Around the Web in 80 Minutes (11/11/09)

On President Hope&Change:

November 11, 2009 | American Spectator
The Man Who Despises America
By Mark Hyman

When people who voted for Obama in 2008—including registered Democrats—start speaking in normal conversational voices at dinner parties, neighborhood gatherings and PTA meetings that the over-inflated ego from Chicago has it “in for America,” then it’s clear most reasonable people have reached the same conclusion.

The central conviction of Obama’s ideology is that America is guilty of limitless moral failures and is the chief architect of the world’s ills. Obama has boundless enmity for America, its key institutions, and its longtime allies. …

November 11, 2009 | American Thinker
Obama’s Post-American World
By Monte Kuligowski

… Mr. Obama needs a weak America to facilitate his view of global multiculturalism. No country is better than any other. So-called evil regimes are really dispossessed nations that need to be understood and brought to the table. Once at the table, we will see that our mutual interests make self interests innocuous. Old views of American exceptionalism are simply worn out.

The President is a creature of postmodern, post-Christian thinking. He is a new kind of leftist. Barack Hussein Obama is essentially a global Marxist. On a global scale, the proletariat consists of the poor nations of the world that have been oppressed by powerful, greedy, self-interested countries. The United States is the prime example of the global bourgeoisie. The evil, capitalistic country, still high on religious opium represents all that is wrong with the world. …

Mr. Obama was photographed during the 2008 campaign carrying the book, "The Post-American World" by Fareed Zakaria. A guy running to be president of the country that saved Europe and the world from Nazism and communism and provided stability to the world ever since was reading about a post-American world. …

On the Ft. Hood massacre:

November 11, 2009 | American Thinker
Victims, Villains and Heroes
By Ben Voth

… For NPR and related ‘journalistic’ outlets, Nidal is a “victim” of the trauma associated with war. Though he had never been deployed, as a psychologist he witnessed the trauma of combat soldiers and the burdens of war and found that ‘too much to bear.’ Consequently, because of America’s ‘warmongering character’, psychologist soldier Nidal Hisan ‘snapped’ and fired more than 100 rounds at Fort Hood killing a dozen American soldiers and wounding dozens more.

The careful consideration of Nidal’s victimage stands in sharp contrast to the treatment of American soldiers at Haditha denounced as cold blooded killers by a member of the United States Congress. A U.S. Senator was willing to refer to American soldier interrogators at Guantanomo as comparable to Pol Pot and Hitler.

What American soldiers are not allowed to be is heroes. The moral consequence of this propaganda war fought by “journalists” is the increased deaths of our soldiers at home and abroad. With attacks on our bases here at home and hundreds of attacks overseas, the world has been conditioned to believe that American soldiers do not enter the world to protect the innocent but to kill them. …

11/11/2009 | Human Events
The Phantom Backlash
by Robert Spencer

… Did armed bands of furious Islamophobes throw molotov cocktails at mosques? Did ferocious white supremacists maul fragile little girls in hijabs on their way to school? Did angry bigots spit at pious imams quietly going about their business?

No. [Do they ever?]

Had there been any report—any report at all—of any innocent, random Muslim being attacked in a “backlash” after the Fort Hood jihad?

Nope. Not one. [Do they ever?] Americans are decent people. Americans believe people are innocent until proven guilty. But Ibrahim Hooper and his fellow thugs at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) need to be able to claim that hate crimes are being committed so that they can claim victim status for Muslims and deflect attention away from such small matters as the jihad at Fort Hood. And, naturally, the clueless and/or complicit mainstream media in their hip pocket.

And so we witness the strange phenomenon of stories of Muslims fearing a backlash soaring and the numbering of actual incidents of backlash remaining at zero. In the AP story, all that followed the announcement of an “immediate” anti-Muslim backlash were various stories about mosques and Muslims asking for special police protection, and the like. So in reality, the story should have been headlined, “Muslims claim victim status in wake of Fort Hood jihad attack.” …

On man-made global warming climate change:

Nov 7, 2009 | Newsweek [to its credit]
Everyone Out of the Water! Damn the pesky models! Full speed ahead.
George F. Will

In last week’s NEWSWEEK, the cover story was a hymn to “The Thinking Man’s Thinking Man.” Beneath the story’s headline (“The Evolution of an Eco-Prophet”) was this subhead: “Al Gore’s views on climate change are advancing as rapidly as the phenomenon itself.” Which was rather rude because, if true, his views have not advanced for 11 years.

There is much debate about the reasons for, and the importance of, the fact that global warming has not increased for that long. What we know is that computer models did not predict this. Which matters, a lot, because we are incessantly exhorted to wager trillions of dollars and diminished freedom on the proposition that computer models are correctly projecting catastrophic global warming. On Nov. 2, The Wall Street Journal’s Jeffrey Ball reported some inconvenient data. Soon after the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—it shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with the Thinking Man’s Thinking Man—reported that global warming is “unequivocal,” there came evidence that the planet’s temperature is beginning to cool. “That,” Ball writes, “has led to one point of agreement: The models are imperfect.” …

On government-run health (s)care:

Nov. 11, 2009 | Town Hall
The U.S. House of Presumptuous Meddlers
By John Stossel

I’m embarrassed that my representatives think that government can subsidize the consumption of medical care without increasing the budget deficit or interfering with free choice.

It’s a triumph of mindless wishful thinking over logic and experience.

The 1,990-page bill is breathtaking in its bone-headed audacity. The notion that a small group of politicians can know enough to design something so complex and so personal is astounding. That they were advised by “experts” means nothing since no one is expert enough to do that. There are too many tradeoffs faced by unique individuals with infinitely varying needs.

Nov. 11, 2009 | Jewish World Review
Constitutional Contempt
By Walter Williams

At Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Oct. 29th press conference, a CNS News reporter asked, “Madam Speaker, where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?” Speaker Pelosi responded, “Are you serious? Are you serious?” The reporter said, “Yes, yes, I am.” Not responding further, Pelosi shook her head and took a question from another reporter. Later on, Pelosi’s press spokesman Nadeam Elshami told CNSNews.com about its question regarding constitutional authority mandating that individual Americans buy health insurance. “You can put this on the record. That is not a serious question. That is not a serious question.” …

Speaker Pelosi’s constitutional contempt, perhaps ignorance, is representative of the majority of members of both the House and the Senate. Their comfort in that ignorance and constitutional contempt, and how readily they articulate it, should be worrisome for every single American. It’s not a matter of whether you are for or against Congress’ health care proposals. It’s not a matter of whether you’re liberal or conservative, black or white, male or female, Democrat or Republican or member of any other group. It’s a matter of whether we are going to remain a relatively free people or permit the insidious encroachment on our liberties to continue. …

Have a blessed day!