Click here to view the embedded video.

I get the news I need on the weather report. Oh, I can gather all the news I need on the weather report
The only living boy in New York – Simon and Garfunkel

After reading this week’s winning entries, it’s not hard to understand that you really might get all the news you need from the weather report, standard media outlets can’t get a story right.

In his council winning submission this week, NYC Cabbie Slashed by Drunken Nutjob – Left Wing Media Makes Up the Rest, VA Right concludes:

So in the end, all we have is a drunken, crazy man who stabbed someone else and was apprehended blocking traffic on Third Avenue, or possible sitting on the sidewalk.

He may or may not be Muslim.

He may or may not have worked for Intersection International.

The Ground Zero Mosque was never mentioned, although the Cabbie claims he asked him if he were a Muslim.

In the end, it seems we have a troubled 21 year old kid with a drinking problem and a screw loose. Nothing more.

A Ground Zero Mosque hate crime? Not hardly.

VA Right also gets credit for submitting this week’s non-council winner, RedState’s A Free Society And The Muslim Conundrum. The winning council entry was about manufacturing a hate crime when there was none, the non-council pick this week, discusses outraged sensibilites where there ought not to be.

We have a young muslim, whose family is established enough to live in Potomac, MD (median family income, $177,000) and front the AU tuition and expenses for at least one of his siblings, who is upset that someone voiced opposition to the GZM. He wasn’t beaten or threatened or in any way insulted. He either heard or was involved in a conversation in which one party was against the GZM. While we can write his outrage off to the Walter-Mittyism of a 17 year old, we are less able to rationalize the statements by people who should know better. When we are told that if the mosque is not built there will be more islamic radicals and when the muslim chaplain at Georgetown and other “leaders” warn that Americans exercising their rights as citizens could “radicalize” people this is not a cry for acceptance, this is narcissism on steroids.

These MSM stories aren’t news, they’re narratives designed to promote the values of the “news organizations” doing the “reporting.”

Now pardon me while I catch the weather report.

Council Submissions

• First place with 1 1/3 votes! – VA Right –  NYC Cabbie Slashed by Drunken Nutjob – Left Wing Media Makes Up the Rest
• Second place *t* with 1 vote – Right Truth – Look For Another Lawsuit or Two
• Second place *t* with 1 vote – Bookworm Room - Zoning, religion, guns and the Bill of Rights
• Second place *t* with 1 vote - Joshuapundit - ‘Progressives Need A Palin Of Their Own?’
• Second place *t* with 1 vote - Rhymes With Right – Fisking Bloomberg
• Second place *t* with 1 vote - The Colossus of Rhodey – Islamophobia
• Third place with 2/3 vote - Wolf Howling – Obama Prostrates America before the UN Human Rights Council

Non – Council Submissions

• First place with 1 2/3 votes! – RedState - A Free Society And The Muslim Conundrum Submitted by VA Right
• Second place with 1 1/3 votes – Big Questions Online – Multiculturalism and Its Discontents Submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• Third place with 1 vote – zombie/Pajamas Media - Ideological War Spells Doom for America’s Schoolkids Submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Resa Laru Kirkland: War Chick - SHIA TAQIYYA–Freedom from Shari-dum Submitted by Right Truth
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote - Maggie’s Farm/Bruce Kesler - I just disinherited my alma mater Submitted by Bookworm Room
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Big Government – Judge in Virginia ‘Global Warming’ Investigation Blocks Inquiry Into…His Wife’s Former Employer Submitted by Rhymes With Right
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Simply Jews - Omar Khadr – not guilty by reason of Genetics Submitted by The Watcher
• Fifth place with 1/3 vote - Victor Davis Hanson – The Sources of American Anger Submitted by JoshuaPundit

Why did you start blogging?

If I remember correctly it was the combination of 9/11 and the so-called “Aqsa intifada” and the attendant reporting (or mis-reporting) that encouraged me to get started.

The organization, Honest Reporting got started due the latter. In this video, Tuvia Grossman meets the soldier (actually border policeman) who saved him 10 years earlier.

Click here to view the embedded video.

To be sure, over the next few weeks there would be several more incidents of journalistic malfeasance. There was the killing of Mohammed al-Dura, which was attributed to Israeli soldiers. It took two and a half years for anyone in the mainstream media to raise doubts about the narrative. James Fallows wrote “Who killed Mohammed al-Dura?” for the Atlantic in June 2003.

The al-Dura case stands out as a prime example of what Richard Landes calls “Pallywood.”

Council Submissions

• The Colossus of Rhodey – Islamophobia
• Right Truth – Look For Another Lawsuit or Two
• Bookworm Room - Zoning, religion, guns and the Bill of Rights
• VA Right –  NYC Cabbie Slashed by Drunken Nutjob – Left Wing Media Makes Up the Rest
• Rhymes With Right – Fisking Bloomberg
• Joshuapundit - ‘Progressives Need A Palin Of Their Own?’
• The Glittering Eye – The Conflict Between Egalitarian Policies and Abandoning Commodity Products
• Snapped Shot – Back!
• Wolf Howling – Obama Prostrates America before the UN Human Rights Council

Non – Council Submissions

• Big Questions Online – Multiculturalism and Its Discontents Submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• Resa Laru Kirkland: War Chick - SHIA TAQIYYA–Freedom from Shari-dum Submitted by Right Truth
• Maggie’s Farm/Bruce Kesler - I just disinherited my alma mater Submitted by Bookworm Room
• RedState – A Free Society And The Muslim Conundrum Submitted by VA Right
• Big Government – Judge in Virginia ‘Global Warming’ Investigation Blocks Inquiry Into…His Wife’s Former Employer Submitted by Rhymes With Right
• Victor Davis Hanson – The Sources of American Anger Submitted by JoshuaPundit
• zombie/Pajamas Media - Ideological War Spells Doom for America’s Schoolkids Submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Media Backspin – AP illustrates deadly roadside attack Submitted on behalf of Snapped Shot
• Fausta’s Blog – Is Hugo Chavez a racist? Submitted on behalf of Wolf Howling
• Simply Jews - Omar Khadr – not guilty by reason of Genetics Submitted by The Watcher

Click here to view the embedded video.

Don’t know much about history
(What a) Wonderful World – Sam Cooke

In an essay 27 years ago, Deep Down we’re all alike, right? Wrong., Charles Krauthammer wrote:

Its central axiom is that if one burrows deep enough beneath the Mao jacket, the shapka or the chador, one discovers that people everywhere are essentially the same. American Anthropologist Samantha Smith was invited to Moscow by Yuri Andropov for firsthand confirmation of just that proposition (a rare Soviet concession to the principle of on-site inspection). After a well-photographed sojourn during which she took in a children’s festival at a Young Pioneer camp (but was spared the paramilitary training), she got the message: “They’re just . . . almost . . . just like us,” she announced at her last Moscow press conference. Her mother, who is no longer eleven but makes up for it in open-mindedness, supplied the corollary: “They’re just like us . . . they prefer to work at their jobs than to work at war.”

This week’s winning Council post, The Razor’s Tolerating Intolerance, observes that phenomenon regarding Islam and the corollary to that belief.

Yet American elites which should know more about Islam than the common people side with a religion that is intolerant of the very rights it champions among Christians: women, gays and artistic freedom. The ignorance shown by the mainstream media towards Islam makes one wonder if any of these “journalists” ever left New York City or San Francisco. Every attempt to equate a Muslim cleric with an American religious figure like Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell merely emphasizes their ignorance of both faiths. The reviled Robertson and Falwell would actually be considered raging liberals compared to “moderate” Islamic clerics.

The mainstream media and the American Left have allied themselves with one of the most intolerant faiths around, yet they demand that Americans tolerate this intolerance and call those who don’t “Islamophobes”.

Unsurprisingly Krauthammer still has something to say about this. In his column today, The last refuge of a liberal (shouldn’t that be “first” not “last”?) Krauthammer writes:

…promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.

– Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the Tea Party movement? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.

– Disgust and alarm with the federal government’s unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism.

– Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.

– Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.

Now we know why the country has become “ungovernable,” last year’s excuse for the Democrats’ failure of governance: Who can possibly govern a nation of racist, nativist, homophobic Islamophobes?

So those who tolerate the intolerant, end up being intolerant of any dissent. It’s a variation of a Talmudic formulation: “One who has mercy on the cruel, in the end will be cruel to the merciful.”

If the title of this week’s song evokes the wonderful world that liberals are seeing slipping away from them, the lyric, “Don’t know much about history” applies very well to this week’s non-council winner. The runner up,  American Thinker/Randall Hoven’s  Iraq: the War That Broke Us — Not very skillfully argued that the costs of the Iraq War have been greatly exagerrated. However it was the history of  Buckhorn Road’s  Hey, Union soldier! What have you done for me lately?, that won me over and earned my tiebreaking vote. It’s pretty clear that the prosperous, free and tolerant society we now live in, would have been much different had the Union not won the Civil War. Appreciating Gettysburg is essential to appreciating what we are as a nation.

Council Winners

• First place with 2 2/3 votes! – The Razor - Tolerating Intolerance
• Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – Rhymes With Right – The Tension Of Two Visions Of America
• Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – The Colossus of Rhodey – Same situation, less tolerance
• Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – Wolf Howling - Victory In Iraq
• Third place with 1 vote – Joshuapundit – Islamophobia?
• Fourth place with 2/3 vote – VA Right – Republican Best Case Scenario: 53 Seats in US Senate
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Glittering Eye – Putting Humpty Together
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Bookworm Room – Cruisin’

Non – Council Winners

• *First place with 2 2/3 votes! – Buckhorn Road – Hey, Union soldier! What have you done for me lately? – submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• Second place with 1 2/3 votes – American Thinker - Iraq: the War That Broke Us—Not - submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Third place *t* with 1 vote - Pajamas Media – A Patriotic Muslim’s Warning on Ground Zero Mosque submitted by Wolf Howling
• Third place *t* with 1 vote – The Phyllis Chesler Organization – Is Time A Muslim Magazine? submitted by The Razor
• Third place *t* with 1 vote – Right Wing News – Why Right Wing News is sponsoring HomoCon submitted by Bookworm Room
• Third place *t* with 1 vote – Adam’s Zionist Journey - The Guardian’s Jewish Defamers of Israel, and A Letter To My Teenage Nephew submitted by The Watcher
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Counterterrorism Blog, James Gordon Meek – The Real Truth About Al Qaeda in Afghanistan submitted by Right Truth
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote - Gateway Pundit – Religious Freedom, Property Rights vs. Government Control – submitted by Rhymes With Right
• Fifth place with 1/3 vote – Tammy Bruce – Patriots Demonstrate Against GZ Mosque; Little Daisy Whines – submitted by Joshuapundit

On our way up to Niagara, we stopped at the Wegman’s in Williamsport, PA. My 16 year old pointed out this bumper sticker.

Council Submissions

• The Colossus of Rhodey – Same situation, less tolerance
•  Right Truth - The Expendables Works
• Wolf Howling - Victory In Iraq
• VA Right – Republican Best Case Scenario: 53 Seats in US Senate
• The Razor – Tolerating Intolerance
• Snapped Shot – Celebrating Ramadan in Kashmir
• The Glittering Eye – Putting Humpty Together
• Rhymes With Right – The Tension Of Two Visions Of America
• Bookworm Room – Cruisin’
• Joshuapundit - Islamophobia?

Non – Council Submissions

• Buckhorn Road – Hey, Union soldier! What have you done for me lately? – submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• Counterterrorism Blog, James Gordon Meek – The Real Truth About Al Qaeda in Afghanistan submitted by Right Truth
• Pajamas Media – A Patriotic Muslim’s Warning on Ground Zero Mosque submitted by Wolf Howling
• Disrupt the Narrative – NRA Preps Members for Unpopular & Unwise Harry Reid Endorsement submitted by VA Right
• The Phyllis Chesler Organization - Is Time A Muslim Magazine? submitted by The Razor
• Cranach: The Blog of Veith – A classical musician on heavy-metal singers submitted by Snapped Shot
• American Thinker – Iraq:  the War That Broke Us—Not - submitted by The Glittering Eye
•  Gateway Pundit – Religious Freedom, Property Rights vs. Government Control – submitted by Rhymes With Right
• Right Wing News – Why Right Wing News is sponsoring HomoCon submitted by Bookworm Room
• Tammy Bruce – Patriots Demonstrate Against GZ Mosque; Little Daisy Whines – submitted by  Joshuapundit
• Adam’s Zionist Journey – The Guardian’s Jewish Defamers of Israel, and A Letter To My Teenage Nephew submitted by The Watcher
• Legal Insurrection – Gazanitive Dissonance submitted by The Watcher

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sharif don’t like it
Rock the casbah
(He thinks it’s not kosher)
Rock the Casbah – The Clash

This week’s winning council entry, The Razor’s  The Rage Beneath The Surface, examines the Left’s tolerance for intolerance as it explores the issue of the Ground Zero Mosque:

Should we subject ourselves to Islamic fundamentalists today simply because Roman Catholics burned heretics at the stake 500 years ago? How clever is it to ally yourself politically with a group that devalues you (in the case of feminists) or wants to kill you for who you are (in the case of gays)?

Maybe they do so out of plain ignorance. Having fallen for Marxist atheism in college they may have believed that Islam was just another opiate of the masses. Perhaps they do so out of hope, thinking that the alliance will change the minds of the Islamists. Or maybe it’s due to fear: You can drop a crucifix in a pot of piss or create a painting of the Virgin Mary with crap without worry – and even look edgy doing so. But draw a cartoon of Muhammed or make a 10 minute movie about women’s bodies covered with Quranic verses and you get banned in newspapers and a note pinned to your chest with a dagger. Leftists refuse to recognize that while it’s possible to talk your way out of a robbery or mugging, it’s impossible to talk your way out of being murdered.

There is a disconnect among those who would celebrate the display of magnamity to one who doesn’t show the a reciprocal generostiy of spirit. But too many of our elites will brook no dissent in the matter: one who asks Muslims to show sensitivity are bigots. To that charge Charles Krauthammer answers:

Ground Zero is the site of the most lethal attack of that worldwide movement, which consists entirely of Muslims, acts in the name of Islam and is deeply embedded within the Islamic world. These are regrettable facts, but facts they are. And that is why putting up a monument to Islam in this place is not just insensitive but provocative.

Just as the people of Japan today would not think of planting their flag at Pearl Harbor, despite the fact that no Japanese under the age of 85 has any possible responsibility for that infamy, representatives of contemporary Islam — the overwhelming majority of whose adherents are equally innocent of the infamy committed on 9/11 in their name — should exercise comparable respect for what even Obama calls hallowed ground and take up the governor’s offer.

This week’s winning non-council post, Pascal Bruckner’s  Europe’s Guilty Conscience, deals with a different intellectual collapse. In this case it is the collapse of Europe or at least of Europe’s self confidence.

While America is a project, Europe is a sorrow. Before long, it will amount to little except the residue of abandoned dreams. We dreamed of a great diversity where we might live well, seek personal fulfillment, and, if possible, get rich—and all this in proximity to great works of culture. This was a worthwhile project, to be sure, and such a calm condition would be perfect in a time of great serenity, in a world that had finally achieved Kant’s “perpetual peace.” But there is a striking contrast between the stories that we Europeans tell ourselves about rights, tolerance, and multilateralism and the tragedies that we witness in the surrounding world—in autocratic Russia, aggressive Iran, arrogant China, a divided Middle East. We see them, too, in the heart of our great cities, in the double offensive of Islamist terrorism and fundamentalist groups aiming to colonize minds and hearts and Islamize Europe.

This article by the way reminded me of another recent article, Israel through European Eyes by Yoram Hazony, which argues, in part:

It is a little-discussed fact that the Jews are not the only ones for whom Auschwitz has become an important political symbol. Many Europeans, too, see Auschwitz as being at the heart of the lesson of World War II. But the conclusions they draw are precisely the opposite of those drawn by Jews. Following Kant, they see Auschwitz as the ultimate expression of that barbarism, that brutal debasement of humanity, which is national particularism. On this view, the death camps provide the ultimate proof of the evil that results from permitting nations to decide for themselves how to dispose of the military power in their possession. The obvious conclusion is that it was wrong to give the German nation this power of life and death. If such evil is to be prevented from happening again and again, the answer must be in the dismantling of Germany and the other national states of Europe, and the yoking together of all the European peoples under a single international government. Eliminate the national state once and for all—Ecrasez l’infame!—and you have sealed off that dark road to Auschwitz.

In different ways, our two winners this week describe what we might call the West’s lack of self-worth.

Council Winners

• First place with 2 2/3 votes! – The Razor –  The Rage Beneath The Surface
• Second place with 1 2/3 votes - The Glittering Eye - Do Differently
• Third place with 1 1/3 votes – Wolf Howling –  The Social Security Bogeyman
• Fourth place with 1 vote - Rhymes With Right -  Obama Speaks On The Mosque
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Right Truth-  Countdown to nuclear Iran, day 3, 2, 1
• Fifth place *t* with 2/3 vote - Snapped Shot -  Today’s Ramadan Theme Is Checkpoints
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – VA Right - CAN LEGAL ANTI-CHRISTIAN DISCRIMINATION HAPPEN HERE? MORE REASON for MY FELLOW BELIEVERS to JOIN the LIBERTARIAN CAUSE!
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote -The Colossus of Rhodey – How else could this headline have been written?
• Sixth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Joshuapundit – Tom Friedman: Blind Or Just Nearsighted On The Middle East?

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 votes! – Pascal Bruckner @ City Journal - Europe’s Guilty Conscience submitted by Wolf Howling
• Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes – Sultan Knish – The Towers of Barbarism submitted by Right Truth
• Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes - Discriminations – The Separation Of Race And State II submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• Second place *t* with 1 1/3 votes - Cubachi – Harry Reid Can’t Believe I’m A Hispanic Republican submitted by Joshuapundit
• Third place *t* with 2/3 vote – Big Lizards – An Unanswerable, Five-Word Response to Judge Dredd’s Claim that Prop. 8 Proponents Have No Standing to Appeal His Decision (Why Yes – It’s Shorter Than This Title!) submitted by Rhymes With Right
• Third place *t* with 2/3 vote – Jihadwatch -  Ground Zero mosque moves forward, Ground Zero church in limbo submitted by The Razor
• Third place *t* with 2/3 vote – Ace of Spades HQ - Ho Boy: FDA May Rescind Approval Of Anti-Breast-Cancer Drug As Political Favor To Obama submitted by Snapped Shot
• Third place *t* with 2/3 vote – Sweetness & Light - Auto Workers Chase Out UAW Executives submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Fourth place with 1/3 vote – Tertium Quids -The Federal Highway Windfall submitted by VA Right

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’ve wondered. Who’s better – The Temptations or the Four Tops?
Anyway, I saw this medley over at Sense of Events, where he writes:

They don’t make singing groups like this any more…

Council Submissions

• Rhymes With Right -  Obama Speaks On The Mosque
• Wolf Howling –  The Social Security Bogeyman
• Right Truth-  Countdown to nuclear Iran, day 3, 2, 1
• VA Right - CAN LEGAL ANTI-CHRISTIAN DISCRIMINATION HAPPEN HERE? MORE REASON for MY FELLOW BELIEVERS to JOIN the LIBERTARIAN CAUSE!
• The Colossus of Rhodey – How else could this headline have been written?
• The Razor -  The Rage Beneath The Surface
• Snapped Shot -  Today’s Ramadan Theme Is Checkpoints
• Joshuapundit – Tom Friedman: Blind Or Just Nearsighted On The Middle East?
• The Glittering Eye – Do Differently
• Mere Rhetoric – NYT Slams “Master Manipulator” Netanyahu, Ignores Abbas’s Pro-Terrorism High School Graduation Ceremony [Video]

Non-Council Submissions

• Big Lizards – An Unanswerable, Five-Word Response to Judge Dredd’s Claim that Prop. 8 Proponents Have No Standing to Appeal His Decision (Why Yes – It’s Shorter Than This Title!) submitted by Rhymes With Right
• Pascal Bruckner @ City Journal – Europe’s Guilty Conscience submitted by Wolf Howling
• Sultan Knish – The Towers of Barbarism submitted by Right Truth
• Tertium Quids -The Federal Highway Windfall submitted by VA Right
• Discriminations – The Separation Of Race And State II submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• Jihadwatch -  Ground Zero mosque moves forward, Ground Zero church in limbo submitted by The Razor
• Ace of Spades HQ – Ho Boy: FDA May Rescind Approval Of Anti-Breast-Cancer Drug As Political Favor To Obama submitted by Snapped Shot
• Cubachi – Harry Reid Can’t Believe I’m A Hispanic Republican submitted by Joshuapundit
• Sweetness & Light – Auto Workers Chase Out UAW Executives submitted by The Glittering Eye
• PJTV - Weapons of Mass Distraction: Mainstream Media’s Double Standard on Israel submitted by Mere Rhetoric
• Day by Day Cartoon – Massage it submitted by The Watcher
• The Muqata – PA to Palestinians: Avoid Israeli Hospitals submitted by The Watcher

First of all thank you very much to JoshuaPundit for handling the submissions while I was away on vacation.

Click here to view the embedded video.

When you know as well as me
You’d rather see me paralyzed
Why don’t you just come out once
And scream it
Positively 4th Street – Bob Dylan

This week’s council vote ended in a tie between JoshuaPundit’s A Mosque At Ground Zero and Rhymes with Right’s We Are The Revolution People. After careful consideration I cast my tie breaking vote for the former, a complete treatment of the issues related to the proposed “Islamic community center,” near Ground Zero.

One point that bears repeating is this:

The very name Cordoba House invokes Islamist triumph, invoking the capitol of Islam’s Spanish conquests at the height of Islam’s power.

In its celebration of the landmark committee’s decision to allow demolition of the existing structure, the editors of the Washington Post announced
A vote for religious freedom: N.Y. panel clears way for mosque near Ground Zero with a bit of wishful history:

The $100 million Cordoba House takes its name from the medieval Spanish city where Muslims, Jews and Christians lived in peace for 800 years. The developers promise to act in that spirit by bringing people together in peace, healing and collaboration at a center that would include a 500-seat auditorium, art exhibition space, a swimming pool and retail space. It would also include a mosque. This sparked vocal opposition not only in New York but throughout the country.

Actually, Jews, Christians and Muslims lived peacefully in Cordova, as long as the Jews and Christians paid a special tax to the ruling Muslims to live there as second class citizens. Perhaps Jews lived better under Muslim rule in Spain than they did elsewhere in Europe, but that doesn’t erase the burdens that came with living under Muslim rule. This period of relative tolerance ended in the 1140′s (well short of 800 years) when the Almohads conquered Andalusia and offered non-Muslims the choice to convert or die. The name “Cordoba” evokes images of peaceful coexistence in the same way that “Bull Connor” evokes images of equal treatment under the law.

Related: see today’s column by Charles Krauthammer.

For the second time in recent weeks, our winning non-council post was written by the internet’s foremost satirist Iowahawk, who, this week, wrote, Undocumented Imam’s Refusal to Perform Interracial Gay Handicapped Wedding Leads to Charges of Racism. Here’s a brief taste.

Following the incident, Davis, who is African-American, called a press conference on the sidewalk in front of the Cordoba House to complain of racial and gender discrimination. She was eventually shoved from the podium by Abdul Mohammed-Haq, the Mosque’s controversial Yemeni Imam who is currently battling a federal deportation case against the ICE, who countered with complaints of profiling discrimination by Davis and Markowicz. Within minutes the streets in front of the center were filled with chanting protesters from the Gay, Muslim, Black and handicapped communities. A disaster was narrowly averted when the Reverend Al Sharpton’s limousine rammed a parked EMS ambulance before it could careen through the crowd.

Amid the growing crisis, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg ordered a SWAT team of negotiators from the city’s Multicultural Affairs Office parachuted to the scene. A brief truce was reached when negotiators pointed out to the Imam Markowicz’s status as a pre-op transexual, obviating his religious objections to performing a same-sex marriage. But tensions erupted again after Markowicz – who is legally blind – tried to enter the mosque with a seeing-eye guide dog.

Iowahawk brilliantly weaves a tapestry of satire using disparate threads of politically correct thought.

Council Winners

• *First place with 3 votes! – JoshuaPundit - A Mosque At Ground Zero
• Second place with 2 votes - Rhymes with Right - We Are The Revolution People
• Third place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – Virginia Right! - Obama Retaliates Against Virginia
• Third place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – Right Truth - The First Muslim College In America
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote - Bookworm Room - A history lesson about your Social Security card and benefits *UPDATED*
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote - Wolf Howling - Perry v. Schwarzenegger: A Modern Roe v. Wade
• Fifth place with 1/3 vote - Snapped Shot – Memo to Fayaz Kabli and Dar Yasin

Non-Council Winners

• First place with 2 2/3 votes! – Iowahawk – Undocumented Imam’s Refusal to Perform Interracial Gay Handicapped Wedding Leads to Charges of Racism submitted by The Razor
• Second place with 2 1/3 votes - Sultan Knish - Is Islam’s Problem a Lack of Modernity? submitted by JoshuaPundit
• Third place with 1 1/3 votes – Hot Air/Ed Morrisey – Why is the state involved in marriage at all? submitted by Bookworm Room
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote - funny or die – Eva Mendes Sex Tape submitted by Wolf Howling
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote - Belmont Club/Pajamas Media – The Foundations of Our World submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Reuters Middle East Watch – Reuters Goes to Hollywood - submitted by Snapped Shot
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – First Thoughts – Judge Walker’s Rational Basis for Supporting Polygamy submitted by Rhymes with Right
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Victor Davis Hanson – A Rather Angry America submitted by The Watcher
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote - Rabbi Dov Fisher – Why I Love Israel and Am Proud to Be Judged by Her Standards submitted by The Watcher

Welcome to the Watcher’s Council, a group of some of the most incisive blogs in the`sphere. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one of their own and one from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.Then we vote on the best posts, with the results appearing in this space on Friday.

Council News: The Provacateur is no longer with us and should you be interested in becoming part of our group, we now have an open seat reserved for a quality blogger. The rules for applying and participating can be found at the top of this page. These seats don’t last long, so if you’re interested, don’t snooze.

This time of year is traditionally called the Dog Days, ( Latin: dies caniculares ) originally a sailor’s term referring to a time when Sirius, the Dog Star and the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major was most clearly visible in the sky.

Dog Days, usually falling between early August and early September were traditionally believed to be an evil time when the oceans boiled, wine turned sour, dogs went mad, monsters surfaced at sea and men became angry, hot tempered and prone to violence. Both World Wars started during the Dog Days.

Traditionally, the feast day of Saint Roch, the patron saint of dogs, is August 16.

We have our own version of Dog Days going on as war fever heats up in the Middle East and intensifies in Afghanistan, and political strife and division sweep Washington and the country.

The Dog Days, among their other attributes are also the time when people traditionally holiday, or get out of Dodge just to let passions cool off. That relief has been denied to Congress this year, as the Democrat majority in Congress found that braving the hell of Washington DC in August and plotting yet another raid on the American treasury in the form of a second stimulus infinitely preferable to facing their angry constituents at home.

Meanwhile, our Ruling Class pleasures itself in luxury resorts at our expense, seemingly blind to the temperature of the American people.

Ah, well. Such times usually end in a resolution of one kind or another, as the season changes. This version of Dog Days will be no different.

-Selah-

Rob Miller @ Joshuapundit

Ok, let’s see what we have this week….

Council Submissions

• The Colossus of Rhodey -“OK, But …”
• Wolf Howling - Perry v. Schwarzenegger: A Modern Roe v. Wade
• The Glittering Eye - The Breakdown: the Wrap
• Virginia Right! - Obama Retaliates Against Virginia
• The Razor - Riders On The Storm
• Right Truth - The First Muslim College In America
• Bookworm Room - A history lesson about your Social Security card and benefits *UPDATED*
• Snapped Shot – Memo to Fayaz Kabli and Dar Yasin
• Rhymes with Right - We Are The Revolution People
• Mere Rhetoric – State Department: Hey, You Don’t Think Lebanon Used American Weapons To Attack Israel, Do You?
• JoshuaPundit - A Mosque At Ground Zero

Non-Council Submissions

• Brendan O’Neill at Spiked Online – “We’ll Only Listen to You If You’ve Been Peer Reviewed.” submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• funny or die – Eva Mendes Sex Tape submitted by Wolf Howling
• Belmont Club/Pajamas Media
  – The Foundations of Our World submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Atlas Shrugs – Obama’s State Department Bankrolls Ground Zero Imam Rauf’s Middle East Fundraising Tour: “US Muslim Engagement” submitted by Virginia Right!
• Iowahawk - Undocumented Imam’s Refusal to Perform Interracial Gay Handicapped Wedding Leads to Charges of Racism submitted by The Razor
• Jack and Jill Politics, Jill Tubman – Michelle Obama — Dining on the Tears of Taxpayers in Spain? submitted by Right Truth
• Hot Air/Ed Morrisey – Why is the state involved in marriage at all? submitted by Bookworm Room
• Reuters Middle East Watch – Reuters Goes to Hollywood – submitted by Snapped Shot
• First Thoughts – Judge Walker’s Rational Basis for Supporting Polygamy submitted by Rhymes with Right
• Sultan Knish – Is Islam’s Problem a Lack of Modernity? submitted by JoshuaPundit
• Victor Davis Hanson – A Rather Angry America submitted by The Watcher
• Rabbi Dov Fisher – Why I Love Israel and Am Proud to Be Judged by Her Standards submitted by The Watcher

Click here to view the embedded video.

Oh yes, I’m the great pretender
Adrift in a world of my own
The Great Pretender – The Platters

Reuters, the once great news service, has fallen on hard times lately. Our winning Council entry, Mere Rhetoric’s After Lebanon Border Ambush, Reuters First Out Of The Gate With Demonstrably False Anti-Israel Propaganda, shows how badly it’s fallen:

This was an out-and-out ambush either by Lebanese soldiers or Hezbollah soldiers dressed like Lebanese soldiers. It was pre-planned – you can tell as much by how the commanders were fired upon and not the trimming team – and there was even a photographer on hand. Reuters somehow got that picture, evaluated it, and came to exactly the wrong conclusion. The Israelis were on their side of the border, in a so-called enclave, exercising legitimate authority on their sovereign territory. Even the Lebanese have admitted as much in the past, though they don’t like it and complain about how it increases tensions or whatever.

The top two non-council entries were tied, and so, I was forced to make a difficult choice and awarded the win, this week, to The Winds of Change’s (Armed Liberal) Why We’re Just Flatly Screwed in Afghanistan:

Because at this point, it looks as though we’re going to keep paying a price in blood – and getting little in return – for key failures by our national and military leadership.

Those failures are:

* Failing to establish a clear Objective for the war – which is why the strategy for the war keeps spinning like a weathervane.
* Failing to check the rise of the administrative/bureaucratic military over the warrior military.
* Lying to the American people about the real nature of the war – trying to paint the war as ‘bloodless’ and ‘surgical’ when like any war it is anything but.
* Distrusting the American people by trying to keep them from being aware of and involved in the war and in the cause the war is being fought in the name of.

Now on to the winners:

Council Winners

• First place with 2 1/3 votes! – Mere Rhetoric - After Lebanon Border Ambush, Reuters First Out Of The Gate With Demonstrably False Anti-Israel Propaganda
• Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes - JoshuaPundit - Obama’s Latest Anti-Israel Tactic – Getting Others to Do the Dirty Work For Him
• Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – Wolf Howling - What Direction Our Economy
• Third place with 1 1/3 votes – The Colossus of Rhodey -The conclusion is: “Common Sense”
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – Rhymes with Right - Sorry, Charlie — Obama Can’t Fix The Racial Climate He And His Supporters Have Created
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote - Virginia Right! - Will Washington’s Failures Lead to Second American Revolution?
• Fifth place with 2/3 vote – Bookworm Room -  Anne Rice and neo-paganism
• Sixth place with 1/3 vote – Snapped Shot – The Future of Photojournalism

Non-Council Winners

• *First place with 3 2/3 votes! – Winds of Change - Why We’re Just Flatly Screwed in Afghanistan submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Second place with 2 2/3 votes – Seraphic Secret – Nazis To Open Museum Of Tolerance At Aushwitz submitted by Wolf Howling
• Third place with 1 2/3 votes - Yaacov Lozowick’s Ruminations - Fog of War, Foggy Thinking, Pure Malice submitted by The Watcher
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – News Real Blog – Dr. Phyllis Chesler - What Happens to Women if We Leave Afghanistan? Time Magazine Gets it Wrong submitted by Right Truth
• Fourth place *t* with 1 vote – Andrew Breitbart/Big Journalism – I Got My Correction Thanks to the The New York Times — Now Who’s Next? submitted by JoshuaPundit
• Fifth place with 2/3 vote – DaTechguy’s Blog – If professor Bambridge is embarassed to be a conservative these days… submitted by The Watcher
• Sixth place with 1/3 vote – StandWithUs (You Tube) –  Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions submitted by Bookworm Room

Click here to view the embedded video.

One look from you, I drift away.
I pray that you are here to stay.
You got it – Roy Orbison

One of the consequences of the Traveling Wilburys was that Jeff Lynne produced Roy Orbison’s final album that included the hit, You got it.

Council Submissions

• The Colossus of Rhodey -The conclusion is: “Common Sense”
• Wolf Howling - What Direction Our Economy
• The Glittering Eye - The Tip of the Iceberg
• Virginia Right! - Will Washington’s Failures Lead to Second American Revolution?
• Right Truth - Politicians Should Have An Expiration Date
• Bookworm Room -  Anne Rice and neo-paganism
• Snapped Shot – The Future of Photojournalism
• Rhymes with Right - Sorry, Charlie — Obama Can’t Fix The Racial Climate He And His Supporters Have Created
• Mere Rhetoric – After Lebanon Border Ambush, Reuters First Out Of The Gate With Demonstrably False Anti-Israel Propaganda
• JoshuaPundit - Obama’s Latest Anti-Israel Tactic – Getting Others to Do the Dirty Work For Him

Non-Council Submissions

• Discriminations – Blow-n Away submitted by The Colossus of Rhodey
• Seraphic Secret – Nazis To Open Museum Of Tolerance At Aushwitz submitted by Wolf Howling
• Winds of Change – Why We’re Just Flatly Screwed in Afghanistan submitted by The Glittering Eye
• My Modern Met - The Ghosts of World War II’s Past (20 photos) submitted by Virginia Right!
• News Real Blog – Dr. Phyllis Chesler – What Happens to Women if We Leave Afghanistan? Time Magazine Gets it Wrong submitted by Right Truth
• StandWithUs (You Tube) –  Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions submitted by Bookworm Room
• Pirate’s Cove - Retirement Savings “Undisclosed Bomb” - submitted by Snapped Shot
• Rick versus Kay – Voter ID… Bill White opposes requiring identification to vote… submitted by Rhymes with Right
• MEMRI – Gaza Friday Sermon on Al-Aqsa TV: Muslims Should Wage Jihad to Liberate the Al-Aqsa Mosque from the Filth of the Jews, the Brothers of Apes and Pigs submitted by Mere Rhetoric
• Andrew Breitbart/Big Journalism – I Got My Correction Thanks to the The New York Times — Now Who’s Next? submitted by JoshuaPundit
• Yaacov Lozowick’s Ruminations – Fog of War, Foggy Thinking, Pure Malice submitted by The Watcher
• DaTechguy’s Blog – If professor Bambridge is embarassed to be a conservative these days… submitted by The Watcher