With whats shaping up Obama will hang Israel out to dry and side with the Arabs.

Netanyahu gives up on alliance with Livni
Sat Feb 28, 2009 7:27pm GMT

By Dan Williams

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel's right-wing Prime Minister-designate Benjamin Netanyahu has abandoned efforts to woo centrist Tzipi Livni into forming a broad coalition government, a spokeswoman said on Saturday.

The decision, made after a second round of negotiations on Friday ended in disagreement, increased the likelihood that Netanyahu's Likud party would turn to rightist factions opposed to territorial withdrawals in peace talks with the Palestinians.

Livni, currently foreign minister, has accused Netanyahu of insufficient commitment to the U.S.-sponsored two-state vision

-- a future Palestine created in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war.

Netanyahu, an ex-premier whose popularity was buoyed by jitters at the Islamist Hamas takeover of Gaza after Israel withdrew in 2005, wants contacts with the Palestinians to focus on economic and security issues rather than territory.

"The courtship is over. We are not scheduling any more talks with Kadima," said Dina Libster, a Netanyahu spokeswoman, referring to Livni's and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's party.

"If Livni wants to rethink her approach and contact us, she is welcome to."

A February 10 election to choose Olmert's successor gave Kadima, under Livni, the biggest number of parliament seats. But it also created a majority bloc of rightist factions, leading President Shimon Peres to task Netanyahu with forming a new government.

Saying political stability was needed to address challenges on the Palestinian front, a gathering economic crisis, and Israeli fears of Iran's nuclear programme, Netanyahu has expressed desire to lead as broad a coalition as possible.

Kadima said it would not be won over.

"What Netanyahu wants is for us to provide cover for what will be a narrow right-wing government, and we won't do that," said a senior party official. "We are content to lead the opposition and prove that we're the best alternative."

Losing Kadima as a potential partner leaves the centre-left Labour party of Defence Minister Ehud Barak, with whom Netanyahu was scheduled to hold a new round of talks on Sunday. But Barak's office played down expectations of a breakthrough.

"Barak has made clear that Labour is destined for the opposition," one aide said.

Likud's likeliest ally appears to be the ultranationalist Yisrael Beiteinu party, which came third in the election.

That would mean a top cabinet post for the party's leader, Avigdor Lieberman, whose questioning of the loyalty of Israeli Arabs and hawkish talk on regional issues has prompted political analysts to predict a clash with the Obama administration.

"I would certainly prefer the defence portfolio," Lieberman told Israel's Channel Two television. "Yisrael Beiteinu is fit to handle any portfolio, and no one will disqualify us."

Pakistan says wins key region on Afghan border

Sat Feb 28, 2009 2:14pm GMT

By Mian Khursheed

KHAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani forces have defeated Islamist militants in a strategically important region on the Afghan border and expect to clear militants out of other areas by the end of the year, a commander said on Saturday.

Pakistan's seven semi-autonomous ethnic Pashtun regions, known as agencies, are sanctuaries for al Qaeda and the Taliban and a victory against them would provide relief for U.S. and NATO forces hard-pressed by insurgents in Afghanistan.

Major-General Tariq Khan, who is commanding military operations in five of the seven agencies, said his paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) had driven militants out of Bajaur, the smallest of the agencies but a major infiltration route into Afghanistan, after a six-month offensive.

"They have lost. They have lost their cohesion here," Khan told reporters on a trip arranged by the military to Bajaur and Mohmand agencies. "The resistance has collapsed."

He said his forces had also largely restored "a reasonable state of stability," in the four other agencies under his command.

"If you are asking me about five agencies ... I think somewhere by the end of the year or so we would, more or less, be over with the military operations," he said.

Khan said his forces planned to hand over control of Bajaur, the most northerly of the tribal areas and opposite the Afghan province of Kunar, to government authorities next week.

In 2006, a CIA-operated pilotless drone aircraft fired missiles at a house in Bajaur in the belief that al Qaeda number two Ayman al Zawahri was there. At least 18 people were killed.

Khan said he had no information about Zawahri's whereabouts but his forces had killed and arrested several Arab fighters.

Officials say more than 1,500 militants were killed, along with about 100 soldiers, during the "Operation Sher Dil" launched in Bajaur in September. There has been no independent verification of that militant casualty estimate.

Hard-pressed militants led by an al Qaeda ally, Faqir Mohammad, this week declared a unilateral cease-fire in Bajaur. Khan said he rejected an offer of talks and went ahead with military operations.

DIFFERENT STRATEGIES

Khan's strategy appears different to the government's in the neighbouring Swat valley, where authorities struck a deal with Islamists, agreeing to enforce Islamic sharia law, after militants virtually took control of the region in recent months.

Authorities also sealed peace deals with militants in North and South Waziristan agencies, two major sanctuaries for al Qaeda and Taliban militants on the Afghan border where U.S. drones have carried out more than 20 missile strikes since September.

Western countries have expressed concerns over Pakistan's policy of making deals with the militants, fearing the strategy provides breathing space for militants to regroup and intensify their insurgency against Western forces in Afghanistan.

Army spokesman Major-General Athar Abbas said the military and government had devised strategies to suit different areas.

"There is no single thread that runs across all the agencies ... so one has to deal according to what exactly the situation warrants. That's why the strategy applied in Swat is different and what is being applied in Bajaur is different."

Pakistani officials argue that military action against militancy must be backed by political support to reach a lasting solution. "There is no such thing as a military solution. It has to be a political solution," Khan said.

Boehner: 'Spending barrage' starting

By ANDY BARR
House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) told conservatives Friday that a "spending barrage" from President Barack Obama is the first step toward an American brand of socialism.

"First it was the stimulus, then the omnibus and now the budget," Boehner said during a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference. "It's all a down payment on a new American socialist experiment."

"The spending barrage is just beginning," he added.

Boehner harshly criticized the president's recently unveiled budget as a "job killer, plain and simple."

"American jobs are under threat," he said.

Boehner also railed against the stimulus package the president recently signed and said that the legislative fight may be a turning point for House Republicans.

"The way the new Democratic majority handled the stimulus reminds me of what happened in the early 1990s," he said. "But we fought back, and we won."

No Country for Black Men

By Travis Rowley
The Coen Brothers’ 2007 film [1] No Country for Old Men revolves around the tale of several young men engaged in a violent race for a satchel of cash. Tommy Lee Jones plays an aging sheriff investigating the depressing trail of bloodshed, markings that inform the old man that the customs and morals that guided his generation have decayed even faster than he has. Jones ends up as a depiction of the anguish experienced by people left without a country they can call home.

Democrats remain on their quest to offer similar anguish to African-Americans, as liberals now embark on their fifth decade aimed at stripping these reliable party constituents of American nationalism.

Liberal mouthpieces have long emphasized a shameful American history, one marked by slavery and segregation. And they insist that, even today, a majority of Americans hold contempt for dark-skinned people. “Something is clearly wrong when the government’s most effective affirmative-action program is the preference people of color receive when entering not college, but the criminal-justice system,” proclaims one prominent progressive text titled [2] A Covenant with Black America — which goes on to say that there is “a multi-headed, multi-tentacled monster out there devouring blacks who live in certain neighborhoods.”

Such rhetoric has caused many African-Americans to experience feelings of anti-Americanism and national detachment. Blacks now see mirages of racism everywhere, albeit disguised by “code words” and “institutional racism.” The outrage last year over Barack Obama being referred to as “articulate” provided a powerful example of this paranoia.

Anger and hatred typically accompany blacks’ racial anxiety. Before the start of a game last year, the NBA’s [3] Josh Howard said to a live camera, “‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ is going on. I don’t celebrate this [expletive]. I’m black.” Denver Nuggets guard [4] Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf refused to even stand for the national anthem, stating that the American flag was a “symbol of oppression” and that the United States had a long “history of tyranny.”

In Democratic circles, this is known as “patriotism.”

These are not so much black sentiments as they are liberal. But many blacks now subscribe to the anti-American wing of contemporary liberalism.

Last year Michelle Obama said that America was “just downright mean” and admitted, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.” And any Google search of Jeremiah Wright provides a score of videos showing Barack Obama’s longtime pastor condemning America for practicing “state terrorism” and for “inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.” We find him referring to the United States as the “U.S. of KKK A.” and thundering, “Not God Bless America. Goddamn America!”

His all-black congregation cheers.

To be without a home is to live with pain. But this has been the Democratic scheme for decades — to promote government intrusion by convincing minorities that most Americans, especially Republicans, reject them. Republicans are racist and against affirmative action. Democrats care and will give you stuff.

The misinformation campaign has succeeded. Many black Americans now view racial solidarity as more important than black individualism. Each year a handful of notorious black leaders convene the State of the Black Union, calling all “brothers” to recognize the uniformed plight that all African-Americans endure. Liberals stripped blacks of their country. So they concocted a new one — the Black Union.

Because racial camaraderie has resulted in more than 90% of blacks predictably voting for Democrats, the advice to be more “inclusive” is oft delivered to the GOP. Replicate the way in which Democrats pander to minorities in order to attract blacks to the Republican Party.

But safeguarding the feelings of minorities by adhering to liberals’ politically correct pap is precisely the cause of blacks’ adoption of big-government, anti-American liberalism. Do Republicans really want to be associated with such a philosophy?

The advice is backwards. Blacks are the ones to make concessions. They must abandon their liberalism before the party of conservatism can consider their membership. A simple matter of principle.

Yet, in order to convince Republicans to alter their strategy, Los Angeles-based writer Chaise Nunnally recently [5] referenced the Don Imus controversy in which Imus referred to the Rutgers women’s basketball team as “nappy-headed hoes.” Even though Nunnally found the opinions expressed by conservatives involved in the debate “legitimate and defensible,” he thought “they also struck the wrong note in communicating with the black community on a racially sensitive topic.”

Nunnally’s counsel was to be more racially symbolic, recommending Republicans find “a more race-sensitive tack to woo black voters.” Join the left in their truth-stifling political correctness in order to trick blacks into voting for you.

That’s how much liberals respect minorities.

Republicans would be better off listening to black conservative columnist Thomas Sowell, who recently reminded his readers, “Most Americans’ principles are closer to those of the Republicans than to those of the Democrats. … [Republicans] won big when they stood for something and told the people what that something was. … Ronald Reagan was the classic example. But another example would be the stunning Republican victories in the 1994 Congressional elections. … Articulating the message of Newt Gingrich’s ‘contract for America’ was a key to that historic victory.”

Republicans win when they underline conservatism, not when they dilute their principles by pandering to special interests. They should leave such prostitution to the Democrats.

For black Americans addicted to Democrats’ coddling sense of self-pity and collectivism, they will find no such slavery within the Republican Party. Only when blacks finally recognize the big-government whip held in Democratic hands can the party of Lincoln help them regain their independence, sustain their dignity, strengthen their families, and recapture their country.

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

Delay for Federal Acquisition Regulation Policy Requiring Federal Contractors to Use E-Verify System

January 29, 2009 - Implementation of the final rule requiring federal contractors and subcontractors to begin using USCIS’ E-Verify system has been delayed until 5/21/09. An amendment providing notice of this postponement will publish in the Federal Register on Friday, 01/30/09. The final rule will be legally final and effective on 01/19/09, but Federal contracting officers will not begin to insert the new E-Verify clause into federal contracts and solicitations until 5/21/09.

CONTINUE TO CHECK TO SEE HOW THIS HAS BEEN EFFECTED SINCE PASSAGE OF THE "ECONOMIC DESTRUCTION ACT"

The Cal Ripken President

by Ann Coulter
02/25/2009

As Obama prepared to deliver his address to Congress on Tuesday, the Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner, Fox News' Bret Baier and Charles Krauthammer all gushed that history was being made as the first African-American president appeared before Congress.

Even Gov. Bobby Jindal, whom I suppose I should note was the first Indian-American to give the Republican response to a president's speech, began with an encomium to the first black president. (Wasn't Bobby great in "Slumdog Millionaire"?)

Are we going to have to hear about this for the next four years? Obama is becoming the Cal Ripken Jr. of presidents, making history every time he suits up for a game. Recently, Obama also became the first African-American president to order a ham sandwich late at night from the White House kitchen! That's going to get old pretty quick.


But as long as the nation is obsessed with historic milestones, is no one going to remark on what a great country it is where a mentally retarded woman can become speaker of the house?

Obama spent more than twice as much time in his historic speech genuflecting to the teachers' unions than talking about terrorism, Iraq or Afghanistan. So it was historic only in the sense that Obama is the first African-American president, but was the same old Democratic claptrap in every other respect.

After claiming that the disastrous stimulus bill would create or save 3.5 million jobs -- "more than 90 percent" in the private sector -- Obama then enumerated a long list of exclusively government jobs that would be "saved."

He was suspiciously verbose about saving the jobs of public schoolteachers. Because nothing says "economic stimulus" better than saving the jobs of lethargic incompetents who kick off at 2 p.m. every day and get summers off. Actually, that's not fair: Some teachers spend long hours after school having sex with their students.

As with the Clintons, Obama so earnestly believes in public school education that he sends his girls to ... an expensive private school. He demands that taxpayers support the very public schoolteachers he won't trust with his own children.

It is one thing to tell voters that school choice is wrong, because, you know, the public schools won't get better unless Americans sacrifice their children to the teachers' union's maw. But it is quite another for Democrats to feed their own kids to the union incinerator.

Consequently, no Democrat since Jimmy Carter has been stupid enough to send his own children to a public school.

And yet the stimulus bill expressly prohibits money earmarked for "education" to be spent on financial aid at private or parochial schools. Private schools might use it for some nefarious purpose like actually teaching their students, rather than indoctrinating them in anti-American propaganda.

The stimulus bill includes about $100 billion to education. By "education," Democrats don't mean anything a normal person would think of as education, such as learning how to talk good. "Education" means creating lots of useless bureaucratic jobs, mostly in Washington, having nothing to do with teaching.

Apparently, nothing irritates public schoolteachers more than being asked to teach. While 80 percent of the employees of private schools are teachers, only half the employees of public schools are. The rest are "coordinating," "facilitating" or "empowering" something or other.

The Department of Education alone provides more than 4,000 jobs that haven't the faintest connection with teaching. And now the stimulus bill will double the Education Department's funding. (For those of you who went to a public school, that means it will become twice as big.)

We've come a long way from Ronald Reagan promising to eliminate the Education Department, which itself was a Jimmy Carter sop to the teachers' unions.

Federal meddling in education has been an abject failure, so the Democrats' plan is to keep doing more of the same. If only there were some aphorism about people who fail to learn from history -- oh, well!

It can't be easy to reduce the educational achievement in America year after year, but the education establishment has done it! Yes they can!

Thanks to the hard work of thousands of government workers at the Department of Education and well-paid teachers' union employees, American schoolchildren perform worse on education tests for every year they spend in a public school.

It turns out that being in U.S. public schools has the same effect on people as hanging around Paris Hilton does.

In fourth grade, the earliest grade for which international comparisons are available, American students outperform most other countries in reading, math and science. Fourth-graders score in the 92nd percentile in science, the 58th percentile in math and the 70th percentile in reading, where they beat 26 of 35 countries, including Germany, France and Italy.

But by the eighth grade, American students are only midrange in international comparisons. (On the plus side, by the eighth grade they're noticeably fatter.)

By the 12th grade -- after receiving the full benefits of an American education -- Americans are near the bottom. Let X represent the number of years spent in U.S. public schools, and Y represent average test scores in math and reading -- oh, never mind.

With an additional eight years of a public school education under their belts, Americans fall from the 92nd percentile in science to the 29th percentile. While American fourth-graders are bested only by South Korea and Japan in science, by 12th grade, the only countries the American students can beat are Lithuania, Cyprus and South Africa.

Which suggests that if public education were extended all the way through college, by the time a student gets to graduate school he might very well be qualified to be ... speaker of the house!

Here's one Byrd that's not in the hand.

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.), the longest-serving Democratic senator, is criticizing President Obama’s appointment of White House “czars” to oversee federal policy, saying these executive positions amount to a power grab by the executive branch.

In a letter to Obama on Wednesday, Byrd complained about Obama’s decision to create White House offices on health reform, urban affairs policy, and energy and climate change. Byrd said such positions “can threaten the Constitutional system of checks and balances. At the worst, White House staff have taken direction and control of programmatic areas that are the statutory responsibility of Senate-confirmed officials.”

While it's rare for Byrd to criticize a president in his own party, Byrd is a stern constitutional scholar who has always stood up for the legislative branch in its role in checking the power of the White House. Byrd no longer holds the powerful Appropriations chairmanship, so his criticism does not carry as much weight these days. Byrd repeatedly clashed with the Bush administration over executive power, and it appears that he's not limiting his criticism to Republican administrations.

Byrd also wants Obama to limit claims of executive privilege while also ensuring that the White House czars don’t have authority over Cabinet officers confirmed by the Senate.

“As presidential assistants and advisers, these White House staffers are not accountable for their actions to the Congress, to cabinet officials, and to virtually anyone but the president,” Byrd wrote. “They rarely testify before congressional committees, and often shield the information and decision-making process behind the assertion of executive privilege. In too many instances, White House staff have been allowed to inhibit openness and transparency, and reduce accountability.”

The West Virginia Democrat on Wednesday asked Obama to “consider the following: that assertions of executive privilege will be made only by the president, or with the president’s specific approval; that senior White House personnel will be limited from exercising authority over any person, any program, and any funding within the statutory responsibility of a Senate-confirmed department or agency head; that the president will be responsible for resolving any disagreement between a Senate-confirmed agency or department head and White House staff; and that the lines of authority and responsibility in the administration will be transparent and open to the American public.”

Obama faces a decision as early as next week on whether to support a claim of executive privilege made by former President Bush in refusing to allow Karl Rove, the former deputy White House chief of staff, to be deposed by the House Judiciary Committee on the White House’s role in the 2006 firing of nine U.S. attorneys.

Bush claimed “absolute immunity” for top advisers in resisting such subpoenas, but Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, filed a lawsuit over the issue. The case is on appeal, and the Obama administration is scheduled to file a motion next week laying out its stance on the issue.
Read more stories in Congress.

Senate Will Vote on Constitutionally Controversial Bill Allowing a Non-State to Have a Member in the House of Representatives

CNSNews.com

Wednesday, February 25, 2009
By Matt Cover



The U.S. Senate voted Tuesday to allow floor debate on a bill that would grant the District of Columbia a full-fledged congressman in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The bill advances a controversial item on the agenda of congressional Democrats, but which many Republicans say is unconstitutional. The Constitution says: “The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States.” It says nothing about members of the House being elected by anything other than a state.


On a mostly party-line 62-34 vote, 54 Senate Democrats and eight Republicans voted to allow the D.C. Voting Rights Act to proceed to the Senate floor for debate, which should take place later this week.

Senate Democratic leaders praised the bill’s progress, saying it was about time the more than 600,000 residents of the nation’s capital got a vote in Congress.

“This morning we had a vote which takes a big first step toward addressing a wrong that has been going on for centuries, one that is offensive to all people,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said at a press conference Tuesday.

Reid said that District residents have been denied “basic civil rights” by not having representation in Congress for the entirety of the country’s history.

“They haven’t had a basic civil right, the right to vote,” Reid declared.

But Senate Republicans said that not only is the bill unconstitutional, if the District of Columbia wants representation in Congress, it should go through the statehood process – like every other state.

“It’s unconstitutional,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters Tuesday. “There’s a way to get the District of Columbia members of Congress, and it’s to go through the constitutional amendment process.”

McConnell predicted that no matter what congressional Democrats have in mind, the issue will ultimately be decided in federal court.

“I think we all know, on both sides of this question, that it will end up in court and ultimately the Supreme Court will determine whether or not you can do this.”

Even Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), one of the Republicans who voted to allow the bill to proceed for debate, said she believes the measure was unconstitutional. She explained her vote by saying she thought the debate was important and the bill shouldn’t be bottled up -- even though she will ultimately be voting against it.

“I think we should have this debate,” Murkowski said, “I happen to agree with Leader McConnell that the provisions we will vote on are unconstitutional. I think it’s important that we have the debate here in the Senate and look at the options we have here in front of us. I’m voting against the bill.”

The Republicans’ constitutional challenges are rooted in Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution, which stipulates that the House of Representatives be made up of members elected from the states.

“The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States.”

Article I is the part of the Constitution which establishes Congress – as well as D.C. – but does not specifically provide for congressional representation for the nation’s capital city.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), meanwhile, disagreed with Republicans, saying that Article I, Section 8 – known as ‘the District Clause’ – empowers Congress to grant the district a full House member.

“It’s in the District Clause that says that Congress has the right to deal with matters regarding the District of Columbia,” Lieberman explained when questioned by CNSNews.com.

That is open to interpretation.

Specifically, the District Clause gives Congress the power “To exercise exclusive legislation in all cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding 10 miles square) as may, by cession of particular states, and the acceptance of Congress, become the seat of the government of the United States, and to exercise like authority over all places purchased by the consent of the Legislature of the state in which the same shall be, for the erection of forts, magazines, arsenals, dockyards, and other needful buildings.”

The Supreme Court has ruled that the District can be treated as a state for certain purposes. In National Mutual Insurance Co. v. Tidewater Transfer Co., justices held that Congress could treat D.C. as a state for purposes of federal court jurisdiction.

However, in Michel v. Anderson, a lawsuit filed by former House Majority Leader Bob Michel (R-Ill.), the U.S Circuit Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit said that Article I prohibited Congress from bestowing the privileges of a member of Congress on anyone who is not elected by the people of a state.

Writing for the majority, Judge Laurence Silberman wrote: “The crucial constitutional language … is, instead, Article I, section 2: “The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members....” That language precludes the House from bestowing the characteristics of membership on someone other than those “chosen every second Year by the People of the several States.”

The Supreme Court declined to hear the Anderson case, signaling that it found nothing wrong with the judges’ decision.

Hey Will Somebody Tell This Guy the Campaign is Over, He Can Tell The Truth Now!!

MSNBC is not what I would call reliable news and since the past election foray hasn't been deemed a very credible source. However compared to some of the other biggies, it is a bit more solute.

Here is their FACTS CHECK on Obama's speech last night. A rehash from the actual authors of the article may be heard through out the morning on any RADIO FREE COMMUNIST, or scuse me I meant National Public Radio.

Please take the time to note that Bobbi Jindal gave a Republican rebuttal to Obama's speech and only ONE slightly in accurate statement could be noted.


WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's assurance Tuesday that his mortgage-relief plan will only benefit deserving homeowners appears to be a stretch.

Even officials in his administration, many supporters of the plan in Congress and the Federal Reserve chairman expect some of that money will go to people who should have known better than to buy that huge house.

The president glossed over a number of complex realities in delivering his speech to Congress and a nation hungry for economic salvation.

A look at some of his assertions:

OBAMA: "We have launched a housing plan that will help responsible families facing the threat of foreclosure lower their monthly payments and refinance their mortgages. It's a plan that won't help speculators or that neighbor down the street who bought a house he could never hope to afford, but it will help millions of Americans who are struggling with declining home values."

THE FACTS: If the administration has come up with a way to ensure money does not go to home buyers who used bad judgment, it hasn't announced it.

Defending the program Tuesday at a Senate hearing, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said it's important to save some of those people for the greater good. He likened it to calling the fire department to put out a blaze caused by someone smoking in bed.

"I think the smart way to deal with a situation like that is to put out the fire, save him from his own consequences of his own action but then, going forward, enact penalties and set tougher rules about smoking in bed."

Similarly, the head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. suggested this month it's not likely aid will be denied to all homeowners who overstated their income or assets to get a mortgage they couldn't afford.

"I think it's just simply impractical to try to do a forensic analysis of each and every one of these delinquent loans," Sheila Bair told National Public Radio.

OBAMA: "We have already identified $2 trillion in savings over the next decade."

THE FACTS: Although 10-year projections are common in government, they don't mean much. And at times, they are a way for a president to pass on the most painful steps to his successor, by putting off big tax increases or spending cuts until someone else is in the White House. Obama only has a real say on spending during the four years of his term. He may not be president after that and he certainly won't be 10 years from now.

OBAMA: "Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn't afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day."

THE FACTS: This may be so, but it isn't only Republicans who pushed for deregulation of the financial industries. The Clinton administration championed an easing of banking regulations, including legislation that ended the barrier between regular banks and Wall Street banks. That led to a deregulation that kept regular banks under tight federal regulation but extended lax regulation of Wall Street banks. Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, later an economic adviser to candidate Obama, was in the forefront in pushing for this deregulation.

OBAMA: "In this budget, we will end education programs that don't work and end direct payments to large agribusinesses that don't need them. We'll eliminate the no-bid contracts that have wasted billions in Iraq, and reform our defense budget so that we're not paying for Cold War-era weapons systems we don't use. We will root out the waste, fraud and abuse in our Medicare program that doesn't make our seniors any healthier, and we will restore a sense of fairness and balance to our tax code by finally ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas."

THE FACTS: First, his budget does not accomplish any of that. It only proposes those steps. That's all a president can do, because control over spending rests with Congress. Obama's proposals here are a wish list and some items, including corporate tax increases and cuts in agricultural aid, will be a tough sale in Congress.

Second, waste, fraud and abuse are routinely targeted by presidents who later find that the savings realized seldom amount to significant sums. Programs that a president might consider wasteful have staunch defenders in Congress who have fought off similar efforts in the past.

OBAMA: "In the last eight years, (health insurance) premiums have grown four times faster than wages. And in each of these years, 1 million more Americans have lost their health insurance"

THE FACTS: The number of uninsured grew by 7 million from 2000 to 2007, the latest year for which Census figures are available, meaning Obama's claim would be true if had been talking about averages. But it's not true that the number of uninsured rose each year by 1 million. In 2007, the ranks of the uninsured dropped by 1.3 million from the year before, to 45.7 million.

OBAMA: "Thanks to our recovery plan, we will double this nation's supply of renewable energy in the next three years."
THE FACTS: While the president's stimulus package includes billions in aids for renewable energy and conservation, his goal is unlikely to be achieved through the recovery plan alone.

In 2007, the U.S. produced 8.4 percent of its electricity from renewable sources including hydroelectric dams, solar panels and windmills. Under the status quo, the Energy Department says, it will take more than two decades to boost that figure to 12.5 percent.

If Obama is to achieve his much more ambitious goal, Congress would need to mandate it. That is the thrust of an energy bill that is expected to be introduced in coming weeks.

OBAMA: "Over the next two years, this plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs."

THE FACTS: This is a recurrent Obama formulation. But job creation projections are uncertain even in stable times, and some of the economists relied on by Obama in making his forecast acknowledge a great deal of uncertainty in their numbers.

The president's own economists, in a report prepared last month, stated, "It should be understood that all of the estimates presented in this memo are subject to significant margins of error."

Beyond that, it's unlikely the nation will ever know how many jobs are saved as a result of the stimulus. While it's clear when jobs are abolished, there's no economic gauge that tracks job preservation. The estimates are based on economic assumptions of how many jobs would be lost without the stimulus.

OBAMA: "And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it."

THE FACTS: According to the Library of Congress, the inventor of the first true automobile was probably Germany's Karl Benz, who created the first auto powered by an internal combustion gasoline, in 1885 or 1886. Nobody disputes that Henry Ford created the first assembly line that made cars affordable.


Jindal's response
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, giving the Republican response to Obama's speech, ran off the tracks with one claim about the stimulus plan.

JINDAL: The plan is "larded with wasteful spending," including "$8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a magnetic levitation line from Las Vegas to Disneyland."

THE FACTS: Jindal was echoing an often-used Republican complaint that is an oversimplification. GOP budget hawks have dubbed the train "the Sin Express," and say it will soak up much of the rail money. But that's not a done deal. Competition for the mass transit money is just starting, and backers of other projects across the nation -- including one through Obama's home state of Illinois -- think they have at least an equally good chance.

Kudo's for Obama on one point in last nights Fib-o-fest, and that is that he was entirely truthful and accurate when he stated that his Administration was going to reveal the accurate costs of maintaining the war on both fronts of Iraq, and Afghanistan. This is a clean break from the way the accounting and funding for the wars was done during the Bush Administration.

Move over Obama, In eight days the House says No More Apes!

Forget the stimulus -- this one moved really fast.

From the Humane Society:Disclaimer, The HSUS, is not my favorite organization in fact they surprise me by backing this bill, but whatever it took this is a positive step.

U.S. House of Representatives Passes Captive Primate Safety Act

WASHINGTON (Feb. 24, 2009) — Eight days after a chimpanzee kept as a pet attacked and critically injured a Connecticut woman, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Captive Primate Safety Act, H.R. 80, introduced by U.S. Reps. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., and Mark Kirk, R-Ill., to stop interstate commerce in primates as pets. The bill passed by a vote of 323 to 95. The bill now moves for consideration to the U.S. Senate, where the effort to pass the legislation is being led by U.S. Sens. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and David Vitter, R-La.

The Humane Society of the United States and the Humane Society Legislative Fund expressed thanks and appreciation to Reps. Blumenauer and Kirk for introducing the bill, and to Insular Affairs, Oceans and Wildlife Subcommittee Chairwoman Madeleine Bordallo, D-Guam, and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall, D-W.V., for their leadership in bringing the measure to the House floor so expeditiously.

“There is no reason for any private citizen to keep a primate as a pet, and this trade is driven by unscrupulous dealers who sell primates across state lines for thousands of dollars,” said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The HSUS. “Congressional action on this animal welfare and public safety issue will complement our efforts at the state level to dry up the trade and the practice of private ownership of chimps and other primates.”

“As the tragic attack in Connecticut shows us, The Captive Primate Safety Act is necessary, common-sense legislation for the welfare of humans and animals,” said Rep. Blumenauer. “Make no mistake, this bill will protect communities and ensure the humane treatment of these animals. The passage of this bill is long overdue; I salute The Humane Society of the United States and animal welfare advocates for their consistent dedication and I am pleased that together we were able to pass this bill.”

Rep. Kirk said, "It is inhumane to cage primates in private homes. Besides the animal cruelty concerns, the interstate movement of pet primates creates serious public health and safety risks. The Captive Primate Safety Act takes important steps to address these concerns."

It is most unfortunate that it took such a severe interaction between humans and an chimpanzee to bring attention that was clearly visible to most clear thinking people before the tragedy had occurred.

A Dutch Hero Comes to Warn Us, Seek Our Support. The Incomparable Geert Wilders,

MP, in New York City.

Posted By Phyllis Chesler
“I have come to warn you of a great threat. Free speech is no longer a given, we must now battle for our birthright. We are looking at the end of democracy, the slavery of women, the death of gays. While there might be moderate Muslims, there is no such thing as moderate Islam. Islam is not a religion, it is a political and totalitarian ideology.”

Some would say that these are fighting words.

Indeed, Dutch parliamentarian, Geert Wilders, is fighting for Western liberty and Western values, as rooted in the legacies of “Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem.” This is the legacy he wishes to leave the “children of Europe,” as opposed to the legacy of “Mecca and Gaza.” Wilders is fighting for us all, his fight is our fight. As he said earlier today, “it is not about (him) but about Free Speech.” Today he may be a “criminal, tomorrow, anyone of us might be considered a criminal too,” for telling the truth about the danger that Islam poses to Western democracy. “Today I may be put behind bars. I am not the issue. Will free speech be put behind bars?”

“It is not 8:55pm. It is 11:55pm. We will lose everything.”

Wilders is very blond, quite trim, and well tailored, both matter-of-fact and charming in a way that does not come across in still photos. Wilders’ Dutch and Scandinavian entourage: other members of Parliament, such as Barry Madlener, of the Party of Freedom, (PVV), with whom I sat, and Lars Hedegaard, (the head of The Free Speech Society–Denmark), were all impossibly handsome, healthy, fluent in English, and heartbreakingly serious.

“The Left has hated Christianity for decades. Now, it demands respect for Islam. Guess why? The Left and Islam are both opposed to criticism of any kind. Where the Left and Islam come together, freedom will always suffer.”

Wilders attributes the erosion of Western sanity and courage to the infernal doctrine of “multicultural relativism which has fatefully weakened the West.” Such politically correct beliefs have led to the liberal Dutch Labor Party’s initiation of the lawsuit against Wilders. While the public prosecutor’s office declined to prosecute Wilders for “hate speech,” (hundreds of people wrote to the Prosecutors on Wilders’ behalf), the liberals appealed their ruling to the High Court in Amsterdam which actually overruled the public prosecutor’s decision. Wilders is on his way to appeal this last decision in the Dutch Supreme Court. He says, wryly, that the lawsuits may last until 2015.

There we all were, on a cold and sunny day in February, the creme de la creme of New York’s anti-jihadists, gathered together in Manhattan’s Four Seasons restaurant, to honor Geert Wilders, all of us the guests of The Hudson–New York Briefing Council. The tall and elegant Dr. Herbert London, the author of a new and wonderful book, [1] America’s Secular Challenge. The Rise of a New National Religion presided. I was so happy to see him and many others, including Anne Bayefsky, Dr. Anat Berko, Dr. Andrew Bostom, Helen Freedman, Ibn Warraq, Joel Mowbray, Deroy Murdock, Pierre Rehov, Claudia Rossett, Ilyse Wilpon, Tim Wilson, and Barbara Winston, all of whom do extraordinary anti-terrorist and anti-jihadi work. I was honored to be among them. (Other important people were present but I am not at liberty to divulge their names).

Wilders said: “The liberals are blinded by multicultural relativism.”

Ah yes, we have all written as much dozens of times, hundreds of times, and the “great disdain” of the leftists and liberals for this particular sentence is something that Wilders also knows a great deal about. But, Wilders points out, these same “leftists and liberals participate in demonstrations where they shout ‘Death to the Jews.’ They bring shame upon Europe.” Wilders asks: “Are we going to sell Israel, our dearest ally, out?”

Wilders had been invited to show his film, Fitna,in the British Parliament. One Lord Ahmed threatened that if this happened, there would be 10,000 Muslims protesting on the street. And worse. Thus, Wilders, a Dutch MP, was detained at the airport. For three and a half hours, the British authorities did not allow the Dutch Ambassador to Britain to see Wilders. Shockingly, Wilders was deported from England–in his words, “the first member of a European government to be denied entry to another European country.”

This is beyond remarkable, even beyond surreal, when you think about how many Muslim hate preachers and Muslim terrorists Britain has allowed both entry and citizenship.

Wilders is wanted in Jordan to stand trial as well; he potentially faces deportation. Wilders has received so many death threats that he has been under armed guard for four and a half years. And yet: His face is unlined, his words flow smoothly. He does not look harried. He does not have a haunted, hunted look in his eyes.

As I listened to Wilders’ speak, I wondered whether this time, the hero’s story will have a happy ending, or whether he will be delivered up to the jihadists , one way or the other, by dhimmi westerners who view what Wilders says about Islamic violence and hatred as “hate speech,” but who refuse to consider words uttered by Muslims in mosques, Islamic schools, and on the streets of Holland, such as “Kill the Jews,” “Stone the gays,” “Enslave all the women,” “Behead them all,” as hate speech.

MP Wilders embodies our Orwellian moment in history. Like Oriana Fallaci who, for years, had also been sued in several European countries for telling the truth about Islam and about Muslim immigration to Europe; like Salman Rushdie, who was forced to live in hiding and under police protection for years because of an Islamic fatwa against his life; like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has required round-the-clock protection due to Islamic death threats as well–Wilders has taken the same battle to a new level. (What is wrong with Holland? Theodore Van Gogh is dead, butchered by an unrepentant Islamist who insists that were he not in jail that he’d do the exact same thing. You can see him on camera in Fitna.)

Wilders is not in hiding. He has not been exiled from, nor has he exiled himself from his native country. He is endangered, but he is also fighting back in some new ways.

Wilders has been sued in Holland for “hate speech.” He has also been characterized as an anti-immigration “racist,” as if anyone who dares question the Islamification of Europe and what it means for Western democracy is, by definition, a “right-wing” maniac as opposed to a civil libertarian and freedom-fighter.

Wilders hopes to introduce a version of the American First Amendment in Europe, (they have nothing like this), and to abolish the hate speech codes which, United Nations style, are only meant to silence those who criticize Islamist violence, including terrorism, and intolerance; it is not supposed to stop the Muslim violence or hatred or the left support for it.

Wilders made a brief film, Fitna. I’ve posted it at my blog several times. He has been absolutely unable to find a distributor for this film. “They are too afraid.”

We all watched it together again. This was the first time I’ve seen it on a big screen and it has real power. You may watch it [2] HERE. The film is great, awe-inspiring.

Interspersed with powerful, lyrically chanted passages from the Qu’ran, we see familiar scenes of Islamic terrorist carnage in New York, Madrid, London. Bloody body parts are strewn everywhere, buses and cars are burned and twisted, we hear a frantic call to 911 from the Twin Towers. Then, after more Qu’ranic passages are chanted, we see a mullah or imam preaching fiery hatred: “We will rule the world, we will defeat and take over the world.” We see a Dutch Muslim explain that yes, if his mother or his sister have forbidden sex that he will kill them.” We see a young Arab girl, no more than three or four years old, explain that “Jews are descended from pigs and apes.”

The scenes of carnage are accompanied by the grave and beautiful music of Tchaikovsky’s “Arab Dance.”

Wilders-our-hero did not for one minute suggest that things were gloomy. For example, he and his political party are gaining in popularity in Holland. He joked that someday he may stand before us as Holland’s Prime Minister. He also said that Italy has embraced him and that he has been invited to show Fitna in the Italian Parliament. Wilders has even persuaded the Dutch Parliament to demand a review of the British deportation decision; unfortunately, the Dutch Prime Minister ignored this decision. “My own government is not in favor” of holding the British government accountable.

I will give Wilders the last words. “You cannot escape the dangers of ideologies that are out to destroy you. America might be the last man standing. And you might lose Europe as an ally…European leaders are giving in, giving up, selling out our values. We need your support.”

All donations to Wilders’ cause can be made to the Hudson Institute. They will be tax deductible and will go 100% to Wilders. Checks should specify that they are for Geert Wilders and may be written to:
Hudson Institute New York
666 Third Ave. – 29th floor
New York, NY 10017

According to Wilders: “We do not stand and fight alone. We are standing on the shoulders of giants. We will never apologize or bow to the Left or to Mecca. We will never surrender.”

Geert Wilders sounds a lot like a twenty-first century Winston Churchill, or like World War II era, American General, Anthony McAuliffe who, although surrounded and outnumbered, refused to surrender to the Germans at the battle of Bastogne, in Belgium, during the Battle of the Bulge. We won that war against Hitler, against fascism, against National Socialism. We must win the war against totalitarian Islam now.

Time Trashes Bernard Goldberg Bias Book As One to 'Toss' Instead of Read

By Tim Graham
February 24, 2009

Last year, Time magazine created a little mini-book review featured called "The Skimmer," to quickly determine for readers whether a new book is something they should either Read, Skim, or Toss. In the March 2 edition, Time took up Bernard Goldberg’s media-bias expose A Slobbering Love Affair. Unsurprisingly, they trashed it as a book to "Toss."

A look back over the feature quickly demonstrates that Time has used the feature to offer raves and "Read" recommendations for fellow members of the liberal media, especially when they’re bashing President Bush or his war on terror. The list begins with former Wall Street Journal reporter Jane Mayer (July 28, 2008 issue), Washington Post bias legend Bob Woodward (September 22), Washington Post reporter Steve Fainaru (November 24), New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (December 22), and New York Times reporter David Sanger (February 2).

Time’s Gilbert Cruz bashed Bernie throughout his mini-review:

As a conservative media critic writing for a conservative publishing house addressing a conservative audience, Bernard Goldberg, a former CBS journalist and the author of the media-bashing memoir Bias, doesn't have to do much to notch a best seller.

Step 1: sarcastically criticize the "mainstream media" as hopelessly liberal. Step 2: repeat for 20 or so abbreviated chapters. Goldberg's objections to "mainstream media" coverage of Barack Obama are fairly well worn. Among the many complaints, he notes that Obama's associations with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and former Weatherman Bill Ayers didn't get enough press scrutiny during last year's election campaign, while Sarah Palin's clothing and Joe the Plumber's personal life got too much.

Because of their fawning over Obama, the "mainstream media" – if the author removed that modifier, this book would be a pamphlet – have left their credibility "in tatters," Goldberg writes. Of course, just saying something doesn't make it so. But that won't matter to Goldberg's readers, who will devour his latest with gusto.

Cruz could easily look at his first sentence and realize he is a liberal book critic writing for a liberal magazine addressing a liberal audience. But perhaps that’s too much to ask.

—Tim Graham is Director of Media Analysis at the Media Research Center

Alan Keyes: Obama Will Destroy U.S.

Monday, February 23, 2009 8:50 AM

Arch-conservative Alan Keyes is not giving Barack Obama any honeymoon.

After the Los Angeles Times "Top of the Ticket" column picked up Keyes' comments - taken from an impromptu interview posted to YouTube - about Obama from last week, those comments have been the buzz of the web this past weekend.

Keyes, a former U.S. ambassador, ran against Obama in 2004 as the Republican Senate candidate in Illinois.

In his diatribe against the new president, Keyes calls Obama a "radical communist" and says "he will destroy this country" and warns that unless he is stopped, America "will cease to exist."


Keyes also says Obama has failed constitutional muster to become president, since, Keyes argues, Obama was born in Kenya.

Obama has stated he was born in Hawaii. His campaign has released his Certificate of Live Birth - not his actual birth certificate. Hawaii state officials said they reviewed the actual birth certificate and that Obama was born in the state of Hawaii.

Also, Obama's family placed a legal advertisement in a Hawaii newspaper days after he was born.

Things That Have Gotten Better (and Worse) Since Obama Became President

A lot has changed in the month since Obama became president. Let's review, shall we?

Things That Have Gotten WORSE Since Obama Became President

1. The U.S. stock market has plumetted to a six-year low. But, hey, it's only your retirement money, right?

2. Nationalization of banks has become a serious possibility. America, the new banana republic.

3. Obama has backed three MASSIVE new spending initiatives (the $787 billion stimulus bill, the trillion-dollar financial stability initiative and the $275 billion mortgage assistance program). A trillion here, a trillion there -- but who's counting?

4. Hundreds of thousands of classic children's books (children's books printed before the early 1980s) are being destroyed all across the country because they may contain miniscule traces of lead in their print

5. Obama has lost a key air base providing the only supply line into Afghanistan, jeopardizing any future military action the U.S. may need to take in the region

6. Russia has become emboldened and increasingly aggressive

7. Iran has also become more emboldened and aggressive, has launched its first home-built earth satellite, and now has enough material to make a nuclear weapon

8. Pakistan has freed the notorious A.Q. Khan, who sold nuclear technology to North Korea, Libya and Iran, and has capitulated to the brutal Taliban in the Swat region

9. Obama has announced that he will close Guantanamo within a year -- even though his administration has no clear answer to the question of what to do with the most dangerous GITMO terrorists, including 9/11 matermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

10. Obama has dropped charges against the U.S.S. Cole bombing suspect allegedly responsible for the deaths of American sailors. It's been a good month for terrorists.

Now, here is a list of the things that have gotten better since Obama became president:

Things That Have Gotten BETTER Since Obama Became President

1. America has had its first African American president. (Technically, this doesn't count, though, since it didn't happen after Obama became president).

2. . . . .

Surely there's something.

2.. . . . . .

Help me out here.

Anyone?

2. . . . .

I guess that's it, then.

I can't wait to see Obama's second month in office.

Oh yeah right blame it all on Bush.....

_______________

Gina Cobb blogs at her eponymous website, GINA COBB., where this is cross-posted.

The Way It Was

The simple, undeniable, and clarion fact is that our personal freedoms came about only, exclusively, and entirely because, centuries before, enough Englishmen had owned enough private property to compel the crown to recognize their rights. When individuals hold the nation’s purse strings, the rulers can’t afford to be too arbitrary.

Evolution of individual property ownership and individual liberties was a process that took place only in England, and it was the very heart of the ethos brought to America by the English colonists.

As Alan Macfarlane (The Origins of English Individualism) explains, England’s traditions of property ownership and the rights of contract, along with its supporting legal system, are historically unique in the world. Only in England did the legal right exist for individuals to own and freely dispose of property. As a consequence, according to accounts by visiting merchants and diplomats from the 15th century onwards, England had a per capita wealth and standard of living, even among the peasant farmers, vastly greater than that of any other European country. It is no accident that the 19th century industrial revolution was more extensive and more effective in England than on the Continent.

Elsewhere in Europe, property was a vague concept based, not on a legal title as in England, but on the feudal tradition of occupancy by generations of the same family. A peasant farm was “owned” by the whole family. No member of the family had any legal way to dispose of any of the property by contract. Every member of the family was entitled by tradition to live on the farm. When a family grew larger, there was less produce from the farm for each member.

The Continental peasant economy was characterized by subsistence farming. Peasant families hardly ever possessed money, but lived by bartering produce at local markets. There was almost no hired labor working for wages. The effect was social and economic stagnation with little prospect for increasing the wealth or living-standards of individuals.

In contrast, England at least as early as the 13th century, around the time that Henry II instituted the common law, had a well developed legal system of individual ownership. Church and court records of the time, both in the rural districts and in the cities, show continual sales of all or parts of farm land and other property by the legal owner, who was always an individual, not a family. Fathers could, and did, disinherit individual children; women owned and sold property in their own name, appearing by legal right to represent themselves in such transactions before the local courts.

The expected pattern in rural England, described by Henry de Bracton in the 13th century (On the Laws and Customs of England), was for sons to leave their families at an early age and hire themselves out as laborers on other farms or in the trades. They usually worked and saved their wages until they had accumulated enough to buy a small farm or business, then they married and began to raise their families. Harder-working and more capable individuals often became well-to-do by continually adding to their property holdings, but there was nothing guaranteed by law or tradition. Indeed, records over several generations in any given local jurisdiction show a constant turnover of family names in the property ownership and tax records. The grandchildren of a wealthy yeoman farmer could easily be poor, if they were not equally hard-working and prudent.

The result of this ethos was an unparalleled degree of economic and political individualism in England, and later in the British North American colonies. For an additional perspective, note the striking contrast between British North America and Latin America, where the Spanish crown originally controlled or owned all property. Latin Americans have never enjoyed the secure personal freedoms found here from the earliest days of the English colonists.

For non-English immigrants to America, especially the millions after the Civil War from historically-feudal Continental Europe, this almost universal private ownership of property was both a jarring social and legal ethos, and, at the same time, the source of their great opportunity for a better life in the New World. Their European heritage led them to identify property ownership with the hereditary landed aristocracy and therefore with repression. They had heard all their lives that liberty was to be taken with armed revolution against existing authority. With no conception of the English heritage of working and saving to accumulate private property over the long term, small numbers of them simply transferred their radical socialism to American soil.

TODAYS JOKE

The Obama Administration Should Not Delay Offshore Oil and Gas Leasing

by Ben Lieberman


Last July, President Bush responded to public anger over $4.00 a gallon gasoline and rescinded the longstanding executive moratorium on offshore leasing for oil and natural gas. Congress followed suit by allowing its own restrictions to lapse on October 1. But now, the Obama Administration has taken steps to slow down the process of leasing these areas to energy companies, and some fear that expanded offshore drilling will be put off indefinitely. Delay would be a mistake and should be kept to a minimum, as additional domestic oil is still badly needed.

Background

For many years, 85 percent of America's territorial waters--including most of the Pacific, Atlantic, and eastern Gulf of Mexico--were off limits to oil and natural gas exploration and drilling.[1] The U.S. is the only nation that has restricted its own energy supply to this extent. An estimated 19 billion barrels of oil--nearly 30 years of current imports from Saudi Arabia--as well as substantial natural gas reserves are estimated to lie beneath these restricted areas.[2] And it should be noted that these initial estimates in under-explored areas tend to be on the low side.

Most of these restrictions were put in place at the behest of environmentalists and other drilling opponents in the late 1980s and 1990s, a time when gasoline was cheap and the need for additional supplies was not seen as great. But they have remained in place in recent years, even as gasoline hit $2.00 and then $3.00 a gallon and state-of-the-art drilling technology has amassed a proven record of reducing the environmental impacts and risk of spills.[3]

However, when prices hit $4.00 a gallon last summer, a fed-up public clamored for action, and polls showed more than 2-1 support for offshore drilling. President Bush and Congress finally listened and belatedly removed the legal restrictions governing drilling in new offshore areas.

Delay, Baby, Delay

The next step in the process is for the Department of the Interior's Minerals Management Service (MMS) to offer these areas for lease. MMS took the first step in this process when it published its 2010-2015 Draft Proposed Program on January 21. It included a 60-day period for comments. Signaling this deadline might be postponed indefinitely, President Obama's new secretary of the interior, Ken Salazar, announced that he is extending the comment period by six months and ordered the agency to gather additional information on the estimated amounts of oil and natural gas in these offshore areas.[4]

By itself, a six-month delay is not unreasonable, but Secretary Salazar's comments when announcing the change suggest that he may try to drag out the offshore leasing process much longer than that, and perhaps for the length of his tenure. First, he mischaracterized the initial proposal, which MMS formulated prior to Obama taking office, as "a headlong rush of the worst kind." In reality, the announced 60-day comment period, far from being a point of no return, was merely the first of several steps in the energy leasing process. This process already contains several opportunities for environmentalists, coastal state governments, or others to weigh in with any objections or concerns. Wanting additional time for this first step suggests that Salazar may be launching a strategy of paralysis by analysis.

Further, Salazar has downplayed the benefits of additional oil, attacking the original proposal as a "drill-only approach" that excluded offshore renewable energy sources like wind and wave power. "The Bush Administration was so intent on opening new areas for oil and gas offshore that it torpedoed offshore renewable energy efforts," he said. These statements, in addition to being untrue (the same day the Bush Administration announced the proposed plan for oil and gas leasing, it also announced a proposal moving ahead with a major offshore wind energy project), also make no sense from an energy policy standpoint. These offshore renewable projects at issue are for electricity (and very expensive electricity at that) and thus would do nothing to help America meet its growing need for liquid fuels for its citizen's cars and trucks. Any Administration attempts to obfuscate the need for more offshore oil with diversions about these politically correct renewables will not do the American driving public one bit of good.

"Drill Now" Still a Good Idea

The days of $4.00 a gallon gas are gone for now, and with them the front-burner status of "drill, baby drill." Nonetheless, this is no time for complacency. The only reason for the sharp drop in oil and pump prices is a decline in demand due to the recession. But recessions do not last forever. Unless America begins to take action to increase supplies, prices will go right back up as soon as the economy turns around and demand picks up. Further, the process by which energy companies obtain a lease, explore for oil and gas, and then produce it takes a number of years to unfold, so the time to start things is now.

Expanded offshore drilling would also create jobs,[5] and unlike the taxpayer-funded jobs in the proposed stimulus package, the jobs created by a reinvigorated domestic energy industry would be well-paying, long-term, and funded entirely by the private sector. And since the extra energy produced would help bring down future oil and natural gas prices, it would truly be a win-win for both producers and consumers.

Don't Turn Back

Though this proposal was crafted by the outgoing Bush Administration, the Obama Administration would do well to continue with it. It sets out a sensible plan for moving expeditiously but not recklessly toward leasing new areas. The offshore oil and natural gas leasing process should not be delayed beyond the six months announced. The American people would be best served if this process leads expeditiously toward substantially expanded domestic offshore energy production in the years ahead.

Ben Lieberman is Senior Policy Analyst in Energy and the Environment in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

[1]Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, "Overview of U.S. Legislation and Regulations Affecting Offshore Natural Gas and Oil Activity," September 2005, at http://www.eia
.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/natural_gas/feature_articles/2005/offshore
/offshore.pdf (February 19, 2009).

[2]Department of the Interior, Minerals Management Service, "Report to Congress: Comprehensive Inventory of U.S. OCS Oil and Natural Gas Resources, February 2006, p. xii, at http://www.mms.gov/PDFs/2005EPAct/InventoryRTC.pdf (February 19, 2009).

[3]Department of Energy, Office of Fossil Energy, "Environmental Benefits of Advanced Oil and Gas Exploration and Production Technology," October 1999, at http://fossil.energy.gov
/programs/oilgas/publications/environ_benefits/
env_benefits.pdf (February 19, 2009).

[4]Department of the Interior, "Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar's Statement on Offshore Strategy," February 10, 2009, at http://www.doi.gov/secretary/speeches/021009_speech.html (February 19, 2009).

[5]ICF International, "Strengthening Our Economy: The Untapped U.S. Oil and Gas Resources," December 5, 2008, at http://www.api.org/Newsroom/upload/Access_Study
_Final_Report_12_8_08.pdf (February 19, 2009).

Only a Mother Could Love that Face

Actually I said that because I am angry with Alan Colmes for his upcoming program. But really he needs to wear glasses not contacts.

Tonight on Fox network Alan "Liberland" Colmes, will be interviewing Bill Ayers.

Mel Brookes made a very valid point onetime a long while back about how the best thing he could do to show his disdain and lack of authentication for Hitler and what he stood for was to make fun of him.

Clint Eastwood has been very successful in his ridicule of the "Biker" stereotype as well during his serial "any which way" clips.

Colmes should take the cue and not for the mere sake of shoring up his already feeble ratings take on such an anti American Communist such as Bill Ayers.

By doing so he has exceeded even the lowest of low ratings of even the infamous Jerry Springer, whom by the way would probably approve of such an interview.

Just as much as the newest movie about Roman Polanski sucks for its shallow attempt to depict Polanski as anything less than what he is. (a child rapist) Alan Colmes attempt to sensationalize his show with such a slug as is Ayers, is all wrong.

Ayers by proxy is a murderer and a traitor to his country. He has capitalized (and I find that ironic having to use that word with such a dweeb) on his new found popularity amongst more than the usual burn out left overs of the sixty's and wanna be tweekers of the uneducated class.

There is nothing positive that can come out of this interview unless Colmes takes on a whole new persona and Bill Reilly's him. This man is the distaste of what congeals in the mouth of true patriotic Americans and what they are constantly spitting to the curb.

If Colmes goes through with this interview and I see no reason he would not at this point it only goes to show that he is just a liberal whore for a paycheck and really has no substance of character, just like the rest of them.

$5,000 the easy way.

I guess it beats thirteen bucks a week.

Many of us were concerned that having Joe Biden in the Administration — or having Joe Biden in government — would continue to inflict misandry on an increasingly toothless, dependent country. Biden’s Pride is the VAWA, among other things, a well-intentioned trainwreck of unintended institutionalized discrimination against fathers.

Porkulus — never let a good crisis go to waste and like that — just added nearly half a billion dollars in new domestic violence program funding about which RADAR commented:

Groups such as African-Americans for VAWA Reform believe the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) relies too heavily on law enforcement and ignores the needs of male abuse victims. Other problems include a rise in false accusations of domestic violence which lead to families unnecessarily being torn apart, and victims revictimized by abuse shelter staff, and immigration loopholes that grant permanent status to foreign nationals based on a simple allegation of abuse. In addition, statistics show that VAWA has not been effective in reducing domestic violence.

Today comes news from RADAR of legislation sponsored by Reps Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-CA) and Ted Poe (R-TX), neither of whom could apparently locate one of those little Constitution booklets they give school kids. H.R. 739 is the SAFE (”Security and Financial Empowerment”) Act, and it has some really dandy new provisions for, shall we say, alleging parties.

H.R. 739 prohibits an employer from refusing a job to any person who claims to have suffered from domestic violence or “substantial emotional distress or psychological harm” – words that can be interpreted to mean just almost anything. As hard as it is to believe, no hard evidence of domestic violence is required to receive these benefits – the “victim” only has to sign a sworn statement or get a restraining order, and restraining orders are notoriously easy to get because of the low standards of proof and weak definitions of domestic violence. Furthermore, judges are reluctant to deny applications for fear that they’d be blamed if something bad happened following the denial.

A family or household member of the DV “victim” is also entitled to the same benefits. HR 739 also allows any person who “is, has been, or may be the subject of abuse” to qualify for lifetime health insurance coverage. The “victim” would also be entitled to 30 days of emergency leave as well as unemployment compensation. The bill amounts to a lifetime guarantee of job security and availability of employer-subsidized health insurance for any person who claims to be a victim of domestic violence or psychological abuse, or for any family member.

And the person who allegedly inflicted the abuse has no right to refute or appeal the charges.

And my personal favorite:

Grants any person the right to sue, to have the case judged using the “preponderance of evidence” standard, and be paid compensatory and punitive damages. Alternatively, “the aggrieved individual may elect, at any time prior to the rendering of final judgment, to recover in lieu of actual damages, an award of statutory damages in the amount of $5,000 for each violation.” (which amounts to an easy $5,000 for a baseless claim). (Section 408)

RADAR has prepared a summary in PDF form, available here.

Neither personal rights or free markets could be reached for comment but I’ll keep dialing.

[JHoward]

Why Does President Obama Hate The Constitution?

Detainees being held at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan cannot use US courts to challenge their detention, the US says.

The justice department ruled that some 600 so-called enemy combatants at Bagram have no constitutional rights.

Most have been arrested in Afghanistan on suspicion of waging a terrorist war against the US.

The move has disappointed human rights lawyers who had hoped the Obama administration would take a different line to that of George W Bush.

Prof Barbara Olshansky, the lead counsel in a legal challenge on behalf of four Bagram detainees, told the BBC the justice department's decision not to reform the rules was both surprising and "enormously disappointing".

The BBC's Kevin Connolly in Washington says the move has angered human rights lawyers, with one saying the new White House was endorsing the view of the old one, that prisons could be created and run outside the law.

It is certainly evidence that having set the tone for his administration by announcing plans to close Guantanamo Bay, Mr Obama intends to adopt a much more cautious approach to the problem of detainees held elsewhere by the US military, our correspondent says.

But didn't actions like this make President Bush a "war criminal"? Ed Morrissey elaborates:

Remember how the Left considered Bush a war criminal for taking this exact position? I'd like to see how they square the circle with Obama now. A few like Glenn Greenwald will rip Obama on principle, but the rest will suddenly discover the reasonableness of detaining terrorists and treating them not like burglars but like enemy combatants who have themselves violated Geneva Conventions through their terrorism.

Just as we did in the George Bush administration.

All statements from Barack Obama come with expiration dates. That's something that the HopeandChangizoids have begun to learn just a month after the dawning of the Age of Obama. A lot of them owe Bush -- and us -- apologies.

I won't hold my breath.

Cross-posted from the Sister Toldjah blog.

American addition to the Islamists' armoury?

Sunday, 22nd February 2009

Melanie Phillips, Spectator
After I wrote the assessment below of the threat already posed by Obama’s policy towards Israel and the Islamist war against the west, news emerged of a further appointment to his administration which exceeds in sheer brazenness the malice even of the others. Chas W. Freeman Jr., a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, who is tipped to become chairman of the National Intelligence Council, is a piece of work.

In 2008, he told the Middle East Policy Council:

Hamas’ ascendancy as an elected government in Gaza has been accompanied by new extremes in suffering for the Palestinian people... How can there be two states when one of them is limited to less than 11 percent of the original territory of the Palestine mandate? How can there be two states when one state has the sovereignty that we accord to Indian tribes, rather than the sort of sovereignty that is generally recognized internationally as pertinent to a state?

In September 2005, he told the National Council on US-Arab Relations:

As long as the United States continues unconditionally to provide the subsidies and political protection that make the Israeli occupation and the high-handed and self-defeating policies it engenders possible, there is little, if any, reason to hope that anything resembling the former peace process can be resurrected. Israeli occupation and settlement of Arab lands is inherently violent. ...And as long as such Israeli violence against Palestinians continues, it is utterly unrealistic to expect that Palestinians will stand down from violent resistance and retaliation against Israelis...

And that in turn paled by comparison with these remarks by Freeman in 2006, reported on the Saudi/US Relations Information Service:

There will be no acceptance of Israel, by the Arabs or by the Muslims - including the Iranians, and the Indonesians, and others, if Israel does not find a way of coexisting peacefully with the other inhabitants of the land in which it has established itself... Demonstrably, Israel excels at war; sadly, it has shown no talent for peace... For the past half decade Israel has enjoyed carte blanche from the United States to experiment with any policy it favored to stabilize its relations with the Palestinians and its other Arab neighbors, including most recently its efforts to bomb Lebanon into peaceful coexistence with it and to smother Palestinian democracy in its cradle.

...Tragically, despite all the advantages and opportunities Israel has had over the fifty-nine years of its existence, it has failed to achieve concord and reconciliation with anyone in its region, still less to gain their admiration or affection. Instead, with each decade, Israel's behavior has deviated farther from the humane ideals of its founders and the high ethical standards of the religion that most of its inhabitants profess.

He even blamed Israel for 9/11 and the Islamist war upon the west:

We have paid heavily and often in treasure in the past for our unflinching support and unstinting subsidies of Israel's approach to managing its relations with the Arabs. Five years ago we began to pay with the blood of our citizens here at home. We are now paying with the lives of our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines on battlefields in several regions of the realm of Islam, with more said by our government's neoconservative mentors to be in prospect.

So close is Freeman to Saudi Arabia that Ed Lasky previously remarked he should more properly be described as Saudi’s ambassador to America:

As head of the Middle East Policy Council, he has promoted the interest of Saudi Arabia. He shares Board membership with executives from major multinationals with major markets in Saudi Arabia and the Arab world, Frank Carlucci-head of the Carlyle Group, George McGovern, and...a representative of the giant Saudi Binladin Group.

If he is appointed to this new intelligence role, Freeman will shape the intelligence assessments that will tell America, among other things, what threats are posed to America and the free world by the Iranian regime. We already saw, with the misleading and manipulatively spun NIE two years ago which facilitated the demonstrably false conclusion that Iran had stopped working on the bomb – a conclusion almost immediately disproved by further intelligence but which was used to head off action against Iran – how such politicised intel can be used to thwart attempts to stop the Iranian bomb.

With such viciously prejudiced views and such an intimate association with the principal force behind the Sunni division of the Islamic jihad, can anyone apart from the west’s gloating Jew-haters doubt that the appointment by America’s 44th President of Chas W Freeman as chairman of the NIC would be a stunning coup as a weapon in the armoury of the enemies of the Jewish people and the free world?

My favorite American

Posted By Roger Kimball On February 21, 2009

My favorite American at the moment is Rick Santelli. A week ago, Mr. Santelli was just another financial television journalist. As of February 19, he has been elevated into a national hero for those, like me, who regard the economic policies of the current President of the United States with a mixture of revulsion and horror.

Speaking from the trading floor at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Mr. Santelli called for a Chicago tea party next July: a taxpayer’s revolt against the obscene redistributionist policies of the Pelosi-Reid-Obama troika.

Commenting on the latest effort to take yet more of your money to subsidize failure, Mr. Santelli bluntly charged that “The government is promoting bad behavior.”

After poking a little fun at the derisory tax rebate (”$8 or $10″) the current plan would provide for low-income workers, Mr. Santelli proceeded to eviscerate the style and substance of the Democratic Special-Interest and Wealth-Transfer Initiative (that’s an English translation of “Stimulus”) that Washington just shoved down your throat.

As to style: how about a little “transparency”? Why don’t we actually debate the provisions of this $787,000,000,000 plan before passing it? Didn’t the current President of the United States promise “a new era of responsibility” in the way government does business?

“The new administration,” observed Mr. Santelli,

is big on computers and technology. How about this, Mr. President and new administration. Why don’t you put up a website to have people vote on the internet as a referendum to see if we really want to subsidize the losers mortgages? Or would they like to at least buy cars, buy a house that is in foreclosure — give it to people who might have a chance to actually prosper down the road and reward people that can carry the water instead of drink the water?

What do you reckon the results of that referendum would be? Mr. Santelli then dilated on the “spread-the-wealth-around” confiscatory assumption behind the White House plan.

How many people want to pay for your neighbor’s mortgages that has an extra bathroom and can’t pay their bills? Raise their hand! [A chorus of boos, but no hands raised.]

President Obama, are you listening?

You know Cuba used to have mansions and a relatively decent economy. They moved from the individual to the collective. Now they’re driving ‘54 Chevys.

It’s time for another tea party.

What we are doing in this country will make Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin roll over in their graves.

You said it! And Washington, Madison, and Hamilton would be rolling over along with them.

There been a lot of talk about the current President of the United States looking for a “Swedish solution” for crisis in the banking industry. A depressing prospect, that. But I think Mr. Santelli touches on another real danger to the US economy, even worse than the Swedish solution, namely the Cuban Catastrophe. I don’t think the current President of the United States is going grow and beard and start donning combat fatigues (too much Harvard for that). But his policies just might tip the mighty US economy over into a serious and protracted decline.

They just don’t get it.

Practical economics is not about “fairness” (one of the current President’s favorite words) or “spreading-the-wealth-around” (the ultimate aim of his domestic policy). Practical economics is about the creation of wealth, not the redistribution of wealth. A rising tide floats all boats. More wealth means more jobs, greater prosperity for everyone.

We learned these lessons in the 1980s, reaped their benefits in the 1990s and beyond: do we really need to go back to economic kindergarten and relearn them?

We’ve already suffered through Lyndon Johnson’s disastrous “Great Society” wrecking ball and Jimmy Carter’s flailing incompetence once. Do we really have to go through it again? Haven’t we learned anything about the place that the road paved with good intentions leads?

The immense popularity of Mr. Santelli’s performance (you can see it [1] here) caught the White House off-guard. Hey, there’s someone peeking behind the curtain and offering an independent, critical opinion over there! Sound the alert!

Result: White House Press Secretary [2] Robert Gibbs is wheeled out to pour a bit of scorn on Rick Santelli.

Non sequitur alert, division of liberal guilt

“I’ve watched Mr. Santelli on cable the past 24 hours or so,” quoth Robert Gibbs. “I’m not entirely sure where Mr. Santelli lives [Hello? What difference does that make? Who cares where Mr. Santelli lives?] . . . but the American people are struggling every day to meet their mortgages, stay in their jobs, pay their bills, send their kids to school.”

Got it! People are struggling, ergo, ignore criticism of this gigantic engine of impoverishment and wealth-transfer.

This didn’t play so well; I suspect Mr. Gibbs understood that; so he opted to try a modified patented Presidential “[3] I won” ™ tactic:

“I think we left a few months ago the adage that if it was good for a derivatives trader that it was good for Main Street. I think the verdict is in on that.”

Right: the current President of the United States won the election in November, ergo, any criticism is off limits.

Possibly the most repellent part of Robert Gibbs’s thrust-and-parry was yet to come. “Mr. Santelli has argued, I think quite wrongly, that this plan won’t help everyone,” Gibbs said. [Dear Reader: ask yourself this: will the President's plan help you?] “This plan helps people who have been playing by the rules. … I would encourage him to read the president’s plan.”

Whoa! “Read the president’s plan.” That’ s rich. I wonder whether Mr. Gibbs has read it. No, that’s wrong. I do not wonder. I know that he hasn’t. In fact, I will go further. I would wager that not one of the duly elected (and, God willing, soon to be unelected) lawmakers who voted for this 1000-page fiscal enormity read it before cast casting their vote. Not one. Any takers on that wager? [UPDATE: I mean of course 1073-page mother-of-all-spending blowouts, not the brief, toxic "Home Affordability" codicil.]

Rahm Emmanuel, the current President’s chief of staff, has said that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. His boss obviously agrees, and has been assiduous about exploiting this crisis not to “stimulate” the economy but to cater to every conceivable Democratic interest while the panic lasts. Democratic lawmakers, in collusion with the White House, realized they could capitalize on the crisis by taking a big step towards socializing the economy.

Here’s how it works. You canvas your supporters and lobbyists and special interests: “Hey, the candy store’s open folks! We’ve got nearly $800 billion here: what do you want? Green golf carts? no problem? Another $89 billion for medicare? It’s yours. $4 billion or so for ACORN and other para-military voter fraud initiatives? be my guest.” Like Pooh Bah, in his role as Koko’s Private Secretary, the word went around: “I should say that as the city will have to pay for it, don’t stint yourself, do it well.”

Here’s a question: how much of this is naked cynicism, mere paying off special interests and shoring up one’s political power base and how much of it is an honest if deeply misguided effort to do good? I don’t know the answer to that question, but it is worth thinking about.

Robert Gibbs ended his little exercise in damage control by inviting Rick Santelli to come to the White House to read the bill, generously offering to buy him a cup of decaf coffee.

Only one cup of coffee (and decaf!) as Santelli struggles through a thousand-page document? Sounds like cruel and unusual punishment to me. If Mr. Santelli were at Gitmo there would be howls of protest over such treatment.

Mr. Santelli [4] responded, lavishing upon the Gibbs-dibs some of the contempt it deserves. He warned against “going down the road of subsidizing other people’s mortgages”–that way lies ruin. And elsewhere he noted a glaring inconsistency in the administration’s policy. If you are going to subsidize other people’s mortgages, why not subsidize their 401ks and investment portfolios? “We want our 401K money back,” Santelli said. “I want my stock money back. The retirement funds of many Americans [are] much larger of a loss than some people on their housing at this point in time.” So why isn’t the current President of the United States expropriating yet more of your children’s money to make people whole for those losses–losses, by the way, which were caused as much by such Democratic policies as the [5] Community Reinvestment Act as anything. And as for Mr. Gibbs’s disingenuous offer of a cup of decaf coffee, Mr. Santelli said thanks but no thanks: “I prefer tea.”

I think there may soon be a run on tea. The question is, does the nascent taxpayer’s revolt that Mr. Santelli is help to spearhead have legs? [6] Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit suggests that it does, pointing to tea-party protests planned in “Dallas, Chicago, Fayetteville, NC, San Diego, Omaha, and elsewhere.” I hope such a party will be coming to a township near you.

Article printed from Roger’s Rules:

An exercise in Rambling

74% of America is white according to the last census.

The new Attorney General said we (total populous?) we are all cowards.

One cartoon about shooting a chimpanzee, and referring to the stimulus bill.

The NAACP, and other notable blacks shriek about cartoon and racism towards the president.

Not a word is said of the implications perhaps meant by the new black Attorney Generals comments.

What has changed??

All of America's advancement towards racial equality over the last 50 years will be severely lamed in less than 4.

Signs to look for;

a rise in the Amerika, banners once again.

A push for racial quota balance emphasising black equality not other races.

Reemerging of black political gangs in urban settings, handing out propaganda and food.

A sharp rise in crime amongst black communities and against black people.

A strong push in higher education systems to give priority consideration to a balanced black student population over others such as immigrant Hispanics.

A large imbalance of hiring more blacks in government jobs around the beltway.

An increase in black communities outcry about white cop brutality.

A sharp separation and strong push for minority focus on blacks and not Hispanics.

It is Obama's intention to be the black Lincoln. He wants to be the catalyst for the rising up of the black, population to a level apart from that of the poverty of other minorities. It is his intention to see that blacks reach a quantification of middle class, ahead of other minority races who come after them as well as poor whites.

Barack Obama must be viewed with a sharpest light focused on his semantics. He prides himself with a pseudo intellectual sense of being an expert at the word game, on a par with those of diplomatic schooling.

But he is not of that class. He is a Harvard Lawyer.

There is an ego nom among lawyers of all schools that gives license to their rational that they can honestly say one thing and honestly mean the total opposite, or at minimus something else. and not be lying.

Barack Obama prides himself in doing this very well at everyone else's loss of comprehension, or so he thinks

Obama should have been an engineer, he has the mind of one. Or I should say he has the mechanically structured mind of one. The fact that he did not become an engineer leads me to believe he is pathetically weak in mathematical skills.

Hitler had the mind of an engineer but he too was weak in mathematics, thus his down fall.

What Obama fails to see and fails to accept as the reality is that a quantitative analysis of his endeavour is statistically in error.

If he were to give one million dollars to each and every black person alive and in the United States tax free, it would not create any more stimulus than his present program will although it would be a whole lot less expensive for the rest of the tax paying population.

Statistically to try and create a perfect populous of 100% can never be accomplished.


The quantification of the predicate belongs in part to Sir William Hamilton; viz., in its extension to negative propositions. --De Quincey.

ANOTHER PREDICTION COMES TO PASS

American Jews are idiots *UPDATED*

UPDATE: Pardon the white heat in the title of this post, but I cannot tell you how many times, during the days and months leading to the election, liberal Jews assured me, both in the media and in personal conversations, that Obama would never do anything to hurt Israel. Nor can I tell you how many times my liberal Jewish friends and family refused to hear about all the antisemitic or anti-Israel people in Obama's closest circles.

Seventy-eight percent of American Jews voted for Obama. They did so despite the fact that those of us American Jews immune to the Obama Kool-Aid warned them, and warned them, and warned them again that Obama had a history of hostility to Israel, revealed most strongly in the people with whom he surrounded himself and upon whom he relied.

Obama's anti-Israel animus revealed itself with startling speed once he assumed the presidency. Caroline Glick gives a laundry list of the steps Obama has taken in just one month that are harmful to Israel:

SINCE IT came into office a month ago, every single Middle East policy the Obama administration has announced has been antithetical to Israel's national security interests. From President Barack Obama's intense desire to appease Iran's mullahs in open discussions; to his stated commitment to establish a Palestinian state as quickly as possible despite the Palestinians' open rejection of Israel's right to exist and support for terrorism; to his expressed support for the so-called Saudi peace plan, which would require Israel to commit national suicide by contracting to within indefensible borders and accepting millions of hostile, foreign-born Arabs as citizens and residents of the rump Jewish state; to his decision to end US sanctions against Syria and return the US ambassador to Damascus; to his plan to withdraw US forces from Iraq and so give Iran an arc of uninterrupted control extending from Iran to Lebanon, every single concrete policy Obama has enunciated harms Israel.


Glick does acknowledge that the above acts can all be imputed to good intentions, naivete and a political trajectory that just happens, as an unintentional byproduct, to harm Israel.

No such good or neutral intentions, however, can be imputed to the Obama administration's much touted decision to attend the UN's Durban II conference. As those of you who have been paying attention recall, the Bush administration refused to attend the Durban I conference, since it was manifest that, while it was supposed to be some sort of massive anti-racist, anti-torture love fest, it would, in fact, be an occasion for unparalleled Israel bashing, something the Bush administration refused legitimize. As it turned out, the administration was correct, and Durban I resulted in a type of high level, politically-sanctioned antisemitism unseen since the 30s in the Reich.

Durban II is not even pretending any longer to be anything but an antisemitic festival. It's stated goals are the implementation of those Durban I policies that were, without exception, aimed at delegitimizing and destroying Israel. In other words, attendance at Durban II is not a chance to go back and undo Durban I. Instead, it is intended to be a forum in which gleeful Muslim nations can expand upon and implement their Durban I policies. Under those circumstances, Glick explains precisely why American participation is a disaster for Israel:

The same [that is, neutral or foolish good intentions] cannot be said of the administration's decision to send its delegation to the Durban II planning session this past week in Geneva. Unlike every other Obama policy, this is a hostile act against Israel. This is true first of all because the decision was announced in the face of repeated Israeli requests that the US join Israel and Canada in boycotting the Durban II conference.

[snip]

On Thursday, Prof. Anne Bayefsky, the senior editor of the EyeontheUN Web site, demonstrated that by participating in the planning sessions the US is accepting the conference's anti-Israel agenda. Bayefsky reported that at the planning session in Geneva on Thursday, the Palestinian delegation proposed that a paragraph be added to the conference's agenda. Their draft "calls for implementation of... the advisory opinion of the ICJ [International Court of Justice] on the wall, [i.e., Israel's security fence], and the international protection of Palestinian people throughout the occupied Palestinian territory."

[snip]

As Bayefsky and others argued this week, by entering into the Durban preparatory process, the US has done two things. First, it has made it all but impossible for European states like France, Britain, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands, which were all considering boycotting the conference, to do so. They cannot afford to be seen as more opposed to its anti-Israel and anti-freedom agenda than Israel's closest ally and the world's greatest democracy. So just by participating in the planning sessions the US has legitimized a clearly bigoted, morally illegitimate process, making it impossible for Europe to disengage.

Second, through its behavior at the Geneva planning sessions this week, the US has demonstrated that State Department protestations aside, the administration has no interest in changing the agenda in any serious way. The US delegation's decision not to object to the Palestinian draft, as well its silence in the face of Iran's rejection of a clause in the conference declaration that mentioned the Holocaust, show the US did not join the planning session to change the tenor of the conference. The US is participating in the planning sessions because it wishes to participate in the conference.


The above quotations are just small parts of a coherent, larger article in which Glick demonstrates irrefutably that the Obama administration is precisely as hostile to Israel's interests as those of us paying attention predicted it would be.

As far as I can tell, the only good thing in the offing for Israel is that Bibi Netanyahu will be the new head of Israel's government. He's hampered by the dreadful coalitions that routinely paralyze Israel's ability to function, but he will no longer be held back by the restraining hand of a friendly American administration. This administration, by showing itself openly hostile to Israel's very survival, actually gives Bibi some room for maneuver that was lacking before. But Israel needs to act very quickly, because this administration will also surely cut off the foreign aid that has helped Israel maintain her necessary defenses in the world's most antisemitic region.