Gateway Pundit is Shocked, Shocked I tell you!

And Well they should be -  look at this:
Stunner. Muslim Brotherhood “Reformer” to Run for President in Egypt
Posted by Jim

Well, who could have known? That is, who in the President's orbit. The rest of us knew all along the Muslim Brotherhood was not good news in the Egyptian uprisings.

Why I read the blogs

You learn so much you will not learn without spending 24 hours a dad perusing the web.  And I do spend many hours at it, there just isn't time enough in the day to read it all. So I do like to read them and then pass the information on to you.

This is from a blog on Investor's Business Daily. I read Ann Althouse several times a day so I knew exactly the points she had made but you may not have without my post.

If ObamaCare Is Valid, Could Congress Mandate Abortion?

By Ed Carson

Ann Althouse took down Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe’s pro-ObamaCare NYT op-ed in a trio of blog posts Tuesday. Althouse, herself a law professor, called out Tribe for trying to equate activity with choice, when there is a big difference.

In fact, the cases refer to “commercial activities,” and a switch from “activity” to “choice” is immensely important in the health care litigation, in which opponents stress that the failure to buy insurance is inactivity, not activity, and therefore beyond even the broadest interpretations the Supreme Court has ever given to the Commerce Clause.

Moreover, she points out that the liberal legal scholar is playing with fire. Arguing that society can stop the individual from making a choice now that possibly could have negative consequences down the road could undercut the philosophical case for a women’s right to choose, Althouse notes (cross-throughs in original):

If we take a similarly broad view of choice, we could say — as anti-abortion advocates do — that women who know they may be fertile have a choice when they go ahead and have sexual intercourse with a man. They can refrain from having sex, but if they go forward, they know that if they need emergency-room care that they can’t pay for get pregnant, the public will pick up the tab they can get an abortion.

From NewsBusters and not a surprise to most of us:

Major Media Miss: Muslim Brotherhood's Stated Goal Has Long Been 'To Seize U.S.' ByTom Blumer

While looking for something else, I accidentally stumbled across a 2007 item in my blog's archives that makes the current soft media treatment of the Muslim Brotherhood even more outrageous than it already appears.

In November of that year, the Dallas Morning News, covering the Holy Land Foundation terrorist funding trial, directly described what had been learned about the Muslim Brotherhood and its goals -- not in Egypt, but the in U.S. (link is to excerpt at my blog; DMN article is no longer available at Dallas.com or in the ProQuest library database):

Muslim Brotherhood’s papers detail plan to seize U.S.
Amid the mountain of evidence released in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial, the most provocative has turned out to be a handful of previously classified evidence detailing Islamist extremists’ ambitious plans for a U.S. takeover.

A knot of terrorism researchers say the memos and audiotapes, many translated from Arabic and containing detailed strategies by the international Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood, are proof that extremists have long sought to replace the Constitution with Shariah, or Islamic law.

From Roll Call on pensions for former members of congress

Former Members Get Millions From Pensions

Taxpayers are likely to foot the bill for at least $26 million in pensions for former Members of Congress this year, even as Congress embraces austerity by curbing its annual pay raises and voting to slash office budgets.

That estimate, drawn from data published by the Congressional Research Service, is based on payments to 455 former Members as of October 2009 and doesn’t include potential payouts to dozens of newly retired lawmakers who are eligible to draw their pensions.

From Canada Free Press:

Obama’s Trumpeted Super Intelligence is Strictly a Myth 

From Gateway Pundit

Blow to “O”… Egyptian VP Says There Will Be No Regime Change
Posted by Jim Hoft on Tuesday, February 8, 2011, 10:34 PM

On Tuesday the Obama Administration asked Hosni Mubarak to step aside.

On Wednesday they said that transitioning power “now means yesterday.”

On Saturday morning the Obama Administration said Mubarak must stay.

On Saturday evening the Obama Administration said Mubarak should step aside.

On Sunday Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Mubarak must stay in power.

Today the Obama Administration said that political reform will be a gradual process.

Is it any wonder then that the Obama Administration has alienated all sides in Egypt?

Just in case you were not concerned with the Egyptian Uprising here's some headlines on areas of concern

From MSNBC online:
Concerns grow over Egypt's WMD research
U.S. has been quiet about Cairo's weapons programs, but revolt changes the calculus

From Tea Party Nation
Islam and the Prospect of World War Three

Pajamas Media's Richard Fernandez in his Belmont Club - Tea Party People be sure to read this one.
The Egyptian Tea Party

Victor Davis Hanson at Pajamas Media: This one has a good history of the liberals turning on the Iraq war.
Clueless on Cairo

Roger L. Simon in, you guessed it, Pajamas Media- a good critical roundup of liberal takes:
Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood & Oyster Stew

From the Washington Post:
Egypt diplomacy: White House races to keep pace with events put in motion by protests

Also from WP:
Egypt's real parallel to Iran's revolution

More from WP:
Iran's opposition leaders hope to draw from protests in Egypt

Also from WP Robert J. Samuelson on oil and Egypt
Reminder from Egypt: The age of oil isn't going away

I haven't checked with the New York Times yet, there may be updates later.  I think the MSM is trying to keep this going, the Egyptians have grown weary of it and things will probably limp along for a while.  I'm wondering what political shenanigans we are missing while we are consumed with only Egyptian coverage.

Egypt Invites the Arsonists to put out the fire

The Egyptian government, whatever that means, has met with the Muslim Brotherhood. This is not good news for America.  This is being touted by the New York Times and Fox News.
The NYT headline:

Muslim Brotherhood Joins Egypt Talks
Members of the Muslim Brotherhood joined other opposition groups meeting with Vice President Omar Suleiman on Sunday in what seemed a significant departure in the nation’s uprising and political history.

The Brotherhood is an outlawed Islamist organization often depicted by the authorities as committed to the overthrow of the secular order in the heart of the Middle East. Official attitudes toward it here have swung between outright repression and reluctant tolerance. But it has remained Egypt’s biggest opposition force against the autocratic rule of President Hosni Mubarak.

After the meeting had started, The Associated Press said that talks included some of the top issues for the opposition — including freedom of the press and the release of those detained since antigovernment protests started — as well as agreement to begin setting up a structure to study amending the country’s constitution.

A spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, Gamal Nassar, said the huge and sometimes violent demonstrations that have paralyzed Cairo for 13 days, reverberating around the Middle East, would continue “until the political path can have a role in achieving the aspirations of the protesters” — an apparent reference to their goal of removing Mr. Mubarak.

Mr. Nassar said mediators had brokered the encounter with Mr. Suleiman, who Saturday received public backing from the Obama administration and other Western governments that confirmed him as the West’s choice to guide any transfer of power.

“The brothers decided to enter a round of dialogue to determine how serious the officials are achieving the demands of the people,” Mr. Nassar said. “The regime keeps saying we’re open to dialogue and the people are the ones refusing, so the Brotherhood decided to examine the situation from all different sides.”

“The Egyptian regime is stubborn, and cannot relinquish power easily,” he said. “In politics, you must hear everyone’s opinions.”

Another member of the Brotherhood, the former lawmaker Mohasen Rady, said the organization had not abandoned its demand for Mr. Mubarak’s ouster. “He can leave in any way the regime would accept him to leave, but it has to be that he is out,” he said.

Read the rest here.

Fox News:
Egypt Makes New Concessions to Opposition Groups

CAIRO -- Egypt's vice president met a wide representation of major opposition groups for the first time Sunday and agreed to allow freedom of the press, to release those detained since anti-government protests began nearly two weeks and ago and to lift the country's hated emergency laws when security permits.

Vice President Omar Suleiman endorsed a plan with the opposition to set up a committee of judiciary and political figures to study proposed constitutional amendments that would allow more candidates to run for president and impose term limits on the presidency, the state news agency reported. The committee was given until the first week of March to finish the tasks.

The regime also pledged not to harass those participating in the anti-government protests, which have drawn hundreds of thousands at the biggest rallies. The government also agreed not to hamper freedom of press and not to interfere with text messaging and Internet.

Sunday's meeting was the broadest representation of Egypt's fragmented opposition to meet with the new vice president since the protests demanding the immediate ouster of longtime President Hosni Mubarak began on Jan. 25.

The opposition groups represented included the youthful supporters of leading democracy advocate Mohamed ElBaradei, who are one of the main forces behind the protests.

The outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest opposition group, and a number of smaller leftist, liberal groups also attended the meeting, according to footage shown on state television.

Mubarak, Egypt's ruler of nearly 30 years, has rejected calls to step down immediately and instead promised a package of unspecified political reforms -- part of a series of concessions the regime has made in an unsuccessful bid to quell the protests.

The two sides also agreed at the meeting that the government would open an office that would field complaints about political prisoners, according to the state news agency.

The government also pledged to commission judicial authorities to fight corruption and prosecute those behind it. It agreed to investigate and prosecute those responsible for the yet unexplained disappearance of police from Cairo's streets more than a week ago, which unleashed a wave of lawless looting and arson.

Egypt's emergency laws were imposed by Mubarak when he took office in 1981 and they have been in force ever since. The laws give police far-reaching powers for detention and suppression of civil and human rights. Lifting the laws has been a longtime demand by the opposition.

Read more.

Is this the Answer for Egypt?

It seems to be the truth, but is there really any answer at all?  From The Daily Beast by  Leslie H. Gelb.

Obama's Egypt Flip-Flop
U.S. media pundits are intoxicated with protests and naïve about religious and military extremists—and the White House's daily policy shifts aren’t helping, writes Leslie H. Gelb. Plus, full coverage of the Egypt uprising.

As the Egyptian earthquake rumbles into its second week—with implications for U.S. security in the Middle East rivaling those for the Soviet Union during the 1989 uprisings in Eastern Europe—three matters roil my mind:

First, most of the American talkocracy is now so utterly intoxicated with protestocracy, which they call democracy, that they outright neglect the enormous trials of getting from the streets to a real democracy. It's hard as hell, and the process lends itself to hijacking by extremists.


Second, the Muslim Brotherhood jumps immediately to mind as hijackers, but don't overlook the potentially equal or greater threat to democracy from Egypt's beloved armed forces. The history of venomous domestic and foreign-policy pronouncements by the MB should keep us all awake at night. And never forget that the murderers of the great President Anwar Sadat were Muslim Brothers embedded in the army. All who ignore this history are naïve, best suited to cable-TV commentary, not policymaking.

Third, the Obama White House hasn't helped matters by shifting policy ground almost daily, causing confusion, and thereby squandering America's credibility and limited but precious influence. President Obama has got to learn the fundamental rule of dealing with careening crises: State your basic principles and then shut up publicly! (Meaning, just boringly repeat your mantra daily.)

I'd like to believe that, if I were an Egyptian, I would be in the streets with the protesters. I'd be mad as hell with Mubarak and would want to get rid of him as quickly as possible. But that wouldn't make me or my fellow mobsters democrats. Generally, one cannot count on mobs, no matter how nice or liberal or unfilled with hatred, to produce democracies.

The United States has no power to shape events in Egypt, but it does have real influence. Using that influence effectively absolutely requires consistency out of the White House. That has not been forthcoming.

The best way to get from the streets of Cairo to some semblance of a constitutional government that ensures rights and freedoms is, of course, to get Mubarak and his lot to help with the transition from dictatorship to the desired end. That's what the Obama administration is now trying to do behind the scenes. And that's the right approach. The protestocracy is justifiably skeptical of involving Mubarak and his bunch in any capacity whatsoever. And that's understandable because he disappointed and lied to them so many times before. And they're afraid that if they get out of the streets and let him take the lead, Mubarak will revert to business as usual or worse. I'd think that way if I were in their shoes as well.

Read the rest of this man's wise words here. 

Who Do We Believe? Probably they are both the truth. Egypt is in Chaos

This first hand account from Greg Palkott from Fox News:

Bloody in Cairo: A Firsthand Account
CAIRO, Egypt – It was Wednesday afternoon. We were covering the clashes between pro- and anti-government protesters near Tahrir or Liberation Square in Cairo.

A short time after we started our shooting, cameraman Olaf Wiig was threatened by a small group of pro-Mubarak thugs.

We ducked down an alley. It turned out to be a dead end, so we dashed into a nearby building.

At first it was a perfect vantage point to cover the street battle. Then it quickly turned into a battle station for the pro-government side.

Olaf, producer Ibrahim Hezbroun, a Canadian journalist, and myself hunkered down in an apartment in the back of the top floor.

Go to here to read the full battle account, I am cutting the length to give you his take on the culprits.

Then when the hospital staff said we were good to go, we were still held by the authorities. We were jammed into the back of a small jeep, driven across town, held blindfolded at the Ministry of Military Security, marched lock-step to a location, then videotaped and photographed as if in a line-up.

We were later to learn other journalists were treated the same way.

When I looked around at the people there, in plain clothes, some with guns, many with angry faces, all of a sudden it came full circle.

I felt I was back in Tahrir Square with the pro-Mubarak thugs.

Still blindfolded, we were thrown back into the jeep and driven to another location. Happily it was not to some jail for political prisoners, but to a car with those working to get us free.

In a half an hour we were with the Fox team set for a later trip home.

The experience we endured filled us with revulsion at those Egyptians who use violence and repression and those in higher places who support those actions. It also filled us with a deep admiration for the good and courageous Egyptians who will be continuing the struggle today and the days to come, who are putting their own lives on the line.

Hopefully they’ll come out on the other side of this with a better country.

This article blames Mubarak also, but in a different way.

Islamist Muslims Attack Two Christian Families in Egypt, Killing Eleven
Two Islamists groups Killed eleven Copts, including children

News of a massacre of two Christian Coptic families by Islamists just emerged from Upper Egypt with the return of the Internet connections after a week of Internet blackout by the Egyptian regime. Two Islamists groups, aided by the Muslim neighbors, descended on the roof of houses owned by Copts, killing eleven Copts, including children, and seriously injuring four others. 

These events are sickening.  I hate to think what will happen to the Coptics or other Christian sects if the Muslim Brotherhood takes over.  Read the whole story.

Egypt links for Jan 31st

VDH at Works and Days

What’s the Matter with Egypt?
So what’s the matter with Egypt? The same thing that is the matter with most of the modern Middle East: in the post-industrial world, its hundreds of millions now are vicariously exposed to the affluence and freedom of the West via satellite television, cell phones, the Internet, DVDs, and social networks.

Read it all, well worth it. Click the title above.

The New American Fans of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt
by Ron Radosh

From the UK's Daily Mail
More than 102 dead and thousands of prisoners on the loose in Egypt as 30,000 stranded Britons struggle to leave the country
 
Reuters
Looters pillage Egyptian antiquities warehouses

Trump's take in Newsmax - I hope he is right
Mideast Explosion Could Destroy OPEC, Lower Oil Prices


Updates as I see them.

The Conundrum that is Egypt

Is especially spelled out in this article by Michael Goodwin in the New York Post:
The Worst of Times
The first page of the online article explores the many reasons the New York Times has lost its way, the extremely liberal and biased reporting of the news. The second page gets into the meat of what is happening in Egypt. I don't know about you, but I am much more worried about Egypt than the NYT at this point.
Goodwin says:

But because Keller sees his options on national security as simplistically binary -- either a free press or a government veto -- he fails to recognize his duty to exercise voluntary discretion. In a time of war, that is unforgivable.


Pain of double edged sword

As Egypt burns, nervous Americans must resist one thing: certainty. Ignore anybody who is absolutely, positively sure of who will be standing when the smoke clears and what we should do about it.

Take Joe Biden. The veep was certain Hosni Mubarak is not a "dictator." He is wrong and there is no honor in pretending otherwise.


On the other side, the thugocracy in Iran is gung-ho for the demonstrators. "Iran expects Egyptian officials to listen to the voice of their Muslim people" a spokesman said.

To judge an uprising by its supporters, we don't want to be on the same side as the Iranian rulers who brutally crushed a democracy movement. They seize on destabilization anywhere, from Lebanon to Gaza to Iraq, to spread their evil.

Remember the lesson of the Iranian revolution: One person, one vote, one time.

The easy truth is that Mubarak personifies the double-edged sword that bedevils our policy in the Mideast. He is a firewall against Muslim terrorists and a helpful neighbor of Israel's for 30 years. He is also a ruthless ruler who created the powder keg now exploding.

The hard truth is that there is no obvious path as America faces an agonizing choice between our interests and our values. That's why the White House's is hedging its bets, leaning first toward Mubarak and then toward the protestors without breaking with either.

It also realizes that what happens in Egypt won't stay in Egypt, just as the revolt in Tunisia is awakening Arabs in Yemen and Jordan as well. Saudi Arabia is nervous, as is Europe, because 40 percent of the world's oil passes through the Suez Canal.

The smart money says Mubarak's days are numbered. Fair enough, but two questions more:


What or who follows him? And is it good for America?


As of now, nobody really knows.

Al Zawahiri, Al Queda, Iran, Iraq and Egypt

I am listening to C-Span's Washington Journal this morning.  Tom Ridge is on taking questions and giving answers.  Someone called in and reminded us of Al Zawahiri's involvment with the assassination of Sadat. Then I opened my email and found a link to this article by  by N.M. Guariglia in Pajamas Media on  "Remembering the Iran-Al Queda Link." It is subtitled The connection that Western intelligence agencies fear to make.  This is how it begins:

Credit must be given to former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. During his testimony before Britain’s Iraq inquiry, Blair addressed an issue considered taboo in many Western national security circles: the alliance between the Islamic Republic of Iran and al-Qaeda. “What nobody foresaw,” Blair said, “was that Iran would actually end up supporting al-Qaeda. The conventional wisdom was these two are completely different types of people because Iran is Shi’a, the al-Qaeda people are Sunni, and therefore, you know, the two would never mix. What happened in the end was that they did because they both had a common interest” in fighting the United States.

The Iran-al-Qaeda relationship is long and extensive. As with Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, the Iran-al-Qaeda alliance can best be understood simply by reanalyzing the very same documents that are said to contain evidence to the contrary. The 9/11 Commission, for example, states: “On November 4, 1998, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York unsealed its indictment of bin Laden, charging him with conspiracy to attack U.S. defense installations. The indictment also charged that al-Qaeda had allied itself with Sudan, Iran, and Hezbollah.”

The Iranian regime created Hezbollah in 1982 to serve as its terrorist proxy army throughout the world. Hezbollah and al-Qaeda have collaborated for many years. The Saudi branch of Hezbollah helped al-Qaeda commit the deadly Khobar Towers attack in June 1996. The 9/11 Commission elaborates:

In late 1991 or 1992, discussions in Sudan between al-Qaeda and Iranian operatives led to an informal agreement to cooperate in providing support — even if only training — for actions carried out primarily against Israel and the United States. Not long afterward, senior al-Qaeda operatives and trainers traveled to Iran to receive training in explosives. In the fall of 1993, another such delegation went to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon for further training in explosives as well as in intelligence and security. Bin Laden reportedly showed particular interest in learning how to use truck bombs such as the one that had killed 241 U.S. Marines in Lebanon in 1983. The relationship between al-Qaeda and Iran demonstrated that Sunni-Shi’a divisions did not necessarily pose an insurmountable barrier to cooperation in terrorist operations (emphasis added).

The Commission continues:

Intelligence indicates the persistence of contacts between Iranian security officials and senior al-Qaeda figures.… Iran made a concerted effort to strengthen relations with al-Qaeda after the October 2000 attack on the USS Cole, but was rebuffed because bin Laden did not want to alienate his supporters in Saudi Arabia.

In this case, it was Iran reaching out to al-Qaeda. But al-Qaeda had been an underling of Iran’s for some time.

The article has a lot of truths that must be realized, One of the most telling is this:

When asked whom the Iranians support, Tamimi responded:

Everybody — [Iran] works with the [Iraqi] government, with the opponents of the government, with the opponents of the government’s opponents, with al-Qaeda, with the enemies of al-Qaeda, with the militias, with the enemies of the militias. … Iran spreads its investments everywhere — with the Shi’ites, the Sunnis, and the Kurds.

This might be one of the most accurate quotations an intelligence analyst could read about Iran and the state of its affairs in the Middle East.

Read it all. I hope the president, defene secretary and Secretary of State are taking notes on these facts.

Obama and The Egyptian Uprising as noted by A J Strata

A J Strata has a very thoughtful take on the uprising and how it should be handled. This is such a dangerous situation we can only hope it does not desolve into utter chaos and be taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood.

This is from AJ's Stratasphere blog:

Obama A Deer In The Headlights Of Egypt’s Uprising

The situation in Egypt is not simple or clear cut. I have hesitated to write about it simply because it is complex, unstable and could result in a regional war if not handled correctly. It opens the future to two warring philosophies that have been roiling the Middle East since 9-11 and America’s efforts to instill peaceful democracies into the region.

America’s knee-jerk preference is, of course, democracy. We believe through freedom of individual rights you gain two very important results:

* Individual, family, local and regional financial success that translates into a productive and educated society that grows instead of stagnates.
* A calming of the human soul that comes from having the basic needs met, some worthy accomplishments under your belt, time to learn and gain some wisdom – all of which negates the urge for violence and hate.

The Middle East has yet to gain this serene balance so many in the West take for granted (and liberals risk through their endless and oppressive government edicts). Hosni Mubarak has been a solid and worthy ally for 3 decades. He has attempted to acclimate his people to the modern world in preparation for a transition from the Arab-Muslim autocracy to democracy. The problem is, Mubarak may have waited too long to see the fruits of his efforts bear fruit. He may have been waiting for that mythical ‘perfect moment’ where there is no risk in ringing in massive societal change.

Read the rest here. I am heartened by reports today that when looters tried to storm the Egyptian Museum others in the crowd reacted by protecting it. The military stepped in them and did a good job of keeping the looters out.