Vocal Minority

On the Christmas Day Almost-Terrorist Attack in Detroit

Last night, the Facebook status of a close liberal/Democrat friend read:

TSA is now “banning the use of blankets and pillows an hour before landing.” Because you might try to hide under a blanket to light your explosive … What about the rest of your 12 hour flight? F**king idiots. Really? Is this the best we can do?

Yes, my friend. This is the best we can do. Even under the Bush administration, the airlines handled terrorism in many ways, but not by profiling for terrorists, which makes the flying lives of everybody else inconvenient. A few years ago a radical Muslim terrorist snuck onto an airplane a bomb hidden in his shoe. Did that make us look for more radical Muslim terrorists? Nooooo. Instead, before boarding an airplane, everybody now has to take off their shoes! And now, because of another radical Muslim terrorist hiding explosive material in his underwear, everyone will soon be subjected to an all-out frisking at the airport.

A lot of pundits on the rightosphere weighed in over the weekend on the (thankfully) botched terror attack aboard an airplane landing in Detroit on Christmas Day. By Sunday DHS Sec Janet Napolitano was on CNN was spinning the events to make it look like some Obama administration success. The most laughable point of her interview was when the woman who notoriously labeled white Tea Partiers as extremists actually said that the way things went down on that airplane indicated that “the system worked.”

John Hinderaker at Power Line deftly deconstructs Napolitano’s CNN interview here. He writes:

So the “system” consists of hoping there is an alert Dutch filmmaker on board, and that the terrorist’s detonator fails? … The idea that responding to terrorist attacks, rather than preventing them, constitutes “success” is eerily reminiscent of our policies pre-September 11.

Michelle Malkin also scoffs at Napolitano’s laughable assessment:

If the “system” had “worked,” the U.S. consular officials who granted Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab a short-term visa last June would have revoked it immediately upon being informed by his father that he was a Muslim radical with al Qaeda ties.

If the “system” had “worked,” U.S. consular officials would have never granted Abdulmutallab — a rootless, young, single male — a visa in the first place in compliance with State Department visa regulation 214(b) …

If the “system” had “worked,” Abdulmutallab would have been barred from the U.S. like he had been barred from Britain.

The “system,” like Napolitano, was an epic fail.

And as predicted, Napolitano also played the “lone nut” card — dismissing the Christmas Day jihadist as a single operator not part of “anything larger” despite his own testimony to the contrary.

She’s Obama’s biggest joker. And there’s no Blame-Bush loophole to weasel through anymore.

Not so fast, Michelle. Yesterday, while President Hope&Change was vacationing in Hawaii working on his golf game, WH spokesman Bill Burton told the press this [h/t Verum Serum]:

We are winding down a war in Iraq that took our eye off of the terrorists that attacked us, and have dramatically increased our resources in Afghanistan and Pakistan where those terrorists are. We are putting the pressure on al Qaeda worldwide with all elements of American power, and key al Qaeda leaders have been taken out in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Gibbs also made clear the President refuses to play politics with these issues. As he said in West Point, we must put aside petty politics and recapture the unity that we had after 9/11.

Lastly, Gibbs and Secretary Napolitano announced that the president has asked that the policies and procedures that have been in place the last several years related to watch-listing and all information available on the suspect be reviewed. He has also asked that the Department of Homeland Security, specifically the Transportation Security Administration, review its practices and capabilities as he is interested in learning how the explosive material was brought on board the aircraft and steps that can be taken to enhance the ability of airport screeners to detect and interdict such materials in the future.

So the president’s spokesperson plays petty politics against the Bush administration, then two sentences later says the president refuses to play politics with this issue, and then starting with the very next sentence plays petty politics again at least two more times.

(I not-so-politely mentioned this inconvenient truth on my own Facebook page last night. The result of that was getting an earful from two liberal/Democrat friends for being petulant, partisan, indecent, and vapid.)

UPDATE: As I write this, Napolitano has appeared on the Today show with Matt Lauer conceding they failed misery … but not without pointing her bony finger back at the Bush administration, blaming them for the security procedures they put in place. Jeez, this woman is as unprofessional and immature as her boss. You’ve been DHS Sec for almost a year, Toots. If Bush’s security procedures were so piss poor, why didn’t you do something about it yet? I guess you were too busy putting white U.S. veteran Tea Party protesters on the terrorist lists …

Bill at the Patriot Room isn't satisfied by Napolitano's sudden discovery of that elusive thing called "the truth." He cites the Washington Post:

"Security failed," said Doron Bergerbest-Eilon, Israel's senior-ranking counterterrorism officer from 1997 to 2000 and a former national regulator for aviation security. It is of little comfort that Abdulmutallab was stopped only after he allegedly failed to properly detonate the bomb, instead igniting a fire that alerted fellow passengers, Bergerbest-Eilon said.

"The system repeatedly fails to prevent attacks and protect passengers when challenged," he said, adding that, in the minds of security experts, "for all intents and purposes, Northwest Flight 253 exploded in midair."

Bone-chilling, but truthful.

* * * * *

Andrew McCarthy at National Review online also weighs in on the incompetence:

… [A]fter 9/11, the 9/11 Commission, etc. — we have Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab: He was in the terrorist “database” because we were warned by his own influential father of his radical ties and proclivities, and he was evidently notorious among associates in Africa and Europe for his jihadist leanings; yet, he was issued a multiple-entry visa. And he claims to have been trained in Yemen — the al Qaeda hub to which the administration has just sent a half-dozen trained jihadists previously detained in Gitmo, and where it hopes to send many more.

I wonder what the media would be saying if George Bush were still president.

Hadn’t Abdulmutallab heard that we are closing Gitmo? Hadn’t he heard that we’re phasing out military-commissions so we can show the world that we give even the worst mass-murderers civilian trials with all the rights of American citizens? Hadn’t he heard that President Obama has banned torture (yes, yes, I know, actually Congress banned it 15 years ago — details, details ...)? Hadn’t he heard that the president has called for “a new beginning” in America’s relationship with the Muslim world? Hadn’t he heard that this is our new, smarter strategy to safeguard the nation from man-caused disasters?

Jonah Goldberg, also writing at NRO, outrightly suggests Napolitano be fired for this glaring display of national security incompetence since … um, Ft. Hood.

… It is her basic position that the “system worked” because the bureaucrats responded properly after the attack. That the attack was “foiled” by a bad detonator and some civilian passengers is proof, she claims, that her agency is doing everything right. That is just about the dumbest thing she could say, on the merits and politically. I would wager that not one percent of Americans think the system is “working” when terrorists successfully get bombs onto planes (and succeed in activating them). Probably even fewer think it’s fair that they have to take off their shoes, endure delays and madness while a known Islamic radical — turned in by his own father — can waltz onto a plane (and into the country). DHS had no role whatsoever in assuring that this bomb didn’t go off. By her logic if the bomb had gone off, the system would have “worked” since it has done everything right.

Napolitano has a habit of arguing that DHS is a first responder outfit. Its mission is to deal with “man-caused-disasters” afer they occur. It appears she really believes it. If the White House wants to assure people that it takes the war on terror seriously (a term Robert Gibbs used this morning by the way), they could start by firing this patenly unqualified hack.

Ouch.

See updates to Goldberg’s post, where he posts some commenter responses.

* * * * *

Oh, here’s something from the “Why Am I Not Surprised?” Department: The folks at Newsbusters noted over the weekend that major news outlets, most notably the New York Times and Associated Press did not mention that the terrorist on the Detroit-bound plane was Muslim. And on CNN, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) was shushed twice by CNN interviewer Ali Veshi from mentioning Abdul Mudallad’s name.

What do we make of all this insanity from our own politically correct, ideologically-blinded government and media? It seems to me that the one thing interconnecting this incident, the Ft. Hood massacre, the shoe bomber incident from a few years ago, and other such incidents isn’t that our security officials can’t connect the dots; it’s that they won’t. Political correctness and fear of offending the wrong kind of people got people killed at Ft. Hood, and they almost got people killed on Christmas Day. Don’t get me wrong – Bush’s national security people let PC cloud their judgment too. But not as badly as this bunch.

So get ready, all you white blue-haired old ladies with your little crosses or Stars of David hanging around your necks: One hour before the end of your flight you must relinquish your blanket and pillows, and keep your crotch open to view.

You know, for the sake of national security.

Related reading: "Learning From Abdul Mutallab" by Victor Davis Hanson

Liberal Media Bias: MRC's Notable Quotables of 2009 Are Here!

They gushed like lovestruck schoolgirls over an unaccomplished, incompetent, and immature new president.

They downplayed said president’s motley crew of tax-cheating White House appointments and communism-endorsing czars.

They perpetuated his flawed conception of the United States as—that is, until he fixes it—an arrogant, racist, imperialist, wealth-stealing, pollution-spewing, Islam-oppressing, terrorist-torturing, saber-rattling threat to world security.

They covered his every trip abroad as if a rock star’s world tour.

They bolstered the administration’s image by unquestioningly parroting their excuses for their failed, disastrous policies.

They dutifully cheerled for every piece of legislation coming out of the Democrat White House and Congress, expressing virtually no concern their constitutionality, legality, or popularity with the American people.

They explained away opposition to said legislation by Republicans and the general public as bitter partisanship, talk-radio-fomented anger, militia-initiated anti-government hatred, and good ol’ fashioned American racism.

They treated Tea Parties and town halls as disturbing uprisings of perpetually angry, white supremicist, gun-toting militia types merely having a temper tantrum after losing an election to a black man.

With blatant disregard for fact-checking, source verification, journalistic professionalism and objectivity, they painted Sarah Palin as an intolerant, extremist, moronic country bumpkin.

With blatant disregard for fact-checking, source verification, journalistic professionalism and objectivity, they painted Rush Limbaugh as a woman-hating, violence-inciting racist.

They fixated on the scandals or indiscretions of conservative/Republican politician no matter how miniscule.

They downplayed the scandals or indiscretions of liberal/Democrat politician no matter how enormous.

They treated the infrequent crimes of conservatives/Christians as an indication of some dangerous pattern inherent in conservativism/Christianity.

They minimized the recurrent crimes of radical Islamists by warning us against the temptation of treating them as an indication of some dangerous pattern inherent in radical Islam.

They covered the deaths of famous conservatives/Republicans in a “Ding-dong the Wicked Witch is dead” sort of way.

They covered the deaths of famous liberals/Democrats in a “The heavens are weeping for this devastating loss to mankind” sort of way.

They helped perpetuate the man-made global warming climate change hoax by ignoring, dismissing, or criticizing opposing scientists and their data.

They helped perpetuate said hoax by ignoring or downplaying the leaked emails revealing the deliberate manipulation and deletion of inconvenient data.

Who are they? They are ABCNBCCBSCNNMSNBCPBSNPR, a.k.a. the mainstream media.

The year 2009 was sure busy for these protectors of Truth. For that reason, I am thankful to the Media Research Center and their 48 judges for selecting the most outrageous media quotes of 2009. Below are my personal favorites from this 18-page compilation. As was the case last year, my favorites don’t include statements made by commentators like Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Joy Behar, and Rachel Maddow. As revolting as their statements are, I feel MRC does a slight disservice by conflating opinion-makers with news anchors or reporters. There are ample examples of pervasive left-wing bias offered this year by the Katie Courics, Bob Schieffers, Jack Caffertys, and Andrea Mitchells of the media world.

The Coronation of the Messiah Award for Fawning Inaugural Coverage

“What a day it was. It may take days or years to really absorb the significance of what happened to America today....When he [Barack Obama] finally emerged, he seemed, even in this throng, so solitary, somber, perhaps already feeling the weight of the world, even before he was transformed into the leader of the free world....The mass flickering of cell phone cameras on the Mall seemed like stars shining back at him.”
— NBC’s Andrea Mitchell on the January 20 Nightly News.

Master of His Domain Award for Obama Puffery

“The legislative achievements have been stupendous — the $789 billion stimulus bill, the budget plan that is still being hammered out (and may, ultimately, include the next landmark safety-net program, universal health insurance). There has also been a cascade of new policies to address the financial crisis — massive interventions in the housing and credit markets, a market-based plan to buy the toxic assets that many banks have on their books, a plan to bail out the auto industry and a strict new regulatory regime proposed for Wall Street. Obama has also completely overhauled foreign policy, from Cuba to Afghanistan. ‘In a way, Obama’s 100 days is even more dramatic than Roosevelt’s,’ says Elaine Kamarck of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. ‘Roosevelt only had to deal with a domestic crisis. Obama has had to overhaul foreign policy as well, including two wars. And that’s really the secret of why this has seemed so spectacular.’”
— Time’s Joe Klein in the magazine’s May 4 cover story on Barack Obama’s first 100 days as President.

“It didn’t take long for Barack Obama — for all his youth and inexperience — to get acclimated to his new role as the calming leader of a country in crisis....Rookie jitters? Far from it....For the past three months, Obama has spoken in firm, yet soothing tones. Sometimes he has used a just-folks approach to identify with economically struggling citizens. He has displayed wonkish tendencies, too, appearing much like the college instructor he once was while discussing the intricacies of the economic collapse. He has engaged in witty banter, teasing lawmakers, staffers, journalists and citizens alike. He has struck a statesmanlike stance, calling for a renewed partnership between the United States and its allies....”
— AP Washington correspondent Liz Sidoti in an April 25 dispatch, “Obama quickly, confidently adapts to presidency.”

The Crush Rush Award for Loathing Limbaugh

“Limbaugh’s perceived racist diatribes are too many to name but here’s a sampling: He once declared that [words on screen] ‘Slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark,’ said Limbaugh.”
— CNN’s Rick Sanchez promoting a made-up quote on the 3pm ET hour of Newsroom, October 12.

Damn Those Conservatives Award

Host Dylan Ratigan: “Some Republicans and conservatives celebrating Obama’s failed attempt to bring the 2016 Olympics to Chicago. Down with Chicago! Contessa Brewer has the latest.”
News anchor Contessa Brewer: “Can you imagine this, that some people actually went as far as to cheer?”
Ratigan: “Sure. I mean, there are people that are actually trying to derail health care in order to take down Obama, even if it means half the country dies.”

— Exchange on MSNBC’s 9am ET Morning Meeting, October 5.

The Poison Tea Pot Award for Smearing the Anti-Obama Rabble

“You know, … this is a party for Obama bashers. I have to say that this is not entirely representative of everybody in America....It’s anti-government, anti-CNN, since this is highly promoted by the right-wing conservative network, Fox. And since I can’t really hear much more and I think this is not really family viewing, I’ll toss it back to you.”
— Correspondent Susan Roesgen during live coverage of the tea party protests, CNN Newsroom, April 15.

“They’ve waved signs likening President Obama to Hitler and the devil; raised questions about whether he was really born in this country; falsely accused him of planning to set up death panels; decried his speech to students as indoctrination; and called him everything from a ‘fascist’ to a ‘socialist’ to a ‘communist.’ ...And all that was before Mr. Obama’s speech was interrupted by a representative who once fought to keep the Confederate flag waving over the South Carolina state house. Add it all up, and some prominent Obama supporters are now saying that it paints a picture of an opposition driven, in part, by a refusal to accept a black President.”
— ABC’s Dan Harris on World News, September 15.

Spread the Wealth Award for Socialist Sermonizing

“Why not just nationalize the banks?...People are angry. There’s so much taxpayer money going into the banks. Why shouldn’t the government — why shouldn’t you just fire the executives who wrecked these banks in the first place and tanked the world’s financial system in the process?”
— ABC’s Terry Moran interviewing President Obama for Nightline, February 10.

“In Britain, a government takeover of a bank last year helped to temporarily calm fears in the financial markets there. Nationalization may have a psychological impact as well, and Uncle Sam wrapping his arms around failing banks in this country might provide a big dose of confidence for the American consumer.”
— Katie Couric on the February 19 CBS Evening News, talking about the Obama administration possibly taking over American banks.

Long Live Camelot Award for Lionizing Ted Kennedy

“Mary Jo wasn’t a right-wing talking point or a negative campaign slogan....We don’t know how much Kennedy was affected by her death, or what she’d have thought about arguably being a catalyst for the most successful Senate career in history....[One wonders what] Mary Jo Kopechne would have had to say about Ted’s death, and what she’d have thought of the life and career that are being (rightfully) heralded. Who knows — maybe she’d feel it was worth it.”
— Discover magazine deputy web editor Melissa Lafsky, who formerly worked on the New York Times’s Freakonomics blog, writing at the Huffington Post, August 27.

“America mourns the lion of the Senate....There is, of course, no royal family in this country. The Kennedys, perhaps, the closest we’ve ever had....For nearly half a century in the Senate, Ted Kennedy spoke for people who had no voice — the poor and the disabled, children and the elderly.”
— Anchor Katie Couric kicking off the August 26 CBS Evening News.

The Half-Baked Alaska Award for Pummeling Palin

CNN’s Jack Cafferty: “Here’s the question: ‘Would you rather listen to a speech by Sarah Palin or a speech by Newt Gingrich?’ Go to CNN — or would you rather just stick needles in your eyes? [Over loud laughter off-camera from a man other than Cafferty, presumably Blitzer] Go to CNN.com/CaffertyFile and you can post a comment on my blog. I forgot about the third option.”
Anchor Wolf Blitzer: “What do you think, Jack? You want to listen to Palin or Gingrich deliver a speech?”
Cafferty: “I’m not interested in listening to either one of them.”

— Exchange on CNN’s The Situation Room, June 9, talking about Palin and Gingrich’s appearance at a Republican fundraiser the previous evening.

“She’s been an astronaut and a rock star. Pop icons Beyonce and Shakira. She’s won American Idol too. She’s even run for President twice. [Over footage of Sarah Palin] Some would argue she also ran for Vice President in 2008.”
— ABC’s David Wright in a retrospective marking the 50th anniversary of Barbie for Nightline, February 16.

“She’s a joke. I mean, I just can’t take her seriously....The idea that this potential talk show host is considered seriously for the Republican nomination, believe me, it’ll never happen. Republican primary voters just are not going to elect a talk show host.”
— New York Times columnist David Brooks talking about Sarah Palin on ABC’s This Week, November 15.

The Un-Fairness Doctrine Award for Slamming Media Conservatives

“Let me be precise here: Fox News peddles a fair amount of hateful crap. Some of it borders on sedition. Much of it is flat out untrue. But I don’t understand why the White House would give such poisonous helium balloons as Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity the opportunity for still greater spasms of selfinflation by declaring war on Fox....The best antidote to their garbage is elegant, intelligent governance.”
— Time’s Joe Klein on the magazine’s “Swampland” blog, October 23.

“[Robert] Novak titled his 2007 memoir, The Prince of Darkness, and he was indeed a very dark force in cable TV news contributing mightily to the toxic culture of confrontation, belligerence and polarization that so defines cable TV and American political discourse today. There is no way to be nice about his impact on cable TV during its formative years....I am talking about Novak’s sneering TV persona and the role it played in reaching back to the dark political style of the 1950s Richard Nixon — and leading us to the polarized, angry space that cable TV and the conversation of American politics now inhabits.”
— Baltimore Sun critic David Zurawik August 18 on his “Z on TV” blog, two hours after news broke of Novak’s passing.

“Was there a tone in this country that was actually started with the election of our first black president that is bringing the crazies out of the woodwork, and are they being motivated to move by right-wing pronouncements, like he’s dangerous, he’s a socialist, he’s a Muslim, and he isn’t even a U.S. citizen? This is what we hear on some TV and radio outlets, which, by the way, according to our Constitution, they are entitled to what they believe and even propagate.”
— CNN Newsroom anchor Rick Sanchez setting up a segment suggesting “hateful talk” can be blamed for the Holocaust museum shooting, June 11.

Let Us Fluff Your Pillow Award for Obsequious Obama Interviews

“You’re so confident, Mr. President, and so focused. Is your confidence ever shaken? Do you ever wake up and say, ‘Damn, this is hard. Damn, I’m not going to get the things done I want to get done, and it’s just too politicized to really get accomplished the big things I want to accomplish’?”
— CBS’s Katie Couric in an exchange with Obama shown on The Early Show, July 22.

“It seems to me that there is a sort of meanness that’s settled over our political dialogue. It started this summer at these town hall meetings....President Carter is now saying that he thinks it’s racial. Nancy Pelosi says it could be dangerous. What do you think it’s all about?”
— CBS’s Bob Schieffer to President Obama on Face the Nation, September 20.

“House Speaker Pelosi worried about the opposition, the tone of it, perhaps leading to violence as it did in the ’70s. There’s more recent examples of anti-government violence — occurring even in the mid-’90s. Do you worry about that?”
— David Gregory to Obama on NBC’s Meet the Press, September 20.

Barry’s Big Brain Award for Journalists Bedazzled by Obama’s Brilliance

“I like to say that, in some ways, Barack Obama is the first President since George Washington to be taking a step down into the Oval Office. I mean, from visionary leader of a giant movement, now he’s got an executive position that he has to perform in, in a way.”
— ABC Nightline co-anchor Terry Moran to Media Bistro’s Steve Krakauer in a February 20 “Morning Media Menu” podcast.

The Audacity of Dopes Award for Wackiest Analysis of the Year

“We have an FBI, and we’re not prejudiced against somebody who’s worked at the FBI. It’s an honorable place to work. And the KGB, I think, was an honorable place to work. It gave people in the former Soviet Union, a communist country, an opportunity to do something important and worthwhile.”
— CNN founder Ted Turner on Meet the Press, November 30, 2008.

“Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today. One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages. That one party can just impose the politically difficult but critically important policies needed to move a society forward in the 21st century.”
— New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in a September 9 column, “Our One Party Democracy.”

The Obamagasm Award for Seeing Coolness In Everything Obama Does

Correspondent John Harwood: “He had this fly that was persistently buzzing around him....He swatted his hand and he said, ‘I got the sucker.’ He threw it onto the ground. It was a, you know, Dirty Harry ‘make my day’ moment.”...
MSNBC anchor David Shuster: “Amazing...An amazing interview....It never fails — great weather, rainbows, incredible speeches, and three-point basket. A fly and he nails it. Unbelievable. Unbelievable.”

— Exchange on MSNBC after Harwood’s CNBC interview with President Obama concluded, June 16.

“Between workouts during his Hawaii vacation this week, he was photographed looking like the paradigm of a new kind of presidential fitness, one geared less toward preventing heart attacks than winning swimsuit competitions. The sun glinted off chiseled pectorals sculpted during four weightlifting sessions each week, and a body toned by regular treadmill runs and basketball games.”
— Washington Post reporter Eli Saslow in a December 25, 2008 front-page story about Obama’s vacation fitness regimen.

Michelle, the Media Belle Award

Correspondent Dawna Friesen: “Her husband is, of course, the big star of the show, but this is Michelle Obama’s first foray on to the global stage as First Lady. And you can bet that her every move, her every fashion decision will be dissected and analyzed, especially when the couple go to meet the Queen. But she’s got a lot of good will on her side. … Ask the British about Michelle Obama, and you’ll hear a lot of what you hear in the States.”
Woman on the street: “Oh, I think she’s really cool. She’s got a lot of really good styles. It makes a change from politicians’ wives to look good.”
Man on the street: “She looks supportive and that’s what a man needs in life.”
Second man: “I have been totally stunned at the awesome nature of Michelle Obama.”...
Friesen: “Then there’s those arms, the envy of a lot of British women....”
— NBC’s Today, March 31.

“In 1961, when Jacqueline Kennedy came to Europe, she enchanted even the crustiest of world leaders, and she’s remained a tough act to follow for every First Lady since. But Michelle Obama looks more than equal to the task of impressing and delighting even the grandest of them....To be honest, most Europeans were going to like whoever replaced President Bush. But there’s no doubt Michelle and her husband have an extra je ne sais quoi.”
— CBS’s Elizabeth Palmer on The Early Show, March 31.

Media Hero Award

“I’m honored to be joined today by the Godfather of Green, the King of Conservation: Former Vice President Al Gore.”
— Katie Couric opening her November 2 “@KatieCouric” CBSNews.com webcast.

“The Thinking Man’s Thinking Man: Al Gore’s New Plan for the Planet.”
— Cover of the November 9 Newsweek.

“This woman has a life story that you couldn’t make up! I mean, you know, she’s born in the public projects, in the shadow of Yankee Stadium, a single-parent household, she goes to a Catholic school, she gets scholarships to the best schools in the country, Princeton and Yale, she overcomes all that while dealing with diabetes all her life, and she is Hispanic....This was the political advisor’s dream candidate.”
— CBS’s Bob Schieffer during live coverage of Obama’s selection of Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, May 26.

Not enough for you? Then visit my post on MRC's 2008 Notable Quotables here.

Copenhagen = Anti-Capitalism (Part III)

Part II here

In my first post on the Copenhagen fake climate conference I wondered whether President Hope&Change would heed Sarah Palin’s WaPo warning to boycott it. Whump, there he is. Lying effing Commie.

Today two more speakers at the conference used his bully pulpit to bash the United States for its guilt in causing man-made global warming climate change:

(1) Mahmoud Ahmedinejad “lashed the U.S. as an oil-addicted warmonger” and criticized it for gobbling up way more oil than warranted by its population in proportion to the rest of the world.

(2) Barack Hussein Obama: “As the world’s largest economy and the world’s second largest emitter, America bears our share of responsibility in addressing climate change, and we intend to meet that responsibility.”

Obama’s bashing his own country at home and abroad is just so commonplace, it’s not even shocking anymore.

But why, for the love of HaKadosh Baruch Hu, do thug dictators like A’jad, Chavez, and Mugabe get the mic, let alone an invitation???

You have the leader of the free world decrying climate change “left unchecked”—yes, he actually said “left unchecked!” But legitimizing the dictatorship of the world’s most ruthless dictators at this sham of a conference is tantamount to leaving them unchecked! These are tyrants who are working tirelessly to obtain nuclear weapons while Obama is planning to eliminate ours. Oh, did you know there’s a uranium mine on the Venezuela-Guyana border and is alleged to be helping Iran with its nuclear program?

And our world’s leaders—our own president included—are chasing a windmill called man-made global warming climate change???

God help us all.

Profiles in Liberal Ignorance, Hate, and Intolerance: Louis Farrakhan on the Ft. Hood Massacre

Jim at Gateway Pundit reports on an interview with “Nation of Islam” Leader Louis Farrakhan, which aired on Al-Jazeera TV on November 6. In it, Farrakhan blames the Ft. Hood massacre on the foreign policy of George W. Bush and on the climate of anti-Muslim sentiment fostered by Jews and Christians alike during his administration. Take it away, Calypso Louie:

As you know, since 9/11, in America and in other parts of the world, those anti-Islamic forces have stepped up their efforts to make Muslims… to cause the Muslims to be looked at as uncivilized, savage, or wicked people. This is an attempt by anti-Islamic forces, and some members of the Jewish community, and some members of the Christian community, who have united to condemn Islam …

It is because, my dear brothers and sisters, Islam was making so much progress in the United States that those anti-Islamic forces are trying to stem the tide of the progress of Islam. …

When there are Muslims who love America, and who join the armed forces to protect America, and to serve the interests of America, and then America, unfortunately, under the falsehoods of the George. W. Bush administration, launches attacks against Iraq and against Afghanistan, and now, those soldiers are killing Muslims… So when they go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the kind of hatred that is built up in the American forces, when they call the Muslims “ragheads” and “desert niggers,” and then, in the Abu Ghureib prison, Muslim women were raped, and Muslim men were sodomized …

All this affects Muslims serving in the army. So when you are being insulted by your superior officers or by your fellow soldiers, at some point, a person might break. Unfortunately, I believe this is what happened to Captain Nidhal Hassan.

Isn’t is amazing when it’s hard to tell when a hateful anti-American rant is being delivered by the leader of the Nation of Islam or by an MSNBC commentator?

Speaking of which, my initial reaction to these statements (other than disgust) was to ask: Hey, ABCNBCCBSCNNMSNBCNYTLATWaPo: Will any of you be reporting on this, actual, hate speech (as opposed from the fake hate speech by Rush Limbaugh et al., which is basically any speech that doesn’t echo the liberal template)? Or will you dutifully sweep it under the rug since the speaker is a close personal friend of President Hope&Change’s pastor of 20+ years?

And then I realized: This interview was from November 6. It’s now November 18, and this is the first time I’m hearing about it.

Should I be surprised?

Ways the Left Has Screwed Up My Country Today: U.S. Agency Helping Palestinians De-Hebraize West Bank

Skimming my favorite sites for anything new and interesting to blog about, I came across this story that I missed from August 27, from the blog of Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes:

American Taxpayer Money Spent on Eradicating Hebrew-Language Signs

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), an independent federal agency “that receives overall foreign policy guidance from the Secretary of State” has embarked on a four-year, $20-million project to help Palestinians prepare for statehood in the West Bank by replacing road signs that include Arabic, English, and Hebrew with ones just in Arabic and English.

Comment: So much for the prospects of normalization, harmonious peace, or a Palestinian population content to live side-by-side with Israel. (August 27, 2009)

Not only that, but isn’t such a move closed-minded and exclusionary? Israel gets called an “apartheid state” by the likes of Jimmah Carter (who on January 20, 2009 became the second-worst president in American history) and gets compared to Nazi Germany for its “genocidal” treatment of the Palestinian people by the anti-Semitic Left including those who run Barack Obama’s own “Organize for America” website.

Not only are both charges patently false—Israel treats its Arab citizens better than their native countries do—but in Israel most public signs are in Hebrew, English, and Arabic. (Don’t you remember how Nazi Germany had printed its road signs in German and Yiddish?)

So here is “Palestine”—purportedly the victim of Israeli genocide and general mistreatment—engaging in wiping anything Jewish/Israeli from its territory, i.e., making the West Bank Judenrein (Jew-free).

This story was from August 27. It’s now November 8. Hello? Any liberal-Democrat Jews out there? This is your precious Obama government funding this.

Meanwhile, this afternoon about 3,000 Reform Jews are returning home from the Union for Reform Judaism’s Biennial convention in Toronto. Having attended these conventions in the past, I can safely bet it was rife with Obama stickers and other such paraphrenalia (At their 2005 convention in Houston, among the invited speakers were Madeleine Albright and Robert Reich, two former Clinton administration members. Yeah, that’s fair and balanced.)

Not sure who was invited to speak this year, but I doubt anyone was talking about how their hero, President Golden Calf, has been helping the Palestinians slowly but systematically wipe Israel off the map.

Which is reason #657581 why I will never rejoin the Reform movement.

Around the Web in 80 Minutes (11/3/09)

My favorite articles of the day …

On today’s closely-followed elections:

November 3, 2009 | USA Today
Don’t bury GOP yet: Prophecies of party’s demise this election are way overdone.
By Jonah Goldberg

After Obama’s presidential election, a cottage industry of punditry sprang up to forge a new conventional wisdom. It goes something like this: The Republican Party has been discredited by the Bush presidency, congressional scandals and overspending. Worse, it is “out of touch” due to the stranglehold of knuckle-dragging, troglodytic, Bible-thumping, gun-nuts and greedy capitalists. Confronted with the divine light of Obama, these hissing conservatives must scurry to the shadows like vampires fearful of the burning rays of the sun. The only chance for Republican survival is to embrace moderation, compromise and, in some cases, what Barry Goldwater called “me-too Republicanism.” Whatever the merits of this advice, two things are now quite clear.

First, most conservatives and Republicans have next to no desire to follow it. And, second, it looks like they’re right not to.

The Virginia contest alone shows that much of this talk about “moderates” vs. “extremists” or “pragmatists” vs. “ideologues” within the GOP was nonsense.

McDonnell is socially and economically very conservative, but he has dominated the race by focusing on mainstream issues such as transportation, taxes and the economy. Meanwhile, Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid have been working overtime to recast the Democrats as big spenders more committed to an ideological agenda than setting the country right. As a result, independents — the same voters who delivered the election for Obama — are now flocking to the Republicans. McDonnell beats Democrat Creigh Deedsamong independents by 2-1.

The best illustration of the conservative comeback is the special election for the 23rd congressional district in New York (a district Obama carried in 2008). Before last Saturday, the race was being cast a “civil war” on the right because many conservatives were supporting not the Republican nominee, Dierdre Scozzafava, but Doug Hoffman, a Republican who switched to theConservative Party ticket when he failed to get the nomination. Scozzafava is a very liberal, pro-choice Republican, the sort of candidate the conventional wisdom says the right must embrace to stay relevant. Hoffman is a mainstream conservative. On Saturday, Scozzafava dropped out of the race because Hoffman was crushing her in the polls. Most tellingly, it was Hoffman’s support among independents that gave him the advantage.

There’s more than one way to read all of this. Independents might just want to be a counterweight to the Democratic Party’s lurch to the left. Corzine and Deeds might just be lousy candidates in a bad economy.

All of that’s true. But it’s also true that the GOP is not much interested in becoming a Democrat-lite party, and it seems voters don’t want it to, either.

On government-run health (s)care:

November 3, 2009 | Real Clear Politics
The “Costs” of Medical Care
By Thomas Sowell

… There is a fundamental difference between reducing costs and simply shifting costs around, like a pea in a shell game at a carnival. Costs are not reduced simply because you pay less at a doctor’s office and more in taxes—or more in insurance premiums, or more in higher prices for other goods and services that you buy, because the government has put the costs on businesses that pass those costs on to you.

Costs are not reduced simply because you don’t pay them. It would undoubtedly be cheaper for me to do without the medications that keep me alive and more vigorous in my old age than people of a similar age were in generations past.

Letting old people die would undoubtedly be cheaper than keeping them alive—but that does not mean that the costs have gone down. It just means that we refuse to pay the costs. Instead, we pay the consequences. There is no free lunch.

Providing free lunches to people who go to hospital emergency rooms is one of the reasons for the current high costs of medical care for others. Politicians mandating what insurance companies must cover is another free lunch that leads to higher premiums for medical insurance—and fewer people who can afford it.

Despite all the demonizing of insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies or doctors for what they charge, the fundamental costs of goods and services are the costs of producing them.

If highly paid chief executives of insurance companies or pharmaceutical companies agreed to work free of charge, it would make very little difference in the cost of insurance or medications. If doctors’ incomes were cut in half, that would not lower the cost of producing doctors through years of expensive training in medical schools and hospitals, nor the overhead costs of running doctors’ offices.

What it would do is reduce the number of very able people who are willing to take on the high costs of a medical education when the return on that investment is greatly reduced and the aggravations of dealing with government bureaucrats are added to the burdens of the work. …

Jewish World Review | Nov. 3, 2009
A Society that Venerates Lawyers More than Doctors
By Dennis Prager

… Nothing better illustrates the reorientation — indeed, the transformation — of values that will take place if the Democrats’ health care legislation is passed. Thanks to trial lawyer/Democratic influence, for decades, we have been moving in the direction of litigation-based society. But with a Democratic health care bill, the movement will accelerate exponentially.

Much of our money, our innovation, our creativity and our ingenuity will gravitate from medicine to law. …

No rational person argues that society doesn’t need law or lawyers, or that all lawyers, even trial lawyers, do no good. That is certainly not what is being argued here.

But it does say something about a society when those who sue physicians and hospitals make as much or more money than those who heal disease. It says something about a society when it glorifies and rewards those who litigate while it demonizes and punishes those who produce the drugs and devices that keep its citizens alive and well.

This is part of the upside-down world the left is bequeathing to us and our children in the name of health care “reform.”

On the Leftocracy’s continued pile-up on Rush Limbaugh:

American Thinker | November 02, 2009
The Vilification of Rush
By Kenneth L. Hutcherson

[NB: Ken “Hutch” Hutcherson is a former NFL player, a pastor, and an African-American. - ETR]

... The Minority Thought Pattern is aimed at destroying America, at rending the very fabric that makes America great. The Minority Thought Pattern denies the greatness, honor, bravery, courage, humility, and sacrifice that has brought us the power to be the greatest nation that has ever existed. The Minority Thought Pattern has a mission to undermine and redefine every characteristic of America, maintaining that it is a nation based on greed, cowardice, selfishness, and a lack of genuine humility. The Minority Thought Pattern is the reason for all the apologies to the rest of the world for how bad American is, coming even from our top leader. …

This is extremely personal to me. It’s about a friend. When I look at Rush, I don’t see a white man; I see a friend. I don’t see a talk show host (a very famous talk show host); I see a friend, and friendship overrides color and political stances. I don’t see a controversial figure, but a man whose heart and thoughts I know, and a man who is not a racist.

I believe with all my heart that minorities, especially African-Americans, will never be free until they stop allowing people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to insist they adopt the mentality of victims. Likewise, they will not be free until they take the next bold step: start thanking God for America, and stop condemning the white male.

It is time for America to reject the Minority Thought Pattern and the hateful campaign against Rush Limbaugh.

On Obama’s dithering in Afghanistan and photo-op at Dover AFB:

American Thinker | November 01, 2009
O isn’t dithering on Afghanistan! It’s a Harvard Law Seminar!
By James Lewis

… Why would Obama be any better informed than the rest of the Left? He’s swallowed the Party Line for decades. He never has an original thought when it comes to liberalism; he memorized it when he was a kid, and by gum, it’s still exactly the same as it was decades ago. So he must have gulped down the whole peacenik delusion wholesale. And now a Divine Providence with a highly developed sense of irony has made him Commander in Chief.

After all, what does a Chicago pol have to really know about national security? Nothing. Chicago pols don’t even know about school security on the South Side. If they did, the schools would be much more peaceful. In New York City, it took Rudy Giuliani to clean up crime because generations of liberal mayors couldn’t figure it out. If they can’t run safe schools, what can they know about keeping peace on a global scale? When Obama and Bill Ayers got together on that Chicago inner-city program for fixing schools and buying votes, the best he came up with was a “jazz curriculum.” That’s the Dixiecrat solution for African-American education. It is disrespectful to parents and children of any race. …

George W. Bush accepted six years of foaming rage from the yapping Left with good grace. I think he could shrug it off because he understood what was important and what was merely self-serving. The Bush family has a record of solid values. Dad still jumps out of airplanes at 85. George W. Bush used to visit privately with wounded soldiers and their families, and go to see the dead coming home. Real tears are private. Bill Clinton had Hollywood photo ops in Normandy. …

On the latest from the “Religion of Peace”:

November 02, 2009 | World Net Daily
‘Everyone hates Jews,’ declares Islamic cleric
By Aaron Klein

JERUSALEM – Trees, animals and non-Jewish athletes despise Jews, declared an Egyptian cleric on his country’s television network.

“People hate (Jews). They don’t like them. We are not talking only about people. [The same goes] even for trees and animals,” stated Egyptian cleric Amin Al-Ansari on a program two weeks ago that aired on Egypt’s Al-Rahma satellite network. …

“The proof is that the Prophet Muhammad said that when Judgment Day draws near, the final war between the Muslims and the Jews will take place. The Prophet said that the Muslims would kill the Jews. ‘Judgment Day will not come before the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them,’“ declared Al-Ansari.

He added, citing from a hadith, a collection of the sayings of Muhammad: “The Muslims will kill the Jews. Be patient. All the trees and all the stones will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him – except for the Gharqad tree.’ Only one kind of tree will not call [the Muslims]. It is the Gharqad tree.”

On man-made global warming climate change:

November 3, 2009 | U.K. Telegraph
Al Gore could become world's first carbon billionaire

Al Gore, the former US vice president, could become the world's first carbon billionaire after investing heavily in green energy companies.

On liberal media bias:

November 3, 2009 | NewsBusters
USA Today Defines Sycophantic Media in Front Page Homage to Obamas
By Brent Baker

… USA Today’s Mimi Hall and Maria Puente gushed in a front page story on Tuesday marking a year since President Obama’s election, “With cultural ‘flair,’ Obamas updating first family’s image.” The two reporters began by describing Barack and Michelle Obama as just like any other hip couple:

He carries a smartphone on his hip, goes out for burgers and plays pickup hoops. She goes to their daughters’ soccer games, works in the garden and loves listening to her iPod. Together, they host poets, artists and musicians at their house and invite neighborhood kids to drop by.

The journalistic duo soon featured this glowing assessment: “‘The Obamas’ White House is the most open for cultural and intellectual activities since the Kennedy administration,’ says Douglas Brinkley, author and presidential historian at Rice University in Houston. ‘It’s not simply a matter of doing events of statecraft and cultural gravitas. They have a great flair for American pop culture.’”

November 02, 2009 | TimesWatch
‘The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York.’
By Clay Waters

Though he’s predicting Democrats will prevail in the end, former theatre critic turned over-dramatic liberal columnist Frank Rich sounded even more skittish than usual in his pre-election column in the Sunday Week in Review, “The G.O.P. Stalinists Invade Upstate New York.”

Barack Obama’s most devilish political move since the 2008 campaign was to appoint a Republican congressman from upstate New York as secretary of the Army. This week’s election to fill that vacant seat has set off nothing less than a riotous and bloody national G.O.P. civil war. No matter what the results in that race on Tuesday, the Republicans are the sure losers. This could be a gift that keeps on giving to the Democrats through 2010, and perhaps beyond.

Have a blessed day!

Ayatollah Khamenei Dead

At least that's what's being reported by Pravda (and we all know how reliable they can be!). And Pravda's source is the Iran opposition party sooo ... Could this really be the end of a figure who has been a cancer on the planet since the Reagan days? (Oh, sorry, one should not speak ill of the dead ... Where are my manners!?)

Around the Web in 80 Minutes (10/1/09)

First, at National Review Online, Victor Davis Hanson gives it to us straight on the current lethal state of international affairs:

October 1, 2009
Three Dangerous Stooges

Last week, three dictators — from Iran, Libya, and Venezuela — delivered lunatic hate-speeches at the General Assembly of the United Nations. Why do these anti-Semitic dictators feel so free to damn America from downtown New York? Why do their abettors spurn our requests for help? And why do creepy regimes plot to get nukes, and fund terrorists? Easy. They do not fear, much less listen to, an indebted and energy-hungry America that either needs their cash or oil — or both.

Next, at American Thinker, Randall Hoven has all you need to know about ObamaCare, but were terrified to ask:

October 01, 2009
Nothing for Everyone

Just about all of us want some kind of health care reform. But different people want different things from that reform. One trouble with crafting legislation that would make some people happy is that it would make other people unhappy. But the proposals put forth so far by Democrats, and supported by President Obama, have the unique gift of satisfying virtually no one. ObamaCare, inasmuch as there is such a thing, is bound to disappoint you, no matter what you'd like to see in health care reform.

Next, David Horowitz at Front Page Mag castigates the mainstream media for being so busy fear-mongering about predicted right-wing violence that they’ve failed to report about all the actual left-wing violence that has been taking place:

Serious Fascists in America

There are serious fascists in America. But they’re on the political Left.

I wrote yesterday about Glenn Beck’s feature on the violent demonstration by leftists in Pittsburgh (which was covered up by the New York Times and the rest of the left-wing media.) He also reported on the bombing of a radio tower in the State of Washington by the Earth Liberation Front — a left-wing terrorist organization — which went equally unreported. Instead we are treated to a rash of hand-wringings by liberals like Tom Friedman who talk about incitements that could lead to the assassination of President Obama.

Pete Wehner has an excellent blog on this hypocrisy, recalling that a film was actually made by leftists portraying the assassination of President Bush among many other incitements against him by leftists with no — absolutely no — complaints by Friedman and the NY Times. In fact the whole Democratic Party leadership accused Bush of lying to get us into a war and killing young Americans in the process.

Also recommended: Peter Wehner’s Commentary post, which is cited in the above article.

Finally, the Weekly Standard has published the eulogy William Kristol delivered for his father last week:

Irving Kristol, 1920-2009
10/05/2009, Volume 015, Issue 03

In 1994, my father wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal titled "Life Without Father." It dealt with the subject of the family and poverty and welfare--with my father drawing for his argument, as he so often did, on a combination of social science, common sense, history, and personal experience. In the course of the article, my father briefly discussed his father, Joseph Kristol--who, he wrote, "was thought by all our relatives and his fellow workers to be wise, and fair, and good. I thought so too."

So have Liz and I always thought about our father. To us, he was wise, and fair, and good. I honestly don't think it ever occurred to us that we could have had a better father. So as we enter the rest of our life--a life without our father--we are overwhelmed not by a sense of loss or grief, though of course we feel both, but by a sense of gratitude: Having Irving Kristol as our dad was our great good fortune.

Have a blessed day!

Obama's Rosh Hashanah Message - I Don't Buy It for One Second

Wanna know why this blog often refers to Barack Obama as “President Golden Calf”? Because not since the book of Exodus have Jews run to tongue-draggingly and heart-swooningly worship a false god.

Want to see a Kool-Aid drinking Jewish Obama-worshiper in action? Last week, the White House released this video of the president issuing a Rosh Hashanah message to American Jews:

Here are some anonymous responses to that video from my Facebook page:

He is a REAL person with a warm and caring heart

I think it was impressive that he took the time out of his busy Presidential schedule to offer his warm wishes to all of us. I like this guy … I find him endearing … I really mean it.

What a beautiful sentiment to bring in the new year. A great way to show how important our day is to the rest of the country. Thank you President Obama.

Nine months into the Obama presidency, these statements reflect the sentiments of virtually every Jewish liberal/Democrat I know.

Yet this is the same guy who has had close years-long relationships with virulent anti-Semites such as Jeremiah Wright (and, by reasonable extension, Louis Farrakhan) to Rashid Khalidi

This is the same guy who just last week at the U.N. legitimized the faux campaign of the Palestinian Authority by condemning the building of Israel settlements in the West Bank and employing politically-biased labels (in favor of Palestinians) like “occupation”.

This is the same guy who has yet to condemn the maniacal leader of Iran who proudly denies the Holocaust is working unimpeded on a nuclear device while promising to wipe Israel off the face of the map.

For a litany of other actions and statements by President Golden Calf w.r.t. the Jewish people, Israel, the Palestinians and Iran, see this post by Shari Hillman at the RJC blog and Barry Rubin at his blog.

Only a Jewish American Kool-Aid drinker can be so unmoved by these disturbing facts.

Incidentally, President Golden Calf wasn’t the only major political figure to voice High Holy Day wishes to Jewish Americans. These High Holy Day wishes were released the other day. Note the mentioning of the anti-Semitic remarks made at the U.N. assembly:

… I would like to offer our best wishes to the Jewish community as they celebrate the High Holy Days. With the celebration of the Jewish New Year this week and the observance of the Day of Atonement next week, we are reminded of the hopeful commitment to renewal and peace exemplified by the Jewish tradition and the Jewish people throughout history.

Yom Kippur, the most solemn and important of the Jewish holy days, is a time of reflection and supplication for forgiveness. The timeless human struggle to promote justice, harmony, and peace is seen here in this process of atonement—in humbly seeking pardon for past wrongs in the hope of a new beginning. It reminds us that if we wish to co-exist globally, we must all strive for forgiveness and tolerance.

A speech was given at the United Nations General Assembly yesterday that was full of hateful anti-Semitic rhetoric. It was a shameful display before a body whose very charter is premised on the need for co-operation and harmony in pursuit of peaceful co-existence between nations. Such talk was especially abhorrent coming as it did during the Jewish High Holidays. The world community must speak with one voice in declaring anti-Semitism and all forms of intolerance and racism utterly unacceptable. There is no place in the community of peace-loving nations for those who traffic in hate or deny the terrible atrocity of the Nazi Holocaust.

In this holy season, we join the Jewish people in the struggle to promote justice, harmony, and peace. May God bless them.

This message comes from the Facebook page of Mrs. Sarah Palin. Boy, is that woman scary!

I have not forwarded Palin’s message to my liberal Jewish friends, who, it’s probably safe to say, are not members of the Sarah Palin Facebook page! Why bother? I know from experience that Palin’s message or Palin herself will just be mocked and smeared.

Now let’s rewind to December 10, 2001. On this date George W. Bush became the first U.S. president to hold a Chanukah menorah lighting at the White House. Here were the inspiring words Bush spoke at that event:

Tonight, for the first time in American history, the Hanukkah menorah will be lit at the White House residence. It’s a symbol that this house may be a temporary home for Laura and me, but it’s the people’s house, and it belongs to people of all faiths.

The magnificent menorah before us was crafted over a century ago in the city of Lvov, which was an important center of Jewish life and culture. The Jews of Lvov fell victim to the horror of the Nazi Holocaust, but their great menorah survived. And as God promised Abraham, the people of Israel still live.

This has been a year of much sadness in the United States, and for our friends in Israel. America and Israel have been through much together. This year we have grieved together. But as we watch the lighting of this second candle of Hanukkah, we’re reminded of the ancient story of Israel’s courage and of the power of faith to make the darkness bright. We can see the heroic spirit of the Macabees lives on in Israel today, and we trust that a better day is coming, when this Festival of Freedom will be celebrated in a world free from terror.

According to a simple Google news search, this event got little media attention, and I certainly don’t recall any of my Obama-worshiping fellow tribespeople commenting on it. From that year on, the White House menorah lighting became an annual event—see here, for example, of footage of 2004, 2006, and 2008.

But Bush’s gesture didn’t go unpunished by the mainstream media. In 2005, the Washington Post published an article called “Mr. Bush’s Misstep on Hanukkah.” The WaPo condemning him for “lock of insensitivity and judgment” for the sin of holding the event on December 6. Chanukah that year didn’t begin until December 25 (does that ring a bell?).

Seriously? This is what constitutes subject matter for a major newspaper? Can you imagine the WaPo having an article like this about Obama (or any Democrat president for that matter)? Of course not.

Actually, Bush apparently couldn’t win with the Right either. In 2004, he was criticized at World Net Daily for scrubbing Jesus out of that year’s White House Christmas celebration.

The 2007 celebration was particularly poignant when Bush hosted the family of beheaded journalist Daniel Pearl for a White House Chanukah:

Yet now Barack Obama, a/k/a President Golden Calf, craps on Pearl’s memory by releasing animals like Pearl’s beheaders from Club G’tmo and by heaping ever more civil rights fought for and defended by Americans!

No speech on a TelePrompter can change that.

They say actions speak louder than words. With Barack Obama, both his words and actions spell nothing but trouble for Jews in America and Israel alike.

And yet the Democrat Kool-Aid continues to flow like Mogen David wine ...

Listen & Learn: Mark Levin on Obama's Evil-Appeasing, America-Trashing U.N. Speech (9/24/09)

These two clips from Levin’s 1st hour yesterday speak for themselves. The first clip starts with Israel Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s statement to the U.N., after which Mark declares—and I quite agree—that it is Netanyahu, not Obama, who is now the true leader of the free world. It is Netanyahu who sounded like Reagan and Thatcher, and Obama who sounded like Neville Chamberlain. It was Netanyahu, not Obama, who stood up to the personifications of evil that now disgrace the halls of the U.N. Mark said it quite well: Obama should have been the one to give the speech that Netanyahu. Because he predictably did not, the world is going to become a much more dangerous place.

In the second clip, Mark read excerpts from his book Liberty and Tyranny describing the Statist’s views toward U.S. foreign policy. How prescient he was: Although the chapter was written two years ago, it fits Obama to a T. Mark then concludes by chastising Obama for throwing the United States under the bus in front of the world’s tyrants and oppressors, of declaring that the U.S. is no more special than any other country, and of (in Mark’s estimation) narcissistically burying himself in the self-anointed role of “global leader,” rather than the president of the country he was elected to represent.

Go get ‘em, Mark!

[Edited for long silences, commercial breaks, and any other moments of extraneous talking]

Download Levin2009-09-24-Pt1_32

Download Levin2009-09-24-Pt2_32

Around the Web in 80 Minutes (9/24/09)

Jennifer Rubin wrote this article at Pajamas Media the day before President Hope&Change threw his own country and our ally Israel under the world bus. But it’s all relevant:

Obama’s Cardinal Errors
Four fundamental mistakes have drained the president's early momentum.

September 22, 2009

As Walter Russell Mead put it:

… It all looked so easy last winter when a cocky administration and a hyperbolic press talked about a new Lincoln and a new FDR in the White House. Nine months later, the president has more irons in the fire than trophies on the wall.

The Democrats are disunited worried about 2010. Abroad, the foreigners don’t seem to be listening: not Netanyahu, not Libya, not Iran — even tiny Honduras blew off Obama’s demand that it reinstate an ousted president. Less than a year into his presidency, his enemies at home and abroad think he’s weak and on the way down.

The president could turn this around by focusing on job creation, ceasing to snarl at critics, adopting a more centrist approach on domestic and foreign policy, and finding some areas of common agreement to pass through Congress (e.g., real education reform). But so long as Obama and his spinners remain convinced the real issue is not enough him or the mean conservatives or racism, there is little chance of that.

Next, at Front Page Mag, Jacob Laksin gives his take on Obama’s U.N. speech:

UN-Inspired
Thursday, September 24, 2009

“I am not naïve,” President Obama insisted yesterday, as he delivered his first speech to the United Nations General Assembly. And, indeed, some components of his remarks—including his call for sterner action to halt Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs—were reasonable enough. But nothing more corroded the seriousness of the president’s appeal for a new era of global security and cooperation than the fact that it was addressed to a body that, whatever the high-minded principles of its founding, has long been an obstacle to both. […]

Obama successfully avoided an embarrassing photo op with Qadaffi, but his enthusiastic support for an organization that welcomes the likes of the Libyan dictator nonetheless spoke volumes. Never mind that the UN has repeatedly failed to prevent human rights abuses. Never mind that it has empowered regimes that kill, torture, and oppress their populations with impunity. Despite this history, Obama still seems to believe that the UN remains a force for good in the world. There’s a word to describe people who hold such astoundingly credulous beliefs. And the president is not going to like it.

Also recommended re: Obama’s U.N. speech: Obama’s Time Warp: The U.S. Is Still the Bad Guy by Michael Barone at Townhall.

For the scholar in you, here’s a piece by economics professor Edmund Phelps on capitalism and morality [h/t Joseph Lawler at American Spectator]:

Economic Justice and the Spirit of Innovation
Edmund Phelps

When the word morality comes up in connection with economics, income distribution and financial stability are usually the issues. Is it moral for rich countries to use such a high proportion of the world’s resources or for investment bankers to earn large bonuses? And is it moral for financial markets to experiment with volatile derivatives that increase the potential for panics?

Across the political spectrum, the voices in the debate presume a homo economicus who is focused on maximizing consumption while taking prudent risks. And these voices presume that the economy in which this maximization takes place is a mechanical sort of system. But real human beings bear little resemblance to this ideal type. Any discussion of economics and morality must begin instead with real human beings who are not only acquisitive and risk averse but also inquisitive and adventurous and who sometimes feel the need to take a plunge, to leap into the unknown. Furthermore, in a healthy economy, each participant has to reckon on a future about which knowledge is imperfect, owing to the ventures being undertaken by the others.

Finally, Sarah Palin was in the news yesterday for a speech she gave in Hong Kong. Oh, you didn’t know about it? Or you knew about it but don’t know any of the content therein? That’s the Obamedia for ya! Here’s a review by Rich Lowry at National Review Online’s “The Corner” blog. If the content of the speech and Palin’s delivery of it was as good as Lowry describes, it’s no wonder the Obamedia isn’t doing much to tout it:

Palin’s Hong Kong Speech
September 24, 2009

The first thing we can say about Sarah Palin’s speech is that it is exactly the kind of address she should be giving. It’s plain-spoken and not exactly ground-breaking, but it’s substantive and the kind of thing that is absolutely essential to adding some heft to her political portfolio. She describes her approach as “common sense conservatism,” and it lives up to its billing, falling firmly within the mainstream of conservative thought. […]

Palin is an authentic, powerful voice of the populist right and in the speech she implicitly connects its call for limited government and sensible fiscal policy with America’s role as a world power. Palin can play a very important role in channeling the inchoate populist anger out there in a responsible direction, which makes it all the more important that she engage on the issues in a serious way and avoid rhetorical over-kill. The speech, judging from what we've seen of it so far, is a big step in the right direction.

How ironic it is that the person who managed to get elected president was at the U.N. trashing his own country while the person who could have been VP was across the globe celebrating it.

Sometimes the world goes topsy-turvy …

President Obama Still No Friend of Israel

Just the other day, I was accused by a liberal/Democrat Jewish Facebook friend that I oppose ObamaCare only because I dislike Barack Obama. After reiterating for the umpteenth time all the things that are dangerously wrong about the bill, I pointed out that only Democrats play that game. Remember Bush’s War on Terror? There was nothing Bush did that was approved of by liberal/Democrats - especially my Jewish liberal friends and relatives. On virtually every level - moral, legal, and political (strategic, decent people can disagree on) - Bush’s war was right. But I contend my lefty friends’ staunch opposition to it was only because they were staunch Bush-haters. They didn’t care that 50 million Iraqis and Afghanis were freed from their tyrannical dictatorial regimes; they hated Bush so they hated his policies.

I will go one step further: The reason my lefty Jewish friends have stood proudly behind Obama's disastrous and unsuccessful pork bill stimulus package; the economy- and prosperity-destroying c(r)ap-and-trade legislation; and now the liberty-squelching and privacy-violating government-run health (s)care bills is only because they love Obama. 

In fact, I believe there is nothing President Golden Calf can do to lose the support of his Jewish American worshipers. Case in point: Israel.

Exactly one month ago the APRPEH blog posted:

“Right now, the Obama Administration is the strongest, if you will, and the greatest adversary that Israel has.” Jay Shapiro Show - 12 July 09 ‘The Real US-Israel Relationship’ - Israel National Radio

Increasingly, it is becoming apparent that the US President, Barack Hussein Obama no longer has any apprehension in hiding the fact that he is not a friend of Israel.

Monday’s meeting with “Top Jewish Organizational Leaders” hand-picked for passivity, (as pointed out in the Leibler article below) further supports the notion that Obama is unashamedly and openly anti-Israel. Obama wants no opposition to his opinion that Yosh is the biggest obstacle to peace and wants support for that position by the lefties who voted for him. The idea that “settlements” are the biggest obstacle to peace also is a surrender to the false notion that Israel was required to withdraw from all of Yosh in any of the previous “negotiations” or treaties. […]

Below, Isi Leibler lays out a compeling case as to why Obama is causing significant damage not only to the US-Israel relationship but to Israel’s security. By accepting arabian propaganda as truth, Obama has turned the tables on America’s role in the world as the bearer of truth. Shameful.

Candidly Speaking: The case against Obama
Jul. 15, 2009 | Isi Leibler , THE JERUSALEM POST

… THIS COLUMN is a response to American Jews devoted to Israel who remain under the charismatic spell of their president and challenged me to demonstrate how his policies are harming Israel.

President Obama’s keynote Cairo address included effusive praise for Islam, highlighted Western shortcomings but omitted mention of global jihad and Islamic fundamentalism. It also legitimized the Arab narrative including its malicious and false historical analogies. By alleging that the State of Israel was a by-product of the Holocaust, the president of the United States denied 3,500 years of Jewish history and the central role of Jerusalem in Judaism. He endorsed the Arafat mantra that Israel had been inflicted upon the Arabs by the Europeans to compensate for the Holocaust, even hinting at equivalence between Jewish and Arab suffering. Obama ignored the rejectionism, ongoing wars and waves of Arab terror directed against the Jewish state since the day of its creation. He also compared the Palestinians to the US civil rights movement. When the president of the world’s greatest superpower provides an imprimatur for such a false narrative it represents a major breakthrough for those seeking to delegitimize Israel. […]

NOT SURPRISINGLY, the Palestinians and Arabs are delighted with Obama’s humiliation of Israel. Saeb Erakat, the chief PA negotiator, proclaimed that the Palestinians need make no concessions because the longer the process extended, the more they would benefit from further unilateral Israeli concessions. Washington Post journalist Jackson Diehl, not renowned as a pro-Israel supporter, observed, “[Obama] revived a long-dormant Palestinian fantasy: that the United States will simply force Israel to make critical concessions whether or not its democratic government agrees, while Arabs passively watch and applaud.” […]

American Jews who voted overwhelmingly to elect Obama should not remain silent. They are entitled to press him to adhere to his commitment and treat the Jewish state in an even-handed manner. Together with other friends of Israel they should discourage their president from offering Israel as a sacrificial lamb on the altar of Arab appeasement. In urging Obama not to abandon Israel, they would also be promoting the US national interest. History cannot point to a single instance in which appeasement of jihadists or tyrants has ever borne fruit.

Even one month after the publication of this article, Israeli opinion of Obama to be embarrassingly low [h/t Yid With Lid]. By now quite a number of my liberal/Democrat Jewish friends have been to Israel and back. I wonder if any of them got a sense from the natives of the effects of their Golden Calf’s Middle East policies. 

If any such friends are reading this, I’d be interesting in hearing your thoughts.

Until at least 2012, this Jewish Republican weeps for Jerusalem.

Obama or Israel? For American Jews, It's No Contest

A lot of my Jewish friends visited or are currently visiting Israel this summer. Not me. I’m staying parked right here. How can I visit a country that has lost the protection and blessing of one of the only nations who supports it? Namely, the U.S. under Barack Obama, the most anti-Semitic president to occupy the White House since Jimmy Carter. 

I’m not saying Israel was a picture of security under Republican presidents; far from it. But let’s just say Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, etc. are much more emboldened to launch something catastrophic against Israel under a Jew-hating president who couldn’t care less about our once-treasured ally than a Republican one who treasured her and loved her people and heritage.

All this said, Mark Gold at Israpundit asks this pertinent question:

Were Jewish Obama Voters Fooled?

Barack Obama won the votes of a large majority of American Jews, despite the strident warnings of a small minority that he was no friend of Israel – and in fact would be a danger to her.

In a recent op-ed in the Jerusalem Post, Jonathan Tobin, executive editor of Commentary magazine, and one of today’s most astute observers of the American Jewish community, stated that “there is no way that he would have won as much as three-quarters of the Jewish vote had not most believed him when he claimed he was a supporter of Israel.”

Obama’s actual position on Israel has become clear as he passes his six-month mark in office, and it certainly seems at variance with Obama the candidate’s assurances of his commitments to Israel and her security.

That might indicate that many of his Jewish voters were taken in. Yet it is hard to fathom how an ostensibly intelligent, engaged community could be so wrong in the face of so many clear warning signs. (To recount just one: Obama’s 20-year membership in the church of the anti-Israel and anti-semitic Reverend Wright, which was also the single largest beneficiary of his charitable giving.)

While Obama’s Republican opponent, John McCain was rarely regarded as an ideal candidate, neither was he ever seriously considered a threat to Israel as was Obama. That leaves two sad, alternative explanations to Obama’s Jewish voters being fooled by his campaign rhetoric.

One possibility is that these voters tend to support the position that Obama’s hard-nosed, strong-arm tactics against Israel, and only Israel, coupled with his soft approach towards America’s and Israel’s enemies, really is in Israel’s interest. But it seems harder to justify that fatuous argument with every passing day.

The one remaining possibility as to how Jews could have voted for Obama if they were not deceived by his campaign rhetoric regarding Israel seems to be the most plausible: While Tobin wrote, “Contrary to the boasts of the left and the fears of the right, most Jewish Democrats still care deeply about Israel,” that appears to be overly optimistic. The record of recent years just does not demonstrate much support for that argument.

The attachment to Israel of many younger American Jews, in particular, is widely acknowledged to be problematic. And among much of the older generation, Jews may say they “care deeply about Israel,” but they don’t actually walk the walk very far to help her.

When I heard rumblings that some Americans were beginning to have “buyer’s remorse” about Obama, I began posing the question to my Jewish acquaintances. I could find no regrets among any of those who voted for him, nor did my Republican-leaning friends find any among their acquaintances. Nobody admitted to being deceived by Obama’s proclamations of support for Israel.

Recall that the obverse was also true: When it was patently clear that President George W. Bush was one of the best friends in that office Israel ever had, most American Jews continued to shun him nonetheless (although he did garner a slightly larger share of the Jewish vote than did the next Republican candidate, McCain). So Bush’s support for Israel did not win him the succor of legions of Jews, just as Obama’s hostility to Israel today is not costing him his overwhelming Jewish backing.

This picture leads reluctantly to the conclusion that most of Obama’s Jewish voters were not fooled by his campaign, but rather that, unfortunately, Israel is just not a major concern or issue to them. And that also explains why we are not seeing from his Jewish supporters the widespread and strong objections to his policies that Jonathan Tobin, and others, are looking for.

I don’t think all American Jews were fooled. Maybe some; not all. The others - who to this day treat Barack Obama like the second coming - knew exactly what they were voting for: An ultra-leftist who believes liberalism trumps all.

Because, as I and others have noted before: For Jewish liberals, liberalism trumps Judaism.

Meaning: Liberalism trumps Jewish moral values. And liberalism certainly trumps the safety and protection of Israel.

And also: Jewish observance.

On a similar note, the Washington Times reported Wednesday: Study: U.S. Jews drift from faith: One-third throroughly secular.

Not that I’m the world’s most observant Jew; You’d find me closer to the bottom of that list than the top. But still, I don’t find this development coincidental in the least.

P.S. Some of you might be thinking: What are you saying, Eric? That one cannot be both an Obama-supporter and a lover of Israel?

That’s a question I can’t (or won’t!) answer for you. Look at the facts on the ground and figure it out for yourself.

I Support Bill Clinton on This One [UPDATED]

Yes, you read that right. I wasn’t a big fan of the 42nd president, his personal behavior, or his policies. In terms of foreign policy, I would consider Clinton’s intentions to be good, but in so many ways he was a failure, e.g., Middle East (Oslo Accord) and especially North Korea. (And Secretary of State Madeline Albright was certainly no help.)

But today the former president is in North Korea again, trying to convince Kim Jong-(mentally) Il to release two detained American reporters, as AP reports:

Clinton was in communist North Korea on a mission to secure the freedom of Americans Euna Lee and Laura Ling, reporters for former Vice President Al Gore’s Current TV media venture who were arrested along the Chinese-North Korean border in March and sentenced in June to 12 years of hard labor for illegal entry and engaging in “hostile acts.”

Former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton criticizes Clinton’s mission as rewarding North Korea’s behavior. From AFP:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is rewarding North Korea for its bad behavior by sending ex-president Bill Clinton to Pyongyang to win the release of two US journalists, the former US ambassador to the UN said Tuesday. […]

“I think this is a very bad signal because it does exactly what we always try and avoid doing with terrorists, or with rogue states in general, and that’s encouraging their bad behavior,” Bolton said.

Han at a blog called Breaking Down Borders: Korea shares my point of view:

While in principle I’ve always been a supporter of John Bolton even when he fell out with the George W. Bush administration when the administration did its sudden U-turn on its North Korean policy, I wouldn’t believe it to be as bad as Bolton makes it out to be (yes, from one angle, it’s a form of appeasement, but to rigidly be against a policy just because of it’s name is a strike against common sense and an exercise in sheer stupidity) and considering how things currently are I think its realistically the most the U.S. can ask for.

Yes, while sending another former U.S. (Democratic) President to North Korea definitely looks bad as the U.S. seems to continually be rewarding North Korea for bad behavior -- bad behavior in the sense that North Korean behavior has led to sanctions on at least two different occasions by the United Nations Security Council, after mostly being championed by the U.S. And, sending a former President after the country allegedly explodes a couple nuclear devices definitely sends the wrong signal if the U.S. is against accepting North Korea as a nuclear state.

But realistically, and and I think this is where George W. Bush’s North Korea policy was such a failure in its first administration, considering what the U.S. can actually do with respect to North Korea this is the best the U.S. can ask for.

Look, I don’t support the reason these reporters were there to begin with, given who they were working for. But I consider Clinton’s mission—at least the way it looks on the surface—honorable enough: Just get the reporters freed, and get the hell outa there. 

Maybe I’m just being too naïve and John Bolton knows something we don’t.

UPDATE: He did it.

Diversity Lane (7/12/09): Coup-Less

The latest from Zack R. at the irascible Diversity Lane: