Posts Tagged ‘Netherlands’

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Bring Me My Bow Of Burning Gold

Thursday, December 7th, 2017

Wednesday President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, finally fulfilling the terms of the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995. (Trivia: It passed the Senate by a vote of 93-5. The only Democrat to vote against it? Sen. Robert Byrd.)

The usual idiots are in full poo flinging mode. “Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Mr Trump was ‘throwing the region into a ring of fire.'” Yes, because the Middle East was such a garden of peace and understanding before the announcement.

Those notorious peace lovers in Hamas stated that President Trump’s move had “opened the gates of Hell. Which is sort of their go-to move:

Maybe they can turn it into a tourist attraction: “Be there at sunset to see Hamas open the Gates of Hell!”

I guess we’ll have to live with Hamas abandoning the peaceful, reasonable, constructive engagement with Israel that’s been their hallmark.

And there’s the usual gnashing and wailing over the blow to the mythical “peace process” that’s all process and no peace.

As one official notes: “Delaying the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has done nothing to achieve peace for more than two decades.”

Naturally the Palestinians are rioting because it’s the only thing they’re good at. Maybe they’ll launch Intifada 3: Little Bombers. The Second Intifada did manage to ramp the annual deaths of Israelis into the low hundreds, but that was before Israel built most of its security wall. (They’re also far along in building an underground wall around Gaza to thwart those Hamas Peace and Happiness kidnap tunnels.) So the scope of Israeli killing they can accomplish is probably fairly constrained.

In the Netherlands, Muslims responded by smashing the windows of a kosher restaurant, trying to ensure those blintzes never oppress Palestinians again.

Meanwhile, a bill to cut off payments to the Palestinian government for supporting terrorism sailed through the House.

Being hypersensitive to the tender sensibilities of Palestinians and the “Arab street” has gotten the United States exactly jack over the years (unless you count dead ambassadors). Let the Arab street rage and boil over Jerusalem this week. Next week it will be something else. And the week after. And the week after. And the week after.

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Jihad | No Comments »

LinkSwarm for March 17, 2017

Friday, March 17th, 2017

Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Insert your own Irish-related drinking joke here.

  • President Trump’s approval ratings rise.
  • Did Obama use a British intelligence agency to spy on Trump? (Maybe not.)
  • Did the Obama Administration use Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac as a slush fund to pay for ObamaCare?
  • Senate Democrats are paralized what do to over Neil Gorsuch. Everyone agrees Gorsuch is extremely qualified, but the leftwing nutroots are threatening to primary any Democrat who votes to confirm him. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Finally: “A House panel held a hearing on possibly splitting the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Thursday morning.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • In talking about the House GOP’s pathetic ObamaCare replacement, Stephen Green hits the nail on the head: “Congress is warped because the American electorate has yet to accept that other people’s money does eventually run out — and that we are all the other people.” That’s why we need someone committed to reform in the White House, and Greece and Venezuela’s examples fresh in the public’s eye…
  • Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey: “What we reject is immigration without assimilation.” (Hat tip: Sarah Hoyt at Instapundit.)
  • ICE arrests 248 illegal aliens, most in the sanctuary city of Philadelphia. “20 had a conviction and/or pending charges or 48 percent (88 of those arrested had criminal convictions and 32 of those arrested have pending criminal charges). In addition, 50 had been previously removed from the United States and subsequently illegally re-entered.” (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Meanwhile, in Australia: “Teacher quits after primary school students threaten to behead her.” (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • “Iraqi government forces besieged Islamic State militants around Mosul’s Old City on Thursday, edging closer to the historic mosque from where the group’s leader declared a caliphate nearly three years ago.”
  • Former Democratic Representative Dennis Kucinich says that one of his phonecalls was wiretapped. “If a member of Congress can have his phone tapped, this can happen to anybody.”
  • “Ten Senate Democrats are vulnerable in 2018. They’re prime targets for takedowns in the midterm elections. But the process starts now, not then…In order of vulnerability (most to least), the target list features: 1) Joe Donnelly-IN; 2) Bill Nelson-FL; 3) Sherrod Brown-OH; 4) Claire McCaskill-MO; 5) Heidi Heitkamp-ND; 6) Tammy Baldwin-WI; 7) Jon Tester-MN; 8) Joe Manchin-WV; 9) Debbie Stabenow-MI; 10) Bob Casey, Jr.-PA.” Agree with the list, but not the order, since Heitkamp hails from a state Trump won by 36 points. But seeing Stupak bloc flip-flopper Donnelly go down at last would be extremely satisfying…
  • Breakdown of 2016 Presidential race demographics. Least likely to vote for Trump: Black single women. Most likely to vote for Trump: Mormons. Usual poll caveats apply. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Remember convicted felon Brett Kimberlin? There’s always some Kimberlin news floating around the blogsphere, usually in relation to his latest ludicrous lawsuit getting laughed out of court. But this week he made the news for being involved in selling hoax documents designed to bring down Donald Trump. “The entire set of documents appear to have been forged as part of an elaborate scam.” So, like most Kimberlin escapades, the story ends in embarrassing failure. (Hat tip: The Other McCain.)
  • Cenk Uygur: Why the Democratic Party is useless. 1. As with all these critiques of the Democratic Party from the left, it’s right about the party being a corrupt institution for entrenched interests and wrong about America being gung ho for socialism. 2. Boy, that “not being polite” stuff sure helped Democrats recall Scott Walker! 3. “Cenk Uygur” sounds like a dark, forbidding fortress at the edge of Mordor.
  • Holland is the canary in the European coalmine of radical Islamization. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Speaking of Holland, Geert Wilders placed second in Dutch elections, which falls short of a serious challenge to the Islamophillic and Eurocentric establishment.
  • Dear Sen. McCain: (Sigh).
  • Rand Paul fires back: “He makes a really, really strong case for term limits. I think maybe he’s past his prime. I think maybe he’s gotten a little bit unhinged.”
  • Germany wants to fine companies for not censoring fast enough. What do you want to bet that objections to the rousing success of their Muslim immigration policy are first on the list of things to be censored?
  • Camille Paglia has a new book out, and offers up an interview where she talks about modern feminism (against), southern women (for), working class men (for), Michel Foucault (against), and pornography (for).
  • “Soros Fellow Flees Country While Wife Arrested For Welfare Scam.” It seems that earning $1.5 million a year at the Washington, D.C., offices of Mayer Brown LLP just wasn’t enough for Fidelis Agbapuruonwu… (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Three #BlackLivesMatter protestors arrested for beating up a homeless man.
  • Man gets a C when he should have gotten an A for a school assignment. So he did what any of us would have done: Successfully amends the Constitution. (Hat tip: Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett’s Twitter feed.)
  • Dwight has some Austin-related memoes from the police beat.
  • “Coming up next on Most Shocking…Mormon Justice!”
  • King Kong burns.
  • He divided them again!
  • Schumer steals again. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Singer Kelly Clarkson is selling her Tennessee mansion. I like how it’s half typical rich-person mansion, and half Bass Pro Shop…

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    Posted in Austin, Border Control, Budget, Crime, Democrats, Elections, Foreign Policy, Jihad, ObamaCare, Republicans, Supreme Court, Texas | No Comments »

    Gunman Forces Dutch News Off the Air

    Thursday, January 29th, 2015

    Dutch news agencies reported on Thursday that a man with a gun had entered the offices of the national broadcaster NOS and was demanding to go on air.

    The RTL press agency reported that a building belonging to NOS was being cleared. An 8 p.m. (2.00 p.m. EST) NOS broadcast displayed a message reading “In connection with circumstances, no broadcast is available at this time”.

    Could be a lone nut. Or it could be a member of a certain religion that’s not Christianity, Buddhism or Judaism…

    Update: Seeing reports he’s been arrested.

    Update 2: Sky News confirms gunman’s arrest.

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    EuroDoom Roundup: Waiting for the Inevitable Greek Default

    Monday, January 30th, 2012

    You know the problem with doing one of these roundups on the European Debt Crises? I can search for “Euro” just about anytime of the day and night on Google News and come up with a dozen things I could potentially include. So just consider this a Whitman’s European Despair Sampler of possible bad news, as there’s a lot more where this came from:

  • European Finance Minsters on Greece’s latest bond offer: REJECTED.
  • “A Greek Default: It’s a-Comin'”.
  • In exchange for bailing out Greece yet again, Germany wants Greece to cede control over its tax rates and budget to an EU commission (i.e., Germany). It’s almost touching, this German naivety that Greeks can actually be compelled to obey German laws when they can’t even be compelled to obey Greek laws even now. But despite the fact that such government dictates would be ignored just like they are now, Greeks are still furious at the proposal. (Hat tip: Ace.)
  • And if Berlin doesn’t get to call the tune? “Germany and the Netherlands are likely to quit the eurozone rather than swallow an indefinite number of ‘unrequited transfers’ to the union’s crisis-stricken nations.”
  • And even if a deal is reached, it will probably trigger credit default swaps.
  • And if Greece doesn’t blow up the Euro, Portugal will.
  • Fitch downgrades Spain, Belgium, Italy, Slovenia, and Cyprus. (Hat tip: Ace, again.)
  • What will European currency look like after a Euro-zone breakup? Like this.
  • Another month, another EuroZone bailout fund. The rules for the New and Improved Euro Bailout Fund is: 1. “Access [will] be made conditional on signing a new treaty on fiscal discipline.” 2. “Countries representing 85 percent of the fund’s capital [will make] decisions instead of unanimity among the eurozone 17 – will only apply to authorise ESM loans from existing funds.” So 1.) We get an entire new set of fiscal discipline guidelines for the PIIGs governments to ignore, and 2. Germany will call the tune, and the rest of the Eurozone will dance. At least until the next shuffling of the fiscal deck chairs.
  • Well, here’s a headline sure to fill investors with confidence: “From now on, in Europe, everything gets worse.”
  • Spanish unemployment hits 23.4%. And what happens when austerity means they can no longer pay people not to work? That’s he problem with cradle-to-grave European welfare state: sooner or later you run out of your grandchildren’s money…
  • Eurofudge.
  • The Soviet Union yesterday: “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.” Greece today: “The old dynamic—with Greece pretending to make structural changes and its lenders pretending to save it from default—has become untenable.”
  • The whole EU illusion has been predicated on the assumption that Greeks can be made to behave like Germans, and that the EU could manage to forge a new, multi-ethnic, post-national identity in 20 years when Belgium hasn’t been able to do it in almost 200.
  • Cameron caves. Sadly, this behavior is far more in line with his previous record than his brief stint of standing on principle.
  • House Republicans are working to rescind the $100 billion IMF bailout fund Nancy Pelosi helped create. They may not succeed, but they might force the Obama Administration to defend backstopping the Euro at a time when the federal budget is still hemorrhaging red ink…
  • Last week: France’s credit rating makes our latest Euro bailout fund rock solid. This week: oops.
  • The threat of default is also holding up the merger of two Greek banks, maybe because it’s as yet unclear just how they’ll put European taxpayers on the hook for their losses. Once that’s figured out, I’m sure the merger will fly through…
  • Those bondholders who can’t stick it to taxpayers are looking at 70% losses for Greek debt.
  • Just because Italy is broke is no reason for them to drop a bid for the Olympics.

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    Posted in Budget, Economics, Foreign Policy, Waste and Fraud, Welfare State | No Comments »

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