It’s Not About Settlements (Updated)

Jennifer Rubin "Giora Eiland isn’t impressed with the happy talk coming from the Obama team. George Mitchell may coo all he wants about getting down to “substantive issues,” but the Palestinians show no sign they are willing to accept the most basic element of a peace deal: recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Eiland explains why this is an essential component of any accord:""...

RE: It’s Not About Settlements "As Jennifer noted yesterday in her comments on Giora Eiland’s Ynet op-ed, Palestinian unwillingness to recognize Israel as a Jewish state is the make-or-break issue of the peace process. She’s also correct that the Obama administration shows no signs of recognizing this fact. But two recent developments make this blindness particularly puzzling."

Song on Palestinian TV about conquering Israel through war. "The performance was broadcast on official Palestinian Authority TV this week, two days before the latest round of peace talks."

Palestinian cartoons depicting Israel and the US.

Sham Mideast Peace Talks: What It Really Means When They Say ‘Contiguous’ "U.S. envoy George Mitchell takes a position inimical to Israel, disguising it as neutral."

Socialized failure

Powerline  "Over the past year or two we have featured John Hinderaker's running series on socialized medicine, focused mostly on the United Kingdom. His series runs under the name "Annals of government medicine." John's annals feature the horror stories regularly produced by socialized medicine.

"Yesterday the Minneapolis Star Tribune ran an op-ed column by University of Minnesota Professor John Bryson providing a contrast with our annals."  Search results for this series here:

Annals of Government Medicine  "In the United Kingdom, decentralization of the National Health System is being planned in response to widespread revulsion with rising costs and lousy health care. The latest case in point: Babies died after junior surgeon left to cope on his own."
Here's that chart again:

What’s Behind David Frum’s Attack on Dinesh d’Souza and Mr. Newt?

Big Journalism  "Things About Newt Gingrich and Other Bad Conservatives That Only David Frum Knows

1.Anybody who disagrees with my position on anything is by nature hurting the Conservative movement.
2.Newt Gingrich was heard discussing the fact that Obama breathes air. Muslims breathe air that means Newt Gingrich believes that Barack Obama is a Muslim.
3.Sarah Palin was in the United States on 9/11/01. There were attacks on the US on 9/11/01 that means Sarah Palin believes that Barack Obama was behind the 9/11 attacks.
4.Newt Gingrich was on the Tonight Show when Conan was the host. Conan’s Tonight show was canceled, that means Newt Gingrich believes that Barack Obama is a communist.
5.Rush Limbaugh went to high school with Terry Jones. Terry Jones wanted to burn a Koran which means Rush Limbaugh believes that Barack Obama is a Muslim."

Will GOP Victories Save Obama?

 American Thinker "Ideally should they win, the Republicans should push economically sound legislation, spending cuts and tax cuts and they should also embark on a communication blitz to show the American people what is working and why. And above all, as Mark Levin has pointed out, they should work to switch the worn out Democrat premise that starts every argument with the Republican or Conservative on the defensive. And above all, we should gladly accept a robust economy under President Obama even if he had nothing to do with it."

Justice IG probing Black Panther case

Washington Times   "Christopher Coates, the veteran Justice Department voting section chief who recommended going forward on the civil complaint against the New Black Panther Party, was removed from his post and transferred to the U.S.attorney's office in South Carolina. New Black Panther Party members had disrupted a Philadelphia polling place in the November 2008 elections, one of whom intimidated would-be voters with a nightstick."

The Obamacare and Obama Tax Hike Double Whammy on Seniors (UPDATED)

Heritage "The top tax rates on qualified dividends are scheduled to jump from 15 percent to 39.6 percent on January 1, 2011. The left will claim that these tax hikes will only soak the rich while lower-income Americans will enjoy a free ride. This is false. Higher taxes on dividends will reduce the value of all corporate stocks traded in U.S. markets, regardless of who owns them. According to some estimates, the tax hike on dividends would cause stock prices to drop by more than $211 billion."

 The 1099 Insurrection ;The White House fights an effort to ease a burden on small business.  "The Senate will vote on amendments to the White House small business bill that would rescind an ObamaCare mandate that companies track and submit to the IRS all business-to-business transactions over $600 annually. Democrats tucked the 1099 reporting footnote into the bill to raise an estimated $17.1 billion, part of the effort to claim that ObamaCare reduces the deficit by $100 billion or so."

PLAYING POLITICS  "Earlier this week, the Republicans offered an amendment to repeal the infamous 1099 provision included in ObamaCare. The Democrats voted it down. Now we know why."

Like, Is Sarah Palin Totally Conceited?

Ann Coulter   "Yeah, like the Midwestern bellboy. But the reader is supposed to be gasping at the strangeness of the Palins, not the strangeness of the two reporters, standing alone, staring at the Palins' empty house on an imaginary "anniversary," postulating theories on why the Palins aren't there.
"It turns out the Palins had simply flown to Todd's parents' house for the weekend. No "curiosity seekers" showed up at the house to gawk -- other than the two reporters, who are utterly oblivious to the fact that the only paranoid psychotics in this story are themselves."
Maybe the reporters and David Letterman should be investigated for their Palinophobia.

Questions About Released Far-Left Activist “Hiker” Sarah Shourd

Debbie Schlussel   "You know my position on Shourd and her cohorts.  As I’ve written, they are far-left, anti-American, anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian propagandists who lived in Syria–another Muslim, human rights abusing, terrorist-host state for which she served as an apologist and shill, writing gushing articles about the country."....
 "* Who put up the $500,000 bail money to get Shourd out of Iran? Was it George Soros or one of his shell companies or organizations?

"* How long until Shourd starts spouting her anti-American, anti-Israel, pan-Islamic garbage in books, on Oprah and other TV interviews, etc?"

O’Donnell’s Victory and What It Means

John Podhoretz "The presumption among delighted people on the Left-liberal side is that all this roil on the Right suggests a party in disarray and a movement intent on cannibalizing itself. That’s one way to look at it. The other is that the GOP is actually expanding and seizing the populist mood that seems to be the national direction –  even though the GOP leadership, especially in the Senate, is finding the whole business unnerving and destructive."

Tea Party candidates mostly did well, which should help pull the GOP back to its roots. "Tea Party candidates mostly did well, which is mostly to the good in my opinion. If the flurry and fighting that ended Tuesday represented a “war for the soul of the Republican Party” as the mainstream media is fond of saying, here’s the silver lining: at least the GOP still has a soul worth fighting for."

Koran burner Derek Fenton booted from his job at NJ Transit

NY Daily News  "If Fenton was fired for burning the Koran while off-duty, his First Amendment rights probably were violated, Chris Dunn of the New York Civil Liberties Union said.

"The Supreme Court has recognized a constitutional right to burn the flag. As reprehensible as it may be, burning the Koran would be protected as well." "
As, I'm sure they consider burning the American flag to be reprehensible.

Worries Over Tax Hikes Coloring Business Decisions

WSJ  "Nobody is doing much of anything about expanding or hiring or investing in new equipment," said Ken Keith, owner of Kasbar Inc., a Winston-Salem, N.C., accounting firm that works with small businesses.
"Target Plastics Inc., a Salem, Ore., maker of custom plastic products, used to have seven employees, but now it has only two full-time workers, with an additional person working half-time, said owner Melissa Hescock.
" "I've basically cut back because of the amount of taxes," Ms. Hescock said, including recent state increases and anticipated future federal boosts. "I have fewer people doing more work.""
Oh, the country's in the very best  of hands, the best of haaaaands, the best of hands.

GOOD MOVE MITCH!  "He is introducing a bill in Washington that would prevent anyone from paying a higher tax rate next year than they do this year. This would effectively extend all of the Bush tax cuts for another year .. and give a new congress the chance to straighten this mess out." Neal Boortz

Photo from Wikipedia

Obama's Tiresome Tolerance Lectures

David Limbaugh  "But it's not Obama's curiously bloodless behavior and strange disconnectedness ...that most concerns me about his Pentagon speech and the others. It's his reflexive instinct to lecture Americans, when they're not the ones who need lecturing.

"His first reaction, for example, when Americans protested the building of the ostentatious mosque at ground zero was to assume Americans were being intolerant and bigoted."....
"Surely it should be obvious to Obama and his ilk by now that Islamists don't attack us because of our alleged "intolerance." They don't even respect tolerance. They don't aspire to it. They reject it. And they reject us -- and will continue to, regardless of how nice and "tolerant" we are."