Sunday, May 31, 2009

Anyone wonder why WE have to approach THEM when THEY attacked US on 9/11?

http://tinyurl.com/kllmww 5/31
Obama speech to Muslims key to new U.S. strategy By Ross Colvin
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – ...Obama will try to repair America's tarnished image in the Muslim world...will reach out to the world's more than 1 billion Muslims... U.S.-Muslim relations that were badly damaged by the Bush administration's global war on terror.****But, presumably, not by the terror itself. ****...how the United States can change for the better its relationship with the Muslim world," Obama said last week...
***Obama is speaking in Cairo, center of the Islamic teaching world ( tell that to the Saudis -- Keepers of the Two Shrines -- and the Shia world of Najaf and Qom.)and will be careful not to endorse Mubarek ( he is, after all, an ally, and Obama endorses only enemies while rejecting or insulting friends,, as with the Bits ) and yet not recognize human rights activists in Cairo. Nevertheless, he is willing to accord respect to the mullahs of Iran with a human rights record worse than almost anyone's. He is ready to recognize totalitarian regimes that are hostile to the U.S. without concern for dismaying human rights activists in those places. John Kerry goes around promising that the U.S. is "not for regime change." It seems to me that anyone who calls us "the Great Satan" and wishes our destruction should at least be open to the possibility that "we" might encourage the 50% of Iranians who are not ethnic Persians (and even some who are) to change the regime. After all, Jimmy Carter caused the regime to change from the Shah to that of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the rule of the mullahs.Take away subversion from the CIA, as well as assassination, and we are left only with what Nancy Pelosi described as lying to Congress:a pretty sour view of the front line of American defense.***

Saturday, May 30, 2009

Russian Analytical Digest knows the U.S. better than we do.

Russian_Analytical_Digest_60 May 19 2009

American capitalism gone with a whimper
It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American descent into Marxism is happening with breath-taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.
[…]
Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.
[…]
The proud American will go down into his slavery without a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

Wisdom from the past, especially Benjamin Franklin, applicable to the present

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."Benito Mussolini.
While a definition more than wisdom, it behooves us to identify what was the nature of Fascism and even National Socialism: Hitler lined up the leaders of German industry behind him like so many puppets or stiffly-immobile victims of Vlad the Impaler.Any comparison to the photo-ops of the healthcare industry promising $2Trillion(!)of savings over ten years?(By EXPANDING the reach of healthcare, no less! )Of auto industry executives endorsing mileage and emissions standards impossible to meet by the laws of physics without compromising safety and saleability?

Would that our current politicians read and understood history and the wisdom of such as Benjamin Franklin.
"All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse."
Starting with Paulson's Panic, aided and abetted by Bernanke and Geithner, passively permitted by Bush and enthusiastically endorsed by Obama, Draconian measures adduced to immediate problems, but heedless of future consequences, have threatened the whole American system.

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!"
Bailouts of one by another, redistribution and avoidance of income tax liability by almost 50% of the population, threaten the commonwealth as Aristotle predicted 2500 years ago when he noted that, when the majority realizes it can vote the tax burden onto the minority, it presages the destruction of the polis. The arming of the lamb used to be the nature of a Constitutional Republic protecting the rights of a minority ( N.B. not the privileged "minorities" of political correctness ) through the Constitution and properly-just operation of the judicial system. Now that the Constitution itself is subject to both attack and "reinterpretation", and judges act out of empathy, that protection and arming is lost.

"A countryman between two lawyers is like a fish between two cats."
When the legislature and the Presidency are all staffed by lawyers, it is inevitable that their thinking and interests ( e.g. the tort lawyers as a glaring example ) will dominant the conversation, to the detriment of the rest.Of course, it is in the nature of politicians to consider their own re-election and seniority as their paramount priorities and the corrupt-but-legal system of earmarks, lobbyist contributions, etc. follows.

"Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion."
Almost all of the "new projects", falsely heralded as "change", are actually old, warmed-over and historically-discredited ideas and failed initiatives from the past. Those who don't know history, and use the excuse that they were too young or not even born at the time, repeat follies that prudence would otherwise cause any sensible person to avoid.

"Would you persuade, speak of interest, not of reason."
Unhappily, this is the successful strategy of the party of PrincipALS, rather than PrincipLES. The tort lawyers, the teachers' unions, the UAW, the environmentalists, the socialists, the one-worlders, the pacifists,the Hispanics, the affirmative-action-babies, etc are all interest groups who are so defined by their interests as to cause them to endorse any hodge-podge of programs so long as their interests are addressed, especially if they don't have to participate much in paying for them.

"It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part."
That we are far beyond this ( however one interprets that to which the percentage is applied: income, wealth, etc.) is due to the unequal weight with which the burden falls on voters. Taxes paid by others weigh not at all on voters who pay little or nothing while, at the same time, engendering enthusiasm for more spending (shared) even at the cost of onerous taxes ( unshared.)

"Repeal that [welfare] law, and you will soon see a change in their manners. ... Six days shalt thou labor, though one of the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be looked upon as a respectable precept; industry will increase,and with it plenty among the lower people; their circumstances will mend, and more will be done for their happiness by inuring them to provide for themselves, than could be done by dividing all your estates among them." An indictment of redistributionism, Franklin recognizes the benefits even to the poor of refraining from giving them something for nothing: self-esteem, dignity, empowerment to self-improve one's lot.

"Even peace may be purchased at too high a price." The best counter to the Leftist mantras: Better red than dead; War should always be the LAST resort (presumably after appeasement and surrender ). I often ask of those who proudly profess to be members of one or another movement or organization with "Peace and Justice" in their title: What do you do when peace and justice are in conflict with each other? I have yet to have such a one acknowledge that there could be a conflict, so desperate is their inability to make a choice. (There is an old Yiddish proverb that translates to: Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.) Franklin had another relevant aphorism about this:
"Make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you."

Friday, May 29, 2009

A Latina Lady Justice sneeks a peek out from under her blindfold to bias things w/ empathy.

http://tinyurl.com/kvlnh4
Sotomayor: Criticize, then Confirm by Charles Krauthammer 5/29/09 WASHINGTON -- Sonia Sotomayor has a classic American story. So does Frank Ricci...a New Haven firefighter stationed seven blocks from where Sotomayor went to law school (Yale). Raised in blue-collar Wallingford, Conn., Ricci struggled as a C and D student in public schools ill-prepared to address his serious learning disabilities. Nonetheless he persevered, becoming a junior firefighter and Connecticut's youngest certified EMT.After studying fire science at a community college, he became a New Haven "truckie," the guy who puts up ladders and breaks holes in burning buildings. When his department announced exams for promotions, he spent $1,000 on books, quit his second job so he could study eight to 13 hours a day, and, because of his dyslexia, hired someone to read him the material.He placed sixth on the lieutenant's exam, which qualified him for promotion. ****The exams had been designed by a reputable organization specializing in insuring that exams were racially-and-gender "neutral."****
Except that the exams were thrown out by the city, and all promotions denied,because no blacks had scored high enough to be promoted. ***It would have been more honest, and expedient for a place in need of 19 lieutenants, merely to award points-for-being-black sufficient to pass one black( or whatever number the PC preference was. )It would also insure closure, else New Haven might have to keep administering exams ad nauseum.***Ricci (with 19 others) sued. That's where these two American stories intersect. Sotomayor was a member of the three-member circuit court panel that upheld the dismissal of his case, thus denying Ricci his promotion. This summary ruling deeply disturbed fellow members of Sotomayor's court, including Judge Jose Cabranes (a fellow Clinton appointee) who, writing for five others, criticized the unusual, initially unpublished, single-paragraph dismissal for ignoring the serious constitutional issues at stake. ***That is, there was not a shred of intellectual pretense that the overturning was based on anything except a result that was unPC, even tho' fairness and due process had been followed at every step of the way.*****Two things are sure to happen this summer: The Supreme Court will overturn Sotomayor's panel's ruling. And, barring some huge hidden scandal, Sotomayor will be elevated to that same Supreme Court... Use the upcoming hearings not to deny her the seat, but to illuminate her views. No magazine gossip from anonymous court clerks. No "temperament" insinuations. Nothing ad hominem. The argument should be elevated, respectful and entirely about judicial philosophy.On the Ricci case. And on her statements about the inherent differences between groups, and the superior wisdom she believes her Latina physiology, culture and background grant her over a white male judge. They perfectly reflect the Democrats' enthrallment with identity politics, which assigns free citizens to ethnic and racial groups possessing a hierarchy of wisdom and entitled to a hierarchy of claims upon society.Sotomayor shares President Obama's vision of empathy as lying at the heart of judicial decision-making -- sympathetic concern for litigants' background and current circumstances, and for how any judicial decision would affect their lives.
Since the 2008 election, people have been asking what conservatism stands for. Well, if nothing else, it stands unequivocally against justice as empathy -- and unequivocally for the principle of blind justice.
Empathy is a vital virtue to be exercised in private life -- through charity, respect and lovingkindness -- and in the legislative life of a society where the consequences of any law matter greatly, which is why income taxes are progressive and safety nets built for the poor and disadvantaged. But all that stops at the courthouse door. Figuratively and literally, justice wears a blindfold. It cannot be a respecter of persons. Everyone must stand equally before the law, black or white, rich or poor, advantaged or not.Obama and Sotomayor draw on the "richness of her experiences" and concern for judicial results to favor one American story, one disadvantaged background, over another. The refutation lies in the very oath Sotomayor must take when she ascends to the Supreme Court: "I do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich. ... So help me God."
...Vote Democratic and you get mainstream liberalism: A judicially mandated racial spoils system and a jurisprudence of empathy that hinges on which litigant is less "advantaged."****Or, perhaps, merely which litigant is most like the judge or which litigant is most successful in lobbying to the judge's empathy. Can outright bribery be far behind? ****...

The gaffe about Auschwitz: Barack's uncle speaks.

http://tinyurl.com/l6svxu
Obama's Uncle: He's Using Buchenwald for Political Purpose
Barack Obama's great uncle offered some blunt language as to why his nephew is visiting the memorial at the former Buchenwald concentration camp next week during his trip to Europe and the Middle East.“This is a trip that he chose, not because of me I'm sure, but for political reasons,” Charles Payne told the German magazine Spiegel. “Perhaps his visit also has something to do with improving his standing with (German Chancellor) Angela Merkel. She gave him a hard time during his campaign and also afterwards.”Obama will visit Saudi Arabia, make a long-awaited speech to the Muslim world in Cairo, travel to Dresden and the Buchenwald Nazi concentration camp in Germany, and attend D-Day commemorations in France...Payne, 84, is no stranger to Americans: The Obama campaign used his WWII experiences last year to burnish the candidate’s all-American upbringing. But Obama made a gaffe when he said his great uncle liberated Auschwitz. In fact, Payne was part of the force that liberated Ohrdruf, a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp, in April 1945.Payne told Spiegel that he was shocked to see his war experience, especially his "liberation" of a concentration camp, used in campaign commercials. He said he had never spoken with his nephew about the matter, nor did Obama ever express any interest in Payne's experience...

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Obama "wants"... Israeli settlers either to break up or uproot their families or abort their future children.

http://tinyurl.com/ndkvm7
****Obama "demands" of Israel to cease even settlement activity to accommodate natural increase in families. (Of course, he only "urges" the Palestinians to eschew vilification, blood libel and terrorism.)***** "Clinton signaled the raised stakes when she said Wednesday that Obama wanted new construction in the settlements stopped and rejected Israel's insistence that it needed to allow for such things as "natural growth.""He wants to see a stop to settlements," Clinton said. "Not some settlements, not outposts, not 'natural growth' exceptions. That is our position. That is what we have communicated very clearly." *****Given the source of this pressure, one might well assume that the Obama Administration wants the Israeli settlers to abort any children scheduled to be born after Obama delivered his ukase.If Obama the Messiah before his accession to political success, perhaps he now aspires to higher status, with the heady power over life and death.*****
Israeli, U.S. Officials Discuss Outposts - Herb Keinon An Israeli team headed by Intelligence Services Minister Dan Meridor, National Security Adviser Uzi Arad, and Netanyahu aide Yitzhak Molcho met in London on Tuesday with U.S. Middle East envoy George Mitchell to discuss Iran and settlement construction. Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Tuesday, "We must...find a way to make it clear to the Americans that there is not a direct connection between the outposts and Iran....It is not as if the minute that the last outpost is removed...the Iranians will abandon their nuclear aspirations. These things do not have to be directly linked to one another." http://tinyurl.com/nxoxpc Is Obama Looking for a Fight over "Natural Growth"? - Herb Keinon "A 'settlement freeze' would not help Palestinians face today's problems or prepare for tomorrow's challenges," Elliott Abrams, the deputy national security adviser under former President George Bush, wrote in April in the Washington Post. "The demand for a freeze would have only one quick effect: to create immediate tension between the United States and Israel's new government," he wrote. The question is why the U.S. is looking for this fight.But what if Obama, as some maintain, is actually looking for a public fight with Israel on this issue in order to win credit with the Arab world, and legitimacy among the Europeans as a leader who is willing to take Israel on when necessary?...if the US president picks a fight with Israel over the natural growth issue at a time when Israel has declared it won't build new settlements, expropriate land or give incentives to move there, then it could be perceived among some Obama supporters...as being unfairly tough on Israel, especially since various verbal understandings were made over the years that Israel interpreted as a green light for natural growth.

Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Innovations in traffic control from Denmark

http://www.speedbandits.dk/

Obama's "terminally obtuse" Middle East policy full of holes

U.S.-Backed Palestinian Leader Has Credibility Problem by Howard Schneider// PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, 74, heads a fractured government and a fractured political party. His four-year term expired four months ago. Polls show that he lags in popularity behind the leader of the Islamist Hamas movement, Ismail Haniyeh. His handpicked prime minister, Salam Fayyad, trusted to manage billions of dollars in foreign aid, is reviled by some Palestinians as a U.S. proxy. Whatever peace initiative President Obama envisions for the region, it involves a gamble that Abbas can overcome a long list of liabilities, put Palestinian politics back into one piece and hold up his side of any bargain. Abbas is to meet Obama at the White House on Thursday.(Washington Post) ****One can only wonder IF Obama expects Fatah to honor any bargain.****
Muslim Nations Link Better Israel Ties to Peace - Khaled Yacoub Oweis// Muslim foreign ministers meeting in Damascus on Monday issued a statement saying: "We must not reward Israel for its crimes." The statement issued by the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) said: "Any progress on ties must be linked to how much the Israeli position represents a commitment to a just and comprehensive peace that guarantees the restoration of rights and occupied land." The OIC said the concept of "resistance" was distinct from terrorism. "Terrorism is a dangerous global phenomenon, but this does not mean that we should allow it to be used to confuse issues and describe resistance as terrorism," the statement said.(Reuters) ****"Our" terrorism isn't "terrorism."****
****U.S.State Department's "adviser" at variance with Obama/Hillary position (at least in a book before his appointment)*****
Dennis Ross: No Link between Iran, Mideast Peace by Yossi Melman// Dennis Ross, the U.S. Secretary of State's special adviser on Iran, opposes the Obama administration's concept of linkage in a new book, Myths, Illusions, and Peace: Finding a New Direction for America in the Middle East, written with David Makovsky. Ross writes that efforts to advance dialogue with Iran should not be connected to the renewal of talks between Israel and the Palestinians. In the second chapter, entitled "Linkage: The Mother of All Myths," Ross writes: "Of all the policy myths that have kept us from making real progress in the Middle East, one stands out for its impact and longevity: the idea that if only the Palestinian conflict were solved, all other Middle East conflicts would melt away. This is the argument of 'linkage.'" (Ha'aretz)
No Common Ground by Jeffrey Goldberg //
In March, Muhammad Dahlan, a former chief of the PA's secret police organizations and once a tacit ally of the CIA, defended Fatah from the charge, made by Hamas, that it had previously recognized Israel's right to exist. Dahlan said: "For the 1,000th time, I want to reaffirm that we are not asking Hamas to recognize Israel's right to exist. Rather we are asking Hamas not to do so, because Fatah never recognized Israel's right to exist." Dahlan's comment helps buttress the main argument of Benny Morris's new book, One State, Two States, which says that Arab rejectionism is so profound a force that only the terminally obtuse could believe that Palestinians will ever acquiesce to a state comprised solely of the West Bank and Gaza. Morris sees the culprit as the implacable fanaticism of Arab Islamists, who are unwilling to accept a Jewish national presence in what is thought of as Arab land, a position that hasn't changed since 1920. Subsequent events that seemingly contradict this - most notably the PLO's ostensible recognition of Israel in 1988 - have been staged for the benefit of gullible Westerners, Morris writes. (New York Times)

Lacunae in Obamian Logic - eloquence with non sequiturs

Obama and the 'South Park' Gnomes Too many initiatives that require a leap of faith. By BRET STEPHENS Sometimes it takes "South Park" to explain life's deeper mysteries. Like the logic of the Obama administration's policy proposals.Consider the 1998 "Gnomes" episode -- possibly surpassing Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose" as the classic defense of capitalism -- in which the children of South Park, Colo., get a lesson in how not to run an enterprise from mysterious little men who go about stealing undergarments from the unsuspecting and collecting them in a huge underground storehouse.What's the big idea? The gnomes explain: "Phase One: Collect underpants."Phase Two: ? "Phase Three: Profit." Lest you think there's a step missing here, that's the whole point. ("What about Phase Two?" asks one of the kids. "Well," answers a gnome, "Phase Three is profits!") This more or less sums up Mr. Obama's speech last week on Guantanamo, in which the president explained how he intended to dispose of the remaining detainees after both houses of Congress voted overwhelmingly against bringing them to the U.S. The president's plan can briefly be described as follows. Phase One: Order Guantanamo closed. Phase Two: ? Phase Three: Close Gitmo!...on the central question of the 100-odd detainees who can neither be tried in court nor released one searches in vain for an explanation of exactly what the president intends to do.Now take the administration's approach to the Middle East. Phase One: Talk to Iran, Syria, whoever. Phase Two: ? Phase Three: Peace! ...seems to think that diplomacy, like aspirin, is something you take two of in the morning...in (the) book, "Advice to War Presidents," diplomacy "can neither create nor change basic intentions, interests, or convictions. . . . To say, 'We've got a problem. Let's try diplomacy, let's sit down and talk' abstracts from the important questions: What will you say? And why should anything you say lead anyone to accommodate you?"...Obama's approach to nuclear weapons. .. right after North Korea had illegally tested a ballistic missile, Mr. Obama promised a new nonproliferation regime, ...ensures when any nation [breaks the rules], they will face consequences." Whereupon the U.N. Security Council promptly failed to muster the votes for a resolution condemning Pyongyang's launch.... Kim Jong Il has tested another nuke, and we're back at the familiar three-step. Phase One: Propose a "structure." . . .Mr. Obama repeated his pledge to "confront climate change by ending the world's dependence on fossil fuels, by tapping the power of new sources of energy like the wind and sun."...neither the wind nor the sun are new sources of energy... the U.S. gets about 2.3% of its energy resources from "renewable" resources of the kind the president advocates while fossil fuels account for about 70%. ...has much to do with something known as "energy density": Crude oil has almost three times as much of it as switchgrass,...it will always be difficult to turn diffuse sources of energy, like wind, into concentrated ones.In Gnome-speak, then, Mr. Obama's energy policy goes something like this: Phase One: Inaugurate the era of "green" energy. Phase Two: Overturn the first and second laws of thermodynamics. Phase Three: Carbon neutrality!****Of course nuclear energy fits the bill but is just politically incorrect.**** Take any number of Mr. Obama's other initiatives. Rescue Detroit? Phase One: Set a national mileage standard for passenger cars of 39 miles per gallon and force auto makers to make the kind of cars that drove them to bankruptcy in the first place.****It's not clear that even a skip to Phase Three:Profit can be made with a straight face.**** The deficit? Phase One: Approve $3.5 trillion in government stimulus, and then await the mythical Keynesian multiplier. Pay for a $1.2 trillion health-care reform? Phase One: scrounge around for about $60 billion in new "sin tax" revenue.Actually, we can easily guess how Mr. Obama intends to make up the difference on this last item: To wit, by taxing health benefits. Taxes, subsidies funded by taxes, regulations and mandates will also fill in many (though not all) of the other blanks. Underpants gnomes: meet Phase Two. Say, what happened to profits? ****It's going to get hard for even the most unthinking of voters to believe that Obama knows something that they do not.****

Tuesday, May 26, 2009

The Sotomayor nomination - the law is what the heart says

La Jueza Empática A "wise Latina woman" who doesn't always side with victims of government power. By JAMES TARANTO...Judge Sonia Sotomayor of the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will be the next associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court,...President Obama has said he wanted justices with "empathy," although in fairness he has also insisted that knowledge of the law would not disqualify a prospective nominee. As National Journal's Stuart Taylor notes, in a 2001 speech Sotomayor described her judicial philosophy in this way: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."...she's going to be writing a lot of dissents...Without the support of at least two white males, then, the best she can hope for is to be on the losing end of a 6-3 decision.What exactly does "empathy" mean in the context of appellate judging, anyway? One assumes it is a euphemism for "judicial liberalism," itself a rather vague term whose exponents usually describe themselves as favoring individual liberty over authority. This description is accurate, except when it isn't...(as in) Kelo v. New London (2005), in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the taking of Susette Kelo's Connecticut house as part of a "redevelopment" scheme that aimed to transfer ownership of her land to someone who would pay more in taxes. Four white males and one white female held that maximizing tax revenues was a legitimate "public use," allowing eminent domain. Two white males, one white female and one black male dissented.Property rights is traditionally a conservative cause, but the use of eminent domain for urban redevelopment also draws considerable opposition from minority communities, since often it is their members who have their property taken from them.Sotomayor has dealt with the question of takings in her position on the Second Circuit. In a February 2008 Forbes article, Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago laid out the details:In 1999 Port Chester [N.Y.] established a redevelopment area, in which new projects could be built only after getting approval from a village-designated private individual, Gregory Wasser, to whom the municipality inexplicably delegated its regulatory authority. In 2003 two owners of a plot within the redevelopment zone, Bart Didden and Domenick Bologna, asked Wasser for permission to build a CVS pharmacy. According to Didden and Bologna, Wasser responded: Either pay me $800,000 to build, give me a piece of the action, or I'll have the village take the property. The day after they spurned the offer, Port Chester did indeed start the takings process. Wasser then arranged for Walgreen to develop the site...Didden and Bologna will be compensated for the value of their land, as the Constitution requires. But they "won't get any compensation for the work they did to put together the CVS deal...their legal, expert or appraisal fees." And it's a bum deal for the taxpayers too:The village, for its part, has paid undisclosed legal fees to fight Didden...It takes no financial wizardry to see that the expenses on both sides of this high-priced battle are a social waste if all they do is replace a CVS pharmacy with a Walgreens. ...flaw of modern takings law. Undue judicial deference creates large amounts of government discretion that in turn invites self-interested actors to game the system. Current constitutional law subjects most development rights to government vetoes, which invite perpetual intrigue and personal favoritism.In a Forbes column today, Epstein writes that in Didden v. Port Chester, Sotomayor and her colleagues "did [the white male who wrote the Kelo decision] one better":The Second Circuit panel on which Sotomayor sat did not raise an eyebrow. Its entire analysis reads as follows: "We agree with the district court that [Wasser's] voluntary attempt to resolve appellants' demands was neither an unconstitutional exaction in the form of extortion nor an equal protection violation."Earlier this month, Jeffrey Rosen of the liberal New Republic argued against Sotomayor's nomination on the ground that various anonymous people "expressed questions about her temperament, her judicial craftsmanship, and most of all, her ability to provide an intellectual counterweight to the conservative justices, as well as a clear liberal alternative."We hope Republicans who interrogate La Jueza Empática during her confirmation hearings will be more high-minded than Rosen's hit piece. They ought to have no shortage of material...............
*****Epstein's article points out that Sotomayor's decision in the Didden/Port Chester case
http://tinyurl.com/qmjguj
The Sotomayor Nomination by Richard A. Epstein, 05.26.09,The hidden costs of presidential empathy....I decried President Barack Obama's insistence that empathy would weigh heavily in the scales...reading the arguments that were put forth to justify the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor of the Second Circuit to the Supreme Court, it appears that all the bad chickens have come home to roost...characteristics that matter most for a potential nominee to the Supreme Court have little to do with judicial ability or temperament, or even so ephemeral a consideration as a knowledge of the law. ...The president wants to choose "a daughter of Puerto Rican parents raised in Bronx public housing projects to become the nation's first Hispanic justice."...none of these factors disqualifies anyone for the Supreme Court. But affirmative action standards are a bad way to pick one of the nine most influential jurists in the U.S...the justices of the Supreme Court are likely to have to pass on some of the high-handed Obama administration tactics...that concern the fortunes of American business...a president whose professed devotion to the law takes a backseat to all sorts of other considerations....compensation packages of key AIG... executives (which eventually led to the indecorous resignation of Edward Liddy), and the massive insinuation of the executive branch into the (current) Chrysler and (looming) General Motors...bankruptcies are sure to generate many a spirited struggle over...The level of property rights protection against government intervention on the one hand, and the permissible scope of unilateral action by the president in a system that is (or at least should be) characterized by a system of separation of powers and checks and balances on the other. Here is one straw in the wind that does not bode well for a Sotomayor appointment. Justice Stevens of the current court came in for a fair share of criticism (all justified in my view) for his expansive reading in Kelo v. City of New London (2005) of the "public use language." Of course, the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment is as complex as it is short: "Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." But he was surely done one better in the Summary Order in Didden v. Village of Port Chester issued by the Second Circuit in 2006. Judge Sotomayor was on the panel that issued the unsigned opinion--one that makes Justice Stevens look like a paradigmatic defender of strong property rights.I have written about Didden in Forbes. The case involved about as naked an abuse of government power as could be imagined. Bart Didden came up with an idea to build a pharmacy on land he owned in a redevelopment district in Port Chester over which the town of Port Chester had given Greg Wasser control. Wasser told Didden that he would approve the project only if Didden paid him $800,000 or gave him a partnership interest. The "or else" was that the land would be promptly condemned by the village, and Wasser would put up a pharmacy himself. Just that came to pass. But the Second Circuit panel on which Sotomayor sat did not raise an eyebrow. Its entire analysis reads as follows: "We agree with the district court that [Wasser's] voluntary attempt to resolve appellants' demands was neither an unconstitutional exaction in the form of extortion nor an equal protection violation."
Maybe I am missing something, but American business should shudder in its boots if Judge Sotomayor takes this attitude to the Supreme Court. Justice Stevens wrote that the public deliberations over a comprehensive land use plan is what saved the condemnation of Ms. Kelo's home from constitutional attack. Just that element was missing in the Village of Port Chester fiasco. Indeed, the threats that Wasser made look all too much like the "or else" diplomacy of the Obama administration in business matters. Jurisprudentially, moreover, the sorry Didden episode reveals an important lesson about constitutional law. It is always possible to top one bad decision (Kelo) with another (Didden). This does not auger well for a Sotomayor appointment to the Supreme Court. The president should have done better, and the Senate, Democrats and Republicans alike, should subject this dubious nomination to the intense scrutiny that it deserves.
Richard A. Epstein is the James Parker Hall distinguished service professor of law at the University of Chicago, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a visiting professor at NYU Law School. He is a columnist at Forbes.

http://tinyurl.com/ql9d5q The 'Empathy' Nominee Is Sonia Sotomayor judically superior to 'a white male'?

Publicity hound or Leftist anger? At Confederate soldiers???? A sesquicentennial grudge.

Ayers says he got hate mail over letter to Obama Associated Press CHICAGO - Bill Ayers says he received more hate mail than ever...after signing a petition that urged President Barack Obama not to lay a wreath at the graves of Confederate soldiers....He says he added his name because he signs "any petition that comes across my computer."****Thoughtful!No wonder David Horowitz remembers Ayers from the days they were BOTH radicals and thought him a "moron." Now he's a "distinguished professor at UI(Chicago Circle).Pity UICC***

Korea Marketing at the Nuke Bazaar, thanks to Jimmy Carter et seq

North Korea Advertises Its Nukes Syria has already been a customer.By GORDON G. CHANG North Korea yesterday tested a second nuclear weapon at its underground site. What does Kim Jong Il want? ... the international community to recognize his nation as a nuclear weapons state...to destabilize the South Korean gov't... additional assistance from international donors... bolster the popularity of his regime among hungry North Koreans -- and the senior generals whose backing he needs.... Yet both the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama have put North Korea on the back burner....(NK sales talk). North Korea appears set to go into high gear and merchandise its nuclear arsenal....last nuclear test, in October 2006, was...a dud. ...Kim's technicians had to detonate another device to validate their designs...Tehran is an important customer...because the Islamic Republic has, in all probability, funded at least one acquirer of Kim's nuclear technology....Syria ...a reactor of North Korean design. The Israelis destroyed that secret facility in September 2007 .... Iranians ...are somewhere between one to three years to a working nuclear device of their own....Tehran's technicians were again witnesses to yesterday's test. There is no greater threat to the U.S. than the proliferation of nuclear weapons to dangerous and hostile regimes.
The Bush administration...never made North Korea pay any price...(for being part of the Axis of Evil. It remains to be seen) what Washington will do in the coming days. After the early-April test of a long-range missile, Stephen Bosworth, President Obama's part-time envoy for North Korea, said he was "relaxed" and even suggested direct talks with Pyongyang, which is what the North always wanted from Washington. The feckless American response was a big green light for Kim to continue his destabilizing behavior.... It soon will be able to deliver a nuclear device to the American homeland by... a rusting merchant ship or... a pickup truck. Another danger is the dissemination of nuclear technology to hostile states and their terrorist allies.This is a consequential moment. North Korea is taking on the world, and we have no choice but to respond. ****Jimmy Carter "negotiated" a vacuous standstill for Clinton in 1994; Bush did little to nothing but label. Obama based on the above is not promising but the jury is still out. It's a further test ( altho", when the early exams have been failed, it isn't usual to pick up and pass the course. ***

Monday, May 25, 2009

The Death of Israel:produced &directed by B.Obama

THE DEATH OF ISRAEL By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN on DickMorris.com on May 24, 2009
From Caroline Glick,...she reports that CIA chief Leon Panetta...travel to Israel "read the riot act" to the government warning against an attack on Iran....the Obama administration has ...accepted as irreversible and unavoidable fact that Iran will soon develop nuclear weapons...the Obama administration is desperate to stop Israel from attacking Iran writing ...American officials would regard any harm to American interests that flowed from an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities as Israel's doing, not Iran's.In classic Stockholm Syndrome fashion, the Obama administration is empathizing more with the Iranian leaders who are holding Israel hostage than with the nation that may be wiped off the map...Obama's end-of-the-year deadline for Iranian talks...is just window dressing without the threat of military action. As Metternich wrote "diplomacy without force is like music without instruments." ...Obama is making an empty threat....sanctions will likely have no effect because Russia and China will not let the United Nations act... All this means is that Israel's life is in danger. If Iran gets the bomb, it will use it to kill six million Jews. No threat of retaliation will make the slightest difference. One cannot deter a suicide bomber with the threat of death....Iran would probably not launch the bomb itself, anyway, but would give it to its puppet terrorists to send to Israel so it could deny responsibility. Obama, bent on appeasement, would likely not retaliate with nuclear weapons. And Israel will be dead and gone....sunshine Jewish patriots who voted for Obama must realize that ...witnessing the possible end of Israel...same moral position as our ancestors were as they watched Hitler rise but did nothing to pressure their favorite liberal Democratic president, FDR, to take any real action to save them or even to let Jewish refugees into the country....Because one thing is increasingly clear: Barack Obama is not about to lift a finger to stop Iran from developing the bomb. And neither is Hillary Clinton. Obama may have held the first White House seder, but he's not planning to spend next year in Jerusalem. ****Fittingly, the Obama "seder" replaced the traditional "next year in Jerusalem..." with "next year in the White House."***

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Priorities of community-organizers don't rank education highly but might authoritarianism.

http://tinyurl.com/lxme8j
Who Killed Teach For America? By Joe Klein
In the midst of the 2000 Presidential campaign, George W. Bush had a private breakfast in Los Angeles with members of Teach for America (TFA), the exemplary national-service program that sends recent college graduates to teach for two years in the poorest urban and rural school districts. "Everyone came out of that room glowing," said Wendy Kopp, the founder of TFA. ...optimistic that TFA, one of the flagship AmeriCorps programs, would have a future in a Bush Administration. Indeed, Kopp was invited to sit in the First Lady's box at Bush's first budget message to Congress in February 2001. At the same time, Teach for America was designated as one of five education and literacy programs that would receive special attention and support from Laura Bush. In 2002, the President in his State of the Union address called for increased national service and then illustrated what he meant by visiting a Teach for America school in Atlanta. "I am proud to stand up and talk about the best of America and Wendy Kopp," the President said. "I hope young Americans all across the country think about joining Teach for America."...Bush aides approached Kopp and encouraged her to quadruple the size of the Teach for America infantry, from 1,000 to 4,000 per year. (Each TFA teacher serves for two years and receives $4,725 per year in college scholarship money.)...Kopp began to hear that AmeriCorps' priorities had changed. Programs that encouraged voluntarism would be favored over so-called professional corps like Teach for America....she was assured... that Teach for America's annual grant from AmeriCorps--about $12.5 million in scholarship money and $1.5 million for operating expenses--was safe. ****Despite being paltry
"chickenfeed"***
...a form letter arrived in the Teach for America offices from the Corporation for National and Community Service. "We regret to inform you," it said, "that your application was not selected for funding."..."There had been no warning."...Teach for America's fate was far more drastic; it had been zeroed out, eliminated. "We are no longer an AmeriCorps program," Kopp said...having Orwellian conversations with functionaries at the Freedom Corps and the Corporation for National and Community Service. ...TFA was axed because it doesn't encourage community volunteer work; its members merely teach school in poor neighborhoods.
There is a legitimate philosophical difference here, and it involves the difference between voluntarism and service. Voluntarism is the act of doing valuable things that fall just outside the normal scope of governance. Service is more intense: it is a full-time commitment to do the most difficult public works--policing, teaching, social casework. The Police Corps, which exists outside AmeriCorps, and Teach for America are exemplars of the latter. They are unabashedly elitist; TFA accepts only 13% of all applicants. They involve rigorous training programs. And the goal is to leverage the altruism of the best and the brightest college students, putting them to work on the toughest jobs in the toughest neighborhoods--and, in the process, to help create a new generation of leaders like the "Greatest" generation, imbued with the spirit of sacrifice ...
............................
http://tinyurl.com/czmjee
Rife With Bogus Idealism, Waste, AmeriCorps Doesn't Need To Exist IBD By JAMES BOVARD author of "Attention Deficit Democracy" and eight other books. President Obama signed legislation Tuesday to triple the number of AmeriCorps members from 75,000 to 250,000...the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act is about "connecting deeds to needs."...the signing ceremony and a $5 billion multiyear outlay for AmeriCorps came one day after Obama called on his cabinet members to trim $100 million in wasteful government spending.Paying people on false pretenses to do unnecessary things is the soul of AmeriCorps. Since President Clinton created this program in 1993, politicians have endlessly touted its recruits as volunteers toiling selflessly for the common good.But the average AmeriCorps members receives more than $15,000 on an annual basis in pay and other benefits....most AmeriCorps members go on to work for government agencies or nonprofit groups...gig is more of a career stepping stone... AmeriCorps' prestige has perennially been at war with its boondoggles.During the Clinton administration, AmeriCorps members helped run a program in Buffalo that gave children $5 for each toy gun they brought in — as well as a certificate praising their decision not to play with toy guns. In San Diego, AmeriCorps members busied themselves collecting used bras and panties for a homeless shelter.In Los Angeles,AmeriCorps members busied themselves foisting unreliable ultra-low-flush toilets on poor people.In New Jersey, AmeriCorps members enticed middle-class families to accept subsidized federal health insurance for their children. Nowadays, many AmeriCorps programs are hailed in the media for projects that produce little more than sanctimony among participants: • In Florida, AmeriCorps members in the "Women in Distress" program organized a poetry reading on the evils of domestic violence. • In San Francisco, AmeriCorps members busy themselves mediating elementary-school playground disputes. • In Montana, AmeriCorps members carried out a drive encouraging people to donate books to ship to Cameroon. • In Oswego, N.Y., AmeriCorps members set up a donation bin to gather used cell phones for victims of domestic violence. AmeriCorps is beloved by politicians because it provides ample photo opportunities of them doing good deeds..AmeriCorps advocates claim that AmeriCorps members spur 1.7 million other Americans to volunteer each year. At best, this is the Tom Sawyer Model of Virtue: some people getting paid to sway other people to work for free. In reality, AmeriCorps members have no such suasive gift. AmeriCorps routinely counts anyone who works in a project that AmeriCorps members "manage" as a new volunteer.Thus, if 20 people are already working at a house building project where an AmeriCorps member temporarily supervises, all 20 can be counted as AmeriCorps-generated volunteers.At the signing ceremony, Obama declared that "we will measure our progress not just in number of hours served or volunteers mobilized." But in reality, AmeriCorps has always relied on Soviet Bloc-style accounting to justify itself.For instance, program defenders often assert that "540,000 AmeriCorps members have contributed more than 705 million hours of service" since 1994.Many individual programs evaluate themselves with raw numbers that mean little.AmeriCorps members are leading a donation drive for items to ship to the Pennsylvania National Guard in Iraq..."Our goal is to collect 200 pounds of donations." AmeriCorps has never performed a credible analysis of the value of the service that its members produce.Instead, meaningless aggregates are "close enough for government work" to prove that AmeriCorps is a cornucopia....AmeriCorps puts a smiley face on Uncle Sam.
America has enough real volunteers: It does not need mass production of government-issue bogus volunteers. The glorification of AmeriCorps should awaken Americans to the bogus idealism permeating Washington.
...............
http://tinyurl.com/djn2bz
Expanded Americorps has stench of authoritarianism SFExaminer Editorial...both chambers of Congress in the past week advanced an alarming expansion of the Americorps national service plan, with the number of federally funded community-service jobs increasing from 75,000 to 250,000 at a cost of $5.7 billion. ...multiple provisions that together create a strong odor of creepy authoritarianism...House passed the measure overwhelmingly, while only 14 senators had the sense and courage to vote against it...Last summer, then-candidate Barack Obama threw civil liberties to the wind when he proposed “a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded” as the regular military. The expanded Americorps is not quite so disturbing, but a number of provisions in the bill raise serious concerns...legislation threatens the voluntary nature of Americorps by calling for consideration of “a workable, fair and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people.” It anticipates the possibility of requiring “all individuals in the United States” to perform such service, including elementary school students....summons up unsettling memories of World War II-era paramilitary groups by saying the new program should “combine the best practices of civilian service with the best aspects of military service,” while establishing “campuses” that serve as “operational headquarters,” complete with “superintendents” and “uniforms” for all participants. It allows for the elimination of all age restrictions in order to involve Americans at all stages of life. And, it calls for the creation of “a permanent cadre” in a “National Community Civilian Corps.” ****Almost at the point of calling it "ObamaJugend."****
But that’s not all. The bill also calls for “youth engagement zones” in which “service learning” is “a mandatory part of the curriculum in all of the secondary schools served by the local educational agency.” This updated form of voluntary community service is also to be “integrated into the science, technology, engineering and mathematics curricula” at all levels of schooling. Sounds like a government curriculum for government-approved “service learning,” which is nothing less than indoctrination.****One can only wonder at the math/science credentials of Americorps people vs. Teach For America.Probably better loved by the teachers' unions since they are equally unqualified in math and science and don't even take a teaching job away from union members.**** Now, ask yourself if Congress members who voted for this monstrosity had a clue what they were voting for. If not, they’re guilty of dereliction of duty. If they did, the implications are truly frightening.

Saturday, May 23, 2009

"Rule of Law" if done by computer needs contingency algorithms

http://tinyurl.com/q734j9
Interrogations and Presidential Prerogative
The Founders created an executive with substantial discretionary powers.By WALTER BERNS...Judging by what he had to say about "enhanced" interrogations, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., N.C.) ... believes that we're either a rule-of-law nation or we're not, and no exceptions....His point was that our definitions of torture should not vary with the sort of person being questioned -- terrorists, for example, or merely prisoners of war.****Nevertheless, there remain nuances related to motivation ( e.g. eschewal for confessions, punishment or sadism )and permanence (e.g. a truth serum would hardly be torture, according to most people )and, ultimately, the conscience of the people ( a variable but the ultimate constraint on the guy at the very top of the hierarchy -- the President ). **** Mr. Graham's position is similar to the one taken by Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney during the Civil War....Abraham Lincoln...ordered the military to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, which led to the arrest and imprisonment of John Merryman,...Taney ruled in Ex Parte Merryman (1861) that only Congress could suspend the writ of habeas corpus and ordered Merryman released. Lincoln disobeyed the order, believing that the executive must sometimes do things it would not do in ordinary times...John Locke, the 17th century Englishman sometimes referred to as "America's philosopher"?...Locke argued in the Second Treatise of Civil Government that the "first and fundamental law is the establishment of the legislative power." ...But Locke admitted that not everything can be done by law...there are many things "which the law can by no means provide for." The law cannot "foresee" events, for example, nor can it act with dispatch or with the appropriate subtlety required when dealing with foreign powers. Nor, as we know very well indeed, can a legislative body preserve secrecy.Such matters, Locke continued...should be left to "the discretion of him who has the executive power." It is in this context that he first spoke of the "prerogative": the "power to act according to discretion, for the public good without the prescription of the law, and sometimes even against it." He concluded by saying "prerogative is nothing but the power of doing public good without a rule" (italics in the original). Did the Framers find a place in our Constitution for this extraordinary power? What, if anything, did they say on the subject or, perhaps more tellingly, what did they not say?
They said nothing about a prerogative or -- apart from the habeas corpus provision -- anything suggesting a need for it. But they provided for an executive significantly different from -- and significantly more powerful than -- the executives provided for in the early state constitutions of the revolutionary era. This new executive is, first of all, a single person, and, as the Constitution has it, "he shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy." This is no mean power; Lincoln used it to imprison insurgents and to free the slaves...According to the "Records of the Federal Convention of 1787," on June 1, a mere two weeks into the life of the convention, James Wilson "moved that the Executive consist in a single person."...Why the silence? Why were they shy? Apparently because the proposal was so radically different from the executives provided(heretofore)...This new, single executive is also required to take an oath to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." This was the provision of his oath President George W. Bush used to capture, hold and interrogate terrorists....questions Locke may have had in mind in his chapter on the prerogative. Who, he then asked, shall be judge whether "this power is made right use of?" Initially, of course, the executive but, ultimately, the people.
****Nixon was not quite right when he said "If the President does it, it IS legal." It might be judged to be illegal AFTER THE FACT through public opinion and/or impeachment.****...forum could be a committee of Congress or a "truth commission" --...a process that, among other things, would require Nancy Pelosi to testify under oath.

>50Million PREVENTABLE deaths due to political correctness?

http://tinyurl.com/ozxqp7Malaria, Politics and DDT
The U.N. bows to the anti-insecticide lobby. 5/23/09
In 2006, after 25 years and 50 million preventable deaths, the World Health Organization reversed course and endorsed widespread use of the insecticide DDT to combat malaria. So much for that. Earlier this month, the U.N. agency quietly reverted to promoting less effective methods for attacking the disease. The result is a victory for politics over public health, and millions of the world's poor will suffer as a result...
"Sadly, WHO's about-face has nothing to do with science or health and everything to do with bending to the will of well-placed environmentalists," says Roger Bate of Africa Fighting Malaria. "Bed net manufacturers and sellers of less-effective insecticides also don't benefit when DDT is employed and therefore oppose it, often behind the scenes."It's no coincidence that WHO officials were joined by the head of the U.N. Environment Program to announce the new policy. There's no evidence that spraying DDT in the amounts necessary to kill dangerous mosquitoes imperils crops, animals or human health..."We must take a position based on the science and the data," said WHO's malaria chief, Arata Kochi, in 2006. "One of the best tools we have against malaria is indoor residual spraying. Of the dozen or so insecticides WHO has approved as safe for house spraying, the most effective is DDT." Mr. Kochi was right then, even if other WHO officials are now bowing to pressure to pretend otherwise.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Intractability and the Chimera of the "two-state solution"

http://tinyurl.com/p4tzgs
Middle East mirage By Tony Blankley 5/20/09
...all shrewd diplomats and observers of diplomacy look beneath the surface language and actions of diplomacy to the underlying realities that will shape negotiations, because, as professor Angelo Codevilla explains, effective diplomacy is, at its core, a "verbal representation of a persuasive reality. Indubitable reality itself convinces — sometimes even without verbal expression, or through nonverbal expression."...new round of U.S.-Israeli-Arab negotiations, one needs to keep firmly in mind the political realities that will either undergird or undermine the talks.
...the constantly repeated background theme has been that now is the vital moment to actually bring into being an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. As I discussed in this space last week, President Obama is being put under extraordinary pressure — both by Arab leaders and commentators and by his own White House staff — to be personally responsible for the success or failure of these talks....Prime Minister Netanyahu is coming under even greater pressure to comply with the United States' proposed path to a "peace accord," the foundation of which is a two-state solution, that is to say, two sovereign nations side by side: Israel and a Palestinian state.
The Arab states never have been more united in preparing the diplomatic groundwork for these talks. In advance of this week's Washington talks, the Arab states have let it be known that they will "reward" Israel with "confidence-building measures" — as Nader Dahabi, Jordan's prime minister, said last weekend at a World Economic Forum in Jordan — should Israel cooperate in the negotiations. But the premise of Arab cooperation includes adherence to the key provisions of the Saudi-sponsored plan: giving Palestinian refugees the right to return to Israel and having the Israeli borders return to how they were before the 1967 war....shrewd old Talleyrand also once said, "I know where there is more wisdom... — in public opinion." So consider this dismal data from the authoritative polling of the 2007 Pew Global Attitudes Project. The report tabulated the response to this key question: "Which statement comes closest to your opinion? 1) A way can be found for the state of Israel to exist so that the rights and needs of the Palestinian people are taken care of OR, 2) the rights and needs of the Palestinian people cannot be taken care of as long as the state of Israel exists?"
...the key results being, by 77 to 16 percent, Palestinians don't believe they can live side by side with Israel, while, by 61 to 31 percent, Israelis do believe they can live side by side with a Palestinian state. Note that all the Arab states are very negative and all the Western states (plus Israel) are quite positive for a two-state solution.
• United States: 1) 67 percent, 2) 12 percent.
• France: 1) 82 percent, 2) 16 percent.
• Germany: 1) 80 percent, 2) 11 percent.
• Sweden: 1) 65 percent, 2) 12 percent.
• Britain: 1) 60 percent, 2) 12 percent.
• Israel: 1) 61 percent, 2) 31 percent.
Morocco: 1) 23 percent, 2) 47 percent.
Kuwait: 1) 21 percent, 2) 73 percent.
Egypt: 1) 18 percent, 2) 80 percent.
Jordan: 1) 17 percent, 2) 78 percent.
Palestinian territories: 1) 16 percent, 2) 77 percent.
Keep in mind, also, that after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat signed a Sinai peace treaty with Israel, in October 1981 he was assassinated...A fatwa authorizing the assassination had been issued by Omar Abdel-Rahman...It would take an unusually courageous leader to sign a peace treaty and his own death warrant in one document. And lest there be any doubt as to the acceptability of a peace treaty that doesn't include refugees' being given the right to return (which would turn Israel into a Muslim-majority, rather than Jewish-majority, state), consider the writing this week in the Los Angeles Times of Mustafa Barghouthi, a member of the Palestinian Parliament, a candidate for president in 2005, and currently secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative: "Palestinians in the occupied territories have no standing to sign away the rights of the Palestinian citizens of Israel in order to get Israel to the negotiating table. To tell the truth, we don't believe that Israel can be a true democracy and an exclusivist Jewish state at the same time."****So, there is no agreement with the international goal since the Mandate and League of Naions of "two lands for two peoples." **** As long as fewer than 2 in 10 Arabs, both Palestinian and all others, believe in Israel's right to exist as a nation with a Jewish majority, there can be no successful peace based on a two-state solution. That is the reality that no diplomacy can change.
History shows no change over many times of trying the same thing: http://tinyurl.com/okurh2
A two-state peace isn't the Arab goal By Jeff Jacoby 5/20/09 Who favors a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict? President Obama does,...So does former President George W. Bush, who began advocating Palestinian statehood in 2002 and continued until his final days in office. The Democratic Party's national platform endorses a two-state solution; the Republican platform does, too. The UN Security Council unanimously reaffirmed its support a few days ago. The European Union is strongly in favor as well — so strongly that the EU's foreign-policy chief, Javier Solana, has been warning Israel that its relations with Europe "will be very, very different" if it drops the two-state ball.Pope Benedict XVI called for a Palestinian state...aligning himself ...with the editorial boards of The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times. And, for that matter, with most Israelis. A new poll shows 58 percent of the Israeli public backing a two-state solution; prominent supporters include Netanyahu's three predecessors — former prime ministers Ehud Olmert, Ariel Sharon, and Ehud Barak — as well as president Shimon Peres.The consensus, it would seem, is overwhelming. ...a senior adviser to French President Nicolas Sarkozy,..."Everyone wants peace. The whole world wants a Palestinian state."
It isn't going to happen.International consensus or no, the two-state solution is a chimera. Peace will not be achieved by granting sovereignty to the Palestinians, because Palestinian sovereignty has never been the Arabs' goal. Time and time again, a two-state solution has been proposed. Time and time again, the Arabs have turned it down.
The Peel Commission's proposed two-state solution (1937). The Arabs said no.
In 1936, ...Palestine was still under British rule, ...Lord Peel was sent to investigate the steadily worsening Arab violence....It recommended a two-state solution — a partition of the land into separate Arab and Jewish states. "Partition offers a chance of ultimate peace," the commission reported. "No other plan does."But the Arab leaders, more intent on preventing Jewish sovereignty in Palestine than in achieving a state for themselves, rejected the Peel plan out of hand. The foremost Palestinian leader, Haj Amin al-Husseini, actively supported the Nazi regime in Germany. In return, Husseini wrote in his memoirs, Hitler promised him "a free hand to eradicate every last Jew from Palestine and the Arab world."
In 1947, the Palestinians were again presented with a two-state proposal. Again they spurned it....On Nov. 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly debated — and by a vote of 33-13 adopted — Resolution 181, partitioning Palestine on the basis of population. Had the Arabs accepted the UN decision, the Palestinian state that "the whole world wants" would today be 61 years old. Instead, the Arab League vowed to block Jewish sovereignty by waging "a war of extermination and a momentous massacre." Over and over this pattern has been repeated. Following its stunning victory in the 1967 Six Day War, Israel offered to exchange the land it had won for permanent peace with its neighbors. From their summit in Khartoum came the Arabs' notorious response: "No peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel." At Camp David in 2000, Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians virtually everything they claimed to be seeking — a sovereign state with its capital in East Jerusalem, 97 percent of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, tens of billions of dollars in "compensation" for the plight of Palestinian refugees. Yasser Arafat refused the offer, and launched the bloodiest wave of terrorism in Israel's history.
To this day, the charters of Hamas and Fatah, the two main Palestinian factions, call for Israel's liquidation. "The whole world" may want peace and a Palestinian state, but the Palestinians want something very different. Until that changes, there is no two-state solution.

Does Obama not get it or is he being disingenuous?

The President reiterates his determination to bring Gitmo residents to the U.S. promising ( unnecessarily ) that they will be housed in maximum security prisons. This is beside the point. What is relevant is bringing them onto U.S. soil, which they were not at Guantanamo. Now, it might be the position of such as Obama that the U.S. Constitution protects everyone on the planet everywhere on the planet, even without any connection to the U.S. Even without this bizarre viewpoint, everyone would grant that there is a better chance of Constitutional protections being extended to someone legally resident within the United States. It was actually a legalistic act of cleverness to use Gitmo to preclude this. Once on U.S. soil, such zealots as the ACLU and traitor-lawyers such Lynne Stewart, the lawyer for Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman, will petition the courts for all sorts of rights for these "clients." Aside from the continuing nuisance, there will be increased likelihood of the Gitmo terrorists getting visitors, especially from their lawyers who may be of the suasion of Ms. Stewart who aided and abetted her client, the blind Sheik, in carrying on jihad from prison. It will be difficult to maintain these prisoners incommunicado and out of the general prison population at which time they will recruit and educate others to both their religion and terrorism. Ordinary citizens, and even 90 Senators, understand this and are not likely to be dissuaded by Obama's non sequitur about "maximum security prisons."................
The Jihadi Virus in Our Jails By Michelle Malkin President Obama's speech on homeland security was 6,072 words long. Curiously, he chose not to spare an "a," "and" or "uh" on the New York City terror bust that dominated headlines the morning of his Thursday address. Did the teleprompter run out of room?...the feds cracked down on a ring of murder-minded black Muslim jailhouse converts preparing to bomb two Bronx synagogues and "eager to bring death to Jews." They also planned to attack a New York National Guard air base in Newburgh, N.Y., where the suspects lived and worshiped at a local mosque. Not one word from the president on the jihadists' intended victims, motives or means. No comfort for the reported targets in the Big Apple, still raw from the Scare Force One rattling that so vainly and recklessly simulated 9/11. No condemnation for the accused plotters.
Why? Because doing so would force Obama to abandon his cottony "extremist ideology" euphemisms and confront the concrete truth. To borrow one of our obtuse president's favorite cliches, "let me be perfectly clear" about the reality Obama won't touch: America faces an ongoing Islamic jihad at home and abroad. Not merely "man-caused." But Koran-inspired. Yet, Obama refuses to spell out the centuries-old roots of the war that he claims he'll win faster, better and cleaner than any of his predecessors.
Moreover, his push to transfer violent Muslim warmongers into our civilian prisons — where they have proselytized and plotted with impunity — will only make the problem worse. A brief refresher course for the left's amnesiacs about the festering jihadi virus in our jails and overseas:
In 2005, Bush administration officials busted a terrorist plot to attack infidels at military and Jewish sites in Los Angeles on the fourth anniversary of 9/11 or the Jewish holy days. It was devised by militant Muslim converts of Jam'iyyat Ul-Islam Is-Saheeh (Arabic for "Assembly of Authentic Islam") who had sworn allegiance to violent jihad at California's New Folsom State Prison. Convicted terror conspirator Jose Padilla converted to Islam during a stint at a Broward County, Fla., jail and reportedly fell in with terrorist recruiters after his release.Convicted "shoe bomber" Richard Reid converted to Islam with the help of an extremist imam in a British prison. Aqil Collins, a self-confessed jihadist turned FBI informant, converted to Islam while doing time in a California juvenile detention center. At a terrorist camp in Afghanistan, he went on to train with one of the men accused of kidnapping and beheading Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
In East Texas, inmates were recruited with a half-hour videotape featuring the anti-Semitic rants of California-based Imam Muhammad Abdullah, who claims that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were actually carried out by the Israeli and U.S. governments.
Federal corrections officials told congressional investigators during the Bush years "that convicted terrorists from the 1993 World Trade Center bombing were put into their prisons' general population, where they radicalized inmates and told them that terrorism was part of Islam."
Despite the insistence of Obama and the Jihadi Welcome Wagon that our civilian prisons are perfectly secure, convicted terrorist aid Lynne Stewart helped jailed 1993 World Trade Center bombing/NY landmark bombing plot mastermind Omar Abdel-Rahman smuggle coded messages of Islamic violence to outside followers in violation of an explicit pledge to abide by her client's court-ordered isolation.
As I've reported previously, U.S. Bureau of Prison reports have warned for years that our civilian detention facilities are major breeding grounds for Islamic terrorists. There are still not enough legitimately trained and screened Muslim religious leaders to counsel an estimated 9,000 U.S. prison inmates who demand Islamic services. Under the Bush administration, the federal prison bureaucracy had no policy in place to screen out extremist, violence-advocating Islamic chaplains; failed to properly screen the many contractors and volunteers who help provide religious services to Islamic inmates; and shied away from religious profiling. What's Obama's plan to prevent the jihadi virus from spreading? Washing hands and covering mouths won't work for this disease.

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Recall the nonsense of Obama at Notre Dame:

where he blithely said "...violent extremism;...these things do not discriminate. ...They do not target specific ethnic groups
****Does he not realize or does he deliberately lie in the interests of political correctness? ( Or worse!)****Experts: Plot underscores threat from independent attackers By Eric Fingerhut · May 21, 2009 WASHINGTON (JTA) -- The arrest of four men accused of plotting to attack two Bronx synagogues underscores the threat to Jewish targets by individuals or small groups, several experts said.From the shooting at a Los Angeles Jewish community center 10 years ago through the attack on the Seattle Jewish federation building in 2006, to the individual targeting Jews at Wesleyan University in Connecticut earlier this month, an individual or small group not formally connected with al-Qaida or any major international terrorist group was at the center of the threat (see list of attacks).****There is, however, a common thread that it is not PC to mention: the perpetrators are Muslims, whether born so or converts ( in prison, often ) matters not. For those concerning about "profiling", it might suffice to input Heinz 57 demographic descriptors of these terrorists and let "factor analysis" come up with a computer-derived description of who is likely to be a perpetrator. While not evidence, it should provide a guide for law enforcement. (I'm sure the ACLU will disagree. )**** Steve Pomerantz, former assistant director and director of counterterrorism at the FBI, compared the lessons from Tuesday’s arrests to the popular book “All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”“All you need to know about terrorism you can learn from this case,” he said, asserting that Jews will always be at the top of the list of targets for terrorists ****Now, does he mean "generic" terrorists including Tamil Tigers, the Irish Republican Army, Basque Separatists etc? Hardly! ****and that groups unaffiliated with a large international terrorist group are “at least as dangerous” as well-known groups such as al-Qaida because they can “more easily slip through the intelligence net.”
Paul Goldenberg, the executive director of the Jewish-organized Secure Community Network, stressed “one common denominator” present in all those past plots: hostile surveillance by the attackers.****Perhaps the ACLU will object on behalf of "watchers" of all stripes including bird, weather, human interest, etc."****...the criminal complaint for the New York plot states that last month, one of the defendants “photographed several synagogues and Jewish community centers in the Bronx and elsewhere for consideration as possible targets in a planned terrorist bombing campaign” and said bombing one of the JCCs would be a “piece of cake.”...Pomerantz also noted reports that the plotters met in prison, similar to the four men arrested in Los Angeles in 2005 on charges of plotting terror attacks on Jewish and military targets....said prisoners often are attracted to Islam when incarcerated because of the “cohesiveness of the group.”“There are different social networks in prison” and Muslims will often pray together, eat together and protect each other, she said....the First Amendment makes monitoring such materials a sensitive matter, Barsky believes that the United States needs to confront the issue....

The consequences of violating property rights and the rule of law.

http://tinyurl.com/oq992z
About Those 'Speculators' . . . Pension funds also got whacked by Uncle Sam. WSJ MAY 21, 2009 Remember how President Obama blamed Chrysler's bankruptcy filing last month on "a small group of speculators" who turned down Treasury's $2 billion final offer for their $6.9 billion in debt? Well, it turns out that hedge funds and other short sellers weren't the only secured creditors who got a raw deal from Uncle Sam.Indiana ...state's police and teacher pension funds have lost millions of dollars in the Chrysler "restructuring." ...Far from being speculators, these funds represent retired public employees, including cops and teachers. The funds paid a premium to buy "secured" status, only to discover that they were politically outranked by the United Auto Workers in the White House hierarchy.
"In the past, to be 'secured' meant an investor was 'first in line' in the event of a bankruptcy and 'non-secured' creditors would receive value after secured-creditors were paid," ..."In the Chrysler bankruptcy, however, secured creditors received $.29 on the dollar even as non-secured creditors received higher values and ended up with a 55% ownership of the new company, which is fundamentally wrong and a dangerous precedent to the capital markets." We've worried that the Chrysler sandbagging would discourage bond investment. And, sure enough, Mr. Mourdock says that from now on no funds under his control will invest in the secured debt of "General Motors, other manufacturing companies, or those insurance companies who have or will be receiving bailout funds." Given the recent actions by the feds, he adds, "the risk is too great for any prudent investor to accept." This isn't political grandstanding. Public investment officials like Mr. Mourdock have a fiduciary duty to seek maximum returns for retirees. The question for all public officials responsible for investing pension money is whether they too should conclude that investing in U.S.-aided companies now carries so much political risk that it violates their legal obligations. Such are the wages of White House disdain for legal contracts.
The situation w/r GM bondholders is even more egregious. GM bonds were sold in smaller-than-usual denominations to small holders who are now out of pocket and anything but "speculators." They are, however, still outranked by the UAW......
http://tinyurl.com/pjuk3nTheft In Name Of Stimulus Is Still Theft By WALTER E. WILLIAMS Most of our nation's great problems, including our economic problems, have as their root decaying moral values. ...we have become an immoral people left with little more than the pretense of morality....Do you believe that it is moral and just for one person to be forcibly used to serve the purposes of another? And, if that person does not peaceably submit to being so used, do you believe that there should be the initiation of some kind of force against him?...For me, the answer is no to both questions, but I bet that your average college professor, politician or minister would not give a simple yes or no response. They would be evasive and probably say that it all depends. In thinking about questions of morality, my initial premise is that I am my private property, and you are your private property. That's simple. What's complex is what percentage of me belongs to someone else....accept the idea of self-ownership, then certain acts are readily revealed as moral or immoral. ...rape and murder are immoral because they violate one's private property rights. Theft of the physical things that we own, such as cars, jewelry and money, also violates our ownership rights.
The reason why your college professor, politician or minister cannot give a simple yes or no answer to the question of whether one person should be used to serve the purposes of another is because they are sly enough to know that either answer would be troublesome for their agenda. A yes answer would put them firmly in the position of supporting some of mankind's most horrible injustices such as slavery....A no answer would put them on the spot as well because that would mean they would have to come out against taking the earnings of one American to give to another in the forms of farm and business handouts, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and thousands of similar programs that account for more than two-thirds of the federal budget. There is neither moral justification nor constitutional authority for what amounts to legalized theft. This is not an argument against paying taxes. ...no way out of our immoral quagmire....now that the U.S. Congress has established the principle that one American has a right to live at the expense of another American, it no longer pays to be moral. People who choose to be moral and refuse congressional handouts will find themselves losers. They'll be paying higher and higher taxes to support increasing numbers of those paying lower and lower taxes.
As it stands now, close to 50% of income earners have no federal income tax liability and as such, what do they care about rising income taxes? ...once legalized theft begins, it becomes too costly to remain moral and self-sufficient. ...join in the looting, including the current looting in the name of stimulating the economy....a historian, a hundred years from now, will footnote America as a historical curiosity where people once enjoyed private property rights and limited government, but it all returned to mankind's normal state of affairs — arbitrary abuse and control by the powerful elite.

Corruption: From C (Chicago) to Z (Zogby polls)

It is well known that people's opinions are shaped by what they believe are the opinions of OTHERS. The ability of pollsters to shade results through nuanced wording ( or more overt means) is so obvious that we have "Democratic" pollsters and "Republican" pollsters. The results of the Zogby polls on U.S. voters relevant to the Middle East have long been questionable due to the two brothers: one Zogby, the pollster, the other the head of an "Arab-American" lobbying organization. Now we might see a Chicago innovation: from "pay-to-play" to "pay-to-say." Also, the link to a pre-eminent family of perhaps-legal-but-clearly-unethical corruption: the Jacksons of Chicago.Jesse Jackson Jr. Pays Campaign Funds to Chicago Alderman Wife By Timothy J. Burger May 21 (Bloomberg) -- Representative Jesse Jackson Jr.’s congressional campaign organization has paid his wife at least $247,500 since 2001, including at least $95,000 after Sandra Jackson joined the Chicago City Council...received the $95,000 for political consulting after pledging during her campaign to give “my full attention” to the alderman’s post. ... the Chicago Democrat’s fundraising is so entangled with his family’s interests that he’s pushing the limits of propriety, said ... a nonprofit ethics watchdog group.“Much of this may be legal, but let’s refer back to an old quote: the scandal in Washington often is what’s legal,” ...Jackson is availing himself of the full range of loopholes by which he can transfer money to his family.”...“Both the congressman and alderman take pride in being in compliance with federal, state and local laws, and rules and ethics codes.”Jackson,...is the subject of a House ethics probe into his contacts with ousted Illinois Democratic Governor Rod Blagojevich...Voter ‘Favorite’ Last November, Sandi Jackson’s political committee paid for a statewide poll showing her husband as “the favorite” among Illinois voters to fill Obama’s Senate seat.... Questioned during the City Council race about living in Washington, Sandi Jackson wrote on a campaign blog that, if elected, “it is my intention to reside full time in Chicago and to give the ward and its residents my full attention.”...Different Names/“Using all these different names to describe the same person raises questions as to whether they’re intentionally disguising information on their FEC reports,” said ...a former FEC official....the filings create the appearance that Jackson “made efforts to hide some of the expenditures to his wife by using names different from how his wife is known.”...In addition to payments for consulting work, Jesse Jackson’s political committee has transferred more than $227,000 to Sandi Jackson’s campaign organization since October 2006, according to his campaign reports. He provided in-kind benefits of $71,914, including billboard space worth about $66,000....The congressman got some reciprocal benefit when the “Friends of Sandi Jackson” campaign bankrolled a Zogby International poll that showed Jesse Jackson atop a list of 10 possible contenders to replace Obama in the Senate. Sandi Jackson’s campaign reports show almost $26,000 paid to Utica, New York-based Zogby two days before polling began....the Jacksons are “now reviewing the circumstances of the poll, to determine whether reimbursement is appropriate.”....................
http://tinyurl.com/qwexks
Corruption in Illinois Costs Each Family $109 as Reform Stalls

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Obama extorts "endorsements" for $Trillions in healthcare and gas savings

The healthcare industry showed up to promise they will save Obama 2 Trillions in savings with the sincerity and enthusiasm of puppets or, more appositely, guys propped up on the stakes of Vlad the Impaler. The farcical idea that extending healthcare benefits and paying for some high-cost procedures will, nevertheless, (or, even, consequentially ) save money is really hard to make pass the snicker test.
Having had to face this, we were then fronted with the U.S. auto industry trotted out to endorse more stringent standards of both mileage and emissions simultaneously. This calls for either a suspension of the laws of physics or the substitution of golf carts for automobiles. Again, Vlad the Impaler had staked out these endorsers, totally beholden to the President, to mouth agreement. We were treated to the idea that new cars would cost the consumer a mere $1500 extra but the extra fuel savings would pay that back in three years, all the projections being in the future. The present CAFE standards have been estimated to cost 40000 deaths that would not have occurred if cars were not compulsorily lightened but the new ones boggle the mind with respect to the carnage, assuming that the car-buying public won't laugh these designs out of existence. The last time a government designed an automobile, it produced ...the YUGO! When Chrysler trots out its new designs they won't be by Fiat, the Italian source; rather they will be by fiat, bureaucratic ukase sourced in Washington.
We are also being treated to the idea of cap-and-trade, a tax on carbon-based fuels which should more than wipe out any of the cost savings fantastically predicted under the CAFE rubric.
The one thing that can be said is that Obama is a serious man: how else can someone spout such utter nonsense with a straight face?

The Audacity of "Nope" and unwoolly thinking by Woolsey

The frilly Valentine is not for friends By Wesley Pruden
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/pruden051909.php3
http://tinyurl.com/qkr852
Benjamin Netanyahu is back in town, and he could make Barack Obama's life easier if he would just go away. The president is trying to concentrate on the frilly Valentine he's taking to the Muslims next month in Cairo, the latest stop on his global blush, bow low and apologize tour.Mr. Netanyahu is an unwelcome reminder of the reality lying in ambush out there, where things go bump not in the night but in midafternoon, and all manner of evil lurks in the hearts of barbarians. Mr. Obama thinks a good shoeshine, a working teleprompter and a pretty speech can transform that ugly reality into something nice that maybe even smells good. Mr. Netanyahu and his countrymen have to deal with an ugly reality that stinks. They understand what Dr. Johnson was talking about with his celebrated observation that "the prospect of hanging concentrates the mind wonderfully." Survival in the Middle East is a full-time job.
The Israeli prime minister, who grew up in America and has been here before as prime minister, arrived in an Obamaworld he couldn't recognize and where he is not particularly welcome. The War on Terror is over, replaced by an "enhanced" unpleasantness in Afghanistan that we're supposed to call an "overseas contingency operation," where terrorists are "improvisational ideologues" and once captured can be politely called "custodial informants." We lost the War on Drugs, and the new drug czar suggests that we not call it a war. "Dialogue with controlled-substance entrepreneurs" would improve the self-esteem of the drug dealers. We don't do deficits any more; they're "inverted surpluses." No one will be killed in Mr. Obama's "augmented" war in Afghanistan; the dead will merely be "reassigned to operations in a command in another realm."
Once explained to Mr. Netanyahu, the new enhanced road map to a viable settlement in the Middle East through the peace process (are any cliches missing?) was plain and clear. Concessions are for the Jews to make, as he learned Monday at the White House, and rewards are for the Palestinians.
Mr. Obama and his policymakers, not all of whom assign Israeli security a particularly high priority, are determined to impose the Palestinian version of a two-state solution on Israel and freeze expansion of Jewish settlements on territory occupied since the Arabian knights lost the Six-Day War. The Jewish settlers get in the way of the Palestinian gunners firing rockets into villages in northern Israel. Mr. Netanyahu, on the other hand, is more interested in what the West — i.e., Israel and the United States — can do to deter Iran, which is furiously developing nuclear weapons with which to rearrange the topography and demography of Israel. Mr. Obama thinks milk toast and weak tea, which he calls "diplomacy," can make a Christian (so to speak) out of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This in turn will invite normal diplomatic ties between Israel and its Muslim neighbors. Mr. Netanyahu recognizes this as more of Mr. Obama's pie in the sky, which is indigestible when served with milk toast and weak tea."There is a sense of urgency on our side," Uzi Arad, the prime minister's adviser on national security, told correspondents on the eve of Monday's session at the White House. But the only urgency apparent in Washington is for more talk.Authentic peace in the Middle East, which has never known authentic peace, will continue to be elusive well into the outer eons. President Obama thinks endless negotiations on agreements the Palestinians won't keep will encourage the Arab states to join the "pressure," such as it may be, to persuade Iran to straighten up and fly right. The Israelis see getting tough with Iran as the way to exploit Arab fears of Iran as a rogue power, mistrusted by everyone and emboldened by its nuclear weapons.Mr. Obama may be sincere in his confidence that his soaring oratory can make rough places smooth and hard places plain, even persuade Arabs to like Jews, but talk is cheaper in the Middle East than anywhere else on the planet.
In his conversations with Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Obama, comfortable in his bubble of mindless worship and wonder, with nothing to lose but his fading reputation as a messiah, is talking to someone with everything to lose. Israel is surrounded by mortal enemies, heavily armed and getting more so. Israel's enemies can continue to lose the wars they start, and live to rearm and make war again. Israel loses once, and it's all over. Like the prospect of the rope, this, too, concentrates the rational mind wonderfully well.....................................................
Obama approach to Mideast peace makes U.S. less secureBy Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/gaffney.jpg http://www.blogger.com/
This is a lousy time to have a president in the White House who is, apparently, contemptuous of Winston Churchill. President Obama met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, the latest in a series of efforts aimed at weakening Israel and otherwise bending it to the U.S. administration's will — a practice against which an historian/statesman like Churchill would have strenuously warned. In his extraordinary memoir, "The Gathering Storm," the future British prime minister recalled how he had publicly pronounced in the run-up to World War II that he could not "imagine a more dangerous policy" than one then being practiced by the British government. It involved trying to appease Adolf Hitler by encouraging Britain's principal continental ally, France, to disarm -- even as Nazi Germany was remilitarizing in increasingly offensive ways. This practice was subsequently applied by both the British and French as they compelled another powerful ally, Czechoslovakia, to surrender its formidable Western defenses and military-industrial capabilities to the Nazis. The results of these misbegotten initiatives produced not peace, but an unprecedented conflagration. Extreme care should be exercised to avoid a repetition of this tragic history.
Yet, every indication is that Mr. Obama is determined to weaken Israel, America's most important and reliable ally in the Middle East, by forcing the Jewish state to surrender territory and make other strategic concessions in order to create a Palestinian state. As in the past, this weaken-your-friend approach to achieving the so-called two-state solution will not work. It will encourage, not eliminate, the abiding ambition of other nations in the region and their terrorist proxies to "wipe Israel off the map." It will actually exacerbate regional instability, not alleviate it.
Fortunately, another thoughtful student of history and accomplished statesman has come forth in Churchill's footsteps (and follows his example) by laying out a markedly different approach to the idea of creating a second state out of the 22 percent of the original mandate Palestine west of the Jordan River that was not given to the Arabs in 1922. (The other 78 percent became "Transjordan," known today simply as Jordan.) At a Washington dinner hosted on May 6 by the Endowment for Middle East Truth, R. James Woolsey was recognized as a "speaker of the truth." In his brief acceptance address, a man who has served presidents of both parties as undersecretary of the Navy, conventional arms control negotiator and director of central intelligence laid out preconditions that must apply before there is any likelihood of a Palestinian polity with which Israel might actually be able to live "side by side in peace."
Mr. Woolsey's analysis is informed by the status Israeli Arabs enjoy in the Jewish state today. They make up roughly one-fifth of the population of Israel. They are able to have their own places of worship and schools. They are free to own and publish their own newspapers.Israel's Arab citizens are also entitled to vote for real representation in a real legislature. Currently, they have 10 of the 120 seats in the Israeli Knesset. There is an Arab justice on the Israeli Supreme Court. And an ethnically Arab Druze holds a seat in Mr. Netanyahu's Cabinet.Most importantly, as Mr. Woolsey notes, law-abiding Arab citizens of Israel "can go to sleep at night without having to worry that their door will be kicked down and they will be killed" by agents of the Israeli government or others among the majority Jewish population. In short, they enjoy real security as well as opportunities in a society in which Israeli Arabs are a distinct minority.
Regrettably, as Mr. Woolsey notes, the world has a tendency to "define deviancy down for non-Jews." As a result, governments around the world, including the Obama administration, never even mention the possibility that Jews should be able to enjoy the same rights and privileges in any future Palestinian polity that Israeli Arabs exercise today in the Jewish state.
So, instead of what amounts to a Hitlerian program of Judenrein in any prospective Palestinian state — meaning, as a practical matter, if not a de jure one, that no Jews can reside or work there — there could be about twice the number of Israeli Jews as currently reside in so-called settlements on the West Bank. They should be free to build synagogues and Jewish schools. And newspapers that serve the Jewish population in any future state of "Palestine" should be permitted to flourish there.
Jews should also have a chance to elect representatives to a future Palestinian legislature. They should be able to expect to be represented as well in other governing institutions, like the executive and judicial branches.
In order for the foregoing to operate, Jews in the Palestinian state must be able to live without fearing every day for their lives. In Mr. Woolsey's view, "Once Palestinians are behaving that way, they deserve a state."

By establishing full reciprocity as the prerequisite basis for a two-state solution Mr. Obama might just be able to make useful progress toward peace in the Middle East. If, however, he persists in distancing the United States from Israel and otherwise weakening the Jewish state, he will likely get war, not a durable end to hostilities. As Churchill and Mr. Woolsey might attest, no good will come of Mr. Obama ignoring history and his efforts to euchre Israel into doing the same.