We've Never Been Islam's Enemy
Is it "new" to acknowledge Muslim interests and show respect to the Muslim world? Obama doesn't just think so, he said so again to millions in his al-Arabiya interview, insisting on the need to "restore" the "same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago."
Astonishing.
In these most recent 20 years -- the alleged winter of our disrespect of the Islamic world -- America did not just respect Muslims, it bled for them. It engaged in five military campaigns, every one of which involved -- and resulted in -- the liberation of a Muslim people: Bosnia, Kosovo, Kuwait, Afghanistan and Iraq.
The two Balkan interventions -- as well as the failed 1992-93 Somalia intervention to feed starving African Muslims (43 Americans were killed) -- were humanitarian exercises of the highest order, there being no significant U.S. strategic interest at stake. In these 20 years, this nation has done more for suffering and oppressed Muslims than any nation, Muslim or non-Muslim, anywhere on Earth.
Why are 'we' apologizing?
... it is both false and deeply injurious to this country to draw a historical line dividing America under Obama from a benighted past when Islam was supposedly disrespected and demonized. [snip]
In these seven years since Sept. 11 -- seven years during which thousands of Muslims rioted all over the world (resulting in the death of more than 100) to avenge a bunch of cartoons -- there's not been a single anti-Muslim riot in the United States to avenge the massacre of 3,000 innocents. On the contrary. In its aftermath, we elected our first Muslim member of Congress and our first president of Muslim parentage.
... to suggest that pre-Obama America was disrespectful or insensitive or uncaring of Muslims, he is engaging not just in fiction but in gratuitous disparagement of the country he is now privileged to lead.
[The kidnapping and cold-blooded execution by Arab terrorists of the U.S. ambassador in Sudan, followed by an Arab oil embargo that sent the United States into a long and punishing recession, followed by Iran's radical Islamic revolution, the seizure of the U.S. Embassy and 14 months of Americans held hostage, then the Marine barracks massacre of 1983, and the innumerable attacks on U.S. embassies and installations around the world leading up to {and let us never forget the dancing in the Arab streets following} 9/11.
Boy, do we have much to apologize for.
More that every American should remember > Highly Recommended > ]
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Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Outreach, Yes. Apology, No.
Number One Without a Bullet
... With each new major utterance by our President, I am overwhelmed by the distorted lens through which he filters our experiences. The world Barack Obama describes is very close to being the exact opposite of reality. With the launching of a nuclear rocket by North Korea and his response in a major address in the Czech Republic, we are again confronted with this inversion of truth.
At this point, our obligation to protest, founded in the intellectual realm, crosses into the grim turf of physical self-defense. Obama, flashing his trademark illogic, has committed our nation to a path toward suicide for us and genocide for humanity. All this because the initial premises diverge from truth, building in an inevitably corrosive warp.
Before a teeming throng of Czechs, he declared that nuclear weapons must be eliminated from the world. This may take a long time, he averred, beyond even his own lifetime. The United States is morally obligated to lead in this effort because -- pay close attention now -- it is the only nation to have actually used such a device in war.
Thus said Barack Obama, the man entrusted by the American People with its highest office... [snip]
In conclusion, it would not be a virtue if we disarmed, even if everyone seemed to join our initiative. On the contrary, it would be an abdication. We would be handing off leadership and replacing it with a perceived partnership; a partnership with too many ill-fitting parts and loose ends.
Turning a cheek is one thing, but turning a back is another matter entirely. Turn your back on your enemies and you turn your back on the world.
[Does any sane adult seriously think we can un-make nukes? To try would only leave those who lie about it masters of the world - it's a fantasy in the real world.]
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In a self-destruct mode?
Mr. Obama demonstrated a dangerous naivete - one that endangers long-term U.S. security interests. His meetings with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao were praised by the fawning press corps. Their warmth and collegiality supposedly marked a clear break from the hated Bush years. Yet Mr. Obama was outmaneuvered by the leaders of America's two great rival powers.
More important, the meeting with Mr. Medvedev produced the illusion of detente between Moscow and Washington. Behind the diplomatic facade and back-slapping, Russia is a fascist petro-state bent on undermining America's international standing. Led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, it seeks to restore the Russian Empire. It has waged wars of aggression in Chechnya and Georgia. It wants to annex Belarus and Ukraine. It has erected an authoritarian kleptocracy that crushes internal dissent. It has forged an axis with China, Iran and Venezuela. In other words, it is not a friend or strategic partner, but our enemy.
Yet the big winner was Red China. Flush with $2 trillion in foreign reserves (much of it in American Treasury notes), Beijing has emerged as an economic giant. It now owns much of our debt. China is a creditor nation; America is a debtor nation. For decades, the Chinese have systematically used their massive trade surpluses to pile up U.S. dollars and invest in critical sectors of the American economy. Their goal: to emerge as Asia's pre-eminent power and eventually replace Washington as the world's leader. Mr. Obama has given Beijing what it has always wanted: equal standing with the United States. He has jettisoned the policy of containment.
Like vultures circling over a rotting carcass, Russia and China sense American weakness. Both have called for a new global currency to replace the U.S. dollar. Their demands reflect not only America's vulnerability, but also Moscow's and Beijing's growing lack of respect.
The G-20 summit was a historic watershed. It marked the end of the American moment; the United States lost its will and desire to remain the world's last hyperpower. The values that propelled its meteoric rise to global hegemony - free markets, limited government, American exceptionalism - were abandoned in a fit of multicultural, narcissistic self-indulgence.
[Highly Recommended > ]
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57% want a military response to North Korea
.
Most Americans think Kim Jong-Il needs a little cruise missile diplomacy.
While leftists scoffed last fall when at Gov. Sarah Palin said some of her constituents can see Russia from their yards — they can — North Korea quietly was building a rocket that can reach Alaska — or Hawaii.
In response, we got a bunch of jaw from President Obama, who wants to replace the Department of Defense with the Department of Eloquence.
“We will immediately consult with our allies in the region, including Japan and the Republic of Korea, and members of the U.N. Security Council to bring this matter before the Council. I urge North Korea to abide fully by the resolutions of the U.N. Security Council and to refrain from further provocative actions,”
Obama said in a written statement.
Rasmussen asked people what they think: 57% say a military response is in order. 15% say kumbaya.
I say if you own land in Alaska or Hawaii, you might want to take out missile insurance. Just in case.
The Rasmussen story is here.
The president’s words are here.
[ Yippee ki-ay ]
U.N. divided over North Korea rocket launch
SEOUL/UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – North Korea fired a long-range rocket on Sunday, provoking international outrage, but a divided U.N. Security Council failed at an emergency meeting to agree on a reaction to Pyongyang's defiant move.
The 15-nation Security Council held a closed-door session in New York on Sunday afternoon but China and Russia had already made clear they would use their veto power to block any resolution imposing new sanctions on Pyongyang.
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Barack Obama, the rabbit in North Korea's headlights, is Jimmy Carter II
"Obama calls for action on North Korea" reported today's headlines - which is much like a chief constable demanding something should be done about crime.
If the President of the United States cannot bring the Pyongyang regime to heel, who does he expect to perform this task?
It appears that, along with the bust of Churchill, Harry S Truman's maxim "The buck stops here" has also been banished from the Oval Office...
[Ah but we're just one of many nations now - nothing special.]
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Return N. Korea to Terror-Sponsor List, Invest in Missile Defense,
With slim chance of a firm U.N. Security Council response to North Korea’s defiant long-range missile launch, U.S. lawmakers are pressing for a determined unilateral U.S. response, including returning Pyongyang to a list of terror-sponsoring states and stepping up investment in missile defense...
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Here Come the Defense Cuts
After a $700B bailout, a $150B "sweetener" to the bailout, a $787B stimulus and another $410B added to the FY 2009 budget (because President Bush was just too stingy), all on top of a $3 trillion original budget, the gang that can only add decided to subtract. Next year's federal budget of about $3.7 trillion just doesn't have room to keep all of today's Defense programs going.
So far, no surprise. President Obama asked for a 10% cut. Barney Frank asked for a 25% cut. The Communist Party USA asked for a 50% cut. And Defense Secretary Robert Gates is starting to deliver...
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FLASHBACK >
Gates plans major changes in defense budget
He also plans to eliminate elements of the missile defense effort...
Military strained by Obama trip
President Obama's European visit this week has strained Air Force heavy-airlift capabilities and obliged the military to hire more foreign contractors to help resupply U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, according to military sources.
The large delegation traveling with the president in Europe required moving several transports, including jumbo C-5s and C-17s, from sorties ferrying supplies to Afghanistan...
[And we're going to reduce military spending.]
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Chavez open to Russian strategic bombers using Venezuelan island
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has proposed to Russia using a Venezuelan island for temporary hosting of Russian long-range aviation, a top-ranking Russian Air Force official said Saturday.
"There is such a proposal on the part of the Venezuelan president. Chavez proposed to us a whole island with an airfield that we can use for temporary basing of strategic bombers,"
said Maj.-Gen. Anatoly Zhikharev, the chief of the long-range aviation staff...
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Chinese Develop Special "Kill Weapon" to Destroy U.S. Aircraft Carriers
After years of conjecture, details have begun to emerge of a "kill weapon" developed by the Chinese to target and destroy U.S. aircraft carriers.
First posted on a Chinese blog viewed as credible by military analysts and then translated by the naval affairs blog Information Dissemination, a recent report provides a description of an anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) that can strike carriers and other U.S. vessels at a range of 2000km.
As analyst Raymond Pritchett notes in a post on the U.S. Naval Institute:
"The Navy's reaction is telling, because it essentially equals a radical change in direction based on information that has created a panic inside the bubble.
For a major military service to panic due to a new weapon system, clearly a mission kill weapon system, either suggests the threat is legitimate or the leadership of the Navy is legitimately unqualified.
There really aren't many gray spaces in evaluating the reaction by the Navy…the data tends to support the legitimacy of the threat."
In recent years, China has been expanding its navy to presumably better exert itself in disputed maritime regions. A recent show of strength in early March led to a confrontation with an unarmed U.S. ship in international waters.
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New NATO Chief apologizes for Mohammed Cartoons
He didn't come out and say "I'm sorry" as Michelle Malkin points out. But he may has well have given the tone of his remarks.
And all at the expense of western values regarding freedom of speech.
And there's the rub. There literally is no western leader now who will stand up and unequivocally defend westerns traditions and values against those whose grievance mongering threatens their very foundation.
Michael van der Galien sums it up:
Rasmussen should have stuck to his guns. He has nothing to apologize nor to ’sympathize’ for. The cartoons were printed by a newspaper, not by his government. It is sad that many felt insulted by them, but it is even sadder that mobs in Indonesia and Arab countries took the streets, boycotted Danish products, and attacked its embassies.
It was not an open, outright apology, but it is hard if not impossible to interpret it differently than a political one.
An apology for a non-offense according to our traditions and values is what should matter. While it is always good to respect the sensibilities of others it is never alright to sacrifice your principles in the face of intimidation.
And that's exactly what Rasmussen did.
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A Seoul Warning
If you think there are no costs to President Obama's opposition to new trade deals, witness the tentative free trade agreement struck Tuesday by South Korea and the European Union. It's expected to be a comprehensive accord that will reduce or eliminate most tariffs on goods and liberalize European investment in Korea's tightly regulated service sector.
There's a warning here for Democrats in Washington, and especially for Mr. Obama.
The Bush Administration signed a trade accord of its own with Seoul in 2007. That pact would have thrown open most of the world's 13th-largest economy to American companies and boosted U.S. GDP by $10 billion to $12 billion. It also would have cemented America's relationship with an important ally.
Yet congressional Democrats have stalled ratification, largely at the behest of their Big Labor backers. Opponents claim, all evidence to the contrary, that the agreement wouldn't do enough to open Korea's car market. Mr. Obama picked up that line during the campaign and now he's running with it in office.
"We'll be prepared to step away from that,"
This week's news is a sign that other countries won't step away from trade...
[Again the average American screwed because of unions' ownership of the Democratic party.]
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US lawmaker: Obama budget makes US worse than Cuba
President Barack Obama's 3.55-trillion-dollar budget plan will leave the United States with a worse budget deficit than Cuba, a leading Republican critic warned Tuesday.
"This creates for us a higher deficit than Cuba's. This is not the kind of position we want to put the United States in,"Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters.
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Huffington Calls Suspension of Mark-to-Market Accounting 'Absolutely Tragic'
Huffington Post editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington appeared on ABC's April 5 "This Week," where she voiced her disapproval of the March 30 decision by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) relaxing mark-to-market accounting rules.
"This week, we saw so many concessions to the banks," Huffington said. "We saw the suspension of mark-to-market, which is absolutely tragic. Japan, by not having mark-to-market, made it much harder for them to recover."
Funny, Brian Wesbury and Robert Stein of First Trust Portfolios recently wrote for Forbes magazine, mark-to-market accounting reinstitution was reinstated only in recent years. The last time it was in effect - during the Great Depression - it caused many bank failures...
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Will Obama's Revolution Deliver Energy Independence?
Steven Chu, the physicist who is President Obama's energy secretary, recently gave a speech in which two key words never passed his lips. He talked about energy efficiency, electricity transmission lines and renewable energy sources. He waxed eloquent about technology and the need to fund energy research. But afterward, Chevron vice chairman Peter Robertson noted disconsolately that
"it would be nice to hear a bit about oil and gas." [snip]
"The clean energy revolution is here now,"
declares Greg Wetstone, senior director for government and public affairs at the American Wind Energy Association.
To carry out this revolution, Obama has appointed a climatologist's dream team of scientists, regulators and political operatives to energy and environment positions. Chu gave up his research to devote himself to seeking technologies that could slow climate change. Environmental Protection Agency head Lisa Jackson is determined to set greenhouse gas regulations. Lisa Heinzerling, principal author of the brief in a key lawsuit against the Bush EPA, is now working as the agency's senior climate policy counsel. And Carol Browner, who served for eight years as head of Bill Clinton's EPA, is back as White House energy and climate czar.
[Which is why the obvious (and only realistic) solution to our foreign oil dependance is being utterly ignored: develop our own oil and gas reserves.]
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Census Bureau: We’ll Work with ‘Community Organizations’
The acting director of the U.S. Census Bureau, Thomas Mesenbourg, told CNSNews.com that the bureau intends to work with community organizations to make sure every illegal alien in the United States is counted in the 2010 Census.
“Our job is to count everyone that resides in the U.S.(Snip) So, certainly that’s our goal to count(Snip) every resident whether they’re documented, undocumented, whether they are citizens or non-citizens.”
The Census is used to apportion the seats in the U.S. House of Representative. There are 435 House seats that are divided among the states in proportion to their population, which is determined by the decennial census. States with more people get more seats in the U.S. House.
This means that a state harboring more illegal aliens can gain more House seats as long as the Census Bureau finds the illegal aliens and counts them.
This also means that the illegal alien population resident in the United States during a census year has the potential to alter the regional and philosophical balance of power in Congress
[I.e., they'll make no effort to distinguish illegals for reapportionment reasons. The assault continues.]
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The Campaign To Bankrupt The Palin Family
From just September till now, Sarah Palin has accumulated a personal dept of over $500,000 in legal fees defending herself against fake/false/frivolous ethics charges. That’s Five Hundred Thousand Dollars.
I must defend against these baseless ethics accusations out of my own pocket as the use of public monies to do so could itself violate state law …
A group of Alaska liberals, with the apparent cooperation of members of the Alaska Democratic Party have been filing ethics charge after ethics charge against Sarah Palin. The aim? Not to get her impeached and booted from office, because every single one of the charges are frivolous, baseless and even fairly deranged - one was even filed in the name of a soap opera character - but something far more personal.
… obviously we cannot afford to personally pay these bills - and really no future governor should feel the sense of financial vulnerability at the hands of those with a political vendetta bent on personal destruction …
These people want to bankrupt the Palins and leave them destitute. They want to empty their bank accounts so that they cannot afford the basics and necessities of life after Governor Palin leaves office.
This is just despicable.
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MSNBC Shuns Democratic Hypocrisy; Highlights GOP
For over two and a half months, MSNBC host David Shuster featured a segment called "Hypocrisy Watch" on his program "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue".
An analysis by the Media Research Center finds that of the 48 "Hypocrisy Watch" segments, 34 went after conservatives or Republicans. Only four attacked liberals or Democrats. (Only two editions could be described as bipartisan. Another wasn't political. The remaining seven segments all hit business and corporate-related targets.)
The daily feature began on January 14 and Shuster asserted on that day, "...We will focus on an organization or person who clearly seems to be doing something that makes the term appropriate."
Liberal hypocrisies, such as President Barack Obama signing a $410 billion spending bill loaded with thousands of earmarks despite decrying them during the campaign, have gone unnoticed.
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Name That Party: Public Drunkenness Edition
The CNN story, Pennsylvania official checks into rehab following arrest, is yet another example. It begins:
Pennsylvania's acting secretary of labor and industry has entered a rehabilitation program for at least two weeks after her arrest on a public drunkenness charge last week.
Just a few hours before her arrest, Sandi Vito backed out of a scheduled interview with a CNN correspondent about the state's controversial use of debit cards to pay unemployment benefits.
Vito, who was appointed acting secretary of labor and industry in February 2008, "has entered a treatment program for two weeks," according to Gov. Ed Rendell's chief spokesman.
The article runs for a dozen paragraphs. Never mentioned is the fact Vito is a Democrat. We know this not just because she's an appointee of Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell, whose party is also not reported, but because Vito has given money to Democratic political campaigns.
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Poll finds nation most polarized in decades under Obama
As President Obama travels across Europe, a new poll out at home shows he's failed so far to forge any kind of bipartisanship and has polarized the country.
"For all of his hopes about bipartisanship, Barack Obama has the most polarized early job approval ratings of any president in the past four decades,"
says the Pew Research Center.
The poll finds that Obama has very high approval from Democrats, 88 percent, and very low approval from Republicans, 27 percent.
The 61-point partisan gap eclipses George W. Bush's 51-point gap in his first year, and that was after the long recount and simmering charges from Democrats that Bush 'stole' the 2000 election..
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Modern American 'Racism'
In modern America, racism means anything you want it to mean. If you want a job you're not be qualified for, or you don't want to work at all but still want to get paid, or if you want to stop someone from doing something, or you want to punish someone for doing something, just scream racism at the top of your lungs until your lawyer gets someone to pay you to shut up.
Here are some practical examples of racism, as practiced by racists, in modern America:
- Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal questions whether to take federal stimulus money because to do so may obligate the state to continue to fund some programs long after the federal money runs out. He's a racist.
- Dallas County Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield says paperwork that keeps getting lost in a county office has disappeared into "a black hole." He's a racist.
- Toddlers who say "yuk" when fed unfamiliar ethnic food. They're racists. (Technically, this was based on a British study, but they speak English, too.)
- An Indiana University student working as a part-time university custodian reads the book Notre Dame vs. the Klan: How the Fighting Irish Defeated the Ku Klux Klan in an employee break room (the book is available in the school's library). He's a racist.
- A man tells a co-worker he wrecked his car after loosing control of it on a patch of "black ice." He's a racist.
- Anyone who suggests a link between Islam and violence is a racist.
- Anyone who suggests stricter border security is a racist.
- And obviously, anyone who didn't vote for Barack Obama is by default a racist.
I'm fed up with it, but perhaps if enough of us are fed up, and together we express our disgust and begin to shout down the race mongers, we can be heard. And if we can be heard, maybe we can engage in an intelligent debate when the subject of race comes up, instead cowering in the corner hoping not to be accused of RACISM.
[Don't subscribe to the 'shouting' part - I think a calm, consistent {every time} but unambiguous rejection is the best counter to this extortionary tactic.
More, Recommended > ]
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Featherweights: Detroit police halt pillow fight
Detroit - Police in Detroit have ruffled some feathers after they cracked down on an organized pillow fight at a downtown park. The Detroit News reports that police at Campus Martius Park prevented the feathery fight Saturday by disarming pillow-toting participants.- police confiscated the 32-year-old man's pillows but returned their cases.
He said he was told that he needed a permit.
[Government. Health care anyone?]
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Our Exceptionalism Comes From Our Constitution
The U.S. Constitution is the rarest of documents and our execution of what it says has separated our country’s history from the rest of the world and made us objectively better. America is not a pile of soil. We aren’t a location. In fact, if we ever move the U.S. to the moon I’ll be the first on the ship and to hell with the Earth. The Global Community has no such miraculous document. It has no self-evident truth as its charter, instead it has global consensus.
Our country is not a peer of the G20. Our country is better than every other country in the world. Not because we’re white or black, or born in this or that hemisphere, or because of our GDP, but because of our values, our charter, our adherence to the Constitution. So the idea that we have just one vote amid twenty countries when we represent almost half of G20’s combined GDP is a foolish play on President Obama’s part.
So it pains me to watch my President stand among the G20 leaders as he works hard to fit in with a bunch of really stupid countries...
[Recommended > ]
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Woman to 911: Help! I'm locked inside my car
A 911 dispatcher had to tell a woman how to unlock her car on Sunday. A woman called Kissimmee police to say she was locked inside her car at the Walgreen's on John Young Parkway near Poinciana.
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