Connecting the Dots

Thomas Sowell writes:

Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, Moammar Qaddafi, and Vladimir Putin have all praised Barack Obama. When enemies of freedom and democracy praise your president, what are you to think? When you add to this Barack Obama’s many previous years of
associations and alliances with people who hate America — Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Father Pfleger, and so on — at what point do you stop denying the obvious and start to connect the dots?

Obama as War President

James Lewis at American Thinker:

The gangster regimes of the world are on the march, and they've got our number. They know how to squeeze more civilized nations. Our weakness is cowardice, and that goes double or triple in the face of nuclear weapons. That's why all the rogues are trying to get nukes as fast as they can. They know it's the perfect blackmail weapon, and it makes them invulnerable to attack.

That is also why President Obama's public rejection of General McChrystal's advice on Afghanistan affects your personal safety and mine. Gen. McChrystal wants more troops. Obama doesn't want to send them because he needs the money to promote his socialist take-over of America. You can't have both. Look at Europe, where the military have become pathetic social welfare programs. All the air is sucked out by bigger and bigger victim programs.

Obama must be realizing by now that the chance of a major war in the Gulf next year is rising to 100 percent. Ahmadinejad will have nuclear weapons too, and he already has enough radioactive materials for a dirty nuke, a low-tech weapon that can spread terror everywhere in the world. The Left always puts the burden of proof for WMDs on America, which can never prove their existence because the CIA rarely can penetrate totalitarian regimes. You can't prove a negative. Ever. So the Left is always asking the impossible. It makes them sound reasonable when they are just sabotaging common sense.

Read the rest of “Lose Afghanistan, Lose Pakistan, Lose Iran, Lose It All”.

The 'Dream' of Disarmament: Dormez-Vous?, Dormez-Vous?

It’s being reported that neither Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown, nor France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy, were very pleased with the Greatest Foreign Policy Genius in American History after his performance in Pittsburgh the other day.

The Wall Street Journal says that both leaders “were quietly seething on stage, annoyed by America’s handling of the announcement” about Iran’s second clandestine nuclear facility. Both France and Britain wanted to make the announcement at the UN a day earlier, when it would have had much greater effect, and been more logical, as the Security Council Obama was chairing was “devoted to nonproliferation.”

Why the wait? While Sarkozy was pushing for the announcement while still at the UN, the “Administration told the French that it didn’t want to ‘spoil the image of success’ for Mr. Obama’s debut at the U.N. and his homily calling for a world without nuclear weapons, according to the Paris daily Le Monde.”

The upshot?

“We thought we'd never see the day when the President of France shows more resolve than America’s Commander in Chief for confronting one of the gravest challenges to global security. But here we are.”

Here we are indeed.

Read the entire article here.

Copenhagen Meets Chicago's Little Merman

As has been reported, President Barack Obama is traveling to Denmark this week to arrange for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Chicago. Obama is best suited for this mission because he best represents his “adopted” hometown of Chicago. Even moreso because he represents the Olympian gods whom the games were originally intended to amuse, and from several of whom he is most likely descended.

In honor of the president’s mission his chief political adviser, David Axelrod, revised Danny Kaye’s version of, “I’m Hans Christian Andersen” from the 1950s film for the president to sing as he descends from Air Force One.

“I’m Barack Hussein Obama”

(Jauntily, to the melody of Frank Loesser's “I’m Hans Christian Andersen”.

1.
I'm Barack Hussein Obama

I've many a dream to sell

And though my plans are in a ditch

I'd say I sell them rather well

First I'll fix health care, then I'll tame Iran

When I have a moment free

When I'm not otherwise preoccupied
As Chicago's guy, with an ACORN lie

Or a skip across the sea!

I'm Barack Hussein Obama,

Obama, that's me!

2.
I'm Barack Hussein Obama,

My tongue's like a babbling brook

Gushing forth ideas radical

Taken straight from Alinsky's book

I depend on all you simple fools
To recall just a phrase or two

Not to throw a fit, just to take the bit

Not to realize while you're hearing it

All we've got in store for you!

I'm Barack Hussein Obama,

Obama, that's who!

3.
They really love me at the Times

They more than get the hint

The Van Jones mess, ACORN's distress

Not a word there fit to print!

What's 'round and 'round the Net, you see

Will never bother me,

Not when NBC can't stop hailing me,

which is merely to remind myself

I'm Barack Hussein Obama,

Obama, that's me!

A Refreshing Break for the Truth

You may not have heard it reported but Obama was not the only one called a liar last night. Sarah Palin was, as well, and, unlike Obama, who was the one who was calling her that, she didn't have it said to her face.

She posted on her Facebook page right after the president's speech:

After all the rhetoric is put aside, one principle ran through President Obama’s speech tonight: that increased government involvement in health care can solve its problems.

Many Americans fundamentally disagree with this idea. We know from long experience that the creation of a massive new bureaucracy will not provide us with “more stability and security,” but just the opposite. It's hard to believe the President when he says that this time he and his team of bureaucrats have finally figured out how to do things right if only we’ll take them at their word.

Our objections to the Democrats’ health care proposals are not mere “bickering” or “games.” They are not an attempt to “score short term political points.” And it’s hard to listen to the President lecture us not to use “scare tactics” when in the next breath he says that “more will die” if his proposals do not pass.

In his speech the President directly responded to concerns I’ve raised about unelected bureaucrats being given power to make decisions affecting life or death health care matters. He called these concerns “bogus,” “irresponsible,” and “a lie” — so much for civility. After all the name-calling, though, what he did not do is respond to the arguments we’ve made, arguments even some of his own supporters have agreed have merit.

In fact, after promising to “make sure that no government bureaucrat .... gets between you and the health care you need,” the President repeated his call for an Independent Medicare Advisory Council — an unelected, largely unaccountable group of bureaucrats charged with containing Medicare costs. He did not disavow his own statement that such a group, working outside of “normal political channels,” should guide decisions regarding that “huge driver of cost ... the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives....” He did not disavow the statements of his health care advisor, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, and continuing to pay his salary with taxpayer dollars proves a commitment to his beliefs. The President can keep making unsupported assertions, but until he directly responds to the arguments I’ve made, I’m going to call him out too.

Say It Again, Joe!

The AP, fresh from reciting its “I Pledge” promise to Obama to use its position to protect the president, is helpfully reporting that Joe Wilson’s outburst at Obama’s speech last night overshadows the president’s weak showing.

It is meant to be a diversion from the issue of the public option covering immigrants, which it almost certainlt is going to do.

It won’t work.

Only 10 days ago the AP was celebrating the release of the Iraqi who threw his shoes at George W. Bush. “Muntadhar al-Zeidi's act during Bush's last visit to Iraq as president turned the 30-year-old reporter into a folk hero across the Arab world amid anger over the 2003 invasion.”

Vocal outbursts during sessions of a deliberative body are not that shocking. At worst it was a breach of decorum, but compared to standards lowered by Democrats and liberal activists in recent years, it is really rather tame. All of us lived through eight years of former President Bush being accused by Congressional Democrats of being a liar, a Nazi, a racist, a murderer, and worse, Cindy Sheehan being hailed for her obnoxious behavior, and Bush being openly booed and hissed by Democrats during a State of the Union speech.

I applaud Wilson for, literally, standing up and calling out the president when he deserved to be called out. I also applaud him for apologizing for incivility, while reiterating his disagreement with Obama’s statement.

No One Should Be Surpised About Jones

Andrew McCarthy has written today on NRO’s The Corner:

For anyone with common sense and a willingness to look at what we were allowed to learn about Obama's background and associations, nothing about Van Jones is the least bit surprising. Nothing about Obama's penchant for government by radical, unaccountable czars is the least bit surprising. What is surprising is that smart people continue to treat these developments as if they were abberations that somehow happen independent of Obama, as if the president just needs to do a better job of vetting staffers. The selection of Van Jones is who Obama is and what he is about. Bad things are not happening to our president; our president is doing bad things — as we should have known he would.

Billy Graham, Meet Ashton Kutcher

I started out thinking that the Demi-Moore directed video, “I Pledge,” was part of a presidential push to recruit America’s public school children into Obamajugend.



The first appearance of this video in a Utah schoolhouse only days before Obama’s presidential address to America’s Youth, and at the very moment when Department of Education-created lesson plans about how students can help the president were hotlined to prinicipals, seemed like just too much of a coincidence.

And it still seems reasonable to me that fertile brains in Obama’s support staff opportunistically deployed the video at this time as part of Obama’s initiative to get America’s kids on his side.

But the video wasn’t created at the administration’s direction. It was originally produced by Ashton and Demi as their inaugural gift for Obama, a declaration of their intention to help the One transform reality.

During the presidential inauguration, actors/human/animal right activists Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore stepped up with a staggering group of other well-known [sic] entertainment A-listers and went on the record for very personal “I Pledge” declarations on how they’ll make the world better in 2009 and beyond. The video, directed by Moore was presented to President Obama during the festivities. One outspoken pledge was by Moore who stated that she and Kutcher were determined to help free 1,000,000 people currently in slavery, within five years.

A less outspoken Jason Bateman didn’t go that far, pledging only that he would limit his toilet-flushing strictly to when he poops. Mainly, the staggering group of A-listers take turns flexing their self-esteem and telling the camera what they pledge: to smile more, to get to know their neighbors, to stop buying bottled water, to buy a hybrid. One guy who’d never heard of Medicare pledged to fight for health care for seniors.

But it’s not the individual pledges that matter. What matters is when Ashton and Demi pledge themselves to be a “servant to our president, and to all mankind.”

Depending on the broadness of your theology, that may be a distinction without a difference.

For an audience of grade-school kids, the overall commercial message of this video is, “we’re really cool, and you can be cool too by pledging to Obama.” And it’s a lot easier to join a club that doesn’t demand too much, a selling-point common to all liberal religions. (“Our only creed is, Just be yourself--only more smug!”). The variety and banality of these A-lister pledges won’t freak some kid out that he’s being asked to pledge celibacy or to serve his country in uniform. “Pledge allegiance to the funk? Yes I can!”

Not that I demean Ashton’s and Demi’s horror at white slavery--(the totally unPC name by which it was once known) as banal. The sex trade is real, and awful. George W. Bush was condemning it, the first U.S. president to do so, as a “humanitarian crisis” and a “special evil”, and all without benefit of Hollywood support. (As far back as 2006, Bush opponent Nicholas Kristof wrote that on this “crucial issue, Mr. Bush is leaving a legacy that he and America can be proud of.”).

But “I Pledge” isn’t really a rallying cry against white slavery--that’s just Ashton’s and Demi’s thing. The video is an invitation to youngsters, who are impressionable when their instincts for idealism and service are just beginning to awaken, to lend those unformed instincts to the service of a particular person, namely one President Barack Hussein Obama. Had an NFL player at a Bible camp given a similar message, it would end with an invitation to give your heart to Jesus.

Most Obama supporters detest that sort of evangelism, but, in fairness, at least Jesus has two-millenium of witnesses testifying that He is God, a good portion of them martyrs and saints. The testimony for Obama’s godhood goes back barely two years, and includes Oprah Winfrey and Chris Matthews.

Maybe critics of Obama’s decision to speak to public school kids, and have pupils inscripturate his wiser sayings, shouldn’t be complaining that it’s an attempt to indoctrinate children. Maybe they should be complaining that it’s an attempt to establish a religion.

'London Mayor Recommends Ramadan Fast for All'

From the Israel National News:


The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has recommended that non-Muslims take the opportunity of the month of Ramadan to fast, along with their Muslim neighbors, in order to promote "understanding between cultures."

Johnson told members of a London mosque that with Muslims so much a part of London life, it would be befitting for non-Muslims to get to know their fellow Londoners' customs and religion better.

"Whether it's in theater, comedy, sports, music or politics, Muslims are challenging the traditional stereotypes and showing that they are, and want to be, a part of the mainstream community," Johnson said. ''That's why I urge people, particularly during Ramadan, to find out more about Islam, increase your understanding and learning, even fast for a day with your Muslim neighbor and break your fast at the local mosque. I would be very surprised if you didn't find that you share more in common than you thought," he said.

'Muslims are at the heart of every aspect of society," he added. "Their contribution is something that all Londoners benefit from. Muslim police officers, doctors, scientists and teachers are an essential part of the fabric of London." There are currently 1.6 million Muslims in Britain, most of whom fast during Ramadan, Muslim community officials told reporters.

Not all Londoners embraced the idea. A local English Democrat leader, Steve Uncles, blasted Johnson's comments, saying that "the indigenous culture of this country is based on Christianity and Paganism. Of course, as an open and tolerant society, if people want to practice other religions, then good luck to them. But the state should not be funding them because otherwise we will lose our culture."

Although perhaps the most original, Johnson's is far from the only effort by Western politicians to honor Ramadan and Muslims. Last week, U.S. President Barack Obama hosted a Ramadan break the fast meal at the White House. "Islam, as we know, is part of America," Obama said during the dinner. "Together we have a responsibility to foster engagement grounded in mutual interest and mutual respect."

A report Saturday said that Egyptian police had arrested 155 people in the southern city of Aswan for not fasting during Ramadan. According to local reports, police have targeted people seen eating or drinking anything during daylight hours. According to one local official, the police campaign is evidence of an increased Muslim fervor among police, while another official said that the local government was trying to appease Islamists, who have increased in popularity in recent months.

There was no word on whether London Mayor Johnson was planning to suggest that Muslims and Christians fast on Yom Kippur in order to better understand their Jewish neighbors.

America Calls Retreat

Steven Emerson gave a chilling interview to Bill Bennett this past week about the unraveling of eight years of the American war against radical Islamic jihad.

You can listen to it here.

'Revenge of the Shoe Bomber'

From the Thursday Wall Street Journal:

Revenge of the ‘Shoe Bomber’
The terrorist sues to resume his jihad from prison. The Obama administration caves in.

By DEBRA BURLINGAME

Last May at the National Archives, President Barack Obama warned that “more mistakes would occur” if Congress continued to politicize terrorist detention policy and the closure of Guantanamo Bay. “[I]f we refuse to deal with those issues today,” he predicted, “then I guarantee you, they will be an albatross around our efforts to combat terrorism in the future.”

On June 17, at the Administrative Maximum (ADX) penitentiary in Florence, Colo., one of those albatrosses, inmate number 24079-038, began his day with a whole new range of possibilities. Eight days earlier, the U.S. Attorney’s office in Denver filed notice in federal court that the Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) which applied to that prisoner—Richard C. Reid, a.k.a. the “Shoe Bomber”—were being allowed to expire. SAMs are security directives, renewable yearly, issued by the attorney general when “there is a substantial risk that a prisoner’s communications, correspondence or contacts with persons could result in death or serious bodily injury” to others.

Reid was arrested in 2001 for attempting to blow up American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami with 197 passengers and crew on board. Why had Attorney General Eric Holder decided not to renew his security measures, kept in place since 2002?

According to court documents filed in a 2007 civil lawsuit against the government, Reid claimed that SAMs violated his First Amendment right of free speech and free exercise of religion. In a hand-written complaint, he asserted that he was being illegally prevented from performing daily “group prayers in a manner prescribed by my religion.” Yet the list of Reid’s potential fellow congregants at ADX Florence reads like a Who’s Who of al Qaeda’s most dangerous members: Ramzi Yousef and his three co-conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; 9/11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui; “Millennium bomber” Ahmed Ressam; “Dirty bomber” Jose Padilla; Wadih el-Hage, Osama Bin Laden’s personal secretary, convicted in the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombing that killed 247 people.

In December 2008, the Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss Reid’s lawsuit. It cited the example of ADX inmate Ahmed Ajaj as an illustration of “the dangers inherent in permitting a group of inmates, of like mind in their opposition to the United States, to congregate for a prayer service conducted in a language not understood by most correctional officers.”

While imprisoned for passport fraud in 1992, Ajaj assisted in the plans to destroy the World Trade Center on Feb. 26, 1993, making phone calls to Ramzi Yousef and speaking in code to elude law enforcement monitoring. Ajaj tried to get his “training kit” to Yousef, which included videotapes and notes he had taken on bomb-making while attending a terrorist camp on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Reid’s own SAMs on correspondence had been tightened in 2006 after the shocking discovery that three of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers at ADX, not subject to security directives, had sent 90 letters to overseas terrorist networks, including those associated with the Madrid train bombing. The letters, exhorting jihad and praising Osama bin Laden as “my hero of this generation,” were printed in Arabic newspapers and brandished like trophies to recruit new members.

When setting restrictions on inmate religious practice, the Bureau of Prisons need only meet a reasonableness standard, a very low bar in the case of Muslim terrorists. Justice would easily have prevailed against Reid’s lawsuit; nevertheless it dropped the security measures on Reid after he missed 58 meals in a hunger strike that required medical intervention and forced feeding in April.

On July 6, Justice Department lawyers informed the court that Reid will be given a “new placement” in a “post-SAMs setting.” Whether that entails stepped down security in a different unit or transfer to a less secure facility, the Bureau of Prisons won’t say, and Justice refuses to comment.

Mr. Obama likes to observe that “no one has escaped from supermax,” but if Reid is moved from ADX Florence, he will be the first convicted terrorist to use the First Amendment to sue his way out.

What drove the Obama administration’s decision to cave in to Reid’s demands? The president after all has repeatedly pitched supermax and the federal prison system as a secure alternative to Guantanamo, citing the fact that it handles “all manner of violent and dangerous criminals.” Yet the last thing he needs, as his administration engages in its hasty effort to shut Gitmo down by a fast-approaching deadline, is for lawyers and human-rights activists to use a hunger-striking, near-death prisoner to launch a propaganda campaign fashioned right out of the Gitmo detainees’ playbook. Lawyers who shamelessly compared Gitmo to Nazi concentration camps would think nothing of casting supermax as the next “symbol of America’s shame” and a “rallying cry for our enemies.”

From the outset of his administration, Mr. Obama has been trying to thread the needle between national security policy and his ideological affinity with civil liberties lawyers and human-rights activists, meeting with and consulting them prior to making detainee-related decisions. Though his executive order shutting Guantanamo closely followed the blueprint provided by Human Rights First, leaders of key organizations were stunned when he revealed in an awkward, off-the-record meeting the day before his public announcement at the National Archives that he planned to continue President George W. Bush’s policy of preventive detention.

Michael Ratner, whose human rights organization, the Center for Constitutional Rights, filed the first successful detainee lawsuit in 2002, called Mr. Obama’s proposed U.S. detention scheme a “road to perdition” and nothing more than a plan to “repackage Guantanamo.” Leaders of the so-called Gitmo bar appear poised to launch a flurry of legal challenges the moment the last departing detainee’s feet touch U.S. soil.

In January, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Colorado issued a statement saying that conditions at supermax are “simply another form of torture” worse than Gitmo which “make a mockery of ‘innocent until proven guilty.’” Last month, the ACLU filed a civil lawsuit mirroring Reid’s religious rights claim on behalf of two terrorism inmates held at the Communications Management Unit inside a medium security prison in Terre Haute, Ind.

One of those inmates is Enaam Arnaout, a Syrian-born U.S. citizen serving a 10-year sentence for diverting Muslim charity money to militant Islamic groups in Bosnia and Chechnya. The other, Randall Royer, is serving 20 years for his role recruiting young Muslims in the “Virginia Jihad Network,” a group that used paintball games in 2000-2001 to train for holy war.

Mr. Obama has repeatedly suggested that the security challenge of bringing more than 100 trained and dangerous terrorists onto U.S. soil can be solved by simply installing them in an impenetrable fortress. This view is either disingenuous or naïve. The militant Islamists at Guantanamo too dangerous to release believe that their resistance behind the wire is a continuation of holy war. There is every reason to believe they will continue their jihad once they have been transported to U.S. soil where certain federal judges have signaled a willingness to confer upon them even more rights.

The position of civil rights activists with regard to these prisoners is plain. “If they cannot be convicted,” says ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer, “then you release them.”

Meanwhile, in order to appease political constituencies both here and abroad, the Obama administration is moving full steam ahead, operating on the false premise that giving more civil liberties to religious fanatics bent on destroying Western civilization will make a difference in the Muslim world. In a letter sent to his father as he began his hunger strike, Reid provided a preview of how he will exercise his newly enlarged free speech rights, calling Mr. Obama a “hypocrite” who is “no better than George Bush.” His lawsuit remains active while the Department of Justice works out a settlement that satisfies the man who declared, “I am at war with America.”

Ms. Burlingame, a former attorney and a director of the National September 11 Memorial Foundation, is the sister of Charles F. “Chic” Burlingame III, the pilot of American Airlines Flight 77, which was crashed into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.

'(Let's) Free the Irbil Five!'

Obama Frees Iranian Terror Masters
The release of the Irbil Five is a continuation of a shameful policy.

By Andrew C. McCarthy

There are a few things you need to know about President Obama’s shameful release on Thursday of the “Irbil Five” — Quds Force commanders from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) who were coordinating terrorist attacks in Iraq that have killed hundreds — yes, hundreds — of American soldiers and Marines.

First, of the 4,322 Americans killed in combat in Iraq since 2003, 10 percent of them (i.e., more than 400) have been murdered by a single type of weapon alone, a weapon that is supplied by Iran for the singular purpose of murdering Americans. As Steve Schippert explains at NRO’s military blog, the Tank, the weapon is “the EFP (Explosively Formed Penetrator), designed by Iran’s IRGC specifically to penetrate the armor of the M1 Abrams main battle tank and, consequently, everything else deployed in the field.” Understand: This does not mean Iran has killed only 400 Americans in Iraq. The number killed and wounded at the mullahs’ direction is far higher than that — likely multiples of that — when factoring in the IRGC’s other tactics, such as the mustering of Hezbollah-style Shiite terror cells.

Second, President Bush and our armed forces steadfastly refused demands by Iran and Iraq’s Maliki government for the release of the Irbil Five because Iran was continuing to coordinate terrorist operations against American forces in Iraq (and to aid Taliban operations against American forces in Afghanistan). Freeing the Quds operatives obviously would return the most effective, dedicated terrorist trainers to their grisly business.

Third, Obama’s decision to release the five terror-masters comes while the Iranian regime (a) is still conducting operations against Americans in Iraq, even as we are in the process of withdrawing, and (b) is clearly working to replicate its Lebanon model in Iraq: establishing a Shiite terror network, loyal to Iran, as added pressure on the pliant Maliki to understand who is boss once the Americans leave. As the New York Times reports, Gen. Ray Odierno, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, put it this way less than two weeks ago:

Iran is still supporting, funding, training surrogates who operate inside of Iraq — flat out. . . . They have not stopped. And I don’t think they will stop. I think they will continue to do that because they are also concerned, in my opinion, [about] where Iraq is headed. They want to try to gain influence here, and they will continue to do that. I think many of the attacks in Baghdad are from individuals that have been, in fact, funded or trained by the Iranians.

Fourth, President Obama’s release of the Quds terrorists is a natural continuation of his administration’s stunningly irresponsible policy of bartering terrorist prisoners for hostages. As I detailed here on June 24, Obama has already released a leader of the Iran-backed Asaib al-Haq terror network in Iraq, a jihadist who is among those responsible for the 2007 murders of five American troops in Karbala. While the release was ludicrously portrayed as an effort to further “Iraqi reconciliation” (as if that would be a valid reason to spring a terrorist who had killed Americans), it was in actuality a naïve attempt to secure the reciprocal release of five British hostages — and a predictably disastrous one: The terror network released only the corpses of two of the hostages, threatening to kill the remaining three (and who knows whether they still are alive?) unless other terror leaders were released.

Michael Ledeen has reported that the release of the Irbil Five is part of the price Iran has demanded for its release in May of the freelance journalist Roxana Saberi. Again, that’s only part of the price: Iran also has demanded the release of hundreds of its other terror facilitators in our custody. Expect to see Obama accommodate this demand, too, in the weeks ahead.

Finally, when it comes to Iran, it has become increasingly apparent that President Obama wants the mullahs to win. What you need to know is that Barack Obama is a wolf in “pragmatist” clothing: Beneath the easy smile and above-it-all manner — the “neutral” doing his best to weigh competing claims — is a radical leftist wedded to a Manichean vision that depicts American imperialism as the primary evil in the world.

You may not have wanted to addle your brain over his tutelage in Hawaii by the Communist Frank Marshall Davis, nor his tracing of Davis’s career steps to Chicago, where he seamlessly eased into the orbit of Arafat apologist Rashid Khalidi, anti-American terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, and Maoist “educator” Michael Klonsky — all while imbibing 20 years’ worth of Jeremiah Wright’s Marxist “black liberation theology.” But this neo-Communist well from which Obama drew holds that the world order is a maze of injustice, racism, and repression. Its unified theory for navigating the maze is: “United States = culprit.” Its default position is that tyrants are preferable as long as they are anti-American, and that while terrorist methods may be regrettable, their root cause is always American provocation — that is, the terrorists have a point.

In Iran, it is no longer enough for a rickety regime, whose anti-American vitriol is its only vital sign, to rig the “democratic” process. This time, blatant electoral fraud was also required to mulct victory for the mullahs’ candidate. The chicanery ignited a popular revolt. But the brutal regime guessed right: The new American president would be supportive. So sympathetic is Obama to the mullahs’ grievances — so hostile to what he, like the regime, sees as America’s arrogant militarism — that he could be depended on to go as far as politics allowed to help the regime ride out the storm.

And so he has. Right now, politics will allow quite a lot: With unemployment creeping toward 10 percent, the auto industry nationalized, the stimulus revealed as history’s biggest redistribution racket (so far), and Democrats bent on heaping ruinous carbon taxes and socialized medicine atop an economy already crushed by tens of trillions in unfunded welfare-state liabilities, Iran is barely on anyone’s radar screen.

So Obama is pouring it on while his trusty media idles. When they are not looking the other way from the carnage in Iran’s streets, they are dutifully reporting — as the AP did — that the Irbil Five are mere “diplomats.” Obama frees a terrorist with the blood of American troops on his hands, and the press yawns. Senators Jeff Sessions and Jon Kyl press for answers about the release of the terrorist and Obama’s abandonment of a decades-old American policy against trading terrorists for hostages, and the silence is deafening.

Except in Tehran, where the mullahs are hearing exactly what they’ve banked on hearing.

'Today Everyone Is an Iranian'

Today Everyone is an Iranian

By Amil Imani

"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." John F. Kennedy

Today, all Iranian expatriates are united in solidarity with the Iranian people in Iran. Today, we are all standing tall to let the world hear our continuous aspiration for a free and democratic Iran. Today, we pledge ourselves, under the divine inspiration, to stand beside the Iranians in Iran and echo their voices around the globe. Today, we make history, yet again.

It is critical that freedom-loving people, governments and media, rally behind the Iranian people and end the tyrannical mullahcracy that is a scourge on Iran as well as the world. The Iranian people themselves are fully capable and are determined to remove the cancer of Islamism from their country. The United States and Israel and other democracies have a huge stake in the success of the Iranian people to rid themselves of the Islamic oppression and tyranny.

The situation in Iran is dire indeed. Anyone who believes that sane rational people on both sides are engaged in brinkmanship to secure the best advantage, but would eventually work out a compromise, is deluding himself. In some cases, time works as a healer and even as a solution of thorny problems. Yet, this problem will not go away, and time would only make the cataclysmic clash more likely and deadly. The best chance for resolving the impasse is regime change in Iran.

For the past thirty years, the intrepid Iranians have been paying with their blood for liberty, independence and human dignity while the world looked the other way and did business with the Islamist rulers in Iran. Thirty years ago, a fanatic Shi'a Muslim by the name of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, with the assistance of western governments (with Jimmy Carter on top of the list), succeeded in overthrowing the Shah of Iran during Iran's 1979 revolution.

Khomeini promised Iranians heaven, but he created hell on earth, turning Iran into a bastion of Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism. Ever since, tens of thousands of political activists have been killed or imprisoned. Tens of thousands of opposition groups, women, ethnic and religious minorities, have been subjected to inhumane treatment and tens of thousands of political prisoners are spending their precious lives, in the medieval barbaric Islamic Republic dungeons.

Since 1979, this illegitimate government of the Islamic Republic has been waging a brutal war against the entire population of Iran who has been fighting for individual and religious freedom. In spite of tens of thousands of political executions, other brutal practices and years of a reign of terror, the Islamists have not succeeded in uprooting the nationwide movement for democracy in Iran.

We honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for proclaiming from a Birmingham jail, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." To demand justice for others, he risked his life, left his native Georgia, and ended up in jail in the-then-bigoted south, Birmingham, Alabama. We "Iranians" must do no less. We must demand justice for our compatriots who are suffering under the yoke of Islamofascism in Iran.

We also do well to recall the example of an Irish-American President-John F. Kennedy-looking at the Communists' Wall of Shame in Berlin, proclaiming, "Ich bin ein Berliner"-"I am a Berliner." By so claiming, he helped rally free people of the world that brought down the wall and created a momentum that eventually swept the totalitarian Communist wall-builders into the dustbin of history.

Another great American President, Ronald Reagan, took a stand on freedom with the Polish people.

"The Polish nation, speaking through Solidarity, has provided one of the brightest, bravest moments of modern history. The people of Poland are giving us an imperishable example of courage and devotion to the values of freedom in the face of relentless opposition. Left to themselves, the Polish people would enjoy a new birth of freedom. But there are those who oppose the idea of freedom, who are intolerant of national independence, and hostile to the European values of democracy and the rule of law."

History records that Reagan's decision to take a strong stand for Polish freedom -- and bringing down the Communist system itself -- was the right one." Reagan led and inspired the Poles to continue the struggle which resulted in half of Europe being freed from iron-fisted domination, by then, the Soviet Union.

Even the European Union called on Islamic authorities to investigate allegations of vote-rigging during Iran's presidential election on Friday, expressing concern at Tehran's crackdown on protesters. Germany's Angela Merkel took a much tougher stand than President Obama did, calling the oppression "totally unacceptable," while all Obama could say was that it's "deeply troubling" (video here).

President Obama's halting comments only made clear his fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Islamic regime. It appears President Obama is going to betray the Iranian people as Jimmy Carter did 3 decades earlier. Senator John McCain, President Obama's rival in last year's US election, described the president's response as "tepid," and blasted him for abandoning the "fundamental principles" of the United States. Iranian people don't expect the Americans to come to Iran and fight for them. Every decent and freedom-loving nation knows that the Iranian people have the right and the duty to change their form of government. What Americans can do for the Iranian people is to lend them their support; not to fight on their behalf, but to rally to their side and to cheer their struggle.

We Iranians in spirit-free people of the world--greatly cherish liberty, where the mind is imbued with enlightenment, and every individual, by the virtue of being born human, is afforded freedom. It is within the open expanse of liberty that each and every person can be at his or her best. And when the individual person is at his best, humanity is at its best.

Today, we are reaching outside of ourselves. Today, we are raising our own standard. Today, we are standing tall and declaring our perpetual commitment to the liberation of Iran and her citizens. Today, we are marching for the support of the brave and courageous people of Iran. Today, our demonstration is inspired by demonstrations of the Iranian people inside Iran against the dictatorship and barbarity of the Islamic Republic. We shall all demonstrate until every Iranian is free. Today, everyone is an Iranian.

Carter's Little Livid Pills

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s personal effort to make Hamas a peace partner has set off alarm bells in the White House. "[We] won't have more to say about this,” a government official said after being asked about reports that Carter will propose to U.S. President Barack Obama that the United States take Hamas off the list of illegal terrorist organizations.

He made the comment shortly after he narrowly escaped an assassination attempt by terrorists who had planted a huge bomb near the path where he was traveling.

The White House is livid with Carter, according to an experienced Middle East expert who was quoted on the website of the widely respected Foreign Policy magazine. “They are very pissed,” he said. "Just like with President Clinton, Carter is becoming a huge problem and a growing concern for Obama.” (“Carter-Hamas Friendship May Stalemate Obama”).

Obama: 'Sort of God' (or Better?)

Evan Thomas, the editor of Newsweek, is impressed with how Obama has risen above being merely American and has achieved deity, or whatever it is that comes above deity.

You can tell your grandchildren what these days were like.
They won't believe you.

Now What Would Dinah Sing?

From today's New York Times:

President Obama owes American taxpayers and voters a candid and detailed explanation of the government’s goals and the levers it intends to use to achieve them. He should make clear that the overarching objectives are to create a profitable company that makes cars that people want to buy, and that are more fuel-efficient. (“Owning G.M.”)

Which I think calls for a new version of an old theme:

"See, the USA Now Runs Chevrolet"
(To the melody of “See the USA in Your Chevrolet,” with verve, and plenty of MMWAH!!)

See, the USA now runs Chevrolet
Because GM was just too big to fail
Next year’s GMC runs on battery
Your dealer has the greenest cars for sale!

From Manhattan, or in a Harvard tower:
“Small cars seem neater, they make the air sweeter
So build’em cramped & light without much power!”

So in your Chevrolet made by USA
You’ll be coasting towards a new Green Day!

'Someone's Launching Lord, Kumbayah'

Caroline Glick at The Jerusalem Post is awfully gloomy about our new President's approach to the Axis of Evil:

THE OBAMA administration's impotent response to Pyongyang's ICBM test last month and its similarly stuttering reaction to North Korea's nuclear test on Monday have shown Teheran that it no longer needs to even pretend to have an interest in negotiating aspects of its nuclear program with Washington or its European counterparts. Whereas appearing interested in reaching an accommodation with Washington made sense during the Bush presidency, when hawks and doves were competing for the president's ear, today, with the Obama administration populated solely by doves, Iran, like North Korea, believes it has nothing to gain by pretending to care about accommodating Washington.

This point was brought home clearly by both Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's immediate verbal response to the North Korean nuclear test on Monday and by Iran's provocative launch of warships in the Gulf of Aden the same day. As Ahmadinejad said, as far the Iranian regime is concerned, "Iran's nuclear issue is over."

There is no reason to talk anymore. Just as Obama made clear that he intends to do nothing in response to North Korea's nuclear test, so Iran believes that the president will do nothing to impede its nuclear program.

Of course it is not simply the administration's policy toward North Korea that is signaling to Iran that it has no reason to be concerned that the US will challenge its nuclear aspirations. The US's general Middle East policy, which conditions US action against Iran's nuclear weapons program on the prior implementation of an impossible-to-achieve Israel-Palestinian peace agreement makes it obvious to Teheran that the US will take no action whatsoever to prevent it from following in North Korea's footsteps and becoming a nuclear power.

Glick explains that Obama is putting maximum pressure on Israel on ceasing all construction on settlements inside Judea and Samaria, while at the same time describing a timeline towards Iran and its nuclear program so slow and ineffectual that by the time Obama even considers a demand for international sanctions, beyond one year from now at least, “Iran will already be in possession of a nuclear arsenal.”

Then last Friday, writes Glick:

Yediot Aharonot reported that at a recent lecture in Washington, US Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton, who is responsible for training Palestinian military forces in Jordan, indicated that if Israel does not surrender Judea and Samaria within two years, the Palestinian forces he and his fellow American officers are now training at a cost of more than $300 million could begin killing Israelis.

Assuming the veracity of Yediot's report, even more unsettling than Dayton's certainty that within a short period of time these US-trained forces could commence murdering Israelis, is his seeming equanimity in the face of the known consequences of his actions. The prospect of US-trained Palestinian military forces slaughtering Jews does not cause Dayton to have a second thought about the wisdom of the US's commitment to building and training a Palestinian army.

Four days after Dayton's remarks were published, senior US and Israeli officials met in London to discuss Obama's demands that Israel stop building in Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria.

What was most notable about the meeting was its timing. By holding the meeting the day after North Korea tested its bomb and after Iran's announcement that it rejects the US's offer to negotiate about its nuclear program, the administration demonstrated that regardless of what Iran does, Washington's commitment to putting the screws on Israel is not subject to change.

All of this of course is music to the mullahs' ears. Between America's impotence against their North Korean allies and its unshakable commitment to keeping Israel on the hot seat, the Iranians know that they have no reason to worry about Uncle Sam.

I know not everyone cares that much about the fate of Israel. But if this isn't a window into President Obama's aproach to national security, I don't know what it is. Iran has designated Israel only the "little Satan." It is America that is the "Great Satan."

Read the rest of "Column One: Israel and the Axis of Evil" here.

Just Wait Until the Next One

Now there’s going to be plenty of talk about Sonia Sotomayor, so anything I can add can wait, or be skipped all together. But I will make just one single prediction.

Selecting her for the Supreme Court is President Obama’s way of ticking off two emblems of his American Victims constituency, (ethnics, women). The aim is populating the court not with top jurists, but representatives of American victim groups whose voices need to be embroidered into, or over, the Constitution.

Except with Judge Sotomayor, Obama's already running out of identity groups. That's why I'm convinced his next choice for Supreme Court is going to be a homosexual. A fully out, practicing homosexual, naturally, so we won't fail to get the full benefit of his (or her) rich experiences.

All the rhetoric now about Judge Sotomayor the Latina woman judicial pioneer can just as well be applied to a queer nominee: the compelling life story, the rich experience, (eeeeeww) how America's finally turning a page, how the nominee's "community" has a long history of discrimination -- even Chuck Schumer's shirty (brownshirty, that is) threats that anyone who criticizes the choice will do so at his own peril. All the stuff we've learned to love about being silenced by the gay rights movement.

With that in mind, I suppose President Obama could select a Muslim, too, for all the same reasons. Not that there's anything unConstitutional about selecting a Muslim, (what can I say, with all those Catholics on the bench?). Any more than there's anything wrong with selecting a Latina, or a woman. What I don't like is choices based on the Supreme Court as a representative political body making policy instead of a deliberative juridical body safeguarding the Constitution with good old abstract legal theories and a pithy footnote in a casebook or two.

Keep Killing Our Children? Yes We Can!

But as the president began his commencement address, at least three protesters interrupted it.

One yelled, "Stop killing our children!"

The graduates responded by chanting, "Yes we can," the slogan that became synonymous with Obama's presidential campaign.~ Buffalo News, May 17

***

In order to secure the political advantage Obama had gained among Catholic voters last November, the president of the United States decided that he would define what it means to be a real Catholic in 21st-century America — not the bishop of Fort Wayne–South Bend, who in sorrow declined to attend Notre Dame’s commencement; not the 80-some bishops who publicly criticized Notre Dame’s decision to invite the president to receive an honorary degree; not the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which explicitly and unambiguously instructed Catholic institutions not to do what Notre Dame did. He, President Obama, would settle the decades-long intra-Catholic culture war in favor of one faction — the faction that had supported his candidacy and that had spent the first months of his administration defending his policies. ("Obama and the ‘Real’ Catholics").

Prepare for Some Serious Liberal Busting of Your Moral Ball Bearings

As someone who’s been opposed to legalized abortion for so long, I’m pretty resistant to liberals posturing that they’re more compassionate than the rest of us, or care more about preventing suffering in others. They aren’t. They don’t. Their sermons to me about how much they care about the poorest of the poor are wasted, when their most heartfelt battle-cry is for the unrestricted right of a strong, healthy mother to slaughter her far poorer and weaker child simply for being unwanted.

The current outrage about the way Khalid Sheikh Mohamed and Abu Zubaydah were interrogated has nothing to do with liberals’ profound compassion for these terrorists as fellow human beings. Nor does it prove they walk a higher moral road than the rest of us, in spite of President Obama’s breathtaking charge that before he came along the country had lost its “moral bearings.”

Saddam Hussein ran one of the world’s cruelest torture regimes right up until the end, and the closest the Left ever came to taking that seriously was when they sponsored American youths to go there as human shields to protect Saddam, Uday, and Qsay from being stopped. When fellow human beings are in the way of what they want, the Left can be as icy, cold, and heartless as their worst feverish fantasies about poor Dick Cheney. Whether it’s the murder of Terri Schiavo, or the rape of South Vietnam in 1975, or the present-day abuse of women (and girls) in Muslim countries, or the slaughter in Rwanda, or the stealing away of the educations of a few poor kids in Washington, D.C., or the forced abortions in China, or the heinous infanticides of George Tiller in present-day Kansas, or the celebration of the murdering police state of Fidel Castro, there isn’t a moral bearing left in the liberals’ tool kit.

Like all participants in political struggles, the Left makes its decisions based on a balancing of interests, always wanting the scales heaviest on the side they’re most committed to protect. That’s why the President, when an Illinois senator, could justify keeping legal the practice of denying a newborn survivor of a botched abortion “health care” and letting it be discarded to die in a trash bin. It’s not that Obama hated babies. It’s just that in his political calculus, he valued so much more the love and political support of pro-abortion radicals, who do happen to hate babies, (or anyone else who might stand between them and their rights under Roe v. Wade).

You may just happen to agree with Obama on that calculus. But if you do, don’t try telling me it’s because you love humanity more than I do.

It’s going to be more of the same with what the leftist media is already referring to as the “torture memos.” (For a short history of media accuracy in naming things, see the “Duke rape case.”)

Opposition to the Bush administration “torture policy,” just like opposition to “domestic spying,” “Bush’s war in Iraq,” “outing Valerie Plame”, “the so-called war on terror,” “tax cuts for the rich,” and on and on, wasn’t really being driven by the exquisitely sensitive conscience of liberals, even though they’ve sickened half the country with their smugness. Those decisions were made by the cold political calculation that a weakened, or better yet, failed, Bush presidency would better guarantee them a return of the White House, in 2004 or 2008.

Okay, so I guess that’s politics. As one of those quotable sorts said once, politics ain’t beanbag. But at the same time, it ain’t Sunday School, either, and I wish the Left would stop acting as if they were Elijah and John the Baptist, Now With Religion.

When history handed to George W. Bush America’s first chance to make a proportional response against jihadist provocation in 200 years, America was united for about six weeks. That ‘s all the time it took before Democrats figured out that Bush and the Republicans would be unstoppable if America saw them actually roll back global Islamic jihadism.

That made the number one mission of the Democrats to do everything in their power to keep that from happening—from marshaling the media to undermine morale at home, to hamstringing our efforts abroad, to criminalizing military and intelligence advisers doing their best to stay within the rules while protecting the country.

It isn’t exactly that the liberals wanted the terrorists to win. It’s that they wanted the party most identified with fighting the terrorists to lose. If success in that resulted in terrorists winning, that’s not their fault. They’re only doing God’s work. Similarly, it’s not that Obama is trying to destroy the free market system in America and wreck the economy. It’s that he feels empowered to fix things so that highly successful Wall Street-CEO-Industry types aren’t making too much money. If that mission results in capitalism being crippled, don't blame him--blame his magnificently lofty principles.

It ought to be apparent by now that when liberals demand “action,” and “change,” they don’t sweat too much about the consequences of those actions or that change.

Witness that tea party exchange with CNN Susan Roesgen, where she acts so dismayed that a citizen could scorn the tax rebate Obama was giving him for the sake of some gun-nut fantasy that his liberty was at stake. (You’d give up $400 for liberty?!) And when Obama was asked if he still planned to raise the capital gains tax even knowing it would reduce government revenues, he said yes, because it would be fair.

There's a reason fairness is the appropriate scale of morality in the schoolyard: children haven't had enough experience to deal with the heavy work of right and wrong in a grown-up world. Fairness was the criteria Solomon pretended to apply when he offered to cut that baby in half. You’ll recall the false mother was enthusiastically in favor of it. Better a dead baby than tolerate a disparity between the maternal haves and the have-nots.

Now Obama’s running a foreign policy apparently no more “nuanced” than just to do the opposite of whatever his evil predecessor did. If that results in America becoming weaker and our enemies stronger, that’s not his fault. Bin Ladin only attacked us anyway because we were “arrogant”--and now we’re not. Besides, people like us better this way.

Surveys by both Gallup and Rasmussen surveys show that bestowing Geneva Convention protections on captured Al Qaeda killers polls particularly well among women who support late-term abortions and life-long college students driving 1989 Subarus with “Mean People Suck” bumper stickers.

We can all expect a hurricane of Democratic self-righteousness now of Katrina proportions. They will try to get as much mileage as they can out of this issue, mugging for all they're worth on each other’s programs about how incomprehensible it is that America could have sunk to this low level.

Meanwhile, the next most heinous crime the Left will go after is that of a Miss USA contestant for not thinking gay marriage is such a great idea.