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In honor of Mary, Pickings has another Ladies’ Day. We begin with The Motherland is Calling. This is the iconic image of Russia at war. We also included a picture of the memorial the Soviets placed on a famous hill in Stalingrad (now Volgograd)
Claudia Rosett starts off Ladies Day with a piece on the next UN hate-fest against Israel and the U. S.
At the United Nations, ‘tis the season to bankroll hatred of Israel and America — via pricey preparations for a 2009 gathering dubbed the “Durban Review Conference,†or Durban II. Right now, plans have advanced from general talk of funding this jamboree out of the U.N. regular budget, and have homed in on a figure of $6.8 million which the U.N. budget committee is poised to approve. Unless Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice makes it her business to somehow block the money — and fast — this means that Americans, as top contributors to the U.N. budget, can look forward not only to being vilified at Durban II along with our democratic ally, Israel, but also to picking up the biggest share of the tab for this next landmark U.N. exercise in bigotry.
Durban II is of course being planned as the follow-up to the U.N.’s notorious 2001 conference in Durban, South Africa. Convened under the pretext of fighting racism, that conclave erupted into a frenzy of malice toward America, and even more specifically, Israel. Colin Powell, then secretary of State, had the integrity to withdraw the U.S. delegation, and publicly tell the U.N. organizers: “You do not combat racism by conferences that produce declarations containing hateful language, some of which is a throwback to the days of ‘Zionism equals racism;’ or supports the idea that we have made too much of the Holocaust; or suggests that apartheid exists in Israel; or that singles out only one country in the world — Israel — for censure and abuse.†…
Remember how poorly Israel did in the 2006 war with Hizbullah? Caroline Glick discovered why. Olmert put the lawyers in charge.
… The legal establishment’s ardor for the Second Lebanon War was exposed on Tuesday with the publication of the testimonies of Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz and Military Advocate-General Avichai Mandelblit before the Winograd Committee which the Olmert government established to research the war’s failures. In their testimonies both men shared their perception of the war as a great victory of lawyers in their campaign to “lawyerize” – or assert their control – over Israeli society.
In his opening statement, Mazuz extolled the war as “the most ‘lawyerly’ in the history of the State of Israel, and perhaps ever.” He explained, “The process didn’t begin in Lebanon 2006. It… is a gradual process of ‘lawyerizing’ life in Israel.”
Mazuz responded negatively to the question of whether legal considerations superseded operational and strategic goals during the war. He claimed that the government and the IDF restricted their plans from the beginning to conform with perceived legal restrictions.
As he put it, that preemptive limitation of goals was “the result of a sort of education and internalization that have taken place over the years. I remember periods where there was a great deal of friction with the senior military level regarding what is allowed and what is prohibited. But today I think that there is more or less an understanding of the rules of the game and I can’t identify any confrontation… or … demands to ‘Let the IDF win.’” …
… What has changed is the focus of military and political leaders in conducting war. Before the advent of legal dominance, commanders and political leaders devoted themselves to winning wars. Today they concentrate their efforts on avoiding criminal indictments. …
Suzanne Fields says Anne Frank would be 78 now.
Nearly every morning I go to the attic to blow the stuffy air out of my lungs, from my favorite spot on the floor I look up at the blue sky and the bare chestnut tree, on whose branches little raindrops shine, appearing like silver, and at the seagulls and other birds as they glide on the wind. As long as this exists, I thought, and I may live to see it, this sunshine, and the cloudless skies, while this lasts I cannot be unhappy. — Diary of Anne Frank
AMSTERDAM — I climbed the narrow, steep steps to the attic of the Anne Frank House to look out the window at the tree that gave a young girl hope. …
Kathryn Jean Lopez names the real men of the year.
If I were the editor of Time magazine, I’d have three men on the famous year-ending issue. My men of the year would be Gen. David Petraeus, with Sen. John McCain and Joe Lieberman as his Beltway wingmen.
Not to crowd the cover too much, but the mission takes a few good men: I’d make sure that George W. Bush (the commander in chief who put Petraeus where he is) and the American soldier (who does the work every day) got in the picture as well.
When Mitt Romney appeared on “Meet the Press” a week before Christmas, there wasn’t even five minutes of an hour-long program devoted to Iraq. That wouldn’t have happened had Romney been on as recently as last spring and summer. Just ask the Senate candidates who were on the same program in the run-up to the November 2006 elections if they were asked about Iraq, and how often. …
Noemie Emery with good Clinton profile.
What is one to make of Hillary Clinton, now that her front-running campaign seems to be foundering? Pretty much what one made of Al Gore when his campaign faltered.
2008 has barely begun, but already it seems quite a lot like 2000. There is a sense of deja-vu-all-over-again as Bill Clinton’s over-ambitious First Lady replays his vice president’s fate. The former VP and the former first lady have remarkable similarities. Both Gore and Hillary wanted to be president for a most of their lives, and with an uncommon ferocity. Each one’s rise through the ranks came about via family members — his father; her husband. Both rose to fame on the wings of Bill Clinton, who is proving to be a mixed blessing for both. Each began a campaign in a position of almost impregnable power, which each one subsequently (and quickly) undermined by errors of judgment and character. In short, what we see here are two campaigns that began with a huge amount of familial and institutional support for candidates who rose exclusively through the power of their respective situations, and who, in the end, are inept politicians and thus in over their heads in a high-stakes campaign. …
Maureen Dowd is back on the Clintons.
Once it was about Hillary, but now, of course, it’s about Bill.
Our ubiquitous ex-president is playing his favorite uxorious game, and it goes like this: Let’s create chaos and then get out of it together. You ride to my rescue or I ride to yours. We come within an inch of dying and then recapture the day by the skin of our teeth. While we’re killing ourselves, we blame everyone else. We’ll be heroes.
It worked for Bill and Hillary in ’92 and ’96. It didn’t work in the health care debacle. Will it work in Iowa and New Hampshire?
Just when I thought I was out, the Clintons pull me back into their conjugal psychodrama.
Inside the Bill gang and the Hillary gang, there is panic and perplexity. Is Bill a loyal spouse or a subconscious saboteur?
Should Hillaryland muzzle him? Give him a minder? Is he rusty? Or is he freelancing because he relishes his role as head of the party his wife is trying to take over?
“For the first time since the Marc Rich pardon,†said a friend of the Clintons, “Bill is seriously diminishing his personal standing with the people closest to him.†…
Kimberley Strassel takes a long look at Huck. She doesn’t like what she sees.
As pigs in pokes go, the Democratic Party bought itself a big one in 1988. Michael Dukakis was relatively unknown, but he was also the last man standing. Only too late did his party, along with the rest of the country, realize Mr. Dukakis was a typecast liberal–a furlougher of felons, and a guy who looked mighty awkward in a tank.
This is what happens when a party takes a flyer, and it could be Republicans’ turn with Mike Huckabee. The former Baptist minister and governor of Arkansas is surging in Iowa, and is tied with Rudy Giuliani in national polls. He’s selling his party on a simple message: He’s not those other guys, with their flip-flops and different faiths, and dicey social positions. As to what Mr. Huckabee is–that’s as unknown to most voters as the Almighty himself.
Mr. Huckabee is starting to get a look-see by the press, though whether the nation will have time to absorb the findings before the primaries is just as unknown. The small amount that has been unearthed so far ought to have primary voters nervous. It isn’t just that Mr. Huckabee is far from a traditional conservative; he’s a potential ethical time bomb. …
Neither did Peggy Noonan.
I didn’t see the famous floating cross. What I saw when I watched Mike Huckabee’s Christmas commercial was a nice man in a sweater sitting next to a brightly lit tree. He had easy warmth and big brown puppy-dog eyes, and he talked about taking a break from politics to remember the peace and joy of the season. Sounds good to me.
Only on second look did I see the white lines of the warmly lit bookcase, which formed a glowing cross. Someone had bothered to remove the books from that bookcase, or bothered not to put them in. Maybe they would have dulled the lines.
Is there a word for “This is nice” and “This is creepy”? For that is what I felt. This is so sweet-appalling.
I love the cross. The sight of it, the fact of it, saves me, literally and figuratively. But there is a kind of democratic politesse in America, and it has served us well, in which we are happy to profess our faith but don’t really hit people over the head with its symbols in an explicitly political setting, such as a campaign commercial, which is what Mr. Huckabee’s ad was. …
Kathryn Jean Lopez rounds out the Huckabee hat-trick suggesting politics makes strange alter-fellows. That in reference to whose church he visited Sunday before Christmas.
… The problem with this particular church is its pastor. It is no secret that evangelicals and Catholics have their theological differences. If we didn’t we’d all be under the same church roof like once upon a time. But Hagee has been particularly outspoken beyond his Cornerstone Church, as a supporter of Israel and a prolific writer. His activism has brought some attention to his views on the Catholic Church.
In Hagee’s “black history†of the Catholic Church, for example, Catholics were far from only guilty of sins of omission when it came to the Nazis, they also gave Hitler his blueprint, according to Hagee. In a speech this year, Hagee pointed to the Catholic Church as having provided the jumping-off point for the Holocaust, claiming: “That was really drawn by the Roman church. [Hitler] did not do anything differently. He only did it more ruthlessly, and on a national scale.†The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has long been concerned about Hagee’s rhetoric, calling him a “veteran bigot,†accusing him of distorting Catholic teachings and misrepresenting Church history. The League has cautioned that, “Tone matters … and Hagee’s tone is nothing but derisive.†…
Sarah Lueck in WSJ reports on the one senator who works for us.
WASHINGTON — On Tuesday afternoon, when most senators were preparing to leave Washington for the holiday recess, Tom Coburn was declaring his intention to stick around.
“The floor’s going to be open,” said the 59-year-old Oklahoma Republican. “I’m going to have to be here…to try to stop stuff.”
Stopping stuff is Sen. Coburn’s specialty. In a Congress that has had trouble passing even the simplest legislation, Sen. Coburn, who proudly wears the nickname “Dr. No,” is a one-man gridlock machine. This year, the senator, who indeed is a medical doctor, single-handedly blocked or slowed more than 90 bills, driving lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to distraction.
He blocked a ban on genetic discrimination by health insurers. He thwarted a bill to set up a program to track patients with Lou Gehrig’s disease. Also nixed: an effort to promote safe Internet use by children and a resolution to honor the late environmentalist Rachel Carson on the 100th anniversary of her birth. …
Melanie Phillips with outstanding post on the crumbling of the globalony idea.
And now for some good news. Geophysicist David Denning writes:
‘South America this year experienced one of its coldest winters in decades. In Buenos Aires, snow fell for the first time since the year 1918. Dozens of homeless people died from exposure. In Peru, 200 people died from the cold and thousands more became infected with respiratory diseases. Crops failed, livestock perished, and the Peruvian government declared a state of emergency.
Unexpected bitter cold swept the entire Southern Hemisphere in 2007. Johannesburg, South Africa, had the first significant snowfall in 26 years. Australia experienced the coldest June ever. In north-eastern Australia, the city of Townsville underwent the longest period of continuously cold weather since 1941. In New Zealand, the weather turned so cold that vineyards were endangered. …