Mr. Ibrahim complains that the US Global Anti-Semitism Awareness Act stops at Jews, in a recent Middle East Times article titled “Why stop at Jews?�

Surely he knows that Congress passes laws to specifically protect other groups. The Glass Ceiling Committee helps working women. Affirmative action benefits underrepresented minorities. Mr. Ibrahim wisely does not complain about these laws. Why complain when Congress recognizes that Anti-Semitism is on the rise?

This may be surprising, but Anti-Semitism in Egypt predates the Arab-Jewish conflict. Had Egypt’s government passed an Anti-Semitism Awareness Act a century or more ago, Egyptian Jews would still be jointly contributing with other Egyptians to the country today, and would be a bridge of true peace between the Egyptian government and Israel.

As far back as 1860, bureaucrats interpreted citizenship decrees so as to exclude Jews. One decree after another culminated in the Nationality Law of 1929. As a result, 90 percent of the country’s 80,000 Jews were denied Egyptian citizenship. While a minority of these, 25 percent or so, already had or succeeded in obtaining citizenship papers from a foreign country, the great majority of Egyptian Jews were left stateless. Many of these Jews lived in Egypt for centuries.

Read it all: A Jewish refugee answers Youssef Ibrahim

If you're interested in learning more about Egyptian Jews, read the wonderful memoir Out of Egypt. Andre Aciman writes about his family, Sephardic Jews living in Alexandria until they were expelled by Nasser.

Bat Ye'or on Fallaci's latest book: Oriana Fallaci on Eurabia

Her concise vivid language traces the essential elements of international complexity seen, analyzed, and emotionally experienced with the lucidity and courage of a woman on the threshold of death. The book shines with intense fervor kindled by the author’s life and death struggle, her suffering in body and soul transcended by relentless work and reflection. In this brief masterpiece Oriana Fallaci moves us to tears, shakes us with laughter, enlightens us and transmits her love and despair for a Europe she served with such great devotion and now watches in despair as it goes adrift.

From Eric the Unread: Strangely re-assured about Bush

In the forthcoming days we are going to read and hear a lot of second rate comment from supposed "intellectuals" berating America (but not the American people of course - because they have American friends you know) for its choice of President. They will not recognise the irony of their complaints about democratic imperialism from the US - as the editor of The Lancet tellingly put it - as they spout their own patronising views about American democracy. For them, Bush's victory supplies four more years for them to hide their anti-Americanism behind a facade of loathing for Bush.

Read it all, you must.

Many of us received our first introduction to Walter Russell Mead's writing by reading The Jacksonian Tradition, which defined for the first time for many of us a major strain of American foreign policy thinking (and named three others that compete with it for influence).

Now he turns his perception and acumen on Dick Cheney, who will be America's Vice President for four more years, and if you believe Mead, will probably run for President in 2008 to act as the buffer between George Bush and Jeb Bush. He insightfully analyzes Cheney from several perspectives, as best as anyone can analyze such an opaque man. It's a fascinating read. Follow that jump to read the rest...

I watched the Greek news this morning, wanting to see the reaction to the U.S. election. On my screen appeared the three grimmest looking people I had ever seen.

Grim female broadcaster: "So now Bush will do whatever he wants?"

Grim male broadcaster: "Yes, Bush now can do whatever he wants."

Second grim male broadcaster: "Many Democrats and liberals will move to Europe in the next weeks and months. We'll have American political refugees in Europe."

LOL! Oy.

Ok, here's what the rest of the world is saying: Europe Hoping for More Amiable Bush

If Bush wins, I would feel happy that the American people have not allowed themselves to be scared and made the decision they considered reasonable," Putin said at a Kremlin news conference after talks with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Putin said U.S.-Russian relations have improved under Bush.

Berlusconi said a Bush victory would help maintain close ties between the United States and Italy.

"Bush will keep up that policy that gives the United States the role of promoting freedom in the world," he said.

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, another U.S. ally in Iraq, and Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra both said their nations would have good relations with the United States no matter who wins.

Iraq's interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi said his country will remain a friend of the United States no matter the outcome of the election.

"The United States have freed us from a dictator, from a very long period of wars and agony," Allawi told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica in an interview published Wednesday.

"We will always be grateful to America for what it has done and what it continues to do."

Good enough for me.

It's shocking, now that I've read this fascinating piece describing Richard Kerry's views, how much alike he and his son John's worldviews are.

Most of Acheson's crowd was dumped shortly after Eisenhower and Nixon arrived in 1953, Acheson being replaced by John Foster Dulles, who started a Cold War with communism that our side would eventually win.

A rising star in the Acheson State Department -- an attorney for the Bureau of United Nations Affairs from 1951 to 1954 -- was one Richard Kerry, who in 1954 was sent to Germany as legal adviser to the U.S. Mission to Berlin, where he became involved in European unification issues, establishing relationships with prominent European politicians including Jean Monnet.

The foreign policy views that French-reared Richard Kerry developed while working in the State Department, as expressed in his later book, "The Star-Spangled Mirror: America's Image of Itself and the World," reflect the influence of Acheson and his associates.

These views put John Kerry's father, who died four years ago, at increasing odds with Dulles and later with the Kennedy administration. In 1962, he retired from the diplomatic service, feeling no one was listening to his opinions, and became a disgruntled critic of U.S. foreign policy.

From 1965, Richard Kerry opposed American involvement in Vietnam. In 1990, he wrote a book that attacked the premises of American foreign policy during the Cold War. He characterized the Dulles brothers' ideological opposition to the Soviet Union as an oversimplified "either/or" dualism, advocating what in his eyes was a more sophisticated relativism.

As he put it, "Casting issues in the form of polar choices (for example: isolationism vs. interventionism) readily leads to the conclusion that if one is wrong, the other must be right. In a more relative view of the issue, both are likely to be wrong."

"A number of things we're seeing today were also laid out in a book by Kerry's father, Richard Kerry," writes Philip Gourevitch in the July 26 New Yorker.

" 'On occasion we seemed to be telling them that we understood their vital interests better than they did,' Richard Kerry wrote, adding, 'On many occasions the need to consult them in advance before taking unilateral action was simply ignored, and we often showed visible impatience with consultation.' "

Sound familiar?

Read it all.

John Robb's been banging this drum for a long time: terrorists (he prefers "guerrillas") are aware of the rate of return on investment that they are achieving, and they seek to maximize it (while minimizing their own attrition). Now John notes that the full transcript of Osama's video vindicates him.

...for example, al-Qaida spent $500 000 on the event, while America, in the incident and its aftermath, lost – according to the lowest estimate – more than 500 billion dollars." "Meaning that every dollar of al-Qaida defeated a million dollars by the permission of Allah, besides the loss of a huge number of jobs."

Clearly Osama, if he represents terrorist thought and leadership (and he does), is confirming John's insight into their calculation. Osama's transparent motive was of course to dispirit us and make us think we're losing and can't afford our war on him. But he revealed more than he intended to.

Another insight of John Robb's is noticing and naming the Shadow OPEC, a powerful concept apply if you want to understand what's happening in the world lately. Reuters' correspondent adoringly notes a "spectacular attack" on Iraqi pipelines- in northern Iraq. It was oil being pumped to Turkey. It's a very significant fraction of Iraq's oil exports that's now been halted. I believe over 300,000 barrels/day.John sees an acceleration of systemic attacks. It just looks like more of the same to me. But I'm thinking in his language, with concepts he's framed, even if I am disagreeing with him on this "accelerating" characterization. If you're not reading John Robb regularly, you're cheating yourself.

I have my differences with Andrew Sullivan. But I'm not happy to see gay marriage and in some cases even civil unions defeated so soundly at the polls.

Our generation is far more tolerant than our parents', so this will change. Under-30 turnout was at the same level as every other recent election: 17%. As we grow older and replace our elders, we'll start voting in larger numbers, and our greater tolerance will be reflected in the guiding documents of these States-whether constitutions or mere laws.

When I read this, I shivered. I don't think it's too much to compare it to some of Martin Luther King's most affecting appeals to our common humanity and dignity.

The dignity of our lives and our relationships as gay people is not dependent on heterosexual approval or tolerance. Our dignity exists regardless of their fear. We have something invaluable in this struggle: the knowledge that we are in the right, that our loves are as deep and as powerful and as God-given as their loves, that our relationships truly are bonds of faith and hope that are worthy, in God's eyes and our own, of equal respect. Being gay is a blessing. The minute we let their fear and ignorance enter into our own souls, we lose. We have gained too much and come through too much to let ourselves be defined by others. We must turn hurt back into pride. Cheap, easy victories based on untruth and fear and cynicism are pyrrhic ones. In time, they will fall. So hold your heads up high. Do not give in to despair. Do not let the Republican party rob you of your hopes. This is America. Equality will win in the end.

I know it will, Andrew. I'm sorry your private life was an issue in this election, and we had to differ.

UPDATE: More thoughts on gay marriage, inspired by my conversation with LGF superstars Thom and Frank IBC in the comments section of this thread.

This is something that's frequently forgotten: the only country that has legal gay marriage right now in Europe is Holland. The Dutch and the English are the two societies whose legal systems have always reflected the presumption of liberty-they developed independently but have always been kin. This is a reason why what the Dutch are doing often reflects strains of Anglosphere political developments, like their legal prostitution, liberal narcotics regime, and attitudes toward gay marriage.

America and Canada are actually far, far ahead of the Euro-curve on this, contrary to stereotype. The whole civil unions thing started with American cities and corporations extending these rights piecemeal to gay couples, as part of their competitive advantage in attracting young affluent professionals (the cities and townships) and competing for the best hires and for the gay dollar (the corporations). It was more about capitalism and the natural growth of liberty than it ever was about government coercion and top-down fiats, but the hard-leftists that constitute most of the gay political leadership today basically took this football and decided to run with a Eurosclerotic playbook of judicial elitist diktats. It had nothing to do with PC or social dissolution or anything else, it's been a profoundly American phenomenon. It's only since the hard-left got ahold of this that the judicial coups have started being attempted, until then it was a grassroots American political phenomenon, and it's one that was unnecessarily thrust on the national stage ahead of its ripening. It's now been interrupted, reacted to violently and turned into another issue that will wedge Americans against each other, the way abortion was. Abortion should have been left to the states, not federalized by the Supreme Court. Here's another case where the judges should just butt out.

Fox News just said the AP told them that.

If I know how to ululate, I would. Still no public concession speech.

I'm convinced of it. Dead, dead, dead. For now. But not forever.

It's been pointed out by Andy Card that this is the first popular vote-majority victory since 1988, when Bush the father won. GHW Bush lost in 1992 because of the Reform Party. Third party candidacies continued to be a force to reckon with up till Ralph Nader's 2000 run. This year, none of that.

The twelve-year reign of confusion is over.

In this American lifetime, I don't think we'll start seeing a viable third party candidacy until the Democrat party actually disintegrates as a national party and becomes the bicoastal elite party. I'm officially predicting that it will, within the decade, because it's a party with no intellectuals and no philosophies, nothing but hot air, anger, bitterness and superiority complexes. It's a cobbled-together patchwork of special interests and victim and entitlement advocacy groups. The seams are already fraying.

I foresee Southern Democrats splitting off from the national party's anti-Americanism and architecting a viable Southern-populist party that can compete with the GOP in the New South and across the Bible Belt. Maybe they'll take over the Reform party and turn it into something viable.

No, the Greens aren't going to be America's new viable third party. Just because Greens are big in Europe and among left-coasters doesn't mean they're going to get any traction here. The eco-cult is a nonstarter in the United States of America. No, the Libertarians aren't either. Both these parties are too wedded to ideologies and bizarre personalities that the American populace in general rejects.

Reform, on the other hand, is like a shell corporation. They're a party with a nice name, and no insurmountably negative connotations in the American mind. They're ripe for a takeover by disgruntled Southern Democrats, who are disaffected with the path to disaster they're being led down by their party's increasingly out-of-touch bicoastal elite leadership.

Lead the way, Zell!

Former Clinton political operative Dick Morris is outraged in the NY Post-the exit polls were clearly biased, as the hopelessly spiteful big 3 broadcast networks try one last dirty trick to defeat Bush:

Why did the exit polls show such a Democratic win when the Republicans were ahead all along? Why did they bias the coverage in the favor of the Democrats when Bush was winning from the beginning?

Exit polls are almost impossible to get wrong this way. They are based on interviews with voters as they leave the polling places having just cast their ballots. They don't reflect absentee, mail-in or early-voting ballots, of course — but these voters generally tend Republican. When you combine military votes with those of voters who are likely to travel and need absentee ballots, the bias is all pro-Republican.

So why were the exit polls wrong?

That an exit poll is always right is an axiom of politics. It is easier to assume that a compass is not pointing north than to assume that an exit poll is incorrect. It takes a deliberate act of fraud and bias to get an exit poll wrong. Since the variables of whether or not a person will actually vote are eliminated in exit polling, it is like peeking at the answer before taking the test.

But these exit polls were wrong. And the fact that they were so totally, disastrously wrong is a national scandal. There should be a national investigation to unearth the story behind the bias.

In this election, we have seen CBS go with a story on Bush's National Guard service based on forged documents. We have seen the New York Times and CBS report 377 missing tons of explosives that were not missing, not that many tons and confiscated by American troops. And now we have seen exit polls that were wrong, quite possibly deliberately biased.

and in the Australian, he writes that this is a resounding affirmation for the War on Terror

The latest Osama bin Laden tape may have dealt Kerry the final blow by reminding Americans that the world remains a dangerous place and that it is no time to change leadership or to break in a new president. Americans have come to believe that there is no time for training and no margin for error.

The outcome of the election was momentarily obscure because early exit polls projected Kerry as a landslide winner, capturing virtually all the swing states. Exit polls, which are hardly ever wrong, are treated as gospel by news media anchors. Based on interviews with voters as they leave the voting booths, it is hard to make a mistake.

But a mistake was made, a colossal mistake, by the television network exit polls. Perhaps it was a final act of bias in an election campaign in which the establishment media bent over backwards to elect Kerry; perhaps it was a genuine mistake of almost unimaginable proportions. But the result is that the network polls got it wrong. Very, very wrong.

The repercussions of the total failure of the exit polling to reflect accurately the votes cast will linger long in the American media.

The networks -- ABC, CBS and NBC -- which have long been accused of a pro-Democratic bias, will have a lot of explaining to do in accounting for their erroneous predictions.

Bush's re-election will militate for a strong affirmation of the US role in Iraq and a vindication for the hawks who urged that the US invade and topple the Saddam Hussein regime.

In a very real sense, the American people have delivered a strong victory to those who are determined to battle terror aggressively and rebuffed the advice of those who counselled caution and opposed military action in Iraq.

Marcos "Screw 'em" Zuniga is screwed: each and every one of the candidates that he got his Kossacks to donate money to LOST. Here's trevino from Redstate with the details:

A big loser tonight isn't just John Kerry. It's also Markos Moulitsas and the Daily Kos community that trusted him to direct and guide their fundraising efforts. For some time now, Moulitsas has waged a jihad against the establishment organs of the Democratic Party, and in particular the DCCC, which he regarded as insufficiently willing to support the bold challengers upon whom the future of the Democratic Party in the House presumably depends. Fed up with their staid ways, he took it upon himself to select a group of Democratic challengers -- mostly, but not all, Congressional candidates -- for whom his netroots community could raise funds and donate their own hard-earned money. A spot on the Kos Dozen (actually fifteen candidates) was much-coveted by Democrats in need of seed money and publicity, especially after the much-publicized netroots mobilization for one of its original members, Ginny Schrader of Pennsylvania's 8th District.

A promising start for the revolutionary Kos. He was a rising young Democrat star. But what happened?

The post-election roll call of Moulitsas' hand-picked beneficiaries reads as a litany of woe and defeat:

Tony Miller -- Lost
Ben Konop -- Lost
Dan Mongiardo -- Lost
Richard Romero -- Lost
Samara Barend -- Lost
Jeff Seemann -- Lost
Nancy Farmer -- Lost
Ginny Schrader -- Lost
Jan Schneider -- Lost
Lois Murphy -- Lost
Jim Newberry -- Lost
Brad Carson -- Lost
Tony Knowles -- Lost
Stan Matsunaka -- Lost
Richard Morrison -- Lost

All told, that's $547,157.97 of donated money, squandered on the basis of the mass trust placed in Moulitsas by his readers. (This is, at least, what ActBlue reports -- the actual figure is doubtless higher.)

Wow. Nice black thumb! You're a miserable failure! Screw you, Markos! I feel nothing!
(nbl: LGF commenter Free Speech Is Only For Über-Libs)
UPDATE: Meteor Blades has a post on their front page, after four hours of silence.

OK. I read thousands of comments and dozens of Diaries last night and this morning. And you know something? I’m going to forget I read most of them. Just erase them from memory along with the names of those who posted them. Chalk them up to adrenaline crashes, too much rage and reefer and booze.

Because what I found in my reading was a plethora of bashing Christians, bashing Kerry, bashing gays, bashing Edwards, bashing Kos, bashing America and bashing each other. As well as a lot of people saying they’re abandoning the Democrats, abandoning politics, abandoning the country. This descent into despair and irrationality and surrender puts icing on the Republican victory cake.

Yes, yes it does! We're gloating over your derangement and misery at Little Green Footballs.

I want to thank the American people for crushing Kerry! I didn't get the electoral college landslide I wanted. But I did get a very comfortable popular MAJORITY. You can't beat that with a stick: at least 55.6 million Americans voted for Bush. The first majority in a long time in a Presidential election, by about 3%.
LGF commenter ördög "Big Dog" Johnson says:

4 more years!
4 weitere Jahre!
4 années supplémentaires!
4 nuovi anni!
4 mais anos!
¡4 más años!
4 roky navic!
4 большe лет!
4 ã?¤ã?®ã‚ˆã‚Šå¤š ã??ã?®å¹´
4 개� 년 �!
4 �外年!

How do you like THAT, globe? Got any other languages you want to hear it in?

Congratulations, Mister President!

John Edwards is out on his ass. John Kerry, sadly, is still with us-he's still a Senator.
from the talented minds of Cox and Forkum. Which reminds me of my favorite C&F t-shirt.Tom Daschle has also been handed the pink slip by the American voter. Thank you, America!

Arizona voters approve controversial "anti-immigrant" law

Voters in the western US state of Arizona, which shares a border with Mexico, approved a disputed measure that has been branded "anti-immigrant" by opponents, officials said.

The measure will require residents to prove they are US citizens when they register to vote and to display some type of identification when casting a ballot.

More contested is the measure's requirement that public employees verify the "immigration status" of people applying for "public benefits" and report non-citizens attempting to apply to authorities.

Really now, what's "anti-immigrant" about this law? Non-U.S. citizens are not allowed to vote and people should be asked for proof of citizenship when they register to vote. No one has ever asked me if I'm a U.S. citizen and I'm one of those people that um... should be asked!

And aren't U.S. "public benefits" restricted to U.S. citizens and legal residents only? So, how does this make this law controversial or "anti-immigrant?" Will I ever understand this sort of thinking? Probably not.

Theo Van Gogh, director of Submission, was murdered yesterday in the Netherlands: Controversial Dutch filmmaker shot dead

Van Gogh, 47, was attacked near a park close to the centre of the Dutch capital in the morning on his way to work in what could be the second political killing in the country in two years after anti-immigration politician Pim Fortuyn was shot.

Police arrested a man near the scene after an exchange of gunfire in which the suspect wounded a police officer. The suspect, who was wounded in the leg, was a 26-year-old man with dual Dutch and Moroccan citizenship.

Police said the murder was clearly premeditated.

A note was found at the scene and, Dutch media said, it contained lines from the Koran, the Muslim holy book.

Van Gogh, who branded imams women-haters and ridiculed the Prophet Mohammad in his newspaper columns, was hailed as a champion of free speech by some Dutch but others called him an extremist, while Muslims said they found his work insulting.

So they killed him.

(nbl jim russell)

UPDATE: If you want to see part of the fim "Submission," check out Eurabian Times