Mid-Week Post

Your post-Canada Day goodness...


After the murder of three Jewish teen-agers (and the celebratory laudings of the Palestinians), a Palestinian teen-ager has been found dead in what may be a revenge killing:

The body of an abducted Palestinian youth was found in Jerusalem on Wednesday, raising suspicions he had been killed by Israelis avenging the deaths of three abducted Jewish teens.

News of the discovery of 16-year-old Mohammed Abu Khudair, who was last seen being bundled into a van earlier in the day, triggered clashes between rock-throwing Palestinians and Israeli police in the city. 

(Sidebar: the Jewish teens are Naftali Frenkel, 16, Gilad Shaer, also 16, and Eyal Yifrach 19. Naftali Frankel's parents condemn the killing of the Palestinian boy. It must be some sort of decency thing.)

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas accused Jewish settlers of killing Abu Khudair and demanded that Israel "mete out the strongest punishment against the murderers if it truly wants peace".

(Sidebar: I'm sure Abbas will work be working hard to find those who murdered Frankel, Shaer and Yifrach.)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged police "to swiftly investigate who was behind the loathsome murder and its motive". He called on all sides "not to take the law into their own hands".

Police said they had found a body in the wooded outskirts of Jerusalem. Abu Khudair's father told Reuters the force had told him the body was his son.

An Israeli security source said Israel suspected the youth had been kidnapped and murdered, possibly in retribution for the killings of the Israeli teens. Their bodies were discovered on Monday, nearly three weeks after they were abducted in the occupied West Bank.

 
The White House has sent its condolences to the Palestinian boy's family but has not condemned Hamas nor has it spoken for Naftali Frankel who was an American citizen.


Obama has been found to be the worst president since the Second World War:

Poll after poll has charted President Obama’s dipping approval rating in recent months, but Wednesday brought perhaps the cruelest cut to date: A new Quinnipiac University survey found that voters rate Mr. Obama as the country’s worst president since World War II.

With Mr. Obama deploying troops to Iraq, failing to find compromise with Congress and seeing major defeats in the Supreme Court, voters continue to sour on him. The new poll also revealed that more voters now say GOP nominee Mitt Romney would have been a better choice in 2012.

Quinnipiac found 45 percent of voters say the country would have been better off if Mr. Romney had been elected, while just 38 percent say Mr. Obama remains a better choice. Even Democrats aren’t so sure — just 74 percent of them told the pollsters Mr. Obama was clearly the better pick in the last election.

Voters also rated the man who swept into office in 2009 with a promise of “hope and change” as worse than even his predecessor, Republican President George W. Bush, who left office with terrible approval ratings.

If the Americans wanted Mitt, they should have voted for Mitt. If they loved W, they shouldn't have stood by and let professional liars revile him.

(SEE: reap, sow)


And this is a problem because...?

It may be nothing, but when Prime Minister Stephen Harper thanked God for keeping the country safe on Canada Day, he did so with the heaviest of thumbs and it did not go unnoticed.

In one tweet, Canada's leader nearly doubled the amount of Godly references he has made this year, hammering the reference into a Canada Day message, twice.

"God bless you all, and God keep our true north, strong and free!" reads a message posted to Harper's official Twitter account.

The reaction online was pointed, with the feathers of users becoming instantly ruffled by the post. "Which God? Zeus?" one person asked. Another sniffed that there was "clearly no separation of church and state for this PM." ...

Is it that slow a news day that the usual childish, foot-stompy, Christmas-hating Harper-loathers take great offense over the mere mention of the name of God?

Just wow...


Choco-pies are like the Korean Wagon Wheels. They are yummy treats for children of all ages. It is no surprise that North Korean workers would be banned from consuming them:

North Korea has reportedly banned factory workers from receiving “Choco Pies” as payment as a black market in the beloved snacks flourishes.

North Koreans have been allowed to work in the Kaesong industrial park across the demilitarized zone in South Korea since 2004.

But restrictions meant that employees from the authoritarian state could not be paid cash bonuses for overtime, so payment switched to food products, namely Choco Pies.

The snacks became a sensation among workers and realising they were too valuable to eat, employees took them back to Pyongyang to sell on the black market for several times their original price.

There are all manner of items that are used as currency in the black markets of the hermit state. I would have never figured Choco-Pies as that currency, however. 


And now, what a storm looks like from space.