Monti Says: Another correct Monti prediction! I’m getting good at this.
New York Post
November 5, 2009
By GEORGE A. KING III
Baseball’s penthouse is again decorated with hand-painted silk Yankees pinstripe wallpaper.
Nine years after their last World Series title, the Yankees earned No. 27 last night when they spanked the defending champion Phillies 7-3 in Game 6 at Yankee Stadium before a record crowd of 50,315 that didn’t include George Steinbrenner.
Tomorrow morning the Yankees will celebrate with a ticker-tape parade up lower Broadway.
“Right where we belong,” Derek Jeter bellowed from a stage in the middle of the $1.5 billion Stadium.
And they looked very comfortable. Alex Rodriguez, who doesn’t have to answer any more questions about choking in the postseason, let loose with a river of victory tears and promised the parade will be a huge party.
Mariano Rivera held a copy of The Post’s front page with the No. 27 on the cover.
Hideki Matsui, who went 3-for-4 with a homer and six RBIs that tied the single-game Series record, was named the MVP and took the occasion to lobby for a return.
“I hope so,” when asked if he would be back. Matsui can become a free agent in 15 days. “I hope it works out. I love New York and I love the fans.”
From 1996 to 2000 the Yankees won four Series titles and three straight (1998-2000). They came within two outs of winning in 2001, were bounced from the 2003 Series in six games and didn’t make it back until this year when they spent almost a half-billion dollars of Steinbrenner’s fortune to import CC Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Mark Teixeira to successfully plug gaping holes in the rotation and lineup.
When the subject of money surfaced, general manager Brian Cashman was ready with an answer.
“You can call us anything you want. You’re also going to have to call us world champions,” said Cashman, who didn’t join the Steinbrenner family on the stage to accept the World Series trophy.
All brought to you by the “religion of peace.” Watch how CAIR tries to spin this debacle…
October 29, 2009
by Ed White
AP – Detroit Police enter the temporary home to the Masjid Al-Haqq mosque in Detroit Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2009. …
• 
Slideshow: Radical Islamic leader killed in Detroit raid
DETROIT – A leader of a radical U.S. Sunni Islam group killed in a shootout with federal agents near Detroit repeatedly told followers that the government was the enemy and they must be willing to take on the FBI — even if it meant death, authorities said.
“You cannot have a nonviolent revolution,” Luqman Ameen Abdullah said, according to a 2008 conversation secretly recorded by a confidential FBI source.
Abdullah, 53, was killed Wednesday at a warehouse in Dearborn, where agents were attempting to arrest him on charges that included conspiracy to sell stolen goods and illegal possession and sale of firearms. He was one of 11 people named in a criminal complaint after a two-year investigation.
FBI spokeswoman Sandra Berchtold said Abdullah refused to surrender, fired a weapon and was killed by gunfire from agents.
The 43-page complaint described Abdullah as an extremist who believed the FBI bombed New York’s World Trade Center in 1993 and the Oklahoma City federal building two years later. Abdullah beat children with sticks at his Detroit mosque, the complaint claimed, and was trained with his followers in the use of firearms, martial arts and swords.
Neither Abdullah nor his co-defendants were charged with terrorism. But he was “advocating and encouraging his followers to commit violent acts against the United States,” FBI agent Gary Leone wrote in an affidavit filed with the complaint.
The FBI said Abdullah, also known as Christopher Thomas, was an imam, or prayer leader, of a radical group named Ummah whose primary mission is to establish an Islamic state within the U.S.
Abdullah told followers that it was their “duty to oppose the FBI and the government and it does not matter if they die” and to “simply shoot a cop in the head” if they wanted the officer’s bulletproof vest, Leon wrote.
The affidavit also said bombs, guns and even the recipe for TNT were among Abdullah’s regular topics with his allies. Group members and former members said they were “willing to do anything Abdullah instructs and/or preaches, even including criminal conduct and acts of violence,” the FBI agent wrote.
But that description doesn’t match what Dawud Walid, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Michigan chapter, said he knew of Abdullah.
“He would open up the mosque to homeless people. He used to run a soup kitchen and feed indigent people,” Walid said. “I knew nothing of him that was related to any nefarious or criminal behavior.”
Walid said Abdullah had a wife and children. A phone number for the family had been disconnected.
Ummah believes that a separate Islamic state in the U.S. would be controlled by Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, who is serving a life sentence in a federal prison in Colorado for shooting two police officers in Georgia in 2000, Leone said.
Al-Amin, a veteran of the black power movement, started the group after he converted to Islam in prison.
“They’re not taking their cues from overseas,” said Jimmy Jones, a professor of world religions at Manhattanville College and a longtime Muslim prison chaplain. “This group is very much American born and bred.”
Abdullah’s mosque is in a brick duplex on a residential street in Detroit. A sign on the door in English and Arabic reads, in part, “There is no God but Allah.” The mosque was located elsewhere in the city until the property was lost in January because of unpaid taxes.
When the eviction took place, a search turned up empty shell casings and large holes in the concrete wall of a “shooting range,” Leone said.
Seven of the 10 people charged with Abdullah were in custody, including a state prison inmate, the U.S. attorney’s office said. Three were still at large. Another man not named in the complaint also was arrested.
The FBI built its case over two years with the help of confidential sources close to Abdullah who recorded conversations and participated in undercover operations involving the sale of furs, laptop computers, televisions, energy drinks and power tools.
Abdullah received at least 20 percent of any profit and claimed the “Prophet Muhammad said that it is okay to participate in theft; as long as that person prays, they are in a good state,” Leone wrote in the affidavit.
Imad Hamad, regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in Dearborn, said the FBI briefed him about the arrests.
“We know that this is not something to be projected as something against Muslims,” Hamad said.
___
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) blasted President Barack Obama’s approach to Iran and bemoaned what he described as the United States’s weakening relationship with Israel.
In a speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in San Diego, Romney called the Iranian government the world’s “greatest immediate threat,” an “unalloyed evil, run by people who are at once ruthless and fanatical.”
“Stop thinking that a charm offensive will talk the Iranians out of their pursuit of nuclear weapons. It will not,” Romney said, referring obliquely to Obama’s insistence on talks with the rogue nation. “And agreements, unenforceable and unverifiable, will have no greater impact here than they did in North Korea.”
“Once an outstretched hand is met with a clenched fist, it becomes a symbol of weakness and impotence,” Romney added.
Romney called for “comprehensive, withering sanctions,” along with American support for anti-government activists in Iran. Taking a hawkish line, Romney said military options should remain on the table even as Iran participates in nuclear talks with the U.S., Russia and France this week in Vienna.
“Unfortunately, for reasons that are unfathomable to me, our government has signaled that the military option is effectively off the table. How can that be countenanced when an ally of the United States faces an existential threat?” he asked.
Romney has long been critical of Obama’s approach to foreign policy. He has portrayed the tone of Obama’s relations with the rest of the world as apologist, and Romney’s newest book will continue the theme. No Apology: The Case for American Greatness is to be released early next year.
Romney also said the United States is putting too much pressure on Israel, and not enough on Palestinians, in the pursuit of a lasting Middle East peace.
“In pursuit of a peace process, the United States today has exerted substantial pressure on Israel while putting almost no pressure on the Palestinians and the Arab world,” Romney said. “We can encourage both parties in the conflict, but we must never forget which one is our ally.”
The United Nations “has become a forum for invective against the Jewish state,” Romney said, insisting that the U.S. has landed on the wrong side when condemning Israel for building new settlements.
Monti Says: I can’t wait until this disgrace of a news service is permanently out of business!
New York Post
October 19, 2009
PAUL THARP
The New York Times today said it was cutting 100 newsroom jobs, as the struggling newspaper continues to make cuts in the face of a declining advertising market.
The round of cuts marks the second time this year that the Times has slashed jobs. In March, the company eliminated 100 positions and imposed a 5 percent pay cut that lasts through the end of the year.
According to a memo distributed to employees by Executive Editor Bill Keller, the company hopes to make all the cuts through voluntary buyouts, though he didn’t rule out involuntary cuts if too few people step up.
The fresh round of cuts come amid signs the ad picture is starting to show some signs of improvement.
USA Today publisher Gannett reported a better than expected results, even though profit sank by more than 50 percent.
Shares in the Times jumped nearly 5 percent to $8.90 as of 3:30 p.m.
Could they possibly be that stupid? Let’s hope so, as this will open the door to wholesale destruction of their nuclear sites!
DEBKAfile Special Report
October 19, 2009
Iranian Revolutionary Guards chief Mohammed Ali Jafari
The commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafary, Monday, Oct. 19, threatened “crushing” retaliation against the US, UK and Pakistan including the invasion of its eastern neighbor. Tehran links all three to the suicide bombing attack in Sistan-Baluchistan Sunday, Oct. 18, which killed 42 people including seven senior Guards officers. One was Gen. Nur Ali Shoustari, Jafari’s deputy, who was identified by DEBKAfile’s counter-terror sources as commander of the al Qods clandestine terror bases in Iraq, Pakistan, Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
Jafary said: “Behind this scene are the American and British intelligence apparatus and there will have to be retaliatory measures to punish them.”
DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources note that is the first time in Iran’s 30-year Islamic revolution that a military leader has gone to the extreme lengths of threatening to strike US and British military targets, a measure of the damage the regime and Guards suffered from the suicide attack, which has since been condemned and denied by Washington.
Jafari expanded on his charge by saying: “New evidence has been obtained proving the link between yesterday’s terror attack and the US, British and Pakistani intelligence services.” He spoke of evidence showing that all three supported the group. “A delegation would soon travel to Pakistan to present it,” he said.
A military official in Tehran then suggested Iran might launch a military thrust into Pakistan against the group blamed for the attack. Lawmaker Payman Forouzesh said: “There is even unanimity that these operations (could) take place in Pakistan territory.”
Tehran accuses the Sunni secessionist terrorist group Jundallah of Baluchistan, which is fighting for the predominantly Sunni province’s independence, of carrying out the suicide bombing in provincial town of Pisheen near the Pakistan and Afghanistan borders. In the past, Tehran has charged the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence agency and the CIA of supporting the group. It has carried out a string of terrorist attacks on regime and Shiite targets including in 2007 a failed assassination attempt on president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources report that Tehran will have to make good on its threats without too much delay or lose face among the political and ethnic minority dissidents plaguing on the regime, especially those who rose up in protest against the tainted June 20 presidential election. Hesitation will be seen as weakness.
Past Iranian reprisals were usually carried against the US or Britain indirectly in the Persian Gulf or by local Islamic surrogates like Hizballah in Iraq. Jafari’s words point to a more direct showdown this time by the IRGC or its terrorist arm al Qods.
IT’S TIME FOR A NEW THIRD PARTY
80% of Americans identify themselves not as Liberals or Conservatives, but as Moderates. And these Moderates want fiscal conservatism- something the D’s and R’s can’t deliver on. They want term limits on all elected officials. And they want a progressive attitude w/r/t social issues. It’s way past time for a NEW THIRD PARTY in this country- a fiscally conservative/socially progressive platform with the pledge of term limits FOR ALL ELECTED OFFICIALS NATIONWIDE! Only then can the gridlock, corruption and malfunctions of government be addressed. Only then can we begin to rebuild our great nation. This happened before- in 1860, when a relatively unknown lawyer from Illinois ran for President with an upstart third party- Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party!
IT’S TIME FOR A NEW THIRD PARTY.
You will see it, despite what conventional wisdom tells us- that the vested parties are too rich and powerful to let it happen. Nope, here’s a place where “follow the money” will not ultimately work. Follow the hearts and minds of Americans that were sick of the same old Republican Party of George Bush and took a chance and lost on a Democratic powerbroker with a hidden, now blatant, socialist agenda. No, Americans do not want another Bush and they do not want Obama. Both parties have failed miserably and have no ability to recover.
IT’S TIME FOR A NEW THIRD PARTY!
Trust me, it’s coming and it’s bigger than Tea Parties.
Spread the word, my friends!
Up until now I thought this was all a big joke… now I’m sure that it is!
TIMES ONLINE
October 9, 2009
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6867711.ece
Big whoop. If Jimmy Carter and Yasser Arafat can be winners, why shouldn’t Obama be one, too! What a disgrace and what a joke. This award is less than meaningless, it is absurd and irrelevant. So who cares, especially since this year’s winner (the Obameister) refuses to meet last year’s winner, the Dalai Lama.
PAJAMAS MEDIA
October 9th, 2009
So Barack Obama just picked up the imprimatur and nihil obstat from Oslo’s Nobel Prize Committee for “his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people.”
Yes, that’s right, this year’s Nobel “Peace” Prize goes to Barack Obama. What’s the appropriate response: incredulity? Nah: the Nobel Peace Prize is a thoroughly discredited politically-correct coefficient of liberal transnational socialism. Barack Obama was tailor-made for this dubious honor, just as Yasser Arafat was. No, the appropriate response should be a compound of contempt and irritation, contempt for the bloviating Norwegians who once again have distinguished themselves by their sanctimonious fatuousness (”Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future . . . .”), irritation at the fact that this pseudo distinction will, in the eyes of the credulous, tend to legitimate the actions of the most anti-American and incompetent President in history.
The Times (no, not The New York Times, which is purring with pleasure at the news, but the London Times) is correct:
Rarely has an award had such an obvious political and partisan intent. It was clearly seen by the Norwegian Nobel committee as a way of expressing European gratitude for an end to the Bush Administration, approval for the election of America’s first black president and hope that Washington will honour its promise to re-engage with the world.
Instead, the prize risks looking preposterous in its claims, patronising in its intentions and demeaning in its attempt to build up a man who has barely begun his period in office, let alone achieved any tangible outcome for peace.
Bottom line: this action is less the awarding of a prize than a kick in the teeth aimed at traditional American power and prestige.
As usual, Andy McCarthy cuts to the chase:
I’m not all for Americans winning international prizes, especially the Nobel Peace Prize. In fact, I’m vigorously against it. The transnational progressives who pass out these accolades believe America is the problem in the world, the main threat to peace, the impediment to “progress,” etc. The award is a symbolic statement of opposition to American exceptionalism, American might, American capitalism, American self-determinism, and American pursuit of America’s interests in the world.
Exactly. If you are pro-American, you must be anti-the Nobel Peace. I am pro-American, ergo, etc. And Andy is to be commended, too, for his suggestion that we rebaptize this discreditable faux-honor with a more suitable name:
After a number of years, the NFL renamed its Super Bowl trophy after its most fitting recipient — it’s now called the Vince Lombardi Trophy. I’d like to see the Nobel Foundation follow suit. If today’s headlines said, “Barack Obama Wins Yasser Arafat Prize,” that would be perfect.
[UPDATE: a friend reminds me that this year's Nobel Peace Laureate, B. Obama, has just refused to meet last year's Nobel Peace Laureate, the Dalai Lama: what do you make of that?]
