Crushing the media
By RALPH PETERS, NY Post:
The Obama administration’s un-American attempt to vilify Fox News only increased the network’s popularity. But this White House debacle can’t be judged in isolation: There’s a global leftwing assault on the freedom of information.
Intense leftist sentiment in most of the international media isn’t enough. Extremists seek total control.
The one thing leftists just can’t bear is criticism. (Mass murder’s fine, but don’t stray from the party line.) As early as the French Revolution, the left grasped that a free press is inherently subversive to its doctrines.
The Obama administration’s aborted Fox hunt simply aligned our government with the hounds of the global left. Our Constitution and common sense frustrated the White House apparatchiks — but other leftist and radical regimes are crushing press freedoms, murdering dissenting journalists and turning the media into a state weapon.
In country after country where Obama’s been tapping re-set buttons, the media are under assault:
[...]
Carbon report’s bloody portent
Kevin Libin, NP:
Those 200 protesters who disrupted Question Period this week demanding the government pass Bill C-311 — setting strict targets for reducing carbon emissions — showed how dearly some people will pay to slash Canada’s carbon footprint. Six protesters were arrested; one later showed up on television with blood around his nose claiming he’d been brutalized by Parliamentary guards. “My face was smashed on the floor,” Jeh Custer told a CBC audience, insisting he would not give up pressuring the government to commit to aggressive emission-reduction goals.
With the arrival yesterday of a report funded by TD Bank, prepared by the David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute, and based on economic models by M.K. Jaccard and Associates, calculating for the first time the economic impact of government climate-change policies, the rest of us are left to decide how willing we are to have our own noses bloodied in the name of atmospheric justice.
For it leaves no doubt: in meeting the government’s plan to cut greenhouse gases by 20% from 2006 levels in the next decade, there will be blood.
It portends, TD’s chief economist told reporters, “the biggest fiscal shock in Canadian history.” The study shows “it can be done,” as long as we’re prepared for hard-line restrictions, including steep carbon taxes and the banning of any new buildings, homes, appliances and vehicles not meeting strict environmental standards.
[...]
Killing Canada’s cash cow not the answer
Calgary Herald:
A report funded by TD Bank on the regional economic impact of climate change should be viewed with a jaundiced eye. Written by the agenda-driven David Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute, it tells us that only by punishing Alberta with massive carbon taxes can the federal government meet its climate-change goal of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions by 20 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020.
Federal Environment Minister Jim Prentice is right to call the study irresponsible. For, as we have seen before with the Trudeau-era National Energy Program, bleeding Alberta is bad for all of Canada. Shooting the cash cow is not the answer.
[...]
ObamaCare’s Scary October Surprise
By Robert Knight, AT:
Stung by a rising tide of resistance and a closing window of opportunity, House Democrats have unleashed a new version of ObamaCare, weighing in at 1,990 pages and with a $1 trillion price tag. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi promises to ram it through quickly, exhibiting a disdain for her countrymen that makes Marie Antoinette look like a populist.
[...]
J Street and Judge Goldstone: the plot thickens
Thomas Lifson
So a George Soros-supported staff intellectual, who also advises J Street turns out to be effectively delegated to speak for the author of UN report critical of Israel.
The web of influence bought by Soros’s billions staggers the mind.
[...]
MORE
I am not at all surprised. Soros is the puppet master and chief bank roller of the U.S. [and maybe more] left-wing political universe. A very dangerous man.
Glenn Beck Clips 10-29-09 Seg1 of 5 SPECIAL: Lord Monckton & John Bolton on Climate Treaty.
Glenn Beck Clips 10-29-09 Seg2 of 5 Monckton: Climate Treaty Targeted Against America
Glenn Beck Clips 10-29-09 Seg3 of 5 Monckton: The Word ‘Government’ for 1st Time in the Treaty
Glenn Beck Clips 10-29-09 Seg4 of 5 In 70′s Scientists Said Global Cooling, Had Proof Charts
Glenn Beck Clips 10-29-09 Seg5 of 5 Monckton Says Al Gore a COWARD and Will NOT Debate
Ron Paul vs. Michael Moore on Larry King CNN 10/29/2009
I have several disagreements with Ron Paul but he does make a few good points regarding economics.
Ohio Christian Girl Still Trying to Escape Muslim Parents
By: Pamela Geller:
Rifqa Bary is in grave danger. Rifqa, the girl who converted from Islam to Christianity and fled to Florida after saying that her father threatened her life, could now be returned to her devout Muslim family.
Last Tuesday, Oct. 27, she was returned to Ohio and placed in foster care in Franklin County. Eric Fenner, the executive director of Franklin County Children Services, said that he has “no reason to believe Rifqa wouldn’t be safe with her parents” — with the father who according to Rifqa said, “If you have this Jesus in your heart, you’re dead to me. You’re not my daughter . . . I will kill you.”
And even now in Ohio, Rifqa Bary’s civil rights are being violated. She is being held prisoner: She is not allowed use of the phone or the Internet, unlike thousands of other children in foster care. Why? What is her crime?
[...]
Israeli Colonel Refutes Damning U.N. Report
By: Kenneth R. Timmerman:
The United Nations and much of the world media have blasted Israel for alleged war crimes during its incursion into the Gaza Strip in January, but one Israeli tank commander is mounting a spirited defense, using declassified video footage from Israel Defense Force drones and commercial media.
The video clips show the extraordinary efforts the IDF made to avoid civilian casualties, at times steering bombs away from their intended targets, because the target had moved into a crowd of civilians.
They also provide graphic testimony of war crimes committed by Hamas. In one scene, an armed Hamas fighter can be seen grabbing a child by the arm holding the child in front of him as he crossed the street.
“He knows that our snipers shoot them when they are in the open, crossing the street,” says Col. Ben-Tzion Gruber. “So they grab children as human shields. He knows we don’t shoot when there are children around.”
[...]
You would necessarily be an antisemite to believe Israel guilty of war crimes.
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Troubling Signals On Free Speech
by Stuart Taylor Jr., National Journal:
It was nice to hear Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton say on October 26, “I strongly disagree” with Islamic countries seeking to censor free speech worldwide by making defamation of religion a crime under international law.
But watch what the Obama administration does, not just what it says. I’m not talking about its attacks on Fox News. I’m talking about a little-publicized October 2 resolution in which Clinton’s own State Department joined Islamic nations in adopting language all-too-friendly to censoring speech that some religions and races find offensive.
The ambiguously worded United Nations Human Rights Council resolution could plausibly be read as encouraging or even obliging the U.S. to make it a crime to engage in hate speech, or, perhaps, in mere “negative racial and religious stereotyping.” This despite decades of First Amendment case law protecting such speech.
[...]
Dismantling America: Part II
By Thomas Sowell:
Many years ago, at a certain academic institution, there was an experimental program that the faculty had to vote on as to whether or not it should be made permanent.
I rose at the faculty meeting to say that I knew practically nothing about whether the program was good or bad, and that the information that had been supplied to us was too vague for us to have any basis for voting, one way or the other. My suggestion was that we get more concrete information before having a vote.
The director of that program rose immediately and responded indignantly and sarcastically to what I had just said– and the faculty gave him a standing ovation.
After the faculty meeting was over, I told a colleague that I was stunned and baffled by the faculty’s fierce response to my simply saying that we needed more information before voting.
“Tom, you don’t understand,” he said. “Those people need to believe in that man. They have invested so much hope and trust in him that they cannot let you stir up any doubts.”
Years later, and hundreds of miles away, I learned that my worst misgivings about that program did not begin to approach the reality, which included organized criminal activity.
The memory of that long-ago episode has come back more than once while observing both the actions of the Obama administration and the fierce reactions of its supporters to any questioning or criticism.
Almost never do these reactions include factual or logical arguments against the administration’s critics. Instead, there is indignation, accusations of bad faith and even charges of racism.
[...]
Breaking the Hippie Spell at the White House
By Judi McLeod:
In the upside down world that comes with Barack Obama in the White House, everything is a prop—including Old Glory.
“One of the 20 finalists in health care video contest run by Barack Obama’s campaign arm features a mural of an American flag splattered with health care graffiti until it’s covered completely by black paint.” (politico.com, Oct. 28, 2009.)
“The video is accompanied by the sound of a heart monitor pumping and then flat-lining—words such as “pre-existing conditions”, “homeless” and “death panel” ultimately obliterate the flag, which reappears on screen seconds later with the words “Health Will Bring Our Country Back to Life” on the blue field where the 50 stars usually are.”
How could anyone expect respect for the American flag when the Obama administration shows no respect for the heroes in harm’s way fighting to preserve that flag?
[...]
Caught: Muslim father who attempted honor killing in Arizona
Jihad Watch:
Note the egregious, completely gratuitous attack on Rifqa Bary and defense of Islam at the end of this story. The mainstream media continues to feel itself compelled to run interference for Muslims as a group whenever a Muslim behaves badly — a courtesy they never accord to other groups. An update on this story.
“Muslim Father Arrested for Running Over ‘Westernized’ Daughter: Cops Capture Iraqi Immigrant Accused of Attempted Honor Killing,” by Sarah Netter for ABC News, October 30 (thanks to Paul):
[...]
Silencing dissent in America
Caroline Glick, THE JERUSALEM POST:
Former ambassador to the UN Dore Gold should probably buy himself a flak jacket. Gold is scheduled to debate Richard Goldstone at Brandeis University next Thursday and the anti-Israel forces are organizing quite a reception for him.
Goldstone, who chaired the UN Human Rights Council’s commission charged with accusing Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead, has become a darling of the anti-Israel Left in the weeks since his report accusing Israel of committing both war crimes and crimes against humanity was published last month. And anti-Israeli leftists don’t like the idea of someone challenging his libelous attacks against Israel in a public debate at a university.
In an e-mail to a campus list-serve, Brandeis student and anti-Israel activist Jonathan Sussman called on his fellow anti-Zionists to disrupt the event that will pit the “neutral” Goldstone against Gold with his “wildly pro-Zionist message.” Sussman invited his list-serve members to join him at a meeting to “discuss a possible response.”
As the young community organizer sees it, “Possibilities include inviting Palestinian speakers to come participate, seeding the audience with people who can disrupt the Zionist narrative, protest and direct action.” He closed his missive with a plaintive call to arms: “F**k the occupation.”
Apparently the aspiring political organizer never considered another possibility: listening to what Gold has to say.
[...]
UNDER PERSECUTION
UNDER PERSECUTION: Asia Bibi
Location: Pakistan
Arrested: June 2009
Asia Bibi, a 37-year-old Pakistani woman from the village of Ittanwali, was arrested by police on Friday, June 19, and faces possible blasphemy charges. Asia is the wife of 50-year-old Ashiq Masih, and their family is one of only three Christian families in a village of more than 1,500 families.
Many of the local women work on the farm of Muslim landowner Muhammad Idrees, including Asia. During their work many of the Muslim women have pressured Asia to renounce Christianity and accept Islam. In June, the pressure became especially strong.
On Friday, June 19, there was an intense discussion among the women about their faith, with the Muslim women telling Asia about Islam. Asia responded by telling them about her faith in Christ. Asia told the Muslim women Christ had died on the cross for our sins, then asked them what Mohammed had done for them, according to VOM sources. She told them Jesus is alive, but Mohammed is dead. “Our Christ is the true prophet of God,” she reportedly told them, “and yours is not true.”
Upon hearing this response the Muslim women became angry and began to beat Asia Bibi. Then some men came and took her and locked her in a room. They announced from mosque loudspeakers that she would be punished by having her face blackened and being paraded through the village on a donkey. Local Christians informed the police, who took Asia into custody before the Muslims could carry out their plan. She is currently being held at the police station in Nankana city. Christians there urged the police not to file blasphemy charges, but police claimed that they must go forward due to pressure from local Muslim leaders.
The Voice of the Martyrs urges Christians around the world to pray for Asia Bibi and her family. Further, we call on the Pakistani government to insure that the rights of Christians like Asia are protected.
[...]
MORE
Be Prepared for the Worst
Ron Paul, Forbes:
Any number of pundits claim that we have now passed the worst of the recession. Green shoots of recovery are supposedly popping up all around the country, and the economy is expected to resume growing soon at an annual rate of 3% to 4%. Many of these are the same people who insisted that the economy would continue growing last year, even while it was clear that we were already in the beginning stages of a recession.
A false recovery is under way. I am reminded of the outlook in 1930, when the experts were certain that the worst of the Depression was over and that recovery was just around the corner. The economy and stock market seemed to be recovering, and there was optimism that the recession, like many of those before it, would be over in a year or less. Instead, the interventionist policies of Hoover and Roosevelt caused the Depression to worsen, and the Dow Jones industrial average did not recover to 1929 levels until 1954. I fear that our stimulus and bailout programs have already done too much to prevent the economy from recovering in a natural manner and will result in yet another asset bubble.
[...]
U.N. probe of Israel ‘used false witnesses’
By Aaron Klein, WorldNetDaily:
A U.N. investigator who accused Israel of war crimes was misled by false witnesses and Palestinian misinformation, charged the chief medical officer of an Israeli army brigade that was previously falsely accused of committing a massacre.
“You have let yourself be misled by fabrications made by either terrorists or even doctors. … Did you by any chance try to validate any of these invented and inciting details? Well you didn’t!” wrote David Zangen, an Israeli reservist officer and physician.
Zangen, in an open letter published in Israel’s Maariv newspaper, was addressing South African Judge Richard Goldstone, who penned a U.N. report that claimed both Hamas and Israel were guilty of war crimes during the Jewish state’s defensive war in Gaza last December and January.
Goldstone’s report claimed Israel deliberately targeted civilians during the Gaza conflict, which started after Hamas refused to extend a cease-fire. The terrorist group instead launched a rocket offensive against Israeli population centers.
The U.N. report equated Israel, which worked to minimize civilian casualties in Gaza, to Hamas, which utilized civilians as human shields and fired rockets at Jewish cities from Palestinian hospitals and apartment buildings.
During the Gaza war, Israel sent hundreds of thousands of text messages and placed tens of thousands of calls warning local Palestinians of incoming attacks against Hamas’ military infrastructure in Gaza.
Zangen’s letter questioned specific details of Goldstone’s report that, Zangen alleged, relied heavily on faulty witnesses without corroborating their testimony.
[...]
Muddled models
By Peter Foster, FP:
When the TD Bank’s Don Drummond agreed to spend $110,000 on a study of the impact of climate change policy on Canada, what he had in mind was to elucidate the regional impacts of such policies. This was a worthy objective, although everybody knows that it’s Alberta that stands to get hammered. But Mr. Drummond chose to channel the study, which was carried out by climate policy wonk Mark Jaccard, through the Suzuki Foundation and the Pembina Institute, organizations hardly known for their objectivity on the issue. Why do this? Mr. Drummond told me yesterday that these activist organizations have “technical expertise,” while Mr. Jaccard apparently has “the models.”
TD certainly got media bang for the buck. His report was leaked to The Globe and Mail, and yesterday’s Globe featured a front-page story, two columns and an editorial. However, the thrust of coverage appeared to contradict the smiley-faced conclusions of the report, which was titled “Climate leadership, economic prosperity.” Or, please hobble us so that we can run faster!
Under reasons for draconian action, the report quotes the widely discredited report from British economist and climate extremist Nicholas Stern. Meanwhile, the Jaccard study claims that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is the fount of science, but then maintains that the situation is much worse than that presented by the IPCC.
The Stern report’s central flaw is a ridiculously low discount rate. If that sounds technical, what it means is that man-made climate change is claimed to be already costing us 5-20% of global GDP annually. It’s just that we can’t see where.
Lord Stern is increasingly becoming a figure of ridicule.
[...]
The three envelopes
By Charles Krauthammer:
Old Soviet joke:
Moscow, 1953. Stalin calls in Khrushchev.
“Niki, I’m dying. Don’t have much to leave you. Just three envelopes. Open them, one at a time, when you get into big trouble.”
A few years later, first crisis. Khrushchev opens envelope 1: “Blame everything on me. Uncle Joe.”
A few years later, a really big crisis. Opens envelope 2: “Blame everything on me. Again. Good luck, Uncle Joe.”
Third crisis. Opens envelope 3: “Prepare three envelopes.”
In the Barack Obama version, there are 50 or so such blame-Bush free passes before the gig is up. By my calculation, Obama has already burned through a good 49. Is there anything he hasn’t blamed George W. Bush for? The economy, global warming, the credit crisis, Middle East stalemate, the deficit, anti-Americanism abroad — everything but swine flu.
It’s as if Obama’s presidency hasn’t really started. He’s still taking inventory of the Bush years. Just this Monday, he referred to “long years of drift” in Afghanistan in order to, I suppose, explain away his own, well, yearlong drift on Afghanistan.
This compulsion to attack his predecessor is as stale as it is unseemly. Obama was elected a year ago.
[...]
Rifqa Bary in grave danger: her father’s attorney reneged on a deal in order to get her back to Ohio without protection or allies
Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch:
Here is a very serious message from Muslim apostate Rifqa Bary’s friend Jamal Jivanjee. You may recall that Judge Daniel Dawson in Florida had said that he would not send Rifqa back to Ohio, where she says her father had threatened to kill her for converting from Islam to Christianity, until he received her family’s immigration documents. So the father’s attorney cut a deal with Rifqa’s guardian ad litem, offering to keep Rifqa in foster care until she was 18 — which would mean she was free from the father she fears so much — in exchange for dropping questions about the immigration status. But once the contempt of court charge over the immigration issue was dropped, the father’s attorney reneged, leaving Rifqa back in Ohio and in imminent danger of being sent home to her family. From there, of course, once media attention died down, it would not be difficult to have her sent back to Sri Lanka to be killed or institutionalized — and even here she would be subjected to relentless, unstinting pressure to renounce Christianity and proclaim Islam publicly.
Jamal frames this issue in Christian terms, understandably enough, but I cannot emphasize more strongly that this is a human rights issue that should energize every person of conscience of whatever creed or point of view. Will this girl be exposed to mortal danger in order to appease the gods of political correctness? Will she be allowed to exercise her freedom of conscience in the United States of America? Will Sharia provisions — calling for the indefinite imprisonment and isolation of the female apostate — be allowed to prevail in this country? Why is Rifqa, alone among the thousands of minors in foster care, be cut off from the outside world entirely, deprived of phone and Internet use? The phone or Internet could save her life. And saving her life seems to be what malevolent forces in the U.S. are doing their best to make impossible.
[...]
Glenn Beck Clips 10-29-09 Seg1 of 5 SURPRISE! Glenn Reveals the ‘BLUE CURTAIN’ Today
Glenn Beck Clips 10-29-09 Seg2 of 5 Freepress, Internet Neutrality, Bailout Newspapers
Glenn Beck Clips 10-29-09 Seg3 of 5 Radicals in WH and Around Obama Attacking Free Speech
Glenn Beck Clips 10-29-09 Seg4 of 5 Our Founding Fathers Are Under the BLUE CURTAIN!
Glenn Beck Clips 10-29-09 Seg5 of 5 Founding Fathers vrs. Obama Socialists
The Audacity of Image: Obama at Dover
Monte Kuligowski, AT:
Some journalists, most notably Ben Feller of the Associated Press, are fawning over President Obama’s pre-dawn photo op at Dover Air Force Base earlier today. Feller should be ashamed of himself by insinuating that, though former President George W. Bush spent volumes of time with grieving family members, Obama really cares. Mr. Obama, unlike Bush, actually greeted the flag covered corpses of servicemen returning from Afghanistan. This was the one time when Bush should have been left out of the story.
Back to the fawning: Wow. What a president. When most people were sleeping Obama was up braving the darkness in Marine One. Arriving before the dawn, Mr. Obama stood erect brandishing a military salute in honor of the 18 servicemen killed this week in Afghanistan. The bodies were taken from the cargo plane and carried past the solemn president. Incidentally, if Obama came to privately honor the dead before the break of day why were cameras necessary?
He came. He saw. He honored. And he pulled off yet another publicity stunt to hide the fact that the dead were possibly the proximate cause of Obama’s dithering.
[...]
Another Obama-op brought to you by your friends at the Ministry of Truth.
Obama hinders public’s right to know
By Quin Hillyer, Washington Times:
When it came to divulging basic information, it was Richard Nixon’s administration that became infamous for the phrase, and practice, of “modified, limited hangout.” Now the Obama administration has abandoned all but the “limited” part. The candidate whose most identifiable promise was to provide open and transparent government instead is leading an administration rife with secrecy, stonewalling and prevarication.
The administration repeatedly has stiff-armed Congress, the media, outside organizations and even a prestigious independent government commission. It has raised “none of your business” from an adolescent rejoinder to a public policy – to keep the public in the dark.
Before examining examples of this alarming trend, let’s remember what newly inaugurated President Obama said in a big press conference on Jan. 21, his first full day in office. His words and tone could not have been more clear:
“The way to hold government accountable is to make it transparent so that the American people can know exactly what decisions are being made [and] how they’re being made. … Starting today, every agency and department should know that this administration stands on the side not of those who seek to withhold information, but those who seek to make it known. … The mere fact that you have the legal power to keep something secret does not mean you should always use it.”
[...]
“We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America” – B. Obama
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Diseased minds
David Warren:
In considering politics more generally, the phenomena of “madness” are difficult to chart. There are too many forms of it. In the world today we have several obvious madmen ruling states — Ahmadinejad of Iran, Gadhafi of Libya, Chavez of Venezuela. But there are many more subtle cases where the precise degree and cause of the affliction is unclear. One thinks, for instance, of Berlusconi of Italy, or Sarkozy of France, or of Clinton, the former president of the United States — men whose unusual and irregular sex lives have impinged on questions of state in ways that we can see, and ways that we can’t.
The present-day leadership of Russia is shot through with “interesting cases.” I brought attention some years ago to a little, well-recorded incident of Vladimir Putin’s curiously pathological relationship with cats. (They upset him terribly.) I am not a shrink, and I don’t trust shrinks, but it struck me that in combination with some of his other eccentricities, this will make a fine study for the forensic psychologists.
The problem, for the “common people,” with the sometimes arduous task of living under unhinged rulers, or with the conditions of life they create, is broader than can ever first appear. The lust for power itself is a moral failing, a beginning to madness. And when it grows gigantic, in relation to the size of the man, and makes connections with “the madness of crowds,” usually by means of hypnotic slogans — then we “progress” towards inevitable catastrophe.
History is littered with demagogues, and with the bodies of their victims both direct and indirect. But even on the smallest scale, at the level of some club or committee, we may observe the fallout from individuals with “ego issues” and iron wills.
[...]
Who are the real proponents of hate speech on campus?
ENV:
Supporters of Darwin’s theory continue to distinguish themselves on America’s college campuses—not for their reason and logic, but for their incredible ill manners and an almost pathological inability to engage in civil discussion. Last week, a factually-challenged attack on intelligent design was published in The Nevada Sagebrush, the student newspaper at the University of Nevada, Reno. Nothing new in that; I see ill-informed articles on intelligent design all the time. But after my colleague Rob Crowther posted a short comment suggesting that readers might actually want to hear from intelligent design proponents themselves (imagine that!), the Darwinist thought-police came out in force. One writer who is so courageous that he hides behind the pseudonym “bobxxxx” fulminated:
[...]
Sounds familiar. I routinely deleted expletive laden venomous comments from a reader with a remarkably similar nickname.
The Coming Financial Crisis
by Vasko Kohlmayer, FrontPage:
The Associated Press noted last week that the federal deficit reached a record $1.42 trillion for the fiscal year that ended September 30. Up until now, most of the mainstream media have either ignored the exploding deficits or declared them a good thing, since they were supposed to lift us out of the recession. But now that the full figures have come in even some Obama-friendly media stalwarts are struck by their enormity.
This awakening is heartening. The AP report does a good job of putting the deficit number against some other figures to give a sense of scale. The government’s shortfall last year, AP notes, is larger than the whole economy of India and more than the combined deficits during this country’s first two hundred years. It is, in fact, almost as large as the yearly economic output of Canada. AP quoted Kenneth Rogoff, former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund, who pointed out that “The rudderless U.S. fiscal policy is the biggest long-term risk to the U.S. economy.”
Rogoff only states the obvious. The gravest threat to this country’s economic well-being is the policies of this government. A Harvard professor and a Keynesian through and through, Rogoff is no right-wing conservative. But after surveying the grim economic picture, even liberals must recognize that the reckless spending of the Obama administration is taking us toward fiscal Armageddon.
[...]
Dismantling America
by Thomas Sowell on Oct 29th, 2009 and filed under FrontPage:
Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many “czars” appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?
Did you think that another “czar” would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers— that is, to create a situation where some newspapers’ survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?
Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called “experts” deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?
[...]
How Putin is Separating America from Europe
by Konstantin Preobrazhensky, FrontPage:
My guest today for this Frontpage Interview is Vladimir Bukovsky, a former leading Soviet dissident who spent twelve years in Soviet prisons, labor camps and psychiatric hospitals for his fight for freedom. His works include To Build a Castle and Judgement in Moscow.Preobrazhensky: Vladimir Bukovsky, welcome.
You have turned out to be very prophetic in our previous interview “The Kremlin’s Obama Gambit” of April, 2009. Answering my question about your view of Russian-American relations ensuing under Obama, you said the following: “As it stands now and if there is no drastic rethinking and reformulating, [there will be] a chain of endless concessions by America.”
And just recently we have witnessed such a concession. America has refused to deploy missiles to Eastern Europe and it received nothing in exchange. How would you comment on this development?
Bukovsky: Yes, recently America has refused to deploy missiles to Eastern Europe. It was surely done under the greatest pressure by Russia in exchange for Russia’s support of American sanctions against Iran. But as soon as the Americans agreed, the Russians said that sanctions against Iran are too hard. And they have only increased their requirements.
The plan of deploying missiles to Eastern Europe cannot be brought back anymore. The West is driving itself into a corner. They should have been firm with Russia from the very beginning. They should have told the Russians that the plan of deploying missiles to Eastern Europe was not a matter of reconsideration, and the Russians might have been fine with it! They understand only strict language.
Preobrazhensky: Because of this development, Russia has now hampered the American position on the European continent in general, right?
Bukovsky: Yes, Russia is pushing America away from Europe. That has always been the “number 1” target of Kremlin policy. Task “number 2” is making Germany their leading ally in Europe. They have been doing it since Lenin’s times, the 1920s, and Hitler’s times, the1930s.
[...]
Getting ready for the Islamic bomb
By THE WASHINGTON TIMES:
The White House believes there is an Islamic bomb in your future. Associated Press reported Tuesday that the Obama administration is “quietly laying the groundwork for long-range strategy that could be used to contain a nuclear-equipped Iran and deter its leaders from using atomic weapons.” Granted this could be routine contingency planning, but it’s believable that President Obama is pursuing an acquiescent policy given his foundering efforts to dissuade Iran from developing a nuclear capability.American planners are pondering whether Iran can be deterred from using nuclear weapons. This is the wrong question. They should instead examine how the United States will be deterred should Iran go nuclear.
[...]
Uncontrolled Muslim Influx a Threat to the West
By Greg Sheridan, Australian:
A few weeks ago in London, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband told me that 75 per cent of the terrorist plots aimed at Britain originated in the federally administered tribal areas of Pakistan. Some 800,000 Pakistanis live in Britain.
The vast majority, it goes without saying, are law-abiding citizens. But there is a link between uncontrolled Muslim immigration and terrorism.
[...]
Jimmy Carter rejected the postwar consensus. President Obama appears to be following a similar path
By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Upon entering office, Barack Obama knew little about foreign policy. But then neither did Vice President Harry S. Truman when Franklin Delano Roosevelt died suddenly on April 12, 1945.
President Obama often invokes the supposed mess abroad—especially in Iraq and Afghanistan—left to him by George W. Bush. But Mr. Obama’s inheritance is mild compared to the myriad crises that nearly overwhelmed the rookie President Truman.
[...]
Soft Power is a Fancy Way of Saying Indecisive
By Daniel Greenfield, CFP:
When Barack Obama completed his long march on the White House, liberal pundits promised us that he would completely transform US foreign policy from the dark days of the Bush Administration through soft power. Now thanks to all that squelching soft power we have gone from a foreign policy in which few liked us but we could get things done unilaterally… to a foreign policy in which everyone supposedly likes us but are actually less willing to help the new multilateral us, and as a result what we are left with is a foreign policy approach that can’t get anything done at all anymore.
[...]
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