Vocal Minority

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:

Liberal Hypocrisy: Obama Lectures Africa's Leaders About Responsibility, Corruption, and Bad Governance

This Washington Times article nearly knocked me off my seat:

Obama to African leaders: Time for ‘responsibility’
By Stephen Dinan | Saturday, July 11, 2009

L’AQUILA, Italy | President Obama on Friday said African countries cannot blame colonialism for problems caused by corruption and their own bad governance as he embarked on his first trip as president to sub-Saharan Africa.

Mr. Obama also announced that he has secured a commitment from major countries to spend $20 billion on food security aid, or $5 billion more than expected from world leaders meeting in Italy this week. But he said rather than simple assistance, this money will be managed “to help people become self-sufficient, provide for their families and lift their standards of living.”

“We do not view this assistance as an end in itself. We believe that the purpose of aid must be to create the conditions where it’s no longer needed,” he said.

The president flew from Italy to Ghana Friday and is scheduled to deliver a speech to that nation’s parliament Saturday, at which time he is expected to lay out developing nations’ roles and responsibilities, and his strong words on ending excuses are likely to be a theme.

He said he delivered that message in Italy at a meeting of major economies and African countries, when some fellow leaders started blaming “colonialism and other policies by wealthier nations.”

Mr. Obama said he told them the parallel between Kenya and South Korea, which 50 years ago had similar-sized economies. Today South Korea’s economy is nearly $1 trillion, while Kenya’s is about $30 billion.

“If you talk to people on the ground in Africa, certainly in Kenya, they will say that part of the issue here is the institutions aren’t working for ordinary people,” he said.

In an interview with AllAfrica.com, released by the White House earlier this week, Mr. Obama sounded an even tougher note.

“I think part of what’s hampered advancement in Africa is that for many years we’ve made excuses about corruption or poor governance; that this was somehow the consequence of neo-colonialism, or the West has been oppressive, or racism,” Mr. Obama said. “I’m not a believer in excuses.

“The fact is we’re in 2009. The West and the United States has not been responsible for what’s happened to Zimbabwe’s economy over the last 15 or 20 years,” he said. “It hasn’t been responsible for some of the disastrous policies that we’ve seen elsewhere in Africa. And I think that it’s very important for African leadership to take responsibility and be held accountable.”

Still, he said the world has a responsibility to help African people who are suffering, and that the $20 billion in food aid—of which $3.5 billion has been pledged by the U.S.—will help.

He recounted for reporters a story he had told leaders at a meeting earlier Friday in which he said he has family members in Kenya who live in villages where “hunger is real”—though he stressed his family members do not go hungry.

Aid groups praised the $20 billion figure, but some—including the One campaign, co-founded by rock group U2 singer Bono—said pledges don’t matter until the money comes through. Italy, in particular, has been blasted for being recalcitrant in the past.

“The food initiative looks promising, but what will Italy’s contribution be?” said Bob Geldof, another singer involved with One, who said Italy has delivered on only 3 percent of its commitment to African aid since 2005. “Mr. Berlusconi, you owe the poor a billion euros. Where is it, Mr. Three Percent?”

Mr. Obama said 1 billion people worldwide are hungry, and 100 million have dropped into dire poverty because of the world financial collapse.

Well, I don’t know about those last statistics. But still, suffice it to say, there are a lot of people around the world, especially Africa, living in poverty.

First, kudos to Obama for taking to task the many despotic heads-of-state who keep their nations dangerous and destitute for decades on end. Maybe it actually took a black president to say this to the despotic leaders of Africa. So that in and of itself is a good thing. 

Nevertheless, I find it hard not to view Obama as disingenuous. Isn't the president calling the proverbial kettle, um ... black?  Doesn’t he realize that many of these leaders are left-wing central government ideologues, just as he is, and that they have simply implemented the same  left-wing central government policies that Obama is trying to impose at home? 

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying Obama is machete-ing refugees in the streets of America. But let’s be clear here: These leader whom Obama is chastising are his brethren, pure and simple.

Too harsh? Case in point: In Obama’s ancestral homeland of Kenya there sits a corrupt Marxist leader Raila Odinga who not only received public support from Obama, but who himself claims to be Obama’s cousin. Although Odinga took office already two years ago, in 2007, the Obama-worshiping mainstream media here in the U.S. was not interested at all in this story. (They were more interested in infesting Wasilla, Alaska snooping for ginned-up ethics scandals to pin on Sarah Palin.) 

See this January, 2008, post from Pam Geller’s Atlas Shrugged blog for a pretty thorough account of the Obama-Odinga relationship. Of all the myriad links therein you will find only one mainstream media citation (NY Times). A much more recent post (October, 2008) is found here at the Logistics Monster blog.

Will Obama ever recognize thay his own Marxist-socialist ideology and the actions stemming from this mindset have kept most of Africa in a third-world prison? Does he find it the least bit hypocritical that he admonishes the leaders of Africa when in some ways all they are guilty of is running their countries based on the same philosophies of him himself, as well as his much-revered father the self-described Marxist Obama Sr.?

What’s more, Obama has yet to put his own money where his mouth is, himself having a half-brother in Nairobi who languishes in poverty and as recently as this January has had run-ins with the law due to drug possession.

But arguably the most contradictory of Obama’s desire to further African prosperity is his demand that developing countries (which, I imagine, given the location of Obama’s speech, are mostly African) adopt global warming climate change energy policies along with the G-8 countries. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon even raised the stakes by suggesting G-8 countries finance poorer nations to “change their carbon-heavy growth patterns and adapt to the effects of global warming. He said the G-8 must do both if developing countries are to cut their own emissions.”

Don’t these megalomaniacal Marxists realize that climate change is the least of Africa’s worries. Most of the continent is still electricity, clean water systems, and even standard plumbing for bathing and going to the bathroom. Millions of Africans a year die from malaria. Even more die from diarrhea—caused by the injection of dirty drinking water. Even in the U.S. climate change is at the bottom of “concern” polls. One would probably be hard-pressed to even find it on the radar among Africans.

Cited by me before on this blog, this article from AllAfrica.com by Ghanan professor and business consultant Kofi Bentil says all one needs to know about Africa and man-made global warming climate change. By sheer eerie coincidence, it was written exactly two years ago—July 11, 2007—in response to Al Gore’s “Live Earth” concerts, which had taken place a couple weeks prior.

… In Africa, we have much more serious things to worry about than climate change. Indeed, if they achieve their objective the concerts will have done harm to the people of Africa.

Britain’s former Secretary of State for the Environment, David Miliband, recently said that the rest of the world cannot aspire to the UK’s standard of living because: “If the world were to have the same living standards as we have in the UK, then we’d need three planets to support us.” Presumably Mr. Miliband would disagree with Indira Ghandi, who famously said, “Poverty is the greatest polluter.”

Miliband was replaced by Hilary Benn, who as Minister for International Development ran the Department for International Development (DfID). One might have thought that DfID would have supported economic development as a means of escaping from poverty and pollution. But in its Rough Guide to a Better World it advocates “Development by Dung” and claims that “As poor countries develop, it is essential that they do not follow the same failed patterns of energy use.” So it’s dung not diesel for Africa - while India and China soar ahead because they are too big, and nuclear-armed, to stop.

Even if we accept that global warming may have a significant effect on our climate, limiting the use of fossil fuels in Africa would be counterproductive.

Respiratory infections are the leading cause of childhood deaths on my continent, mainly from inhaling the smoke produced by burning wood and dung in our quaint mud huts. Why do we burn these “renewable” but very dirty fuels? Not because we have some desire to save the Earth. No sir! It is because we don’t have access to natural gas or electricity.

The second leading cause of childhood deaths is not malaria or Aids, it is diarrhoea, caused by drinking dirty water. Why is our water dirty? Mainly because we lack cheap, efficient means of pumping and cleaning it. That requires fossil fuels--either directly or to produce electricity.

An underlying cause of many health problems in Africa is malnutrition. This is a consequence both of inefficient farming and poor food distribution. To rectify this situation will mean using cheap and relatively clean fuels, such as gasoline and diesel. (Of course we also need better roads--which can only be built using machines that burn fossil fuels.)

Our already poor and struggling countries are being sucked into a giant movement to save the Earth--with aid money as the carrot and the stick. If we are cajoled into using more expensive “renewable” forms of energy, we will remain uncompetitive and our rates of economic growth will remain low or shrinking.

That would be a tragedy because economic growth has been shown to be the best way to reduce poverty and improve health. Please, Europe and America, spare us! You can cut your own emissions if you want, but don’t tell us what to do. We really have much more serious and urgent threats to deal with. Unfortunately, our beggarly governments are very susceptible to diktats from on high, especially when they are offered aid (which they use to line the coffers of their bank accounts): don’t encourage them! […]

I wonder if Barack Obama will come across Bentil while in Ghana this weekend. And if so, will Obama be convinced that imposing climate change restrictions, which are draconian even for developed nations, will do nothing but consign the developing world to more decades of third-world poverty.

Doubt it.

Quote of the Day (7/10/09) [UPDATED]

"The United States has sometimes fallen short of meeting our responsibilities. Let me be clear, those days are over."

- President Barack Hussein Obama

Aren't you proud we have a president who loves and cherishes his country so much? 

Worst. President. Ever.

UPDATE:

Scenes from a Free Honduras Rally

Well, actually just one scene ... A Facebook friend posted this shot from a Free Honduras rally. Translation for you gringos is underneath.

Translation: "Honduras is an example for the world. We don't have oil or dollars but we have balls."

Right on, right on, right on! Let freedom reign!

Around the Web in 80 Minutes (7/9/09): M. Crowley, P. Ferrara, J. Perazzo

First, my girl Monica responds to Veep Biden’s genius statement about having misread how bad the economy was, leaving us to wonder who’s stupider, the economic-catastrophe-mongers or the American people?

Boy, Do They Think We’re Stupid
By Monica Crowley

On this weekend’s “This Week with George Stephanopolous,” Vice President Joe Biden said: “We misread how bad the economy was.”

He and Obama “misread” how bad the economy was?!

Pardon me, but weren’t they elected on the basis of their self-touted ability to manage the economy back to relative health? Didn’t they slam into Senator John McCain as inept on economic issues, as a man incapable of reading the economy and crafting appropriate policies to bring it back? Didn’t The Bama position himself as the Only One who could fix it? Didn’t he promise to deliver results, such as keeping unemployment to 8% if he were elected and his policies implemented?

And how.

And yet, here we are, at 9.5% unemployment and rising, home foreclosures at record levels and climbing, and multiple industries—including those which have received hundreds of billions of dollars in federal bailout money, from banks to the auto industry—in collapse and/or in bankrupcy.

The trillions of dollars The Bama and his socialist posse have already spent have accomplished absolutely nothing. In fact, all of this government intervention has made things worse.

The Biden says they “misread” how bad the economy was? You “misread” how many calories are in a Snickers bar. You don’t “misread” how bad the economy is, ESPECIALLY when you have spent almost an entire year telling us what a “catastrophe” the economy is, what an epic “crisis” we are in, and how it’s “the worst economic crisis than the Great Depression.”

From all of that apocalyptic rhetoric, it sure SEEMED like Team Bama read the economy just right. Unless, of course, they were trying to sow panic in order to get their massive spending plans through. But they wouldn’t do such a thing, would they??

Now The Biden says all of that over-the-top crisis rhetoric wasn’t ENOUGH. That the economy was WORSE even than that. Which means, of course, they are going to try to spend TRILLIONS MORE on payouts to their Democratic constituencies, disguised as additional “stimulus” spending.

They really think we’re buying this elaborate tap dance of lies and corruption. But then again, if it’s not stopped through our outrage and our own community organizing, then they have every reason to continue thinking it.

Next, Peter Ferrara at the American Spectator argues:

The Bush Doctrine Is Still Working
By Peter Ferrara on 7.8.09

A central theme of President Bush’s administration was to promote democracy in the Middle East. He argued that establishing a full fledged democracy in Iraq in the heart of the Middle East would have transforming effects throughout the Muslim World. Even though the promotion of human rights and democracy had been a central theme of liberal foreign policy for decades, the Left ridiculed Bush’s policy as hopelessly naïve. Even some on the right echoed this criticism.

But recent trends throughout the Middle East show that this policy is now producing a growing, very powerful effect in countering Islamic extremism and terrorism, just as Bush originally envisioned. The most recent example of this is the elections in Lebanon, where the pro-Western coalition in power there was reelected last month with a slightly increased majority over the Islamic extremist Hezbollah coalition, despite Iranian funding estimated in the billions for Hezbollah.

When the pro-Western coalition was first elected in Lebanon in 2005, it soon chased the Syrian army out of the country, ending the occupation started over 20 years ago during the Lebanese civil war. That was a huge victory for America and the West for which Bush received no credit. […]

Absent democracy, the roughly 10% of the public in Middle Eastern, Islamic countries willing to shoot their way into power in the name of Allah seems dominant. Actual elections reveal them to be fringe, extremist groups, greatly diminishing their power in favor of reasonable, secular leaders. As a result, the Bush doctrine of advancing democracy and human rights is now increasingly successful in combating terrorism and Islamic extremism.

Now we are seeing these same results in Iran. Where did the people of Iran get the idea that they were entitled to an honest election? They haven’t had an honest election there in over 50 years. Maybe it comes from watching their Shiite brothers voting in honest, free elections in neighboring Iraq. And maybe it comes as well from watching the same in neighboring Afghanistan, which had formerly been seen as hopelessly backward for centuries.

Iran’s recent sham election fiasco is the biggest victory of all for America and the West, again courtesy of the Bush doctrine of promoting democracy and human rights in the Middle East. All of a sudden, the Islamic theocracy in Iran has been discredited and exposed as illegitimate. Now that the ruling mullahs have had to turn to shooting their own people in the streets to stay in power, it is only a matter of time until their theocracy falls, and the popular will regains power. That result will be enormously beneficial for America, because Iran’s theocratic regime is the central power in the Middle East supporting and spreading Islamic radicalism, terrorism, and continued war against Israel and the West. Once Iran’s theocracy falls, and is replaced by a secular government, peace between Israel and the Palestinians will be possible and increasingly likely over time.

In this environment, the right policy for America would be to do what it can to promote regime change in Iran. Organizing an international gas embargo would greatly undermine the security forces by creating a shortage of fuel for their vehicles, as Iran has minimal refinery capacity and must import virtually all of its refined gasoline. International sanctions and isolation for the theocratic regime would also help. Covert financial and even military aid to the rebels may be desirable as well

But President Obama is committed to the opposite course. He is committed to still negotiating with the mullah dictators to get a deal to stop Iran’s nuclear program. There is zero chance any such negotiations will succeed. The mullahs have already said they are not interested in the materialist incentives of aid and trade packages, or concerned about the materialist harm of sanctions. They are committed to their extremist religious views, which call for wiping Israel off the face of the earth, as they have put it (Holocaust 2.0). President Bush actually carried on diplomatic negotiations with Iran for years regarding its nuclear weapons program through a European coalition and in other forums, and all this did was enable the Iranians to buy time to develop their nuclear weapons.

All Obama’s negotiations will achieve is provide legitimacy to the mullah dictators as the real government of Iran, which will delay their fall for years. This reveals the fundamental weakness of Obama’s foreign policy. It is weak on the traditional liberal theme of democracy and human rights. Obama’s foreign policy is more like Nixon’sRealpolitik in its willingness to negotiate and deal with reigning dictators, from Iran to Russia to China to Venezuela, and around the world.

The Honduras Fiasco

Indeed, while Obama did not want to “meddle” in Iran for fear of offending the mullahs, whom he intends to sweet talk out of their nuclear weapons, he was quick to meddle in Honduras as soon as the people acted to defend their democracy from a rogue president, Manuel Zelaya, allied with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Despite what you have heard from the Democrat party-controlled press, there has been no military coup in Honduras. It is still ruled today by a civilian government, not the military, and free elections are still scheduled for November for a new president and government. […]

Obama’s Nuclear Disarmament

Even worse for America, however, is President Obama’s American nuclear disarmament policy, which he is pursuing this week in Russia through a nuclear deal with the Putin dictatorship. In his foreign policy speech in Prague earlier this year, Obama called for worldwide nuclear disarmament, suggesting that American nuclear weapons are no more acceptable than Iranian nukes, and that the rest of the world would agree to give up its nuclear weapons if America would give up its own. This is an extreme left policy.

North Korea responded soon thereafter with nuclear tests and the firing of new missiles. While Obama responded with bluff and bluster about real consequences, nothing much happened. Meanwhile, Obama’s budget, passed by the Democrat-controlled Congress, substantially cuts funding for missile defense. When Japan suggested North Korea would fire missiles at Hawaii on the Fourth of July, the Obama Administration rushed available missile defense assets to the islands. But the action seemed hollow given Obama’s long range funding plans for missile defense.

Now President Obama has agreed with the Russians to complete a deal that would cut U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals by another third, reducing America’s nuclear warheads down to 1500. It is not clear how we can be sure that Russia will comply with its side of the bargain.

But this arms control initiative reveals how badly Obama’s thinking is frozen deeply in the past, analogously to his unreconstructed Keynesian economic policies from the 1930s. We no longer live in a bipolar world, with America and Russia the only relevant nuclear superpowers. China is now a more powerful threat than Russia with its own nuclear arsenal, and India, Pakistan, North Korea, and soon apparently Iran also pose nuclear dangers. A nuclear deal with Russia alone is not remotely adequate to protect America, even if we could be sure of Russian compliance. Indeed, if we don’t successfully counter North Korea and Iran, and President Obama does not seem to be up to that, nuclear proliferation will spread to Japan, South Korea, and throughout the Middle East. In the face of these threats, cutting our own nuclear arsenal down to 1500 warheads, or even less as Obama ultimately advocates, may leave America vulnerable, particularly to attacks aimed at taking out our nuclear arsenal. Joining that policy with cutting missile defense and halting further development of Reagan’s SDI initiative reflects a blinkered commitment to hopeless left-wing ideology and could not be more reckless and risky for America’s national defense. […]

While Bush’s foreign policy doctrine of promoting democracy and human rights in the Middle East is still working to produce huge victories for America and the West, Obama’s foreign policy doctrine of negotiating deals with the world’s dictators, combined with his flower power nuclear disarmament philosophy, may be the gravest threat America faces today.

Finally, at Front Page Mag’s Newsreal blog, John Perazzo has some critical words for Al Sharpton, who delivered an abominable race-baiting eulogy at Michael Jackson’s funeral yesterday and then continued his bloviating later that evening on Larry King Live:

Al Sharpton: A Lifelong Racist Eulogizes Michael Jackson

The late Michael Jackson, Al Sharpton told CNN’s Larry King last night, “expanded,” on “a cultural level,” the work that “[Martin Luther] King and Jackie Robinson and others had done” to elevate the status of blacks in American society. “Michael made people comfortable with each other,” said Sharpton, asserting that, thanks in part to the pop icon’s influence, Americans at large eventually “grew up to be able to be more comfortable making political and other moves that they may not have made without that cultural comfort.”

Sharpton’s remarks to King were an extension of the eulogy he had delivered earlier yesterday at the L.A. Staples Center, where he proclaimed that Jackson had “broke[n] down the color curtain” and “brought blacks and whites and Asians and Latinos together” – thereby setting the stage for the day when Americans would be “comfortable” enough “to vote for a person of color to be the President of the United States.”

Yes, Al Sharpton chose to turn his eulogy for Michael Jackson into a monologue about race. No surprise there. For Sharpton, everything, however grand or trivial, is ultimately about race.

He is, after all, the same Al Sharpton who, in the late Eighties, knowingly abetted a 15-year-old black girl in falsely charging that a mysterious gang of white racists had abducted and gang-raped her; according to ex-Sharpton aide Perry McKinnon, Sharpton did this specifically for the purpose of cultivating an atmosphere of racial division that could help him advance what he called his “movement.”

Yes, we are talking about the same Al Sharpton who, a few years after that, helped foment some of the ugliest anti-Semitic riots in living memory when he falsely depicted a Brooklyn, New York car accident (which had killed a 7-year old black child) as a racially tinged homicide perpetrated by a Hasidic Jew.

He is the same Al Sharpton who orchestrated a grotesque 1995 boycott against a Jewish-owned clothing shop in Harlem, New York, where a throng of black picketers — under the watchful, approving eye of Sharpton – shrieked, entirely without cause, that a cabal of “greedy Jew bastards” and white “crackers” had been mistreating them. This crusade, too, ended badly, when one of the protesters eventually shot four whites in the clothing shop and then set the building on fire — killing seven people.

And who could forget the skillful manner in which Sharpton has repeatedly turned handsome profits by using threats of racially charged boycotts and negative-publicity campaigns to shake down a host of corporate CEOs eager to avoid controversy.

Indeed, he is the same Al Sharpton who once lavished an audience of students and professors at New Jersey’s Kean College with references to “crackers” and “Greek homos” who, from a historical perspective, were still “in the caves [of Europe] while we [black Africans] was building empires” and developing “philosophy and astrology and mathematics.”

By inviting this vile bigot to speak at yesterday’s memorial service, Michael Jackson’s family demonstrated that for whatever gifts and talents they may possess, good judgment is not among them.

The same can be said of Larry King, who, in tortured syntax, concluded his interview with Sharpton by fawning: “There wasn’t anyone there [at the memorial service] today who could not say that you were anything but brilliant.”

Honduran Dictator Deposed; Now Obama Meddles!

Probably due to celebrity deaths and other events the past couple of days, one story that hasn’t received as much attention is the arresting and deposing of leftist Honduran dictator Manuel Zelaya. Fausta’s Blog, which has an excellent real-time account of the situation in Honduras, reports that:

The Honduran Congress has officially ousted Zelaya “for repeated violations to the Constitution” and has now named the Congress President Roberto Micheletti as president of the country.

Honduras is scheduled to hold a presidential election next November.

The situation, which has apparently been brewing for some time, came to a head on Friday. The Wall Street Journal reported:

Honduran President Manuel Zelaya's push to rewrite the constitution, and pave the way for his potential re-election, has plunged one of Latin America's poorest countries into a potentially violent political crisis.

A day after Mr. Zelaya fired the head of the country's armed forces, hundreds of troops on Thursday deployed around the Congress, presidential palace and airport in Tegucigalpa, the country's capital. It wasn't clear whether the troops were responding to orders from Mr. Zelaya, or Honduras' other civilian and military powers, all of which oppose the president.

The Real Clear World’s blog The Compass pick up the story from there:

Zelaya wants a referendum to be held this Sunday that would allow voters in the upcoming presidential elections in November to also vote on rewriting the constitution. Zelaya's term is scheduled to end in January.

Most recently, rewriting the Constitution is one of the trademarks of Chavista-style regimes like Ecuador and Bolivia, but the maneuver is not limited to them.

There is strong opposition to the referendum:

• When the armed forces refused to distribute the ballots, Zelaya fired the chief of the armed forces, Gen. Romeo Vásquez, and the defense minister, the head of the army and the air force resigned in protest. 
  
• Yesterday the Supreme Court ordered by a 5-0 vote that Vásquez be reinstated. 
  
• Honduras's Supreme Electoral Tribunal ordered authorities to pick up all the ballots and electoral material, which were held by the country's air force. 
  
• The country's Attorney General requested yesterday that Congress oust Zelaya.
  
• The courts have declared the referendum unlawful. Last Tuesday the Congress passed a law preventing the holding of referendums or plebiscites 180 days before or after general elections. Congress has also named a commission to investigate Zelaya.

Now enter Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, who has much stake in Zelaya being reinstated. For Zelaya’s arrest and the ensuing street riots, Chavez blames … America, particularly “The North American Empire,” “the rich,” and “the extreme right.” My God, isn’t it amazing how much Chavez and U.S. Democrats sound exactly the same???

To which The Compass blogger Paul Talley responds:

Yeah, that’s it. With chaos in Iran, American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, a nuclear North Korea, and a faltering economy, US interests include destabilizing a poor Central American country for military and political purposes.

Not to worry, Dear Leader. Comerade Obama is on your side. That’s right. When a leftist despot in the image of Hugo Chavez is (ostensibly lawfully) deposed by his country’s Supreme Court, now Obama meddles! Mainstream media sources have reported that in the days leading to, and since, the arrest of Zelaya, Obama has been reaching out directly to the deposed dictator:

US has talked with deposed Honduran leader
By CALVIN WOODWARD
The Associated Press
Sunday, June 28, 2009; 7:25 PM

WASHINGTON—U.S. diplomats are working to ensure the safety of deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya and his family as they press for restoration of constitutional law and his presidency.

President Barack Obama called Sunday for “all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter” as the Central American crisis unfolded.

For those conditions to be met, Zelaya must be returned to power, U.S. officials said.

Knowing trouble was brewing in Honduras over several weeks, the Obama administration warned power players there, including the armed forces, that the United States and other nations in the Americas would not support or abide a coup, officials said. They said Honduran military leaders stopped taking their calls.

It gets better. WSJ reports that Obama actually worked to prevent Zelaya’s ouster! Talk about meddling!

June 28, 2009
Obama Worked To Prevent Ouster of Honduras President
By Jay Solomon, Of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

The Obama administration worked in recent days to prevent President Manuel Zelaya’s ouster, said a senior U.S. official. The State Department, in particular, communicated to Honduran officials on the ground that President Barack Obama wouldn’t support any nondemocratic transfer of power in the Central American country.

“We had some indication that a move against Mr. Zelaya was afoot,” said a U.S. official briefed on the diplomacy. “We made it clear it was something we didn’t support.”

WSJ informs us that even Hillary “Wait and See” Clinton also made a statement:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton joined Obama Sunday in criticizing the Honduran coup and calling for the restoration of the democratic process.

“We call on all parties in Honduras to respect the constitutional order and the rule of law, to reaffirm their democratic vocation, and to commit themselves to resolve political disputes peacefully and through dialogue,” Clinton said in a statement.

So at least we know that Obama has no problem meddling into the events of foreign nations. It just has to be the right events—ones that affect him and his other comrades. Surely, someone like Barack Obama also nervous any time an out-of-control leftist dictator is ousted from the presidency—especially for repeated violations of the Constitution!