Wednesday, June 30, 2010

Revs. Wright and Farrakhan surface again... unchanged and as Obama always heard them.

****The only thing is that no-one still believes Obama's fiction that they were different during his close association with them.They were and are still anti-Semitic, anti-white, anti-American. ****
http://tinyurl.com/2f95hl7
Rev. Jeremiah Wright: Jews Control Flow of Info 30 Jun 2010 By: Ronald Kessler
As might be expected, the mainstream media have ignored the latest rant from the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr., President Obama’s minister, friend, sounding board, and mentor for 20 years.
As reported recently by the New York Post, Wright told a seminar he taught at the University of Chicago that Jews control the flow of worldwide information and oppress blacks in Israel and in the United States.
“White folk done took this country,” Wright said. “You’re in their home, and they’re gonna let you know it.” Addressing blacks in his class, Wright said, “You are not now, nor have you ever been, nor will you ever be, a brother to white folk. And if you do not realize that, you are in serious trouble.” Wright said the educational system in America is designed by whites to mis-educate blacks “not by benign neglect but by malignant intent.”
...Finally, Wright stood up for Nation of Islam head Louis Farrakhan, who has made serial anti-Semitic and anti-white comments...Wright criticized black leaders for “cuttin’ and duckin’” at the mention of Farrakhan’s name.
During the 20 years Obama sat in his pews, hate speech was Wright’s specialty. In sermons, he claimed America created the AIDS virus to kill off blacks. His church’s website and newsletters were replete with screeds against Israel. Yet Obama, in his speech disavowing Wright in Philadelphia, said of his self-described longtime friend and adviser, “Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect.”...I first encountered Obama’s penchant for fabrication when I wrote a Newsmax story revealing that Wright had given an award to Farrakhan....Obama claimed that the award was for Farrakhan’s work with ex-prisoners. But the award citation and Wright’s own description made no mention of ex-prisoners....explicitly said it was given for Farrakhan’s “lifetime achievement.”
...the “Big Lie.”...description perfectly fits Obama’s claim that Wright never disparaged any ethnic group to him. It has to be his biggest fabrication. In the meantime, Obama’s failure to come clean about his own involvement with a bigot gives us a revealing glimpse into his attitudes and character.//
http://tinyurl.com/3ysnpq2
Farrakhan Accuses Jews Of Hurting Blacks
Hansen Sinclair - AHN News Reporter
New York, NY, United States (AHN) - The U.S. Anti-Defamation League is at odds with Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan. According to Farrakhan, the Jewish people should be blamed for the financial shortcomings of blacks.
ADL Director Abraham H. Foxman accused Farrakhan of becoming obsessive and extreme in his hatred towards Jews.Farrakhan reportedly sent a letter to the ADL director and other American Jewish leaders describing graphic anti-Semitic “histories.” The letter was accompanied by a two-volume book called "The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews" written by the Nation of Islam Historical Research Team.
One volume alleges Jews have worked for hundreds of years to financially destroy black people.
Foxman said Farrakhan’s entire message is all about using Jews as a scapegoat, as opposed to only being part of his message, reports stated.
Farrakhan proposed an open dialogue between the parties to help repair the damage done by Jews to blacks.****Doubtless with the goal of extortion.****
Read more: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7019153534#ixzz0sTagczAi

Hopeful sparks among the Arabs: will they ignite kindling or be extinguished?

Arab Intelligentsia Strive for Better Relations with Israel despite Threats
EducationNews.org
Arab actors, journalists and other intellectuals are defying their countries’ unofficial bans on working with Israelis and Jews – even amid threats – as they strive toward “normalized” relations with their counterparts. The efforts have divided Arabs into two camps: those who defend reconciling relations with Israelis and others who favor boycotts or violence to further political goals.[1]
In the meantime, Israelis have pushed ahead with their longtime attempts to strengthen cultural ties with Arabs as part of their goal of mutual acceptance and recognition.[2]
In recent months, Egyptian actor Khalid Al-Nabawy became an unwitting lightning rod in this struggle after participating in the American film “Fair Game” with Israeli actress Liraz Charhi. Although the actor said he didn’t participate in the movie for political reasons, he ultimately "realized he would pay the price" for acting alongside Charhi.[3]
In other cases, however, Arab actors, authors and others are knowingly taking on roles that bridge cultural and political gaps with their Israeli and Jewish colleagues....

Reductio ad absurdum is, for Democrats, a starting point

***Elena Kagan was asked yesterday the following question: If the Congress passed a law requiring all Americans to have three helpings of fruit and three helpings of vegetables every day, would that law be Constitutional under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution? While Kagan allowed that it would be a stupid law, she refused to deny that it would be a valid law in her view of the Supreme court's interpretation of the Commerce Clause. Now, it is clearly absurd that Congress could so intrude into the private life of citizens but the point is that the Commerce Clause, as loosely used to justify such things as the "individual mandate' in Obamacare, can be used to to justify ANYTHING. Soft tyranny by the government would thus be justified, inevitably followed by harder versions. The Constitution is an American's protection against this but not with activist justices who can justify ANYTHING, however extreme or absurd. When asked if the FCC could ban books it deemed offensive, Kagan's response was that, in 60 years, the FCC had never done so. She refused to see the parallel with the FCC's demanded right to ban non-book free speech. ***

****Then, the Democrats on the interviewing panel proceeded to be the pots calling the kettle black by inveighing against "results-oriented" justices, as if a justice unconstrained by any Constitutional limits on legislation, wouldn't be solely "results-oriented" i.e. holding for legislation she liked and rejecting the other kind. It's also funny that the AP report didn't mention the exchange quoted above although it was the most significant, being headlined in The DRUDGE Report. ****
Leahy predicts Kagan approval; hearings near end
WASHINGTON – Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan neared the end of a grueling turn in the Senate Judiciary Committee witness chair Wednesday, and the senator presiding over the proceedings predicted her confirmation.
"Solicitor General Kagan will be confirmed," Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., told reporters during a pause in a third day of testimony by President Barack Obama's choice for the court.
There was no disagreement from minority Republicans, several of whom have spent the past two days challenging Kagan over her treatment of military recruiters while dean of Harvard Law School, her views on gun rights and her ability to set aside her political leanings if approved.
Obama nominated Kagan to replace retiring John Paul Stevens. If confirmed, she would be the fourth female justice in history and the third to don the robes on the current court.
Kagan, until recently, the Obama administration's solicitor general, spent much of Wednesday sparring with senators in both parties who pressed her to be more forthcoming about her views.
She declined several opportunities to criticize the current Supreme Court, saying, "I'm sure everyone up there is acting in good faith."
In a lengthy exchange with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Kagan said pointedly she didn't agree with the Rhode Island Democrat's analysis that conservative justices appointed by Republican presidents were "driving the law in a new direction by the narrowest possible margins" in a series of 5-4 rulings.
Later, she sat quietly as Democratic Sens. Ted Kaufman of Delaware and Al Franken of Minnesota vigorously criticized recent court rulings. Both men said they would not ask her to agree with them, and she did not volunteer to do so.
Unlike the first two days of the hearings, there were few if any spectators in line to witness a bit of history. Democrats said Kagan's testimony would be completed by day's end. Obama has asked the Senate to confirm her in time to take her seat before the court opens a new term in October.
Republicans and Democrats alike expressed frustration that she wasn't willing to answer more questions despite having once written a book review saying Supreme Court nominees needed to do just that.
In something of a jab at her reticence to expand on numerous legal controversies, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., said some critics are wondering what she believes and whether she would be more like Chief Justice John Roberts or Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Ginsburg, appointed by President Bill Clinton, is generally viewed as being a member of the court's liberal wing, cast into the minority on controversial 5-4 rulings.
Whitehouse seemed more concerned with Roberts and the other justices who frequently side with him in closely decided cases.
The Rhode Island Democrat cited a 9-0 ruling that banned school desegregation in 1954 and a 7-2 decision in 1973 that said women have the right to an abortion as examples of far-reaching cases decided by large or unanimous majorities joined by justices appointed by presidents of both parties. By contrast, he said, the current court had overturned precedent in antitrust law, gun ownership and other cases on 5-4 rulings joined only by "Republican appointees."
He asked what efforts the justices should make to return to a "collegial environment at the court" so controversial rulings are not decided so narrowly.
"Every judge, every justice has to do what he or she thinks is right," she said. "You wouldn't want the judicial process to become in any way a bargaining process," she said, although she added that the court and country are best served when the public "trusts the court as an entirely nonpolitical body."
Kagan did cast doubt on a key argument Roberts outlined in a recent case in which the court said corporations and unions are free to spend their own funds on political activity. In a concurring opinion as part of a 5-4 ruling, the chief justice said legal precedents whose validity is a matter of intense dispute can be toppled.
"It should be regarded with some caution," Kagan said of that line of thinking. She said that there were "stronger reasons" for overturning precedents, including if they became unworkable, if courts reverse the cases that helped establish them or if new facts have made them irrelevant.
Kaufman and Franken both joined in criticizing the decision about corporations and political activity.
The Delaware senator said the court's ruling was an example of `results-oriented judging, kind of reaching a decision and then trying to figure out how to make it happen."
Kaufman refrained from asking Kagan to agree, but then asked for an opinion on "results-oriented judging."
She replied, "I think results-oriented judging is pretty much the worst kind of judging there is."
Franken, too, criticized the court's ruling. "If that isn't outcome-oriented, I don't know what is. I'd love to ask you if you agree, but I don't want to force you to criticize your future colleagues."
****There is a substantive question about whether "stere decisis" should apply to 5:4 decisions since it is likely that the technical interpretation of the Constitution is not the issue but, rather, the personal positions of the justices. One might think that precedent should apply more strongly as the decision is more definitive, being generally useful for the efficient functioning of the SCOTUS, but recognizing that it should never be an absolute (Dred Scott being an example.)****

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Lest we forget: it's important to know when someone is pissing on your boots.

http://tinyurl.com/33nmq3s
The Art of Al-taqiyya March 08, 2005
From the Washington Post:Muslim opinion of America is changing...Yay! Woo hoo! They like us! They finally like us. Yippee! < /sarcasm >Get a grip, for crying out loud, get a grip! Should we care if they like us? No. Should we care if they say they like us? No. But more importantly, do they really really like us more? Or even hate us less? No.
This is, I believe, a direct result of negative press that islam hates Americans, as well as repeated demands by Americans that Muslims speak out against terrorism. Should what they say make a difference?
Al-taqiyya is a word used for the practice of Muslims blatantly lying to non-Muslims. Muslims consider the act of Al-taqiyya or lying to non-Muslims to be a good work. Especially if it helps support the war against the infidel. In case you've forgotten, you are the infidel, so am I, so is each and every American who is not muslim.
From "Islam's Shell Game" by Johnn "Trike" Schroeder
Muslims say one thing and think another, because their holy book allows such action in the furtherance of their religion. They do not punish the insane killers in their communities who strike at Americans, because they do not see the terrorists as wrong, rather they see them as warriors, honorable and holy themselves.
Thus there is no conflict with their religion, and no real dichotomy exists between the terrorists and Islam as a whole. If one acts as a neutral (for no Muslim speaks out one way or the other as a rule on terrorists and their acts), to create a sort of wall behind which our enemies can move and strike at us, they act as our enemies as well!
We have a decision to make here, just how are we to protect ourselves, when we allow such a tactical and strategic screw up to exist in our very midst! Who is killing us and our allies, MUSLIMS, not the little old ladies the airport security strip searches to protect us from illegal knitting needles!
We need to start seriously applying common sense while we still have a few people not yet blown up or under threat of being so.
The terrorists want one thing, (just as the Koran calls for), a world united as Islam or nothing! This is about world conquest as a religious duty.
Let us begin to understand that we face an enemy who will happily kill you, your family and friends and celebrate their own death doing it. It matters not if you are on the right or the left, they want us DEAD! Nothing else will do for them.
And unless we get in gear, they will do just that to far too many of us. as we wring our hands and cringe, crying out "Can’t we just get along?" If we do not act, that will be our pathetic epitaph.
So. All of a sudden Muslims like America and Americans? Yeah. Sure they do.

Al-taqqiya is a war tactic, the sheep's clothing worn by the wolves in our midst. and you can't see the forest for the trees.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Thomas Sowell's great insight into the nature of resentment, hatred,...and "social justice."

http://tinyurl.com/2bxluu2
Resenting Achievement More than Wealth Achievement is a slap in the face to those who had the same opportunities but did not succeed; inherited wealth is no such insult.
Recent stories out of both Philadelphia and San Francisco tell of black students’ beating up Asian-American students. This is especially painful for those who expected that the election of Barack Obama would mark the beginning of a post-racial America.
...Those who explain racial antagonisms on rational bases will have a hard time demonstrating how Asian Americans have made blacks worse off. Certainly none of the historic wrongs done to blacks was done by the small Asian-American population...While ugly racial or ethnic conflicts can seldom be explained by rational economic or other self-interest, they have been too common to be just inexplicable oddities...Resentments and hostility toward people with higher achievements are one of the most widespread of human failings. Resentments of achievements are more deadly than envy of wealth.
The hatred of people who started at the bottom and worked their way up has far exceeded hostility toward those who were simply born into wealth. None of the sultans who inherited extraordinary fortunes in Malaysia has been hated like the Chinese, who arrived there destitute and rose by their own efforts.Inheritors of the Rockefeller fortune have been elected as popular governors in three states, attracting nothing like the hostility toward the Jewish immigrants who rose from poverty on Manhattan’s Lower East Side to prosperity in a variety of fields.Others who started at the bottom and rose to prosperity — the Lebanese in West Africa, the Indians in Fiji, and the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, for example — have likewise been hated for their achievements. Being born a sultan or a Rockefeller is not an achievement.
Achievements are a reflection on others who may have had similar, and sometimes better, chances but who did not make the most of their chances. Achievements are like a slap across the face to those who are not achieving, and many people react with the same kind of anger that such an insult would provoke....Many of our educators, our intelligentsia, and our media — not to mention our politicians — promote an attitude that other people’s achievements are grievances, rather than examples....These are poisonous and self-destructive consequences of a steady drumbeat of ideological hype — differences are translated into “disparities” and “inequities,” provoking envy and resentments under the more prettied-up name of “social justice.”...Young people who are seething with resentments,...are bigger victims in the long run,...A decade after these beatings, these Asian Americans will be headed up in the world, while the hoodlums who beat them up are more likely to be headed for crime and prison.
People who call differences “inequities” and achievements “privilege” leave social havoc in their wake, while feeling noble about siding with the less fortunate. It would never occur to them that they have any responsibility for the harm done to both blacks and Asian Americans.****Is it accidental also that those who inherited success, or came upon it randomly or too easily (e.g. Hollywood and big financial players) are often liberal while those who succeeded on their own by dint of sweat, hard work and application (e.g. small business people) are more often than not conservative? And aren't liberals always trying to level out achievement while conservatives try to preserve and encourage it? ****

Turkey's Islamist turn suits Obama.

http://tinyurl.com/2byl2u9
Obama’s embrace of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan threatens both Israel and the Palestinian Authority By David P. Goldman | Jun 24, 2010
Mickey Mouse must have felt a bit like this, midway through the “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” episode of Fantasia. In the remake, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan plays the role of the runaway broom conjured up by President Barack Obama, who wanted a fresh set of allies to advance a 21st-century foreign policy that rejected U.S. hegemony. Now his inventions have taken on a life of their own, and the White House is awash in a flood of trouble.
The volatile Turkish leader was supposed to have been a key U.S. partner in a new world order founded on diplomacy rather than force. Obama reached out to him repeatedly, first in a high-profile pilgrimage just after taking office and most recently to mediate a secret nuclear fuel deal with Iran. But Erdogan has a different agenda, which a group of Turkish diplomats recently characterized as “neo-Ottoman.” ...become the Mideast’s regional hegemon, as well as Russia’s strategic partner...to succeed he wants to rally the region’s extremists to his neo-Ottoman cause.
“Even despots, gangsters and pirates have specific sensitiveness, [and] follow some specific morals,” Erdogan said of Turkey’s erstwhile ally Israel, accusing the Jewish state of “piracy” and “war crimes.” He also vowed that Kurdish rebels who seek autonomy from Turkey will “drown in their own blood.” ... Turkey’s public embrace of Hamas—which the European Union and the United States consider a terrorist organization—has undercut traditional U.S. allies such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The biggest loser might be the Palestinian Authority and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas. ...Abbas was cut off at the knees when Obama buckled to Turkish demands over Gaza. The White House declared after the flotilla debacle that Israel’s blockade of Gaza was “unsustainable” and “must be changed” and announced a new $400 million Gaza aid package that will help resuscitate Hamas....Abbas reportedly begged Obama not to lift the Gaza blockade...
The Obama blend of self-abnegation and chaos persuades U.S. allies around the world that they are on their own and U.S. enemies that they can get away with a great deal more than they dreamed only a year ago. When Obama proclaimed to the U.N. General Assembly in September 2009 that “no one nation can or should try to dominate another nation,” the message to world leaders in the audience recalls Robin Williams’s 1970s nightclub impression of Jimmy Carter addressing the world on the eve of World War III: “That’s all, good night, you’re on your own.”

***

With the United States seemingly committed to a general strategic withdrawal, the rest of the world has begun a wild scramble for position in a post-U.S.-dominated world. Every wannabe and used-to-be power from Pyongyang to Ankara has seen the opportunity to realize long-simmering ambitions that had been frustrated by decades of Cold War and another two decades of U.S. hegemony. As a matter of self-preservation, their neighbors have had no choice but to join the fray.

Iran hopes to command a “Shi’ite crescent” embracing disaffected Muslims from Hezbollah in Lebanon to Hazara in Afghanistan. Turkey wants to assert its old overlordship over the region, while the starry-eyed Islamists of Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party, known as the AKP, dream of a new caliphate. Russia wants to weaken the United States.

“America has no influence now, because it’s not doing anything,” Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told the Italian daily La Repubblica last month. The United States is not to be engaged, but simply replaced, the Syrian leader said. “It is merely a matter of becoming aware of a fact: that America and Europe have failed to solve the problems of the world,” he said. “This failure leads necessarily to other alternatives: a geo-strategic map that aligns Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Russia, in a community of politics, interests and infrastructure. It takes the form of a single space that unites five seas: the Mediterranean, the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea, the Arabian Gulf and the Red Sea.”

Assad’s account isn’t quite accurate: Turkey, Iran, and Russia only agree about the United States. They compete with each other in the Hobbesian post-United States war of each against all. Turkey’s Erdogan sponsored the Gaza blockade-runners in order to make Hamas into a Turkish rather than an Iranian attack dog. Turkey has aligned with Iran, in open defiance of Washington’s desultory efforts to “isolate” the Tehran regime but with a view toward contending with Iran for leadership of the Muslim world.

But Assad is entirely right to sneer at the confusion and weakness at the heart of U.S. foreign policy. As presidential candidate, Obama employed his ample talent for persuasion to convince prospective supporters with incompatible views that he was on their side. Despite extensive reporting of anti-Israel sentiment among his friends and political entourage during the summer of 2008, Obama managed to win the endorsement of the New Republic’s Martin Peretz, Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, Elie Weisel, and other American Jewish celebrities who like to advertize their commitment to Israel’s security.

But the methods that served Obama so well as candidate have turned into a cascading series of catastrophes that has left the United States at a diplomatic low point not seen since the Carter Administration. Whatever the failings of the Bush Administration—and there were many—the world accorded U.S. priorities a grudging respect born of fear. In just two years Obama has become a figure of astonishment and contempt. In every field of foreign policy—Middle East peace, nuclear proliferation, dealings with the Russians, the Korean peninsula, relations with Japan, management of Latin America— the once-stable pillars of U.S. foreign policy are melting down.

Obama’s image, meanwhile, has tarnished rapidly overseas. His administration’s popularity among Arabs plunged during the past year. The British and continental media portray him as a bumbler; Der Spiegel, Germany’s arbiter of liberal opinion, dismisses Obama as the “Jimmy Carter of the 21st century.”

One problem is that the White House works like a campaign headquarters rather than a presidency. Everything is about spin, and all lines of communication go straight up to the persuader-in-chief. Overlapping and conflicting responsibilities abound. Whether Middle East policy emanates from Dennis Ross or George Mitchell or Hillary Clinton or Rahm Emanuel on a given day depends on press leaks and presidential whim. And above the chaos there is Obama’s preternatural confidence that he can persuade almost anyone to do almost anything.

Israel, which wants to remain a loyal U.S. ally, is in a particularly tough position. Despite his misgivings, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed on to the two basic requirements of the new U.S. paradigm for the Middle East: acceptance of a two-state solution and a settlement freeze. The Obama Administration repaid Netanyahu’s loyalty in March by staging a diplomatic crisis over a minor zoning decision in an East Jerusalem neighborhood where no Arab ever had lived and that every draft peace agreement assigns to Israel. The White House in effect demanded that Israel concede in advance key matters subject to negotiations. Most alarming to Israel, it repudiated the 2004 agreement that President George W. Bush had struck with then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, in which Israel unilaterally evacuated Gaza in return for American flexibility on West Bank settlement growth. Sharon’s chief of staff Dov Weisglass put this agreement in writing in letters that have since been made public.

To add insult to injury, in March the White House sent Gen. David Petraeus to tell the Senate that Israel’s failure to make peace with the Palestinians compromised the United States’ position throughout the Middle East. And when Netanyahu came to Washington to meet Obama later that month, he was given the back-door treatment usually accorded disreputable dictators from banana republics, without a final statement or a photo opportunity.

The Obama Administration rewarded its most loyal and cooperative ally by sabotaging Israel’s negotiating position, blaming Israel for U.S. policy failures in the Middle East, and humiliating its leader. Any of these actions would have been sufficient to put Israel in diplomatic isolation; the combination of them has left Israel in the weakest international position in decades. Israel has become a passive observer in the demolition of its international standing, hoping that the remonstrations of its friends in the United States would reverse the administration’s public hostility.

***

Damaging as the diplomatic crisis was to Israel’s position, the most devastating blow to Israel’s standing came on May 28—the weekend prior to the Mavi Marmara incident—when the United States cast its vote against Israel at the May 28 U.N. review conference for the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Breaking decades of precedent, the United States voted for a statement demanding that Israel join the NPT, which would mean handing over its nuclear arsenal.

This action—taken over Netanyahu’s urgent protests—marked the first explicit repudiation of Israel’s right to defend itself by any U.S. government. Israel’s policy of “nuclear ambiguity”—neither confirming nor denying the possession of nuclear weapons—was an American idea, not an Israeli idea, to begin with. Then-Prime Minister Golda Meir adopted “nuclear ambiguity” in 1969 at the behest of President Richard Nixon, who did not want Israel to make a public demonstration of its recently acquired weapons. Every U.S. administration since Nixon’s has supported “nuclear ambiguity,” and Israel has cooperated. With no prior announcement, and no consultation, the Obama Administration overthrew a fundamental tenet of U.S.-Israeli relations in order to please Arab governments at the United Nations.

Netanyahu’s office called the NPT document “deeply flawed and hypocritical.” He added: “It singles out Israel, the Middle East’s only true democracy and the only country threatened with annihilation. Yet the terrorist regime in Iran, which is racing to develop nuclear weapons and which openly threatens to wipe Israel off the map, is not even mentioned in the resolution.”

Perhaps the most astonishing feature of the affair is that the administration not only voted against Israel on an existential issue but then publicly repudiated its own stance on the same day. Late on May 28, Obama and National Security Advisor James L. Jones released separate statements that “deplored” the U.N. resolution that it had endorsed that same morning. Jones said: “The United States will not permit a conference or actions that could jeopardize Israel’s national security. We will not accept any approach that singles out Israel or sets unrealistic expectations. The United States’ long-standing position on Middle East peace and security remains unchanged, including its unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security.”

He continued: “In this respect, the United States deplores the decision to single out Israel in the Middle East section of the NPT document.” But if the White House deplored the resolution, why vote for it? The State Department attempted to explain, compounding the confusion. The Washington Times quoted a “senior State Department official” saying, “We did fight hard to get that language out of the final document.” But the State Department only need have voted “no.” To announce that the United States had fought and lost over anti-Israel language is a declaration that the United States will subject its alliance with Israel to a majority vote at the United Nations.

At the same time, the State Department told the Washington Times, “Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has received unequivocal guarantees from Obama for the State of Israel’s preservation of strategic and deterring abilities. These assurances include a significant upgrade in the history of United States-Israel relations in the line of strategic understandings.” No subsequent mention has been made of these “historic assurances,” which presumably reside in the same wastebasket as the Weisglass letters and the “nuclear ambiguity” posture.

Obama seems to believe that he can build support in the Muslim world by voting for anti-Israel U.N. resolutions while at the same time reassuring American Jews that he really is on Israel’s side. Rahm Emanuel was wheeled out twice in May, along with Middle East adviser Dennis Ross, to shmooze a group of rabbis assembled for this purpose. Privately, though, Emanuel has been distancing himself from his boss. A recently reported rumor, which the White House denied, has him quitting after the midterm elections.

***

Just as bewildering are Obama’s efforts to placate hostile parties in the Muslim world. In order to bolster Mahmoud Abbas, Obama provoked a storm of protest by liberal Jewish supporters. At the peak of his problems with the American Jewish community, Obama then threw Abbas under the bus in order to placate Turkish leader Erdogan, who embraced Hamas in order to energize his Islamist political base which has been nurtured for years on nutty anti-U.S. propaganda. Wall Street Journal editor Robert L. Pollock recently recounted a 2006 conversation with the Turkish leader, in which he asked Erdogan to refute rumors that U.S. soldiers were harvesting organs from Iraqi prisoners—and Erdogan refused. “These kind of things happen in the world. If it’s not happening in Iraq, then it’s happening in other countries,” Erdogan replied.

Erdogan is an unusual sort of poster-boy for human rights advocacy. During the past two decades Turkish security forces have killed an estimated 40,000 members of the country’s Kurdish minority. After Kurdish militants killed several Turkish soldiers last week, Erdogan vowed that the Kurdish resistance fighters would “drown in their own blood.” Some 1,500 Kurdish leaders, including the mayors of several hundred Kurdish-majority towns, presently are under detention.

At home, Erdogan wields power in a monster-ridden world of paranoid politics. Erdogan’s Islamist AKP has accused the secular establishment of hatching a vast conspiracy called “Ergenekon” aimed at imposing military rule. More than 4,300 military officers, journalists, public officials, and other pillars of Turkish civil society have been charged with lurid and often incredible crimes. Secular Turks allege that the mass arrests are designed to transform Turkey into an Islamic state. The United States has kept mum about the internal policies of its Islamist friends in Ankara.

Erdogan’s belief that he had a free pass from Obama is clearly not just a fantasy of the Turkish leader’s imagination but the product of a deepening relationship between the two men. Obama’s high-profile outreach to the Muslim world began in April 2009 with a town-hall meeting in Turkey, when the U.S. foreign-policy establishment argued that Erdogan’s “moderate” version of political Islam would provide a bridge between the United States and Muslims around the world. Obama’s dependence on the Turkish leader grew over the next year the U.S. president found himself entangled with Erdogan and Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in a scheme to control Iran’s enriched uranium. So fixated was Obama on “engagement” with Iran and Syria that Turkey’s alliance with hostile regimes in Tehran and Damascus seemed like a golden opportunity. In fact, it should have been a red flag about the extremist character of the Erdogan government.

When Iran in May agreed to a Brazilian-Turkish plan to hand over 1,200 kilograms of low-enriched uranium to Turkey, the United States rejected the plan as inadequate. Miffed, the Brazilian foreign ministry posted on its website a facsimile of an April 20 letter from Obama to Brazil’s President Lula da Silva, in which Obama makes clear that the 1,200-kilogram exchange was his idea in the first place.

In the April 20 letter, Obama thanks his Brazilian counterpart for meeting privately with himself and Erdogan at the Washington Nuclear Security Summit earlier that month. “There is a potentially important compromise that has already been offered,” Obama wrote. “In November, the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] conveyed to Iran our offer to allow Iran to ship its 1,200 kg of LEU [low enriched uranium] to a third country—specifically Turkey—at the outset of the process to be held ‘in escrow’ as a guarantee during the fuel production process that Iran would get back its uranium if we failed to deliver the fuel” that the United States promised to provide if Iran gave up its own enrichment program—which is exactly what Iran, Brazil and Turkey jointly proposed just a month later, and the White House then denounced.

Enmeshed in diplomatic shenanigans designed to woo U.S. enemies, it is clear that Obama regards the U.S. alliance with Israel as an annoyance. But Russia understands Israel’s strategic value to the United States quite well. While Russia has joined the diplomatic pile-up against Israel, it also is courting Israel as an arms customer as well as an arms supplier. Russian sources claim that Israel has already ordered several Su-32 “fullback” long range fighter-bombers, the top-of-the-line warplane that has just become available to Russia’s own air force. Sources say that Russia also has offered Israel the newest version of its surface-to-air missile system, which outperforms the Patriot air-defense system supplied by the United States. And Russia wants the full package of military avionics from Israel.

Israel has said nothing about rumored arms purchases from Russia, but it has good reason to diversify its sources of arms. The Obama Administration reportedly has privately threatened that it will cut off delivery of F-16 spare parts if Israrel launches a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. It is doubtful that Russia cares one way or the other whether Israel survives. Moscow’s objective is to weaken the United States. It could not have imagined that the president of the United States would be such a help in this project.

After throwing Israel under the bus in order to bolster the Palestinian Authority, Obama has thrown the Palestinian Authority under the bus in order to placate Erdogan, who is riding a tide of popularity in the Muslim world thanks to his sponsorship of Hamas and its jihadist allies and has threatened to use the Turkish military to force the Israeli blockade. No part of mainstream American opinion can support this kind of open embrace of extremists; even the most fervent advocates of dialogue with Hamas cannot defend turning Gaza into an Iranian port. The president has outraged Jewish voters and has nothing to show for it. Erdogan is the runaway broom of the sorcerer’s apprentice. He cannot be appeased, for he has staked his political future as well as his country’s position in the world on the extremist card. Obama now searches in vain for the magic formula that will put the Turkish broom back in the closet. And the water keeps rising.

Fantasia
Obama's embrace of Turkish Prime Minister threatens both Israel and the Palestinian Authority by David P. Goldman
****Turkey was supposed to be a new Western partner but we saw a change starting with their denial of invasion rights through Turkey for the Iraq War. Further slip to the Islamist side is evident in Turkey's abrogation of its previous friendship for Israel and its votes against Iran sanctions in the Security Council. Sec Gates has tried to blame this on the EU's unwillingness to make Turkey a full member but Mark Steyn has pointed at the demographic shifts that have changed Turkey back to a "neo Ottoman" status aiming for an Islamist caliphate. When Mustapha Kemal made Turkey secular in the 1920s, Remelia was a majority part of Turkey but the whole country had only 14 Million people. Now it has 70 Million and most of the increase has come from Anatolia which has traditionally been rural, Islamist, and unWestern.
Demographics is destiny and the EU cannot make things better by hastening the Islamization of Europe.****

Friday, June 25, 2010

Ruling on the basis of personal prejudices-foreign and domestic.

http://tinyurl.com/2fsexhx
From The London Daily Telegraph
On Foreign Relations
"Let me be clear: I'm not normally in favour of boycotts, and I love the American people. I holiday in their country regularly, and hate the tedious snobby sneers against the United States. But the American people chose to elect an idiot who seems hell bent on insulting their allies, and something must be done to stop Obama's reckless foreign policy, before he does the dirty on his allies on every issue."
--London Daily Telegraph editor -- Alex Singleton, April 11.
One of the most poorly kept secrets in Washington is President Obama's animosity toward Great Britain, presumably because of what he regards as its sins while ruling Kenya (1895-1963)... "It is truly shocking that Barack Obama has decided to disregard our shared history," wrote Telegraph columnist Toby Young. "Does Britain's friendship really mean so little to him?" One could ask, does the friendship of anyone in the entire world mean anything to him? "I recently asked several senior administration officials, separately, to name a foreign leader with whom Barack Obama has forged a strong personal relationship during his first year in office," wrote Jackson Diehl, deputy editorial page editor of the Washington Post, on Monday. "A lot of hemming and hawing ensued."...
For the first time in a long time, the President of the United States is actually distrusted by its' allies and not in the least feared by its' adversaries. Nor is Mr. Obama now respected by the majority of Americans. Understandably focused on the dismal economy and Mr. Obama's relentless efforts to nationalize and socialize health care, Americans apparently have yet to notice his dismal performance and lack of respect in the world community.
They soon will.

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Warriors in the field, wimps in the White House.

http://tinyurl.com/26sefqp
Obama's Muslim Outreach Fails
By: Ronald Kessler
Of all President Obama’s policies, none is more misguided than using politically correct euphemisms to refer to radical Muslim terrorists. Can you imagine Winston Churchill referring to the Nazis as “violent extremists” or to the London Blitz as a “man-caused disaster”?
Now we know the result of that policy. Instead of improving America’s image in the minds of Muslims, Obama actually has made things worse. Since Obama became president, the popularity of the United States in Muslim countries has declined, according to the Pew Global Attitudes Survey.
...Along with tip-toeing around radical Muslim terrorists, Obama has proposed, as ways to signal that we are good guys, holding a civilian trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City and closing the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay. Those policy initiatives also have not worked. Instead, they threaten to put Americans at risk. Although calling radical Muslim terrorist acts “man-caused disasters” may be bizarre, it also signals to those fighting the war on terror that we really are not serious about taking on terrorism.
...The wrong way is to compromise our security by proposing to try the architect of the 9/11 attack in New York. The wrong way is to release CIA interrogation memos that fuel recruitment of terrorists and undermine the morale of the CIA officers and FBI agents who are trying to protect us. The wrong way is to close the prison camp at Guantánamo, where terrorists are housed safely away from the American population. The wrong way is to telegraph weakness by apologizing to the world for America’s imagined sins, as Obama routinely does when going overseas....the majority of Obama’s efforts to reach out to the Muslim world have been not only ill-conceived but also, as it turns out, counterproductive. Muslims are no more impressed by a leader who is afraid to name the enemy than Americans are. From the Nazis to al-Qaida, placating those who are intent on wiping us out has never worked and never will. As a Rolling Stone article based on interviews with Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his aides concludes, the real problem is the “wimps in the White House.”
****Is it possible, perhaps on some subliminal level, that Obama's personal agenda does not have a high priority for protecting and defending the Constitution and America-as-he-found-it? That he hates the British ( and probably the Jews )? Perhaps he really meant it when he promised profound change? It's far-fetched for someone who was elected President of the United States but perhaps that's the fault of the electorate (see The Invisible Gorilla discussions for failure to see the obvious.) For 20 years he sat in the pews of someone who spouted "Not God Bless America...God damn America!!", he was uncomfortable wearing a US flag pin in his lapel ( until he did it for expedient political reasons ) and his wife had no pride in this country until Barack came along. He goes along with the idea that we are dependent for our energy "on people who hate us" and yet he reaches out to those very same people ( also the same ones behind 9/11, and so many other terrorist acts against the U.S. and Western Civilization in general.) He resists tooth and nail simple defense of American borders. He insists, with only the Democrat political future in mind, that "comprehensive immigration reform" occur, meaning amnesty and citizenship for perhaps 20Million new Democratic voters. Is it proven that he is a "Manchurian President?" No, of course not. Is it possible, plausible even??? *****

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

That 3 a.m. call is answered by some kid.

http://tinyurl.com/32fr3ao
Morning Bell: Obama’s Leadership Vacuum
More than two years ago, then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton launched a campaign ad that took direct aim at Senator Barack Obama’s inexperience [1]. It painted the picture of a telephone ringing in the White House at 3 a.m. and asked the question, when there is a crisis in the world and your children are safe and asleep, “Who do you want answering the phone?”...
http://tinyurl.com/2g8tgzr
Hey Barack, You Should’ve Done This... by Human Events
President Obama addressed the nation on the Gulf oil spill, and told the American people how he has been doing all he can to “plug the damn hole” and whose behind he might kick.Since his strategy dealing with the spill seems lacking thus far, Redstate editor Erick Erickson has compiled a Top 10 list of things to alleviate the disaster that Obama could have done but didn’t.
1. Accepted help from the Netherlands when they offered it shortly after the accident. The Dutch, experienced in the oil business, offered prompt help for oil skimming booms and plans to create barriers to stop the oil from infiltrating into wetland areas.
2. Suspended the Jones Act, as President Bush did after Katrina, to allow foreign vessels into American waters to assist with recovery without having to swap ships and transfer equipment onto American flagged vessels.
3. Suspended the Davis-Bacon prevailing wage laws, as President Bush did after Katrina, to allow rapid deployment of new workers to help with containment efforts.
4. Suspended FEMA contracting and bidding rules, as President Bush did after Katrina, to allow a more rapid assignment of contracts to assist with the recovery effort.
5. Allowed coastal governors to immediately begin dredging to create barrier islands.
6. Talked to BP's CEO to establish initial metrics for progress to gauge BP's response so the federal government would have ascertainable metrics to determine when federal intervention was needed. Heck, he should have talked to BP's CEO period.
7. Not imposed a blanket deep water drilling moratorium, further crippling economies in coastal communities.
8. Talked to experts about how to fix the problem instead of trying to figure out whose "ass to kick."
9. Not waited to act lest he be seen as owning the situation. Guess what? He owns it now so why is he still on the golf course?
10. Not have wasted time trying to blame the accident on George Bush before diving in to take responsibility...

Obama sacrifices national interest for his own political ends.

****The sacking of Gen. McChrystal throws away the services of the best person for the particular job and, with his staff, a national asset. This is a loss for the Afghan War and also for national securityh in general since McChrystal's military career is over.
This is certainly not good for the morale of the military, already engaged in a difficult struggle made more so by inadequate materiel and personnel support from the President. Both McChrystal and his extensive staff are being lost to the Afghan War and to the military overall. Generals and their staffs are teams and another cannot step in without developing, or bringing in, his own team. There will inevitably be transitional issues. The middle of a war, especially the middle of a major action, is not the time to undertake such disruption.
Obama compounded the issue by making yet another decision, again in his own political interests at the expense of the nation's. He prevailed on Gen. Petraeus to accept a demotion in order to replace McChrystal in Afghanistan solely in order to maintain the fiction that Obama's war in Afghanistan will continue unabated. Petraeus is good enough ( and loyal enough ) to insure that this is the case ( hence the political advantage to Obama.) However, the nation loses the talents and energies of Petraeus in his current, more senior, position in charge of Central Command ( including both Iraq and Afghanistan.)
Why Petraeus showed such loyalty to the President's image, at the expense of his present and future functioning (with clear ambitions to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the entire military), is not clear. He epitomizes the "good soldier" who does whatever is asked of him. It is not, however, optimum for the interests of the country.****

http://tinyurl.com/2g5rnay
McChrystal out; Petraeus picked for Afghanistan
By JENNIFER LOVEN and ANNE GEARAN, Associated Pres
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama sacked his loose-lipped Afghanistan commander Wednesday, a seismic shift for the military order in wartime, and chose the familiar, admired — and tightly disciplined — Gen. David Petraeus to replace him. Petraeus, architect of the Iraq war turnaround, was once again to take hands-on leadership of a troubled war effort. Obama said bluntly that Gen. Stanley McChrystal's scornful remarks about administration officials represent conduct that "undermines the civilian control of the military that is at the core of our democratic system."
He fired the commander after summoning him from Afghanistan for a face to face meeting in the Oval Office and named Petraeus, the Central Command chief who was McChrystal's direct boss, to step in....he said: "War is bigger than any one man or woman, whether a private, a general, or a president."****Well,maybe not bigger than a president,especially a narcissistic one.****
...The announcement came during what is on pace to be the deadliest month for the U.S.-dominated international coalition in Afghanistan... Obama seemed to suggest that McChrystal's military career is over... Petraeus... has had overarching responsibility for the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq as head of Central Command....The Afghanistan job is actually a step down from his current post but one that filled Obama's pre-eminent need.Petraeus is the nation's best-known military man...Petraeus told Congress he would recommend delaying the pullout of U.S. forces from Afghanistan beginning in July 2011 if need be, saying security and political conditions in Afghanistan must be ready to handle a U.S. drawdown...By pairing the decision on McChrystal's departure with the name of his replacement, Obama is seeking to move on quickly and assure Afghans, U.S. allies and a restive American electorate that a firm hand is running the war...In the magazine article, McChrystal called the period last fall when the president was deciding whether to approve more troops "painful" and said the president appeared ready to hand him an "unsellable" position. McChrystal also said he was "betrayed" by Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, the man the White House chose to be his diplomatic partner in Afghanistan. He accused Eikenberry of raising doubts about Karzai only to give himself cover in case the U.S. effort failed. "Now, if we fail, they can say 'I told you so,'" McChrystal told the magazine. And he was quoted mocking Vice President Joe Biden. If not insubordination, the remarks ...were at the least an extraordinary challenge from a military leader....****We'll see whether Obama's attention to his own image is even smart. Keeping McChrystal contrite and silent under the discipline of being active military is one thing; being retired, a civilian and free to tell the world what he really thinks of Obama and the White House is another. Obama just might have opened a Pandora's Box of justified contempt.****
****What is the effect on allies?****
US allies hope for continuity after McChrystalBy RAPHAEL G. SATTER, AP
LONDON – America's allies in the fight to stabilize Afghanistan are hoping that the ouster of Stanley McChrystal as commander of international forces there still leaves the general's strategy intact, officials and analysts said Wednesday.
From Kabul to London, there was unhappiness with his removal, with some NATO officials saying privately that they believed upheaval at the top sent the wrong message at the wrong time. In Afghanistan, a range of officials expressed dismay at McChrystal's departure, while Peter Felstead, the editor of Jane's Defense Weekly, said he believed the move was "a mistake."...NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said, that while McChrystal will no longer be the commander, "the approach he helped put in place is the right one."
... until he is confirmed by Congress, leadership of the NATO-led force will fall to a British officer, Lt. Gen. Nick Parker, ...The U.S.'s top allies in Afghanistan were eager to emphasize that, at the strategic level, nothing had changed...Analysts agreed that it would be a mistake to shift gears now.... the "McChrystal effect" had led to a reinvigoration of the international campaign — and an appreciable drop in violence in that area....There was a barb, however, from Russia's outspoken envoy to NATO, who suggested in a lyrical posting on social networking website Twitter that a lack of success on the battlefield cultivated a contempt for civilian leaders in McChrystal."War wounds souls," Dmitry Rogozin said. "Bloodshed and hardship at war often arouse soldiers' contempt towards politicians and diplomats."
_____
___

Katrina was local but Bush blamed. Gulf is Federal but Obama gets a pass.

****The contrast is extraordinary between what Bush actually did & what the media said as opposed to the Gulf disaster & how the media has allowed Obama to "skate" on his incompetence.****
http://tinyurl.com/2dpuvfx
A Tale of Two Disasters Bush was blamed for local failures after Katrina. Obama got a free ride for weeks as federal failures mounted during the Gulf spill. By PAUL H. RUBIN
...the Deepwater Horizon disaster and Katrina are mirror images... harm from Katrina was on state land—mainly Louisiana, but also Florida, Alabama and Mississippi. As a result, President George W. Bush and the federal government were limited in what they could do. ...Federal response was hindered because the law gave first authority to state and local authorities....The Deepwater Horizon oil spill is on federal offshore territory. The federal government has primary responsibility for handling the situation, while state and local governments remain limited in what they can do. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency has repeatedly changed its mind regarding the chemical dispersants that Louisiana is allowed to use. In the Florida Panhandle, Okaloosa County officials voted to disregard any restrictions from higher branches of government and allow its own emergency management team to do what it views as best, such as creating an underwater "air curtain" of bubbles to push oil to the surface, and using barges to block the oil once it rises. They believe that the federal government is undermining their efforts.As opposed to Katrina, state and local attempts to address the oil spill have been hindered by an ineffectual and chaotic federal response...****Obama has allowed federal bureaucracies to hinder each other and state efforts at cleanup.The Jones Act, the EPA and the Coast Guard have been especially damaging to the effort.**** Two days after Katrina's landfall, Mr. Bush suspended the Jones Act (which restricts the ability of non-American ships to work in U.S. waters)...In the current situation, President Barack Obama has not suspended the Jones Act. Many countries such as the Netherlands,...This is significantly delaying the cleanup. The Jones Act, which requires American crews, is a favorite of organized labor, a major supporter of Mr. Obama....The final difference is in the press handling of the two issues....Now Mr. Obama has much more power than did Mr. Bush, but the federal response is ineffective and often stands in the way of those in the best position to know what to do....

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Those who know history know Spain is in the gunsights of Islam.

****Once a land was ruled by Muslims, it forever more should be returned to Muslim rule. This according to fundamental Islamic law. It is interesting that two Spaniards seem to recognize that, if Israel "goes", all of Western Civilization will go, too.****
http://tinyurl.com/32frak7
If Israel goes down, we all go down. by José María Aznar
...
Pilar Rahola Speaks: Jews with Six Arms by Pilar Rahola
Why do so many intelligent people, when talking about Israel, suddenly become idiots?
This speech was given Feb. 8, 2010 at the Conference in the Global forum for Combating Anti-Semitism in Spain. Pilar Rahola is a Spanish Catalan journalist, writer, and former politician and Member of Parliament, and member of the far left.
A meeting in Barcelona with a hundred lawyers and judges a month ago.
They have come together to hear my opinions on the Middle-Eastern conflict. They know that I am a heterodoxal vessel, in the shipwreck of “single thinking” regarding Israel, which rules in my country. They want to listen to me, because they ask themselves why, if Pilar is a serious journalist, does she risk losing her credibility by defending the bad guys, the guilty? I answer provocatively – You all believe that you are experts in international politics when you talk about Israel, but you really know nothing. Would you dare talk about the conflict in Rwanda, in Kashmir? In Chechnya? – No.

Cultured people, when they read about Israel, are ready to believe that Jews have six arms.

They are jurists, their turf is not geopolitics. But against Israel they dare, as does everybody else. Why? Because Israel is permanently under the media magnifying glass and the distorted image pollutes the world’s brains. And because it is part of what is politically correct, it seems part of solidarity, because talking against Israel is free. So cultured people, when they read about Israel, are ready to believe that Jews have six arms, in the same way that during the Middle Ages people believed all sorts of outrageous things.

The first question, then, is why so many intelligent people, when talking about Israel, suddenly become idiots.
Pilar Rahola Speaks: Jews with Six Arms
by Pilar Rahola
Why do so many intelligent people, when talking about Israel, suddenly become idiots?
This speech was given Feb. 8, 2010 at the Conference in the Global forum for Combating Anti-Semitism in Spain. Pilar Rahola is a Spanish Catalan journalist, writer, and former politician and Member of Parliament, and member of the far left.
A meeting in Barcelona with a hundred lawyers and judges a month ago.
They have come together to hear my opinions on the Middle-Eastern conflict. They know that I am a heterodoxal vessel, in the shipwreck of “single thinking” regarding Israel, which rules in my country. They want to listen to me, because they ask themselves why, if Pilar is a serious journalist, does she risk losing her credibility by defending the bad guys, the guilty? I answer provocatively – You all believe that you are experts in international politics when you talk about Israel, but you really know nothing. Would you dare talk about the conflict in Rwanda, in Kashmir? In Chechnya? – No.
Cultured people, when they read about Israel, are ready to believe that Jews have six arms.
They are jurists, their turf is not geopolitics. But against Israel they dare, as does everybody else. Why?

McChrystal doesn't think much of Obama--who can blame him?

http://tinyurl.com/2f7unx7
Excerpts from a Rolling Stone magazine profile on Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, set to appear Friday:
...McChrystal and his new commander-in-chief failed from the outset to connect. The general first encountered Obama a week after he took office, when the president met with a dozen senior military officials in a room at the Pentagon known as the Tank. According to sources familiar with the meeting, McChrystal thought Obama looked "uncomfortable and intimidated" by the roomful of military brass. Their first one-on-one meeting took place in the Oval Office four months later, after McChrystal got the Afghanistan job, and it didn't go much better. 'It was a 10-minute photo-op,' says an adviser to McChrystal. 'Obama clearly didn't know anything about him, who he was. Here's the guy who's going to run his f-ing war, but he didn't seem very engaged. The Boss was pretty disappointed.'" ****Hmm. The President seemed disengaged. Any parallel with the Gulf crisis? EVERYTHING else?**** – "Last fall, during a question-and-answer session following a speech he gave in London, McChrystal dismissed the counterterrorism strategy being advocated by Vice President Joe Biden as 'shortsighted,' saying it would lead to a state of 'Chaos-istan,' The remarks earned him a smackdown from the president himself, who summoned the general to a terse private meeting aboard Air Force Once. The message to McChrystal seemed clear: Shut the f- up, and keep a lower profile....– "In private, Team McChrystal likes to talk s- about many of Obama's top people on the diplomatic side. One aide calls Jim Jones, a retired four-star general and veteran of the Cold War, a 'clown' who remains 'stuck in 1985.' Politicians like (John) McCain and (John) Kerry, says another aide, 'turn up, have a meeting with (Afghan president Hamid) Karzai, criticize him at the airport press conference, then get back for the Sunday talk shows. Frankly, it's not very helpful.' ...// ****Uh oh. The President might not be deep but he is thin-skinned.****

http://tinyurl.com/2dd3y8c
White House summons US general to explain himself By ANNE GEARAN and JULIE PACE, AP National Security Writers
WASHINGTON – The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan has been summoned to Washington to explain derogatory comments about President Barack Obama and his colleagues, administration officials said Tuesday. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who publicly apologized Tuesday for using "poor judgment" in an interview in Rolling Stone magazine, has been ordered to attend the monthly White House meeting on Afghanistan and Pakistan in person Wednesday rather than over a secure video teleconference, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. He'll be expected to explain his comments to Obama and top Pentagon officials, these officials said. Obama has the authority to fire McChrystal... ****Obama is decisive only when personally attacked. He gave McC only 30K of the 40K personnel requested, took months to make the decision ( and made a hedged decision, even then, probably polling public reaction before committing) and combined the actual surge with a promise to start withdrawal almost immediately. This last is a promise so stupid that Secretary Gates has basically said there will be only nominal, lip-service adherence to this, with the actual drawdown depending on the field generals' decisions.****
****The issue, "Will McChrystal be fired?" seems answered all around in the affirmative. "Obama needs an opportunity to look decisive." Having said that, it might be that Obama will be afraid to fire McC. First, he is a very good general and probably the best man available for this particular job. Obama might have someone on his staff point out the following: If McC is retained, he will be under the thumb of military codes of conduct and is likely to be especially deferential to the White House in the years ahead. If, however, McC is fired it just might result in his taking retirement, freeing him up to write a book or be interviewed candidly on his opinions. Since he obviously thinks Obama and the people around him are boobs, he is likely to state his case for this once safely in private life but will keep his mouth shut as an active-duty officer.***

Monday, June 21, 2010

Common sense and the Beltway - incompatible

http://tinyurl.com/2agrone
Common Sense Seems to Have Left the Beltway
By Jeff Saut Jun 21, 2010 10:10 am
The political handling of the BP oil spill is one of many instances bringing down the economy... Well, the economic Chernobyl in the Gulf continues; and, if it wasn’t so tragic, it would actually be funny for it was none other than Richard Nixon who first uttered the phrase “energy independence.” At the time, our country was importing roughly 30% of its crude oil needs. Eight presidents and 18 Congresses later we're importing more than 60% of our needs.

Disgustingly, over the past 40 years the country’s energy policies have been aimed at anything but “energy independence.” And here they go again, as last week President Obama appointed a group of men and women to “study the causes of the Gulf of Mexico spill and make recommendations for the future of offshore drilling.” Amazingly, this group consists of environmentalists and academics, but doesn’t include anyone from the oil industry!

Meanwhile, stock market analysts continue to attempt to quantify BP’s (BP) liability for the Gulf tragedy. To this point, I was on TV late last week with an analyst who opined that since BP has created a $20 billion claims fund the situation is now quantifiable. While I'm certain this gentleman is smarter than me, I'm also sure I've seen more cycles than he. Indeed, I remember Chernobyl, Bhopal, Three Mile Island, etc., and let me assure you such events always cost more, and take longer, than forecast.

Consider this: What if oil guru Matt Simmons is right and there's more oil beneath the Gulf’s surface than people think? Also consider what happens if said oil makes it into the “loop current” and subsequently travels up the eastern coast. This is a paraphrased version of what Simmons said on Bloomberg:

Simmons was adding some additional perspective to his original appearance on the station, in which he initially endorsed the nuclear option as the only viable way to resolve the oil spill. Simmons refutes even the latest oil spill estimate of 45,000 to 60,000 barrels per day, and in quoting research by the Thomas Jefferson research vessel, which was compiled late last Sunday, quantifies the leak at 120,000 barrels per day. What's scarier is that according to the Jefferson the oil lake underneath the surface of the water could be covering up to 40% of the entire Gulf of Mexico. Simmons also says that as the leak has no casing, a relief well won't work, and the only possible resolution is, as he said previously, to use a small nuclear explosion to convert the rock to glass. Simmons concludes that as punishment for BP's arrogance and stupidity the government "will take all their cash." Now if only our own administration could tell us the truth about what is really happening in the Gulf.

Verily, if only our own elected representatives could tell us the truth! Let’s see, we’ve gotten a health care bill that was “pushed through” via thuggery tactics, a jobs bill that created very few jobs, proposed financial reform crafted by elected officials who have never run a business let alone have a grasp of basic economics, and now we’ve got a Gulf tragedy that should have elicited a massive response in the first week following the Deepwater Horizon horror. However, what we got is a slow-footed response that wouldn't even set aside the Jones Act and allow non-US flag ships, which were offered and had the capability of capturing 90% of the oil spewing into the Gulf, to sail into US waters and address the situation, driven by political fears of upsetting various labor unions.

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not speaking to the difference between Republicans and Democrats, but rather the burgeoning lack of common sense inside the beltway. If you don’t believe me, listen to legendary business man Steve Wynn in this clip from CNBC. No wonder the stock market has stutter-stepped recently as it contemplates the lack of common sense permeating our nation’s capital.

Also worth considering is just how much business is being “brought forward” into 2010 on worries that tax rates will be higher next year. Despite what our elected officials think, people are indeed rational. According to a 2004 US Treasury Department report, “high income taxpayers accelerated the receipt of wages, and year-end bonuses, from 1992 to 1993 (by) over $15 billion in order to avoid the effects of anticipated increase(s) in the top tax-rate from 31% to 39.6%.” To be sure, if people think tax rates will be higher next year than they are currently, those folks will shift production/income out of next year into this year to every extent possible. Potentially alarming, spurred by the prospect of increased taxes, rising prices, higher interest rates, and more governmental regulations, participants could be shifting income, and demand, into 2010 from 2011.

Regrettably, if true, this increases the chances of a double-dip recession in 2011, an event we've argued against until now. Manifestly, the mid-term November elections, in my opinion, will have a dramatic impact on events going forward. If the progressives/liberals secure a “win” in November, I think it presents a huge headwind for the economy and the stock market as job-killing agendas such as cap and trade prevail. However, if there's a swing to a more fiscally responsible Congress, I think it would have positive ramifications for the economy and the various markets.

Since entering 2010, one of my mantras has been, “I think the trick this year will be to keep the outsized profits we made from the anticipated bottom of March 2009.” Most recently, during the entire month of April, I advised participants to raise cash and hedge portfolios to the downside. Following the "flash crash” (May 6), over the subsequent weeks, I recommended selling those downside hedges given the extreme oversold readings registered in that mini-crash.
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Sunday, June 20, 2010

Chicago/Obama reciprocal feedback.

http://tinyurl.com/2bmthq9
Radical Islamist Group Is Returning to Chicago for Major Recruitment Drive OBAMAS NEW FRIENDS The radical Islamist group that kicked up controversy for its “Fall of Capitalism & Rise of Islam” conference last year is slated to return to Chicago next month to hold its second Khilafah Conference, “Emerging World Order: How the Khilafah Will Shape the World." They're back. A radical Islamist group critics say has links to Al Qaeda is gearing up to host its second annual U.S. recruiting event...

Yes, Obama is incompetent and amateurish but is he even well-intentioned?

http://tinyurl.com/27elklv
Mort Zuckerman: World Sees Obama as Incompetent and Amateur The president is well-intentioned but can't walk the walk on the world stage By Mortimer B. Zuckerman US NewsRWR
President Obama came into office as the heir to a great foreign policy legacy enjoyed by every recent U.S. president...Yet, the Iraq war lingers; Afghanistan continues to be immersed in an endless cycle of tribalism, corruption, and Islamist resurgence; Guantánamo remains open; Iran sees how North Korea toys with Obama and continues its programs to develop nuclear weapons and missiles; Cuba spurns America's offers of a greater opening; and the Palestinians and Israelis find that it is U.S. policy positions that defer serious negotiations, the direct opposite of what the Obama administration hoped for. The reviews of Obama's performance have been disappointing....uncomfortable in the role of leading other nations, and often seems to suggest there is nothing special about America's role in the world....One Middle East authority, Fouad Ajami, pointed out that Obama seems unaware that it is bad form and even a great moral lapse to speak ill of one's own tribe while in the lands of others....Vladimir Putin of Russia has publicly scorned a number of Obama's visions. Relations with the Chinese leadership got off to a bad start...where his hosts treated him disdainfully and prevented him from speaking to a national television audience of the Chinese people....The withdrawal part of the policy was meant to satisfy a domestic constituency, but succeeded in upsetting all of our allies in the region... Obama clearly wishes to do good and means well.****Even this gives Obama more credit than is justified. One would HOPE that he means well but it becomes increasingly clear that he does not believe in American exceptionalism and seems, indeed, not even to approve of America and especially not of the Constitution he swore an oath to "preserve and protect." He has publicly complained of the Constitution's emphasis on "negative" rights and one can only wonder if he taught Constitutional Law as it is or as he thinks it should be.He seems to carry personal animosities for Britain ( perhaps because of his Kenyan heritage ) and Israel ( perhaps because of the anti-Semitism in which he was marinated during his decades on the South Side of Chicago with Rev. Wright and Farrakhan.****But he is one of those people who believe that the world was born with the word and exists by means of persuasion,...not as a tough-minded leader...there is "the impression that Obama might confuse speeches with policy."...The Obama presidency has so far been characterized by a well-intentioned but excessive belief in the power of rhetoric with too little appreciation of reality and loyalty....Even the king of Saudi Arabia, a country that depends on America for its survival, reacted with disappointment and dismay. Obama's meeting with the king was widely described as a disaster.... Les Gelb wrote of Obama, "He is so self-confident that he believes he can make decisions on the most complicated of issues after only hours of discussion." Strategic decisions go well beyond being smart, which Obama certainly is.****"Even this concession about Obama's vaunted intelligence is unjustified. His academic record was undistinguished before Harvard Law School (he got into Columbia on a one-hop via Occidental, despite the advantage of having gone to a tony private school albeit in a pot--and "blow when he could afford it"-- haze )and did not graduate either with honors or a Phi Beta Kappa key. He seems to be proud of not having taken calculus. Even at Harvard, he was one of a hundred editors and was ELECTED as President of the Law Review. His academic reputation rests on the absence of evidence of his grades and courses. Even at the University of Chicago, he was NOT a professor, not a legal scholar, published no scholarly work and was a Senior Lecturer, a post reserved for non-academics.His knowledge of history, economics and even arithmetic has been shown to be deficient.Worst of all, it's not clear if his fallacious statements are due to ignorance or deceptiveness, perhaps both. ****...there is no cost in lining up with America's most serious enemies and no gain in lining up with this administration?...there is a sense that there is something amateurish and even incompetent about how Obama is managing U.S. power. For example, Obama has asserted that America is not at war with the Muslim world. The problem is that parts of the Muslim world are at war with America and the West. ...he has failed to address the religious intolerance, failing economies, tribalism, and gender apartheid that together contribute to jihadist extremism...****Is all this due merely to incompetence or leavened by an inordinate sympathy for anti-Westerm Islam?****
...The Arabs believe you do not deal with Iran with the open hand of a handshake but with the clenched fist of power....They did not see Obama or his administration as understanding the region, where naiveté is interpreted as a weakness of character, as amateurism, and as proof of the absence of the tough stuff of which leaders are made... America right now appears to be unreliable to traditional friends, compliant to rivals, and weak to enemies. One renowned Asian leader stated recently at a private dinner in the United States, "We in Asia are convinced that Obama is not strong enough to confront his opponents, but we fear that he is not strong enough to support his friends."...The world now senses, in the context of the erosion of America's economic power and the pressures of our budget deficits, that we will compress our commitments. But the world needs the vision, idealism, and strong leadership that America brings to international affairs. This can be done and must be done. But we are the only ones who can do it.//
****Obama seems to have an unusual number of personal preferences and DISLIKES that are separate from, and often at odds with, the good of the American polity.****
http://tinyurl.com/299pgnw
The President's Animosities Since when was the American idea us versus them? By DANIEL HENNINGER...

The Principals of the Pauline Party

The Pauline Party and Its Principals

While both Republicans and Democrats each claim to be a party of PRINCIPLES ( small government, laissez-faire, self-reliance, libertarianism, low taxes, individual responsibility, the "Daddy" viewpoint wanting independence, in the case of Republicans ), ( big government, tax-and-spend, cradle-to-grave welfare state, inequality of achievement is somehow to be remedied --even when due to merit and hard work--the "Mommy" viewpoint, liking the idea of Dependence, in the case of Democrats ), the latter are primarily a party of PRINCIPALS. That is, the Democrats consist of a congeries of interest groups, each of whom has an agenda and often with the only common element being the desire for Democratic POWER so that the agendas can be advanced.

Who are the Principals of the Democratic Party? We can list them in no special order:

1) We have the Teachers Unions. These are not concerned so much with benefits for students but primarily those of teachers. Thus they advance the idea that more money should be thrown at "education", the irony being that the worse job the teaching establishment does in educating our youth, the more money they demand to be thrown at the problem. Their concern is for tenure, eschewal of merit- or results-oriented compensation and stamping out any competition to public education from charter schools, parochial schools, home schooling, or any alternative to unionized venues. It is no accident that American K-12 education is a disgrace while our university system ( for the most part without a unionized professoriate ) is globally first-class.

2) The overall union movement is in lockstep with the Democrats. The union leaders are not even as much interested in the benefits to their members as they are to the power vested in themselves. More than anything, they abhor competition ( they are, after all, exempt from anti-Trust laws ). They are against open immigration because they anticipate competition from workers willing to work for less. They like higher and higher minimum wage standards so that competition from entry level workers is lessened and made uncompetitive. They are against free trade because they wish to avoid competition from foreign workers. When it becomes apparent that businesses have to move off-shore to be globally competitive they instruct their Democratic minions to find ways to punish this. Because unionism is not the unalloyed benefit to workers they claim, they have constrained the Democrats to push for elimination of the secret ballot in unionization elections. This is incredibly unfair, undemocratic and biased against interests of individual workers but it is sponsored under the oxymoronic doctrine of "Fairness".

3) Various aggrieved groups count on the Democrats to push their individual agendas. Thus, long after laws and society have removed many inequalities, we have legislation forcing "affirmative" action policies which create new inequalities but ones based on the group identifications. The argument that they "don't discriminate against" anyone, but only are "in favor of" some put-upon group ignores the obvious arithmetic fact that one always has only 100% to allocate.

4) Those who endorse abortion on demand and for any reason, call themselves pro-"Choice" but abhor anyone who exercises choice in a direction different from their orthodoxy. Sarah Palin is especially a target because she lives HER choices even though she has not foisted them on anyone else as governor of her state. She is, nevertheless, an affront to that orthodoxy and accused not only of being “pro-Life” but, illogically, “anti-Choice”.

5) For reasons that escape my understanding, those belonging to (4) also generally adhere to the idea that hunting is evil and capital punishment bad. PETA people even extend this to any kind of killing of animals so we have the somewhat peculiar idea that all killing of animals and murderers is evil but killing of fetuses, and infants past delivery, is okay.

Somehow this has gotten conflated with "environmentalism" despite the fact ( that should be obvious ) that hunters and fishermen are more concerned with the environment than are urban dwellers who opine on the matter from cities and without ever having seen such a place as ANWR. (Sarah Palin is the only nominee who has.) Under the rubric of E-ism we have actual nonsense such as a ban on clear-cutting creating forest fires, banning hunting of predators making certain species less numerous, and latching on to one dubious project after another.
a) Over-population is a recurring theme of the environuts, appearing every generation or so. The Population Bomb was a sales success but an intellectual bomb. Likewise, the dire predictions of the Club of Rome about impending catastrophe were filed by history with the prior prophecies of Malthus.
b) Silent Spring led to the banning of DDT but 2Million people a year die unnecessarily of malaria because of this. There is a tendency to deal in absolutes rather than conduct a rational risk/reward discussion about all the effects of policy positions.
c) In 1974, pollution standards were adduced to automobile fuel so that pollutants were reduced per gallon. Unfortunately, the mileage per gallon went down even more so that the standards were counterproductive in terms of miles traveled.
c) Nuclear energy was made anathema by The China Syndrome because it appeared near the time of the (real) problem of Chernobyl and the (non-lethal) incident at Three Mile Island. Actually, more people have been killed and injured by solar/hydro through dams bursting and being built than any other energy source. In the U.S. no-one (since the Los Alamos days) has been killed by nuclear energy.
d) One of my favorites, living on Lake Michigan as I do, was the war some 20 years ago against "thermal pollution" of Lake Michigan from the outlets of the Zion power plant. LM is one of the coldest bodies of water you are likely to find anywhere and the prospect was for the average temperature going up perhaps 0.25 degrees F. In any event, it was discovered that fish loved to propagate in the warm effluent of the power plant and the cause was quietly shelved without the guffaws it deserved and is no longer mentioned.
e) More recently, even The Economist actually accused Sarah Palin of "hating polar bears" although their population has doubled in recent years and they are in no danger whatsoever ( Al Gore's distortions notwithstanding ).

Friday, June 18, 2010

Mark Steyn on how the Left panders to Islam

http://tinyurl.com/26d35k3
The left’s strange hostility to Hirsi Ali Nicholas Kristof is the latest great thinker to climb aboard. ...At the age of five, Ayaan was forced to undergo “FGM” (female genital mutilation), or, in the new non-judgmental PC euphemism, “cutting.” When she had her first period, her mother beat her. When she was 22, her father arranged for her to marry a cousin in Canada. While in Germany awaiting the visa for her wedded bliss in Her Majesty’s multicultural utopia, she decided to skip out, and fled to the Netherlands.
...As they see it, the perpetrators of “honour killings” love their daughters: that’s why they kill ’em. Would Kristof wish to swap his options for the set menu served up to Muslim women? ...Ms. Hirsi Ali: in 2006, she was one of a dozen intellectuals to publish a manifesto against radical Islam and in defence of “secular values for all.” ...The Times of London recently interviewed a few of Britain’s many female converts to Islam, such as Catherine Huntley, 21, of Bournemouth (“I’ve always been quite a spiritual person”) and Sukina Douglas, 28, of London (“Islam didn’t oppress women; people did”)....In a way, the Western left’s hostility to Ayaan Hirsi Ali makes my point for me. In Terror and Liberalism, Paul Berman wrote that suicide bombings “produced a philosophical crisis, among everyone around the world who wanted to believe that a rational logic governs the world.” In other words, it has to be about “poverty” or “social justice” because the alternative—that they want to kill us merely because we are the other—undermines the hyper-rationalist’s entire world view....Deploring what he regards as her simplistic view of Islam, Nicholas Kristof rhapsodizes about its many fine qualities—“There is also the warm hospitality toward guests, including Christians and Jews.” Oh, for crying out loud. In the Muslim world, Christians and Jews have been on the receiving end of a remorseless ethno-religious cleansing for decades. Christian churches get burned, along with their congregations, from Nigeria to Pakistan. Egypt is considering stripping men who marry Jewesses of their citizenship. Saudi Arabia won’t let ’em in the country. In the 1920s, Baghdad was 40 per cent Jewish. Gee, I wonder where they all went...As Paul Mirengoff of the Power Line blog observes, traditionally when useful idiots shill for illiberal ideologies it requires at least “the illusion of progressivism” to bring them on board. Islam can’t provide that, but that’s no obstacle to getting the bien pensants to sign up. As much as anyone, secular leftists want meaning in their lives. But Communism went belly up; the postwar welfare state is bankrupt; environmentalism has taken a hit in recent months; and Christianity gives them the vapours. Nicholas Kristof will not be the first great thinker to talk himself into a view of Islam as this season’s version of Richard Gere Buddhism.
At a superficial level, the Islamo-leftist alliance makes no sense: gay feminist secular hedonists making common cause with homophobic misogynist proscriptive theocrats. From Islam’s point of view, it’s an alliance of convenience. But I would bet that more than a few lefties will wind up embracing Islam to one degree or another before we’re done.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

IBD clearly explains who the President is

Behind The White House's Anti-Israel Agenda IBD 6-17-10
Foreign Policy: In another affront to a key ally, the White House reportedly doesn't buy Israel's story over the Gaza flotilla flap and supports a U.N. probe of its actions. Helen Thomas would be proud.
According to the Weekly Standard, the investigation will be "one-sided, focusing entirely on Israeli behavior and not on Turkey or Hamas" — despite overwhelming evidence that the terrorist group planned to assault Israeli forces.
It has become increasingly clear that this administration is appeasing the Muslim world at the expense of Israel, a strategic partner in the Middle East at a time when Iran threatens the world with nukes. Where does this reckless new anti-Israel policy come from?
The Israeli press blames the president's own personal bias. Citing recent remarks by a top Egyptian official, it's convinced that President Obama is a closet Muslim secretly furthering the agenda of the Palestinians and other Arabs.
\"The American president told me in confidence that he is a Muslim," Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said after a recent one-on-one meeting with Obama. He made the remarks on Nile TV. It was from Egypt that Obama made his famous "olive branch" speech to the Muslim world essentially apologizing for the War on Terror.\
While Obama's father and stepfather were Muslim, and he himself studied Islam as a child in Indonesia, there's no evidence that the president practices Islam. As far as we know, he doesn't pray five times a day or observe other Islamic rituals.
But Obama, who speaks some Arabic, has made it clear that he identifies at least culturally with Islam. He has waxed fondly of its traditions, once describing the Islamic call to prayer as "one of the prettiest sounds on Earth."
This may explain in part why Obama has expressed sympathy with the widely held Muslim belief that American foreign policy — expressly its partnership with Israel — is largely to blame for anti-American terrorism.
But it was at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago that his political views on Israel likely cemented. His old church called for a South African-style boycott of Israel for its "apartheid" against Palestinians while Obama sat in its pews for some 20 years.
Trinity also sang the praises of Hamas, even reprinting the group's terrorist manifesto in its church bulletin. Written by Hamas deputy chief Mousa Abu Marzook, a fugitive terrorist, the letter was featured on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's "Pastors Page" under the title "A Fresh View of the Palestinian Struggle."
Wright, a one-time member of the Nation of Islam, gave Jew-bashing sermons while mentoring Obama. He once joined Louis Farrakhan on a trip to Libya to pay homage to Moammar Gadhafi. In 1995, Obama joined Wright in Farrakhan's Million Man March.
In 2008, Wright honored the Farrakhan as a hero on the cover of his church magazine, a publication the Obamas presumably received. Both Islamism and the radical "Black Liberation Theology" Wright preached reject the Jews as God's chosen people.
No media have dared ask what Obama believes, though his church had a role in shaping his views — and those views are now shaping U.S. foreign policy.
"Obama and many of his advisers reject the idea that Islamist ideology is fundamentally opposed to Western civilization, mainstream among the world's Muslims, and the root cause of our problems," said former federal terrorist prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, author of the new best-seller "The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America."
"They come from the point of view that American policy is the root cause," he added, "especially our tilt in favor of Israel."
Now they're tilting in the opposite direction, a shift that could embolden the terrorists and alienate a strong strategic ally in our fight against them.

Obama kicks ass of the most responsible; breaks his own nose.

****While the President is hardly responsible for the leak, he is responsible for not taking, indeed thwarting, steps to clean the spill up before it did environmental and economic damage. Now he compounds his follies.****
http://tinyurl.com/35yk3aa
Crude Politics The drilling experts speak out on the Obama deepwater moratorium. Before the Obama Administration sweeps under the carpet the controversy over the drilling experts it falsely used to justify its moratorium, the incident bears another look. Not least because it underlines the purely political nature of a drilling ban that now threatens the Gulf Coast economy and drilling safety.
When President Obama last month announced his six-month deepwater moratorium, he pointed to an Interior Department report of new "safety" recommendations. That report prominently noted that the recommendations it contained—including the six-month drilling ban—had been "peer-reviewed" by "experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering." It also boasted that Interior "consulted with a wide range" of other experts. The clear implication was that the nation's drilling brain trust agreed a moratorium was necessary.
As these columns reported last week, the opposite is true. In a scathing document, eight of the "experts" the Administration listed in its report said their names had been "used" to "justify" a "political decision." ****One of the experts expostulated that, had they been asked to justify the moratorium as stated, they would have termed it "craziness." 1) To stop uncompleted deep-water wells midstream enhances the dangers. The BP well was in process of being sealed when it exploded. 2) If existing wells or permitted ones are halted, the rigs will move to more attractive places, far away and for a very long time. 3) The rigs that will move last and be the first to return are the least modern and advanced. 4) The moratorium will cause loss of experienced personnel and it already appears that the BP disaster was due to human error. "Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?"****

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

If not actually Muslim, Islamophilic, at least.

http://tinyurl.com/2wd6tnt
"I AM A MUSLIM," OBAMA TELLS EGYPTIAN FOREIGN MINISTER GHEIT ISLAMIC COUP ON THE WHITE HOUSE
Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said he had a one-on-one meeting with Obama, in which President Obama told him that he was still a Muslim, the son of a Muslim father, the stepson of Muslim stepfather, that his half brothers in Kenya are Muslims, and that he was sympathetic towards the Muslim agenda.
Finally, during the week of 14-18th of January 2010, just on the eve of my winter tour to the US, Rachel picked up a Nile TV broadcast in which Egyptian Foreign Minister Abul Gheit said on the "Round Table Show" that he had had a one on one meeting with Obama who swore to him that he was a Moslem, the son of a Moslem father and step-son of Moslem step-father, that his half-brothers in Kenya were Moslems, and that he was loyal to the Moslem agenda. He asked that the Moslem world show patience. Obama promised that once he overcame some domestic American problems (Healthcare), that he would show the Moslem world what he would do with Israel...
http://tinyurl.com/2fu46fc
Cairo: One year later By Cal Thomas
One year ago this month, President Obama addressed the "Muslim world" from Cairo, Egypt. Some saw that speech as unnecessary groveling. Critics - and I am among them - think such displays communicate weakness and only encourage those who wish to damage our economy and kill our people....the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...serves as a distraction from much larger problems in the Middle East that have to do with suppression of women's rights, intolerance of any religion except Islam and dictatorships....Aslan called the president's handling of the Israeli-Palestinian problem "disastrous," but that usually means the president has not succeeded in forcing Israel to make more unilateral concessions....This depends on what one means by "democratic." Too often in that region, the first election can be the last election....Turkey, a member of NATO, appears intent on embracing Islamic radicalism. ...Ahmadinejad, Palestinian Authority Leader Mahmud Abbas and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin are among the participants. Not many in the West would feel secure around, let alone trust, this bunch. Separately, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has invited a Hezbollah leader from Lebanon....British security services are concerned that a new generation of British extremists is being radicalized by Anwar al-Awlaki,.. In the United States, the construction of mosques continues rapidly. There is already one major mosque operating in Manhattan, another in Brooklyn, and another has been approved for construction adjacent to the location of the World Trade Center, which was destroyed on Sept. 11, 2001 by people who claimed to be acting in the name of their god. ...No reciprocal rights have been granted to Jews and Christians to build synagogues and churches in Muslim countries, nor has President Obama called for such reciprocity....there is no evidence anything has changed. Radical Muslims are intent on changing us and they will not stop until they've reached their objective.