For your weekend delectation … excellent eating, in San Antonio and environs:
On the grill at Easy Picken’s BBQ, in Harper, Texas. Alas, they don’t have a website, and are only open Fridays and weekends … but the grilled meats are sublime.
Month: September 2011
Obama and Israel
Dan Senor provides a useful summary of Obama’s attitudes and policies toward that country. Excerpts:
”¢ February 2008: When running for president, then-Sen. Obama told an audience in Cleveland: “There is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel.”
”¢ July 2009: Mr. Obama hosted American Jewish leaders at the White House, reportedly telling them that he sought to put “daylight” between America and Israel…In the same meeting with Jewish leaders, Mr. Obama told the group that Israel would need “to engage in serious self-reflection.” This statement stunned the Americans in attendance: Israeli society is many things, but lacking in self-reflection isn’t one of them. It’s impossible to envision the president delivering a similar lecture to Muslim leaders.
”¢ March 2010: During Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Israel, a Jerusalem municipal office announced plans for new construction in a part of Jerusalem. The president launched an unprecedented weeks-long offensive against Israel. Mr. Biden very publicly departed Israel…Moments after Mr. Biden concluded his visit to the West Bank, the Palestinian Authority held a ceremony to honor Dalal Mughrabi, who led one of the deadliest Palestinian terror attacks in history: the so-called Coastal Road Massacre that killed 38, including 13 children and an American. The Obama administration was silent. But that same day, on ABC, Mr. Axelrod called Israel’s planned construction of apartments in its own capital an “insult” and an “affront” to the United States.
”¢ May 2011: The State Department issued a press release declaring that the department’s No. 2 official, James Steinberg, would be visiting “Israel, Jerusalem, and the West Bank.” In other words, Jerusalem is not part of Israel.
Read the whole thing; indeed, you might want to bookmark it for future reference.
Also: Governor/presidential candidate Rick Perry says errors by the Obama administration have encouraged the Palestinians to take backward steps away from peace, and Caroline Glick writes about the Palestinian obsession. Both links via Stuart Schneiderman, who finds the thinking of the Obama-Clinton foreign policy team, and the establishment leftist media as represented by the New York Times, to be so bizarre as to amount to mental illness.
Into the Wilderness – Part Three: By the Ice-Water Lake
(Part 3 of 3 the story of the first emigrant party to bring their wagons over the Sierra Nevada, which became my first historical novel To Truckee’s Trail, which should be out in a second edition next month.)
Dawn, morning, day still moving through the desert, from their last camp at the Humboldt Sink. Riders led their horses to spare them; the march only paused to water the oxen, and pass around some cold biscuits and dried meat by way of food for the people. At the hot spring in the middle of the desert, the animals drink, but not with any relish. They are fed with the green rushes brought from the last camping place. The emigrants rest in the shade of their wagons for a few hours in the hottest part of the day, resuming as the heat of the day fades. Sometime early the next morning, the weary, thirsty oxen begin perking up, stepping a little faster. The wind coming down from the mountains is bringing the scent of fresh water. There is a very real danger to the wagons, if the teamsters cannot control them. Hastily, the men draw the wagons together and unhitch the teams: better for them to run loose to the water they can smell, than risk damaging the wagons in a maddened stampede. In a few hours, the men return with the teams, sated and sodden with all the water they can drink from the old Indian’s river.
The Best Reviews
I remember once when I was eleven I got a new mountain bike. It was really sweet at the time though in retrospect it was not the greatest bike in the world. It had push button gear shift which meant that under any kind of duress the bike would shift into the most inappropriate gear possible. So Im riding my new bike on this dirt trail when I come across these really gnarly jumps and I think to myself I should take my new bike off of these rad hills and totally get some air. Well, the first one I went off of I landed wrong because I didnt know what the hell I was doing, I flipped over my handlebars and dislocated my knee. I also wrecked my new bike and had to hobble home carrying it. Anyway it was a way better time than this movie.
A member’s review on Netflix of the Movie “Gor”. I wish all movie reviews where that evocative.
However,my favorite review of all times is here (second from the top):