This is the last thing I ever expected to see.

The European Union is threatening to cut off aid to the Palestinians, after the Islamic militant group Hamas won key local elections in the West Bank. The rise of Hamas could have dire consequences for the peace process.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana says the organization could halt tens of millions of dollars in aid to the Palestinian Authority, if Hamas wins landmark parliamentary elections next month. The Islamic militant group appears headed for victory, after it won municipal elections in the West Bank’s biggest cities.

Europe(particularly the weasel states) has been neither a supporter of Israel nor a detractor of Palestinian terrorism, if anything they have seemed less the former and more the latter.

This is good news, although the response from the Palestinian Authority is predictable,

Such kind of fundamentalist terrorist organization, like Hamas, cannot play a political role,” he said. “As long as they are terrorists, and they are bloody terrorists, it is obvious that they cannot play a political role.”

The Palestinian Authority rejected the criticism, saying it is interference in an “internal Palestinian affair.” Palestinian Chief negotiator Saeb Erekat.

“It is not acceptable. People must respect the democratic choice of the Palestinian people,” he said.

And therein lies the essence of the welfare state, in this case the state that is on welfare.

“It is not acceptable.” As with all welfare recipients, the PA believes that what handouts they receive from other governments are an entitlement, that they are free to set the conditions.

They’re probably targeting France with their protests, knowing which side of the croissant their surrender is on.

Yes, we can see that ceding Gaza to the Palestinians is paying some real dividends.

Palestinian terrorists in Gaza have fired an almost daily portion of Kassam rockets towards Israel over the past two weeks, and yesterday’s serving included a rocket that landed in the southern areas of Ashkelon. Defense Minister Sha’ul Mofaz convened a meeting of senior defense establishment figures, and demanded that the army continue to fire artillery at northern Gaza as a deterrence measure.

And now it looks like some Israeli politicians are borrowing a chapter from the American Democratic Party, the chapter titled, “Politics Before Country.”

Mofaz was running for head of the Likud until last week, when he suddenly decided to transfer to Ariel Sharon’s Kadima party, where he is guaranteed a Knesset seat and, most likely, a Cabinet position. In light of what many viewed as his unabashed opportunism, many questions were raised as to his fitness to make life-and-death decisions in the capacity of Defense Minister.

I know I’m going to hate to see where this all ends…

Senator John McCain(R/D Arizona) is getting quite a bit of exercise, standing at center aisle and leaping from foot to foot, left side to right side, doing his almighty best to please both Democrats and Republicans. Boy, he really wants to be elected President.

In the end, of course, he’ll find very few takers on either side.

Sen. John McCain disappointed Democrats on Capitol Hill on Sunday by defending the Bush administration’s decision to use the National Security Agency to monitor a limited number of domestic phone calls in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

Here’s the article.

Here’s the latest column from Mark Steyn, right-thinking master wordsmith, titled Iraq Vote Leaves Dems Looking Like Losers.

One day Iraq will be a G7 member hosting the Olympics in the world’s No. 1 luxury vacation resort of Fallujah, and the Defeaticrat Party will still be running around screaming it’s a quagmire. It’s not just that Iraq is going better than expected, but that it’s a huge success that’s being very deftly managed: The timeframe imposed on the democratic process turns out to have worked very well — the transfer of sovereignty, the vote on a constitutional assembly, the ratification of the constitution, the vote for a legislature — and, with the benefit of hindsight, it now looks like an ingeniously constructed way to bring the various parties on board in the right order: first the Kurds, then the Shia, now the Sunni. That doesn’t leave many folks over on the other side except Zarqawi and Dean. What do the two have in common? They’re both foreigners, neither of whom have the slightest interest in the Iraqi people.

LMAO!!!!

According to an article by Sam Dillon in Treason Central the NYT,

The average American college graduate’s literacy in English declined significantly over the past decade, according to results of a nationwide test released yesterday.

The National Assessment of Adult Literacy, given in 2003 by the Department of Education, is the nation’s most important test of how well adult Americans can read.

It seems to me that the literacy levels of young adults have been declining in direct correlation to our advances in technology.

It’s interesting to note that while black and Asian students’ scores have increased, white and hispanic literacy levels have decreased.

Read the rest here.

First We Have John McCain’s “Al-Qaeda Bill Of Rights,” now President Bush has to do this because lawmakers are now seeking to put our nation in danger of sequels to 9/11.

President Bush, at the White House yesterday, calls for renewing the anti-terror act because “we cannot afford to be without this law for a single moment.”
President Bush yesterday blasted senators using a filibuster to block renewal of the Patriot Act, calling the move irresponsible and saying it puts American lives at risk.

Are these people nuts?

“In the war on terror, we cannot afford to be without this law for a single moment,” Bush said in a rare live version of his weekly radio address.

He demanded full reauthorization of the act, parts of which are set to expire within two weeks.

“The terrorist threat to our country will not expire in two weeks,” Bush said. “The terrorists want to attack America again and inflict even greater damage than they did on September the 11th.”

These suicidal, stupid effin’ anti-Bush vote-chasers U.S. Senators are thinking through organs other than those inside their craniums.

Bush also took aim at leaks that have exposed a secret National Security Agency eavesdropping program that he authorized after the 9/11 attacks.

“Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies and endangers our country,” he said.

A report about the domestic spying appeared in Friday’s New York Times. Bush described the program as narrowly designed and called its use “consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution.”

He added that it had only been used to intercept international communications of people inside the United States determined to have “a clear link” to al Qaeda or related terrorist organizations.

“This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security,” he insisted.

The program is reviewed every 45 days, using fresh threat assessments, legal reviews by the Justice Department, White House counsel and others and information previously obtained under the program, he added.

It’s good to know{NOT!} that these boneheads elected U.S. officials at least have some soul mates(cell mates would be better, I mean treason is still illegal, isn’t it?) over at the New York Times, in terms of irresponsible journalists who’ll publish anything they believe might hurt the administration without first looking thoroughly at the legalities, pretending as though members of al-Qaeda don’t also read the newspapers.

If there really is a quagmire anywhere in the War On Terror, it’s located on Capital Hill.

Raven has more on the New York Times issue.

And there’s this, LOL, the episode of the Rampaging Santas.

First, congratulations to Michael Yon for winning Best Media Blog in the 2005 Weblog Awards.

The latest entry in Michael Yon’s Online Magazine is a great piece of video on Election Day in Iraq.

Jewish Comedian Jackie Mason, speaking for me and for millions of other American Jews, says it best.

We have the right to pornography. Erections are allowed to be mentioned every day!

“But you can’t say, ‘Merry Christmas!’”

Merry Christmas to all my Christian friends, and take a hike to all my fellow Jews who shame us by aligning themselves with the Marxist shmutz of the ACLU.

Thank God this was a non-meltdown kind of accident.

ST. PETERSBURG, Russia — An explosion ripped through a smelter at a nuclear power plant outside the northern city of St. Petersburg, badly injuring three people, Russia’s nuclear agency said Friday.

Rosenergoatom said radiation levels were not affected as the reactor in that part of the Leningrad nuclear plant was undergoing repairs and not in operation at the time.

This may be considered by some to be in poor taste, but it reminded me of a joke Yakov Smirnoff told when I saw him at Harrah’s Reno about fifteen years ago:

“Here in America, you have all these wonderful medical advances, but we have them in Soviet Union, too.
There, they have invented a way to X-ray whole population at once, is called Chernobel.”