Don’t Give In To North Korea Demands (Updated)

Washington spurns Tokyo's demand for reprisal against North Korea "...Obama's lack of response to the Japanese call, despite the presence of 28,000 US troops on the Korean Demilitarized Zone border – even with limited military action - is bound to devalue the defensive umbrella against North Korea the US has pledged South Korea and Japan. US unresponsiveness is already resonating loudly in the Middle East and Persian Gulf which is beginning to take it as betokening feeble resolve in dealing with Iran and its nuclear weapons aspirations." DEBKAfile

Heritage " New START offers the US no new tools to deal with Iran and North Korea which are the clear and present danger. Instead, all New START does is tie our military’s hands by limiting our capacity to build the missile defense systems necessary to deal with these regimes. The President should spend less time hawking flawed treaties to justify his Nobel Peace Prize and invest more time in fighting for peace against America’s enemies."

North Korean Artillery Attack on a Southern Island

Map from STRATFOR

North Korean Attack Designed to Flex Muscles, Both Internally and Externally  "...every time they do this they are usually also in dire need of food, oil and cash. They do a fair business in the arms trade and have dabbled in nuclear proliferation, but they know they will get satchels of cash, barrels of oil, and some rice if they remind us they can make a big mess. So we will soon be partnering with our good friends and owners the Chinese to pay the North Koreans to chill."

South Korea on war alert after North shells border island   "The White House strongly condemned the attack and callsed for a halt to belligerent action. The Japanese prime minister Naoto Kan ordered its ministers to prepare for "unexpected events" in reference to the worst clash on the peninsula since the Korean war 50 years ago. China and Russian expressed concern over the shelling and Beijing called for an urgent Six Power meeting on the crisis." DEBKAfile

 North Korea and Iran: Containment vs. Regime Change "The ultimate solution is plain: regime change. But how to achieve it is another matter. China is North Korea’s major remaining lifeline, but unfortunately it is hard to see how to persuade the Chinese to cut off their client state. They may not like Pyongyang’s powerplays, but they are even less wild about the notion of a unified Korea allied with the United States." 
Max Boot.

HIGHER TAXES MEANS HIGHER SPENDING

Neal Boortz  "Don't be fooled by the Democrat rhetoric; and don't expect the ObamaMedia to tell you the facts behind tax increases. Increasing taxes on the rich has nothing to do with reducing our deficit. It has everything to do with pandering to the wealth envy crowd. When presented with the information that increasing capital gains taxes resulted in less revenue for the government, our own president said that he would still increase taxes "for the purposes of fairness." How can you even debate such logic? "
Photo: idiots4obama

http://townhall.com/cartoons/cartoonist/GaryVarvel

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http://townhall.com/cartoons/cartoonist/LisaBenson

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As long as we're kinda, sorta on the subject of body searches: TSA MADNESS   "Now ... look at this from the TSA point of view. This is what passes for a thinking process at the highest levels of this dysfunctional government agency.
"Now .. just for fun, I've created a little movie with this wonderful script I just wrote! You can click here to watch the movie, or just read the script so you don't make too much noise at the workplace. "  Neal Boortz

Republicans Made Inroads with Hispanic Voters in 2010

Weekly Standard   "As several commentators have observed, the 2010 elections saw conservative Hispanics break through to win major offices in New Mexico, Florida and Nevada. Until this year, a conservative Hispanic in public office was likely to be a Cuban-American. In the Congress now stumbling toward its lame-duck finale, four Hispanic Republicans served time – three House members and their fellow Floridian, Sen. Mel Martinez, who retired in August of 2009. All are of Cuban descent."

The George W. Bush Fixation

Victor Davis Hanson  "Obama's serial fixation with his predecessor made little sense when he first took office — and has now become a disastrous misreading of political realities."

How Should Terrorists Be Tried?

Andrew C. McCarthy   "In Canada, the law is very favorable to convicts who commit their offenses as juveniles. Khadr, who is now 24, was 15 when he threw the fateful grenade. On Canadian soil, his incarceration will be governed by Canadian law, not the U.S. military-commission sentence. The likelihood is that the terrorist will be released in a year or two: an unrepentant jihadist hero still plenty young enough for another decade or three of plotting against Americans.
"Of course, the slap on the wrist Khadr got seems draconian compared with a military commission’s handling of Salim Hamdan, a bodyguard and confidant of Osama bin Laden. After years of helping the al-Qaeda chief run his network, Hamdan was captured in possession of missiles intended for use against American troops. Military prosecutors asked for a 30-year term. The commission instead meted out a stunning five-and-a-half-year sentence — resulting in Hamdan’s release and repatriation, since he had already spent more than five years in custody."

Remembering the Kennedy Assassination Through the Zapruder Film [VIDEO]

AOL News  "Surge Desk offers a selection of clips, including the Zapruder Film and related videos:"

Pres. Obama Bashes Bush Overseas at NATO Summit

Bully Pulpit  " Obama: “The message I want to send is that after a period in which relations between the United States and Europe were severely strained, that strain no longer exists… in terms of a broad vision of how we achieve transatlantic security the alliance has never been stronger”…"   (Irony follows...)

Jindal: Obama told us not to criticize him on TV   "Bobby Jindal said that at a meeting with the President during the gulf oil spill, that he and the President of Plaquemines Parish were told specifically by Obama not to go on TV and criticize him."

Obama in Portugal; meets with EU, NATO partners "Obama's two-day Portugal trip comes days after a sometimes disappointing 10-day swing through Asia, the longest foreign trip of his presidency. Though he failed to ink a free-trade deal with South Korea and couldn't rally wide-ranging support for his opposition to China's currency manipulation, he did make clear that fast-growing Asia is central to U.S. foreign policy.
"It's a reality not lost in Europe, where some leaders worry that Obama views the continent as a secondary player in his foreign policy agenda. "

Pat Oliphant, WaPo

Palestinian Authority Information Minister: The Jews have no Claim on Wailing Wall

ShawarmaMayor "In the past, PA leaders and officials have also denied Jewish rights to the Wall, insisting that the Temple Mount never stood in the area.
"The new document claims that the Western Wall, or Al- Buraq Wall, as it is known to Muslims, constitutes Waqf property owned by an Algerian- Moroccan Muslim family.
"It claims there isn’t one stone in the wall that belongs to the era of King Solomon."

Ground Zero mosque applies for $5 million grant from 9/11 redevelopment fund

Hot Air  "Exit question: If the developers are willing to restart the debate by doing something like this that’s bound to get attention, why not go the whole nine yards and publicly call upon their prominent defenders to help them fundraise? Make the site a true lefty cause celebre by imploring Bloomberg, Moore, and so on to strike a blow for tolerance by ponying up some dough towards its completion."
Chutzpah writ large, but why not? Muslims used American planes to destroy American buildings; why not use American money to build their triumphal mosque?

All the News That Is Unfit to Print

Victor Davis Hanson  "...10) Obama and Race. We read of occasional slips from Obama and his associates, but never of the effect of lots of slips in the aggregate. Think for a minute. In only three years we have heard the following: Rev. Wright’s visceral hatred, Father Pfleger, the “clingers” speech, “typical” white person, Eric Holder’s cowards, the Van Jones racial rants, the “stupidly” acting police, Ms. Sotomayor’s “wise Latina,” the back of the car for Republicans, the “enemies” of Latinos, the tribal appeals for minorities to vote en masse and thereby disappoint Republicans who don’t want them to, the Black Panther/Department of Justice mess, the black farmers/Department of Agriculture wildly escalating payout schemes, the Michellisms from downright mean country and never been proud slurs to our uniformed lives and raise the bar whines, the Arizonans who hunt down ice-cream goers, those who in fear lash out at innocents like the Ground Zero mosque backers, and on and on. If this is healing, what is polarization? At some point, we should say to Barack Obama: “Cut it out. Get over the racial thing, and call off the racialists. This is becoming obsessive: We got your drift already.”"  Click the link above to read the other nine items.

Why Sarah Palin Shouldn't Run

Mona Charen "The Republican nominee should be someone with vast and impressive experience in government and the private sector -- and a proven record. Voters chose a novice with plenty of star power in 2008 and will be inclined to swing strongly in the other direction in 2012. Americans will be looking for sober competence, managerial skill, and maturity, not sizzle and flash.
"After the 2008 campaign revealed her weaknesses on substance, Palin was advised by those who admire her natural gifts to bone up on policy and devote herself to governing Alaska successfully. Instead, she quit her job as governor after two and a half years, published a book (another is due next week), and seemed to chase money and empty celebrity."