"Git er Done, " The Jawa Report" blog does just that

This is a blog I get updates with RSS feeds (Bloglines, so I read it probably several times a day. ABC has this to say about it:

'Net Posse Tracked 'Jihad Jane' for Three Years

Civilian Monitors Warn of Others Like 'Jane' on the 'Net Who Are More Dangerous

By EAMON McNIFF

While the rest of America was stunned to hear that a suburban Pennsylvania woman allegedly used the Internet identity of Jihad Jane and tried to join militant jihadists, for a group of 'Net vigilantes it was old news.

In fact, at least one of the Web sleuths claims to have alerted the feds to Colleen LaRose's alleged efforts to raise money and recruit fighters for Islamic terrorists and to carry out her own jihad.

Groups like Jawa Report, Quoth the Raven and the YouTube Smackdown Corps claim they had been monitoring LaRose's growing militancy for three years, and watched as the Internet -- particularly YouTube -- fed her fervor.

They also said "Jihad Jane" is not the only one on the Internet that the groups are monitoring.

"There are certainly many others out there who are more eloquent and appear to be more dangerous from the way they talk," a man calling himself Rusty Shackleford told ABC News.

Shackleford, a pen name, says he is a libertarian college professor who created the blog JawaReport in 2004 after he was enraged that Iraqi Islamists had beheaded an American named Nick Berg.

"It was my way of venting. But mostly it was about countering violent Islamist propaganda, specifically the videos that were being produced by al Qaeda in Iraq and other Salaafist jihadists fighting our troops," he said.

Shackleford said his goal from the beginning was combating violent Islamist material and support on the Web.

"I'm a blogger, but also an activist against violent Islamism. One of the things we do is try and pressure Webhosts to remove Websites that belong to terrorist organizations. An example of this would be the dozen or so times we've successfully had the Taliban's website removed. The websites sometimes pop back up, sometimes not," Shackleford said.

Shackleford and other contributors to JawaReport and sites like it noticed YouTube had become a hub for videos and comments in support of violent extremism and attacks against the West and its allies, leading to the creation of the YouTube Smackdown.

Shackleford said the groups identify videos in support of violent Islamism and pressure the Web site to take them down, "as they would child pornography or other obscene material."

According to the "Quoth the Raven" blog, since the "smackdown" movement began in 2007, users have had over 31,000 videos removed from YouTube, and 695 users suspended. They say LaRose was one of those suspended.

Isn't it great that these people are looking our for us. This is only page 1 of a three page article.  It's interesting. Read the rest here.

Important News from Today

I am busy packing for a Christmas trip so do not have much time to spend posting on the blog. This is going to be a fairly long post with many links I think are very important.  I know I will be leaving out some but please read these and any links that come up with them.

From American Thinker:Merry Christmas, from Harry

     

 According to the latest news, Harry Reid has the 60 votes needed to pass Obamacare. While the legislation itself is not available for reading, to my knowledge, the Congressional Budget Office did report on it December 19. I parse that CBO report here so we know what is about to happen to us.

     The CBO does not make the accounting all that easy, despite its many tables of numbers. The number Democrats like to cite is that this plan will reduce the deficit by $132 billion over the 10 years from 2010 to 019.

     Imagine that, more people insured and the deficit reduced. How do they do that? The short answer is: over $1 trillion in Medicare cuts and tax increases. For the longer story, read on.

From Investors Business Daily:
Penetration Even At The Pentagon: Muslim Spies Setting Muslim Policy
This is Part 3, read Part 1 and Part2

   

  The internal threat from Muslim extremists in the military extends to high-level

Defense Department aides who have undermined military policy. In fact, one top Muslim adviser pushed out an intelligence analyst who warned of the sudden jihad syndrome that led to the Fort Hood terrorist attack.

     An honored guest of the Ramadan dinner at the Pentagon this September was Hesham Islam, who infiltrated the highest echelons of the Ring despite proven ties to U.S. terror front groups and a shady past in his native Egypt.     As senior adviser for international affairs to former deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, Islam ran interference for the Islamic Society of North America and other radical fronts for the Egypt-based Muslim Brotherhood, the subject of my new book "Muslim Mafia." (Be sure to read all three parts of this.)

 
Read and support Michael Yon reporting from Afghanistan.
As Christmas Approaches
            As Christmas approaches, many people are thinking about the troops, who in turn are thinking about loved ones at home. Cards and letters are tacked up on many walls. The favorites are from the little kids, with questions like, "How do you go to the bathroom?" "Can you eat dinner?" "Does it hurt to get shooted?" It goes on.
               I emailed to Command Sergeant Major Jeff Mellinger, asking if he had any words for the troops this Christmas. Jeff came right back with this awesome letter: Read the letter here.  
 
From the Telegraph UK more on the ongoing scandal and fraud of Climategate.
Questions over business deals of UN climate change guru Dr Rajendra Pachauri        

The head of the UN's climate change panel - Dr Rajendra Pachauri - is accused of making a fortune from his links with 'carbon trading' companies, Christopher Booker and Richard North write.

       No one in the world exercised more influence on the events leading up to the Copenhagen conference on global warming than Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mastermind of its latest report in 2007.

        Although Dr Pachauri is often presented as a scientist (he was even once described by the BBC as “the world’s top climate scientist”), as a former railway engineer with a PhD in economics he has no qualifications in climate science at all.  (my emphasis)

     What has also almost entirely escaped attention, however, is how Dr Pachauri has established an astonishing worldwide portfolio of business interests with bodies which have been investing billions of dollars in organisations dependent on the IPCC’s policy recommendations.

     These outfits include banks, oil and energy companies and investment funds heavily involved in ‘carbon trading’ and ‘sustainable technologies’, which together make up the fastest-growing commodity market in the world, estimated soon to be worth trillions of dollars a year. Read the whole thing.

Michael Goodwin in the NY Post writes about the Baby Boomers shame
Dreading our future                 

      I am a baby boomer, which is to say my life has coincided with turbulent and awesome times. From the Cold War to Vietnam, from Watergate to Monicagate, through the horrors of 9/11 and the stunning lifestyle advances, my generation's era has been historic and exciting.

     Yet for all the drama and change, the years only occasionally instilled in me the sensation I feel almost constantly now. I am afraid for my country.

     I am afraid -- actually, certain -- we are losing the heart and soul that made America unique in human history. Yes, we have enemies, but the greatest danger comes from within.

     Watching the freak show in Copenhagen last week, I was alternately furious and filled with dread. The world has gone absolutely bonkers and lunatics are in charge.

     Mugabe and Chavez are treated with respect and the United Nations is serious about wanting to regulate our industry and transfer our wealth to kleptocrats and genocidal maniacs.

     Even more frightening, our own leaders joined the circus. Marching to the beat of international drummers, they uncoupled themselves from the will of the people they were elected to serve.

     President Obama, for whom I voted because I believed he was the best choice available, is a profound disappointment. I now regard his campaign as a sly bait-and-switch operation, promising one thing and delivering another. Shame on me.

Read more, but remember he is one of those who voted for him and we ALL suffer for it.

 
Take a look at these important blogs:
Power Line  (poll data; Lockerbie bomber)
 
Gateway Pundit  Watch a video of John McCain stand up for Sarah Palin, I saw it live this morning and it was a treat.
 
Trying to Grok has three good links. CBO assesment from the Corner;  and why the insistence for healthcare.
 
Leon Hale, if you've read his columns through the years you will enjoy reading his blog posts. He is still great.

Posts from Gateway Pundit

I do read GatewayPundit.com every day. Today they have all this:

ANOTHER PHONY OBAMACARE DOCTOR-- Is Really a Far Left Nut ...Update: She's a Realtor- Never Practiced Medicine

White House Organizes Obamacare Rally in Jackson, MI-- Bus in SEIU Members From 146 Miles Away

Dems Cheered Blocking Social Security Reform in 2006-- Now It Could Face Default Within 2 Years (Video)

PALIN SLAMS OBAMA Over Funding Brazilian Offshore Oil Development
(the gov't is sending money for oil exploration in Brazil!)

Flashback: At Daily Kos Hate Website Obama Told Far Left to "Brook No Compromise" On Progressive Agenda

Barney Frank to Town Hall Constituents: "What's the Matter With You All?" (Video)

And that is just today. You might want to make Gateway Pundit one of your daily reads. (just don't stop clicking on Rockport Conservatives!)

Why I started this Blog

From the Washington Post an editorial by Vijay Ravindran on how the Republicans are overlooking the tools that got the Democratic Party in control of the House and Senate and a President to boot.

Overlooking a Revolution

The White House is in the hands of the opposition party. The Senate and House are also firmly in its hands, to the point that regaining either chamber in next year's midterm elections seems like a complete fantasy. And there's no clear candidate for the next presidential election who can both excite the base and appeal to the center. Today's Republican situation? Well, yes, but this is also what it was like to be a Democrat four years ago, when I left the technology world and went to work for a tech start-up on the Democratic side.......

In the 2005 Virginia race for governor, new campaign tactics were used to identify potential supporters of then-Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine and maximize every dollar of time spent campaigning. Because Virginia does not include party identification with voter registration, more sophisticated techniques, including the use of microtargeting, were needed to find likely supporters. And Kaine used these techniques so effectively that they became a staple of Democratic races by 2008. In fact, this success helped make the business case for Catalist, the company founded by Harold Ickes that I joined in 2005. Catalist commoditized sophisticated data aggregation and data mining for progressive interest groups and campaigns large and small....

As documented in Matt Bai's excellent book, "The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics," wealthy Democrats began coalescing around building an organization that would not only funnel large donations but would also build the apparatus to evaluate the health of organizations before such donations were disbursed. That this organization, the Democracy Alliance, then went on to sponsor a number of groups that played an important role in the 2008 election and the transition went almost completely unreported in daily coverage of the election.

As Bai writes, the left finally developed a counterbalance to right-wing talk radio in the form of blogs, which allowed partisans to develop and refine views from a set of opinion leaders. This movement fed into organizational abilities not only within the Democratic Party but also in groups such as MoveOn.org.

This is just three paragraphs out of a lengthy article which shows how conservatives (and Republicans) are underusing the internet. Read it all and try to understand why we need this blog and a lot of interaction with it.