Poll shows Palestinians' actual position.

Poll: Palestinians Reject '67 Borders, Sharing Jerusalem with Israel (Angus Reid Global Monitor)
67% of the residents of the West Bank and Gaza are opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders with some land exchange as part of a solution to the current impasse with Israel, according to a poll by An-Najah University in the West Bank.
77% reject making Jerusalem the capital of both an eventual Palestinian state and Israel.****Let's be clear what this shows: those identified as "Palestinians" are not satisfied with a Palestinian state on even the 1967 borders and with a shared Jerusalsm. They have not come to the realization that Israel should exist at all.The idea of a "two-state solution", elevated by Obama to a status beyond that of peace in the Middle East, is not acceptable to the mass of Palestinians, except possibly as a way station on the road to a total obliteration of any Jewish state.****

Little "asides" reveal the true Obama.

McCain 'Disturbed' by Obama's View of American Power By: Jim Meyers
Sen. John McCain...was “very disturbed” by President Barack Obama’s statement that America remains a dominant military superpower “whether we like it or not.”
At the close of the two-day nuclear weapons summit in Washington, D.C., on April 13, Obama said that the United States must do its best to resolve conflicts around the world before they grow too serious."It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them."...“It was a very interesting statement. We went to Bosnia to stop ethnic cleansing of Muslims. We went to Kosovo to stop ethnic cleansing of Muslims. We should have gone to Rwanda to stop genocide. America has a role in the world, and I’m proud of the role that we’ve played in defense of freedom and democracy —usually somebody else’s.” Asked if he has any idea why the president appears apologetic about America’s role in the world, the Arizona Republican says simply: “No, I don’t.” ****Of course he does. Obama is apologetic about America's role, doesn't believe in "American exceptionalism," and even recently commented that people can make too much money.Even in his speech in Berlin, Obama revealed that he regards himself first as a citizen of the world rather than one of the United States and has many times indicated he doesn't approve of either the Judeo-Christian or capitalist nature of the U.S. ****

Peggy Noonan and charges of racism in immigration debate.

...Both parties resemble Gordon Brown, who is about to lose the prime ministership of Britain. On the campaign trail this week, he was famously questioned by a party voter about his stand on immigration. He gave her the verbal runaround, all boilerplate and shrugs, and later complained to an aide, on an open mic, that he'd been forced into conversation with that "bigoted woman."
He really thought she was a bigot. Because she asked about immigration. Which is, to him, a sign of at least latent racism.
The establishments of the American political parties, and the media, are full of people who think concern about illegal immigration is a mark of racism. If you were Freud you might say, "How odd that's where their minds so quickly go, how strange they're so eager to point an accusing finger. Could they be projecting onto others their own, heavily defended-against inner emotions?" But let's not do Freud, he's too interesting. Maybe they're just smug and sanctimonious.
The American president has the power to control America's borders if he wants to, but George W. Bush and Barack Obama did not and do not want to, and for the same reason, and we all know what it is. The fastest-growing demographic in America is the Hispanic vote, and if either party cracks down on illegal immigration, it risks losing that vote for generations...

Whatever the twists and turns in Obama's "new" policy, it cannot be relied on.

****Once burnt, twice shy. Twice burnt, four times shy. Consistency with past hostility cannot be papered over with short-term and insincere gestures.The worst thing about Obama is not that he's more unsmart than many think; rather it's that he thinks others are stupid. ****
Why Gates Rolled Out the Red Carpet for Ehud Barak - Laura Rozen When Defense Secretary Robert Gates hosted visiting Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak this week, the Obama administration appeared to be pulling out all the stops in lavishing honor and warm attention on the visiting Israeli official, who has come to Washington numerous times in the past few months without so much grand ceremony. The administration seems to be making a concerted effort to put to rest any impression that the top U.S. military brass was in any way questioning the value of the U.S.-Israeli military and strategic relationship. The White House is engaged in an aggressive public relations and outreach effort to the Hill and Jewish groups to assure them of its commitment to Israel's security. (Politico)****The more the WH protests, at this point, the less it can be believed. Appeasement never works; appeasing an appeaser would be double folly. ****
Obama Spreads the Love - For Now - Ron Kampeas
The Obama administration is projecting a new attitude when it comes to Israel, and is selling it hard: unbreakable, unshakeable bond. "It's a positive development," Alan Solow, chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said of the recent Jewish outreach blitz by the administration. "There are two questions, though, that will only be answered over time: Will the outreach be sustained, and will the policy be consistent with the positions being expressed in the outreach?" (JTA)****Is the whole effort sincere or just due to the alarming petition by 76 Senators and the waning of funding support for the Dems?***
Rejectionism by Palestinians Key to Mideast Standoff - David Harris
...ignoring the conflict's core issue - Palestinian rejectionism. Four consecutive prime ministers, including Benjamin Netanyahu, have endorsed a two-state accord, but to no avail. Withdrawal from southern Lebanon and Gaza has led to increased, not reduced, tension. Virulent incitement against Israel continues apace both in the West Bank and Gaza...the historical record. Previous talks with the Palestinians, prior to the Obama administration, were held without any preconditions. Those negotiations, in fact, led to breakthrough proposals by Israel, in 2000 and again in 2008, to create a viable Palestinian state. The conflict's root remains what it has been for more than 60 years - namely, the Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel's very legitimacy. When that hurdle is overcome, peace will become not just possible but inevitable. The writer is executive director of the American Jewish Committee. (Financial Times-UK)//
Palestinians Expect Obama to Do All the Work - Eytan Gilboa Ever since President Obama entered the White House, the Palestinians are the ones refusing to renew negotiations with Israel. However, the image created by Obama's policy is that Israel alone is responsible for the impasse, and that construction in Jerusalem is the main obstacle to securing an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. Somehow, no American policymaker or commentator is asking how Fatah, which cannot engage in talks with its Hamas "brethren" and secure a deal with them, can finalize an agreement with Israel.
Obama started off by presenting requests and demands to Israel, the Palestinians, and pro-American Arab states for mutual gestures in order to renew the talks. Netanyahu was the only leader who did something. In his Bar-Ilan speech he endorsed the two-state principle, and he even declared a construction freeze in the territories. All the others rejected the American requests. The Palestinians wholly disregard Obama and expect him to do all the work for them and elicit unilateral concessions out of Israel. The writer is a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University. (Ynet News)
America's Big Middle East Game - Tony Badran
* Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman, testifying last week before the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, outlined the administration's conceptual framework for its Syria policy as follows: The U.S. is working to mitigate Iran's regional influence, which Syria facilitates. But Syria is not Iran, and there's a basic policy difference between them - unlike Iran, Syria has an interest in negotiating a peace agreement with Israel.****Why, pray tell, does Syria have "an interest"? Syria is interested in gaining the Golan Heights (for the purposes of war) and that's it's only interest in "agreements."**** Therefore, the peace process is, in Feltman's words, the "big game."
* This toxic viewpoint was echoed by National Security Adviser Jim Jones at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy: "One of the ways that Iran exerts influence in the Middle East is by exploiting the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict....Advancing this peace would...help prevent Iran from cynically shifting attention away from its failures to meet its obligations." * The sought-after model for Syria is Anwar Sadat's Egypt. But that model is totally inapplicable. Egypt made the leap into the pro-American camp before signing the peace treaty.
* The Obama administration might lean on the Israelis to resume peace talks with Syria. But even if the Netanyahu government agrees, it's highly unlikely that the talks will lead anywhere, especially since Assad has repeatedly rejected putting his ties to Hizbullah and Iran on the table - a sine qua non for Israel. And so, the "grand idea" will come crashing down, as it already has in its Palestinian version.
The writer is a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

Amazing tip for eating: six popular restaurant fish are bad for you.

http://tinyurl.com/28vlzfy
***Fish to AVOID: bluefin tuna, Chilean Sea Bass, Grouper, Monkfish, Orange Roughy, FARMED Salmon.***

Bill Clinton explained his actions "Because I could."

Henninger remonstrates that Obama shouldn't do his own dirty work, except that he LIKES IT and because he can. If he comes across as a jerk, perhaps it's because he is a jerk.
http://tinyurl.com/2btlanw
Smart Aleck-in-Chief? There may be good reasons for Obama to go negative, but doing so could wreck his presidency.By DANIEL HENNINGER
...which of the following reasons is the 44th president of the United States bad-mouthing Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, bankers, mine operators, insurers, Glenn Beck, the tea party, the Supreme Court and whoever he hammers as we go to press: a) He's rallying his base. b) He's rallying the Democrats' base (one overlaps but does not equal the other). c) He's changing the subject from 9% unemployment. d) To reverse his sinking approval ratings. e) It's what Saul Alinsky would do. f) It's what Barack Obama likes to do....the answer is, all of the above....Republicans such as Mitch McConnell, a target of Obamian invective, are calling it conduct unbecoming a president. They are right. Carter, Reagan, both Bushes and Ford didn't do it. People assume the hyperpolitical Bill Clinton did it, but if memory serves, his public persona was presidential to a fault, even as he brimmed with Vesuvian anger....Mr. Obama has decided to take down the opposition himself....: Will it work?...There may be any number of good, political reasons for Mr. Obama to let it rip. But let's cut to the real reason this is happening. The answer is (f): It's what Barack Obama likes to do.
,,,Even Achilles had a heel, and Mr. Obama's may be his decision to be his own Saul Alinsky. Defining, demonizing and making a mockery of one's opponents was one of Alinsky's main rules for community organizers. But community organizers, though often charismatic, can also be annoying jerks. ...

Cal Thomas: Whence Obama's extreme Islamophilia? It's not for the benefit of the U.S. or its allies.

Cal Thomas
Economic Development for MuslimsBy Cal Thomas //
Israel's New Enemy: America? [Excerpts] By Cal Thomas
\"Enemy: "a person who feels hatred for, fosters harmful designs against, or engages in antagonistic activities against another; an adversary or opponent." —Dictionary.com
Despite Vice President Joe Biden's recent pledge of unswerving fidelity to Israel during his recent visit there, the rhetoric and pressure directed by the Obama administration against the only fully functioning democracy in the Middle East more accurately resembles the behavior of an enemy. Increasingly under this administration — but also present in Republican administrations — America's policy toward Israel is full of "harmful designs" and "antagonistic activities." The intentions may not be deliberate, but the outcome would lead to the same injurious end.
The latest pretext for putting more pressure on Israel to do more in the "pursuit of peace" comes from a decision by Israel's Interior Ministry to construct 1,600 new housing units in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, which is located in "disputed territory." To the Palestinians and their Arab and Muslim neighbors, most especially Iran and Syria, all of Israel is "disputed territory." It is difficult to understand why the U.S. State Department thinks not building a few houses is going to dissuade Israel's enemies from wanting less than they want now.
After apologizing to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the "offense" of the housing announcement during Biden's visit, Netanyahu reminded the Israeli parliament that Israel has been building in east Jerusalem for four decades. He said, "The building of those Jewish neighborhoods in no way hurt the Arabs of East Jerusalem and did not come at their expense."
Making demands of only one side before serious negotiations begin, especially on matters of Jerusalem, so-called "refugees" and borders, effectively pressures Israel into making concessions on all three, which would severely damage its prospects for continued existence.
How about first making these demands of the Palestinian-Arab-Muslim side: (1) A pledge of no more war with Israel, or terrorism; 2) a declaration by a powerful Islamic cleric that their God no longer requires them to kill people who don't believe as they do; and 3) no more teaching in Palestinian textbooks and in their media that Jews created AIDS and descend from monkeys and pigs?

The only regime change Obama has stomach for is that of an ally.

Obama was reassuring to the brutal mullahs that the U.S. would not endorse regime change; nor would he or Hillary push for regime change anywhere in the totalitarian world. Where does the Obama administration push for regime change? In the democracy of Israel! After all, Rahm Emanuel (together with Jas Carville, all at the behest of the Clintons) got rid of Netanyahu once before. They want a pliable Israeli government, one not concerned with existential issues of survival and willing to go under the bus when Obama dictates.
http://tinyurl.com/252fawu
Bibi be gone: Obama team plotting overthrow of Israel's Netanyahu
WASHINGTON — The administration of President Barack Obama has launched what officials termed a psychological warfare campaign meant to topple Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu...****They prefer the flaccid Livni who will take direction from Obama via Rahm****
http://tinyurl.com/yfnc4e2
YouTube - Rahm Emanuel -the Musical
http://www.latma.co.il Satirical Israeli website explains the reasons for Rahm Emanuel's anti-Israeli policies

Gee! Showing overt hostility might have lost more votes than it gained.

White House May Be Realizing Rift with Israel Not a Wise Move Yitzhak Benhorin - Last week the White House sent senior officials to Jewish organizations with a similar message about the unshakeable relationship between the U.S. and Israel. Something prompted President Obama himself to send a letter to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and declare that a Mideast peace treaty cannot be imposed from the outside, stressing that "We have a special relationship with Israel and that will not change." Someone reached the conclusion that the top U.S. brass must quickly put out the political fire. The U.S. is indeed determined to advance peace between Israel and the Palestinians, yet suddenly the Jerusalem issue no longer makes headlines, and suddenly, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict no longer risks the lives of U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Moreover, Obama himself stressed that "Our alliance with Israel serves our national security interests." The U.S. pressure on Jerusalem was apparently the breaking point for quite a few Jews among his supporters. Peace and the two-state solution are still among the most urgent challenges on the American president's agenda. However, it appears that the Americans will be making every effort to avoid public confrontations with the Israeli government in the future.//
Rahm Emanuel - The Musical
http://tinyurl.com/2a2hxmb

Lack of knowledge of history or personal bias?

Obama's Jerusalem Stonewall - Mortimer Zuckerman
Mr. Obama has undermined Israel's confidence in U.S. support. He uses the term "settlements" to describe massive neighborhoods that are home to tens of thousands of Jews. It certainly sends signals to the Palestinians. The Palestinian Authority followed the president's lead and refused to proceed with planned talks until Israel stops all so-called settlement activities, including in East Jerusalem.
President Obama's attitude toward Jerusalem betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the history of the city. After Israel was recognized as a new state in 1948, it was immediately attacked by the combined armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The attacks were repelled, but the Jordanians conquered East Jerusalem and separated it from its western half. In 1967, the Arab armies again sought to destroy Israel, but it prevailed in the famous Six-Day War and reconquered East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip.
Under Jordanian rule, from 1948 to 1967, dozens of synagogues were destroyed or vandalized. The ancient Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives was desecrated, its tombstones used for the construction of roads and Jordanian army latrines. The rights of Christians as well as Jews were abused, with some churches converted into mosques. Since Israel reunited Jerusalem in 1967, it has faithfully protected the rights and security of Christians, Muslims and Jews. Christians now control the Ten Stations of the Cross; Muslims control the Dome of the Rock. Yet the Palestinians often stone Jewish civilians praying at the Western Wall below. Freedom of religion in Jerusalem should not be compromised by American policy. (Wall Street Journal)//
***Hey! What about Palestinian "sovereignty?" Or was the "Palestinian People" just an invention of Yasser Arafat?****
Who Speaks for the Palestinians? - Elliott Abrams
Abbas said he hopes to get Arab League approval for indirect talks with Israel. This is a giant step backwards. With all the talk about the critical importance of Palestinian independence, Abbas is now refusing to make any decision about peace, instead deferring to Arab states. This is a return to the days when the Palestinians were under the control of Arab states rather than masters of their own future. Putting the Arab League in charge magnifies the influence of bad actors. To get negotiations going, the Obama administration now has to convince not only Abbas, but Bashar al-Assad. The writer is a senior fellow for Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. (Weekly Standard)

Jones' "Jewish" Joke: gratuitous, tasteless and bespeaking a mindset that is not objectrive.

Jones Apologizes for Jewish Joke Ben Smith - National Security Adviser James Jones has apologized for telling a Jewish joke last week at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Though Jones' audience didn't take offense, the joke drew questions about its content. Jones' statement Monday said: "I wish that I had not made this off-the-cuff joke at the top of my remarks, and I apologize to anyone who was offended by it. It also distracted from the larger message I carried that day: that the United States commitment to Israel's security is sacrosanct." ****In fact, it speaks to a bias that Israel and Jews do not deserve such a commitment.****
****Jones' joke: A Taliban lost in the desert and dying of thirst spots a Jewish merchant at the top of a sand dune. "Please give me some water." "I CAN'T GIVE YOU ANY WATER BUT I CAN SELL YOU A TIE." "You lousy #4%43! I know why my people hate you." "WELL, DESPITE YOUR VITUPERATION, I'LL TELL YOU THAT THERE'S A RESTAURANT TWO MILES TOWARD THE SUN AND THEY HAVE PLENTY OF WATER." Two hours later, the Taliban crawls back, "Your brother says I need a tie to get in."
Now, although an old joke that can be told with various ethnicities, one must ask why Jones told it as he did. It plays to several stereotypes: Jews won't help a man in dire extremis, Jews are tricky, collusive and work together against the interests of non-Jews. As a matter of fact, the insertion of "your brother" is novel to Jones, in my experience.Is Jones an anti-Semite? He wouldn't think so; most genteel anti-Semites don't. ****

According to Snopes, Muslims "may" be excluded from Obamacare mandate

http://tinyurl.com/y3l6oss
****Does the "Religious Conscience" exemption apply to Muslims for whom various kinds of insurance are forbidden?****

Obama's claims about Obamacare are unraveling faster than thought possible

http://tinyurl.com/2dvn9qo
Obama Caught with His Pants Down (Again) by Jason Mattera
Remember when Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid promised us that a government takeover of health-care would actually lower cost and reduce the deficit? Remember when we were guaranteed that a bureaucratic overhaul would leave our own current health-care coverage untouched? Oh, and remember when critics were scolded for addressing the forms of government “rationing” that are likely to occur as a result? Well, well. As usual, reality has come back to pimp slap the democrats in the end.
Here are three quick pointers you need to know.
1. The government’s chief Medicare actuary found that, under ObamaCare, costs are expected to see a one percent increase over the next ten years. Not only did his report acknowledge that ObamaCare's price increases are "plausible and even probable," but it even found that many of the Administration’s much-ballyhooed savings projections are “unrealistic” and “difficult to attain.”
2. If you’re a senior citizen, get ready to kiss your Medicare Advantage plan goodbye! The Obama Administration began to gut this very popular program to the tune of $200 billion, which means that there are millions of seniors who will now be booted off of their current insurance coverage—yep, the same insurance coverage that Barack promised us would go unscathed.
3. The President recently nominated Donald Berwick to head the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Who is Donald Berwick? He’s just another leftist dude in high places who is a big believer in health-care rationing. But don’t take my word for it. Quoth Mr. Berwick: Since “we have a limited resource pool…the decision is not whether or not we will ration care—the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.”

Human Rights Watch revealed as a tendentious, biased and unreliable organization.

http://tinyurl.com/35lpgwq
Minority Report Human Rights Watch fights a civil war over Israel.
On October 19 of last year, the op-ed page of The New York Times contained a bombshell: a piece by Robert Bernstein, the founder and former chairman of Human Rights Watch (HRW), attacking his own organization. HRW, Bernstein wrote, was “helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state...”

Obama's policy becomes ever more feckless and reckless

http://tinyurl.com/264mvyu
Barreling on, regardless By Caroline B. Glick
If safeguarding international security is the chief aim of US President Barack Obama's foreign policy, then at some point he can be expected to change course in the Middle East. For today, Obama faces the wreckage of every aspect of his Middle East policies. And largely as a consequence of his policies, the region moves ever closer to war...

Obama plays the crudest form of identity politics.

http://tinyurl.com/3yrobzc
Obama plays the race card
GLENN: Remember you are the one that is dividing the country. You are the one. They are just people in the administration and the president, they just want us all to get together. We just, for all Americans, you are the one that is a racist. You are the one that is dividing people. PRESIDENT OBAMA: Despite the challenges we inherited, we've made great progress. When I took office, our economy was in crisis. Our standing in the world was diminished. Our healthcare system wasn't working for far too many American families... PRESIDENT OBAMA: We put our nation back on the path to prosperity with the Recovery Act. We are moving America forward one step at a time. But despite everything we've done ... our work isn't finished. Today the health insurance companies, the Wall Street banks and the special interests who have ruled Washington for too long ...PRESIDENT OBAMA: A few months ago we asked you to help us set our priorities for 2010 and tell us how you thought we could win elections at all levels of government. You told us your first priority was to make sure the same people who were inspired to vote for the first time in 2008 go back to the polls in 2010. .. It will be up to each of you to make sure that the young people, African Americans, Latinos and women who empowered our victory in 2008 stand together once again...
Can anyone tell me what happened to our so-called "post-racial" president?
Throughout President Obama's campaign he spoke very little about the color of his skin. Consequently the left immediately deemed him our "post-racial president."
This term led many Americans to believe that the social order would follow suit, but since Obama has been elected our country has become the very opposite of a post-racial society.
Earlier this week our post-racial president himself embraced race with the sole intent of influencing an election. Obama excluded middle aged, white, male voters calling on "young people, African Americans, Latinos and women," to vote for Democrats in November.
"Post-racial" my butt! (If you're reading this now I bet you've been called a racist recently...finish reading my column here.)
*Immigration reform is the Left's most recent tool to point the racism finger at conservatives. If you only have time to read one thing right now click here to find out why Rep. Ted Poe (R.-Tex) says immigration reform could be a defining moment for Obama. — Michelle Oddis
****Immigration reform is, for course, Obama's ploy to co-opt the Latino vote ( and, ultimately, the votes of millions of illegals-made-legal-so-they-could-vote.)****

An insane world: pirates, "moderate Islamists", Al Qaeda extremists

***And the "civilized" world captures pirates and lets them go, with food and water. Now we're supposed to root for the pirates because their hostages are better off with them than with Al Qaeda?***
http://tinyurl.com/28oqasu
Somali militants push toward pirate stronghold
By MOHAMED OLAD HASSAN and MALKHADIR MUHUMED,=
MOGADISHU, Somalia – Fighters from Somalia's al-Qaida-linked militant group moved into the northern region where Somali pirates operate early Monday, residents said, forcing pirates to flee and raising the specter of an insurgent attempt to close down the piracy trade. The pirate gang holding a kidnapped British couple fled into a forest to escape the militants,...Maslah Yare, who leads the pirate gang that is holding the Chandlers. Somali pirates and insurgents are two separate groups. If al-Shabab militants take control of pirate strongholds, the 300-plus foreign hostages that pirates hold could be in greater danger...

Obama to act as "lawyer" for Palestinians ( and judge and jury for Israel).

http://tinyurl.com/322mnft
From The Sunday Times
April 24, 2010
Mahmoud Abbas calls on US to 'impose' a solution to Middle-East conflist By Robin Henr
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas today called on the US to “impose” a solution to the Middle-East conflict.Abbas made a direct plea to President Barack Obama to ensure Palestinians were given an independent state.
He also rejected the idea of a state with “temporary borders”, reportedly being offered Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu...
****This way, Abbas doesn't even have to "promise" anything ( not that his promises would mean anything. The most basic of the Oslo agreements have long been violated by Arafat and his progeny.) So, the only guarantor for trust in any imposed solution would be the U.S. and, given that Obama/Hillary have reneged on written promises to Israel already, why should any Israeli trust even the U.S.?****Obama's credibility exists only in the eyes of those (e.g. Hillary, Brzezinski, Samantha Powers, Mitchell et al) whose credibility is also absent.Obama's animus combined with his naivete can well produce nuclear war.****
****Does Bill Clinton know any better? Under him Rahm and the Ragin' Cajun undermined Netanyahu the last time he was PM. Barak, under Clinton's prodding, offered to give away the store; saved only by Arafat's total intransigence.****
Bill Clinton Encourages Obama on Mideast Peace Effort
(Wall Street Journal) Laura Meckler - Former President Bill Clinton said he would "strongly support" an effort by President Barack Obama to issue his own Middle East peace plan, something now under discussion at the White House. "We need to do something to deprive both sides of any excuse not to engage in serious negotiations," Mr. Clinton said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "If this is the tactic he decides to adopt, I will strongly support it." Mr. Clinton said he has talked the issue over with Mr. Obama and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, as well as with his wife, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Politically correct whitewash of the Ft Hood terrorist attack

http://tinyurl.com/2vrbsaj
General Boykin and Major Hasan by Ken Blackwell ... Lieberman and Collins are now issuing subpoenas to enforce their call for the documents. The Pentagon report on the Fort Hood shootings was a whitewash. It never mentioned radical Islam or noted the religious motivation of the Army psychiatrist who killed fourteen people at Fort Hood in Texas in a shooting rampage last November. We now know that Major Hasan had a history of radical jihadist statements and that he was allowed to get away with marginal or even unsatisfactory performance for years. Political correctness, in this case, allowed a Muslim zealot to preach jihad and to threaten “infidels” with retribution... We now know that Hasan’s emails to radical American-born Muslim cleric Anwar al Awlaki were intercepted by U.S. intelligence. But for some as yet unexplained reason, Hasan’s contacts with this known terrorist leader did not result in Hasan’s arrest, or at the very least, a serious investigation into his activities. Fourteen dead Americans are victims of this failure to take timely, effective action. Awlaki has taken to taunting President Obama: “His administration tried to portray the operation of brother Nidal Hasan as an individual act of violence by an individual. The administration practiced the control on the leak of information concerning the operation in order to cushion the reaction of the American public.”

Either Obama doesn't understand the strategic advantages of the Israeli alliance.

or he is governing out of personal bias ( as his Kenyan background makes him anti-British.)
http://tinyurl.com/y7hf4vk
The strategic foundations of the US-Israel alliance by Caroline Glick
...in light of President Obama's repeated claims that US interests are best served by distancing itself from Israel,...the following essay explaining why a strong Israel is essential for US national security.
Israel's status as the US's most vital ally in the Middle East has been so widely recognized for so long that over the years, Israeli and American leaders alike have felt it unnecessary to explain what it is about the alliance that makes it so important for the US. Today, as the Obama administration is openly distancing the US from Israel while giving the impression that Israel is a strategic impediment to the administration's attempts to strengthen its relations with the Arab world, recalling why Israel is the US's most important ally in the Middle East has become a matter of some urgency.
Much is made of the fact that Israel is a democracy. But we seldom consider why the fact that Israel is a representative democracy matters. The fact that Israel is a democracy means that its alliance with America reflects the will of the Israeli people. As such, it remains constant regardless of who is power in Jerusalem...****Consider the dramatic changes in Iran (from the Shah to Khomeini), in Egypt (from Nasser to Mubarek --and, likely, soon to be back again), the instability of Jordan, the ambiguity of the Saudis,etc. **** ...

Schumer wises up; Hillary kisses up.

Sen. Schumer: Obama's "Counter-Productive" Israel Policy "Has to Stop" - Ben Smith
Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) harshly criticized the Obama Administration's attempts to exert pressure on Israel Thursday on a New York radio show. "This has to stop," Schumer said of the administration's policy of publicly pressuring Israel to end construction in Jerusalem. "I told the President, I told Rahm Emanuel and others in the administration that I thought the policy they took to try to bring about negotiations is counter-productive, because when you give the Palestinians hope that the United States will do its negotiating for them, they are not going to sit down and talk."
"Palestinians don't really believe in a state of Israel. They, unlike a majority of Israelis, who have come to the conclusion that they can live with a two-state solution to be determined by the parties, the majority of Palestinians are still very reluctant, and they need to be pushed to get there. If the U.S. says certain things and takes certain stands, the Palestinians say, 'Why should we negotiate?'...You have to show the Palestinians that they are not going to get their way by just sitting back and not giving in." (Politico)//
Clinton Defends Outreach to Syria Despite Scud Concerns
The U.S. defended its policy of engagement with Syria on Thursday despite its concerns that Damascus might be trying to transfer Scud missiles to Hizbullah in Lebanon. Such a weapons transfer could threaten President Obama's diplomatic outreach to Syria and create fresh obstacles to U.S. Senate confirmation of a new ambassador to Damascus. "We have expressed directly to the Syrian government...in the strongest possible terms our concerns about these stories that do suggest there has been some transfer of weapons technology into Syria with the potential purpose of then later transferring it to Hizbullah," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a news conference in Estonia.
Despite Syria's failure to satisfy long-standing U.S. demands that it cease interfering in Lebanon's affairs and make greater efforts to forge peace with Israel, Clinton argued that it was in the U.S. interest to have an ambassador in Damascus. "This is not some kind of reward for the Syrians and the actions that they take which are deeply disturbing," Clinton said. "It's a tool that we believe can give us extra leverage, added insight, analysis, [and] information with respect to Syria's actions and intentions." (Reuters)

Is the opportunity to convert IRAs to Roths irresistible?

If you have the cash, my conclusion is that it IS an irresistible idea.
Starting January of this year, everyone has the opportunity to convert existing IRAs to Roth IRAs by declaring the intention and undertaking to pay taxes on the amount converted at the income rate for this year ( there is also the option to have half taken as income this year and half taken as income next year, when the rates will presumably be higher.) Based on the present understanding, once the taxes are paid on the current amount at the current rate, the contents of Roth IRAs thereafter are exempt from taxes meaning both the current value as well as any increase in the future. There would also be total tax-free freedom to withdraw the contents at any time or not. Further, any Roth IRA would have the same tax-free aspects for inheritors ( although the amounts would be subject to estate tax at the time of transfer from a decedent.)
Considering that the Bush tax cuts will expire at the end of 2010, that there will be a 3.8% tax surcharge mandated by the Obamacare bill and that the Obama administration has threatened to raise taxes in other ways for taxpayers whose gross incomes are > $200K per year, the arithmetic would seem to favor conversion except for two factors: 1) the time value of the taxes paid this year compared to stretching them out over the statistical lifetime of the holder of the ordinary IRA and 2) the risk that the government will violate the spirit of what a Roth IRA is and try to tax the already-taxed Roth accounts yet again.
If one takes the Obama administration-- with a Democratic Congressional majority-- at its word ( not necessarily a slam-dunk, of course ), there will be a division in the tax rates based on a line at $200K/ per year. For retirees, it might be possible, by prepaying taxes on all IRAs in the conversion process, to lower their income from residual assets not in IRAs to be less than $200K/ year reducing the MARGINAL tax rate enormously.
The tax code is impossibly complicated and full of pitfalls but also loopholes. Here is one available to the "average" ( if upper-middle-class) person. Prepaying the tax on conversion also reduces the amount subject to estate tax. A Roth can be left to children and grandchildren,left to earn tax-free and can be distributed tax-free. The only required minimum distribution is based on the life expectancy of young or very young children, only a couple of percent a year so the Roth will increase in value over time on a tax-free basis.

Is an incompetent SEC scapegoating Goldman?

The timing of the civil suit against Goldman is suspiciously convenient for an administration wanting to pass regulation of the financial industry. The President has categorically denied that he was involved with prompting this; does he have more than "plausible deniability?" Would his administration be above this?
We do have the "idea" that the SEC is independent. However, the SEC is embarrassed by its failure to catch either of the Ponzi schemes of Madoff or Stanford. Clearly, its employees have showed incompetence and arrogance in ignoring the Madoff case being laid out in detail for them over a decade. Has the SEC become more competent? The recent revelation that senior officials spent as much as 8-hour days surfing porn on SEC computers ( while opening the computers to spyware and other hacking )has not been an earnest of professionalism. Now we see that they have opened a civil suit against Goldman but might this not also be a manifestation of their incompetence, merely adding hyperaggressiveness to their usual folly. Remember that Goldman does not deal with retail "customers" but only with highly qualified, professional investors who certified that they are qualified to make their own judgements about their transactions. We are also told that Goldman did not tell purchasers of certain securities that the Paulson firm had shorted the same securities. There are two questions that come to mind: first, since when is a firm acting as a broker supposed to tell any party what the position is of another party, even assuming that they knew it ( although an individual rogue employee, like "the fabulous Fab" might have been so aware ); second, the Paulson firm at the time of the transaction in question did not have any special reputation as it later garnered for its successful transiting the financial meltdown by shorting it for profit. Every transaction, especially a "synthetic" one, has two parties to it, taking opposite sides. This blogger bets that Goldman will emerge from this imbroglio unscathed although it is such a big PR target that it might well settle the matter just to move on to other issues. It is already unusual for the SEC to have proceeded to a public case without giving Goldman the almost universally-common avenue of settling the matter before public disclosure.

What about Obama was hidden from the public before the election?

http://tinyurl.com/28n6ano
Why Is the L.A. Times Burying the Obama/Khalidi Tape? Roger L. Simon
Given the extraordinary sudden turnabout in US policy toward Israel under the Obama Administration, I have become obsessed by the repressed 2003 videotape of Rashid Khalidi and Barack Obama. That tape — or so we are told — is ensconced in a safe at the Los Angeles Times building. In the current situation, its release by the paper is more important and newsworthy than ever.
The Khalidi tape could be of tremendous significance in revealing the provenance of Obama’s views on the Middle East and the degree to which the public was misled on those views during the presidential campaign.
I am writing to solicit the help and ideas of Pajamas Media readers for seeking the release of the tape to the public. But first a little background, if your memories are as foggy as mine can be.
Rashid Khalidi — a Palestinian-American historian known for his strong pro-Palestinian opinions — is currently the Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia and director of that university’s Middle East Institute. After Khalidi received this Columbia appointment in 2003, a farewell dinner party was held in his honor in Chicago. A videotape was made of that party where many good things were said about the Palestinian cause and many bad things about Israel. Then Illinois state Sen. Barack Obama was in attendance, as were, some say, William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.
That tape, as Leon DeWinter reminded us, was given at some point by an unknown person to Peter Wallsten of the Los Angeles Times. Wallsten then reported on some of its contents in a brief LAT article of April 10, 2008 titled “Allies of Palestinians see a friend in Obama.”
Perhaps because it was so attenuated, that article engendered a cry for the release of the full tape. What really happened at the party? What was said? How did Obama react? People wanted to know more details of the Middle East views of the presidential candidate. But the LAT was effectively mum and sequestered the tape in its safe.
In response to a charge of suppression of information by the McCain campaign, the paper’s editor Russ Stanton said:
“The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it. The Times keeps its promises to sources.”
Was this an oral promise made by the paper or by the reporter? Or was there a written agreement, as would be more proper and normal in such circumstances? The Times has not told us, nor have they produced a written agreement of any sort, even without the source’s name. We don’t know either whether a transcription is proscribed.
They have told us almost nothing. We have to take this all on faith, just as we do this risible comment by the paper’s ‘readers’ representative’ Jamie Gold, quoted in the same article with Stanton:
“More than six months ago the Los Angeles Times published a detailed account of the events shown on the videotape. The Times is not suppressing anything. Just the opposite — the L.A. Times brought the matter to light.”
Detailed? Brought the matter to light? I am tempted to use the tired Internet acronym ROFLOL. But let’s examine Wellsten’s original article instead. It begins:
It was a celebration of Palestinian culture — a night of music, dancing and a dash of politics. Local Arab Americans were bidding farewell to Rashid Khalidi, an internationally known scholar, critic of Israel and advocate for Palestinian rights, who was leaving town for a job in New York.
A special tribute came from Khalidi’s friend and frequent dinner companion, the young state Sen. Barack Obama. Speaking to the crowd, Obama reminisced about meals prepared by Khalidi’s wife, Mona, and conversations that had challenged his thinking.
His many talks with the Khalidis, Obama said, had been “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases. . . . It’s for that reason that I’m hoping that, for many years to come, we continue that conversation — a conversation that is necessary not just around Mona and Rashid’s dinner table,” but around “this entire world.”
And? Well, that’s about it. Wellsten doesn’t tell us much more from the videotape or the party other than:
“a young Palestinian American recited a poem accusing the Israeli government of terrorism in its treatment of Palestinians and sharply criticizing U.S. support of Israel. If Palestinians cannot secure their own land, she said, “then you will never see a day of peace.”
One speaker likened “Zionist settlers on the West Bank” to Osama bin Laden, saying both had been “blinded by ideology.”
That’s it. No word of the details of how Obama reacted or what he really said, other than the short quote above.
Interestingly, that sole quote from Wallsten contains an ellipsis in the middle. After the then-state senator says the Khalidis had given him “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases” comes a strategically placed dot-dot-dot. We don’t know what those blind spots and biases were and what he might have thought of them. Or how he might have changed. That, in Wellsten’s or some Times editors’ judgement, was best left on the tape.
So what are we to think? We have an administration that not only ascribes most of the Middle East blame to Israel, but also has banned “Islamism” and all related words, even “Islam” and “jihad” from our national security documents. They’re completely gone. Indeed, even the Fort Hood massacre, so clearly inspired by Islamic extremism, has now been shifted into the comfortable category of the lone, angry killer. Rashid Khalidi should be happy. And, in fact, he is.
Sometimes I want to yell and scream. What is wrong with the Los Angeles Times? Are they a news organization or the propaganda wing of some leftover unit of the IWW? No wonder subscribers are deserting them in droves.
But I won’t yell and scream. I want to be polite. I have old friends at the Times. And what I seek is the release of the tape. Even if there is a legitimate promise to the source, the public interest now overwhelms this. Few stopped to criticize when the Pentagon Papers were published by the New York Times. And they were stolen from the Department of Defense. Let’s get this done. If the tape exonerates Obama, they should be anxious to publish it. If it doesn’t, the Times has done a public service. That’s their job.
But failing that, I turn to you, dear reader. What is to be done? We can’t send a FOIA request to the Los Angeles Times. They’re a private company — or owned by one. There must be other means.
One way is to go to the original reporter Mr. Wallsten. He now works for the Wall Street Journal. I have put in a call to him. We shall see how, or if, he replies. Another way is to find and contact the person who gave Wellsten the tape. Deborah Schlussel believes that person is Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada and Arab American Action Network, an organization founded by the Khalidis. I don’t know if that is true, although I can speculate on the motives.
Whatever the case, the time to reveal the tape is now. Please make your suggestions for what to do. It will be an interesting experiment in citizen journalism to try to do it together. And, unlike the current administration, to do it transparently.

Obama is regarded as Muslim by the Muslim world.

Sheppard Smith, Fox News. "If you check President Obama's last trip over-seas, his wife left just after their visit to France. She has yet to accompany him to any Arab
country. Think about it. Why is Michelle returning to the states when'official'trips to foreign countries generally include the First Lady."
Here's one observer's thought on the matter.While in a Blockbuster renting videos I came across a video called "Obama".There were two men standing next to me and we talked about President Obama.These guys were Arabs, so I asked them why they thought Michele Obama headed home following the President's recent visit to France instead of traveling on to Saudi Arabia and Turkey with her husband. They told me she could not go to Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Iraq. I said "Why not?, Laura Bush went to Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Dubai." They said that Obama is a Muslim and therefore he is not allowed to bring his wife into countries that adhere to Sharia Law.Two points of interest here: 1) I thought it interesting that two American Arabs at Blockbuster believe that our President is a Muslim, 2)who follows a strict Islamic creed. They also said that's the reason he bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia. It was a signal to the Muslim world, acknowledging his religion.
For further consideration, here is a response from Dr. Jim Murk, a Middle Eastern Scholar and expert on Islam. This is his explanation of what the Arab Americans were saying. "An orthodox Muslim man would never take his wife on a politically oriented trip to any nation which practices Sharia law, particularly Saudi Arabia where the Wahhabi sect is dominant. This is true and it is why Obama left Michelle in Europe. She will stay home when he visits Arab countries. He knows Muslim protocol; this includes, bowing to the Saudi King. Obama is regarded as a Muslim in the Arab world, because he was born to a Muslim father; he acknowledged his Muslim faith with George Stephanopoulus. Note that he downplays his involvement with Christianity, by not publicly joining a Christian church in D.C. and occasionally attending the chapel for services at Camp David. He also played down the fact that America is a Christian country and said, unbelievably, that it was one of the largest Muslim nations in the world, which is nonsense. He has publicly taken the side of the Palestinians in the conflict with Israel and he ignored the National Day of Prayer, something no other President has ever done. He is
bad news! He conceals his true faith to the detriment of the American people." --- Jim Murk, Doctor of Philosophy in Middle Eastern Culture &Religion.
ACTIONS speak louder than words.

Even WashPost's unreliable RCohen starts to get it

http://tinyurl.com/y3syrt6
Obama, don't forget Jerusalem By Richard Cohen
...busy days for Jewish bloggers when it comes to Israel....the formidable Ed Koch, has virtually incinerated President Obama for his Israeli policy. The Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel has taken out full-page ads in major newspapers to tell Obama, in effect, to lay off Jerusalem, and Ronald S. Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress, wrote the president to say how concerned he was about the administration's Israel policy. In short, it stinks....the Israeli newspaper Haaretz tell us...****Another unreliable source, Haaretz is often not to be trusted...except by the likes of Cohen.****...Obama does not dance like a star. He gives every appearance of not "getting" Israel; not appreciating its fears or its history. Israel is not half of the equation, as if both sides are right. It is a democracy with American values that has tried, over and over again, to make peace with a recalcitrant and unforgiving enemy....It is downright disturbing that in a recent poll published in Haaretz, about 27 percent of Israelis said they think Obama is an anti-Semite....it is unlikely that American Jewish liberals, some of whom have high school crushes on Obama, will ever desert the man.***or think outside of their self-imposed box.***...Would Obama stick by Israel? Many Israelis wonder. Obama "needs to address Israelis' fears," the Israeli philosopher Carlo Strenger wrote recently in Haaretz. So far, Obama has done just the opposite, even going to Cairo to assure the Palestinians and the greater Arab world that he appreciates their plight without assuring Israelis that he appreciates theirs. His coolness toward Netanyahu, earned or not, has chilled the Israeli public and encouraged Palestinian defiance. He is on the cusp of an enormous diplomatic blunder....

VAT terrible idea UNLESS IRS abolished

http://tinyurl.com/y5xbu2e
For VAT to Work, Repeal 16th Amendment By: George Will
When liberals advocate a value-added tax, conservatives should respond: Taxing consumption has merits, so we will consider it — after the 16th Amendment is repealed...

Obama could impose crippling sanctions on Iran now...but won't.

http://tinyurl.com/y3hjxnw
Ex-Israeli Official: Time for Iran Sanctions Is Now
By: Kenneth R. Timmerman
The United States can’t afford to waste any additional time waiting for Russia and China to join an international effort to impose “crippling” sanctions on Iran, says former Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh....The purpose of the sanctions “is not just to prevent the Iranian nuclear bomb,” he said. “It’s to get rid of this horrible regime, which is cruel and brutal at home, and aggressive and spreading terrorism abroad from Afghanistan to Lebanon to Israel, everywhere.”...The refusal of the Obama White House to take concrete steps to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program was baffling to Sneh. “We’re not speaking about declaring a war, about sending soldiers to get killed,” he said. “It’s legislation and the ability to impose legislation. That’s all. Not a drop – maybe a drop of ink, but not a single drop of blood.”

A liberal points out that reflexive "liberalism" is often stupid.

http://tinyurl.com/y4kdgav
Elena Kagan's Achilles' Heel
Obama’s potential Supreme Court pick banned military recruiting at Harvard Law. Peter Beinart on how that stance has damaged liberals—and why conservatives are right to bash her for it...

Whence Obama's striking bias in favor of Islam?

Were Obama actually a Muslim, he would probably bend over backwards to avoid the appearance of bias in favor of Islam and Muslims that he is demonstrating. HOWEVER...
http://tinyurl.com/yfer4zl
With respect to Iran, he claims to seek sanctions but, when it comes to something he COULD do, he refrains.
(IsraelNN.com) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged the United States and the world on Monday to impose "crippling sanctions" on Iran to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon. Interviewed by George Stephanopoulos on the American Broadcasting Company's "Good Morning America" program, Netanyahu said, "If you stop Iran from importing refined petroleum -- that's a fancy word for gasoline -- then Iran simply doesn't have refining capacity and this regime comes to a halt." Such a sanction has received vocal support from members of the U.S. Congress but not from President Barack Obama.
Speculation on the Web: Why has Barack Hussein Obama insisted that the U.S. Attorney General hold the trials of the 911 Muslim Terrorists in Civilian Courts as Common Criminals instead of as Terrorists who attacked the United States of America? If the Muslim Terrorists are tried in Military Tribunals, convicted and sentenced to death, by LAW, Barack Hussein Obama, as President of the United States, would be required to sign their Death Warrants. He would not be required to sign the death warrants if they are sentenced to death by a Civilian Court. Recently, Muslim Jihadist, Army Major Hassan slaughtered non-Muslim, soldiers at Ft. Hood, Texas rather than go to Afghanistan and bea part of anything that could lead to the deaths of fellow Muslims. He stated that Muslims 'could not and should not kill fellow Muslims.'
Is the motive for Barack Hussein Obama's insistence on civilian trials, to make sure he doesn't have to sign the death warrants for the MuslimTerrorists? Why would he, as President of the United States, not sign thedeath warrants for Muslim Terrorists who attacked the United States and murdered over 3,000 U. S. Citizens on 9/11? Could it be that he is FORBIDDEN by his RELIGION to authorize the execution of Muslims?
Think about that! Open your eyes, ears and mind to who the President is, how he behaves and what he is doing.

Obama and Europeans work for regime change but in Israel not Iran.

http://tinyurl.com/y7w4fco
Not quite free By GERALD STEINBERG
European democracies are spending tens of millions of euros to manipulate Israeli society and politicsSixty-two years after the rebirth of sovereignty following 2,000 years of exile and powerlessness, the Jewish state is still struggling for real independence. Beyond the genocidal threats from the Iranian leadership and its proxies, European democracies are spending tens of millions of euros, pounds and krona to manipulate Israeli society and politics. This largely hidden European money that funds so-called “civil society” organizations, like B’Tselem, Yesh Din, Ir Amim, the Public Committee Against Torture, Peace Now and dozens more, is undermining Jewish sovereignty and the right to determine our own future.
With such large sums at their disposal, self-appointed leaders of these foreign government-funded nongovernmental organizations (appropriately known as GONGOs) often have greater influence than elected officials. They often set the political agenda, promote their goals in the Knesset and UN and dominate media discussions on Israel.
For example, under the civil society façade, and using European taxpayer money, as well as donations from the New Israel Fund, B’Tselem’s offices in London and Washington lobby intensely in support of the blood libels in the Goldstone Report. In parallel, the self-styled Coalition of Women for Peace promotes boycotts, divestment and sanctions and to hurt Israeli firms. And a handful of individuals in Breaking the Silence (BTS), were invited to travel (all expenses paid) throughout Europe to tell the journalists, “intellectuals” and left-wing politicians that Israel, and not Hamas or Hizbullah, is the real “war criminal.” BTS films were also shown as part of Israel Apartheid Week activities across campuses last month...

Bias is zero-sum so Obama is anti-Israel.

http://tinyurl.com/y6xa64k
The Times Makes It Official: Obama Has Shifted U.S. Policy Against Israel By Jonathan Tobin, commentarymagazine.com
If there were any lingering doubts in the minds of Democrats who care about Israel that the president they helped elect has fundamentally altered American foreign policy to the Jewish state’s disadvantage, they are now gone. The New York Times officially proclaimed the administration’s changed attitude in a front-page story this morning that ought to send chills down the spine of anyone who believed Barack Obama when he pledged in 2008 that he would be a loyal friend of Israel.
In the view of the paper’s Washington correspondents, the moment that signaled what had already been apparent to anyone who was paying attention was the president’s declaration at a Tuesday news conference that resolving the Middle East conflict was “a vital national security interest of the United States.” Mr. Obama went on to state that the conflict is “costing us significantly in terms of blood and treasure,” thus attempting to draw a link between Israel’s attempts to defend itself with the safety of American troops who are fighting Islamist terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world. By claiming the Arab-Israeli conflict to be a “vital national security interest” that must be resolved, the “frustrated” Obama is making it clear that he will push hard to impose a solution on the parties.
The significance of this false argument is that it not only seeks to wrongly put the onus on Israel for the lack of a peace agreement but that it also now attempts to paint any Israeli refusal to accede to Obama’s demands as a betrayal in which a selfish Israel is stabbing America in the back. The response from Obama to this will be, the Times predicts, “tougher policies toward Israel,” since it is, in this view, ignoring America’s interests and even costing American lives.
The problem with this policy is that the basic premise behind it is false. Islamists may hate Israel, but that is not why they are fighting the United States. They are fighting America because they rightly see the West and its culture, values, and belief in democracy as antithetical to their own beliefs and a threat to its survival and growth as they seek to impose their medieval system everywhere they can...
****What is only slightly more problematical is the extent to which Obama's animus extends to the U.S.,our Constitution, American superpower status and Western values. ****

Obama's clear bias in favor of Muslims here and abroad. But WHY?

http://tinyurl.com/y3ezvtv
White House Quietly Courts Muslims in U.S.
By ANDREA ELLIOTTWhen President Obama took the stage in Cairo last June, promising a new relationship with the Islamic world, Muslims in America wondered only half-jokingly whether the overture included them....his administration has reached out to this politically isolated constituency in a sustained and widening effort that has left even skeptics surprised....the government’s decision this month to end a policy subjecting passengers from 14 countries, most of them Muslim, to additional scrutiny at airports, the officials said....Tariq Ramadan, a prominent Muslim academic, visited the United States for the first time in six years... barred Mr. Ramadan from entering the country, initially citing the U.S.A. Patriot Act.... also cleared the way for another well-known Muslim professor, Adam Habib, who had been denied entry under similar circumstances...r...the administration’s solicitation of Muslims and Arab-Americans has drawn little fanfare, it has not escaped criticism. A small but vocal group of research analysts, bloggers and others complain that the government is reaching out to Muslim leaders and organizations with an Islamist agenda or ties to extremist groups abroad....Islamic Society of North America. The group was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a Texas-based charity whose leaders were convicted in 2008 of funneling money to Hamas....“I think dialogue is good, but it has to be with genuine moderates,” said Steven Emerson, a terrorism analyst who advises government officials. “These are the wrong groups to legitimize.” Mr. Emerson and others have also objected to the political appointments of several American Muslims, including Rashad Hussain....in 2004, while he was a student at Yale Law School, in which he referred to several domestic terrorism prosecutions as “politically motivated.” Among the cases he criticized was that of Sami Al-Arian, a former computer-science professor in Florida who pleaded guilty to aiding members of a Palestinian terrorist group...
****It's hard to interpret these actions by Obama as anything but a threat to our security and Western values, to all of which he seems unsympathetic.****

Surprise, Obama doesn't like American exceptionalism OR "superpower"status.

He is doing his best to undo both.
http://tinyurl.com/y3x3p9m
Palin Taken Aback by Obama 'Superpower' Remark
Sarah Palin criticized President Barack Obama on Saturday for saying America is a military superpower "whether we like it or not," saying she was taken aback by his comment.
"I would hope that our leaders in Washington, D.C., understand we like to be a dominant superpower," the former Alaska governor said. "I don't understand a world view where we have to question whether we like it or not that America is powerful."...

Defense Sec. Gates' memo points up feckless Obama lack of policy.

A leaked memo from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates ( easily the most--and perhaps the only--capable Cabinet member) states that the Obama Administration has NO policy to deal with Iran's nuclear program. Sen. McCain said he didn't need the memo to realize this. John Bolton commented that Obama's diplomacy was ineffective, there was no attempt at regime change in Iran, there was no military option and Obama's only concern was to PREVENT Israel from launching a pre-emptive military strike against Iran.

In the tradition of Neville C.

http://tinyurl.com/y7jztfm
Surrendering an ally is no strategy at all
By Wesley Pruden
Barack Obama has come up with an interesting strategy for dealing with the evildoers of the world. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Surrender your friends, if necessary.
He wants to make Israel, our oldest and only reliable friend in the Middle East, the guinea pig to see whether the strategy works. What appeared to be a minor flap between old friends only a fortnight ago now looks like an exploitable opportunity for the man who learned about who's evil in the world from a crazy Jew-baiting preacher in Chicago...Michelle Obama, ...once conceded that she only became proud of America when her husband got to the brink of the presidency, and in a remarkable video of a 2008 appearance that surfaced only this spring, she told of their visiting "his home country in Kenya." ...she meant that Kenya is his ancestral and cultural home. This could explain a lot, and it certainly offers insights now into his determination to discard the Israelis in the affections of Americans and replace them with nations alien to the affections of most Americans. Why retain an emotional attachment to the sources of American law and literature when you could bow to the Saudi king and court the leaders of Iran, Syria and Venezuela?

The Senate tries to caution Obama on hostility toward israel.

http://tinyurl.com/y5l4j4p
Senators stress value of US-Israel ties
By LAHAV HARKOV
Bipartisan letter to Obama administration signed by 3/4 of Senate.
Three-quarters of the United States Senate have signed over the past three days a bipartisan letter to the Obama Administration stressing the importance of US-Israel relations, published on Tuesday.
Senators Barbara Boxer (D-CA) and Johnny Isakson (R-GA) were the leading signatories. The letter, on which they were joined by 76 of their colleagues, is similar to the US House of Representatives letter sent to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over the weekend. The House letter was signed by 333 members, more than three-quarters of that body.
The letter tells Clinton that “from the moment of Israel’s creation, successive US administrations have appreciated the special relationship between [the] two nations. Israel continues to be the one true democracy in the Middle East that brings stability to a region where it is in short supply.”...
It Is the Palestinians, Not Israel, Who Refuse to Negotiate - Ronald S. Lauder
Ronald S. Lauder, President of the World Jewish Congress, wrote to President Obama on Thursday: "Why does the thrust of this administration's Middle East rhetoric seem to blame Israel for the lack of movement on peace talks? After all, it is the Palestinians, not Israel, who refuse to negotiate.
Israel has made unprecedented concessions. It has enacted the most far-reaching West Bank settlement moratorium in Israeli history. Israel has publicly declared support for a two-state solution. Conversely, many Palestinians continue their refusal to even acknowledge Israel's right to exist.
The conflict's root cause has always been the Palestinian refusal to accept Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. Every American president who has tried to broker a peace agreement has collided with that Palestinian intransigence, sooner or later. Recall President Clinton's anguish when his peace proposals were bluntly rejected by the Palestinians in 2000. Settlements were not the key issue then. They are not the key issue now." (World Jewish Congress)
# Obama Phrase Highlights Shift on Middle East - Mark Landler and Helene Cooper
When President Obama declared Tuesday that resolving the long-running Middle East dispute was a "vital national security interest of the United States," he was highlighting a change that has resulted from a lengthy debate among his top officials over how best to balance support for Israel against other American interests.
Several officials point out that Obama has now seized control of Middle East policy himself, giving Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu a list of demands. "The president is re-evaluating the tactics his administration is employing toward Israel and the entire Middle East," said Robert Wexler, a former Democratic congressman who leads the Center for Middle East Peace. "I don't think that anybody believes American lives are endangered or materially affected by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," said Wexler, who has close ties to administration officials. "That's an oversimplification. However, you'd have to have blinders on not to recognize that there are issues in one arena that affect other arenas." (New York Times)

How can there be any doubt? Rahm got rid of Netanyahu before, for Clinton.

U.S. acts as though it seeks regime change in Israel
The Obama administration's lack of a clear strategy to move Mideast peace talks forward raises the question of whether the U.S. is interested in bringing about a new, more pliable Israeli government.By Aaron David Miller
Regime change. Generally it's a term and tactic reserved for America's enemies. But what if the Obama administration is developing a more nuanced version for one of the United States' closest allies -- Israel?
As the brouhaha between Israel and the United States over settlements and Jerusalem continues to simmer, you have to wonder whether President Obama is focused on changing the behavior of Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, or changing prime ministers instead. The absence of a clear strategy to move the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations forward, highlighted by the administration's repeated calls for a settlements freeze -- which neither Netanyahu nor his Likud-led right-wing coalition can accept -- raises the question of whether Washington is interested in bringing about a new and more pliable Israeli government.//
***Of course Obama wants a more pliable Israeli government so he can sell Israel down the river by forcing them to suicidal concessions. He likes Tsipi Livni for this purpose but Israel may unite in the face of this obvious ploy from someone whose knowledge of history is flawed. Obama thinks the Holocaust showed that Jews will go meekly to their deaths. Appeasers often create greater havoc than they can anticipate.***

Federal program will be announced to lock barn doors

of those who have already had a horse stolen.
http://tinyurl.com/y5p3ydv
Obama Launches Mine-Safety Review...

Why are there "too many tests"? It's fear not greed.

http://tinyurl.com/y6pnf8y
MALPRACTICE WORRIES HELP DRIVE HEALTH COSTS
A substantial number of heart doctors -- about one in four -- say they order medical tests that might not be needed out of fear of getting sued, according to a new study... ****The idea that doctors prescribe more tests in order to make more money is a canard: the tests are usually done by OTHER doctors and there's no financial gain for the referral and such as radiologists are incapable of self-referral.****

Some are waking up; it's amazing ( and quite sad ) that more do not.

and didn't anticipate that this was predictable from Obama's past associations.
http://tinyurl.com/y4fevht
Koch Slams Obama Over Israel
Former Mayor Ed Koch, a longtime outspoken supporter and defender of Israel, unleashed an unprecedented and blistering attack on President Obama in his weekly commentary , saying he’s “weeping” because he believes the leader of the free world of undermining the Jewish state and forming an alliance with Arab nations so he can easier impose a U.S.-prescribed peace accord on the Mideast.
Koch pointedly accused Obama of trying to “so weaken the resolve of the Jewish state and its leaders that it will be much easier to impose on Israel an American plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, leaving Israel’s needs for security and defensible borders in the lurch.”
And he added, “I believe President Obama’s policy is to create a whole new relationship with the Arab states of Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, and Iraq as a counter to Iran – The Tyrannosaurus Rex of the Muslim world which we are now prepared to see in possession of a nuclear weapon. If throwing Israel under the bus is needed to accomplish this alliance, so be it.”...

What ever happened to "you can't strike against the public interest" ?

http://tinyurl.com/y94om3g
Morning Bell: Andy Stern’s America By Conn Carroll ...Service Employees International Union President Andrew Stern is expected to resign...he will be doing so while at the top of his game. Stern told The Las Vegas Sun [4] last year: “We spent a fortune to elect Barack Obama – $60.7 million to be exact – and we’re proud of it.” President Obama is well aware of his huge debt to the SEIU. That is why he admits in his autobiography, “I owe those unions.” [5] And it also explains why Stern is the most frequent Obama White House visitor [6], according to official visitor logs. Stern’s access to President Obama has already paid huge dividends including: an $862 billion stimulus that prevented states from having to cut-back government union jobs or wages [7]; $2.5 trillion in new government health care spending [8], much of which will go to unionized health care providers; and the appointment of SEIU associate general counsel Craig Becker to the National Labor Relations Board [9]...The marriage of politics to union organizing has been great for SEIU membership, making it the fastest-growing union in America [10]...total SEIU liabilities were about $8 million. But by 2008, the union owed more than $156 million, a 30% increase over the $120 million it owed in 2007. ...lobbying government is where Stern believes the future of SEIU is....“some of its biggest gains in recent years were less the result of shoe-leather organizing and more the result of deals with major employers or politicians — including former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich....gave Gov. Blagojevich $908,000, making it the single largest campaign contributor for his re-election campaign [17]....the number of government union members surpassed the number of private sector union members for the first time in our nation’s history [18]. There are two reasons for this: 1) Unions kill private sector jobs, and unionized companies earn profits 15% lower than those of comparable non-union firms. This makes unionized firms less competitive, which is why unionized manufacturing jobs fell 75% between 1977 and 2008, while non-union manufacturing INCREASED 6% over that same time. [19] 2) Government union jobs face no competition. Public sector unionization has exploded in the past decade as leaders like Stern realized politics paid much better than the free market....over half of its membership drawing a paycheck on the taxpayers dime [20].
...US Court of Appeals judge for the 7th Circuit Richard Posner recently wrote [21]:
The goal of unions is to redistribute wealth from the owners and managers of firms, and from workers willing to work for very low wages, to the unionized workers and the union’s officers. … Unions, in other words, are worker cartels. … There is also a long history of union corruption. And some union activity is extortionate: the union and the employer tacitly agree that as long as the employer gives the workers a wage increase slightly above the union dues, the union will leave the employer alone.
Except that in Stern’s America, union management no longer redistribute wealth from firms to union members. With the majority of union members now working for the government, Andy Stern and his cohorts are extorting money from you, the taxpayer. And where is that money going? Not into shoring up union member pensions. Those are woefully underfunded. No, the Andy Sterns of the world turn around and use their taxpayer-funded government union dues to lobby for an even larger government that can pay for even more government union jobs. Andy Stern’s America is a perpetual government dependency machine.

It behooves us to remind ourselves of classics since people like Obama forget ( or never knew!)

"On Liberty," a philosophical work by English philosopher John Stuart Mill, was a radical work to the Victorian readers of the time because it supported moral and economic freedom of individuals from the state. Perhaps the most memorable point made by John Stuart Mill in "On Liberty," and his basis for liberty, is that "over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign". John Stuart Mill makes this assertion in opposition to what he calls the "tyranny of the majority", wherein through control of etiquette and morality, society is an unelected power that can do horrific things. Mill's work could be considered a reaction to this social control by the majority and his advocacy of individual decision-making over the self. John Stuart Mill also articulates the famous "Harm Principle" in "On Liberty," which is basically that people can do anything they like as long as it does not harm others. All branches of liberalism-as well as other political ideologies-consider the "Harm Principle" to be one of their core principles. "On Liberty" was an enormously influential work; the ideas presented in the book have remained the basis of much liberal political thought ever since. Aside from the popularity of the ideas themselves, the book is quite short and its themes are easily accessible to a non-expert. It has remained in print continuously since its initial publication. To this day, a copy of On Liberty has been passed to the president of the British Liberals, and then Liberal Democrats, as a symbol of office and succession from the party that John Stuart Mill helped found.
About the Author
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), English philosopher, political theorist, political economist, civil servant and Member of Parliament, was an influential British Classical liberal thinker of the 19th century whose works on liberty justified freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state control. He was a proponent of utilitarianism, an ethical theory developed by Jeremy Bentham, although his conception of it was very different from Bentham's. Hoping to remedy the problems found in an inductive approach to science, such as confirmation bias, he clearly set forth the premises of falsification as the key component in the scientific method. In the pages of “On Liberty,” John Stuart Mill sets forth an impassioned defense of free speech, arguing that free discourse is a necessary condition for intellectual and social progress. We can never be sure, he contends, that a silenced opinion does not contain some element of the truth. He also argues that allowing people to air false opinions is productive for two reasons. First, individuals are more likely to abandon erroneous beliefs if they are engaged in an open exchange of ideas. Second, by forcing other individuals to re-examine and re-affirm their beliefs in the process of debate, these beliefs are kept from declining into mere dogma. It is not enough for Mill that one simply has an unexamined belief that happens to be true; one must understand why the belief in question is the true one.
****Now, does the modern "liberal" accord with Mill's definition of "liberal?"****

Obama's hostility to Israel increases daily even in petty details.

NRG/Maariv reports today that workers at the Dimona reactor who submitted
VISA requests to visit the United States for ongoing University education in
Physics, Chemistry and Nuclear Engineering — have all been rejected, specifically because of their association with the Dimona reactor. This is a new policy decision of the Obama administration, since there never used to be an issue with the reactor’s workers from study in the USA, and till recently, they received VISAs and studied in the USA.
Israeli Defense Officials have stated that these reactor researches have no
criminal background in Israel or in the USA, and yet they are being singled
out purely because of their place of employment at the reactor.
Professor Zeev Alfasi, the head of Nuclear Engineering at Ben-Gurion University in the Negev stated that “the United States doesn’t sell anything nuclear-related to the Dimona reactor, and that means absolutely nothing. Radiation detectors, for example have to be purchased now in France because the USA refuses to sell these to Israel.” ****Radiation detectors are used in civil defense and yet are denied.****
Israel’s Dimona nuclear reactor’s employees have told Israel’s Maariv daily that they have been having problems recently getting visas to the United States where they have for years attended seminars in Chemistry, Physics and Nuclear Engineering (link in Hebrew, Hat Tip: BA Wilson). They also complain of being treated in an ‘insulting manner’ by President Obama’s people. Until recently, employees of the Nuclear Research Center routinely traveled to the United States for seminars and courses.
But reactor employees also complain of an American refusal to sell them reactor components that have routinely been sold to them by the United States. Instead, the components are being purchased from… France. This is from a Google translation that I’ve tried to fix up a little bit. Professor Zeev Alfasi, the Chairman of the Nuclear Engineering Department at Ben – Gurion University, who is aware of what is going on, describes the deterioration of the American attitude regarding the nuclear reactor. “Some of our people did not receive visas to the United States because they are employees of Nuclear Research Center,” explained Professor Alfasi, “The United States does not sell anything nuclear to the Nuclear Research Center, and this includes everything. For example, the Nuclear Research Center in Dimona is buying radiation detectors in France, because the Americans are not selling to the Nuclear Research Center’s employees. ”
Prof. Alfasi added that “the Americans want to know for what each item of equipment is used. They sell to universities, but they refuse to sell these same items of equipment to the Nuclear Research Center. I do not whether they will sell the same items that they refuse to sell us to Iran.” The Nuclear Research Center refused to comment on the claims.//

Illini honor Ecuadoran thug.

http://tinyurl.com/ycz6uos
Ecuador is one of the poorest countries in South America and the name of the president is Rafael Correa.... Correa is taking lessons from Chavez. South America like Africa and other third world continents has always been known for coups and “banana republics.” Brazil has been relatively stable since the 60’s. But we know “up north” anything can happen “down there.” Yep. Coups can still happen. But there is a new strategy: Change the Constitution so I can be President forever. Yep. President for Life. Sounds like a plan. The Ecuadoran Assembly has “loosened” term limits for the corrupt, money-laundering Thug-in-Chief Correa.... Seems one of the lessons Correa learned from Chavez is “let’s go after the journalists who don’t agree with me.” Emilio Palacio claims the El Presidente is on the brink of giving him a 3-yr prison sentence for insulting the head of the Ecuador’s state-run National Financial Corp. But good news for Palacio. That’s down from the 6-yr. sentence first imposed on him.
Correa was elected in 2006 supposedly with the help of Colombian rebel organization FARC, or the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia. Correa denies any ties to FARC. And on the corruption scale, Ecuador is pretty high on the list. Per the Andean Laundry:...

The whole truth?

From the Internet:
TRULY REMARKABLE

I THINK IT IS REMARKABLE THAT WITHIN A WEEK OF TIGER WOODS CRASHING HIS ESCALADE, THE PRESS FOUND EVERY WOMAN WITH WHOM TIGER HAS HAD AN AFFAIR IN THE LAST FEW YEARS, WITH PHOTOS, TEXT MESSAGES, RECORDED PHONE CALLS, ETC.

AND, THEY NOT ONLY KNOW THE CAUSE OF THE FAMILY FIGHT, BUT THEY EVEN KNOW IT WAS A WEDGE FROM HIS GOLF BAG THAT HIS WIFE USED TO BREAK OUT THE WINDOWS IN THE ESCALADE. NOT ONLY THAT, THEY KNOW WHICH WEDGE!

AND EACH AND EVER DAY, THEY GIVE AMERICA MORE UPDATES ON HIS SEX-REHAB STAY, HIS WIFE’S PLANS FOR DIVORCE, AND HIS PLANS TO RETURN TO THE PRO-GOLF CIRCUIT.

OBAMA HAS BEEN IN OFFICE FOR OVER A YEAR NOW, AND THIS SAME PRESS STILL CANNOT LOCATE OBAMA'S OFFICIAL BIRTH CERTIFICATE, OR ANY OF HIS PAPERS WHILE IN COLLEGE, OR HOW HE PAID FOR A HARVARD EDUCATION, OR WHICH COUNTRY

ISSUED HIS VISA TO TRAVEL TO PAKISTAN IN THE 1980'S AS BARRY SORETORO AND EVEN MICHELLE OBAMA’S PRINCETON THESIS ON RACISM. IT JUST CAN’T BE FOUND.

YET THE PUBLIC STILL TRUSTS THAT SAME PRESS TO GIVE THEM

THE WHOLE TRUTH . . . TRULY REMARKABLE!

On expertise, the lack thereof and what's worse.

In all fairness, Sarah Palin started it. On Fox News Wednesday, Palin criticized President Obama over a new defense policy which states that the U.S. would not respond to chemical and biological attacks with nuclear weapons if the enemy nation abides by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, saying "it's kinda like getting out there on a playground, a bunch of kids getting ready to fight, and one of the kids saying, 'Go ahead, punch me in the face and I'm not going to retaliate.'" But Obama did fight back—against Palin—during an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC News. "I really have no response. Because last I checked, Sarah Palin's not much of an expert on nuclear issues,"
****The last anyone checked, Obama is not much of an expert on anything. As Artemus Ward said, what is worse about Obama is "he knows all kinds of things that ain't so."****

Appeasement? Unilateral disarmament? What's next?

Obama's eschewal of nuclear retaliation for chemical, biological or electromagnetic pulse attack on the U.S. is incompetent, naive and feckless. Before the (first)Gulf War, Secretary Baker informed the Iraqi government that, should the Iraqis use their known chemical weapons against us, the retaliation would be unlimited. Result? They never deployed the chemical weapons they had. There would be no such deterrent under ObamaCarelessness.***
http://tinyurl.com/y5czjo8 By: Dick Morris
If any nation wants to attack the United States with chemical, biological, or electromagnetic pulse weapons, it need not fear nuclear retaliation as long as it has no nuclear weapons and abides by the Non Proliferation Treaty, President Barack Obama has announced. So, as New Yorkers are coughing their lungs out from mustard gas or dying in the streets of biological weapons, they will know that their government will not use nuclear weapons to retaliate against their murderers....
His incredible announcement amounts to a green light for anti-American nations to hit our cities with gas or poisons resting secure in the knowledge that we will not use our nuclear arsenal to reply...

"War on Terror" was euphemistic enough; it IS a war WITH Islamic Radicalism.

Now Obama is saying, "they may be at war with us but We are not at war with them."
http://tinyurl.com/ylzq4hw
Obama Plan Should Outrage 9/11 Victims
Rush Limbaugh used his radio program Wednesday to lash out against President Obama’s plan to censor the word “Islamic radicalism” from a National Security document that deals with threats confronting America. Obama advisers say the new version emphasizes that the U.S. does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terrorism.****If the U.S. does not, the U.S. is "a ass" as Dickens said.If we don't recognize who is trying to kill us, what happens to national defense and security. Do they spit in Obama's face and he thinks it rain? It must depend on where it's coming from because he's waging war on our erstwhile allies. What do these idiots think about the identity of those who attacked on 9/11, bombed our embassies, slaughtered Danny Pearl, murdered unarmed people at Ft.Hood? HINT: when Maj. Hasan Nidal yells "Allahu Akbar" before opening fire, when suicide bombers target the Moscow subway ( or London's or Spain's), what identity could they have but Muslim ?( And perhaps it's a concession to restrict the designation to "radical" Muslims. )****
But the change is a radical shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventive war. It currently states, "The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century."
Limbaugh, America’s number one rated conservative host, thinks the Obama initiative is dangerous... ****Of course it's dangerous; the President doesn't know we are at war and doesn't know with whom we're at war. *****

The "socially just" and policially correct, attack Beck

http://tinyurl.com/yee4k8q
Tweet justice for Glenn Beck? By David Waters
Beginning at 9 a.m. Wednesday morning, and for the following 24 hours, the Jewish Funds for Justice plans to tweet the heck out of Glenn Beck.
The social justice group plans to unleash a "Twitterstorm" on the Fox News host to protest his recent remarks mocking the faith-based idea of "social justice." JFSJ has collected more than 1,500 haikus (Haik U Beck, they call it) mocking Beck...

At Passover time
Do not conflate Jewish rime
With Left do-good-ness.

Rob Peter, pay Paul
Hurts the two of them...and all,
Stealing incentive.

Holier than thou?
It is arrogance enow.
Alms must be given

Holland pushed around by Muslims who demand heresy trial

Travesty in The Netherlands where Gert Wilders is in danger of being burned at the stake even though the court admits that what he said was true. The Dutch are dhimmi Dummies.
http://www.youtube.com/user/patcondell#p/a/u/1/96ZUZ9CPZII

Wow! An admission that it's not about healthcare but about redistribution.

ObamaCare Fixes Reagan Legacy of "Inequality"
"At least one thing seems clear: The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government's biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago....The laissez-faire revolution that Mr. Reagan started did not cause these trends. But its policies — tax cuts, light regulation, a patchwork safety net — have contributed to them."
— New York Times economics writer David Leonhardt in his March 24 "Economic Scene" column.

Ye may be many but ye not be right and it not be science.

London's Daily Telegraph reports on the latest global-warming scandal, "a scheme to claim $60 billion in carbon credits for keeping intact a large chunk of the Amazon rainforest which is not under any threat":
The architects of this imaginative project are the environmental campaigners of the WWF and their close ally the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts.
Last week a letter to this newspaper from Woods Hole's CEO, William Brown, averred that it was not, as I had said, an "environmental advocacy group" but a "widely respected scientific institution." This is precisely the claim which has been dismissed by, among others, the renowned atmospheric physicist Professor Richard Lindzen, who has more than once emphasised that the Woods Hole Research Center is "an environmental advocacy center, not to be confused with the far better known Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution," a genuinely respected scientific body.d****Not only the classic logical fallacy of appealing to authority but doing it to the wrong one!One is certainly tempted to invoke "falsus in unum, falsus in omnibus."****
Meanwhile another advocacy organization, Greenpeace, is urging "mass civil disobedience" to intimidate those who are skeptical about global warming:
If you're one of those who believe that this is not just necessary but also possible, speak to us. Let's talk about what that mass civil disobedience is going to look like.

If you're one of those who have spent their lives undermining progressive climate legislation, bankrolling junk science, fueling spurious debates around false solutions, and cattle-prodding democratically-elected governments into submission, then hear this:

We know who you are. We know where you live. We know where you work.

And we be many, but you be few.

That be politics. It sound like incitement, though threat not be imminent, so probably it be protected by First Amendment. But definitely it not be science.

When Fed officials pledge to "protect and defend the Constitution", many don't mean it.

****FoxNews is replete with clips of Congressmen actually saying that they "don't care about the Constitution". The President has been complaining for years that the Constitution only has negative rights and needs positive ones. His close advisor, Cass Sunstein wrote a book on the need for a Second Constitution. Another advisor, Harold Koh, insists that precedents from other judicial systems should trump the U.S. Constitution. The "internationalist" bias of the Left stems in large measure from the Constitutional mandate that, if a treaty is signed and approved by 2/3 of the Senate, it becomes the "supreme" law of the land, whether Constitutional or not.* It's no wonder Obama doesn't believe in American exceptionalism: he doesn't believe in the Constitution which underlies it.***
http://tinyurl.com/yce76s3
ObamaCare and the Constitution If Congress can force you to buy insurance, Article I limits on federal power are a dead letter.
The constitutional challenges to ObamaCare have come quickly, and the media are portraying them mostly as hopeless gestures—the political equivalent of Civil War re-enactors. Discussion over: You lost, deal with it.
The press corps never dismissed the legal challenges to the war on terror so easily, but then liberals have long treated property rights and any limits on federal power to regulate commerce as 18th-century anachronisms. In fact, the legal challenges to ObamaCare are serious and carry enormous implications for the future of American liberty.
The most important legal challenge turns on the "individual mandate"—the new requirement that almost every U.S. citizen must buy government-approved health insurance. Failure to comply will be punished by an annual tax penalty that by 2016 will rise to $750 or 2% of income, whichever is higher. President Obama opposed this kind of coercion as a candidate but has become a convert. He even argued in a September interview that "I absolutely reject that notion" that this tax is a tax, because it is supposedly for your own good.****An interesting point. What constrains the limits on the penalty for this "good-for-you-hence-not-a-tax? How about $1M for infractions? Why was Prohibition ( which, incidentally, didn't work, created a criminal industry and had to be countermanded ) a Constitutional Amendment? According to Obama, everyone could be required to take injections that make ingestion of alcohol noxiously nauseating, the penalty for not being $1M enforced by the IRS -- Prohibition was also enforced by agents of the Treasury Department! -- . Banning Demon Rum could have been done by a simple act of
Congress. One must realize that the logical tool of reductio ad absurdum doesn't work to debunk the thinking of the Left: it's often merely a starting point for them.**** Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum and 13 other state AGs—including Louisiana Democrat Buddy Caldwell—claim this is an unprecedented exercise of state power. Never before has Congress required people to buy a private product to qualify as a law-abiding citizen... ****Obama makes much and often of his "teaching Constitutional Law." Several points have to be made ( and never are in the MSM):
1) he was not a professor at the UofC Law School or anywhere else.
2) he never published a scholarly paper and, hence, had the title only of "Senior Lecturer" reserved for non-academics.
3) Teaching something doesn't mean you understand the subject. Often, those with bizarre views of a subject are invited to lecture on the grounds that students should be exposed to different points of view so that they can think for themselves.
4) When Obama is constantly told by his sycophants that he is "the smartest guy in the room" ( or, according to David Brooks, has the best-creased pants ), he tends to believe it and his own omniscience. This is especially dangerous when it ain't so. As the old saw ends, "He who knows not, and knows not he knows not, he is a fool, SHUN HIM." ****