This doesn't have to happen...

בָּכוֹ תִבְכֶּה בַּלַּיְלָה, וְדִמְעָתָהּ עַל לֶחֱיָהּ--אֵין-לָהּ מְנַחֵם, מִכָּל-אֹהֲבֶיהָ: כָּל-רֵעֶיהָ בָּגְדוּ בָהּ, הָיוּ לָהּ לְאֹיְבִים

She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks; she hath none to comfort her among all her lovers; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies.
--Lamentations 1:2

And here we are again, on the anniversary of our destruction.



Tisha B'Av is a very difficult day in our nation's history. Much war, destruction, bloodshed and violence has been wrought upon the Jewish people over the centuries...but the worst has befallen us on this day, the 9th of Av. Temples have been destroyed, Inquisitions have been declared, ghettos liquidated and whole populations judged for expulsion and death, all on the same terrible day on the Jewish calender...the 9th of Av.

Every year Jews all over the world commemorate these events by fasting, not eating or drinking anything from yesterday's sunset until an hour after sunset tonight. Jews are to refrain from doing anything enjoyable such as listening to music or having sexual intercourse and it is customary (as when in mourning) not to shave or tell jokes or even sit on chairs. When one listens to the recitation of the Book of Lamentations in synagogue on Tisha B'Av one sit on the floor and contemplates the grave nature of the day.

We remember the terrors that have befallen us for our various sins. We beg God to protect us from future terrors.

Looking around at the world today, it is easy to feel we are on the brink of disaster once more. Just as the Book of Lamentations describes - everyday our enemies grow stronger and our friends prepare to betray us.

A recent report from the Associated Press said that Iran was only six months away from having the capacity to detonate an atomic weapon. While everyone agrees that the Iranians lack a delivery method (an accurate missile system for example), having the capacity to detonate a nuclear bomb is bad enough. Does anyone think that it's beyond the Iranians and their recently "re-elected" president, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to look the other way while a Hizballah terrorist scurries off with a bomb?

This reality and all of its doomsday possibilities may only be six months away. Six months, by the way, is a very short time. Just over six months ago Israel had its closest ally ever in the White House and now here we sit, on the floor, and wonder just how we have gotten to this point.

For at the same time that Iran (who has the potential to be Israel's greatest enemy since the Romans) is furiously working towards acquiring the means to destroy our homeland...

The United States (who has been Israel's greatest friend since GOD) is being led by a man who's biggest priorities are to lecture you on how to buy health insurance, to lecture Cambridge policemen about why they're racists and of course to lecture Israel on why it is the source of all problems in the Middle East. But don't worry, at least one of these lectures will happen while drinking beer, so it's "cool".

It's to the point that even the ISRAELI LEFTISTS at Haaretz are noticing.

From the article:

"the more time passes, the more it appears that the demand to freeze settlement construction was meant to demonstrate a distancing from Israel."

A DISTANCING. Our great friend wants to DISTANCE himself from us.

"Now, the US administration must convince the Israeli public that it has a friend in the White House, and that the administration's positions correspond with Israel's national interests. After talking to the Arabs, Muslims and Iranians, in speeches and on television, it is only right that Obama also address the Israeli public..."

Doesn't seem like very much to ask. Just TALK to us Barrack.

"...there is something naive, not to say infuriating, about his policy of dialogue and about the whistle stops he has chosen in his travels regarding our issue. He spoke in Turkey, he spoke in Egypt, he appeared before students in Saudi Arabia, Paris, England, Ghana and Australia. Even there the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was mentioned... The only place he hasn't been is Israel. He has spoken about us, but not to us."

Infuriating.

"Obama assumed he did a great thing when he spoke in Cairo about the Jewish people's suffering in the Holocaust," the "implied distortion: that we deserve a state because of the Holocaust" is "infuriating."

While the Holocaust should have proven to the world (and to Jews) that a sovereign Jewish state is the only way to prevent Tisha B'Av-style disasters (it didn't), clearly it is NOT the end-all/be-all, raison d'être for Israel's existence.

by basing Israel's claim to statehood on the Holocaust rather than the Jews' historic connection to this land, he has fed the Arab fantasy that Jews are colonialist interlopers with no right to be here, and that the Palestinians are being sacrificed to atone for European misdeeds - thereby fostering Arab intransigence and unwillingness to end the conflict.

With the exception of the last one, every one of those quotes came from far-left Israelis who were all wildly supportive of Obama during the election. The gist of the Jerusalem Post article was to say that if even his biggest supporters are questioning his actions, are "infuriated" by this one-sided framing of the issue and are wondering why he has yet to visit his only real ally in the Middle East...clearly the leader of the first country to recognize the Jewish state is being perceived to be...less than enthusiastic with support than his predecessors, by the very people who were ecstatic in their support for him as a candidate!

The disgraceful condemnations of the Israeli operation in Gaza that came out of Europe, Turkey and other alleged Israel allies adds to the growing perception that our list of friends shrinks by the day.

So it is easy to feel as the writer of the Book of Lamentations felt that our enemies grow stronger while our friends turn their backs on us.

However, unlike the destruction of the Temples - our fate is far from being a foregone conclusion. Unlike in the ancient times of the Babylonians and Romans...we still today hold military superiority over our enemies. We do not have to watch as our capital, Jerusalem is violated by Palestinian rockets (as Sderot and Ashkelon have been) as we still have the ability to prevent these attacks from occurring. We do not have to watch as Tel Aviv is laid barren by Iranian nuclear devastation as we still have the ability to prevent these attacks from occurring. We do not have to watch as one by one our friends disappear into the shadows as we weaken to the point that they can deliver us on a silver platter to those who seek our destruction.

We can still stop this.

Like the "angry Left" in Israel, we must demand that Obama:

"...come to Israel and declare here courageously, before the entire world, that our connection to this land began long before the Israeli-Arab conflict and the Holocaust, and that 4,000 years ago, Jews already stood on the ground where he now stands."

We MUST demand that he either take action on Iran or get out of our way while we do it ourselves.

We CANNOT fall into the trap of Lamentations and sadness and feeling sorry for our miserable lot in life.

We CANNOT have a defeatist attitude and assume that just because we have seen suffering all through our history that we must continue to suffer and be beaten down by the other nations.

There is still time. It doesn't need to be this way.

Reliving this history today, on the ninth of Av, should only spurn us towards taking the appropriate steps to ensure that we limit ourselves to one day of mourning per year. One day is enough to feel sorry for ourselves, to reflect on our actions and to regret them. Today is enough for tears. Today is enough for sorrow. Today is enough for suffering.

Today we mourn.

Tomorrow we act.




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We interrupt our regularly scheduled program...

...to bring you this unbelievable "Atlas Shrugged" moment from today.

Apparently Christine Varney, Obama's new "antitrust cop" has decided to target Google in an unfair business practice investigation.

And why? In an action that seems literally torn from Ayn Rand's classic novel (which seems more pertinent every day) apparently Google is guilty of being too good at the search engines business. This apparently isn't "fair" to other search engines. Also, they're taking advantage of us all by offering everything (like the email accounts so many of us use) for FREE which hurts "competition".

From the article:

But companies still have to make money, so there are limits to how much they can provide free. Not a problem for Google. Its core advertising business is so powerful, dominant and profitable that it can subsidize almost everything else the company does, using Free to get customers in new markets.

How horrible. And the problem?

Is that fair, when so many of its competitors don't have a similar golden goose at the core of their operations?

So because Google was innovative and developed a search engine that was superior to all others which everyone chooses to use on a daily basis, it should be penalized. Awesome. We continue with the article:

Could Free be OK for little companies, but not really big ones? How much market share would you have to have in one market to disallow you from using Free in another?

Hmmm. Is he suggesting that the government order Google to start CHARGING for gmail and search engine usage?! But then some little dotcom clown company that will most likely disappear into obscurity after absconding with investment dollars CAN offer things for free?? Note that the writer isn't speaking for himself, he's exploring what Obama's new "antitrust cop" is going to have to do in order to succesfully prosecute Google.

Did any of us ask for this? Are there people sitting around at home crying about losing such search engine icons as Webcrawler or Lycos or Altavista?? Does anyone even remember that these companies ever existed?? Shouldn't the government expend its resources on things like fixing the housing market or something that might actually be beneficial to the economy and/or the average person? Instead we run up the deficit by paying for this "cop" (and what I'm sure is a whole team of investigators and assistants, not to mention an office and furniture and all the expenditures that go along with it) to chase around the only thing that's still actually free in this world aside from air. Why can't we just leave the internet alone. WHY.

In the meantime the unemployment rate keeps going up, foreclosures continue at an alarming rate, interest rates for mortgages rise despite the government's actions to keep them low and job losses continue to mount as another trillion or so dollars just vanishes into thin air. Another failed policy that is already collapsing in on itself not even four months after going into effect. But we've already moved on to health care and cap and trade and don't ask don't tell and terrible foreign policy that targets our successful friends and helps our failing enemies.

And Google. Google is the biggest problem we have in this country because they have the nerve to be one of the few successful companies in this hell of an economy and because they give away their products for FREE. FREE is now a problem.

This country has lost its mind.

Oh well, who is John Galt anyway?

Declaration of Independence

On the eve (or day) of the anniversary of this country's breaking free of monarchy and tyranny, it is perhaps useful to reflect on what the word "independence" truly means:

in⋅de⋅pend⋅ence
  /ˌɪndɪˈpɛndəns/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [in-di-pen-duhns] Show IPA
Use independence in a Sentence
–noun
1. Also, independency. the state or quality of being independent.
2. freedom from the control, influence, support, aid, or the like, of others.
3. Archaic. a competency.

Freedom from control, influence, support and aid of others.

This means we are free to do the following:

1. Have opinions that may differ from others no matter how much they may not like them
2. Practice our religions, cultures, beliefs and ways-of-life so long as they do not control, influence, etc other people
3. So long as my practices do not control or forcefully influence other people's right to their own I am free to be left alone and not be dictated to by others
4. Take action to prevent others who seek to control and influence our chosen way-of-life
5. Even if other, perhaps neutral groups do not approve of my actions I still have a right to take it so long as I do not harm them - however if they are NOT neutral and actually side with the enemy, any harm my actions cause them is their own responsibility

Think about that as you watch your fireworks displays and enjoy a BBQ or day at the beach or however you choose to celebrate the independence (your independence) of the first country to have this kind of world view. Think about that the next time someone tells you that you shouldn't be allowed to say what you think/feel or that you need to respect someone else's right to force their own beliefs down your throat. Think about that the next time someone tells you that it's ok to support dictatorships who deny their people these basic rights and seek to spread that way of life around the world. That we need to be "tolerant" of other people's cultures even if those cultures embrace a hatred of your culture.

The old cliche that "freedom isn't free" isn't referring to money...it's referring to effort.

Remember also that there are millions of people damning us for celebrating our independence because they hate our way of life. They hate our culture. And they absolutely seek to control and influence us by war, terrorism and violence. They're alive and they're real and they're out there.

But they've fought us before in different forms and they lost before and they will continue to lose as long we stay strong, stay vigilant and stay INDEPENDENT.

Happy Independence Day everybody.

More entries coming soon...


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IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton