"Jolting" the Economy

Thomas Sowell
Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Barack Obama says that we have to "jolt" the economy. That certainly makes sense, if you take the media's account of the economy seriously-- but should the media be taken seriously?

Amid all the political and media hysteria, national output has declined by less than one-half of one percent. In fact, it may not have declined even that much-- or at all-- when the statistics are revised later, as they very often are.

We are not talking about the Great Depression, when output dropped by one-third and unemployment soared to 25 percent.

What we are talking about is a golden political opportunity for politicians to use the current financial crisis to fundamentally change an economy that has been successful for more than two centuries, so that politicians can henceforth micro-manage all sorts of businesses and play Robin Hood, taking from those who are not likely to vote for them and transferring part of their earnings to those who will vote for them.

For that, the politicians need lots of hype, and that is being generously supplied by the media.

Whatever the merits of trying to shore up some financial institutions, in order to prevent a major disruption of the credit flows that keep the whole economy going, what has in fact been done has been to create a huge pot of money-- hundreds of billions of dollars-- that politicians can use to give out goodies hither and yon, to whomever they please for whatever reason they please.

No doubt we could all use a few billion dollars every now and then. But the question of who actually gets it will be strictly in the hands of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. It is one of the few parts of the legacy of the Bush administration that the Democrats are not likely to criticize.

Much as we may deplore partisanship in Washington, bipartisan disasters are often twice as bad as partisan disasters-- and this is a bipartisan disaster in the making.

Too many people who argue that there is a beneficial role for the government to play in the economy glide swiftly from that to the conclusion that the government will in fact confine itself to playing such a role.

In the light of history, this is a faith which passeth all understanding. Even in the case of the Great Depression of the 1930s, increasing numbers of economists and historians who have looked back at that era have concluded that, on net balance, government intervention prolonged the Great Depression.

Many of those who have, over the years, praised the fact that this was the first time that the federal government took responsibility for trying to get the country out of a depression do not ask what seems like the logical follow-up question: Did this depression therefore end faster than other depressions where the government stood by and did nothing?

The Great Depression of the 1930s was in fact the longest-lasting of all our depressions.

Government policy in the 1930s was another bipartisan disaster. Despite a myth that Herbert Hoover was a "do nothing" president, he was the first President of the United States to step in to try to put the economy back on track.

With the passing years, it has increasingly been recognized that what FDR did was largely a further extension of what Hoover had done. Where Hoover made things worse, FDR made them much worse.

Herbert Hoover did what Barack Obama is proposing to do. Hoover raised taxes on high-income people and put restrictions on international trade, in order to try to save American jobs. It didn't work then and it is not likely to work now.

Perhaps the most disastrous of all the counterproductive policies of the federal government was the National Industrial Recovery Act under FDR, which set out to do exactly what the politicians today want to do-- micro-manage businesses.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court declared that Act unconstitutional, sparing the country an even bigger disaster.

Today, it is unlikely that the courts will let anything as old-fashioned as the Constitution stand in the way of "change." In short, the economy today has some serious problems but things are not desperate, though they can be made desperate by politicians.



Copyright © 2008 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

OBAMA ALREADY MAKING MISTAKES WITH INDIA AND PAKISTAN

Published on NewsBusters.org (http://newsbusters.org)
U.S. Media Ignoring Obama Mistakes With India/Pakistan
By Warner Todd Huston
Created 2008-11-28 04:38
Naturally, the U.S. media is following the terrorist crimes in Mumbai, India, as well they should. But, the attacks seem to be the Old Media's only interest where it concerns India and Pakistan, of late, for they've completely ignored the several mistakes that Barack Obama has already made with his attempts at foreign policy with the two embattled nations.

Back on November 11, I noted that Obama had made his first mistakes [1] with both India and Pakistan by mishandling early talks with their leaders (or not having them at all, as the case may be). During his first major effort to contact foreign leaders as president elect, Obama called Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari but neglected to call India's Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh. This short shrifting did not sit well with the Indian government.

Then, Obama appointed to his transition team a woman named Sonal Shah whom the Pakistanis say has ties with a violent Hindu Nationalist Party in India that they claim is responsible for a rampage in Gujarat, India that killed many Muslims and Christians.

Worse, during his outreach to Pakistan's Zardari, Obama promised that he'd help settle the trouble between India and Pakistan over Kashmir and he did this without asking India if his help was wanted by India. As a result, India got its nose out of joint and immediately said that Obama's "help" with Kashmir was not wanted.

Well, more on Obama's unwanted offer with the Kashmir problem has been reported by various Indian and Pakistani news agencies. An Indian official has reiterated that Obama's help with Kashmir was neither asked for nor wanted. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee refused Obama's offer again [2] at a recent press conference held with Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi.

The Indian Express news group reports that on Wednesday Mukherjee "shot down US President-elect Barack Obama’s suggestion that former US President Bill Clinton could prod India and Pakistan into making peace over Kashmir."

The remarks were also reported at KashmirWatch.com [3].

On Jammu and Kashmir, Mukherjee rejected any third party interference, when asked to comment on the reports that the US president-elect was moving to appoint Bill Clinton as his emissary to settle Kashmir issue. "There was no question of the intervention of third party. Kashmir is a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan. It is part of composite dialogue process," he stressed.


These are some embarrassing stumbles on India and Pakistan and shows that Obama won’t be able to flash his dazzling smile and have the world's leaders just fall at the feet of The One happy to follow his policy ideas.

Curiously, I can't find this news reporting Obama’s thus far failed attempts at diplomacy in any American news source. Why do you think that is?

INDIA AND PAKISTAN ABOUT TO GET BAD

If the Nov. 26 attacks in Mumbai were carried out by Islamist militants as it appears, the Indian government will have little choice, politically speaking, but to blame them on Pakistan. That will in turn spark a crisis between the two nuclear rivals that will draw the United States into the fray.

Analysis
At this point the situation on the ground in Mumbai remains unclear following the militant attacks of Nov. 26. But in order to understand the geopolitical significance of what is going on, it is necessary to begin looking beyond this event at what will follow. Though the situation is still in motion, the likely consequences of the attack are less murky.

We will begin by assuming that the attackers are Islamist militant groups operating in India, possibly with some level of outside support from Pakistan. We can also see quite clearly that this was a carefully planned, well-executed attack.

Given this, the Indian government has two choices. First, it can simply say that the perpetrators are a domestic group. In that case, it will be held accountable for a failure of enormous proportions in security and law enforcement. It will be charged with being unable to protect the public. On the other hand, it can link the attack to an outside power: Pakistan. In that case it can hold a nation-state responsible for the attack, and can use the crisis atmosphere to strengthen the government’s internal position by invoking nationalism. Politically this is a much preferable outcome for the Indian government, and so it is the most likely course of action. This is not to say that there are no outside powers involved — simply that, regardless of the ground truth, the Indian government will claim there were.

That, in turn, will plunge India and Pakistan into the worst crisis they have had since 2002. If the Pakistanis are understood to be responsible for the attack, then the Indians must hold them responsible, and that means they will have to take action in retaliation — otherwise, the Indian government’s domestic credibility will plunge. The shape of the crisis, then, will consist of demands that the Pakistanis take immediate steps to suppress Islamist radicals across the board, but particularly in Kashmir. New Delhi will demand that this action be immediate and public. This demand will come parallel to U.S. demands for the same actions, and threats by incoming U.S. President Barack Obama to force greater cooperation from Pakistan.

If that happens, Pakistan will find itself in a nutcracker. On the one side, the Indians will be threatening action — deliberately vague but menacing — along with the Americans. This will be even more intense if it turns out, as currently seems likely, that Americans and Europeans were being held hostage (or worse) in the two hotels that were attacked. If the attacks are traced to Pakistan, American demands will escalate well in advance of inauguration day.

There is a precedent for this. In 2002 there was an attack on the Indian parliament in Mumbai by Islamist militants linked to Pakistan. A near-nuclear confrontation took place between India and Pakistan, in which the United States brokered a stand-down in return for intensified Pakistani pressure on the Islamists. The crisis helped redefine the Pakistani position on Islamist radicals in Pakistan.

In the current iteration, the demands will be even more intense. The Indians and Americans will have a joint interest in forcing the Pakistani government to act decisively and immediately. The Pakistani government has warned that such pressure could destabilize Pakistan. The Indians will not be in a position to moderate their position, and the Americans will see the situation as an opportunity to extract major concessions. Thus the crisis will directly intersect U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan.

It is not clear the degree to which the Pakistani government can control the situation. But the Indians will have no choice but to be assertive, and the United States will move along the same line. Whether it is the current government in India that reacts, or one that succeeds doesn’t matter. Either way, India is under enormous pressure to respond. Therefore the events point to a serious crisis not simply between Pakistan and India, but within Pakistan as well, with the government caught between foreign powers and domestic realities. Given the circumstances, massive destabilization is possible — never a good thing with a nuclear power.

This is thinking far ahead of the curve, and is based on an assumption of the truth of something we don’t know for certain yet, which is that the attackers were Muslims and that the Pakistanis will not be able to demonstrate categorically that they weren’t involved. Since we suspect they were Muslims, and since we doubt the Pakistanis can be categorical and convincing enough to thwart Indian demands, we suspect that we will be deep into a crisis within the next few days, very shortly after the situation on the ground clarifies itself.

Obama's High Profile on Financial Crisis Poses Political Risks

By Adriel Bettelheim, CQ Staff Adriel Bettelheim, Cq Staff
Wed Nov 26, 5:44 am ET

On Tuesday morning, the Bush administration unveiled a set of new programs intended to pump an additional $800 billion into the economy and thaw still-frozen credit markets.

Just hours later, President-elect Obama introduced two new members of his economic team and vowed to overhaul the federal budget process to address bigger deficits and the staggering economy.

The events in Washington and Chicago were not choreographed to dovetail but nonetheless underscored the unprecedented degree with which the incoming and outgoing administrations are moving to simultaneously address the financial crisis.

Newly elected presidents customarily stay on the sidelines during transition periods to avoid being associated with their predecessor's policies. That's especially true when the administrations belong to different political parties. But the worsening financial crisis has forced Obama to dispense with such calculations and forcefully demonstrate that he is taking charge.

Obama introduced members of his economic team at press conferences on Monday and Tuesday during which he outlined plans for a stimulus package he said would save or create 2.5 million jobs. He plans another economy-themed event on Wednesday.

Beyond rolling out the new programs to ease credit, President Bush and his administration worked out a rescue plan for Citigroup over the weekend. Bush spoke with Obama about the bank rescue on Monday, and administration officials say they are in constant touch with the president-elect's transition team.

"They're keeping each other informed and their staffs are working closely together," White House press secretary Dana Perino said on Tuesday. "We are working hand-in-glove with them."

Presidential scholars say Obama is taking considerable risks assuming the burden of governing eight weeks before he takes the oath of office. By collaborating with the Bush administration on the economic recovery, Obama prematurely ended his post-election honeymoon and made himself a target for criticism should the recovery measures prove inadequate.

By outlining his expectations for a stimulus package to a lame duck Congress, Obama also might be seen as overstepping his bounds.

"He's setting himself up to lose very seriously if these efforts tank or don't achieve much, because whatever policies are enacted are going to be Bush-Obama policies," said Tim Blessing, a professor of history and political science at Alvernia University in Reading, Pa. and author of "Greatness in the White House."

"He literally could have gone back to Chicago, work on assembling his team and leave the mess in Bush's hand," he said. "This is truly unprecedented."

Karen M. Hult, a presidential scholar at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, said Bush and Obama have been pushed into the singular partnership by the severity of the crisis and the 24/7 news cycle, which has provided a seemingly non-stop accounting of jittery financial markets.

"What we're seeing is a mix of continuity and a commitment to solving problems," Hult said. "Both sides have incentives to appear they're responding thoughtfully and seriously to the economic crisis. Obama's appointments have come quicker than the norm. Given what we think we know about the president-elect, this response will keep up, but be dependent on what's happening outside world."

Some past government officials believe Bush and Obama should work even more closely, perhaps by forging a new oversight regime to ensure the long-term stability of financial markets.

"Nothing would do more to create confidence and eliminate the fear and anxiety that's out there . . . than to see the incoming president and outgoing president get together on some sort of a proposal or program over the short-term," former Secretary of State James Baker said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday.

Blessing, the political scientist, says the hand-in-hand response to the financial crisis might even prompt other collaborations in the coming weeks, perhaps to coordinate strategy in the war in Afghanistan.

However, Obama does appear to be taking pains to keep at least a little distance with Bush while showing some deference to the beleaguered commander in chief. At his Tuesday press conference, Obama reiterated that the nation can't have co-presidents, but stressed that he hopes to get off to a fast start.

"There is only one president at a time. That president is George W. Bush, and he will be president until I'm sworn in on January 20," Obama said. "Given the extraordinary circumstances that we find ourselves in, however, I think it is very important for the American people to understand that we are putting together a first-class team and for them to have clarity that we don't intend to stumble into the next administration.

Time's Mark Halperin: Pro-Obama Bias of Press Most Extreme in Modern History

All this was of course known (and intended) during the campaign. Now that the campaign has been safely won by the press, it's time for the media to begin admitting the obvious and pretending it was all just sort of a mistake which will be remedied in the future.

As the saying goes, it is easier to beg for forgiveness than to receive permission. They did what they, um, needed to do, but now they can pretend they'd have done things differently, if only they'd been aware of their errors as they were making them.

Media bias was more intense in the 2008 election than in any other national campaign in recent history, Time magazine's Mark Halperin said Friday at the Politico/USC conference on the 2008 election.
"It's the most disgusting failure of people in our business since the Iraq war," Halperin said at a panel of media analysts. "It was extreme bias, extreme pro-Obama coverage."

Halperin, who maintains Time's political site "The Page," cited two New York Times articles as examples of the divergent coverage of the two candidates.

"The example that I use, at the end of the campaign, was the two profiles that The New York Times ran of the potential first ladies," Halperin said. "The story about Cindy McCain was vicious. It looked for every negative thing they could find about her and it case her in an extraordinarily negative light. It didn't talk about her work, for instance, as a mother for her children, and they cherry-picked every negative thing that's ever been written about her."

The story about Michelle Obama, by contrast, was "like a front-page endorsement of what a great person Michelle Obama is," according to Halperin.



The standard press apologetics are that 1) if you're winning you get better coverage, so the bias was "neutral" in the sense that McCain would have had the same bias if only he'd been winning and 2) Obama got better coverage only on the (again) "neutral" grounds he was "new," and of course McCain could have had the same biased coverage if only he'd been new.

Two words rebut both of these points utterly: Sarah Palin.

McCain was winning, quite nicely, for two weeks after he announced Palin as his VP. Who was, you know, new. The press did not respond by giving McCain and Palin positive press, but by indulging in a nasty feeding frenzy of dumpster-diving smear-peddling the likes of which we haven't before witnessed in the modern era.

If the bias was purely due to "neutral" non-political circumstances such as "being ahead in the polls" and the "newness" of a candidate, we should have expected to see McCain and Palin feted as the New Hotness Messiahs, replacing the press love for the Old and Busted Messiah Obama. Of course, no such alienation of affection took place among the press. They redoubled their efforts to elect Barack Obama.

Furthermore, of course, the supposedly-neutral bias in favor of the winner obscures the fact that Obama was winning precisely because the press refused to run negative stories about him. While we heard an awful lot about Sarah Palin's $150,000 wardrobe, we heard nothing about the $300,000 discount that convicted political fixer and bagman Tony Rezko got for his good buddy Obama. The press trumpeted every misstatement by McCain and Palin while ignoring every gaffe by Obama and Biden. Etc.

They have no defense. To ladle additional lies upon a breathtaking record of dishonesty adds insult to injury.

Thanks to CJ.

Posted by Ace at 07:52 PM New Comments Thingy

Year of Flaccid Thinking

Saturday, November 22nd, 2008
Commenter Rob has nominated us for our very own Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) award, or at least suggested we should be so nominated, which highlights the disadvantages involved when accolades have been systematically handed out without rules attached. Can you give yourself a BSIHORL award? The dilemma has, we confess, taken us completely by surprise. We’ll have to toddle off somewhere and give that a think-or-three.

The sentence in question has to do with the iPresident (-elect), and His Divine Effect upon the market, which has been a gloriously depressing one. And it reads thusly,

Oh well. Blame Bush. It’s always been an easy thing for the flaccid mind.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: One of my keenest weaknesses, has been a consistent failure to recognize my own genius now and then. I need to have others point it out. I’m working hard to improve in this particular area…but it’s a slow process.

Now that I take another gander at my own work, the brilliance is hard to deny. Like any other brilliant thing, it cloaks a subtle challenge to orthodoxy. The word “flaccid” has an orthodoxy about it, said orthodoxy being the singularity of a particular act to which the word may pertain. That act has nothing to do with the mind, or very little, and is much more concerned with a particular male appendage.

We do not like, in these enlightened modern times, to connect abstract, capable thinking with masculinity. This would imply that our females are inherently incapable of practical thinking. This is not only politically incorrect, but all of us who were raised by determined, capable mothers know better. Such a thought is therefore relegated to the dungeon reserved for axioms that cause grievous offence both to prevailing sensibilities and to common sense.

Which is right and just.

But our mistake is to retreat headlong from anything located in that general direction.

Because whether we want to admit it or not, there is more than a casual relationship between beneficial thinking, and masculinity. And a state of flaccidness is problematic to both. Thinking, life’s experiences teach us, is quite a waste of time and energy if one is not willing to retain one’s shape when one is challenged by softer tissues that rightfully ought yield. One must assume a certain rigidity. And once one assumes that certain rigidity, one must penetrate. If one is unready, unwilling or unable to do these things, the job is left undone — someone else has to step in and achieve the task as a proxy. So in the end, the flaccid thinker doesn’t think at all, he only displays the work of others; if the task is somehow fruitful, the product belongs to another lineage. It doesn’t matter whether polite company refuses to recognize it.

I point these things out not to indulge in unnecessary vulgarities, or to offend those easily offended. Rather, I point them out to give voice to that which has been, for awhile now, suppressed. The suppression has taken place to the point that damage has been done.

The year 2008 has emerged as sort of a capstone, an epochal event, to which many of the consecutive years gone by languish in our archives as prologue. Since — roughly — the sexual revolution of the 1960’s and 1970’s, thinking has been associated with classically non-male characteristics, which might be summed up as “taking the bottom position.” Passivity prefered over activity; yielding in shape and form; acceptance; getting squished; and last but not least, elevating the importance of one’s own emotions (H/T: Rick).

Men across the nation are weeping tears of joy this week. Publicly and unabashedly. The election of Obama has validated and encouraged their right to publicly expose their sensitive inner selves to the world. Feelings rule.

Metrosexuals everywhere are experiencing a collective ’shiver up their legs’, as they rush to inform one and all of the fascinating complexities and mysteries of their inner emotions.

Setting the example that the new man isn’t a man unless he has the ability to shed tears on cue, was CBS’ Harry Smith. At the end of Wednesday’s CBS Early Show, an emotional Harry Smith declared:”…I wept tears of joy last night.”

Over on ABC, News correspondent Steve Osunsami was reporting live from Morehouse college, and when word of Barack Obama’s victory came, “Steve found himself choking back tears”. He then rushed off to pen his brilliant editorial, A Reporter Reflects on His Own Reaction to the Election. Girly Man meets the me generation.

These are not isolated cases. One is hard pressed to search for the opposite. Where’s the big, tough, rowdy musclehead pullin’ for Obama, slamming his beer mug down on the bar and yelling “YEAAHHH!!!” upon learning of the electoral college triumph of the President-God? Anybody see something like that? Anybody hear a tale, apocryphal or otherwise, that comes even close? Not I. It’s always the “tears of joy” line, or something closely resembling it.

I do not believe an assault on manhood is the point, here. Indeed, I’m open to the possibility that there is no point. Like the nocturnal recreation with which I so crudely compare it here, thinking produces some sweat. It’s work. A lot of folks have lost their virility, or perhaps traded it in; they’re not up to the challenge. They don’t rise to the occasion, because they simply don’t want to. Accountability seems to have much to do with what intimidates them. To engage in this act, without the benefit of a proxy stand-in, involves someone else forming an appraisal of your performance or lack thereof. This is a frightening thing to some lads, because it’s one of the few activities in which they participate that is not a team effort. You bollux this, and you can’t blame it on a weak player. It’s all you, Jimbo.

Perhaps there is no drive. I’m sure any lady possessing some measure of experience, will agree that drive is important in a man, that some gentlemen have it and others do not. Drive is closely associated with confidence, and confidence comes with competence. In many cases, this instance of the electorate, or that one, would be losing his virginity in thinking like a real man, should he ever choose to do so — and regardless of natural ability, nobody has the measure of confidence that comes later, when one loses one’s virginity. If one does, then that one is not being confident, he is being cocky, and this has an oppositional effect.

There has been a virtual tidal wave of opposition and pejorative thinking against Americans prevailing, following-through, defending others, acting independently of garrulous authority figures, in a manner consistent with what was announced previously — doing other things generally consistent with classical definitions of rugged masculinity. Indeed, reading through the letters to Newsweek on the subject, you see the writers taking the initiative to make the thinking-to-masculinity link. Masculine words are sprinkled throughout, like pepper on a meat dish. Violence. Dominating. Domineering. Cowboy. Military.

Interesting side note: There are two reasons to hate a man. You can hate him for what he lacks, like a weary wife or mother endlessly picking up after him because he fails to appreciate the finer things…the whole “men can’t see dirt” thing. Or, you can hate him for what he has, the way a cuckold hates another fellow he’s just learned has been having relations with his wife, or perhaps that his wife simply desires for this to occur. These two camps of male-hatred take on two distinctly different flavors, since the former brand is saturated with exhaustion and the latter is saturated with envy. When I hear people talk about how bad America has been, I don’t hear much exhaustion. What seeps through is a lot more like envy. Food for thought; but that’s a bunny trail.

Back to the subject at hand — with all these years of toxic international talk about how much America needs to shape up its act, sprinkled with these zingers about how undesirable the essentials of maleness really are…we have, in this year of flaccid thinking, capitulated. We have yielded, and yielded in most unmanly fashion. It’s the “well, alright if you say so” election.

It’s the ultimate in flaccidness. A real man, after all, doesn’t do things just because “everybody” wants him to do them (nor does he refuse to do it either, because of such a thing). A real man acts independently of the prevailing viewpoint. And if ever a real man did become fixated on what “everybody around the world” is really thinking about something — which he would not — he would treat it as a thing to be measured, to be made into an objective observation, existing independently of the emotions of those in proximity. Which would mean, world opinion would be presented to him as a poll, run door to door, across billions of households on the planet, or else it wouldn’t be presented to him as anything that means anything to him at all. In other words, he would not rely on someone else to tell him what “we all” think.

So Rob’s right. Flaccid is precisely the right word. We are not thinking like women in the way we’ve conducted ourselves, in this country, in this year; such a statement would be needlessly demeaning to women, unforgivably so.

No, our national culture has managed to conduct itself like gelded men. Call it electile dysfunction. Men who cannot, or will not, do what men were built to do. Supposedly, this has made us much more popular in something called the “world community.” Time will tell. A lot of people, under the right set of circumstances, may pretend they find it appealing when a man wears a dress…but very few really feel that way. And sooner or later, a guy has to do something to justify his existence. The garbage needs to be carried out only so many times. There are only so many pickle jars that need to be opened. Women are perfectly capable of bringing home their own paychecks.

The bedroom beckons.

Oh and there’s one other thing about real men that isn’t mentioned in polite company. By the time we’ve graduated from high school…or very soon afterward…we’ve figured out you aren’t going to get large numbers of people to like you, and want to be associated with you, simply by being a “nice guy.” That quality, all by itself, is associated with impotence; impotence has never been a sign of prestige, anywhere.

If this is the first time that it is, then the iPresident will be remembered more fondly than His predecessor.

If the trend that has remained unbroken since the dawn of time, continues, then He will not be.

All in all, I wouldn’t be feeling good about myself as a man, if this was the year in which I was elected President.

(originally published in House of Erostosthenes)

Zogby Poll: Clueless Obama Voters Reveal Media Bias

I promise this will be the last time I write about the 2008 election; I just thought I'd point out the obvious once more.

In case there was ever any question about the blind sheep mentality of the politically ignorant masses - also known, in this case, as Obama supporters - the latest Zogby poll now provides statistical evidence that voters for Obama indeed know shockingly little about their candidate, even after their vote was cast.

Thanks to John Zeigler, who headed this poll to detect a bias in reporting by the media, both the ignorance of voters and the blatant leftist agenda of today's journalists have been clearly exposed. The statistics are staggering, if unsurprising:

Zogby Poll
512 Obama Voters 11/13/08-11/15/08 MOE +/- 4.4 points
97.1% High School Graduate or higher, 55% College Graduates

Results to 12 Simple Multiple Choice Questions
57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing)
71.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing)
82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing)
88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing)
56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing).

And yet.....
Only 13.7% failed to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes
Only 6.2% failed to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter
And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her "house," even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!
Only 2.4% got at least 11 correct.
Only .5% got all of them correct. (And we "gave" one answer that was technically not Palin, but actually Tina Fey)


And they say there's no such thing as a liberal media bias.

Zeigler, an author and filmmaker, cleverly points out during an interview with Sean Hannity that with several of the questions surrounding Obama, a "group of monkeys, if they were guessing" would have scored higher than those surveyed just by sheer probability (as the questions were multiple-choice with four possible answers).

It's a frightening concept that Republicans, particularly conservatives, face: the impassioned yet politically ignorant masses who not only don't realize their ignorance, but actually revel in their misinformation. Zeigler places the responsibility of this state of affairs on the media; this should be apparent. I, for one, however, am not so quick to exculpate the masses (as I like to call them) themselves. As Zeigler notes, those surveyed were a random mix of high school and college graduates, so the issue is not about education or intellectual ability. The real problem is that the masses either don't care enough to learn the truth, or they are truly happy to be brainwashed by the media. Either way, Republicans have a serious challenge in front of them.

Thankfully, there are a few good men out there like John Zeigler who will work to fight against the leftist tidal wave and show Americans the importance of being an informed voter. He is currently working on a new documentary, Media Malpractice... How Obama Got Elected. For more information about this or about his remarkable Zogby Poll, visit www.howobamagotelected.com.

In the meantime, check out his interview with a handful of Obama supporters. Right now, its amusement may be the only consolation we Republicans have in the current state of affairs.

GOOD NEWS ON IMMIGRATION

(CNSNews.com) - A comprehensive “amnesty” bill to provide illegal aliens a path to citizenship is unlikely to pass the U.S. Senate next year because Republicans will be more united in opposition and Democrats will be reticent to burn political capital on the issue, according to a public policy group that tracks population growth in the U.S.

In October, Numbers USA updated its report card on U.S. senators in regard to key votes cast from 2005 to 2008 on immigration policy. Numbers USA favors policy changes that would reduce the annual flow of immigration to where it was historically prior to the late 20th century.

On the Republican side of the aisle, U.S. senators who have held permissive views toward immigration in the past have either left office or altered their position over the past year, Roy Beck, executive director of Numbers USA, told CNSNews.com.

Most of the Democratic senators who opposed amnesty bills in the past will probably stick to their position or urge the leadership to avoid bringing up a vote – at least in the first year of the new Congress, Beck said.

“I’m feeling optimistic about the Republicans,” he said. “The majority [of Republicans] has always been with us, but the Bush White House had pushed the party in a bad direction on this issue and the leadership went along. This will not be the case come next year.”

There are about a dozen Democratic senators who have opposed “amnesty” for illegal aliens and who will continue to be a factor, Beck estimates. Although some may back amnesty now that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has been elected president, there likely will not be enough votes to secure passage of an amnesty bill, said Beck.

When the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act of 2007 (S.1639), sponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), came up for consideration this past June, the following Democratic senators went on record opposing the bill by way of voting against cloture (cutting off debate):

Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.)
Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.)
Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.)
Sen. Kit Bond (D-Mo.)
Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.)
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.)
Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.)
Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.)
Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.)
Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.)
Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.)
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.)
Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.).

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who has co-sponsored immigration legislation in the past opposed by Numbers USA, shifted his position during the presidential campaign and might find it difficult to switch back and now push for an amnesty-type bill, Beck said.

“The big question we have to ask is, ‘Will McCain become Obama’s point man in the Senate helping to push amnesty the way he did for Bush, or will he stick with the enforcement-first position he took in the campaign?’” said Beck.

“He would not have been nominated if he did not take this position, and I don’t think he will be quick to go back on this position after telling people he had gotten the message on immigration,” Beck added.

All of the U.S. senators who ran for president in 2008 received low grades from Numbers USA. President-Elect Obama received a D-minus for his most recent votes, and for his career as whole. Obama voted against an amendment on the Senate floor (S.1348) to prohibit in-state tuition for illegal aliens and sanctuary cities for illegal aliens.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) also received a D-minus for her record on illegal immigration. Clinton voted against several amendments including S.A. 1311, which would increase interior enforcement against illegal immigration.

On the Republican side, McCain did not fare much better, receiving a D across the board for his overall career and for legislation that came up in the past few years. McCain’s support for “amnesty” legislation figured prominently in the scoring.

But the good news from the perspective of Numbers USA is that the handful of Republicans who held permissive views on border security and immigration are either leaving the Senate or have modified their views.

Beck identified Sens. Ted Stevens (R-Ala.), Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.), John Warner (R-Va.), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), and Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) as being particularly problematic.

Looking ahead, Beck is encouraged by the direction in which Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has been moving. While his record as a whole is mixed, the Senate minority leader seems more inclined now to emphasize enforcement over amnesty, said Beck.

Two policy changes that would go a long way to curtailing the flow of illegals into the United States would be tighter worksite enforcement aimed against the hiring of illegal aliens and the elimination of chain-migration categories, Beck said.

Chain-migration refers to the influx of foreign nationals who are permitted entry into the United States on the basis of non-nuclear family ties.

ANOTHER EARLY PREDICTION LINING UP TO COME TRUE

Return to the Article


November 20, 2008
Obama is a roll of the dice on Israel
By Lauri B. Regan

To many American Jews, the future survival of the State of Israel was a major voting issue in this past presidential election. While both candidates pledged unconditional support of the State of Israel, Jewish voters pinned their blind hope for that on Obama, the candidate with no substantive record of which to speak, over McCain, the candidate who has been a friend of Israel his entire career.


While some have suggested that Obama is a blank slate, I disagree. When discerning his position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we do have information that helps to form a picture of an Obama administration's Mideast policy.


We know that Obama sat in the pews of Trinity Church for 20 years listening to the anti-Semitic venom espoused by his spiritual advisor, Jeremiah Wright. Reverend Wright and the Trinity Church are intimately connected to Louis Farrakhan, the anti-Semitic leader of the Nation of Islam.


Furthermore, as Ed Lasky extensively documented (including here and here and here) throughout the campaign, many of Obama's advisors held pro-Palestinian positions. For instance, his chief foreign policy advisor earlier in his campaign was Harvard Kennedy School of Government professor, Samantha Power. In one interview, Power intimated that although it might mean "alienating a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import," a military invasion of Israel may be necessary in order to create a Palestinian state and prevent genocide.


Then there was Obama's Mideast policy advisor, Robert Malley, who, during the course of the campaign, was regularly meeting with Hamas. Back in January, Ed Lasky insightfully wrote that the choice of Malley warranted scrutiny due to his views on Israel - particularly those of disengagement with Israel and support of her enemies.


While all three of these advisors were eventually thrown under the proverbial bus for Obama's political gain, the emergence of a disconcerting pattern clearly went unnoticed by his Jewish supporters. My position throughout the campaign remained that the situation in the Mideast was simply too precarious to take a chance with a roll of the dice on the next President's support of Israel. As the election unfolded, I was clearly in the minority on that view and American Jews chose to roll those dice.


Within days of Obama's election, however, it seems a new pattern is developing as these pro-Palestinian advisors begin to emerge from hiding.


Just after the election, Farrakhan came out of the closet and announced:


"For nine months, I kept quiet. I decided it would be better for me to just be quiet rather than be drawn into the controversy that was swirling around his pastor, Father Pfleger, and others."


Three days after the election, Reverend Wright and Obama family friend, Bill Ayers, appeared together at the For Members Only "State of the Black Union" event as a VIP guest and keynote speaker, respectively. FMO coordinator Zachary Parker said he hoped to "de-mystify stereotypes" surrounding Wright and his controversial remarks and that inviting Ayers was "only fitting" because the media treated the two figures similarly. In an interview Ayers said:


"Both Rev. Wright and I were brought up as cartoon characters in this campaign because of disinformation and dishonest news. I did not suffer as much as he did, but we both got out of it with a certain amount of dignity."


Perhaps Mr. Ayers should have thought about his dignity before attempting to blow up the Pentagon, possibly killing innocent people, and then complaining that he regretted not bombing more. Perhaps Reverend Wright should have thought about his dignity before claiming that the chickens came home to roost on 9/11 and shouting out "God damn America" to his congregation. Does anyone seriously think that these people actually have one ounce of dignity warranting the public to view them as anything more serious than cartoon characters? Unfortunately, they are not cartoon characters but are real people who advised Obama and who have likely had a tremendous impact on his view of the world and in particular Mideast policy.


However, with the selection of Rahm Emanuel as Obama's chief of staff, the Jewish Obama supporters are dancing in the streets with chants of "I told you so." But what exactly about Rahm Emanuel should give Jews reason for celebration? Are we cynics supposed to abandon reasoned thinking upon the appointment of one of the most partisan Washington insiders, who conveniently happens to be Jewish, to a domestic policy position? To paraphrase the words of one-time vice presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen, "Rahm Emanuel, you are no Joe Lieberman."


Obama's appointment of Emanuel reminds me of a selling point that he made in an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic several months ago in which he discussed his "intellectual formation" through Jewish writers such as Leon Uris. Obama apparently believed that that would appease those of us concerned about his influential relationships with the likes of socialist, Frank Marshall Davis, terrorist, Bill Ayers, antisemite Jeremiah Wright, and Palestinian apologist Rashid Khalidi.


Last Friday, Jerusalem Post columnist Caroline Glick wrote about the perils facing Israel with an Obama administration directing US policy toward the Middle East:


"As the election drew closer, the Obama campaign expanded its efforts to present its candidate as a foreign policy moderate. Moderate foreign policy advisers such as Ross were paraded before reporters. Both Obama and his surrogates insisted that he supports a strong American alliance with Israel.


"Due in large part to media credulousness, Obama's new image as a centrist was widely accepted by the public. And it is likely that he owes a significant portion of his support in the American Jewish community to the campaign's success in distancing Obama from men like Brzezinski and Malley.


"But now that the campaign is over, it appears that, as his critics warned, Obama's moves toward the center on issues relating to the Middle East were little more than campaign tactics to obscure his true policy preferences."


Ms. Glick's analysis is based, in part, on reports that an early priority of the Obama administration will be to force Israel into an agreement with the Palestinians. Apparently Ms. Glick was on to something as news reports confirm that Obama phoned Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, in order to thank Abbas for his support and to confirm his commitment to work for peace based on a two-state solution. I wonder if Obama shared his concern with Abbas that "nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people" as he stated several months ago.


The Jerusalem Post has an online survey asking readers to vote on their predictions of how the Obama administration will handle the burning issues of the Middle East. For example, one question asked whether Obama will respond favorably to a Hamas invitation to meet with the US or whether the administration will require that it meet certain conditions before engaging in a dialogue (I assume this means official dialogue since we know that Malley engaged in regular meetings with Hamas throughout the course of the campaign).


This survey should not be necessary. American Jews took a chance without answers to very pressing, significant questions. I'm guessing that when George W. Bush was elected, no such survey existed and I'm confident that had John McCain won, the survey would not have been posted. American Jews rolled the dice on Israel and now we are left guessing which direction the next administration will take.


How long will it be before we see Robert Malley and Samantha Power reappear from under the bus? When that occurs, we should not be surprised if Israel is found in her place.


Lauri B. Regan is an attorney at a global law firm based in New York City.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/11/obama_is_a_roll_of_the_dice_on.html at November 20, 2008 - 09:04:45 AM EST

Soros-Funded Democratic Idea Factory Becomes Obama Policy Font

Nov. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Three blocks from the White House, on the 10th floor of a sleek glass building, young workers pound at computers, with giant flat-screen TVs overhead. It has the look and feel of a high-tech startup.
In many ways it is. The product is ideas.
Thanks in part to funding from benefactors such as billionaire George Soros, the Center for American Progress has become in just five years an intellectual wellspring for Democratic policy proposals, including many that are shaping the agenda of the new Obama administration.
Much as the Heritage Foundation provided intellectual heft for the Republican Party in the 1980s, CAP has been an incubator for liberal thought and helped build the platform that triumphed in the 2008 campaign.
``What CAP has done is recapture the role of ideas as an important political force, something the Republicans had been better at for 25 years,'' said Walter Isaacson, president of the Aspen Institute, a non-partisan policy-research organization in Washington.
CAP's president and founder, John Podesta, 59, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, is one of three people running the transition team for president-elect Barack Obama, 47. A squadron of CAP experts is working with them.
Some of the group's recommendations already have been adopted by the president-elect.
Withdrawal of Troops
These include the center's call for a gradual withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and a buildup of forces in Afghanistan, a plan for universal health coverage through employer plans and proposals to create purchasing pools that allow small businesses to spread the cost among a larger group of workers. Obama has endorsed much of a CAP plan to create ``green jobs'' linked to alleviating global climate change.
CAP also is advocating the creation of a ``National Energy Council'' headed by an official with the stature of the national security adviser and who would be charged with ``transforming the energy base'' of the U.S. In addition, CAP urges the creation of a White House ``office of social entrepreneurship'' to spur new ideas for addressing social problems.
To help promote its ideas, CAP employs 11 full-time bloggers who contribute to two Web sites, ThinkProgress and the Wonk Room; others prepare daily feeds for radio stations. The center's policy briefings are standing-room only, packed with lobbyists, advocacy-group representatives and reporters looking for insights on where the Obama administration is headed.
`Premier Progressive'
``The center is the premier progressive think tank in Washington,'' said Mark Green, head of the New Democracy Project, an urban-affairs institute in New York.
Just eight days after the Nov. 4 election, CAP released a 300,000-word volume called ``Change for America: A Progressive Blueprint for the 44th President'' that offers advice on issues such as economic revival and fixing the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Work on the book began almost a year ago.
CAP, which has 180 staffers and a $27 million budget, devotes as much as half of its resources to promoting its ideas through blogs, events, publications and media outreach.
The center's future was far from certain in 2003, when wealthy donors such as Soros and film producer Stephen Bing gave $10 million or more to fill what they believed was an intellectual void in the Democratic Party and create a vehicle to produce an agenda for the party's eventual return to power.
Heritage Foundation
Podesta modeled the center on the Heritage Foundation, which became the go-to policy-research organization in 1981 when newly elected President Ronald Reagan embraced its conservative ideas embodied in a book called ``Mandate for Leadership.'' Heritage was just seven years old.
CAP and Heritage have something else in common.
``Others strive to be objective, we don't,'' said Jennifer Palmieri, CAP's vice president for communications.
Podesta likes to say, ``we're not a think tank, we're an action tank,'' said Dan Weiss, an environmental activist who joined CAP last year.
CAP isn't the only Democratic-leaning research organization in Washington with enhanced cachet after Obama's election.
The 92-year-old Brookings Institution, for example, has advisers in Obama's inner circle, including economist Jason Furman and foreign-policy expert Susan Rice. Others are working either part-time or full-time in the Obama transition.
Podesta's center isn't even among the biggest or best- funded. Brookings has a staff of more than 400 and an annual budget of $48 million. Heritage has a staff of 200 and a budget of $60 million. The American Enterprise Institute, which has close ties to the administration of President George W. Bush, has about 140 staffers, including Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, and a budget of $28 million.
Influence
Yet CAP may be the most influential. In addition to Podesta, at least 10 other CAP experts are advising the incoming administration, including Melody Barnes, the center's executive vice president for policy who co-chairs the agency-review working group and Cassandra Butts, the senior vice president for domestic policy, who is now a senior transition staffer.
``John understood that ideas have power in this town, and he brought in super-bright people whose ideas have become essential reading,'' Isaacson said.
CAP's successes offer a lesson for Republican-leaning groups, said James McGann, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia who tracks policy groups.
``They've shown that one has to constantly innovate and be responsible to an ever-changing demographics and electorate, and have policies that are responsive to that,'' McGann said.

Obama’s World

Posted By Michael Ledeen On November 14, 2008 @ 8:59 pm In Uncategorized | 21 Comments

Now he’s had his first real intelligence briefing, and it was probably an eye-opener, because it’s quite a scene out there. I hope he’s got someone close to him with the wit and the nerve to tell the president-elect that the intelligence community is also a mess, and that he can be morally certain the real world is even worse than the one he’s just been briefed about.

The real world is so frightening that I can’t imagine Hillary Clinton will be foolish enough to accept the job of secretary of state; anyone who takes that job is almost certain to fail. How can anyone believe that he or she has a good chance of dealing with:

–the expanding anti-American alliance, now including Russia, Iran, Venezuela, Ecuador, China, North Korea and Syria (remember that the “Axis of Evil” had only three charter members);

–the global financial/economic crisis, which is almost surely in a relatively early stage;

–allies wimping out all over. No one seems to have the stomach (and none has the wherewithal) to mount a more aggressive campaign in Afghanistan, which Obama has promised to do.

And that’s only the top of the list. The Iranian nuclear project is still there, simmering away, as the mullahs almost daily threaten the destruction of Israel and the United States. Iran claims to have tested [1] yet another (long-range) missile, and shown us photographs. The State Department, as always, clicked its tongue, but since so many of these proclamations have proven false in the past, there’s no reason I know of to take this one any more seriously than the earlier hoaxes.

What IS clear about Iran could and should be good news for Obama and his team (whoever they are): the regime shows every sign of being in a paranoid panic over the hatred the Iranian people feel for the mullahs. Hence we have recently seen a huge drill in the major cities, wherein tens of thousands of security forces rehearse their actions in the event of an insurrection; new repression against major non-Persian ethnic groups, including a ban against the use of the Azeri language; and a mounting tempo of executions.

Yet so far as I can tell, neither Bush nor Obama has the slightest intention of supporting democratic revolution in Iran, which is the key ingredient to any successful American policy in the region. Both Bush and Obama insist on seeing Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan as separate policy matters, a failure of strategic vision that lies at the heart of our failed war plan for Iraq in the first place, and which deflected our attention from Afghanistan long enough to permit the Taliban and its Iranian supporters to rebuild their forces.

Until our policy makers finally come to terms with the hard truth that we are in a regional war, and that it has to be waged on a regional scale, we will fail to win the overall struggle. Yes, Iraq looks good today, and although there is still a curious unwillingness to say it in Washington, we defeated al Qaeda in Iraq. But it can all come apart quite quickly if we “declare victory and go home,” because the Iranians and the Syrians will step up the terror war in Iraq.

It will be interesting to see who Obama picks to “manage” the Iranian time bomb. My guess is that he will take people who have been wrong from the beginning. I’m betting that he will find people from the Carter years, the ones who favored the fall of the shah and rather liked the Ayatollah Khomeini.

Any takers?

Orwell's Children

2008

By Bruce Walker

It has been sixty years since George Orwell wrote his chilling dystopian classic, 1984, and it has been thirty years since we saw the creepiest example of educated and free people willingly walking into a living dystopia. November 18, 1978, three decades ago, 918 people drank Kool-Aid laced with cyanide. Jim Jones, the communist leader of Jonestown, Guyana, had become "Big Brother." Soviet and Communist Chinese propaganda films and condemnations of capitalist and imperialist America blared continually to the subjects of this island of Leftist Hell.


Jonestown ended in mass suicide, but the real horror was that ordinary people, Americans like you and I, had become so decoupled from reality and morality that they could be led to surrender everything, even their lives, intoxicated only with the venom of modern Leftism. These were Orwell's Children.


We are drifting into the sort of horrific future he described. Too many of us for comfort or solace have become just like the denizens of Jonestown: Orwell's children -- a new generation of creature enraged into constant militancy against eternal enemies, oblivious to the notion of a Blessed Creator, melded into the consciousness of the party hive, divorced from history, hypnotized by images, inoculated against reason, stripped of family, and existing only to serve the cause.


Orwell did not write his book in a vacuum. 1984 describes the Soviet Union (the book describes Stalinist Russia so well so that subjects of that evil empire wondered when Orwell had lived there, though he had just described what he saw from the outside.) 1984 also describes Nazism and every other odious totalitarianism, which its secret police and propaganda machine and atomized subjects. But Orwell was very much also writing about the democratic western nations. His book was a warning of what could happen here. Oceania, the only totalitarian superstate actually descried in 1984, was largely America and the British Empire.


There were specific elements necessary for nations with a heritage of freedom to slide into the most absolute and abject slavery. These elements existed in Nazi Germany, they existed in Soviet Russia, and they exist in our free democracies today. What are the characteristics of the Orwellian state?


Start with God. He must go. The great Russian novelists knew this: "Without God, everything is permitted." In Oceania, God simply does not exist. The Nazis bragged that they would raise a generation "...without ever having heard of the Sermon on the Mount or the Golden Rule, to say nothing of the Ten Commandments." The Soviet persecuted anyone who followed the God of Jews and Christians. God is hounded in our world today. A generation of Orwell's Children are growing up without thinking about God at all or thinking that God is a silly idea cherished by sillier old fogies.


Truth must go too. Nazis embraced the "Big Lie." Soviets denied that honesty, per se, mattered. In Orwell's Oceania, the Inner Party members learn to even lie to themselves and to hold utterly contradictory beliefs at the same time. Truth and honesty have little meaning to Orwell's Children in our world. All truth is relative, all honesty a sham.


Language must be brought to heel. The Nazis did this by inventing meaningless words like "Aryan science." Marxism foisted upon us words like "capitalism," which means nothing at all but which has so infected our minds that we reflexively use this silly nonsense word instead of freedom. Politically correct language is rampant. We come to view words like "discriminate" as inherently evil, and other words like "viable fetal mass" have replaced the reality of murdered babies.


Image and symbols replace words. Hitler, whose disciples seldom recalled what Hitler said, always recalled the raw imagery of their leader. Stalin's portrait was as inescapable in the Soviet Union as the portrait of Big Brother in Oceania. We live in a word of symbols and images. Conservatives succeed in books and talk radio, media that deal in words. Orwell's Children live in the realm of symbols and images.


The books of the Nazis and Soviets were unreadable tomes like Mein Kampf, The Myth of the Twentieth Century (the two Nazi "masterpieces") or vast empty volumes of Marxist-Leninism. Is it an accident that the giant who most resisted this evil, Solzhenitsyn, was a devout Christian who mastered the written word better than any stooge of Hitler or the Politburo ever could?


Immutable oppressors are the final nasty element in dystopia. Hitler blamed Jews for everything. Stalin blamed kulaks and his enemies in the party for everything. Subjects of Orwell's Oceania saw Emmanuel Goldstein as the eternal, immutable enemy of the party. Today there is a drearily predictable list of oppressors. Christians, men, white people, the "rich" (whatever that is supposed to mean), America, and Israel are oppressors and nothing can ever change that.


Orwell even told us, by name, the professionals who would lead us into the nightmare of 1984: "sociologists," "teachers," "bureaucrats," "journalists," "professional politicians," "scientists," "trade union organizers," "publicity experts," and "technicians." (The term "community organizer" was unknown to him.) Those who enslave were those who taught students, who created the news, who sat in the halls of government power, and who defined official "truth" (at least truth de jour.)


Orwell's Children live among us now, not in tiny numbers in weird Marxist cults like Jim Jones' People Temple, but as leaders of Congress, as the establishment of academia, as the producers of news and entertainment, as the administrators of public schools, as the "experts" in a thousand myriad and odd fields of putative "expertise." They infatuate our bored children with the only reality and the only diversion that many can find. They wait for the rest of us to grow older and to die.


Will these children inherit the earth? History, not theology, has shown a single defense against the spreading contagion of Orwell's Children. Solzhenitsyn found God in the godless Gulag. Michael Power in early 1939 wrote: "In the Christianity of the German people, the National Socialist has found the one enemy it could not vanquish" - and Christians in Germany, alone, chose to voluntarily seek death before selling their souls to Nazism.


The Jewish refusniks proved indigestible to the brutal Soviet police state. When all else failed the Jewish people under the Nazis, devout Jews like my wife's mother clung to the Blessed Creator and survived the Holocaust. God can touch us all. God can protect us all from evil (not from harm - we all suffer and we all die - but from the much greater danger of the sort of evil Orwell described.)


Education, science, technological gadgetry, good medical care - all of this can not stop us from sliding into a massive Jonestown, a realized Oceania, a place marked by Dante's grim caution "Abandon hope, all you who enter here." We are all anchored in belief, but it is what we believe that matters. We can believe in the lies of Big Brother, which change each day with the needs of the party or we can believe in the truth of a living God. We can become the children of Orwell or the special creatures of God. Everything -- our nation, our world, our families, our communities -- flows from that choice.


Bruce Walker is the author of two books: Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie, and his recently published book, The Swastika against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity.

A Senior Fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence

November 13, 2008

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
It was among the juicier post-election recriminations: Fox News Channel quoted an unnamed McCain campaign figure as saying that Sarah Palin did not know that Africa was a continent.

Who would say such a thing? On Monday the answer popped up on a blog and popped out of the mouth of David Shuster, an MSNBC anchor. “Turns out it was Martin Eisenstadt, a McCain policy adviser, who has come forward today to identify himself as the source of the leaks,” Mr. Shuster said.

Trouble is, Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes.

And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months. MSNBC, which quickly corrected the mistake, has plenty of company in being taken in by an Eisenstadt hoax, including The New Republic and The Los Angeles Times.

Now a pair of obscure filmmakers say they created Martin Eisenstadt to help them pitch a TV show based on the character. But under the circumstances, why should anyone believe a word they say?

“That’s a really good question,” one of the two, Eitan Gorlin, said with a laugh.

(For what it’s worth, another reporter for The New York Times is an acquaintance of Mr. Gorlin and vouches for his identity, and Mr. Gorlin is indeed “Mr. Eisenstadt” in those videos. He and his partner in deception, Dan Mirvish, have entries on the Internet Movie Database, imdb.com. But still. ...)

The pranksters behind Eisenstadt acknowledge that he was not, through them, the anonymous source of the Palin leak. He just claimed falsely that he was the leaker--and they say they have no reason to cast doubt on the original story. For its part, Fox News Channel continues to stand behind its story.

Mr. Gorlin and Mr. Mirvish say the blame lies not with them but with shoddiness in the traditional news media and especially the blogosphere.

“With the 24-hour news cycle they rush into anything they can find,” said Mr. Mirvish, 40.

Mr. Gorlin, 39, argued that Eisenstadt was no more of a joke than half the bloggers or political commentators on the Internet or television.

An MSNBC spokesman, Jeremy Gaines, explained the network’s misstep by saying someone in the newsroom received the Palin item in an e-mail message from a colleague and assumed it had been checked out. “It had not been vetted,” he said. “It should not have made air.”

But most of Eisenstadt’s victims have been bloggers, a reflection of the sloppy speed at which any tidbit, no matter how specious, can bounce around the Internet. And they fell for the fake material despite ample warnings online about Eisenstadt, including the work of one blogger who spent months chasing the illusion around cyberspace, trying to debunk it.

The hoax began a year ago with short videos of a parking valet character, who Mr. Gorlin and Mr. Mirvish said was the original idea for a TV series.

Soon there were videos showing him driving a car while spouting offensive, opinionated nonsense in praise of Rudolph W. Giuliani. Those videos attracted tens of thousands of Internet hits and a bit of news media attention.

When Mr. Giuliani dropped out of the presidential race, the character morphed into Eisenstadt, a parody of a blowhard cable news commentator.

Mr. Gorlin said they chose the name because “all the neocons in the Bush administration had Jewish last names and Christian first names.”

Eisenstadt became an adviser to Senator John McCain and got a blog, updated occasionally with comments claiming insider knowledge, and other bloggers began quoting and linking to it. It mixed weird-but-true items with false ones that were plausible, if just barely.

The inventors fabricated the Harding Institute, named for one of the most scorned presidents, and made Eisenstadt a senior fellow.

It didn’t hurt that a man named Michael Eisenstadt is a real expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and is quoted in the mainstream media. The real Mr. Eisenstadt said in an interview that he was only dimly aware of the fake one, and that his main concern was that people understood that “I had nothing to do with this.”

Before long Mr. Gorlin and Mr. Mirvish had produced a short documentary on Martin Eisenstadt, supposedly for the BBC, posted in several parts on YouTube.

In June they produced what appeared to be an interview with Eisenstadt on Iraqi television promoting construction of a casino in the Green Zone in Baghdad. Then they sent out a news release in which he apologized. Outraged Iraqi bloggers protested the casino idea.

Among the Americans who took that bait was Jonathan Stein, a reporter for Mother Jones. A few hours later Mr. Stein put up a post on the magazine’s political blog, with the title “Hoax Alert: Bizarre ‘McCain Adviser’ Too Good to Be True,” and explained how he had been fooled.

In July, after the McCain campaign compared Senator Barack Obama to Paris Hilton, the Eisenstadt blog said “the phone was burning off the hook” at McCain headquarters, with angry calls from Ms. Hilton’s grandfather and others. A Los Angeles Times political blog, among others, retold the story, citing Eisenstadt by name and linking to his blog.

Last month Eisenstadt blogged that Samuel J. Wurzelbacher, Joe the Plumber, was closely related to Charles Keating, the disgraced former savings and loan chief. It wasn’t true, but other bloggers ran with it.

Among those taken in by Monday’s confession about the Palin Africa report was The New Republic’s political blog. Later the magazine posted this atop the entry: “Oy — this would appear to be a hoax. Apologies.”

But the truth was out for all to see long before the big-name take-downs. For months sourcewatch.org has identified Martin Eisenstadt as a hoax. When Mr. Stein was the victim, he blogged that “there was enough info on the Web that I should have sussed this thing out.”

And then there is William K. Wolfrum, a blogger who has played Javert to Eisenstadt’s Valjean, tracking the hoaxster across cyberspace and repeatedly debunking his claims. Mr. Gorlin and Mr. Mirvish praised his tenacity, adding that the news media could learn something from him.

“As if there isn’t enough misinformation on this election, it was shocking to see so much time wasted on things that didn’t exist,” Mr. Wolfrum said in an interview.

And how can we know that Mr. Wolfrum is real and not part of the hoax?

Long pause. “Yeah, that’s a tough one.”

Obama’s Very Bad Start

Posted By Stephen Green On November 14, 2008
Monday, our own Jennifer Rubin wrote a column called “[1] The GOP Gets Off to a Bad Start.” Let’s take a look at the other side of the issue. It seems like our president-elect is keeping himself busy picking unnecessary fights. Is this the way Obama will conduct business with Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, or is it just a case of a new president finding his footing?

Obama vs. Pelosi/Green Machine vs. Jobs

On the Detroit bailout, Obama has hinted that he wants to make sure the money goes to retooling for [2] clean, fuel efficient cars. Just like the original $25 billion Department of Energy bill was supposed to do. Nancy Pelosi is most worried about the UAW and jobs and would probably pump fresh blood into an entire city of the dead to save a single union job. So it looks like Obama and Pelosi are going to clash — and soon. Some reports indicate that GM will be down to its minimum operating cash before the end of the year — and that would make Chapter 11 all but a foregone conclusion. Detroit needs cash, but for what? The Obama Plan or the Pelosi Plan?

Obama vs. Southern Democrats on Guns

Obama is also gearing up for a fight with southern Democrats. After being mostly silent on guns during the campaign, Obama’s Web site has recently added or restored language indicating the return of the “[3] assault weapons ban” on scary-looking rifles. Southern Democrats paid with their jobs for Clinton’s ban back in 1994. You might expect the new Blue Dog Dems to join hands and sing Kumbaya with House and Senate Republicans to block a new Scary Looking Rifles Law.

Obama vs. Republicans

OK, so maybe this item is no real shocker, but it still seems a little early in the game for Mr. Post Partisan to be dissing Republicans. And yet, Obama has already soiled relations with the GOP, thanks to [4] leaks from his meeting with President Bush on Monday. Obama might just give us the most ethical administration ever — I mean, anything can happen. But it’s already shaping up to be the most indiscrete. If Obama wants to reach across the aisle, that’s great. He just shouldn’t do so with a joy buzzer in his hand.

Obama vs. Europe

Speaking of indiscretion, Obama doesn’t seem to have a clue on how to treat American allies. During the primary race, he threatened to crack down on major threats like Canada — a position he probably/maybe/sort of backed off from in backdoor talks with the Canadian government. In Europe, Obama is already to the left of most every major EU leader. Then last week, Obama [5] told Poland one thing about missile defense in private and told Russia quite another thing in public. In other words, he’s doing his best to spoil relations with Poland, which will have repercussions throughout Eastern Europe, too. Our allies have got to wonder where Obama stands. I think we all do.


Obama vs. Everybody (Eventually) on Taxes

Obama promised to raise taxes only on the lower-upper class on up. Then we got hints that taxes would go up for the upper middle class, too. And now we’re learning that Team Obama has plans to raise taxes on people who do evil things like [6] own cars. Or just drive them. Which by my count is … pretty much everybody.

More ominously, unless we get middle class entitlement reform out of the Democrats, then eventually everybody’s taxes are going up. Way up. And “eventually” comes closer every year, as the Baby Boomers have begun to retire and place new financial strains on our retirement and health care transfer-payment systems. Alternately, Washington can give us a big round of inflation — a hidden tax which will do for your 401(k)… what Washington has already done to your 401(k).

So it’s true — Obama really is bringing people together. He’s bringing them together … against Barack Obama. While it’s true that Republicans got off on the wrong foot this week and last, so did Obama. And if he keeps it up, then the Republicans might not be the minority party for too very much longer.


Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com

Pickens shelves plan for wind farm

November 13, 2008

Thomas Lifson
After a massive television advertising campaign, T. Boone Pickens has shelved his plan for a huge Texas wind farm. Ryan Randazzo of the Arizona Republic writes:

Billionaire T. Boone Pickens said that his Texas wind farm is on hold because natural-gas prices have dropped but that his plan for wind power and natural-gas vehicles is still viable to reduce foreign oil imports.


The Texas oil tycoon spoke Tuesday to about 650 utility and investment officials gathered in Phoenix for the Edison Electric Institute Financial Conference.


Most alternative energy schemes are viable only when oil prices are high. Their economic inefficiency is why they are "alternatives" rather than mainstays. Wind farms in particular are expensive because the individual generating units are comparatively small and require a lot of maintenance.

Oil and coal remain predominant sources of energy because they are cheap, at least when not in the hands of an effective cartel, or regulated into non-production.


President-elect Obama's vast "green" energy production plans will result in much higher costs for energy. An extra burden on top of his higher taxes.

How Barack Obama Will Ensure His Victory in 2012

November 12, 2008

By Selwyn Duke

Even before the election, with the realization that a Barack Obama presidency lay on the horizon, many saw a silver lining in the cloud that drifted into Washington, DC, from the left coast. "The right will be re-energized," many thought, "and we'll have a better Republican candidate and improved prospects in 2012." Moreover, it was figured that Obama will exacerbate a bad situation, causing a meltdown in our economy and emboldening enemies without and within, thereby creating fertile ground for a Republican victory. Of course, the GOP nominee may in fact be better four years hence, although he is far more likely to be so in terms of persona than policy. But his prospects are a different matter.


No one likes the bearer of bad news, but, in this case, to render good news would be to offer bad prognostication. Frankly, I don't see anything short of divine or devilish intervention (and the latter favors the president-elect) that will prevent Obama from being a two-term president.


There are numerous reasons for this. First, the mainstream media may take minor potshots at him occasionally for circulation purposes and to convince themselves they're still journalists, but, ultimately, they will remain his all-powerful public relations team. Second, Obama is a remarkably effective demagogue. Sure, as with all of the species, it amounts to illusion; in Obama's case, this involves formidable but not singular ability, a resonant voice, and that activist media which smoothes out the rough edges. Yet there is one factor which, barring some monumental event that upsets the rotten-apple cart (a distinct possibility), will guarantee the ascent of the leftist agenda and descent of our culture at a rate heretofore unseen in America. It is a simple thing to understand, and, lamentably, I don't think I'm wrong about it.


The coup de grace Obama will use against rightist opposition is mostly embodied in one word: Amnesty. This, along with some other measures, will both grow the Hispanic voting block and ingratiate Obama to it. This will enable him to create a powerful coalition of blacks, young voters and Hispanics that, along with the older whites he will be able to retain, will constitute an insurmountable electoral force. And this is why amnesty has long been a dream of the Democrats. Even easier than brainwashing new voters (which the media and academia specialize in) is importing them.


The last time the left proposed amnesty for the 20-30 million (a realistic estimate) illegals in our nation, they were blocked by the Republicans. Now, however, with a president who will enjoy great popular and media support, more significant Democrat majorities in the Houses, and with sheer attrition-induced exhaustion in the opposition, I suspect that it will be impossible to forestall.


So how monolithically Democrat will this larger Hispanic voting block be? Well, let's begin by considering this research by the Pew Hispanic Center:


"Hispanics voted for Sens. Barack Obama and Joe Biden over Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin by a margin of more than two-to-one in the 2008 presidential election, 66% versus 32% . . . . Latino youth, just as all youth nationwide, supported Obama over McCain by a lopsided margin - 76% versus 19%."


A new infusion of foreign-born Hispanic voters will tilt this block even further left, and it isn't hard to understand why. Most such people have a socialist political orientation, which is why governments in Mexico and much of central and South America also tend have one. And the proof is in U.S.-election pudding, too; for instance, in the 1990s, first-time Hispanic voters cast ballots for Bill Clinton by a ratio of 15 to 1. People's passions don't change simply because they set foot on American terra firma.


Barack Obama and his fellow travelers know this well, and they have already done much to curry favor with Hispanics. Obama said during the primaries that American children needed to learn Spanish, and he will continue to send the message -- albeit in more subtle ways -- that he is sympathetic to the Latinization of the U.S. These messages will be downplayed by the mainstream media but emphasized in the Spanish one, which was in the tank for Obama even more than the former. I also expect him to appoint an ample number of Hispanics to posts in his administration.


Of course, like many others, I envision that the coming years will bring some very tough times. And while it's usually the case that a president who presides over a nation in distress doesn't win re-election, I suspect Obama will defy this trend. Why?


That media again.


President Bush, through only some fault of his own, will be the gift that keeps on giving. The media have already cemented the narrative, "The last eight years have destroyed the nation, and it will take a long time to repair the damage." How long might this be? For as long as leftists need a diversionary tactic with which to deflect attention from their misbegotten policies.


This could, of course, be a very long period. As I wrote recently, Bush will become an


". . . omnipresent phantom of failure. It's much like how, decades after Napoleon Bonaparte's exile to barren Saint Helena, British children were kept in line with the admonition, ‘Be good, or Nappy will get you.' Bush's power will greatly outlive his tenure."


Yes, if you don't elect me, Bushy will get you. And there is yet so, so much work to be done. Pass the New York Times and the café latte.


But having a water-carrying mainstream media isn't enough -- the left will also try to stifle voices that would report the truth. To this end, they will attempt to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine. And although it may be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of two years hence, this may not be the case once Obama has the opportunity to appoint two or three justices. Also lying further down the road may be hate-speech laws, which target "hate" about as much as legislation that would destroy talk radio ensures fairness. They already exist in most of the western world and, incredibly, some judges actually view this as precedent. Ruth Bader-Ginsberg, that affirmative-action appointee, said herself that the Internet makes other nations' court rulings readily available and that we should learn from them. Said she, "[As judges and lawyers] we must look beyond our borders, to the laws and constitutions of other nations." By the way, some people call this a judicial philosophy. I call it malfeasance and treason.


So this is our probable dystopian reality. Yet we do have some recourse. And here is what I recommend for now.


The Founding Fathers meant for us to be a nation of states, not a nation state; they intended for most power to rest on the state level and for localities to largely shape their own destinies. We must embrace this model with boldness and vigor. Huge swaths of our nation are now in the pocket of the left, but there are yet bastions of light wherein traditionalists can hold sway. In these places, campaign hard and seize control of the local governments. Then, resist any and every unconstitutional mandate.


Contact Selwyn Duke

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/11

A Veteran's Thanks to America

November 11, 2008
By Col. David Sutherland

One year ago today, November 11, 2007, our Brigade Combat Team began its redeployment from Diyala province, Iraq, back to Fort Hood, Texas. As we remember our veterans, I think about those brave men and women who participated in the surge operations that led to improvements seen in Iraq today.


The Greywolf Brigade began its deployment to Iraq in October 2006. Our formation consisted of approximately 5,000 of our nation's finest men and women from all branches of our Armed Services, Department of Defense civilians, Department of State, and other interagency and Coalition partners. For 14 months, they poured their hearts and souls into the mission - a mission that required we bind-up the wounds of the innocent and reestablish rule of law, while at the same time combating a depraved enemy, devoid of human decency.


No one, to include myself, was able to fathom the reality we were about to face as we deployed to Diyala province - a complex area of Sunni, Shia and Kurd, that quickly became the primary battleground of the fight faced in Iraq. Reality, however, struck quickly at my base's aid station during the first week of our deployment.


I held a little girl in my arms, recognizing the facts. She was five years old and had been shot in the face. She had been shot and her family killed simply because her father was a policeman. This was the reality of al Qaeda -- a reality my Troopers and I had just begun to face as the terrorist network worked to destroy the families of the security and government officials so the people lose their will to support progress.


My team in Diyala fought day in and day out to destroy the terrorists and bring peace to an area plagued for years by violence, destruction and neglect. Going places no man or woman should ever have to go and seeing sights no man or woman should ever have to see, my Soldiers, Marines, Sailors, and Airmen remained dedicated to their mission and determined to accomplish that which they were sent to do.


Al Qaeda was carrying out attacks across the province. The terrorist network in Iraq imposed it's will in the province through fear, death, torture, and intimidation. The atrocities committed by al Qaeda in Iraq and Iranian-sponsored Special Groups cannot be adequately described, but were witnessed daily by our men- and women-in-arms. It is important to know that our enemy is ruthless, inhumane, and capable of the most depraved forms of torture, mutilation and killing of innocents that could be imagined. As we encountered these grizzly tactics, we felt as if we were looking into the depths of hell.


Yet in the toughest of environments, the courage, charity and goodness of our team shone through like bright lights in the midst of darkness. Their capabilities are indescribable - their sacrifices are great.


Heroes such as Private First Class Steven Cornford, Command Sergeant Major Rodney Harris and Staff Sergeant Donnie Dixon showed great courage and leadership under fire.


Staff Sgt. Donnie Dixon of Miami, Florida, was a member, more importantly a leader, of my Personal Security Detachment; and had been a member of my Bradley Fighting Vehicle crew since my assumption of command in July 2005. Highly respected by his peers and subordinates, Dixon was a quiet, yet strong leader and warrior. He embodies all that is the American Soldier.


September 24, 2007, Dixon and several other members of my PSD were providing security while I met with provincial and local leaders about reconciliation. Following the breaking of the fast feast for Ramadan, a suicide bomber detonated on the front steps of a mosque, about three meters from where I was standing. The blast killed 24 citizens and wounded 37 people, one of whom was Dixon.


Dixon's first concern was me. Although wounded, he ran to my location, uncovering me from the bodies and body parts of the dead and wounded. After helping me up, Dixon was the first to take the lead and gain control the situation. The entire time I could feel his watchful eye making sure I was safe. After evacuating Donnie to the aid station for treatment, he again displayed his tenacity. Rather than rest and recover, he was anxious to be returned to duty so he could get back into the fight with his team. That was the type of Soldier, leader and man Dixon was.


Five days later, Dixon was back by my side as he always was. We were conducting battlefield circulation in Muqdadiya, Iraq. As several members of my PSD and I were leaving a company command post, we came under fire from a sniper. The sniper fired towards our formation, killing Donnie immediately.. As I wept, I held him in my arms and hugged him, thanking him for his service and his sacrifices. Posthumously, he was awarded two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star Donnie left four children and a wonderful wife. He made the greatest sacrifice while making life better for people he didn't even know. He knew they needed him just as his family needs all of us now. There is no greater sacrifice.


This experience was repeated 109 times during our deployment; sometimes daily. The friends and comrades-in-arms left behind often only had time to fight, eat, grieve, and cry. Some are unable to get the smell of blood and burning flesh or hair out of their systems and yet, they went on. Having a Soldier die in your arms while looking into your eyes as other Soldiers feverishly try to get him unpinned from the wreckage created after an IED strike is reality and leaves lasting nightmares -- yet we continue and we fight to accomplish our mission.


During our tour in Iraq, our formation received 146 awards for valor in combat and 277 Purple Hearts. Many made the ultimate sacrifice and epitomize the kind of character we find cited in John 15:13: "Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." These are my heroes.


Our Soldiers are willing to make these sacrifices because they believe in the cause of liberty. They knew our mission to secure, stabilize and begin the healing process in Diyala was necessary and just. They have committed themselves to a lifestyle and set of values bigger than themselves. They are willing to pay any price, even to the laying down of their own lives if necessary, in building and defending institutions of freedom.


This day we remember not only our Soldiers' sacrifices, but also that of their families'. Military families are vital to our success as they provide never-ending support and encouragement, all the while facing their own fight. Maintaining the home front, they remain as brave and as strong as their service member, for their service member.


On Veterans Day, we all need to understand that the families cope with fear, they cope with loss; the entire time their service member is deployed, they are waiting to exhale. Our military families are the cornerstone of our strength - their sacrifices are also great.


It is the spirit and perseverance of our service members and our families that drives us and motivates us to do what we do - serve, lead, care and commit to making the most of wonderful relationships, wonderful opportunities and a wonderful life. At this time, given our National Interests in the Middle East Region military service, and a willingness to participate in something greater than us as individuals is still critical. It continues to be a dangerous world.


Extensive security tasks remain before us as we achieve our objectives in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, defeat the al Qaeda network, and build greater partnership capacity. We need a great cadre of Veterans to support a region of secure, stable, independent, peaceful and responsibly governed states, where the freedom and dignity of the peoples of the region are protected.


Whether at Gettysburg, Omaha Beach or any other famous battle in the history of our nation, American men and women are doing the same thing our ancestors have done - fighting courageously and bravely, refusing to quit or leave a fallen comrade.


On this Veterans Day, allow this Veteran to say, ‘Thank You' to the American people for your support, your love, and your commitment to our living, our fallen, and their families who have sacrificed the greatest. God bless each and every one of you, God bless our families, God bless the members of the United States Military, and God bless America.


COL David Sutherland was the commander of the 3d Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, deployed to Diyala province, Iraq from October 2006 to December 2007.

Obama-Hamas Contacts Bode Ill

Reported Posted By P. David Hornik On November 11, 2008

In an interview published Tuesday in the London-based Al-Hayat, Dr. Ahmad Yousef, political adviser to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, [1] said senior Hamas figures had held a secret meeting with advisers to Barack Obama in Gaza before the U.S. elections.

Throughout his campaign Obama’s official line was that he would “only talk with Hamas if it renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel’s right to exist, and agrees to abide by past agreements.”

Yet Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal responded to Obama’s win on an optimistic note, [2] telling Australia’s Sky News on Saturday that his organization was “ready for dialogue with President Obama and with the new American administration with an open mind.”

On Saturday night, though, Obama’s senior foreign policy coordinator Denis McDonough seemed to hold the fort, deflecting Mashaal’s amiability by [3] reiterating Obama’s three-part formula for making Hamas acceptable.

For those who don’t want America to have dealings with an Islamist terror organization like Hamas, that may have sounded reassuring. But now it seems it may be too soon to feel reassured.

According to Yousef in the Al-Hayat interview, the Obama-Hamas talks were already ongoing during the U.S. election campaign: “We were in contact with a number of Obama’s aides through the Internet, and later met with some of them in Gaza, but they advised us not to reveal this information as it may influence the elections or become manipulated by McCain’s campaign.”

Yousuf also claimed he personally had friendly relations with some of Obama’s advisers and that “Haniyeh will draft a congratulatory letter to Obama for his victory.”

Yousuf added: “The policy Obama will instate in the Middle East will differ from that of his predecessor George W. Bush, although it is clear that the region and the Palestinian issue will not be at the top of his agenda. [Obama] will focus more on the economic crisis, Iraq, and Afghanistan.”

A clash between Obama’s public, anodyne, mainstream statements and behind-the-scenes activities of a different nature would confirm the fears of those concerned about Obama’s history of association with radical people and ideologies.

Hamas was founded in December 1987 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin — killed seventeen years later in an Israeli raid — and is the Palestinian branch of the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood. Already in 1988 Hamas began shooting, stabbing, and stoning Israelis to death (incidents are proudly listed in the organization’s “[4] Glory Record,” a popular document on anti-Israeli websites).

That year Hamas also promulgated its [5] charter, which states: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it. … There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad. … Jihad is [our] path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of [our] wishes.”

The deeply anti-Semitic charter also cites the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as “the embodiment of the Zionist plan to usurp Palestine.”

Hamas carried out its first suicide bombing in 1994, and is believed to have killed over 500 people and wounded thousands. Israel, the European Union, Canada — and the United States — officially boycott it and define it as a terrorist organization. Among its most famous attacks are the suicide bombings of:

the Dolphinarium Disco in Tel Aviv in June 2001, which killed 21
the Sbarro Restaurant in Jerusalem in August 2001, which killed 15
the Park Hotel in Netanya in March 2002, which killed 30
Jerusalem’s Egged bus no. 2 in August 2003, which killed 23
Since Israel’s withdrawal of all civilian and military personnel and installations from Gaza in August 2005, Hamas, with some help from other terror organizations, has fired over six thousand rockets at civilian targets within Israel. In June 2006, Hamas raided an Israeli army encampment on sovereign Israeli territory, killing two soldiers and kidnapping another, Gilad Shalit, whom Hamas has held ever since while denying him visits of any kind including by the Red Cross, a flouting of all legal norms.

While some of us have also criticized the Bush administration’s close contacts with Fatah — now the internationally accepted Palestinian Authority leadership — and especially its glorification of Fatah as a peace-seeker, certain differences between Hamas and Fatah are worth noting:

Ongoing talks with Fatah leaders like PA President Mahmoud Abbas and top negotiator Ahmed Qureia are now bipartisan Israeli policy, with Likud prime ministerial aspirant Binyamin Netanyahu recently stating that he’ll continue these contacts if elected. For better or worse, in dealing with Fatah the U.S. — whether under Bush or Obama — is not in principle going farther than Israel goes. The bipartisan Israeli position toward Hamas, however, is that it is a sworn enemy seeking Israel’s destruction and that a political process with it is out of the question.
Whatever their past activities, and despite the official PA’s ongoing inculcation of murderous anti-Israeli attitudes particularly through its education system, Fatah leaders like Abbas and Qureia are not currently known to be involved in terror attacks. Terror or “resistance” remains, however, Hamas’s raison d’être and its leadership is fully behind, for instance, the ongoing shelling of Israeli civilian targets from Gaza.
Although there have been reports of Iranian backing and funding for Fatah, Hamas is directly, heavily, and explicitly backed and funded by Tehran and is a full-fledged member of the radical anti-Israeli, -American, and -Western axis that it leads and that also includes Syria and Hezbollah. And while Fatah’s supposed “secularism” is exaggerated and it too has adopted Islamist themes, Hamas’s expressly Islamist — albeit Sunni — ideology makes it a more natural client for Tehran.
All in all, it doesn’t add up to an organization the United States should be treating as even a potential friend. If that’s what Barack Obama’s advisers, with his blessing, have been up to, it’s not only an end-run around official U.S. policy but also cause for very serious worry.


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