Blog Heap of Links for the day 27 September 2012

In Obama's speech at the UN, he asked less of Muslims than he asks of members of his own faith and, critically, less than he himself has said is required of those embarking on a path to real democracy. That's not just my opinion, that's Obama's opinion as recorded in a 2006 speech on the topic of faith and politics.

Magarief told Curry that based on the accuracy of the assault, he believes the attackers must have had training and experience using the weapons. "It's a pre-planned act of terrorism," he said, adding that the anti-Islam film had "nothing to do with this attack." Though Magarief believes the attack was the work of Islamist fundamentalists, he dismisses any notion that Libya is in danger of becoming a theocracy.

Now every child's favorite game, "Horsie," comes to life!

Police fired tear gas at rioters hurling gasoline bombs and chunks of marble Wednesday during Greece's largest anti-austerity demonstration in six months — part of a 24-hour general strike that was a test for the nearly four-month old coalition government and the new spending cuts it plans to push through. The brief but intense clashes by a couple of hundred rioters participating in the demonstration of more than 60,000 people came a day after anti-austerity protests rocked the Spanish capital, Madrid. Hundreds of Spanish anti-austerity protesters gathered again Wednesday, ending near parliament in Madrid amid a heavy presence of riot police. In Tuesday's protest, police arrested 38 people and 64 were injured.

protesters stepping up anti-austerity demonstrations … The government's drive to rein in regional overspending as part of its austerity measures has prompted a flare-up in independence fervor in Catalonia … Anti-austerity groups planned a fresh demonstration on Wednesday evening in Madrid, a day after police fired rubber bullets at thousands of protesters who tried to form a human chain around the parliament building. Police arrested 35 protesters on Tuesday and 64 police and demonstrators were injured in the clashes.

"Unlike the ultra-extreme, radical Lutheran sectarians of Iowa and Minnesota, most ethnic Wisconsinites belong to the Wisconsin Lutheran Synod," said Joseph Killian, a Midwestern Studies professor at Emory University in Atlanta. "And if you add in three Super Bowl titles, easier access to beer, and walleye fishing, and you're going to have a much calmer and more stable culture." All that would change in November with the publication of four cartoons in a Texas office newsletter -- cartoons that today have brought this once happily beer-goggled society to the precipice of all-out culture war.

Jewish education is all about profanity, bestiality, and dishonesty--if George Soros, Samuel L. Jackson, and Sarah Silverman are to be believed.

The so-called "Jewish Council for Education and Research," in reality a super PAC backed by Soros's son Alexander, has produced a new anti-Romney ad in which Jackson exhorts a family to "Wake the F--- Up!" and work for President Barack Obama's re-election. Earlier this year, the Jewish Council released an ad in which Silverman simulates sex with a dog to mock Jewish GOP donor Sheldon Adelson.

There is nothing "Jewish" at all about these ads--far from it. Yet Alexander Soros--with money, no doubt, from Soros père--uses the "Jewish" label to give the imprimatur of respectability to these profane and profoundly unfunny ads.

Once the winning candy bar wrapper is opened, the tracking device will go off and Nestle officials will be able to find the exact location of the customer. [What could go wrong?]

The evidence suggests that the Indo-Australian plate began to be ripped apart between 8 million and 10 million years ago. The 2012 earthquake is just one of many that have likely ripped along the same region since this process began.

After millions more years of similar earthquakes, the ruptures will begin to favor a particular path, giving rise to a new plate boundary, and separating today's existing plate into two.

Delescluse said that the singular earthquake measured in 2012 offers a glimpse of this process in unprecedented detail.

Stockdale approached adversity with a very different mindset. He accepted the reality of his situation. He knew he was in hell, but, rather than bury his head in the sand, he stepped up and did everything he could to lift the morale and prolong the lives of his fellow prisoners. He created a tapping code so they could communicate with each other. He developed a milestone system that helped them deal with torture. And he sent intelligence information to his wife, hidden in the seemingly innocent letters he wrote.

Collins and his team observed a similar mindset in the good-to-great companies. They labeled it the Stockdale Paradox

A human finger found inside a fish at Idaho’s Priest Lake has been traced to a wakeboarder who lost four fingers in an accident more than two months earlier.

The future must not belong to people who say things like "'The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam'"

The Assistant Attorney General of the United States has said he does not rule out a law against blasphemy, so that's good news, isn't it? Once we've got government commissars regulating movies, and cartoons, and teddy bears and children's piggy-banks and Burger King ice-cream tubs and inflatable sex-shop dolls and non-Sharia-compliant mustaches (just to round up a few of the innumerable grievances of Islam), all the bad stuff will go away, right?

This statue currently stands outside the Iraqi palace, now home to the 4th Infantry division. It will eventually be shipped home and put in the memorial museum in Fort Hood, Texas.

The statue was created by an Iraqi artist named Kalat, who for years was forced by Saddam Hussein to make the many hundreds of bronze busts of Saddam that dotted Baghdad.

With the presidential race deadlocked and the future of the country at stake, it is time for the Right to answer race baiting and poverty pimping with the condemnation it deserves. It is time to offer an inspiring vision of possibility fostered through liberty. Judging individuals by the content of their character precludes herding them into racial voting blocs. Dr. King dreamt of harmony, not animosity, brotherly love, not class division. For him as for us, civil rights are a means to that end, not the Marxist end of redistributive change advocated by the NAACP and President Barack Obama.

OK, if you believe the polls, Mitt Romney’s 10 points behind in Ohio. But then there are those people — THOUSANDS of people — who stood in line in the rain to get in to see Mitt this afternoon in downtown Toledo [video]

"I think they want to do their very best to keep the people of America from understanding exactly what happened. We expect candor, we expect transparency, particularly, as it relates to terrorism," Romney said. "Why is he (Obama) not on the same page with his own administration officials who are saying that this is a terrorist attack? We'll leave it up to you to decide whether it's a coverup or not," Ryan said.

In my article The Difference Between Israelis and Palestinians I pointed out that in Israeli fairy tales the story ends with peace between natural enemies while in Palestinian fairy tales the story ends with the death of the Jews and Israel wiped off the map. Today I would like to point out the difference between Palestinian and Israeli Gardens. ... [The Israelis] treated the land as a gift from God.