Obama seems prepared to dump on Israel even to the point of its existence.

http://tinyurl.com/ybv366d
***Obama's antipathy for Netanyahu, Israel and, possibly, Jews outside of his administration seems curious in an American President. His snubbing of the British seems likewise strange. In both case, policy might be coming from his personal animus (the British colonial powers oppressed his forebears in Kenya; he was marinated in anti-Semitism in his decades on the South Side of Chicago with the Rev. Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Rashid Khalidi and the Chicago Palestinian community.) Perhaps he just doesn't understand. Despite his supposed intellectualism, he is innumerate, seems to know very little history ( and, worse, seems to misunderstand it by "knowing" things that aren't so ) and his soaring rhetoric seems often separate from logic, facts, and basic principles of causality. He might well believe that the Israeli presence in the Middle East "caused" 9/11 and that the jihadists are somehow provoked. His "outreach" to the Muslim worl in the light of terrorism including 9/11 seems peculiar, at the least.Having finally acknowledtged that Al Qaeda is an enemy, does he yet recognize other Muslim jihadis inimical to Western Civilization? That is, Iran isn't part of Al Qaeda and his strange silence about the nature of Maj. Hasan 's terrorism at Ft Hood is peculiar. ***
http://tinyurl.com/ykoohuj
Barack The GoodThe big government liberalism that Mr. Obama uses to make himself history-making also alienates him in the center-right America of today.
By SHELBY STEELE
****Steele thinks that Obama's narcissism impels him to be transformative and to "make a difference" whether the transformation be for good or ill so long as it's significant. ****
****As a narcissitic control freak, his first steps and the final desiderata are clear.****//
Obama Wants Israel's Netanyahu Out By: Dick Morris & Eileen McGann
Why is President Barack Obama so obviously humiliating Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu?hy is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton negating everything she said when she represented New York state and piling on the Jewish state? ****Because she has few core principles and those do not apply to Israel (and she's a political opportunist.)****
They want Netanyahu out. Specifically, they want him to feel such pressure that he dumps his right-wing coalition partners and forms a new government with the center-left party Kadima, headed by former Prime Minister Tzipi Livni.
Livni, who thinks nothing of trading land for peace, no matter how flawed the peace might be, will then hold Netanyahu's government hostage and force it to bend to the will of Washington and sign a deal with the Palestinians that cedes them land in return for a handful of vague vapors and promises, none of which will be kept.
On March 3 Livni said, in a Knesset debate, that since Netanyahu took control "Israel has become a pariah country in the world." ****Livni is as unprinciple an opportunist as is HIllary.****
She is trying to use Obama's and Clinton's rejection of Netanyahu's course to force her way into the government. And Obama and Clinton are intent on helping her do so by publicly humiliating Netanyahu.****Rahm Emanuel did a similar hatchet job on Netanyahu under the behest of the Clinton White House.****
Netanyahu insists that he'd be happy to negotiate a peace accord. But, as he told me last year, "I just don't have a peace partner with whom to negotiate."
The Palestinians are expert at playing "good cop/bad cop" with Israel. The good cop — the Palestinian Authority — wants to negotiate a peace deal and insists on signs of Israeli good faith in order to do so.
Meanwhile, the bad cop — Hamas — fires missiles at Israel from Gaza, land Israel ceded to the Palestinians in order to promote the peace process earlier in the decade.
Any peace deal with the Palestinian Authority will not be binding on Hamas, and the pattern of Gaza will likely play out again: First, Israel cedes land to the Palestinian Authority. Second, Hamas seizes the newly ceded land through elections or military action. Third, Hamas refuses to recognize the peace deal and uses the newly acquired territory as a base from which to launch further attacks against Israel.
Insanity is defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome each time.
When Hillary Clinton and President Obama explode in indignation against Israel for building apartments in East Jerusalem, they deliberately miss the point: There is no reason for Israel to catalyze peace negotiations when there is no single entity that is both committed to peace and speaks for the entire Palestinian people.
Without a peace partner, negotiations are either a trip to nowhere or a slippery slope to more Gaza-like concessions that do nothing but strengthen the enemies of Israel without providing any advancement to the cause of peace.
The merits of building in East Jerusalem or the need for a moratorium on all settlement construction are quite irrelevant as long as a substantial body of Palestinian opinion wants a war with Israel and the prevailing political authority in Gaza insists on the Jewish state's eradication.
So why are Obama and Clinton so intent on raising the profile of the construction issue and publicizing it?
One suspects an effort is afoot to link Israeli resistance to the peace process with the ongoing loss of American lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, if not to the global terrorism of al-Qaida.
Gen. David Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee that "Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships with governments and peoples [in the region] … Enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the area of responsibility." In other words, blame Israel.****Petraeus denies having said these things.****
And ultimately, the administration's agenda may be to explain its withdrawal of support for Israel by blaming its stubborn insistence on housing construction.
One can well see the Obama administration learning to live with an Iranian nuclear weapon, all the while blaming Israel for fomenting Iranian hostility by building housing.
Meanwhile, through American aid to Gaza, the Obama administration is helping Hamas to solidify its position in Gaza and lengthen its lease on political power — the very power it is using to torpedo the peace process.

Why is Obama dumping on Israel? Three reasons: all blameworthy and all predictable.

http://tinyurl.com/yfpf9us
Obama Snubs Netanyahu at White House By: Dan Weil
President Obama snubbed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in several ways during his visit to Washington this week...//
http://tinyurl.com/y8t9xok
Why Does Obama Want an Israel Crisis? by Charles Krauthammer
Why did President Barack Obama choose to turn a gaffe into a crisis in U.S.-Israeli relations?...It was certainly not a policy change, let alone a betrayal. The neighborhood is in Jerusalem, and the 2009 Netanyahu-Obama agreement was for a 10-month freeze on West Bank settlements excluding Jerusalem. Nor was the offense intentional....The next day, however, the administration went nuclear....Clinton's spokesman then publicly announced that Israel was now required to show in word and in deed its seriousness about peace. Israel? Israelis have been looking for peace -- literally dying for peace -- since 1947, when they accepted the U.N. partition of Palestine into a Jewish and Arab state. (The Arabs refused and declared war. They lost.) Israel made peace offers in 1967, 1978 and in the 1993 Oslo peace accords that Yasser Arafat tore up seven years later to launch a terror war that killed a thousand Israelis. Why, Clinton's own husband testifies to the remarkably courageous and visionary peace offer made in his presence by Ehud Barak (now Netanyahu's defense minister) at the 2000 Camp David talks. Arafat rejected it. In 2008, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered equally generous terms to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas. Refused again. In these long and bloody 63 years, the Palestinians have not once accepted an Israeli offer of permanent peace, or ever countered with anything short of terms that would destroy Israel. ...What reciprocal gesture, let alone concession, has Abbas made during the Obama presidency? Not one....And Clinton demands that Israel show its seriousness about peace? Now that's an insult.
So why this astonishing one-sidedness? Because Obama likes appeasing enemies while beating up on allies -- therefore Israel shouldn't take it personally (according to Robert Kagan)? Because Obama wants to bring down the current Israeli coalition government (according to Jeffrey Goldberg)? Or is it because Obama fancies himself the historic redeemer whose irresistible charisma will heal the breach between Christianity and Islam or, if you will, between the post-imperial West and the Muslim world -- and has little patience for this pesky Jewish state that brazenly insists on its right to exist, and even more brazenly on permitting Jews to live in its own ancient, historical and now present capital?...****Krauthammer doesn't touch a fourth explanation: that Obama has marinated for decades in the anti-Semitism of the Rev. Wright, of Louis Farrakhan, of the South Side Chicago Palestinian community of Rashid Khalidi and Ali Abunemah ( who says Obama told him that 1) he would do whatever he could for the Palestinians if ever he had the power to do so and 2) he could no longer openly associate with Abunemah once he got elected but his sympathies remained the same .)For three-quarters of American Jews to have voted for Obama ( the third most supportive group after African-Americans and Muslim-Americans) is perhaps reflective of the mindset of European Jews who couldn't believe that anyone hated them so much as to instigate the Holocaust. ****
The fourth explanation has been offered by others, not even recently:
http://tinyurl.com/y88g4tq
THE SOURCE OF OBAMA'S ANTI-ISRAEL POLICY
E.W. Jackson Sr.June 16, 2009
Like Obama, I am a graduate of Harvard Law School. I too have Muslims in my family. I am black, and I was once a leftist Democrat. Since our backgrounds are somewhat similar, I perceive something in Obama's policy toward Israel which people without that background may not see. All my life I have witnessed a strain of anti-Semitism in the black community. It has been fueled by the rise of the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan, but it predates that organization.
We heard it in Jesse Jackson's "HYMIE town" remark years ago during his presidential campaign.... In Chicago, the anti-Jewish sentiment among black people is even more pronounced because of the direct influence of Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam...

As the Post-American President tries to create 12M Post-American voters via Amnesty

Some are contemplating moving to Mexico (for their expected-to-be-better healthcare);
MOVING TO MEXICO
Dear Mr. President:
I'm planning to move my family and extended family intoMexico for my health, and I would like to ask you to assist me.
We're planning to simply walk across the border from the U.S. into Mexico , and we'll need your help to make a few arrangements.
We plan to skip all the legal stuff like visas, passports, immigration quotas and laws.
I'm sure they handle those things the same way you do here. So, would you mind telling your buddy, President Calderon, that I'm on my way over?
Please let him know that I will be expecting the following:1. Free medical care for my entire family.
2. English-speaking government bureaucrats for all services I might need, whether I use them or not.
3. Please print all Mexican government forms in English.
4. I want my grandkids to be taught Spanish by English-speaking (bi-lingual) teachers.
5. Tell their schools they need to include classes on American culture and history.
6. I want my grandkids to see the American flag on one of the flag poles at their school.
7. Please plan to feed my grandkids at school for both breakfast and lunch.
8. I will need a local Mexican driver's license so I can get easy access to government services.
9. I do plan to get a car and drive in Mexico , but, I don't plan to purchase car insurance, and I probably won't make any special effort to learn local traffic laws.
10. In case one of the Mexican police officers does not get the memo from their president to leave me alone, please be sure that every patrol car has at least one English-speaking officer.
11. I plan to fly the U.S. flag from my house top, put U S. flag decals on my car, and have a gigantic celebration on July 4th. I do not want any complaints or negative comments from the locals.
12. I would also like to have a nice job without paying any taxes, or have any labor or tax laws enforced on any business I may start.
13. Please have the president tell all the Mexican people to be extremely nice and never say critical things about me or my family, or about the strain we might place on their economy.
14. I want to receive free food stamps.
15. Naturally, I'll expect free rent subsidies.
16. I'll need Income tax credits so, although I don't pay Mexican Taxes, I'll receive money from the government.
17. Please arrange it so that the Mexican Gov't pays $4,500 to help me buy a new car.
18.. Oh yes, I almost forgot, please enroll me free into the Mexican Social Security program so that I'll get a monthly income in retirement.
I know this is an easy request because you already do all these things for all his people who walk over to the U.S. from Mexico . I am sure that President Calderon won't mind returning the favor if you ask him nicely.
Thank you so much for your kind help. You da man!!!

Anti-semitic screeds are terrorism, they have to be refuted every time.

http://tinyurl.com/ykjhec8
From the Horse’s Mouth: Petraeus on Israel
MAX BOOT
...a former Arafat aide who now pals around with Hamas and Hezbollah — posted an article on Foreign Policy’s website, claiming that General David Petraeus was behind the administration’s policy of getting tough with Israel. He attributed to Petraeus the view that “Israel’s intransigence” ...“could cost American lives.” His item received wide circulation ****and repetition by such certified anti-Semites as Pat Buchanan ( the late Wm F Buckley Jr., with disgust, so-identified his fellow conservative )***
...Perry’s item was a gross distortion —in fact a fraud....Better to look at what (Petraeus)( actually told Congress — in a hearing he barely mentioned Israel (until prompted to do so) and never talked about settlements at all....The answer has now been publicly provided by Petraeus himself in a speech in New Hampshire...The general said that it was “unhelpful” that “bloggers” had “picked … up” what he had said and “spun it.” He noted that, aside from Israel’s actions, there are many other important factors standing in the way of peace, including “a whole bunch of extremist organizations, some of which by the way deny Israel’s right to exist. There’s a country that has a nuclear program who denies that the Holocaust took place. So again we have all these factors in there. This [Israel] is just one.”...He concluded by noting that he had sent to General Gabi Ashkenazi, chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, the “blog by Max Boot” which, he said, had “picked apart this whole thing, as he typically does, pretty astutely.”...Those who are either happy or unhappy about the administration’s approach to Israel should lodge their compliments or complaints where they belong — at the White House, not at Central Command.//
http://tinyurl.com/ykehkjw
Still Spinning Petraeus and Israel By Philip Klein...

Why does Obama single out this jihadist for special treatment?

http://tinyurl.com/yfdzz8z
Obama Welcomes A Stealth JihadistAssyrian International News Agency3-25-2010
Five years after being barred from the U.S. for making charitable contributions to a group that sent those contributions to the jihad terror group Hamas, internationally renowned Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan, often dubbed "the Muslim Martin Luther," will make his first public appearance in America this April after being permitted to enter the country. The turnabout comes not because Ramadan has been cleared of these charges, but because Secretary of State Clinton has, in the words of State spokesman Darby Holladay, "chosen to exercise her exemption authority for the benefit of Tariq Ramadan."
Holladay disingenuously suggested that the Bush Administration had barred Ramadan from the country because of his opposition to the Iraq War, but no "exemption authority" would have been needed to overturn a ban that had been put in place for that reason. Clinton was exempting Ramadan from prohibitions on supporters of terror groups entering the country.

And ironically, days after the Obama State Department announced the exemption for Ramadan, a Detroit-area Muslim named Mohamad Mustapha Ali Masfaka was arrested at the border while attempting to cross from Canada back into the United States. His crime? Lying to the FBI and immigration officials about his work with the Holy Land Foundation, formerly the largest Islamic charity in the United States, which has now been shut down for funneling charitable contributions to Hamas.

So what is the difference between Tariq Ramadan and Mohamad Mustapha Ali Masfaka? They have both allegedly been disingenuous about their ties to a Hamas charity, and yet Ramadan is free to enter the United States and Masfaka is under arrest. So what unique and compelling benefit does Tariq Ramadan bring to the U.S. that would move Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to bend their own anti-terror rules and make this exemption for him?

The answer, of course, is that Tariq Ramadan is internationally famous as a voice of Islamic moderation -- and a vocal critic of the Bush Administration's Middle East policies, which the Obama Administration very much wants to subject to public criticism. Mohamad Mustapha Ali Masfaka, in contrast, toils in relative obscurity and offers the Obama Administration no such political fringe benefits. Ramadan represents the kind of Muslim who should respond most favorably to Obama's recurring pleas for a new relationship based on mutual respect: urbane, sophisticated, Westernized, closely identified with Islamic moderation and reform. In fact, Holladay explained the exemption for Ramadan in terms that specifically recalled Obama's repeated appeals: "Both the president and the secretary of state have made it clear that the US government is pursuing a new relationship with Muslim communities based on mutual interest and mutual respect."

However, there are cracks in Ramadan's façade that should have raised eyebrows even in Obama's State Department. Ramadan is the grandson of Hasan Al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood -- an international Islamic supremacist organization that is dedicated, in its own words (according to an internal Brotherhood document captured in a raid of the Holy Land Foundation), to "eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within and sabotaging its miserable house." French journalist Caroline Fourest, who has published a book-length study of Ramadan's sly duplicity, Brother Tariq, concludes that this much-lionized putative Muslim Martin Luther is actually anything but a reformer: in reality, Ramadan is "remaining scrupulously faithful to the strategy mapped out by his grandfather, a strategy of advance stage by stage" toward the imposition of Islamic law in the West.

Ramadan, she explains, in his public lectures and writings invests words like "law" and "democracy" with subtle and carefully crafted new definitions, permitting him to engage in "an apparently inoffensive discourse while remaining faithful to an eminently Islamist message and without having to lie overtly -- at least not in his eyes." Ramadan, she said, "may have an influence on young Islamists and constitute a factor of incitement that could lead them to join the partisans of violence."

In light of Ramadan's smooth duplicity, his new welcome into the U.S. is a fitting symbol for the entire catastrophe of the Obama Administration's policy toward the Middle East and Islamic terror. Obama reaches out to the Islamic world, assuming that his overtures will be welcomed by voices of reason and restraint. But in making this appeal, Obama drastically underestimates the jihad threat and mistakes all too many enemies for friends. And so now he also underestimates and misevaluates Tariq Ramadan, with consequences that no one can foretell at this point, but which are not likely to be positive.

By Robert Spencer
www.frontpagemag.com

Congressional Black Caucus caught faking racial incident (but not by the MSMedia!)

Andrew Breitbart Offers $10,000 Prize for Anyone Who Can Document Tea Party Protesters Yelling N-Word at the Congressional Black Caucus Saturday Matt Welch
Considering that some of the staffers within proximity of the alleged slurs were reportedly pointing cameras toward the crowd, this would seem like easy money if the story is true. As Michael Moynihan pointed out earlier this week, the anecdote has been presented as fact all over the journalism world.
****Members of the Congressional Black Caucus formed a flying wedge through protesters in what was evidently an effort to provoke a rude and/or violent response from those who could be identified as members of the Tea Party Coalition. Despite there being not a shred of evidence that anything at all happened, John Lewis and others subsequently accused the crowd of yelling the "N-word" FIFTEEN TIMES and spitting at them.

Andrew Breitbart is calling these agents provocateurs on their mendacity ( their accusations having been taken up as literally true by MSNBC and other MSM flacks ) by offering $10,000 to the Negro College Fund if any tape or cellphone evidence can be adduced to even ONE instance of the epithet or spitting. If none such emerge but Messrs Lewis et al still aver that the epithets were hurled albeit in such a low tone as to escape notice, Breitbart will still pay the $10K if Mr. Lewis et al will submit to, and pass, a lie detector test about their allegations. Further, Speaker Pelosi came through the same route shortly after the alleged instances carrying a large gavel and accompanied by her entourage of Capitol police and security. It is hardly likely that, had the alleged incidents occurred, that the security detail would have allowed Ms. Pelosi to follow the same route through the same crowd. While John Lewis might have been a civil rights leader 40 years ago, his present posture is that of a mendacious hater and divider and he should be accorded only contempt even in this politically correct society. ****

Obama/Hillary are anti-Israel, Gen. Petraeus is NOT.

http://tinyurl.com/yj9e6dd
A Lie: David Petraeus, Anti-Israel Max Boot - ...consider the misleading commentary that continues to emerge, attributing anti-Israeli sentiment to Gen. David Petraeus. I already knocked down one fallacious Web item written by terrorist groupie Mark Perry on Foreign Policy’s web site. The meme has also been refuted by other Foreign Policy contributors. But Media Matters, the far-Left activist group founded by David Brock, continues to peddle this twaddle...****Gen Petraeus, not a darling of the Moveon.org crowd,does not join Hillary and Obama in blaming Israel for everything (or even much of anything.)****

Is Hillary a fool or malicious?

Clinton on Arab Incitement: Ignorance or a Lie? by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech to American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) this week incorrectly blamed Hamas, instead of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, for inciting violence by praising terrorists.
Her brief comments on incitement referred to the newly-renamed Dalal Mughrabi Square in Ramallah, headquarters of the Palestinian Authority. PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas told Arab media in January, “Of course we want to name a square after” Mughrabi, who carried out the 1978 Coastal Road massacre in which 37 Israelis were murdered and dozens of others were wounded. She was killed during the attack.
Either intentionally or out of ignorance, Secretary Clinton stated, “When a Hamas-controlled municipality glorifies violence and renames a square after a terrorist who murdered innocent Israelis, it insults the families on both sides who have lost loved ones over the years in this conflict.”
In her speech, she also complimented Abbas, telling her audience, “We commend the government of President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad for the reforms they've undertaken to strengthen law and order, and the progress that they've made in improving the quality of life in the West Bank. But we encourage them to redouble their efforts to put an end to incitement and violence.”
Contradicting Secretary Clinton’s blaming Hamas for the renaming of the Square in honor of Mughrabi, the Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) has documented the continuous veneration of the woman terrorist by Abbas and the Palestinian Authority in the past two years.
It documented five references where Abbas personally glorified Mughrabi and 10 other examples where Fatah and other PA leaders praised her mass murder of Israelis.
Besides Abbas’ comment to the Arabic-language Al Hayat newspaper, he sponsored a celebration of her birthday in late December, as reported by the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority television station.
Abbas’ office also funded the Mughrabi computer center, where its dedication last May was attended by one of his advisors. He also sent his secretary general, Tayeb Abd al-Rahim, to speak in his name earlier this month, calling Mughrabi the “bridge over which we pass on the way to our freedom,” according to PMW.
Abbas also sponsored high school graduation ceremonies in 2008 in honor of the terrorist, where his representative “reviewed the heroic life of the Shahida [martyr]."
Although Secretary Clinton blamed Hamas for praising Mughrabi, PMW cited other examples showing that Fatah, led by Abbas, and the Fatah-led PA lauded Mughrabi. Abbas’ Minister of Culture Siham Barghouti earlier this year defended naming the square after her, declaring that "honoring them [the Martyrs] this way is the least we can give them, and this is our right."
The square was dedicated two weeks ago, on the same day that U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was visiting Israel. Abbas had canceled the ceremony because of the timing, but the Fatah youth movement decided to stage its own ceremony that night.
That same day, PA television praised the Coastal Road Massacre, calling the attack "a glorious chapter in the history of the Palestinian people."
The day after the square was named and when Vice President Biden already was in the air on his return to Washington, Fatah Central Committee member Tawfiq Tirawi said at a second dedication of the square, "We shall not submit to any threats, and we are here today to celebrate our history and our battle in naming the square after Mughrabi."
Fatah also held a summer camp in 2008 named for Mughrabi "out of honor and admiration for the Shahida.”

Hypocrites have absolutely no shame. Exempting the Obamklatura.

No ObamaCare for Obama
3/24/2010 Washington Times Editorial
President Obama declared that the new health care law "is going to be affecting every American family." Except his own, of course.
The new health care law exempts the president from having to participate in it. Leadership and committee staffers in the House and Senate who wrote the bill are exempted as well. A weasel-worded definition of "staff" includes only the members' personal staff in the new system; the committee staff that drafted the legislation opted themselves out. Because they were more familiar with the contents of the law than anyone in the country, it says a lot that they carved out their own special loophole. Anyway, the law is intended to affect "ordinary Americans," according to Vice President Joe Biden (who - being a heartbeat away from the presidency - also is not covered), not Washington insiders.

Mr. Obama frequently tossed around the talking point that the new law gave people the same type of coverage as Congress enjoyed. In his March 20 health care pep talk to wavering Democrats on Capitol Hill, the president said one of the advantages of the health care legislation was that "people will have choice and competition just like members of Congress have choice and competition." At yesterday's signing ceremony, Mr. Obama said Americans will be "part of a big pool, just like federal employees are part of a big pool. They'll have the same choice of private health insurance that members of Congress get for themselves." But the American people will have a public pool; the executive branch and congressional staffers kept their country-club pool private.

Last year, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, spearheaded efforts to have all Americans included in the plan, but he ran into heavy opposition from unions representing federal workers - the same unions that were pro-Obamacare stalwarts. In September, the Senate approved a scaled-down amendment that covered members of Congress and their staff. When this provision later emerged from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's office, the leadership and committee staff loophole had appeared. A move in December by Mr. Grassley and Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, to close this loophole and to extend the law to senior members of the executive branch - including the president, vice president and Cabinet members - was blocked by Senate Democratic leaders.

Mr. Grassley has introduced an amendment to the Senate health care reconciliation bill that also will apply the law to the upper tier of the executive branch and all Capitol Hill staffers, but it remains to be seen whether Democrats will let this measure move forward.

The special exemptions slipped into the health care law are another example of how those statists who rule consider themselves a privileged class, imposing burdens on the country that they will not accept themselves. Candidates for office in 2010 should pledge to close these and other loopholes in the law that impose unequal burdens and create exclusive privileged classes in America. Meanwhile, we await Mr. Obama's explanation why if his "historic" health care law is so great for America, it's not good enough for him and his family.

Brigitte Gabriel on the dangers of Muslims

http://tinyurl.com/yh3ah4n
Loyalty to the Constitution by practicing Muslims is doubtful.

The innumerate explain common-sense-defying arithmetic

****As the program gets bigger, WFA (waste, fraud & abuse) increases so eliminating WFA saves more and more. OK? ****
Jim Clyburn Explains It All
Then again, if the CBO can't do its job, the Democrats who are leading this effort can certainly try. Blogger Tom Elia notes that in an interview on MSNBC's "The Daily Rundown," Jim Clyburn--the No. 3 House Democrat, behind Steny Pelosi and Nancy Hoyer--explained exactly how ObamaCare is going to save the taxpayer money. Elia has the video, and the exchange starts at 1:30, but we thought it worth transcribing:

Chuck Todd: Can you explain how you get a trillion dollars in deficit reduction? I mean, the CBO didn't make it very clear. Do you feel like you understand how it is this bill somehow reduces the deficit by a trillion dollars in those out years?

Clyburn: I think I do. What we are squeezing out of this system--remember, Medicare is a big part of this. We're extending the life of Medicare by nine years, and if you're taking the waste, fraud and abuse out of this, the savings that you get there will come as things grow. Savings will grow. You look at the community health centers. Savings will grow more in out years than in the first few years. So I believe--well, that's my assessment, and that's the way I'm explaining it to members. I hope I'm right.

Savannah Guthrie: But Congressman, you know, speaking of actually the first 10 years, I think when ordinary Americans look at this and they hear this is a bill that will cost $940 billion but will reduce the deficit $138 billion, they don't understand how those two things go together. Can you just explain how you have to spend almost a trillion dollars to save $138 billion?

Clyburn: Well, because--sure. If you look at, as I said, the kind of savings that you build into the system, what it will save the federal government when you get people into these private insurance plans--the cost-shifting, all of that, out of the system. So if you got 32 million people coming onto insurance plans, that's 32 million people coming out of emergency rooms; that's 32 billion [sic] people that you don't have to pay for in all the cost-shifting that takes place in the system. When my wife had bypass surgery, I looked on her bill. We paid $15 for one aspirin. Then that takes all of that out of the system, and that's how you get that kind of savings, when you multiply that by the number of people that are getting primary care out of emergency rooms, you won't be doing that. That's the kind of stuff.

Are Obama/Holder/Napolitano on the right side of national security?

http://tinyurl.com/ykylr5x
Liz Cheney's Big Question Is the Obama administration on the right side of national security? By DANIEL HENNINGER
...The real question the ad raised was bigger than that: Is the Obama administration on the right side or wrong side of national security? That anyone should ask suggests a problem....from the actions and public statements on fighting terror at home by the men at the top: President Obama and Attorney General Holder. Every call seems to be a jump ball—closing Guantanamo, trial venues, reading airline bombers their Miranda rights. This is an inefficient and dangerous way to run an antiterror bureaucracy that needs clarity and consistency....Last March they rebranded the "war on terror" as "overseas contingency operations." Then came the "civilian" trial for 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, which even hyper-liberal Manhattanites couldn't take, no matter the assurances about the need to rediscover "our values."
In September seven former CIA directors, citing Agency morale, asked Mr. Obama to shut down Attorney General Holder's criminal probe of the CIA terrorist interrogators. Mr. Obama dismissed the appeal in a "Face the Nation" interview, asserting "nobody's above the law."...I'm convinced the reason liberal New York City re-elected Rudy Giuliani and then Mike Bloomberg twice was mainly to continue the 1990s' no-nonsense policing program of Commissioners William Bratton then and Ray Kelly now. The comfort level on the streets is the city's No. 1 issue, each day. After 9/11, that's true everywhere in the U.S....Where along the spectrum of personal safety do I and my family feel comfortable? On this score, the incoherence of the Obama administration's policies on domestic terrorism, detainees and military tribunals unsettles people...Looking at the failed Christmas airliner bombing, the aggressive recruitment of home-grown jihadis and the aborted Najibullah Zazi bombings in New York City, I'd say establishing a policy of coherence and constancy in meeting this threat is more urgent than the health-care odyssey Mr. Obama has forced on us for a year....You look at the Obama team's views on terrorism and the law, from the top down, and then ask yourself, Are they going to protect us 24/7 . . . or not? That's one question you never had to ask about John Yoo.

Aristotle said, "when the majority off-loads the tax burden on a minority, it destroys the polis.""

http://tinyurl.com/yaov92u
Tax Fairness Reaches A Tipping Point
Fiscal Policy: The latest data show a record number of people with no tax obligation. We also have the highest-earning nontaxpayers ever. With more riding the wagon and fewer pulling, it should soon break down.
A record number of the 142 million tax returns filed in 2008 resulted in no taxes owed, according to the Tax Foundation's analysis of the latest IRS data. About 51.6 million returns, or 36.3%, were filed by those whose deductions, exemptions and tax credits wiped out any federal income-tax obligation...

The Chicago Way

http://tinyurl.com/yk7uyvh
Health care reform in Washington meets the Chicago Way Reform effort finds its fall guys in Congress
...****It was bad enough when "all politics is local" but "local CHICAGO?"

A "Post-American" or "anti-American" President"?

****A friend to our enemies and an enemy to our friends. Not surprising; this guy shares very little of the "American experience" with other Americans, and especially little of the "black" experience. Indonesia? Hawaii? Harvard Law? The South Side of Chicago? Cocoons, all and not quintessentially American ones, at that.****
http://tinyurl.com/yjozupm
Israel and the Crisis With Obama Benjamin Netanyahu made the mistake of believing the president is serious about stopping a nuclear Iran.By JOHN BOLTON
...if Mr. Obama were simply another president in the long line since Franklin Roosevelt who vigorously asserted U.S. national interests, championed our friends (especially beleaguered ones), and kept alliances strong. But Mr. Obama is different. He is our first post-American president. He looks beyond American exceptionalism and believes that our role on the world stage should be merely one nation among many....Israel has sought to accommodate Mr. Obama on two critical issues: negotiations with Palestinians and Iranian nuclear weapons. ... now the suppressed conflicts are fully visible and will either be resolved or cause a serious collision between Israel and the U.S....Mr. Netanyahu's efforts to avoid open disputes with Washington have not won him White House plaudits. Mr. Obama almost certainly believes the real obstacle to peace is not new housing or unfortunate timing but so-called Israeli intransigence....As time passes, Israel's military option grows more difficult and the chances for success shrink as Iran seeks new air-defense systems and further buries and hardens nuclear facilities.
Mr. Netanyahu's mistake has been to assume that Mr. Obama basically agrees that we must prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. ...the White House ...will therefore not support using military force to thwart Tehran's nuclear ambitions....also unwilling to let anyone else, namely Israel, act instead. That means that if Israel bombs Iranian nuclear facilities, the president will likely withhold critical replenishments of destroyed Israeli aircraft and other weapons systems....a mistake to think that further delays in such a strike will materially change the toxic political response Israel can expect from the White House. Israel's support will come from Congress and the American people, as opinion polls show, not from the president.
Mr. Obama is not merely heedless of America's predominant global position. He is also embarrassed enough by it not to regret diminishing it. ...Ceding America's role in world affairs is not an act of becoming modesty but a dangerous signal of weakness to friends and adversaries alike. Israel may be the first ally to feel the pain.

Isn't it a bit odd for Holder even to speak of Miranda Rights for a dead terrorist.?

http://tinyurl.com/ygxjvog
Holder: Osama bin Laden will never face US trial
By DEVLIN BARRETT, Associated Press Writer – Tue Mar 16, 7:05 pm ET
WASHINGTON – Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress on Tuesday that Osama bin Laden will never face trial in the United States because he will not be captured alive.
In testy exchanges with House Republicans, the attorney general compared terrorists to mass murderer Charles Manson and predicted that events would ensure "we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden" not to the al-Qaida leader as a captive...****What are the workings of the Holder mind to come up with this bizarre statement?****

The only thing Obama believes about the Holocaust is that Jews go meekly to their deaths.

****Why else push Israel to test the "Samson Option?"****
http://tinyurl.com/ye4nosd
Behind Obama's Dangerous Overreaction on Israel By Anne Bayefsky
The Obama administration's hysterical response to Israel's announcement that it will continue to build new homes for its expanding population in disputed territory ought to evoke one response: Methinks thou doth protest too much....the United States is supposed to be committed to the parties determining ultimate legal ownership of the land in final status negotiations...Recent reports indicate that Mamhoud Abbas and company are still inculcating the next generation of budding terrorists in the abc's of antisemitism, refusing to put Israel on the map in their authorized school books and fanning the flames of Islamic extremists at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem - all of which is incitement and a gross violation of the Roadmap. As for Hamas, the other Palestinian authority running Gaza, it is just openly dedicated to Israel's annihilation....what really concerns the human rights gurus in the White House is preserving the option of apartheid Palestine. After all, the purpose of denying the ability of a Jew to build a house on land that theoretically may one day change hands, is to ensure that a Jew-free Palestinian state can come into existence unimpeded....the true explanation of the hyperbole of describing the announcement of housing plans as "insulting" - to use Clinton's word - is something else entirely: Iran. ****Biden should truly have been insulted if the Israelis had laughed out loud at his absurd proclamations about Iran.****...they have absolutely no intention of doing what is necessary to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran...The President's only way to prevent Israel from acting - without using more overt intimidation that would reveal his having put Israel's security way down on his list of priorities and risk a backlash in Congress - is to scare Israel fast with threatened isolation on a trumped-up affront like a bunch of new houses in the desert....Will Jews who voted overwhelmingly for Obama now perceive this President to be the most anti-Israel sitting U.S. commander-in-chief in Israel's history?...for the Vice President of the United States to stand before Israelis, address the greatest immediate threat to their peace and security and misrepresent the President's willingness to do what it takes to prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb - is what is really insulting.

Is Obama insensitive, stupid or just plain hostile?

http://tinyurl.com/ygcrvnt
The Settlements Aren't the Problem The Palestinians' beef with Israel isn't territorial—it's existential. By BRET STEPHENS
...Baruch Goldstein.., remember, was an Israeli settler who in 1994 entered the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and gunned down 29 Muslim worshippers....as last week's diplomatic eruption over the prospective construction of 1,600 housing units in municipal Jerusalem shows, the settlements are a constant irritant to the United States, one friend Israel can't afford to lose....The Israeli-Palestinian conflict isn't territorial. It's existential. Israelis are now broadly prepared to live with a Palestinian state along their borders. Palestinians are not yet willing to live with a Jewish state along theirs....other aspects of Palestinian behavior. For Hamas, Tel Aviv is no less a "settlement" ...Mohammed Dahlan, one of Fatah's key leaders, said the party was "not bound" by the 1993 Oslo Accords through which the PLO recognized Israel.****What does one do with people who openly violate the terms of treaties? Breach of contract voids the contract. Perhaps Fatah should be disbanded and shipped back to Tunisia.****
Then there is the test case of Gaza. When Israel withdrew all of its settlements from the Strip in 2005, it was supposed to be an opportunity for Palestinians to demonstrate what they would do with a state if they got one. ...****Actually, it DID so demonstrate!****...the most important thing Israel's withdrawal from Gaza accomplished was to expose the fanatical irredentism that still lies at the heart of the Palestinian movement....Israel withdrew from Gaza with assurances from the Bush administration that the U.S. would not insist on a return to the 1967 borders in brokering any future deal with the Palestinians. But Hillary Clinton reneged on that commitment last year...Israelis have learned that neither Palestinians nor Europeans can be taken at their word. That's a lesson they may soon begin to draw about the U.S. as well. ...
****A second point can be inferred from this column on why there won't be peace with Palestinians until generations after they have stopped inculcating their children with existential hatred against Israel ( and they haven't started to stop! ) Isn't it odd that we all remember the name of Dr. Baruch Goldstein, the lone Israeli terrorist? Of course, the reason is that the circumstance was so rare, one might say unique.Moreover, in the Goldstein case, it was likely a psychological snap rather than a cultural more.
Try to remember the names of the myriad Palestinians ( and other Muslims ) who have committed terrorist acts.News reports have long ceased to name them individually, so numerous are they. The only ones who recall their names are the Palestinians themselves who, as they did after Biden had left, honor their more efficient terrorist-killers with celebrations and naming streets after them. It is not gratuitous to remind Americans that Palestinians danced in the streets after hearing of 9/11... until Arafat realized it was a PR disaster, enforced a halt and then disingenuously donated blood.****

It's obvious that the Obama WH has been spoiling for a fight with the Israelis

A question is...WHY? Is it arrogant pique at Israel not immediately coming to heel? Intrinsic hostility to the Jewish state coming from Obama's Chicago mentoring by Farrakhan, Wright, Khalidi, Ayres et al?
Obama's Turn Against Israel The U.S. makes a diplomatic crisis out of a blunder.
In recent weeks, the Obama Administration has endorsed "healthy relations" between Iran and Syria, mildly rebuked Syrian President Bashar Assad for accusing the U.S. of "colonialism," and publicly apologized to Moammar Gadhafi for treating him with less than appropriate deference after the Libyan called for "a jihad" against Switzerland.
When it comes to Israel, however, the Administration has no trouble rising to a high pitch of public indignation. On a visit to Israel last week, Vice President Joe Biden condemned an announcement by a mid-level Israeli official that the government had approved a planning stage—the fourth out of seven required—for the construction of 1,600 housing units in north Jerusalem. Assuming final approval, no ground will be broken on the project for at least three years.
But neither that nor repeated apologies from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prevented Secretary of State Hillary Clinton—at what White House sources ostentatiously said was the personal direction of President Obama—from calling the announcement "an insult to the United States." White House political chief David Axelrod got in his licks on NBC's Meet the Press yesterday, lambasting Israel for what he described as "an affront."
Since nobody is defending the Israeli announcement, least of all an obviously embarrassed Israeli government, it's difficult to see why the Administration has chosen this occasion to spark a full-blown diplomatic crisis with its most reliable Middle Eastern ally. Mr. Biden's visit was intended to reassure Israelis that the Administration remained fully committed to Israeli security and legitimacy. In a speech at Tel Aviv University two days after the Israeli announcement, Mr. Biden publicly thanked Mr. Netanyahu for "putting in place a process to prevent the recurrence" of similar incidents.
The subsequent escalation by Mrs. Clinton was clearly intended as a highly public rebuke to the Israelis, but its political and strategic logic is puzzling. The U.S. needs Israel's acquiescence in the Obama Administration's increasingly drawn-out efforts to halt Iran's nuclear bid through diplomacy or sanctions. But Israel's restraint is measured in direct proportion to its sense that U.S. security guarantees are good. If Israel senses that the Administration is looking for any pretext to blow up relations, it will care much less how the U.S. might react to a military strike on Iran.
As for the West Bank settlements, it is increasingly difficult to argue that their existence is the key obstacle to a peace deal with the Palestinians. Israel withdrew all of its settlements from Gaza in 2005, only to see the Strip transform itself into a Hamas statelet and a base for continuous rocket fire against Israeli civilians.
Israeli anxieties about America's role as an honest broker in any diplomacy won't be assuaged by the Administration's neuralgia over this particular housing project, which falls within Jerusalem's municipal boundaries and can only be described as a "settlement" in the maximalist terms defined by the Palestinians. Any realistic peace deal will have to include a readjustment of the 1967 borders and an exchange of territory, a point formally recognized by the Bush Administration prior to Israel's withdrawal from Gaza. If the Obama Administration opts to transform itself, as the Europeans have, into another set of lawyers for the Palestinians, it will find Israeli concessions increasingly hard to come by.
That may be the preferred outcome for Israel's enemies, both in the Arab world and the West, since it allows them to paint Israel as the intransigent party standing in the way of "peace." Why an Administration that repeatedly avers its friendship with Israel would want that is another question.

Then again, this episode does fit Mr. Obama's foreign policy pattern to date: Our enemies get courted; our friends get the squeeze. It has happened to Poland, the Czech Republic, Honduras and Colombia. Now it's Israel's turn.

The WH won't let a(n excuse for a) crisis go to waste.

http://tinyurl.com/ycppdx7
Israeli settlement action 'an insult': Obama aide
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Israel's announcement of plans to build 1,600 settler homes in east Jerusalem was not only an "insult" to the United States but "destructive" of the Middle East peace process, a top White House official said Sunday...But there was no sign Washington was prepared to let go of the issue. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Netanyahu's expression of regret was "a good start" but suggested that the Israeli leader had more to do to placate his country's closest ally...Clinton outlined steps that the United States thinks he should take."I think what would be an even better start is coming to the table with constructive ideas for constructive and trustful dialogue about moving the peace process forward,"...
****The White House protests too much, methinks. The gaffe about the announcement during Biden's visit is being blown out of all proportion by the White House in a planned effort to put pressure on the Israelis about a whole raft of issues. Note especially Hillary Clinton's demand that Israel be "trustful" which is a very strange word. In this context, it means that Israel should make concessions even when they appear to be existentially dangerous. Above all, Obama wants to insure that Israel does nothing to thwart his appeasement of the Iranian nuclear threat and, in continuing fashion, to show the Muslim world that he can extract concessions from Israel.****
///The Zionist Organization of America also criticized Biden for his public condemnation of Israel. Biden’s public criticism violates his own “Biden Doctrine,” as stated in his November 2001 address at the ZOA Brandeis Dinner in Philadelphia’s Adams Mark Hotel, it said.
In that address, then-Delaware senator Biden said, “Why is it that the one ally we have in that part of the world [Israel], that we have the right to publicly chastise them? We would not do that with any other friend... As much as the Middle East is always on our minds, the best thing we can do is keep it off the US and world press.”
He also said that such criticism “emboldens those in the Middle East and around the world who still harbor as their sacred goal the elimination of Israel... It is not for you to tell them [Israel], nor for me, what is in their best interests. We should give them the right to determine what chances they will take.” ****Well, you can't really expect Biden to be consistent in either his positions or his statements. Obama, on the other hand, has been very consistent in his hostility toward Israel ( and, some suspect, even to those members of the tribe who haven't sucked up to him already--some of his best friends are... although it's doubtful that he reciprocates.)****

It's "only academic"- intellectual dishonesty in the Academy

http://tinyurl.com/y86pt4a
Climategate Was an Academic Disaster Waiting to Happen The notion of objective truth has been abandoned and the peer review process gives scholars ample opportunity to reward friends and punish enemies. By PETER BERKOWITZ
Last fall, emails revealed that scientists at the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England and colleagues in the U.S. and around the globe deliberately distorted data to support dire global warming scenarios and sought to block scholars with a different view from getting published. What does this scandal say generally about the intellectual habits and norms at our universities?...
****Here is an amusing example of academic dishonesty, or is it hypocrisy or inadvertency or just plain lying? At least it shares with Climategate an appeal to authority or consensus, albeit one close to home and at odds with the point claimed.****Mirror, Mirror Textbook economics is "a bizarre point of view"--according to the textbook's author!. By JAMES TARANTO
Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman takes note in his New York Times column of what he calls "the incredible gap that has opened up between the parties": Today, Democrats and Republicans live in different universes, both intellectually and morally. "What Democrats believe," he says "is what textbook economics says":
But that's not how Republicans see it. Here's what Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, had to say when defending Mr. Bunning's position (although not joining his blockade): unemployment relief "doesn't create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work."
Krugman scoffs: "To me, that's a bizarre point of view--but then, I don't live in Mr. Kyl's universe."
What does textbook economics have to say about this question? Here is a passage from a textbook called "Macroeconomics":
Public policy designed to help workers who lose their jobs can lead to structural unemployment as an unintended side effect. . . . In other countries, particularly in Europe, benefits are more generous and last longer. The drawback to this generosity is that it reduces a worker's incentive to quickly find a new job. Generous unemployment benefits in some European countries are widely believed to be one of the main causes of "Eurosclerosis," the persistent high unemployment that affects a number of European countries.
So it turns out that what Krugman calls Sen. Kyl's "bizarre point of view" is, in fact, textbook economics. The authors of that textbook are Paul Krugman and Robin Wells. Miss Wells is also known as Mrs. Paul Krugman.
It seems Krugman himself lives in two different universes--the universe of the academic economist and the universe of the bitter partisan columnist... ****A Nobel Prize is evidence that the recipient is/was brilliant or insightful about something. It doesn't betoken wisdom in all things or, even, anything current. We have seen that a Nobelist can even be literally crazy (e.g. John Forbes Nash ).Mr. Krugman joins such worthies as William Shockley, the admittedly brilliant pioneer of semiconductor physics who, nevertheless, was at the level of the Ku Klux Klan in his racist views.The real lesson of all these examples: appeal to authority is not a proper argument, only evidence, logic and an appreciation for scientific method ( which does not acknowledge "consensus" as a positive)are valid.****

Is Islam a peaceful religion...or an angry and violent one?

http://tinyurl.com/yd57q58
Is the Anger of the Muslim Street Justifiable by Islam? By Tawfik Hamid
In the last few decades, Muslims have committed several violent acts because they felt their religion had been insulted or attacked. ****Of course such violence goes back many more decades and centuries but were not too noticeable to the Western world.****These acts ranged from murders and violent riots against Salman Rushdie for writing the "Satanic Verses" to violent riots as a response to rumors of US soldiers insulting the Quran. The aggressive Muslim reaction after the publishing of cartoons of prophet Mohamed by the Jyllands-Posten newspaper in Denmark is another well-known example of the Muslim world's reactions. Sadly, these acts of violence have resulted in devastating consequences such as the burning churches and the killing many innocent people.
The question many have raised is: are these violent reactions condoned by Islam and the result of Islamic teachings?

Incredible interview with British Islamist, Feb 2010

http://tinyurl.com/yhqlcrr
British Islamist Anjem Choudary: Freedom and Democracy Are Idols That Must Be Destroyed and Replaced with Obedience to Allah
Following are excerpts from an interview with Anjem Choudary, head of Islam4UK, which aired on Press TV on February 3, 2010. The interview was held in English.
Anjem Choudary: Our main objectives are to invite the societies in which we live to think about Islam as an alternative way of life, to command good and forbid evil wherever we are, and ultimately, as well, to establish the shari'a on state level – which is the caliphate system of governance – in order to be a beacon again in the world, an example of how people should live their lives.[...]
Interviewer: Let's talk about some of the statements coming out from your Islam4UK website. They were very incendiary, they've inflamed a big debate in the United Kingdom. One of the photos that you released showed, for example, the Buckingham Palace – the home of the British royal family – converted into a mosque...

The future of Islamist subversion of the West

http://tinyurl.com/yecgq3r
America must learn from the UK about the future of Islamist subversion By Steven Emerson
By looking across the Atlantic at our closest friend and ally, the United Kingdom, are we looking into our future? Or maybe even our present? A brilliant expose on Channel 4's "Dispatches" and the pages of the Telegraph, reveals that the extremist Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) - which has chapters across Europe - has infiltrated the British Labour Party in London, holds sway over local government spending, and tries to manipulate electoral politics...

Let's hope the Pakistanis really have Adam Gedahn, are sweating him and will return him to the U.S. for treason trial.

http://tinyurl.com/ycjz4dw
Officers: Pakistan arrests American-born al-Qaida
KARACHI, Pakistan — The American-born spokesman for al-Qaida has been arrested by Pakistani intelligence officers in the southern city of Karachi, two officers and a government official said Sunday, the same day Adam Gadahn appeared in a video calling for Muslim violence...
****Well, as suspected, the news of Gedahn's capture was highly exaggerated.****
Al Qaeda mouthpiece Adam Gadahn NOT in custody, but another American terrorist is, says Pakistan BY Stephanie Gaskell
Pakistani security officials are now saying the American terror suspect they have in custody is not Al Qaeda leader Adam Gadahn.
He may not be Adam Gadahn, Al Qaeda's U.S.-born mouthpiece, but the man captured in Pakistan over the weekend is still a good get, U.S. officials said Monday.
Pakistani officials initially thought they nabbed Gadahn, a 31-year-old Californian who has a $1 million bounty on his head for treason...

Perhaps "a communist takeover"??

From James Taranto's Best of the Web
Gloria Borger and Wolf Blitzer on CNN about Obama's push for Obamacare:...
Blitzer: Gloria, this three-step process that has to go forward within the next few weeks. The House passes the Senate version, the House then makes some changes to the Senate version, and then the Senate passes those changes. It's by no means a done deal that the first step is going to get done.
Borger: No. It's not a done deal, but you know what the president's going to come out and say is, this is the way it has to happen. We've got to have an up-or-down vote.I was talking with a senior White House adviser today, Wolf, who put it to me this way. He said, "This is the last helicopter out of Saigon," meaning they have made a political decision that they're going to use their Democrats to get this through, because what they need, this aide says, is they need an accomplishment. And they believe that once this passes, people will begin to see the benefits of it, and it will not ricochet against them, but will work for them.
Mark Mardell, North American editor of the BBC, was watching and he blogged in response: "Fleeing a lost war is not the most optimistic metaphor for an adviser to adopt. And it still may go down in flames."
But could Mardell have misunderstood the analogy? Maybe the point of comparison is that the fall of Saigon was a communist takeover.

Sweden, sinking into a Muslim sea, coerces Jews to be anti-Israel.

http://tinyurl.com/yf63trc
Eurabia Is a Place in Sweden The Continent's post-Christian baptism of Jews: Convert to Israel-bashing and you'll be safe. By DANIEL SCHWAMMENTHAL Malmö, Sweden
In this city—just across a narrow stretch of water that separates Sweden from Denmark—what has been called "Eurabia" is slowly becoming reality. Roughly 20% of Malmö's 290,000 residents are of Muslim, mostly Arab, origin. Their widespread hatred of Israel together with traditional Swedish anti-Zionism—the result of the left's ideological supremacy here—form an explosive cocktail.****So much for the "peaceful" nature of Islam.****
Screaming "Sieg Heil" and "Hitler, Hitler," a mostly Muslim mob threw bottles and stones at a small group of Jews peacefully demonstrating for Israel at this town's central square last year. Worshipers on their way to synagogue and Jewish kids in schools are routinely accosted as "Dirty Jews." Last year's Davis Cup tennis match against Israel, which pro-Palestinian activists had sought to cancel, was held behind closed doors...

Mass. gives foretaste of what's wrong with Obamacare

http://tinyurl.com/yhlaqr7
Back to the ObamaCare Future The Massachusetts 'model' moves to price controls.
Natural experiments are rare in politics, but few are as instructive as the prototype for ObamaCare that Massachusetts set in motion in 2006. The bills for "universal coverage" are now coming due, and it appears the state political class is prepared to do lasting damage to one of America's top-flight health-care systems...