At least, that’s what it sounds like.

From The Israel Project:

Jerusalem, April 20 — A top Hamas official said the terrorist group is willing to consider a lasting ceasefire with Israel but still rejects a peace deal with the Jewish state. The ceasefire, or hudna, according to Iran-backed Hamas’ No. 2 leader, Mousa Abu Marzouk, would be similar to arrangements between Israel and Syria and Israel and Lebanon.

“Let’s establish a relationship between the two states in the historic Palestinian land as a hudna between both sides,” Marzouk said during a wide-ranging, two-day interview with The Forward newspaper. “It’s better than war and better than the continuous resistance against the occupation.”
But that doesn’t mean Hamas plans to soften its stance on its position toward Israel.

“We will not recognize Israel as a state,” he said emphatically. “It will be like the relationship between Lebanon and Israel or Syria and Israel.” Neither, according to the interview, did Marzouk say Hamas planned to renounce terrorism or live by previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements – principles set forth by the Middle East Quartet. The Quartet comprises the United States, the European Union, the United Nations, and Russia.

Neither, Marzouk said, would he be willing to negotiate with Israel for the ceasefire. And any changes in Hamas’ stance toward Israel, Marzouk said, would have to be approved in a referendum that includes votes by Palestinian refugees worldwide.

In other words, “we may stop the terrorism, or we may not, and if we do, it’ll only be until such time as we decide to start doing so again.”

How Palestinian of them!

At Conservative Byte…

Although the national debt under President Barack Obama has increased $4 trillion since he took office in 2009, as a presidential candidate in 2008 Obama criticized then-President George W. Bush for adding $4 trillion to the national debt, saying it was “unpatriotic” and also “irresponsible” to saddle future generations with such a large national debt.

Hmmmmm…

The flashback video is here.

Kind of reminds me of one president recalling a certain other president’s “misery index” to point out that it far exceeded that of a president Mr. Misery Index had used it to criticize.

That Obama character sure does put his foot in his mouth an awful lot, doen’t he, before the fact.

John Stossel certainly gets it, it’s too bad all those career politicians we keep reelecting to govern the country are clueless.

We spend too much time waiting for orders — and money — from Washington.

The collapse of the housing bubble gave politicians a license to do what they wanted to do all along: spend. The usual checks on extravagance, weak as they are, were washed away. Budgets? We’ll worry about that later. Inflation? We’ll worry about that later.

As I point out in my brand new book, “No, We Can’t: Why Government Fails — and Individuals Succeed,”
a true free market doesn’t require much. It’s not like an orchestra in need of a conductor. What it needs is property rights, so no one can take your stuff. Then people trade property to their mutual advantage. Resources move around without the need for a central, coercive government telling people which resources should go where — or telling them that they must get permission to do what they think is advantageous.

Italics mine.

Superbly put, and exactly what America’s founding fathers would have said.

This formula brought a new nation, in less than two centuries, to the forefront of the world in terms of inventiveness, riches and power.

You got something good, you stick with it, right?

Unfortunately, our politicians can’t seem to grasp this concept, so they’ve gone a different route.

You have to wonder if one day, enough of them will wake up and return us to what works.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting…

This one’s absolutely spot-on, a video “pitting” the legendary 1970s TV character Archie Bunker against President B. Hussein Obama, socialist at large.

The narrative at the link is self explanatory, watching the three minute plus video is a must.

Enjoy as Archie “smacks down” Barack

From the latest of Mark Steyn’s ever-great, fun to read columns:

In the end, free societies get the governments they deserve. So, if the American people wish to choose their chief executive on the basis of the “war on women,” the Republican theocrats’ confiscation of your contraceptives, or whatever other mangy and emaciated rabbit the Great Magician produces from his threadbare topper, they are free to do so, and they will live with the consequences. This week’s bit of ham-handed misdirection was “the Buffett Rule,” a not-so-disguised capital-gains tax hike designed to ensure that Warren Buffett pays as much tax as his secretary. If the alleged Sage of Omaha is as exercised about this as his public effusions would suggest, I’d be in favor of repealing the prohibition on Bills of Attainder, and the old boy could sleep easy at night. But instead every other American “millionaire” will be subject to the new rule – because, as President Obama said this week, it “will help us close our deficit.”

Wow! Who knew it was that easy?

A-hem. According to the Congressional Budget Office (the same nonpartisan bean counters who project that on Obama’s current spending proposals the entire U.S. economy will cease to exist in 2027) Obama’s Buffett Rule will raise – stand well back – $3.2 billion per year. Or what the United States government currently borrows every 17 hours. So in 514 years it will have raised enough additional revenue to pay off the 2011 federal budget deficit. If you want to mark it on your calendar, 514 years is the year 2526. There’s a sporting chance Joe Biden will have retired from public life by then, but other than that I’m not making any bets.

Let’s go back to that presidential sound bite:

“It will help us close our deficit.”

I’m beginning to suspect that the Oval Office teleprompter may be malfunctioning, or that perhaps that NBC News producer who “accidentally” edited George Zimmerman into sounding like a racist has now edited the smartest president of all time into sounding like an idiot. Either way, it appears the last seven words fell off the end of the sentence. What the president meant to say was:

“It will help us close our deficit … for 2011 … within a mere half-millennium!” [Pause for deafening cheers and standing ovation.]

Heh heh…

{SNIPPING deeply, here}

It’s that easy, folks! Like President Obama says, all you have to do to pay off his 2011 deficit is save $3.2 billion a year for 500 years.

Read it all.

From One News Now:

Planned Parenthood is suing the state of Texas for denying it tax dollars for a Medicaid program.

The Obama administration stopped sending federal money for contraception and check-ups for low-income women in Texas when the state decided not to allocate the money to organizations that perform abortions.

Elizabeth Graham of Texas Right to Life says the state instead decided to give program funding to 1,400 qualified providers in the state.

“Planned Parenthood and abortion providers are suing the state for locking them out of the women’s health program because they are desperate to keep their hands in the pockets of taxpayers to promote their abortion agenda,” she says.

Planned Parenthood is basically claiming discrimination because they are abortion providers.

“Really, the state is obligated to distribute much-coveted healthcare dollars to programs and agencies that best serve a large population and programs that have a broad application across the state,” comments the spokeswoman.

Texas will be allocating the money to healthcare providers that have no affiliation with abortion providers, because — as Graham emphasizes — abortion is not healthcare.

…abortion is not healthcare, amen to that!

Yet, Planned Parenthood is determined to finance as much baby murder as it can using our tax dollars. Is that abonimable, or what?

Of course, anyone who’s visited Hard Astarboard over a period of time knows how we classify the likes of Planned Parenthood.

From CNS News:

The government spent at least $205,075 in 2010 to “translocate” a single bush in San Francisco that stood in the path of a $1.045-billion highway-renovation project that was partially funded by the economic stimulus legislation President Barack Obama signed in 2009.

Yes,

“In October 2009, an ecologist identified a plant growing in a concrete-bound median strip along Doyle Drive in the Presidio as Arctostaphylos franciscana,” the U.S. Department of Interior reported in the Aug. 10, 2010 edition of the Federal Register. “The plant’s location was directly in the footprint of a roadway improvement project designed to upgrade the seismic and structural integrity of the south access to the Golden Gate Bridge.

“The translocation of the Arctostaphylos franciscana plant to an active native plant management area of the Presidio was accomplished, apparently successfully and according to plan, on January 23, 2010,” the Interior Department reported.

The bush—a Franciscan manzanita—was a specimen of a commercially cultivated species of shrub that can be purchased from nurseries for as little as $15.98 per plant…

You’d think this $205,075 figure would be a bit expensive, but the cost is well justified here:

…The particular plant in question, however, was discovered in the midst of the City of San Francisco, in the median strip of a highway, and was deemed to be the last example of the species in the “wild.”

That’s right, the last example of the species in the “wild.”

Prior to the discovery of this “wild” Franciscan manzanita, the plant had been considered extinct for as long as 62 years–extinct, that is, outside of people’s yards and botanical gardens.

Before that, the bush had grown in the “wild” in two cemeteries in San Francisco’s Richmond District as well as on Mount Davidson, a peak in the middle of San Francisco. The Department of Interior said that there had also been “unconfirmed sightings” of the shrub in the city’s Haight-Ashbury District—an area that became famous in the late 1960s as the epicenter of the psychedelic hippie movement.

…there had also been “unconfirmed sightings” of the shrub… LOL!

The Haight-Ashbury population of the plant, the Interior Department said in the Federal Register, was believed to have been “lost to urbanization.”

Oh, my!

…the Presidio Trust, the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), the National Park Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the California Department of Fish and Game developed a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) for saving this one bush from the highway project, for which ground had been broken in December 2009.

The agreement of Dec. 21, 2009 – Memorandum of Agreement Regarding Planning, Development, and Implementation of the Conservation Plan for Franciscan Manzanita – explains how, why, and when the bush would be moved and which agencies would be responsible for which aspects of the move.

To cut to the chase, the cost summary goes like this:

The $100,000 to pay for the “hard removal,” the $79,470 to pay for the “establishment, nurturing and monitoring” of the plant for a decade after its “hard removal,” and the $25,605 to cover the “reporting requirements” for the decade after the “hard removal,” equaled a total cost of $205,075 for “translocating” this manzanita bush.

But those were not the only costs incurred by taxpayers on behalf of the bush. According to the MOA, other costs included:

–“Contract for and provide funding not to exceed $7,025.00 for initial genetic or chromosomal testing of the Mother Plant by a qualified expert to be selected at Caltrans’ sole discretion.”

There’s more, the entire article is here.

One California nursery currently allows customer to purchase Franciscan manzanitas online for $15.98 per bush. Another sells them for $18.00 per bush.

From CSN News:

A Florida advocacy group spearheading protests over the racially-charged Trayvon Martin shooting has welcomed the intervention of the United Nations’ human rights chief, who has called for the shooter to be put on trial and “reparations for the victims concerned.”

“We believe that the United Nations involvement can help prevent another Trayvon Martin situation in other counties across the world,” J. Willie David, president of the Florida Civil Rights Association, said in a statement provided to CNSNews.com on Monday.

“The shooting death of Trayvon Martin and Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law have created a worldwide movement that calls into question how justice is delivered to victims of color,” he said.

Cent 1: How is this the U.N.’s business? Between trying to get involved in monitoring our last election, attempting to enact a special U.N. payroll tax on all working Americans and let’s not forget their endeavors at becoming involved in efforts to take away our Second Amendment rights, the people in this corrupt, inept global organization most definitely became much too big for their britches some time ago and are very much in need of a slapping down.

If only we had a few politicians, naturally they’d have to be Republicans or perhaps Independents since Democrats are all for U.N. interference in our national business on every level, who had the cojones to smack the United Nations into its place…

Cent 2: It’s amazing how when a young black man beats down a non-black senior citizen and robs him/her and the victim is paralyzed or dies, it’s not a “racial incident” and in fact seems almost to be a non-incident, but when the same young black man, even one with a criminal record (narcotics, assault, robbery, gang-banging, CCW, whatever) is shot down in the process of assaulting or robbing someone, it’s automatically a racial incident and the same professional race activists are suddenly in the spotlight shouting “racism!!!!” and demanding justice.

I don’t know about you, but I believe that when a mugger or violent victimizing type gets shot, no matter what color he is, justice has already been done!

So what’s everybody getting so worked up about?

Eric Holder, Obama’s attorney general, the snake who’s so vehemently opposed to any kind of voter ID (he has to be, because where would the Democrats be if they couldn’t get illegall aliens’, deadpeoples’ and double dippers’ votes to keep them in office) should be awfully embarrassed right now (that is, if it’s possible for a liberal to be embarrassed).

After all, he’s the man who says voter fraud’s not a problem here in the U.S.A.

Well, then, how come…?

In a shocking new video, James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas demonstrates to the Attorney General of the United States, Eric Holder, just why he should be concerned about lack of voter ID laws – by walking into Holder’s voting precinct and showing the world that anyone can obtain Eric Holder’s ballot. Literally.

The video shows a young man entering a Washington, DC polling place at 3401 Nebraska Avenue, NW, on primary day of this year – April 3, 2012 – and giving Holder’s name and address. The poll worker promptly offers the young man Holder’s ballot to vote.

Holder has maintained that voter fraud is not a major problem in the United States, and that voter ID would not curb voter fraud in any case.

Project Veritas has already shown how dead people can vote in New Hampshire, prompting the state senate to pass a voter ID law; they’ve shown celebrities like Tim Tebow and Tom Brady registering to vote in Minnesota, prompting the state legislature to put voter ID on the ballot as a constitutional amendment. Washington DC voting law is a federal jurisdictional area. Will the federal government take up the challenge?

Have a gander here.

I love the way, at the end of the video clip, the man says “I’ll be back faster than you can say furious.” LOL!

From National Review.

In October 2010, on the eve of the Islamic revolution that the media fancies as “the Arab Spring,” the Supreme Guide of the Muslim Brotherhood called for jihad against the United States.

You might think that this all but unnoticed bombshell would be of some importance to policymakers in Washington. It was not. It is not. This week, the Obama administration quietly released $1.5 billion in foreign aid to the new Egyptian government, now dominated by a Brotherhood-led coalition in parliament — soon to be joined by an Ikhwan (i.e., Brotherhood) luminary as president.

It is not easy to find the announcement. With the legacy media having joined the Obama reelection campaign, we must turn for such news to outlets like the Kuwait News Agency. There, we learn that, having dug our nation into a $16 trillion debt hole, President Obama has nevertheless decided to borrow more money from unfriendly powers like China so he can give it to an outfit that views the United States as an enemy to be destroyed.

Now, isn’t that nice?

And some may wonder why we wonder just whose side our president is on?

Actually, we no longerwonder, we know; O has made it quite obvious since his inauguration.

This pot of gold for Islamic supremacists is the spoils of a Brotherhood charm offensive. Given the organization’s unabashed goals and hostility towards the West, it was U.S. policy, until recently, to avoid formal contacts with the Brotherhood — although agents of the intelligence community and the State Department have long engaged in off-line communications with individual MB members. By contrast, the Obama administration from its first days has embraced the Ikhwan — both the mothership, whose leaders were invited to attend Obama’s 2009 speech in Cairo despite its then-status as a banned organization under Egyptian law, and the Brotherhood’s American satellites, which have been invited to advise administration policymakers despite their notorious record of championing violent jihadists and repressive sharia.

Obama has overlooked the MB’s intimate ties to Hamas, which self-identifies as the Ikhwan’s Palestinian branch and is formally designated a terrorist organization under American law. Administration officials have absurdly portrayed the Brothers as “secular” and “moderate,” although the organization, from its founding in the 1920s, has never retreated an inch from its professed mission to establish Islam’s global hegemony.

The link is here.