What’s Happening with Israel?
by Victor Davis Hanson:
Current American relations with our once-staunch ally Israel are at their lowest ebb in the last 50 years.
The Obama administration seems as angry at the building of Jewish apartments in Jerusalem as it is intent on reaching out to Iran and Syria, Israel’s mortal enemies. President Obama himself, according to reports, has serially snubbed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A new narrative abounds in Washington that Israel’s intransigence with its Arab neighbors now even endangers U.S. troops stationed in the Middle East. Obama is pushing Netanyahu’s Likud government to make concessions on several fronts, from supplying power and food to Gaza, to hastened departure from the West Bank.
These tensions follow the Obama administration’s new outreach to the Muslim world.
[...]
Left-Wingers Who Caused Subprime Meltdown Have Yet To Face Justice
by Matthew Vadum, NewsRealblog:
The left-wing architects of the subprime mortgage collapse have yet to be called to account.
Much has already been written about the possibly criminal conduct of Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who relentlessly gamed the political system to clear the way for their cronies at government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to make billions at the expense of taxpayers, but very little has been written about the role that their liberal friends and allies in the private and nonprofit sectors played in bringing the U.S. economy to its knees.
Funded by huckster John Paulson and predatory lending kingpins Herb & Marion Sandler (who also gave generously to ACORN through the years), the inappropriately named Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) laid the foundation for the current financial crisis. (The photo above shows actors portraying the Sandlers in a “Saturday Night Live” skit soon after the market crashed in fall 2008.)
The media seems barely to have noticed that CRL’s puppet, Eric Stein, is now leading the Obama administration’s push to Sovietize the American banking system.
[...]
Army to ‘inquire’ into charges against Lakin
By Bob Unruh, WorldNetDaily:
Besides Obama’s actual birth documentation, the still-concealed documentation for him includes kindergarten records, Punahou school records, Occidental College records, Columbia University records, Columbia thesis, Harvard Law School records, Harvard Law Review articles, scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, passport, medical records, his files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records, and his adoption records.
[...]
Racism and The Tea Partiers
David Bernstein:
Cathy Young has an interesting column digging deeper into the data. Here’s how it starts:
[...]
The Great Phony Volcano Ash Scare and Global Warming
Thomas Lifson, AT:
The Global Warming alarmists who want to wreck the world economy over an illusory danger, have already wrecked the finances of airlines and stranded passengers over an illusory danger, based on computer models from the same UK bureaucrats.
[...]
Now what does this remind you of…
Melanie Phillips:
The evidence is now very strong that the panic about volcanic ash over Britain which closed British airspace for five days, caused a £1.3 billion airline shutdown and left 150,000 Britons stranded was completely unfounded. The Mail on Sunday reports that the information on which the British Meteorological Office based its assertion that Britain was shrouded by a dangerous layer of ash was
[...]
More Global Warming Profiteering by Obama Energy Official
by Christopher Horner:
Surprising documents made available to this author reveal that Assistant Secretary of Energy Cathy Zoi has a huge financial stake in companies likely to profit from the Obama administration’s “green” policies.
Zoi, who left her position as CEO of the Alliance for Climate Protection — founded by Al Gore — to serve as assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy, now manages billions in “green jobs” funding. But the disclosure documents show that Zoi not only is in a position to affect the fortunes of her previous employer, ex-Vice President Al Gore, but that she herself has large holdings in two firms that could directly profit from policies proposed by the Department of Energy.
[...]
Disastrous Computer Models Predictions From Limits to Growth to Global Warming
By Dr. Tim Ball:
Every time history repeats itself the price goes up. Anonymous
No matter what political committees try to absolve corruption of climate science of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), they cannot hide the complete failure of the computer models to make a single accurate prediction. Leaked emails from the CRU received media attention, but the emphasis must shift to the computer models. They gave the IPCC Reports far more credibility than they deserved by producing simple graphs and crude maps of a warmer world with increasingly, expanding and threatening red (hot) areas that avoided the need for scientific understanding.
What was more dramatic than the infamous hockey stick? The combination of the flat handle achieved by eliminating the Medieval Warm Period and the upturn of the blade in the 20th century with Phil Jones’ undisclosed data was visually dramatic. The propagandists in Hollywood who produced Gore’s movie understood this.
[...]
Obama Is Enabling Nuclear Breakout
By James Lewis, AT:
Jimmy Carter didn’t want to be known as the Ayatollah Appeaser, but that’s how history has him chalked up. Bill Clinton played dumb about the 1994 World Trade Center bombing, actually blocking the flow of foreign intelligence between Justice and the CIA, and thereby enabled 9/11/01 — the second al-Qaeda attack on Manhattan in seven years. The liberal media are still in shrill denial of those facts, but history will not forget their failures. Historians will ask over and over why yet another feckless Democrat was elected in 2008. How could Americans be so blind to the circling jackals of this world?
Now Obama seems intent on reversing the Cold War and letting nuclear proliferation explode. In Congress, the Democrats are committing mass suicide for him. FDR gave us the New Deal, and Obama is giving us the Raw Deal.
[...]
Congressman: Why is Justice Department refusing to allow its career attorneys to testify before civil rights commission?
By: J.P. Freire:
A former career Voting Section chief of the Justice Department shocked coworkers at his going-away luncheon by allegedly “reciting a written defense of his decision to file” a case against two members of the “New Black Panther Party.” The two men, clad in paramilitary uniforms, stood in front of a polling place in Philadelphia, Pa., holding batons. (They can be seen in the video below.) The Justice Department has been reluctant to pursue the case, going so far as to transfer Coates to South Carolina.
[...]
Barack Obama’s top ten insults against Israel
By Nile Gardiner:
Last week Israel celebrated its 62nd year as a nation, but there was major cause for concern amid the festivities as the Israeli people faced the looming menace of a nuclear-armed Iran, as well as the prospect of a rapidly deteriorating relationship with Washington. The Israel-bashing of the Obama administration has become so bad that even leading Democrats are now speaking out against the White House. New York Senator Chuck Schumer blasted Barack Obama’s stance towards Israel in a radio interview last week, stating his “counter-productive” Israel policy “has to stop”.
[..]
The Scud Saga Continues
Noah Pollak:
Michael Young, the opinion editor of the Beirut Daily Star, has a fine column parsing the latest developments on Syria, Lebanon, and the Obama administration. He confirms the interpretation I made recently on this blog, that the administration is puzzled at the failure of its opening gambits and unsure of what to do next:
[...]
The Fight-Back Begins
By Barry Napier:
A sudden uprising from the moguls of enterprise threatens to disrupt, if not demolish, Obama’s fake green plans for the world. The Sierra Club and other socialist despots have been bringing ‘vexatious and frivolous’ law cases against normal businesses for a long time, with Democratic approval. Al Gore used the same tactic in his run-up to the vice presidential elections. The Democrat rat-pack did the same recently to Sarah Palin, bringing malicious and unfounded accusations against her.
The idea is to weaken opposition with continuous litigation, even though their cases are flimsy and stupid. The idea is not to win, but to engage the opponent in expensive legal fees they cannot sustain. Even so, green groups have earned millions each year by bringing these insulting legal cases, by forcing people to cave-in out of court. And Democratic henchmen applaud.
But, this time, big companies with plenty of cash are taking up the fight. I have never heard of a single president (I still can’t use a capital ‘P’ for Obama) who has attracted so much opposition and legal fights in such a short space of time! Yet, Obama deserves every one of them. Hopefully, if the number increases he will be deluged and ruined, just like those he happily destroyed in his secret route to the White House. Now, with the Big Boys on the block, his hot-shot lawyers will have a tough time facing off their adversaries.
[...]
Indentured Servitude in the USA and the Biggest Ponzie Scheme Ever
by John Loudon, BG:
The Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) has been on the forefront of battling this issue for the last 20 years. Trade unions have been meticulously stacking school boards city councils, fire districts and other public boards with candidates whose first priority may not be to the kids or taxpayers, but to making sure that when the public entity builds, it builds union-only. This strategy has been so stealthy, that even the upper middle class municipality in St. Louis County, Des Peres, Missouri, with a median household income of $106,000, has an RFP for electrical work which specifies that union contractors are preferred. Sometimes the battle is not so stealthy. When control hinges on one vote, unions will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to win a single city council seat or even an unpaid fire district seat.
So what will people do with this information? The first thing to do is realize that your school board may not be working for you, as a taxpayer or parent. Here is a clue: if the candidate for the fireboard is endorsed by the firefighters, he might not be looking out for you. Just sayin’. Does the teachers union endorse your school board candidate? Helloooo?
So how bad is the problem? Congress (through the Pension Protection Act of 2006) considers funds with less than 80% of needed assets to be in “endangered” status, and those with less than 65% to be in “critical” status. According to Real Clear Markets, the list has grown from 230 pension plans in 2008 to 640 at the end of 2009.
[...]
Dems seek to gut Citizens United SCOTUS decision
Ed Lasky, AT:
Respect for the Constitution? Respect and deference to the Supreme Court of the United States? That was so 2008 and before. We know how Barack Obama has a fetish for attacking groups, including the Supreme Court justices during the State of the Union address.
Now we can witness moves afoot by Democratic Senators to try to weaken their decision in the Citizens United Case – the decision that allowed corporations to fund independent political broadcast in elections.
Most Senators are lawyers; but here political power and the desire to help control what citizens hear takes precedence over respect to the Constitution. The White House is working with key Democrats to weaken the impact of Citizens United. Meanwhile, unemployment stays stubbornly high-and our politicians are spending time on figuring out how to chill free speech,.
[...]
The Most Enduring Legacy Of Nazi Hate
by David Stokes:
On February 1, 1944, two unlikely allies in the United States Senate—Robert Wagner (D-New York) and Robert Taft (R-Ohio)—introduced a resolution that caused shockwaves around the globe. Their initiative advocated American support for “free and unlimited entry of Jews into Palestine for the creation of a Jewish commonwealth.” This was a bold move and one that put the Roosevelt administration on the spot.
Nearly five years earlier, the British government had released a White Paper on the issue of Palestine—one that largely abandoned the Jewish people in that region. Since the 1917 Balfour Declaration and during the period of the British Mandate they had been largely supportive of Jewish migration to Palestine and the idea of a Jewish state there. In essence, the White Paper changed all of that. It advocated severe limitations on Jewish immigration to Palestine—this at a time when European anti-Semitism was reaching critical mass.
The gang in Berlin was pleased.
[...]
General Boykin and Major Hasan
by Ken Blackwell:
The Obama administration recently issued a report from the Defense Department on the Fort Hood shootings of last November. The report has sparked controversy in Washington. On Capitol Hill, Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Sue Collins (R-Maine) are demanding more documents from the Pentagon.
Lieberman chairs the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee where Collins is the ranking member. Both senators sharply criticized the administration for its failure to turn over documents on the handling of Major Nidal Hasan. Lieberman and Collins are now issuing subpoenas to enforce their call for the documents.
The Pentagon report on the Fort Hood shootings was a whitewash. It never mentioned radical Islam or noted the religious motivation of the Army psychiatrist who killed fourteen people at Fort Hood in Texas in a shooting rampage last November.
[...]
Highly recommended: Glenn Beck’s tv show was particularly good on Friday
Kathie Shaidle. five feet of fury:
Even if you don’t normally watch (and believe it or not, I don’t either), this is 40 minutes (four YouTube videos x 10 minutes each, or watch it all here) well spent.
The theme was “Free Speech Under Attack” and was a memorable history lesson about the Mann Act, the “white slavery” moral panic, and visual proof that Obama is outdoing FDR in creating new regulations.
The segment on Nixon’s Ememies List is particularly good. Even I had never seen footage of reporter Daniel Shorr, tasked with reading the just-released list on live tv, discovering and reading his own name on the list (and keeping his cool — what a pro).
This is Glenn Beck doing what he does best.
[...]
An Age of Untruth
by Victor Davis Hanson, Pajamas Media:
Make no mistake about it, this is a dishonest age. That our daily lies are purportedly advanced in the cause of the common good, nevertheless do not make them any less lies.
Beware of sudden and apparently reasonable “calls for civility.” That pathetic mantra is usually voiced by a liberal administration and its supporters when criticism mounts that they are taking the country too far to the Left — like the Clinton implosion in 1993 or Obama today. I fear “civility” does not mean one should not write novels or produce movies contemplating murdering George Bush — that’s sort of an understandable agitprop art. “Civility” does not mean the New York Times should not give discounts to run ads in wartime like “General Betray Us.” That’s needed dissidence. Civility does not suggest that a Sen. Durbin, or Sen. Kerry, or Sen. Kennedy not use inflammatory language that compares our own troops or personnel to terrorists, Nazis, Pol Pot, Stalinists, or Saddam Hussein’s torturers; that most certainly is not uncivil. And it was certainly not impolite for Rep. Stark to call President Bush a “liar.”
[...]
President follows Europe into places Europeans no longer want to go
By MATT WELCH, NY POST:
With the stunning emergence of the consumption-based Value Added Tax (VAT) as a legitimate public policy option, the Obama administration has now all but made it official: There is no European economic idea too extreme for 21st century America. Even if the Europeans themselves are largely headed in the opposite direction.
[...]
Does Obama Want to Destroy America? Yes, But…
by Warner Todd Huston, BG:
Liberals think that the U.S. is arrogant and needs to be taken down a notch or three. Liberals think that U.S. history is filled with nothing but evil and any attacks on the U.S. are richly deserved. Liberals think that the U.S. was founded by evil, selfish, hateful white men who were only interested in their own power and didn’t want to empower others. So, liberals want the founder’s memory eviscerated. Liberals think that our capitalist system needs to be eliminated. In short, liberals value nothing about the U.S. except its tradition of self-actuation, liberty, and its freedom to re-make itself and they want to use that capacity to erase everything that makes the U.S.A. the U.S.A. Once that is done they want to build a U.S. to their own liking using the very freedoms they used to lay her low.
This is the aim of groups like the American Civil Liberties Union, Moveon.org, the Center for American Progress, the Media Matters for America and other such extremist left-wing organizations. Even CAIR attempts to use America’s freedoms as a weapon against her.
But, again, these liberals think they are doing a good thing. The problem is that they are utterly wrong. If this country treads the left-wing path, the U.S. will not emerge a winner. It will be laid low just like the left wants, but it will not rise again. The left’s prescriptions will lead to our becoming a third world nation. And yet there is no doubt they really imagine they are doing good.
Like Medved, New York Times columnist David Brooks cannot understand this whole political reality. Brooks thinks that Obama and Democrats only tried too many things at once and that is why so many Americans are rising up against them. Apparently it was just an accident of scope, nothing but an act of overreach that frightened the voters. Otherwise, he sees the Democrats and Obama as your average, everyday American pols. He doesn’t see a radical, destroy-America agenda in their efforts. In fact, he ridiculously seems to think that it is the right that somehow wants to destroy the country with a “government war” agenda — a battle against all government. So, he sees both sides as in the wrong and his “centrist” position as the correct path.
What he simply can’t understand is that conservatives are not wholly anti-government. They are all about the right amount of government, government when and where it is most needed and efficacious has always been the American right’s goal.
In fact it is liberals that have used government to destroy America.
[...]
Cap-and-Trade Treason
By Alan Caruba Sunday, CFP:
If you thought that the way the Obama administration and its cohort of Democrats in Congress rammed through the takeover of the nation’s healthcare system was appalling, prepare to watch the same process applied to Cap-and-Trade. Your government no longer represents you, the voter, the citizen.
[...]
Israel Aid to the USA
Posted by David Elazar, MtEvansCO:
Israel receives, in addition to political and moral support, $3 billion annually in foreign aid from the United States. Besides having a strong, democratic ally, what does the USA receive in return?The following bibliography is an attempt to put into perspective how Israel aids the USA and its citizens.
This is just a “drop in the bucket”. I plan to continue adding to this list
[...]
Share your ideas for breaking the LA Times’ stonewall on the Obama/Khalidi Tape
Beldar Blog:
My blogospheric friend Roger L. Simon at Pajamas Media is soliciting reader ideas on how to get the Los Angeles Times to release a 2003 videotape of Rashid Khalidi and Barack Obama that may — there are sound reasons to believe — be very illuminating on Obama’s basic attitudes and prejudices when it comes to Israel and its position in the Middle East. The LAT successfully stone-walled all requests for access to the tape before the 2008 election — I wrote about the issue here on November 8, 2008 — but I agree with Roger that this effort is worth reviving in light of The One’s weird and hostile behavior toward Israel.
[...]
h/t: instapundit
Lawmakers want university explanation for expulsion of Christian
By Bob Unruh, WorldNetDaily
Lawmakers in Michigan are preparing to call on the carpet leaders of taxpayer-supported universities across the state after top officials at Eastern Michigan University expelled from a counseling program a Christian student who refused to argue in support of the homosexual lifestyle.
As WND reported, trouble began for master’s program student Julea Ward when she refused to accept a client whose issue concerned a homosexual relationship.
The school expelled her from the counseling program March 12, 2009, for refusing to abrogate her own personal religious beliefs and support the homosexual lifestyle.
Since then, Ward has brought a lawsuit through the Alliance Defense Fund Center for Academic Freedom.
[...]
The New Fat Cats: public-sector employees
BY Fred Barnes:
John Edwards was right. There are two Americas, just not his two (the rich and powerful versus everyone else). The real divide today is, on one side, the 20 million people who work for state and local governments and the additional 3 million who’ve retired with fat pensions. On the other, the rest of us, roughly 280 million Americans. In short, there’s a gulf between the bureaucrats and the people.
Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey puts his fight with teachers and their union in roughly those terms. He says there are “two classes of citizens in New Jersey: those who enjoy rich public benefits and those who pay for them.” The teachers want to keep a pay raise and continue to pay a minimal share of their retiree benefits.
[...]
Censorship of Islamic Terminology: A Call for a Congressional Inquiry
PJTV VIDEO:
In a special commentary, PJTV CEO Roger L. Simon applauds the efforts of Senators Joseph Lieberman and Susan Collins to have have open communication about Islamic extremism and more openess about Ft. Hood documents. However Simon suggests the two should go further and calls for a Congressional inquiry to examine possible censorship of “Islamic Terminology” within the US government by 1) Examining possible censorship of written documents 2) possible verbal censorship 3) censorship pressure sources within the government 4) Pressure from outside the government
Liberty and the Death of God
By Daniel H. Fernald, AT:
[...]
In George Orwell’s 1984, Comrade O’Brien describes The Party as “the priests of power,” with power itself as their god. Power is simultaneously the method and goal of this new secular religion. As O’Brien tells Winston Smith, “Power is not a means; it is an end. … If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever”[i].
I’ve been seeing that picture quite a bit, lately. It is the quintessence of the present-day power-mad, anti-intellectual radical left. In “killing” God, the left was merely taking out the competition, Tony Soprano-style — and now they’ve upped the ante.
That metal-on-metal sound you hear every time you are careless enough to waste precious, irredeemable seconds watching CNN, MSNBC, or Robert Gibbs’ smarmy mug is the left sharpening its knives for Liberty herself.
If we are unwilling to defend her, or prove unequal to the task, may we die in shame for the shackles to which our fecklessness will have doomed our progeny.
Deconstructing WaPo poison pills reporting on Israel
Leo Rennert, AT:
The Washington Post, in its April 24 edition, runs a photo of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in its World Digest with the following text:
‘”We are serious about it, we know you are serious about it, and we hope the Palestinians respond.’ Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, speaking to U.S. envoy George Mitchell about the peace process, a day after ruling out a freeze on Jewish construction in mostly Arab East Jerusalem.”
Poison pill number one
The clear impression left with Post readers is that Netanyahu speaks with forked tongue, or if you prefer, out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand he declares he’s serious about the peace process, but on the other hand he rules out a construction freeze in East Jerusalem, as requested by the White House.
Except that the Post mixes up apples and oranges to question Netanyahu’s sincerity.
[...]
The do-as-I-say (not as I do) duo
Thomas Lifson, AT:
The First Smoker and his wife don’t always follow their own advice on living healthy to reduce the burden on ObamaCare finances. On yet another long weekend away from the White House, the First Couple indulged in ultra-unhealthy North Carolina barbecue. Jennifer Fermino of the New York Post writes:
[...]
Socialists and elitists are all alike. Here’s a joke from the Soviet Union days that describes it well:
During the famine of the civil war, a delegation of starving peasants comes to the Smolny, wishing to file a petition.
“We have even started eating the grass like horses,” says one peasant. “Soon we will start neighing like horses!”
“Come on! Don’t worry!” says Lenin reassuringly. “We are drinking tea with honey here, and we are not buzzing like bees, are we?”
‘Welcome Back To the Fight — This Time I Know Our Side Will Win’
Posted by Michael Walsh, BJ:
In light of the news about Comedy Central’s astounding cowardice in the face of some veiled threats from Troglogyte Central, my thoughts turned to this movie, and not just because I wrote the sequel:
[...]
The “Zionist Hindu Crusader” Alliance Marches On
Walter Mead:
In one of the least-noted but perhaps more important shifts of the post Cold War world, that has all changed. Currently, Israel isn’t just popular in India. It is India’s largest supplier of high-tech weapons and the growing cooperation between the two countries is spreading into both economic and political fields. There is a strategic compatibility in their interests. Economically, the marriage of Indian and Israeli high-tech know how with India’s enormous force of educated, English-speaking labor, its vast internal market, and Israel’s marketing experience and connections with the advanced industrial economies make for a natural complementarity. Israel welcomes the rise of Indian economic and political influence in the Middle East and East Africa. Both countries view the activities of radicals in Pakistan and their use of Pakistan and Afghanistan for wider regional ambitions with deep concern.
There’s another connection. The United States increasingly favors the emergence of India as a world and regional power. In the context of the Middle East and Africa, Americans see India as a stabilizing, anti-extremist force. More broadly, while the United States isn’t (and shouldn’t be) operating a policy of containment against China, the growing prosperity and power of India in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East is an important positive factor in maintaining the kind of international order the United States wants to see. That means, among other things, that the United States is likely to look with more favor on transfers of technological know how and the sales of advanced weapons systems from Israel to India than from Israel to China. This preference reinforces the ties between the two most successful democracies to emerge from British colonialism in modern Asia.
[...]
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