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Happy Presidents’ Day. (I know it’s supposed to be for George, but Abe is lumped in, too–sort of.)
Check out the biased top ten Presidential mistakes, according to a survey of presidential historians organized by the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center. Bill’s Monica is #10.
Missing from the list: Jimmy Carter ushering the Shah of Iran out, in favor of extremist Islamic “democracy.” Given the danger of Ahmadinejadian nuclear doomsday, we’d put it at #1.
And we’d disagree with about half the others, like #3, Lyndon Johnson’s alleged failure by allowing the Vietnam War to intensify. Nope. The blunder was that he and his defense secretary (McNamara) didn’t go in and finish the job. They sent the troops to their slaughter, didn’t back them up, or finish the job–because they didn’t have the backbone. At least President Bush does.

Then, there’s their #5, Nixon’s alleged Watergate cover-up. No less than liberal Sam Donaldson, who covered the White House, said he never saw any evidence that Nixon knew of Watergate.
Their #8: John Kennedy allowing the ill-fated Bay of Pigs Invasion to overthrow Cuba’s communist government that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. We’d say JFK blundered because he 1) didn’t back up those who got caught in the failure, and 2) allowed the Castro Communist problem to fester, and THAT was the mistake with which we still live today.
Their #9: Ronald Reagan and the Iran-Contra Affair, the effort to sell arms to Iran and use the money to finance an armed anti-communist group in Nicaragua. Well, Nicaragua is free (, this year, because we allowed him to), and we got rid of Communist despotism in Nicaragua. The means were not ideal, but when you have the Red wing of Congress stopping our efforts to stop Communism, other ways must be sought to defend our shores. And, again, whose dealings were the worst vis-a-vis Iran and brought America the most heartache? That would be Jimmy Carter, not Reagan.

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On this site, we’ve been so you don’t have to. Here’s the latest outrage in what your wives, girlfriends, and daughters might be reading: Marie Claire‘s March issue.
On its cover, the magazine–with Mariah Carey as its cover girl–advertises “Heroes & Hardship: Women’s Stories from Iraq,” along with the obligatory, “5 Ultimate Sex Tips.” But, inside, along with stories about America’s female soldiers fighting in Iraq, Marie Claire found it necessary to glorify “the other side.” That’s right, Iraqi insurgents. And the magazine makes great efforts to knock America and its soldiers while it’s at it.

3 Ultimate Anti-Sex Tips:1) Hating Americans, 2) Killing Americans, 3) Wearing that Outfit
Check out the female Iraqi insurgent portrayed by Marie Claire as a feminist, above. Does Marie Claire really believe she’s doing anything “her way”? Hello? . . . More like her FATHER’s or HUSBAND’s way (along with his three other wives, er . . . baby factories/slaves). It’s interesting that Marie Claire finds a way to transform any enemy of America who kills our soldiers to be a “feminist,” so long as she has female plumbing. Look at her outfit. Does she look like a bra-burner to you?
Especially outrageous is Marie Claire’s attempt to portray this terrorist as “peaceful” and Americans as the opposite. To wit:

Faiza, 31, assists . . . during battles with American forces. “I had training from my neighbor . . . he taught me how to shoot a Kalshnikov.” Faiza . . . shows no fear of putting herself in harm’s way. “We are back up for the men. If they need anything, we will be there to help.”
Most of Faiza’s time, however, is spent bonding in more peaceful ways. They attend weekly mosque and religion classes together, as well as making pilgrimages and elaborate meals on the calendar days that honor the martyrs. . . . According to Faiza and the other women, little good has come from the American presence in Iraq. “The Americans have not come to bring us freedom, they have come to occupy our country,” says one. “Freedom is handcuffs, and democracy is prisoner hoods,” says another.

These women, by the way, are Shia–not Sunni–insurgents, follow terrorist Imam Muqtada Al-Sadr, now in the new Iraqi government. Guess they forgot about the handcuffs, hoods, decapitations, mutilations, amputations, and mass murders of Saddam Hussein.
And so did Marie Claire. Which is supposed to be in America–its English language headquarters are in New York (but also comes in French).

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This is a photo of U.S. Olympic speedskater and Gold Medalist Shani Davis. While most Olympians would be thrilled beyond belief to win a gold medal, he was very angry in an interview with NBC’s Melissa Stark. (Maybe it has something to do with fellow Olympic speedskater Chad Hedrick’s catfight with him.) But he looked quite happy, here, with his teddy bear.
Teddy bears, cat-fights, and angry interviews after Gold Medals. Something strange has definitely happened to American speedskating since the glorious days of Dr. Eric Heiden at the unique .

(Photo by Daniel Mears of The Detroit News)

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Why did the United Arab Emirates (UAE) ban Michelle Malkin’s site? Was it her just outrage about the ? Or was it her publishing of the Mohammed cartoons and her thorough exposition of the global Islamic violence in response to the cartoons?
Regardless of the reason, it’s yet another reason we can’t let them control our ports. If they’ll censor out her site from over there, what will they do when they are controlling vital points of entry and shipping here in America?
Not sure if they are censoring my site yet, but here’s an e-mail I got from a reader in UAE:

Debbie,
As usual, my daily dose of reality includes reading your own blog and that of Michelle Malkin. I presume that due to MM’s open support of Denmark the site has now been blocked by Etisalat, the govt. owned service provider in Dubai, UAE. C’est la vie!

****UPDATE: Uncle Tim’s Bargain Basement is right. This is costing Republicans. Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer have taken the lead against this absurdity, while Homeland Security’s is defending it (did so on all the Sunday shows).

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For the latest in examples that airport security is more porous than ever, we turn to the sports pages and a dog show.
A woman’s award-winning show-dog, a whippet, is lost somewhere around New York’s Kennedy Airport. The dog escaped at Kennedy, and after a 24-hour search, it still cannot be found. What if the dog were instead an Islamic terrorist? Or a dog planted with explosives (which Muslim terrorists have, indeed, done in Israel, FYI)?
If our own airport security is this bad, imagine how bad port security will be?

Here’s some of the AP coverage:

Searchers covered the airport’s nearly 5,000 acres over a 24-hour period but did not spot the short-haired, greyhound-like dog, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said.
The 3-year-old whippet, formally known as Champion Bohem C’est La Vie and answering to Vivi, had won an award of merit at the Westminster Kennel Club show this week. The dog apparently escaped her travel cage on the tarmac Wednesday as she was about to be loaded onto a Delta Air Lines flight home to California.

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As we’ve written before, “blame the Jews” is always the convenient response. In this cartoon fight between the Muslims and the Danish paper Jyllands Posten, the Jews are getting it from both sides (even though, the Jews had nothing to do with the Cartoons, and in fact, the Israelis unjustly imprisoned for two years, Tatiana Soskin, a Jewish woman who dared draw a Mohammed cartoon.) The Danes wanted to cancel a soccer exhibition in Israel to please the rioting, angry Muslims, and the Muslims are saying this (surprise, surprise) at cartoon protests all over (thanks to reader R.J.P. for tipping us off to this photo from German media outlet n-tv of a Muslim cartoon protest in Islamabad, Pakistan) . . . .

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Our favorite source of Lebanese news, Ya Libnan, reports that Syria has a hit list of journalists. Syria, on the State Dept. Terrorist List, has a target: Freedom of the Press. The country is targeting journalists critical of Syria.
You’d think journalists all over America would be outraged and would cover this extensively, as they have the less worthy stories of leftist, pan-Islamist journalist kidnapping or ABC Anchor Bob Woodruff’s injuries in Iraq. But you would be wrong. We had to go to a Lebanese site to find out about it.
Not a peep out of the Mainstream Media on Syria’s mafia-style plan to eliminate fellow journalists (with apologies to La Cosa Nostra for the comparison). Yet, whenever Syria raises the spectre of forcing Israel to “give back” (read: give UP, not back) the Golan Heights and Shebaa Farms to Syria, the U.S. media is all over it, like to food.

Al-Assad (The Lion): Syrian Leader Has Hit List for Journalists
Oh, we get it. Freedom of the Press is only important when it’s a tool against the West and in support of despotic Islamic regimes. Not when it’s the other way around.

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Want a textbook definition of “schadenfreude”? It’s how we felt when we read the e-mail sent to us, today, by our friend Ray Wert of DetroitWonk, alerting us to this:
GARY BUSEY GOT ARRESTED! This info is according to celeb gossip website Jossip (linked via Gawker) and has not yet been confirmed. But allegedly Busey assaulted a female police officer.
As we wrote ( and ), Gary Busey is the actor who whored himself out to the Turks and plays an anti-Semitic caricature of a Jewish-American U.S. Army doctor in Turkey’s biggest movie production ever, “Kurtlar Vadisi – Irak” (“Valley of the Wolves – Iraq”). who extracts Muslim Arabs’ organs at Abu Ghraib and sells them to Orthodox Jews in Tel Aviv, New York, and London. The movie is anti-American, anti-Christian, and anti-Semitic.

New Gary Busey Reality Show: “I’m With Arrested Man”
Here’s an excerpt from the unconfirmed report:

Gary Busey . . . was arrested today at LAX for assaulting a female officer.
He was either drunk or stoned and shoved her on the forehead causing her to fall backwards landing directly on her tailbone. She was injured and could not get up.
Soon after, the police cuffed Busey, who was for some reason traveling with his wannabe paparazzi attorney.
One officer drew a gun on Gary’s attorney too for trying to fetch a camera from a briefcase.

By the way, Busey’s lawyer is a woman (Vickie Roberts), not a man (as indicated in the report), and she is his chief defender on the outrageous, anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, anti-American film.

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While everyone is justifiably outraged by America’s relinquishment of six major ports to a Dubaian company, Dubai Ports (also, called DP World), the real outrage should be this:
Where was the outrage in the last 4.5 years? Why has our country continued to maintain great relations with the governments of Dubai and its larger federation of emirates, the United Arab Emirates? Since we’ve never disciplined or even scolded either Dubai or the larger UAE, they have been free to operate as usual.
And we’ve never treated or recognized both as anything but allies. It’s hard to let this fester for years, and then one day say to a party we pretend is our friend: hey, you are our enemy and always have been. That should have been what we were saying ever since 9/11 . . . and probably well before that date.

I’ve been screaming (in writing) about this for years. But no-one listened.
In 2002, at the time of the Kentucky Derby, I wrote this about Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum. Dubai, which is one of the seven United Arab Emirates (UAE).
At the time he did not rule Dubai, but now he does (since the death of his brother Sheikh Maktoum on January 4th). Here is an excerpt from what I wrote:

Al-Maktoum, Defense Minister of the United Arab Emirates, is also Crown Prince of Dubai-an Arab Muslim country that strongly supported and recognized Afghanistan’s Taliban, one of only three countries to do so. According to “From the Desert to the Derby,” by Jason Levin, 10 of the 19 September 11th hijackers carried documents and identification from Dubai, a country which also has no laws against money-laundering. Why? Maybe, because money to fund September 11th’s terrorism was laundered to ringleader Mohammed Atta, directly from Dubai’s banks.
Like most Arab leaders, Al-Maktoum gives only lip service to condemning terrorism, while his country sponsors, aids, and abets it. On September 11th, he was spending billions on high-priced yearlings at Keeneland in Lexington, Kentucky. After claiming, “We are 100% against it and 100% with America to get those people to justice,” he was busy spending millions, again, on September 12th-spending $6.1 million on two horses. As for the money from September 11th traced back to Dubai, Al-Maktoum will only say, “It’s been taken care of.” Whatever that means–ie., nothing.

And there’s more on the larger UAE, which unfortunately has a good friend in a certain President’s brother.
Stay tuned for a longer piece on all of this.

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I am quoted in today’s Baltimore Sun, regarding on “U.S.” Olympic ice dancer and the special treatment she got from liberal U.S. Senator Carl Levin in speeding up her citizenship through legislation.
According to the Sun, the family of another American Olympian, David Mitchell, agreed with me, at the time writing a letter to Congress saying that Belbin’s special treatment might hurt his and his ice-dancing partner’s berth in the Games. (Mitchell and his partner did not qualify.)
Here’s the quote from the Sun, quoting me:

The bill wasn’t universally applauded. The Federation for American Immigration Reform linked to a blog by Debbie Schlussel, a political commentator who also serves as a sports attorney and agent, who wrote, “Belbin shouldn’t be in the Olympics representing our country. She got special treatment, despite the fact that plenty of hard-working Amerian ice skaters who were born here … don’t get special treatment.”