Chamblee54

It is a notorious quote, used to fan the fires of war. It may yet lead to a nuclear Holocaust. The only trouble is, the famous quote is not exactly what he said.
The phrase in question is by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He is the public face of the current government in Iran. The amount of power he holds is a matter of conjecture. The quote in question is about “wiping Israel off the map”. The exact quote is “Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad.” Catchy, huh?
Many scholars maintain that what he really said was “”The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time”. The original is a quote from Ayatollah Khomeini. It would seem that quote refers more to a change of government than a mass slaughter of Israelis. This is similar to the “regime change” that the US pulled off in Iraq, though hopefully not as expensive.
Mr. Khomeini was in charge of Iran after the Shah was evicted. During his tenure, Americans were held hostage at the US embassy, which upset a few people. Could it be that some want revenge for the hostages?
Another event of the Khomeini regime was a nasty war with Iraq. During this war, Iran bought weapons from the USA, with Israel serving as a middleman. This reporter does not know when Mr. Khomeini made the original call for regime change in Jerusalem. Was it before or after Israel helped ship weapons to Iran?
Getting back to Mr. Ahmadinejad, he is playing games with the quote. Whenever he is asked whether he called for the destruction of Israel, he changes the subject.
The source of this feature is THE MOSSADEGH PROJECT. Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh was the Prime Minister of Iran. He was overthrown by a CIA led coup in 1953. HTs also go to Detain This and the WordPress home page.

Every year, Lake Superior State University issues a list of words they would like to see eliminated. This year, in one paragraph, they not only described the process, but used a lot of the forbidden phrases.
“It’s that time of year again!”
Lake Superior State University “maverick” word-watchers, fresh from the holiday “staycation” but without an economic “bailout” even after a “desperate search,” have issued their 34th annual List of Words to Be Banished from the Queen’s English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness. This year’s list may be more “green” than any of the previous lists and includes words and phrases that people from “Wall Street to Main Street” say they love “not so much” and wish to have erased from their “carbon footprint.”
This list is also a good excuse for slack bloggers to put up yet another post. Last year, this reporter posted this list. The very next post to come up at APWBWGTTD was our social chair displaying her engagement ring. There is no guarantee that this will happen again.
So, here we are again. Below is the list of wirty dords from Michigan. If you want more commentary, go here.

maverick,first dude
wallstreet-mainstreet,bailout,____monkey
<3, icon-iconic
green,carbon footprint/carbon offsetting,game changer
staycation, desperate search,not so much
winner of five nominations,it’s that time of year again

There is a war going on in the Gaza Strip. BHO and GWB are on vacation. In the case of GWB, this is probably for the best. Meanwhile, BHO is dodging the hot potato in Gaza, and hoping the inauguration can be moved back to March 4.
BHO has a dandy website, change.gov. A big part of it is devoted to his agenda. It is interesting to see what this says about foreign policy.
The first section is about the “greatest threat” to America. To BHO, this is the resurgence of the Taliban and Al Queda. The call is for increased troop levels in Afghanistan. As for the ticking time bomb ( with nukes) in Pakistan, there is one sentence… ” Obama and Biden will increase nonmilitary aid to Pakistan and hold them accountable for security in the border region with Afghanistan”
The next section is about the “gravest danger” (as opposed to greatest threat). This refers to the spread of nuclear weapons. There is no mention of Israel getting rid of its nukes.
Skipping over “Iran” and “Energy Security”, we get to the section “Renewing American Diplomacy”. The third “bullet point” is the Israeli Palestinian conflict. “Obama and Biden will make progress on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict a key diplomatic priority from day one. They will make a sustained push — working with Israelis and Palestinians — to achieve the goal of two states, a Jewish state in Israel and a Palestinian state, living side by side in peace and security.”
The next section is Israel. At this point we see where BHO’s heart lies. This is directly related to what his campaign contributers have told him to think. “Barack Obama and Joe Biden strongly support the U.S.-Israel relationship, and believe that our first and incontrovertible commitment in the Middle East must be to the security of Israel, America’s strongest ally in the region. They support this closeness, and have stated that the United States will never distance itself from Israel. “ During the July 2006 Lebanon war, Barack Obama stood up strongly for Israel’s right to defend itself from Hezbollah raids and rocket attacks, cosponsoring a Senate resolution against Iran and Syria’s involvement in the war, and insisting that Israel should not be pressured into a ceasefire that did not deal with the threat of Hezbollah missiles. He and Joe Biden believe strongly in Israel’s right to protect its citizens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden have consistently supported foreign assistance to Israel. They defend and support the annual foreign aid package that involves both military and economic assistance to Israel and have advocated increased foreign aid budgets to ensure that these funding priorities are met. They have called for continuing U.S. cooperation with Israel in the development of missile defense systems.
In other words, nothing is going to change. A “key diplomatic priority” just doesn’t hold up against a “first and incontrovertible commitment”. The slaughter of children in Gaza will continue.

PG was upset, and, as is frequently the case, can blame nobody but himself.
He had been saving change for years. The coins go from his pocket, to a bowl, into four peanut butter jars. There is one jar for each type of coin. The machine at Kroger takes a percentage, so PG spent a few delightful afternoons rolling the coins.
The last time PG had taken coins to the bank, the rules were different. You had to have your account number on every roll. Now, in the modern age, the account number was not wanted, but standard coin wrappers were. PG had to take his box home, and re wrap all those coins per the new procedure.

The headlines are so antiseptic… “Israel air strikes demolish Hamas compounds, over 200 dead”
It seems there is a pecking order for tragedy. When it is a Caucasian English speaking American, the media goes bonkers. A dark skinned American gets a more muted response. If the deceased lives in a foreign country, the response is a bit less. If the dead children live in a territory next to Israel, they might as well not exist in the first place.
It is a familiar story. The rockets were coming out of the Gaza Strip, and landing on Israel. The Israeli government decides to take action. No one is really sure how many of the dead were Hamas, and how many were children. Children born into a hell hole, who had no control over who their neighbor is.
The response is predictable. The spokesman for the White House said “Hamas’ continued rocket attacks into Israel must cease if the violence is to stop. The United States urges Israel to avoid civilian casualties as it targets Hamas in Gaza.”
With the internet, people can leave comments when they read a story. In the yahoo system, comments are rated, and those with a low rating are not shown at first. You need to click on a link to read these comments. On the first page of the comments, all the ones not shown due to low ratings, all of them are pro Gazan.
Some of the pro Israeli comments make Israel look bad. Like this WAY TO GO ISRAEL! YOU SHOULD HAVE NEVER LEFT THE GAZA STRIP IN THE FIRST PLACE!See what you get for letting the world dictate how you are to act! Israel, destroy these cowards from the face of the earth. Give them what they want, a martyrs death. So they can go to hell where allah, and mohammed are roasting eternally in hell’s fires.
There are a lot of people in Gaza. Some want them all killed. This is the solution of the Nazis. There is one more solution in the comments: We must send Preachers, Evangelist and Christian missionaries to the Gaza strip , Palestine, Iran, Iraq and Pakistan so that people can “saved” and turn from their wicked ways.

Now that the election is over, we can take another look at the war in Babylon. While our media seems to think we are winning, the truth is a tad more complicated.
Abbas Shawazin has a feature about the size ten salute given to our President recently. He offers this * ::||:: * as an emoticon for shoe. Be sure to leave spaces before and after, or you may wind up with a smiley face. Then you will have happy feet!
Mr. Shawazin talks about men with strange sounding names. This is normal for reports coming out of Babylon. There is a video showing a man beating a picture of Saddam Hussein with a shoe. Saddam liked to say “‘I am the one who made the barefoot Iraqis wear shoes.”
It is also noted that the shoechunker, Muntazer al-Zaidi, was a communist from Sadr City. The residents of Sadr City are known as being tough ghetto guys. Many of them are the core of the Shiite Sadr militia, which is going to be a force to deal with in the future Iraq.

Layla Anwar is an angry young lady. Here is a sample of her prose: ” Get ganged raped and tortured by your “liberators”, have acid thrown at you, be forced to shut up, lose your home, lose your kids, lose your parents, lose your husband, lose your brothers and sisters…But hey, be a lady now ! ” And you thought bloggers in this country had attitude. Do not read this if you are sensitive to cuss words. Ms. Anwar does not like “ALL THOSE WHO FAILED TO STAND BY ANTI-ZIONIST, ANTI-IMPERIALIST, IRAQ AND HER PRESIDENT THE MARTYR, HERO SADDAM HUSSEIN, WHO WAS LYNCHED BY NONE OTHER THAN THE AMERICAN IMPERIALISTS AND THEIR SECTARIAN IRANIAN SHIITE DOGS.”

Vanity Fair  has a good story about torture. This is one part of the Bush regime that has brought a lot of criticism.
The focus of the article is not morals, or whether torture is justified. The thrust of the article is whether or not torture gets good information. On this issue, there seems to be a lot of macho posturing, and talk show hosts who think that torturing the bad guys is a great idea. Many in the intelligence community see things differently.
The ticking bomb scenario gets a rundown. You all know this…a terror suspect is arrested, he knows where the nuke is planted, is torture justified to disarm the device. It is a favorite on talk radio. Back in the real world, a “retired senior officer who was privy to the agency’s internal debate, there was hardly any argument about the value of coercive methods: “Nobody in intelligence believes in the ticking bomb. It’s just a way of framing the debate for public consumption. That is not an intelligence reality.”
There is also the concept that men who are being tortured will say anything to make the suffering stop. What they tell you is not always the truth. Also, when a man is captured, any plans he knows about are going to change.
Several high profile cases are discussed. Many of the men have names which Americans find difficult to pronounce, and have a way of sounding alike. One was a person, who apparently was a greeter at a safe house for Al Queda. Our forces got the idea that he was important, and, after “extraordinary interrogation”, he confessed to a connection between Pre invasion Iraq and Al Queda. This was one of the arguments that was used to promote the invasion.
In one case, a detainee admitting to going to a web site that told how to make a “dirty bomb”. The CIA believed him, and added this to the charges against him. As the story unfolds: ”…his “confession” to reading instructions about building nuclear weapons on the Internet was cited in Mohamed’s Guantánamo charge sheet. Yet it was a joke: such a Web site, with instructions about how to refine bomb-grade uranium with bleach and a bucket, has been doing the rounds on the World Wide Web since at least 1994. In 2005, the conservative columnist Michelle Malkin cited it in her blog as evidence of al-Qaeda’s deadly intentions. She was swiftly disabused by readers, who, unlike the C.I.A. and M.I.5, immediately recognized it as satire”
There is going to be a new man in the white house soon. How he deals with the torture issue ( and the erosion of the rights of American Citizens) remains to be seen. BHO seems to stick his finger in the air before making a decision, and to see what political advantage can be made. The recent episode with Slick Rick Warren is a good example.
America and the world is waiting to see what happens.

PG is almost ready to take back everything he ever said about auto playing music devices. Almost. They are on a lot of blogs now, where the music starts to play when you open the site, whether you want to hear it or not.
PG left a comment at Jasmine Cannick’s facility. Ms. Cannick has a series, A White Gay’s Guide for Dealing with the Black Community for Dummies. PG thoughtfully left a comment, saying that he has learned a lot about “…the black community for dummies”. He went to the site to see if there was any reaction, and the auto start music player had a monolog by Shirley Q. Liquor.
PG let the thing play, and got himself an earful. He was starting to get tired of the whole thing after the fifth monolog, but soon the free show was over. Miss Cannick was so thoughtful to play all those comedy things.
This must just be the day for goofy women. Earlier, PG found a piece by Ann Coulter. She said that Sarah Palin was the Conservative of the Year. The hosting facility was Humanevents. PG wonders where the break should be, whether it is human events or humane vents. The site also has a history lesson from Newt Gingrich, who has gone from teaching history to being history.
Getting back to Man Ann Coulter. She does have a way with words, and I bet Sarah Palin could read them good. For example “I assume Palin was chosen because McCain had heard that she was a real conservative and he had always wanted to meet one — no, actually because he needed a conservative on the ticket, but that he had no idea that picking her would send the left into a tailspin of wanton despair.” What is that saying, when you Assume you make an ass of u and me? Of course, the party represented by a donkey won the election.
HT to Andrew Sullivan for the story by Ms. Coulter.

The email said to bring a wrapped present, costing less than ten dollars, for the gift exchange.
PG had a stack of pictures . He took one, wrapped it, and put it on the pile.
The hostess was number 18, and she chose the picture. She unwrapped it, and was not sure what it was.
She started to make fun of it. Every time a person chose a gift from the pile, she asked them to exchange their gift for the picture. That is how the gift exchange works.
PG saw this from the side of the room. He kept his composure, but will never do this again.