Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today said it was “time to act” in response to Israel’s tiny state’s offensive against terrorists in the Gaza Strip, calling on the Arab League to move “quickly” against the Jewish state.

“Aren’t these oppressed Palestinians Arabs?” asked Ahmadinejad in a televised speech. “So when should the capacity of the Arab League be used? The Arab League should act quickly.” He also criticized the United Nations, saying, “Why don’t you even frown upon the Zionist regime?” (The eighteen anti-Israel resolutions passed by the UN General Assembly in 2007-08 seem to have gone unnoticed by the Persian leader, as does the fact that over half the total number emergency sessions of the General Assembly have been about Israel).

Ahmadinejad did not offer specifics about the action he desired the Arab League to engage in; however, if his frequent talk of “wiping Israel off the map” and of the wonders of “a world without Zionism” are any indicator, the Iranian president would be happiest with a 1948-style Arab League war against Israel itself (though he would doubtless prefer the one-sided outcome be reversed).

Meanwhile, Iranian judiciary officials are threatening to set up a War Crimes court to try Israelis involved in the offensive against the terror group Hamas in absentia.

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Council on Foreign Relations head Richard Haass, in an op-ed placed in the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail this week, laid out his vision of a strategy for preventing Iran - which is currently acting every bit the rogue state as it goes on enriching uranium and threatening the sovereign state of Israel with destruction - from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the suggestions he offers (whose title – “We must talk Iran out of the bomb” – is so laughable that one wonders if the G&M’s headline writer chose it for parody purposes alone), though they are couched as “new” advice for the incoming Obama administration and echo many Liberals’ suggestions for future policy, are largely composed of the exact same things the Bush administration has been doing for the last six years – not that you would know it from listening to critics who make a living decrying the outgoing administration for its “cowboy diplomacy” and supposed refusal to talk to other nations.

In order to “eliminate Iran’s enrichment effort,” Haass says, the U.S. must negotiate with the leaders of Iran (Europe has been doing this on our behalf, and with our guidance, for years). We should offer Iran the “access to nuclear energy but not physical control over nuclear materials (we did so in 2007, with Russia agreeing to house the nuclear reactors and materials for Iran’s peaceful use). We should offer to ease economic sanctions as a reward for cooperation, and offer Tehran a path to normalized relations with the U.S. if they will agree to these terms (does this one even require further comment?).

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The Washington Times has the exclusive scoop:

For much of the past seven years, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have waged a clandestine operation inside the White House. It has involved thousands of military personnel, private presidential letters and meetings that were kept off their public calendars or sometimes left the news media in the dark.

Their mission: to comfort the families of soldiers who died fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and to lift the spirits of those wounded in the service of their country.

[...]

[T]he size and scope of Mr. Bush’s and Mr. Cheney’s private endeavors to meet with wounded soliders and families of the fallen far exceed anything that has been witnessed publicly, according to interviews with more than a dozen officials familiar with the effort.

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The “living wage” debate has been ongoing for far longer than it should have been at this point, with feel-good liberals demanding that minimum-wage workers be paid twice or thrice their current rate so that they can “afford to live” without rising above their bottom-of-the-line jobs (or, I suspect, rising above what those same liberals consider their “station” in life), and with folks who live in the real world (where consequences are a natural result of every decision) warning that, with a finite resource pool, raising workers’ compensation across the board will result in fewer hours and/or fewer jobs.

The mathematics behind this is so simple one of my mother’s third grade students could do it. Let’s look at the wage pool as a large pizza. Cut into twelve slices, that pizza can hold over twelve individual people while they’re between meals or looking for a snack to provide them energy while looking for another, bigger meal.

The argument made by the pro-”living wage” crowd is that the folks among that dozen who have families can’t adequately feed themselves and their dependents with that size a slice of pizza - an assertion which is most likely true. The answer, though, is not for those with the power to do so to mandate that, in the interest of seeing that families can be fed without the provider actually moving up in life, every person should get one and a half slices of pizza. As any third-grader can tell you, if you take a large pizza that is currently feeding twelve people, and redistribute it so that every person getting pizza receives a slice and a half, you suddenly run out of pizza once you’ve fed the first eight folks.

So, as a result of your feelgood policy, you’ve frozen four people out altogether.

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He might as well be, anyway. After all, that’s where the bulk of the cash put into circulation by the stimulus plan Obama wants ready for his signature on his first day in office will go, after all.

Then again, because most of that cash is coming from China in the first place, I suppose there’s a bit of poetic justice present in the fact that President-elect Obama’s the stimulus here, ostensibly intended to spur growth and employment in the U.S. economy, will largely be used to purchase more imported products from China (that fact is doubly ironic because of China’s penchant for curbing its own recessions — like the halving of GDP growth taking place now — by exporting more goods here).

Will any officials (or “economists”) in the Obamadministration catch on to the fact that this $1T stimulus is actually going to create growth and employment in the Far East, rather than here in the U.S.? And, if they do, will they alter their chosen course, or simply try to cover up the fact that All is Not Well in Denmark, despite the visible results (or non-results) of this supposed economic stimulus package?

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On today’s PJTV bloggers roundtable, I appeared with the clean, articulate Stephen Green of VodkaPundit and the always delightful Jennifer Rubin of Pajamas Media and Commentary.

Topics, and quick thoughts on them, below.

(1) Barack Obama taps Rick Warren to give Invocation at his Inauguration — and the Homosexual Lobby is Furious: As I said with the Hillary nomination: Pass. The. Popcorn. This is just absolutely awesome theater, with Obama sticking his finger in the eye of the fringe left that worked so hard to get him elected at seemingly every opportunity.

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I’m taking on a few new projects this year — and I need your help to make some of them possible.

Kona Half Marathon (Crohns & Colitis Foundation)

My fiancée, after a ten-day emergency hospital stay, was diagnosed Thanksgiving week with a severe case of Crohn’s disease. I didn’t know much about this condition until recently, despite having an aunt on on side of my family tree with Crohn’s, and on the other with ulcerative colitis. However, since Katie’s diagnosis, I’ve been making up for lost time, and learning everything I can about this condition for which there currently is no known cure.

Fortunately for those suffering from Crohns or ulcerative colitis, the Crohns and Colitis Foundation of America, a non-profit, volunteer-driven organization dedicated to finding the cure for Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, is there.

This June, I’ll be competing in the Kona, Hawaii Half Marathon with the Crohns and Colitis Team Challenge to raise funds for CCFA’s effort “to cure Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis, and to improve the quality of life of children and adults affected by these diseases.”

Worried about your donation being misdirected or misused? The American Institute of Philanthropy gave the Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation one of the only 6 “A” ratings (out of 44 charities) in its most recent watchdog report. The Foundation also consistently meets the standards established by the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance.

Huayhuash Circuit Clinics and Trek (Mountain Medics International)

Peru’s Cordillera Huayhuash is home to several villages of indigent natives suffering from substandard medical care. In an effort to provide desperately needed medical attention and care to these inhabitants of the Huayhuash mountain range, I will be participating this July in Mountain Medics International’s Cordillera Huayhuash Clinics and Trek 2009.

This volunteer endeavor will involve trekking the entire length of the 90-mile Huayhuash circuit, which rests at elevations between 14,000 and 15,000 feet. I look forward to the challenge, as well as the opportunity to use my emergency medical skills in a critical setting once again — but I can’t do it without your help.

Total fundraising goal: $8,095.⁰⁰

You can help make these volunteer efforts possible by clicking this link and making a donation. Thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

Jeff Emanuel

On December 4, Israel’s supreme court ruled that outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his Foreign Minister, Tzipi Livni, “may continue negotiating with Syria and the Palestinians over peace agreements” despite the caretaker, or lame duck, status of their administration.

The High Court of Justice’s ruling negated a petition filed by Limor Livnat, a Knesset member of the minority Likud party, claiming that the concessions being offered Syria and the Palestinian Authority in the name of peace by the Olmert government were both dangerous and legally illegitimate.

“We are dealing with processes whose implications could significantly affect the country for many years to come,” Livnat said in the petition. “Such negotiations must not be conducted by a resigning prime minister.”

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Sources close to Barack Obama have said the President-elect plans to make a speech from an Islamic capital somewhere in the world within 100 days of his inauguration. This announcement prompted a flurry of speculation amongst reporters, pundits, and bloggers about which capital the Democrat would choose.

Names like Riyadh, Kuwait City, Tehran, Damascus, Amman, and Ankara were thrown out by media, and discarded for various reasons. The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto even half-jokingly suggested Mecca, though the city remains officially closed to all non-Muslims (something which Obama is not, as evidenced in part by the 20 years he spent in the pews of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s church).

Leaving aside the obvious jokes about Obama flying to Dearborn, Michigan (which has been referred to as the Muslim capital of the U.S.) to give a quick speech, or traveling to his childhood home of Jakarta, Indonesia and simply staying there, the question of where that address – which the New York Times‘ Helene Cooper says aides are describing as a “high-profile speech that would seek to mend rifts between the United States and the broader Muslim world” – should take place, assuming it should be at all, is a compelling one.

If handled correctly – a conditional which hinges in large part on choosing the right place to give the proposed address – I believe then-President Obama could send a very powerful message about America’s willingness to deal openly, honestly, and as equal allies with Muslim nations who comport themselves in a manner consistent with America’s interests and values.

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This world features some truly inspiring people moving in circles where you would (and wouldn’t) expect them to be — folks who dedicate their lives to others, folks who give their lives for others, and folks who put their bodies through unimaginable levels of torment simply to help others in the smallest way, be it to raise a modest amount of cash to help research a fatal disease or, even seemingly smaller, to put a smile on a loved one’s face.

It’s impossible for most to fathom what these folks go through and why they’re so willing to push themselves so hard. Folks like Jim Oldfield, a sixty-year-old heart attack survivor and former smoker who competes in triathlon to raise funds for charitable community development, and a former Air Force colleague of mine (and current Navy SEAL) Dave Goggins, who started with Ironman and progressed to ultramarathons and cross-country bike races to raise cash for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, an organization that provides for the children of SOF operators who lost their lives in combat, are individuals who possess a level of quality and toughness that most could never fathom, let alone dream of matching.

The most inspiring of all, though, is a man named Dick Hoyt. Rather than try to retell his story in my own words, an attempt which would fall far short of doing justice to Mr. Hoyt, I’ll just leave his story, as told by former Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly, below the fold.

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On today’s PJTV bloggers whip, I appeared with Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee and a young lady named Heather Gold, whom I’d never heard of before, but who is apparently a “comedienne” in the Margaret Cho mold. (To be honest, she didn’t seem to humorous to me, as all she did was tell the rest of us that the assigned topics of the day were utter wastes of her time, which makes one wonder why she was there in the first place…).

Topics, and quick thoughts on them, below the fold.

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I’ve been making once-or-twice-weekly appearances on PJTV, a new project of Pajamas Media, since shortly after the RNC convention in September, and wanted to try out a new idea: blogging a bit about the day’s show. If I’m boring you to death, well, click away now — you’ve been warned!

The majority of my appearances have been on the “Bloggers’ Whip,” which (usually) features a trio of bloggers from around the country weighing in on a trio of the day’s hot topics. Today I was on with the clean, articulate Stephen Green of Vodka Pundit, who is always a pleasure to appear with. You can see the segment here; below the fold is a quick rundown of today’s topics and my (mostly brief) take on them.

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After being sent home over Thanksgiving to revise their pitches for a multi-billion-dollar, taxpayer-funded “bridge loan” to keep them a float through the end of the year, Michigan’s “Big Three” automakers returned to Capitol Hill this week to renew their respective cases.

The retooled bailout plan included requests from automotive manufacturers that Congress pass legislation requiring every individual to purchase a vehicle (whether or not the definition of “everybody” includes Americans who are under the age of 16 or resident aliens is expected to be worked out at a later time) and mandating the price of gas be cut by 30%.

The preceding paragraph is, of course, not true. However, if it sounds more than a bit over the top to you (as it should), then consider this: America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the official lobby of the national health insurance industry, has made a series of recommendations to Congress for health care “reform” that is identical to the aforementioned example in every way except one: it’s real.

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Unsurprisingly, Pejman, I agree.

Check out this picture from a Boston Globe article on today’s runoff election:

The caption below the photo says, “Jim Martin, the Democrat vying for the US Senate seat in Georgia, posed with rappers (from left) T.I., Young Jeezy, and Ludacris during a campaign rally in Atlanta.“

Here’s a question I have: who in their right mind thought, in a state-wide runoff, it would be a good idea to have Martin appear at public venues with these Kings of Misogyny?

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John Goodman, head of the National Center for Policy Analysis, breaks down Obama HHS Secretary Tom Daschle’s philosophy on health care reform, as expressed in his book Critical: What We Can Do About the Health Care Crisis, thusly:

The main ideas: Medicaid expansion, Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) for everyone who wants to enroll, Medicare for the nonelderly as a FEHBP option, a play-or-pay mandate for individuals, income-based, refundable tax credit subsidies (both at work and away from work), a play-or-pay mandate for employers, electronic medical records, a national health board (”to establish a single standard of care for every other provider and payer”…covering every disease from cancer to diabetes and even depression), preventive care, dental health, mental health, long-term care, home care, community health centers and combating obesity.

Not on the list: Health Savings Accounts, although Daschle was once an advocate, and even cosponsored HSA legislation.

Not on the list: Single-payer health insurance, but only because it is not politically practical.

Not on the list: Any way to pay for any of this. (The issue is not, can we afford reform? The issue is, can we afford not to?) I’m not kidding.

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What is it some folks don’t get about the virtue of letting businesses fail when there’s no demand for their product?

Via Michelle Malkin.