Hugo Chávez's ex-wife gives Washington insights into strongman's psyche: WikiLeaks

American Thinker  "*Chávez as a poor youngster was influenced by a teacher who admired Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Ambitions from an early age, Chávez imagined himself running the country as a 20 year-old."
Isn't that Obama's life story?

Arson attacks spread from North to Jerusalem. Air fleet battles Carmel fire

DEBKAfile  "Black stumps and soot-laden soil are all that remains of 10,000 acres of nature reserve, parks and woodland of the northern Carmel range, one of the most popular and scenic getaway spots in the country. Four million trees, some of them rare species, were lost, despite the efforts of the Nature and Parks Authority and Jewish National Fund personnel. The Hay Bar open zoo is threatened, although the animals are still safe."

Fire services report shows Israel unready for war, again  ""The situation is insufferable," he writes. The discrepancies are severe and the fire services are a bottleneck that could injure the rescue forces as a whole."

Canada: Woman dies waiting in ER

The Star  "Lee feels her daughter was not seen fast enough by medical staff.
"“They didn’t touch her,” said the grieving Lee. “She was crying out, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe’. . . Nobody attended to my daughter.”
"On Monday, Auditor General Jim McCarter released his annual report which found that despite putting an extra $200 million into shortening emergency room wait times over the last two years, “significant province-wide progress has not yet been made.”"
Tax dollars at work through a compassionate progressive government.

And yet another accused bomb plotter named…wait for it…

Michelle Malkin "This morning, the feds arrested Muhammed Hussain, a Muslim convert formerly known as Antonio Martinez, in the Baltimore area on charges related to a bombing plot against military recruitment centers."
The name Muhammed is no surprise; the disturbing part is his original name.

Why Conservative Support For The Deal May Unravel: The Pledge To America and Primary Opponent Rhetoric

Hewitt Blog  "The real problems for conservatives are two.
"First, any conservative who votes for the deal is voting to resurrect the death tax. The death tax is at zero right now, driven there by a decade of step downs and a moral argument, widely and deeply held, that this vampire tax is wrong on many levels. Any Republican who votes for the deal is voting to undo that demise. Any future primary opponent will be sure to campaign on the fact that the incumbent voted to resurrect the death tax --a powerful club with which to beat a senator facing a Tea Party challenge, and some of the redistricted old bulls of the House as well."...Emphasis added.

Cyber group says WikiLeaks attacks to grow

Reuters "Credit card giants MasterCard and Visa came under intense cyber attack on Wednesday as supporters of WikiLeaks retaliated for moves against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange after the release of U.S. diplomatic cables that angered and embarrassed the Obama administration."

House Passes DREAM Act Immigration Measures

Fox News  "The Senate plans a vote Thursday to try to summon the DREAM Act to the Senate floor. It is expected to fail.
"Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), one of the main backers of the DREAM Act, believes this is the last chance he has to pull this legislation across the finish line.
""Once the Congress of the United States changes hands and the House of Representatives is in the hands of the Republican Party, I don't see any movement on comprehensive immigration reform," Gutierrez said."


SignsOnSanDiego



Highway safety sign becomes running story on immigration  "Perhaps nowhere else could such a road sign have been born.

"A ghostly silhouette of a mother, father and little girl running, their bodies leaning forward as if into the wind. The child's pigtails fly behind her as the family dashes across a stark yellow background, accompanied by one word: CAUTION."

Dem Congressman: Illegal Aliens are ‘De Facto Citizens’ "During debate over the DREAM Act Wednesday, Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo., blames a “broken” immigration system for allowing illegal immigrants to live in the United States, calling them “de facto citizens.”" Video and sound.
Democrats do not see "brave immigrants"; they see votes. The left cares not what this nation becomes as long as they get to stay in power.

Pelosi's latest embarrassment: compares illegals to Founders   "Is there no limit to this woman's chutzpah? In praise of the DREAM Act, allowing those who violated our immigration laws to attain citizenship, the San Francisco leftist invokes the Founders."

Rich Terrell Cartoon

http://terrellaftermath.com/  

  Rich Terrell, cartoonist: "Now retired from teaching high school economics and math (thus “AfterMath”) I turned my hand to Photoshop cartooning. My cartoons are unabashedly conservative. This conservatism comes from experience as much as from studying conservative philosophers and economists like Hayek, Smith, Sowell, Milton Friedman. Living in Berkeley , California for seventeen years cured me of any lingering illusions about liberalism. People’s Park alone stands as squalid witness to liberalism’s failure. I do, however, borrow from the radical Saul Alinsky one useful concept -- the importance of mocking the opposition."  http://terrellaftermath.com/about_us/index.html 

Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Call Our Troops Homophobes (Updated)

Ann Coulter "Only a small portion of what is known as "the military" actually does the fighting. The rest is a vast bureaucracy along the lines of the DMV.
"Today's military features "victim advocates" and sensitivity training facilitators, the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Services personnel and a million other goo-goo positions. How did we ever take the shores of Normandy without a phalanx of "sensitivity training" counselors?"....
" Military combat is a very specialized field comparable to nothing in civilian life. There has to be a special bond among warriors -- and only one kind of bond. The soldierly bond gets confused if some guys think their comrades are hot or if they suspect their superior is having a relationship with a fellow soldier.

"It's the same confusion that results from putting girls in the military. When an officer makes a decision, nothing should enter into it except his views on the best military strategy."

Don't sacrifice unit cohesion for a social experiment. "American soldiers in battle don’t fight for what some president says on TV, they don’t fight for mom, apple pie or the American flag, they fight for one another."

—Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore, U.S. Army, We Were Soldiers Once, and Young

Monty Python's take on the subject.

Is Hollywood mounting a war on Christmas?

 LA Times  "But don't be quick to blame Hollywood. Most of the movies from that fertile year of 2006 flopped. So right now, Hollywood executives' assumption is that Americans would rather come to theaters to see stories about pretty much anything other than Christmas. Are they right?"
Picture from imdb

Of Sanctimonious Purists, Hostage Takers, and Obama “Cool” Gone Missing!

Canada Free Press  "Having purged himself of the festering bitterness within as regards the left, Obama coolly turned to rascals on the right, those GOP “hostage takers” who were, according to Obama, anxious to extend tax cuts for the well-to-do while increasing taxes on the middle-class.
"That dilly flies directly in the face of the fact that not one Republican is on record as supporting tax increases on middle-class Americans, or any class of American for that matter."
 "John W. Lillpop is a recovering liberal. “Clean and sober” since 1992 when last he voted for a Democrat. Pray for John: He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where people like Nancy Pelosi are actually considered normal!."

You Have To Pass This Amnesty To Find Out What Is In It

The Foundry "The nation’s unemployment rate stands at 9.8 percent, a post–World War II record 19th month that unemployment has been over 9 percent. President Barack Obama is 7.3 million jobs short of what he promised his failed stimulus would deliver. The American people are staring down the barrel of the largest tax hike in American history. So what do [Reid] and [Pelosi] have Congress voting on today? Amnesty. Specifically, the House and Senate will be voting on the fourth and fifth versions of the DREAM Act, which would legalize anywhere between 300,000 and 2.1 million illegal immigrants."