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Somehow, ( not surprisingly ) you gloss over the full impact of Iran's actions supporting terrorism
What about their support of HEzbollah that is affecting the people of Lebanon? What about Lebanese Christians? Don't they laugh and cry also??
The whole European union has agreed to sanctions as well. They are within the range or Iran's missles.
See, the problem here is that if Israel waits till Iran launches a nuclear weapon at them it's already too late.
Were you against the taking out of Iraq'a nuclear facility by the Isarelis?
How about taking out the Syrian nuclear facility ( built with N Korean help?
There will be no war with Iran in the sense of going into the country as we did with Iraq. The purpose will be to take out their nuclear potential
It's Getting Crowded Under Obama's Bus
By Rick Moran
On Tuesday, Barack Obama faced the glare of the cameras and tried to deal with what was rapidly becoming one of those "distractions" he so despises.
It turns out that the man he chose to head up the steering committee to help him choose a vice president, Jim Johnson, had a past that was making Obama out to be a hypocrite on the sub-prime mortgage crisis. After Obama skewered John McCain for his connections with sub-prime lenders, it appears that Mr. Johnson made McCain's connections look positively innocent by comparison.
Johnson, Fannie Mae chief from 1991 through 1998, received more than $7 million in real estate loans from a program open only to "friends of Angelo." The "Angelo" in question is none other than Angelo Mozilo, CEO of Countrywide Financial Corporation. Obama, who has heavily criticized Mozilo for accepting hefty bonuses despite the sub-prime crisis, evidently didn't vet Mr. Johnson thoroughly and failed to discover the sweetheart connection.
It should also be noted that according to the Chicago Tribune, the practitioner of "new politics" accepted $1.9 million from sub prime lenders, which only goes to show that when it comes to a decision between engaging in the "new politics" and old fashioned money grubbing, "new politics" gets the shaft.
The revelations about Johnson led to an incredible exchange with ABC News reporter Sunlen Miller, who grilled Obama on why the information hadn't been discovered by the campaign before he hired him. The ensuing explanation by Obama is a jaw dropper.
So without further adieu, I give you, ladies and gentlemen, Barack H. Obama -- Columbia University graduate, Harvard Law, President of the Harvard Law Review, and noted American orator:
"Now look, the, the, ah, ah, ah, I mean the uh first of all uh I, I, I am not vetting my VP search committee for their mortgages so you're going have to uh d-direct... Well, nah I mean becomes sort of a... um... I mean this is a game that can be played everybody... It who is tangentially related to our campaign I think is going to have a whole host of relationships. I would have to hire the vetter to uh vet the vetter."
Huh?
It gets murkier -- or more bizarrely incoherent. The following was cleaned up by the ABC website and made into something printable:
"Jim Johnson has a very discrete task," Obama continued, "as does Eric Holder, and that is simply to gather up information about potential vice presidential candidates. They are performing that job well, it's a volunteer, unpaid position. And they are giving me information and I will then exercise judgment in terms of who I want to select as a vice presidential candidate.
"So this - you know, these aren't folks who are working for me," Obama said. "They're not people you know who I have assigned to a job in a future administration and, you know, ultimately my assumption is that, you know, this is a discrete task that they're going to performing for me over the next two months."
Whassat? What'd he say? Johnson doesn't really "work" for him because he's a "volunteer" in an "unpaid position." And after all, he hasn't promised him a cabinet post so it's really OK that he didn't vet him and besides this is just a "distraction" so can we please get back to your slavish worship of my awe inspiring talents?
Well, on Wednesday, Johnson "unvolunteered" himself from the campaign:
I believe Barack Obama's candidacy for president of the United States is the most exciting and important of my lifetime," he said, according to a Bloomberg report. "I would not dream of being a party to distracting attention from that historic effort."
We all know how much Obama doesn't like "distractions." Obama himself cried a few crocodile tears in giving him the heave ho:
"Jim did not want to distract in any way from the very important task of gathering information about my vice presidential nominee, so he has made a decision to step aside that I accept. We have a very good selection process underway, and I am confident that it will produce a number of highly qualified candidates for me to choose from in the weeks ahead. I remain grateful to Jim for his service and his efforts in this process," Obama said in a statement.
So, another Obama associate is thrown under the bus. One might begin to wonder if there are more people riding on the Obama express or underneath it. Think of all this guy's friends, staffers, spiritual advisors, and assorted far left radicals who have been given the equivalent of a pair of cement galoshes and thrown into the Chicago River. A partial list:
1, Samantha Power, foreign policy advisor, who ended up being just a little bit too frank about some of Obama's less than mainstream plans for Israel and other places if the candidate were to win office.
2. Austan Goolsbee, economic advisor, who whispered to the Canadian government sweet nothings about his boss's NAFTA switcheroo in Ohio -- Obama running around the state, breathing fire about the evils of NAFTA and how he would renegotiate the treaty while Goolsbee was telling the Canadians that the candidate was just politicking and had no intention of touching the treaty.
3. Reverend Jeremiah Wright, friend and spiritual advisor for whom the candidate bravely stood up -- at first -- until Wright's performance at the National Press Club caused the candidate to open the door himself and push the old man under the wheels.
4. Father Michael Pfleger, friend and spiritual advisor, whose spittle flecked rant at Trinity Church against Hillary, America and white people forced the candidate to leave his boot print on the good father's rear end as he too was impelled from behind under the Obama Greyhound.
5. William Ayers, terrorist and future Secretary of Education in an Obama Administration. Well, probably not. But Obama's dismissal of his former boss and friend as "just a neighbor" no doubt hurt the terrorist's feelings but became necessary when the press started to get curious about what a candidate for president was doing associating with someone who doesn't regret blowing people to smithereens.
There are more -- the undercarriage of that bus is bloody indeed. There's the entire congregation of Trinity United Church who now must practice their Black Liberation Theology and "anti-middleclassness" without the man who apparently spent many a pleasant Sunday sleeping through sermons -- or so he would have us believe.
But there is a monumental difference between Obama's previous actions in washing his hands of wayward staffers, bigots, and radicals and having to toss Jim Johnson out the window.
The others were handled when he was simply a candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. But his choice of Johnson to head up the most important job he has between now and the election -- choosing a vice president -- was made as the presumptive nominee.
In short, Obama's first major decision as the nominee for president of his party was an unmitigated disaster.
Not only did he choose someone who opened him up to charges of being a rank hypocrite. But the way he handled himself in off the cuff remarks in trying to defend Johnson was shockingly incoherent and stupid. Trying to pass Johnson off as someone who didn't work for him? That's childish in its attempt to avoid responsibility. One might expect a 7 year old to deny breaking a dinner plate by saying something like "I didn't drop it mom, it fell." But when the potential next president of the United States tries to run away from his mistakes, we can ask legitimate questions on how this man will perform if he reaches the oval office.
Craig Crawford brings up another point:
Obama's cavalier response utterly contradicted his campaign's supposed crusade for reform. Not only did those words come across as tone deaf to the very ethical issues that he has raised in this election, but his remarks sounded like the ethical relativism we so often hear from the Washington business-as-usual crowd that Obama claims to be running against.
Chris Cillizza recognizes the danger Obama exposes himself to by latching on to people like Johnson:
For Obama, any questions in voters' minds about whether he truly is a change agent or is legitimately committed to breaking the alleged stranglehold lobbyists and other power brokers have over the political system is potentially disastrous. Because of the peril involved, it's not terribly surprising that Obama moved quickly to "fix the glitch" once he realized questions about Johnson weren't going away.
Seen another way, however, this episode could forebode poorly for how Obama handles the various slings and arrows sent his way by Republicans and their famed -- and effective -- noise machine.
This is where the national press has done a heroic job in keeping a well kept secret of Obama's associations and actions in his past that would expose him as the hypocrite he is. No real attempt has been made to ferret out the truth of what his career was like as a Chicago politician. The Obama campaign would blow up if the press ever read some back issues of the Chicago Tribune or Sun Times.
Instead, it is as if Obama sprang fully formed into the world of national politics, unsullied by grubby special interests and lobbyists who afflict everyone else in Washington. His holy throat and golden tongue will lead a revolution that will make America a paradise of unity and happiness.
All I can say is we better snap out of it before we elect the most incompetent, the most naive, and perhaps the most dangerous man ever to run for the office of the president.
Rick Moran is the associate editor of American Thinker and proprietor of Rightwing Nuthouse.
Thoughts on the pending Iraqi SOFA agreement
Posted by: McQ
SOFA stands for "Status of Forces Agreement" and we have 80 existing SOFA agreements currently with other nations where US troops are in residence.
Iraq, of course, is under the microscope and naturally anything coming out of there that might reflect negatively gets a little air time.
That's not to say that the agreement and the process shouldn't be examined. But I'd like to see the hype toned down a bit. It's not like this sort of agreement is new or unique in our history.
First, it would be nice if someone would define what "permanent bases" means. Apparently the US is negotiating for about 60 of them. Will they indeed be permanent (and if so, why?) and what size are we talking about?
If they're talking about 60 mega-sites housing vast numbers of US troops and equipment, I'd like to know that. If they're talking about places where training cadres would reside, which obviously wouldn't be big or extensive, I'd like to know that as well. More information helps sell the idea, not that the Pentagon has ever realized that truism. Sometimes secrecy is its own worst enemy with its own predictable outcome - only one side of the story is told:
U.S. officials have refused to publicly discuss details of the negotiations. But Iraqi politicians have become more open in their descriptions of the talks, stoking popular anger at American demands that Iraqis across the political spectrum view as a form of continued occupation.
On the Iraqi side, a lot of this is politics - something we Americans should be able to identify immediately.
"What the U.S. wants is to take the current status quo and try to regulate it in a new agreement. And what we want is greater respect for Iraqi sovereignty," said Haider al-Abadi, a parliament member from Maliki's Dawa party. "Signing the agreement would mean that the Iraqi government had given up its sovereignty by its own consent. And that will never happen."
[...]
The American negotiators also called for continued control over Iraqi airspace and the right to refuel planes in the air, according to Askari, positions he said added to concerns that the United States was preparing to use Iraq as a base to attack Iran.
"We rejected the whole thing from the beginning," said Jalal al-Din al-Saghir, a senior lawmaker from the Supreme Council. "In my point of view, it would just be a new occupation with an Iraqi signature."
Of course, our negotiator claims we want Iraqi sovereignty strengthened, not weakened.
A more objective Iraqi observer notes that the US has modified its position on 4 key issues, one of which addresses Askari's point about attacking other countries from Iraq:
Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish member of parliament who has been briefed on the negotiations, said the Americans recently had changed their position on four key issues: Private contractors would no longer be guaranteed immunity; detainees would be turned over to the Iraqi judicial system after combat operations; U.S. troops would operate only with the agreement of the Iraqi government; and the Americans would promise not to use Iraq as a base for attacking other countries.
"Now the American position is much more positive and more flexible than before," said Mohammed Hamoud, an Iraqi deputy foreign minister who is a lead negotiator in the talks.
Those all address sovereignty concerns. And the third point puts the US in a supportive role only with the permission of the Iraqi government. Reading into those 4, I see a training and "fire brigade" type organization being built for Iraq that would see various training teams deployed through out Iraq that would work with the ISF (and most likely occupy most of the 60 "bases"). I'd guess the other part of it would be a deployed combat brigade or two which would act as a fire brigade should problems in Iraq suddenly get to a point that the ISF has difficulty handling them. They'd most likely, again by agreement, pretty well be confined to their base and training facilities.
Last, but certainly not least:
Assuming that violence in Iraq will continue to decrease, politicians such as Saghir have begun discussing another option: asking the U.S. military to leave Iraq.
"Maybe the Iraqi government will say: 'Hey, the security situation is better. We don't need any more troops in Iraq,' " he said. "Or we could have a pledge of honor where the American troops leave but come back and protect Iraq if there is any aggression."
As I've said on other occasions, that should be their call. If, in fact, the sovereign nation of Iraq says, "thanks, but we can handle it from here and we'd like you to leave", then as far as I'm concerned we should salute, pack up our kit and head for the airport.
I'm simply gratified that they're in the position now to seriously think about such a course of action.
Meanwhile, in the US, Congress makes, what I think, is a fair request - let us know what's going on:
In Washington, the White House hastily organized a closed-door briefing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday after Sens. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and John W. Warner (R-Va.), the chairman and ranking minority member of the Armed Services Committee, respectively, demanded Monday that the administration "be more transparent with Congress, with greater consultation, about the progress and content of these deliberations."
I don't think that's an unreasonable demand whatsoever. Should they then demand the power to ratify the agreement, however, then I'd have an objection. They've never ratified any of the others. But since Congress is in the oversight business, per the Constitution, a more transparent process for them is well within their right to demand.
And I still see all of this in a positive way - it's the usual governmental sausage making. Negotiations always have their ups and downs. If this were any country but Iraq with which we were negotiating a SOFA agreement, it wouldn't even warrant a mention in the press.
BREAKING: Johnson Steps Down from Obama VP Committee
Another Scalp for the Online Right
By Ben Domenech
Jim Johnson is stepping down from Barack Obama's VP Search Committee.
WASHINGTON (AP) - A leader of Democrat Barack Obama's vice presidential research team has resigned amid criticism over his personal loan deals.
Obama announced in a statement Wednesday that Jim Johnson was stepping aside to avoid distracting from the vetting process.
Johnson served on the vetting team with former first daughter Caroline Kennedy and former Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder.
I'm beginning to like Barack Obama. He's so wonderfully predictable. Each time there's a blowup - a friend of his who highlights the hypocrisy of his HopeChange message, a connection to the corruption of Chicago politics, an adviser or spiritual mentor saying offensively wacky things - Obama responds with the same round of obfuscations:
1. Obama denies there is a problem.
2. Obama insists he was misunderstood.
3. Obama ignores the problem.
4. Obama caves.
This is awesome.
Jewish Dem donor joins McCain team
By Alexander Bolton
Posted: 06/10/08 07:30 PM [ET]
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is attracting elite Jewish Democratic donors who backed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and are concerned about Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) stance toward Israel, say McCain backers who are organizing the effort to court Democrats.
McCain has already had several fundraising events with Jewish Democrats in Washington and Florida, say his supporters.
He also has the backing of Democrat-turned-Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.), who made history as the first Jewish vice presidential candidate and has recently raised questions about Obama’s foreign policy vision for the Middle East.
Stephen Muss, the Florida developer, is the biggest Democratic donor and fundraiser to pledge his support for McCain and the Republican National Committee, said a GOP official. Muss has given tens of thousands of dollars to help Democratic candidates in recent years, including $80,000 to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in 2000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics and CQ MoneyLine.
Muss did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday afternoon.
“Many Jewish Democrats are sensing there is such an existential threat to Israel that you have to vote for an individual who strongly supports the U.S.-Israel relationship,” said Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), chairman of the GOP’s Jewish Victory Coalition.
Cantor said McCain held a fundraising breakfast with Republican and Democratic Jewish donors last week at the Hyatt Hotel in Washington, D.C.
“The playing field is wide open for John McCain as far as attracting Jewish support,” he said.
Cantor said Muss would help bring more Jewish Democratic donors in South Florida over to McCain.
“He’s an influential player,” said Cantor. “From my knowledge of his influence in South Florida, that’s significant.”
Brian Ballard, a prominent McCain fundraiser, said that several major Jewish Democratic donors have said they will join McCain’s camp.
“There are Bill Clinton folks who for the last three to six months we’ve been pushing to get involved,” said Ballard in an interview last week, referring to former President Bill Clinton. “In Florida there are a lot of people not happy with Obama’s stance with regards to Israel and regards to Cuba. We’re starting to see some significant people come over.
“Democrats who are traditional large Democratic givers are coming over to our side,” said Ballard.
Jewish support is especially important in Florida, a crucial swing state where Obama trails McCain in recent polls. Jewish voters make up about 5 percent of the electorate in that state. Florida’s Jewish community is also a lucrative source of political fundraising.
Jewish Democrats are concerned about Obama’s stance toward Israel, and many big donors from this group supported Clinton. McCain has moved aggressively in recent days to win their allegiance since Clinton dropped her White House bid.
“Her dropping out was huge in terms of potential for crossover voting and crossover support,” said Cantor.
Jewish Democrats are concerned about Obama for several reasons. While stumping in Iowa last year, Obama told Democratic activists, “Nobody is suffering more than the Palestinian people.”
Some Jewish voters interpreted the statement as a sign that Obama would be overly sympathetic to the Palestinian side in future peace negotiations with Israel. And some are concerned about a senior Obama adviser’s comments regarding the influence of American Jews on foreign policy. Merrill “Tony” McPeak, the former Air Force chief of staff, told the Portland Oregonian newspaper in 2003 that the political influence of the Jewish community had hampered efforts to negotiate peace in the Middle East.
Obama has also caused some alarm among Jewish Democrats by pledging to negotiate with leaders of nations that have taken hostile stances against Israel, such as Syria and Iran.
The growing sympathy of Jewish Democrats toward McCain is epitomized by Lieberman, a self-described independent Democrat from Connecticut.
Lieberman has launched a new bipartisan grassroots group, Citizens for McCain, to attract Democrats and independent voters to the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.
Lieberman could become a potent weapon for Republicans seeking to pick off Jewish Democrats. As the Democratic Party’s former vice presidential nominee and a former Democratic candidate for president, Lieberman is assumed to have an expansive list of Jewish Democratic donors from around the country.
“Joe Lieberman supporting McCain has gone a long way with the Democratic Jewish community,” said Stu Sandler, deputy executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition.
“People across the board have had trouble with Obama’s stances and some of the people he’s had around him,” said Sandler, citing McPeak.
Sandler said that McCain met with a group of 60 Jewish leaders, including “a handful” of Clinton supporters, before a conference hosted in Washington last week by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
McCain held a fundraiser with Jewish donors on Friday in Key Biscayne, Fla. Before the main event, McCain met with a roomful of Jewish Democratic donors to discuss Israel and other issues important to them.
As many as two dozen Jewish Democrats who attended the meeting gave money to McCain’s campaign at the fundraiser, which raised about $500,000, said a source close to the event’s organizers.
Prominent Democratic fundraisers, however, say they have not encountered Clinton donors who are planning to defect to McCain.
“I’ve talked to a lot of people in the past couple of days and I have not spoken to anybody who was supporting Hillary Clinton and who has indicated any likelihood of supporting McCain,” said Steve Grossman, a former co-chairman of the Democratic National Committee and a former chairman of AIPAC, who raised tens of thousands of dollars for Clinton this election cycle.
Obama's Defense Policy
By Ed Lasky
Barack Obama's defense policy plans threaten foreign policy consequences inimical to American interests, and would pose perilous problems for some of our key allies around the world ,should he assume the Presidency.
Senator Obama has made quite clear that he intends to eviscerate our most advanced defense programs. In a message to Caucus 4 Priorities, a liberal pacifist organization, (available on YouTube), the Senator called for major cuts in defense spending, for slowing or suspending the development of future combat systems, for the abolition of spending on the "weaponizing of space" ("Star Wars") and the slashing of investment in our ballistic missile defense program. More broadly he promised to support the group's policies. These include:
reducing the National Missile Defense program to a basic research program; cutting spending on platforms like the F-22 Raptor, the Virginia-class Submarine, the V-22 Osprey airplane/helicopter hybrid, the DDG-1000 destroyer, and the Army's Future Combat System. Also, the group advocates reducing America's force structure by eliminating two Air Force fighter wings and one aircraft carrier battle-group.
These savings would be spent on a variety of programs favored by Democratic special interest groups. These calls have been recently echoed by two other influential liberal groups that have called for him to cut support for defense programs
While the desire to Beat Swords into Plowshares is an age old dream rooted in the Bible, the world remains a dangerous place, particularly in an era of a resurgent Russia and China, an Iran on the verge of becoming a nuclear power, the North Korean nuclear program, the Pakistani nuclear bazaar, the weakening of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and threats of worldwide terrorism. These realities seem to escape many supporters of Barack Obama and the candidate himself.
Barack Obama styles himself a foreign policy expert , yet he has again failed another history lesson (other examples can be found). His plans reveal a naïve view of how the world works and the tools of foreign policy. They do not bode well for protecting America's foreign policy interests should he become President.
By signaling his intention to unilaterally halt development of advanced defense systems he will reduce our bargaining strength against our adversaries while gaining absolutely nothing, geopolitically speaking, from them. Our defense programs are inextricably linked to our diplomacy -- a lesson that Barack Obama seems never to have learned.
Reductions in our defense programs were bargained for during the Nixon era (SALT I, SALT II) and were a prime instrument that led to détente; conversely, Jimmy Carter's apathetic attitudes toward defense spending and technology encouraged Soviet aggression throughout the world (Africa, Afghanistan). Ronald Reagan's defense buildup and the threat of developing his often-derided Star Wars program (to defend America from nuclear missiles) were deliberately designed -- we subsequently learned -- to bankrupt the Soviet Union and lead to its demise. Indeed, the Soviet leaders were so anxiety-ridden about Star Wars that it ushered in changes within their government that brought about the collapse of the Communist dictatorship and the freeing of millions of East European nations from Soviet hegemony. Star Wars was an effective weapon even before it was developed, as its mere prospect helped to bring millions their freedom.
That is the best sort of weapon: one that remains sheathed while winning victory. Nixon and Reagan offer two prominent examples of the relationship between our defense programs and our foreign policy, and how defense plans can be used to promote the foreign policy objectives of America.
How might Obama's bargaining strategy play out now? China and Russia are both massively increasing their defense budgets and adopting more aggressive policies (Russia's approach towards Georgia and Ukraine). Iran has stepped up its nuclear programs. Slashing such programs as ballistic missile defense would be an open invitation to Iran, in particular, to continue its aggressiveness. Barack Obama uses the agitprop like word "weaponizing of space" to refer to using satellites to defend our nation and our allies from nuclear missiles.
A failure to understand the ties between defense policy and diplomacy is a fundamental flaw in a potential commander-in-chief.
Beyond these considerations are there other risks to such a unilaterally slashing of our defense programs (especially the most technologically advanced systems)? Yes.
Defense sales are a key to building alliances that serve American interests. Weapons exports and licensing can often be used to help strengthen our allies and used as leverage with nations that may follow policies contrary to our interests. Nations such as South Korea, Taiwan, and Israel face threats arrayed against them that are overwhelming and that constitute existential threats. The qualitative edge that leading edge weapons provide them compensates for quantitative advantages enjoyed by their potential adversaries. In this manner, supplying advanced weapons serves as a deterrent that reduces the risk of war.
Last year, for example, Israel took advantage of technology (undoubtedly enriched by American technology transfer) that allowed it to evade Russian-supplied Syrian radar to destroy a Syrian nuclear facility (built with North Korean and Iranian help) that was close to going "hot". Senator Obama has voted against the production of cluster bombs -- advanced versions of which are supplied to Israel to deter massed attacks from infantry or terrorists (a sadly necessary tool on her arsenal given the relatively small size of her army relative to those of her enemies; a type of cluster bomb is widely used, by the way, by Israel's adversaries). Our ally also benefits from having access to American satellite and early warning systems (the "Eye in the Sky") that keep a perpetually wary eye on Iran and other enemies that surround Israel.
The advanced capabilities of the Arrow antiballistic missile that could protect America, our European allies, and Israel from Iranian nuclear attack, are precisely due to the type of programs that Barack Obama promises to halt. Recent news reports indicate that Israel might be able to receive the newest jet fighter in the American fleet-the F-22 Raptor that utilizes advanced stealth technology that would allow it to fly an undetectable route to Iran -- a legitimate goal given Iran's pledge to destroy Israel and its designation as the number one terror-supporting nation in the world (with sway over Hezb'allah and Hamas). Yet Senator Obama appears to have that program on the chopping block, too.
These plans to slash the development of leading edge defense technology are very hard to square with Senator Obama's recent campaign pledge before a pro-Israel crowd to maintain Israel's "qualitative edge" in the region. Former Israeli Ambassador to America Danny Ayalon has noted that Barack Obama's pledge is suspect. He wrote:
"As far as Israel is concerned, Obama has yet to suggest specific measures he would enact regarding the Jewish State's Qualitative Military Edge that allows us to defend ourselves against our current and future enemies. Given the increasingly tense security environment Israel is confronting on all sides, now is not the time for American leaders to shy away from such fundamental questions. The four years ahead are far too critical for global security to place the presidency of the United States in the hands of a leader whose campaign is leaving us with more questions than answers."
Ambassador Ayalon presaged concerns expressed about Senator Obama's advisers, particularly Samantha Power, who advocated the ending of all military aid to Israel; chief military adviser and campaign co-chair "Tony" McPeak, who places the blame on Israel for problems in the region ; and his nuclear adviser Joseph Cirincione who seeks to strip Israel of its rumored nuclear deterrent (the threat which helped save Israel in the 1973 War) .
This contradiction is not an anomaly. One day Barack Obama can dismiss Iran as a threat; the next day, before a different crowd, he can call it a grave danger. He promises to maintain the qualitative military edge that our ally enjoys over its potential adversaries, but then endorsing policies and making promises to gut the very programs that ensure that edge. We all may as well get used to the phrase "there you go again".
Access to advanced American defense equipment is also a big carrot to influence foreign governments that are not close allies, as well. Egypt signed a peace agreement with Israel in 1979. A cold peace has existed, with its ups and downs. But a key lever that has been used to influence Egyptian behavior has been arm sales. Indeed, disappointment with the quality and technological sophistication of some of the Soviet weapons led the Egyptians to seek American arms. Similar arms deals have been made with numerous Arab nations that have helped them resist Iranian (and before that Iraqi) hegemony. Our access to a naval base in Bahrain is key to projecting American power in the region. AWACS planes sold to Saudi Arabia were later employed in the successful effort to force Saddam Hussein from Kuwait.
A little-appreciated fringe benefit behind the sales of advanced equipment is not just the personal alliances that may develop but also a dependency relationship that develops between those nations and America. As these nations convert their arsenals to American equipment (as opposed to Russian or Chinese equipment -- they prefer top of the line, advanced equipment, the kind President Obama would slash), it gives America leverage should potential war break out in the region. Wars use up equipment, spare parts, ammunition at a rapid clip.* If nations such as Egypt (whose forces have converted from Russian to American weapons) go to war, America can facilitate peace by threatening to hold up resupply efforts. We see a civilian application of this dynamic with Iranian airlines: their fleets were to a great extent American-made. Our supply of spare parts was a lever that had been used up to 2006. . The dependency of Egypt on US military supplies makes war less likely between that nation and Israel.
Should America step back from developing these leading defense technologies, Russia and China would step forward to supply these nations.** They would enjoy foreign policy benefits that would otherwise have accrued to America. As we have seen regarding their sales to Syria and Iran, their foreign policies serve their interests and not America's interests.
While this may not go down well with Barack Obama's leftist pals in Hyde Park and with Pastor Jeremiah Wright, Jr. (in Barack Obama's words, his "sounding board", "moral compass" and "confidant"), defense programs and related sales are inextricably intertwined in the real world with our foreign policy objectives. These programs help to secure America and our allies from hostile forces; help to cement alliances; and help to preserve a Pax Americana (the qualitative edge that derive from advanced defense technology serve as a deterrence to violence and to war) that is key to international order.
They are a vital tool in our foreign policy toolkit. Franklin Delano Roosevelt looked upon America as an "arsenal of democracy".
Will we remain so after President Obama goes to work on our defense programs?
Barack Obama's failure to appreciate the importance of defense research and development in serving American foreign policy goals and understand the implications of his plans are yet another reason to have qualms regarding his readiness to serve as Commander-in-Chief.
* Indeed, had America not had a vast inventory to draw upon, she would not have been able to supply Israel with weapons as it faced destruction in 1973. A massive airlift ordered by Richard Nixon saved Israel. Barack Obama defense plans would clearly not include any such "buffer".
** A pause in such programs would set back America's efforts to maintain our technological superiority in the future to meet risks.
Ed Lasky is news editor of American Thinker.
Please post the details of how many of those cited were self described as having strong faith
Thanks
PS how did they compile the stats on " shotgun " marriages ?
"And, finally, the state with the lowest divorce rate in the country is----are you ready for this?----Massachusetts!
Ya think that MIGHT be influenced but the Irish and Italian and Portugese Catholics??
How many televised beheadings have there been in the name of fundamental Christianity?
I assume you're being disingenuous in your attempts to set up a moral equivalence
I'm not religious myself, but live in an area highly populated by fundamentalists
My interactions with them have shown them to be some of the most caring people I have ever been around
Ahmadinejad says Israel to vanish with or without Iran
Tue Jun 3, 2008 4:08pm EDT
ROME (Reuters) - The state of Israel will cease to exist with or without the involvement of Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday.
"This will happen whether we are involved in it or not," the Iranian leader told a news conference at a U.N. food summit in Rome, when asked to explain his statement on Monday that the Jewish state would soon disappear from the map.
Obama Is Running For Jimmy Carter's Second Term
In an interview with NBC's Brian Williams, McCain said Obama seems to be running for a second Carter term:
Williams: Is it going to be tough to run with an incumbent party for the White House, given this economic backdrop?
McCain: I-- I think it's-- it's tough. But I think the American didn't, people didn't get to know me yesterday. They know me. They know that I have fought for restraining spending, which Senator Obama has been a big part of, with earmarking (UNINTEL) projects. They know that I have been a strong fiscal conservative, and they know I understand the challenges that they face.
They need a little break from-- from their gasoline taxes, and they -- and they know that -- we've got to get spending under control. And we've got to become independent of foreign oil. Sen. Obama says that I'm running for a Bush's third terms. It seems to me he's running for Jimmy Carter's second. (LAUGHTER)
Read on, there is more.
It's an apt comparison. On July 15, 1979, Carter went on national television and gave what became known as his malaise speech. Among other things said this:
I'm asking you for your good and for your nation's security to take no unnecessary trips, to use carpools or public transportation whenever you can, to park your car one extra day per week, to obey the speed limit, and to set your thermostats to save fuel.
In Roseburg, Oregon recently, Obama sounded a lot like Jimmy Carter did when the former president gave that infamous speech:
We can't drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as much as we want and keep our homes on, you know, 72 degrees at all times, whether we're living in the desert or we're living in the tundra and then just expect every other country is going to say OK, you know, you guys go ahead keep on using 25 percent of the world's energy, even though you only account for 3 percent of the population, and we'll be fine. Don't worry about us. That's not leadership. [Transcript courtesy of CNN's Ballot Bowl]
Next thing you know, Obama will be talking about killer rabbits.
Cocky Ignorance
By Thomas Sowell
Now that Senator Barack Obama has become the Democrats' nominee for President of the United States, to the cheers of the media at home and abroad, he has written a letter to the Secretary of Defense, in a tone as if he is already President, addressing one of his subordinates.
The letter ends: "I look forward to your swift response."
With wars going on in both Iraq and Afghanistan, a Secretary of Defense might have some other things to look after, before making a "swift response" to a political candidate.
Because of the widely publicized statistic that suicide rates among American troops have gone up, Senator Obama says he wants the Secretary of Defense to tell him, swiftly:
"What changes will you make to provide our soldiers in theater with real access to mental health care?"
"What training has the Pentagon provided our medical professionals in theater to recognize who might be at risk of committing suicide?"
"What assistance are you providing families here at home to recognize the risk factors for suicide, so that they may help our service members get the assistance they need?"
"What programs has the Pentagon implemented to help reduce the stigma attached to mental health concerns so that service members are more likely to seek appropriate care?"
All this sounds very plausible, as so many other things that Senator Obama says sound plausible. But, like so many of those other things, it will not stand up under scrutiny.
What has been widely publicized in the media is that suicides among American troops have gone up. What has not been widely publicized is that this higher suicide rate is still not as high as the suicide rate among demographically comparable civilians.
No one needs to be reminded that suicide is a serious matter, whether among soldiers or civilians. But the media have managed to create the impression that it is military service overseas which is the cause of suicides among American troops, when civilians of the same ages and other demographic characteristics are committing suicide at an even higher rate at home.
Moreover, this is not the first time that military service overseas has been portrayed in the media as the cause of problems that are worse in the civilian population at home.
The New York Times led the way in making homicides committed by returning military veterans a front page story, blaming this on "combat trauma and the stress of deployment." Yet the New York Post showed that the homicide rate among returning veterans is a fraction of the homicide rate among demographically comparable civilians.
In other words, if military veterans are not completely immune to the problems found among civilians at home, then the veterans' problems are to be blamed on military service-- at least by the mainstream media.
Does Senator Obama know how the rate of suicides or homicides among military veterans compares to the rate of suicides or homicides among their civilian counterparts? Do the facts matter to him, as compared to an opportunity to score political points?
Perhaps even more important, do the media even care whether Senator Obama knows what he is talking about? Or is the symbolism of "the first black President" paramount, even if that means a President with cocky ignorance at a time of national danger?
The media have been crucial to Barack Obama's whole candidacy. His only achievements of national significance in his entire career have been media achievements and rhetorical achievements.
Perhaps his greatest achievement has been running as a candidate with an image wholly incompatible with what he has actually been doing for decades. This man who is now supposedly going to "unite" us has for years worked hand in glove, and contributed both his own money and the taxpayers' money, to people who have sought to divide us in the most crude demagogic ways.
With all his expressed concern about the war in Iraq, he has not set foot in Iraq for more than two years-- including the very years when progress has been made against the terrorists there.
You don't need to know the facts when you have cocky ignorance and the media behind you.
Obama's Finance Chair: Another subprime lender problem
By Soren Dayton
The Pritzkers are one of the leading business families of Chicago. They run Hyatt and have a reputation for particularly cut-throat business practices. (sometimes outside of honorable) So it isn't entirely surprising to find Penny Pritzker at the center of Barack Obama's hypocrisy over his relationship to subprime lenders. Earlier today, I wrote about Jim Johnson, who got a sweetheart deal from Countrywide which Obama had attacked. And then there was UBS, which his campaign shopped a story about, and the reporter didn't point out that the CEO of UBS has raised a quarter million for Obama.
And then there is Penny, Obama's Finance Chair. She was the former Chairwoman of a bank that failed, according to regulators via a 2001 Chicago Tribune article, due to "poor oversight by its board." The depositors felt so screwed, that they filed a RICO suit against Penny and other directors. The Pritzker family eventually settled with regulators for $460m.
So Obama is attacking CEOs of subprime lenders. And his Finance Chairman was the Chairman of a subprime lender that went under because of poor oversight. One of his major donors is the CEO of another one. And the person making his VP recommendation got a sweetheart deal from another.
Krugman tries the race card
Posted by: McQ
Paul Krugman, resorts to some rather specious history in an attempt to lay racism at the feet of the right.
Krugman today notes that some feel the election of Barack Obama to the presidency would transform America.
Not so, says Krugman. Instead there's something else at work:
Mr. Obama's nomination wouldn't have been possible 20 years ago. It's possible today only because racial division, which has driven U.S. politics rightward for more than four decades, has lost much of its sting.
And the de-racialization of U.S. politics has implications that go far beyond the possibility that we're about to elect an African-American president. Without racial division, the conservative message - which has long dominated the political scene - loses most of its effectiveness.
Wow. I'm still trying to remember the Republican governors who stood at the doorways of schools refusing to let blacks enter. I'm still trying to remember the Republican southern Senators who voted as a bloc a number of times to deny blacks civil rights and continually filibustered all such attempts. And for whatever reason, the name of the Republican Senator who was an officer in the KKK escapes my memory.
And who was that Democratic president who sent the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock to ensure black students were admitted? Isn't he the same president that introduced a civil rights bill only to see Republican Senators block its passage?
Of course, if unlike Krugman, you're actually aware of the fact that I've sarcastically placed the wrong party in all of those examples, then it should be clear that the "conservative message" hasn't hinged on "racialism" at all.
I mean, who was it that LBJ purposely thanked for the passage of the 1964 civil rights bill (which Sen. Robert Byrd filibustered for 14 straight hours), because without their overwhelming support Democrats would have defeated it?
The conservative message, as I understand it, has hinged upon the concept of limited government, less spending and less intrusion. What this present crop of Republicans has done is abandon all pretense of being for those conservative principles. That is why the Republicans are in decline - and certainly not because "racialism" has lost its sting.
However, like the rather crude attempt by Oliver Willis, Krugman too is bound and determined to make this upcoming general election about race - even if he has to make up a little history to do so.
In reality, racial politics, as demonstrated for all to see in the just ended Democratic primary, is the almost the exclusive realm of left. One only had to sit back and watch an exclusively Democratic event descend into competing camps each claiming the other was employing racism or sexism in their campaign. You should expect no better from Democrats in the general election. It is an integral part of the "cult of the victim" ideology.
Willis and Krugman represent the first shots in the "framing the debate" wars. And as is evident, there is no sordid depth of "argument" to which they won't resort.
So when you see arguments like this...
If Ronald Reagan and other politicians succeeded, for a time, in convincing voters that government spending was bad, it was by suggesting that bureaucrats were taking away workers' hard-earned money and giving it to you-know-who: the "strapping young buck" using food stamps to buy T-bone steaks, the welfare queen driving her Cadillac. Take away the racial element, and Americans like government spending just fine.
... you need to remind them that there is a certain element of America that doesn't care what or who wasteful spending is lavished upon. They still see it as wasteful spending and want less of it. And that has nothing to do with race, sex or creed, but instead a principled opposition to the expansion of government.
The job for conservatives (and libertarians) is threefold - slap idiocy like this down whenever you see it, defend conservative principles and insist those who seek your votes do more than just promise to follow those principles. Make sure they implement them.
The "objective" media
Posted by: McQ
According to Rasmussen, if public perceptions are any indication, an objective media doesn't exist:
Just 17% of voters nationwide believe that most reporters try to offer unbiased coverage of election campaigns. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that four times as many-68%—believe most reporters try to help the candidate that they want to win.
The perception that reporters are advocates rather than observers is held by 82% of Republicans, 56% of Democrats, and 69% of voters not affiliated with either major party. The skepticism about reporters cuts across income, racial, gender, and age barriers.
With Chris Matthews having little thrills run up his leg, one doesn't have to go far to find examples of advocacy.
Ideologically, political liberals give the least pessimistic assessment of reporters, but even 50% of those on the political left see bias. Thirty-three percent (33%) of liberals believe most reporters try to be objective. Moderates, by a 65% to 17% margin, see reporters as advocates, not scribes. Among political conservatives, only 7% see reporters as objective while 83% believe they are biased.
Some may argue that most people let their prejudices get in the way of objectively assessing how the media actually performs. And I'd agree that has some validity. But the problem for the media, just as for politicians, is perception is reality. If the purpose of journalism is to convey the news in an objective manner, and the audience to which it is aimed is convinced that isn't happening, who has the problem?
And how do the people see the media lining up for the upcoming general election?
Voters have little doubt as to who is benefitting from the media coverage this year-Barack Obama. Fifty-four percent (54%) say Obama has gotten the best coverage so far. Twenty-two percent (22%) say McCain has received the most favorable coverage while 14% say that Hillary got the best treatment.
At the other extreme, 43% say Clinton received the worst treatment from the media. Twenty-seven percent (27%) say the media was roughest on McCain and only 15% thought the media coverage was most unfair to Obama.
Looking ahead to the fall campaign, 44% believe most reporters will try to help Obama while only 13% believe that most will try to help McCain. Twenty-four percent (24%) are optimistic enough to believe that most reporters will try to offer unbiased coverage.
Even Democrats tend to believe their candidate will receive better treatment-27% of those in Obama's party believe most reporters will try to help him win while only 16% believe they will help McCain. A plurality of Democrats-34%—believe most reporters will be unbiased.
Among unaffiliated voters, 44% believe reporters will try to help Obama and 14% believe they will try to help McCain. Seventy percent (70%) of Republicans expect Obama to receive preferential treatment while only 8% believe reporters will try to help McCain.
Those overwhelming perceptions have to come from somewhere, and when you see agreement across the ideological lines that the media seems most prepared to help Barack Obama through their treatment of him during the upcoming election, you have to figure there's a little fire with that smoke.
Congress Fiddled With Warming While Earth Cooled
By Marc Sheppard
Last week Democrats tried to kill the economy in the name of solving a problem that doesn't exist. Republicans should hang this bill around their necks in every district where an incumbent voted for the woefully misnamed and deservedly DOA Climate Security Act, technically S.3036.
Asking Americans to pony up even more at the pump with already record gasoline prices creeping higher almost daily seems offensive enough. But compelling such burden under the guise of moral imperative to curb global warming at a time when the planet is actually cooling rings downright obscene.
And that’s why last week’s cavalcade of Senators opposing the Act -- which would have directed the EPA to decrease emissions of greenhouse gases -- entirely on economic grounds was so confounding.
Don't get me wrong -- the fiscal arguments against the bill's draconian business regulations were inexorable -- its massive consequent spike in energy costs would be nothing short of ruinous to the nation. An April EPA analysis of the bill estimated a 53 cents per gallon increase in the price of gasoline and a 44% jump in electricity costs by 2030 should it become law. Even those figures precariously assumed a 150% increase in nuclear and "significant use of biomass" for electricity generation; otherwise costs will be "significantly higher." Add a projected net loss of almost a trillion dollars in GDP by that very same year and this blatantly socialistic power-grab attempt deserved the pauper's funeral it received on financial grounds alone.
That's without even considering that there's no proof whatsoever that the actions of mankind can influence global temperatures even one degree Celsius in either direction.
With Americans struggling to keep food on the table in lighted rooms of solvent homes as soaring energy costs drive prices painfully northward across the board, a bill that would hemorrhage thousands of additional dollars from each family's survival-chest annually would seem inopportune at best. Indeed, this public display of politicians debating climate science in terms of macroeconomics, while betraying a comprehension of neither by a disturbing majority within their ranks, was a wonder to behold in these truly trying times.
Green dreams were peddled. Imagine the insolence of countering the economic-suicide predicted from arbitrary and inherently unmonitorable CO2 limits with unfounded promises of some imaginary "green job" boom. Or basing short-term impact projections on the advent of renewable energy "technological advances," naively citing alternately the Apollo Mission and Manhattan Project as prognosticators of success's inevitability. And amid all these fantasies, legislating likewise non-existent Carbon capture and sequestration technology shackles upon the only energy source realistically capable of providing the nation's electricity for decades to come: Coal.
Particularly given no proof whatsoever that the actions of mankind can influence global temperatures even one degree Celsius in either direction.
It's no secret how much liberals covet European models for just about everything. Yet, Europe's even less intrusive attempts at cap-and-trade have failed miserably, wreaking havoc upon economies with no significant decrease in atmospheric carbon levels. Britain's efforts to legislate carbon limits have sparked trucker and taxi-driver strikes and protests and even threaten Labor's majority. In fact, climate legislation across the pond has failed so miserably that a new poll found "more than seven in 10 voters insist that they would not be willing to pay higher taxes in order to fund projects to combat climate change."
Yet, despite all the consumer misery endured, CO2 levels in Great Britain still increased by 3.39% between Kyoto ratification in 1997 and 2004. True, the global average was 18.05%, but the United States, whose refusal to ratify allowed continued economic growth, managed a mere 6.57% increase. Compare that to other Kyoto signers like Japan (10.61%), Russia (15.61%) or Italy (15.53%). In fact, lib-beloved France, with all its Carbon pontification, barely beat the US (6.21%), despite deriving the majority of its electricity from carbon-neutral nuclear plants.
S.3036 ostensibly gambled on non-existent technology to accomplish essentially nothing at inescapably catastrophic costs.
The Silence of the Shams
GOP failure to challenge the act's underlying premise of man's influence on climate not only circumvented the strongest case against it, but also set perilous precedent by implying acceptance of the unaccepted in the halls of congress. Such oblique capitulation throughout the MSM, the leftie blogosphere and pop culture has already handed the alarmists a victory of sorts. And a Senate floor debate tacitly based upon the junk which is the Democrats' science can only serve to further dye the fraudulent claim of "consensus" into the ever docile fabric of public psyche.
Consequently, from the outset of the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act of 2008 debate, the greenie claim that the global warming "debate has ended" appeared as though a foregone conclusion. And everyone from Joe Lieberman (I-CT) to John Warner (R-VA) to Barbara Boxer (D-CA) was thus handed the pulpit from which to preach that we have no choice but to act now regardless of the economic fallout involved -- to do otherwise would be downright immoral.
During last week's Democrat radio address Boxer waxed Goraclesque:
"There are some in the Senate who insist that global warming is nothing more than science fiction. These are the same kind of voices who said that the world was flat, cigarettes were safe, cars didn't need air bags -- long after the rest of us knew the truth."
And with this shifty alarmist sleight-of-tongue (intentionally omitting the "anthropogenic" prefix), the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works chair set the tone for debate. Not whether or not mankind's Carbon footprint stinks, but rather what steps are necessary to assuage its feculence.
A June 2nd piece at WaPo lamenting the Senate's probable failure to pass S.3036 (for now) further exemplified the left's disregard for the science by stating that:
"The world has clamored for U.S. leadership on climate change. Yet for seven years the Bush administration denied and dithered while the planet warmed." [emphasis added]
An interesting accusation, particularly considering that the planet stopped warming 2 years before Bush took the oath in 2001, has been cooling since 2002 and that this year's was the fourth coldest May since 1979.
That's right -- the University of Alabama, Huntsville just published its satellite-derived temperature anomalies for May. The figures depict a global temperature drop of 0.195°C between April and May, and a drop of 0.379°C since May of last year. Anthony Watts, one of myriad scientists attributing recent cooling (and global temperature anomalies overall) to the activity of that yellow dwarf star at the center of our solar system and other historically correlative natural forces, notes that: [emphasis in original]
"Even more impressive is the change since the last big peak in global temperature in January 2007 at 0.594°C, giving a 16 month ∆T of -0.774°C which is equal in magnitude to the generally agreed upon ‘global warming signal' of the last 100 years."
Please consider those words carefully.
And also that, as previously noted, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory recently confirmed that an impending phase shift in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation will likely bring colder temperatures for as many as the next 20-30 years.
So amid all the dreadful economics, the Democrats were actually proposing the single largest government intrusion into the nation's economy since WWII rationing in order to stop something that stopped almost 10 years ago. And which, despite continually rising atmospheric CO2 levels, exhibits no signs of restarting.
A socialistic solution in search of a problem if ever there were one.
Das Klima Kapital
Have I mentioned that there's no proof whatever that the actions of mankind can influence global temperatures even one degree Celsius in either direction?
In last Tuesday's NRO, Lawrence Solomon reminded us that Lieberman-Warner is based primarily upon the premise that there exists "scientific consensus on [manmade] global warming." And that this over-talked talking point is based largely upon the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's headline of "2500 Scientific Expert Reviewers."
Even if true, why then does Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine's petition against global warming alarmism continue to add signatures to its over 31,000 scientists, including more than 9,000 with PhDs? Just who are the UN's "expert reviewers" whose opinions have been elevated to the realm of "indisputable?"
Solomon contacted the Secretariat of the IPCC to learn the names of these 2,500 scientists and just what exactly they endorsed. Writes Solomon:
"I planned to canvas them to determine their precise views. The answer that came back from the Secretariat informed me that the names were not public, so I would not be able to survey them, and that the scientists were merely reviewers. The 2,500 had not endorsed the conclusions of the report and, in fact, the IPCC had not claimed that they did. Journalists had jumped to the conclusion that the scientists the IPCC had touted were endorsers and the IPCC never saw fit to correct the record. There is no consensus of 2,500 scientist-endorsers. Moreover, many of those 2,500 reviewers turned thumbs down on the studies that they reviewed - I know this from my own interviews with them, conducted in the course of writing a book about scientists who dispute the conventional wisdom on climate change."
So why champion a bill that gambled on non-existent technology to accomplish essentially nothing at inescapably catastrophic costs to solve a non-problem that no one has the slightest idea how to solve anyway?
Addressing the National Press Club last month, Czech President Vaclav Klaus described the government control over business afforded by cap-and-trade as "something which resembles very much the dreams of communist central planners." And while Lieberman-Warner, which would have extracted trillions of dollars from the economy by selling greenhouse gas credits to American industry, already fit that bill, the so-called Boxer Substitute Amendment would bring a smile to the face of comrade Marx himself. Responding to claims that cap-and-trade would harm poorest Americans the most, Boxer's was a typical liberal fix that "sets aside a nearly $800 billion tax relief fund through 2050, which will help consumers in need of assistance related to energy costs."
Translation - control the nation's commerce while redistributing its profits.
In 1867, Karl Marx argued that capitalism's cycle of labor exploitation could not endlessly sustain itself and would ultimately be its doom. Modern greenies insist that capitalism's cycle of environmental exploitation will not endlessly sustain itself and will ultimately be not only its doom - but the entire planet's.
Cap-and-trade thus represents the perfect liberal synergy of environmentalism and socialism.
With both energy costs and atmospheric carbon levels on the rise while global temperatures fall, one might expect prudent policymakers to adopt a watch-and-wait philosophy over the next 10 years or so. But the envirosocialists are instead feeling the heat to enact their green-red social reforms before the "consensus" lie is exposed -- and the public's hypochondriacal fever cools.
All the more reason why Republican senators should have scooped up handfuls of nascent practical science and with it buried the decaying piles of junk science that shelter the counterfeit arguments coming from the other side of the aisle. And Friday's defeat of S.3036 doesn't change that imperative one iota.
Yes, having failed to muster the 60 votes (48-36) necessary to overcome a GOP filibuster and move to final consideration, Majority Leader Harry Reid was forced to pull the bill from the floor. But with both Presidential nominees supporting cap-and-trade and likely Democrat gains in both houses, this insidious scheme may smell funny, but it's by no means dead. Especially with a majority of the citizenry reading headlines the likes of Republican lawmakers block US climate bill still of the mind that their carbon-spewing lifestyles somehow threaten the world of their descendancy.
So when next the battle wages, government topography, public hysteria and lower energy costs might coalesce to favor the alarmists' scare tactics over the economic realities.
That's why then -- as now and before - disputing and debunking the sham science will be key to curing this greenhouse gas dementia once and for all.
Marc Sheppard is a frequent contributor to American Thinker and welcomes your feedback.
Comments
Perhaps a moment spent at Watts Up With That {see the following} --
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/06/08/surprise-earths-biosphere-is-booming-co2-the-cause/
will give some rational politicians some ready answers, such as that increasing CO2 levels are turning out to be beneficial to the planet. Who'd have thought ~ a coal-fired, CO2 spewing electric power station turns out to be green after all!
Is the Minimum Wage Increase Behind the .50% Jobless Rate Jump?
by: Mark Perry posted on: June 07, 2008
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Accoding to BLS data on unemployment rates by age, it looks like almost all of the .50% increase in May unemployment to 5.5% from 5% in April was due to increases in the jobless rates for young workers in the 16-24 year age group, especially the 16-19 year group (see chart above). For workers 25 years and over, the jobless rate has remained pretty stable at around 4%, compared to large increases from April for 16-19 year workers (+3.3% to 18.7%, the highest rate since 1993) and 20-24 year olds (+1.5%).
From the Patterico's Pontifications blog: Who does this age group represent? How about high school and college students coming into the job market for the summer.
And what do many such job seekers get paid? Minimum wage –which Congress increased last year from $5.15 to $5.85, and which will increase again next month to $6.55, and then again next year to $7.25 (see chart below).
Although it apparently hasn't received much media attention, perhaps there is a link between the rising unemployment rate for teenagers and the pending 12% increase in the minimum wage next month. Since we have evidence that consumers respond to higher gas prices by driving less, wouldn't it also be the case that employers of unskilled workers would respond to 12% increases in wages for unskilled workers by hiring fewer unskilled workers?
I'll verify this later, but from an initial inspection of BLS data on the history of the minimum wage, it looks like the +41% increase in the minimum wage from $5.15 per hour in 2007 to $7.25 in 2009 will be the largest 2-year increase in the minimum wage in U.S. history! And this HAS to have an adverse effect on employment of teenage workers.
Iran and the Problem of Evil
By MICHAEL LEDEEN
June 7, 2008; Page A11
Ever since World War II, we have been driven by a passionate desire to understand how mass genocide, terror states and global war came about – and how we can prevent them in the future.
Above all, we have sought answers to several basic questions: Why did the West fail to see the coming of the catastrophe? Why were there so few efforts to thwart the fascist tide, and why did virtually all Western leaders, and so many Western intellectuals, treat the fascists as if they were normal political leaders, instead of the virulent revolutionaries they really were? Why did the main designated victims – the Jews – similarly fail to recognize the magnitude of their impending doom? Why was resistance so rare?
Most eventually accepted a twofold "explanation": the uniqueness of the evil, and the lack of historical precedent for it. Italy and Germany were two of the most civilized and cultured nations in the world. It was difficult to appreciate that a great evil had become paramount in the countries that had produced Kant, Beethoven, Dante and Rossini.
How could Western leaders, let alone the victims, be blamed for failing to see something that was almost totally new – systematic mass murder on a vast scale, and a threat to civilization itself? Never before had there been such an organized campaign to destroy an entire "race," and it was therefore almost impossible to see it coming, or even to recognize it as it got under way.
The failure to understand what was happening took a well-known form: a systematic refusal to view our enemies plain. Hitler's rants, whether in "Mein Kampf" or at Nazi Party rallies, were often downplayed as "politics," a way of maintaining popular support. They were rarely taken seriously as solemn promises he fully intended to fulfill. Mussolini's call for the creation of a new Italian Empire, and his later alliance with Hitler, were often downplayed as mere bluster, or even excused on the grounds that, since other European countries had overseas territories, why not Italy?
Some scholars broadened the analysis to include other evil regimes, such as Stalin's Russia, which also systematically murdered millions of people and whose ambitions similarly threatened the West. Just as with fascism, most contemporaries found it nearly impossible to believe that the Gulag Archipelago was what it was. And just as with fascism, we studied it so that the next time we would see evil early enough to prevent it from threatening us again.
By now, there is very little we do not know about such regimes, and such movements. Some of our greatest scholars have described them, analyzed the reasons for their success, and chronicled the wars we fought to defeat them. Our understanding is considerable, as is the honesty and intensity of our desire that such things must be prevented.
Yet they are with us again, and we are acting as we did in the last century. The world is simmering in the familiar rhetoric and actions of movements and regimes – from Hezbollah and al Qaeda to the Iranian Khomeinists and the Saudi Wahhabis – who swear to destroy us and others like us. Like their 20th-century predecessors, they openly proclaim their intentions, and carry them out whenever and wherever they can. Like our own 20th-century predecessors, we rarely take them seriously or act accordingly. More often than not, we downplay the consequences of their words, as if they were some Islamic or Arab version of "politics," intended for internal consumption, and designed to accomplish domestic objectives.
Clearly, the explanations we gave for our failure to act in the last century were wrong. The rise of messianic mass movements is not new, and there is very little we do not know about them. Nor is there any excuse for us to be surprised at the success of evil leaders, even in countries with long histories and great cultural and political accomplishments. We know all about that. So we need to ask the old questions again. Why are we failing to see the mounting power of evil enemies? Why do we treat them as if they were normal political phenomena, as Western leaders do when they embrace negotiations as the best course of action?
No doubt there are many reasons. One is the deep-seated belief that all people are basically the same, and all are basically good. Most human history, above all the history of the last century, points in the opposite direction. But it is unpleasant to accept the fact that many people are evil, and entire cultures, even the finest, can fall prey to evil leaders and march in lockstep to their commands. Much of contemporary Western culture is deeply committed to a belief in the goodness of all mankind; we are reluctant to abandon that reassuring article of faith. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, we prefer to pursue the path of reasonableness, even with enemies whose thoroughly unreasonable fanaticism is manifest.
This is not merely a philosophical issue, for to accept the threat to us means – short of a policy of national suicide – acting against it. As it did in the 20th century, it means war. It means that, temporarily at least, we have to make sacrifices on many fronts: in the comforts of our lives, indeed in lives lost, in the domestic focus of our passions – careers derailed and personal freedoms subjected to unpleasant and even dangerous restrictions – and the diversion of wealth from self-satisfaction to the instruments of power. All of this is painful; even the contemplation of it hurts.
Then there is anti-Semitism. Old Jew-hating texts like "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," now in Farsi and Arabic, are proliferating throughout the Middle East. Calls for the destruction of the Jews appear regularly on Iranian, Egyptian, Saudi and Syrian television and are heard in European and American mosques. There is little if any condemnation from the West, and virtually no action against it, suggesting, at a minimum, a familiar Western indifference to the fate of the Jews.
Finally, there is the nature of our political system. None of the democracies adequately prepared for war before it was unleashed on them in the 1940s. None was prepared for the terror assault of the 21st century. The nature of Western politics makes it very difficult for national leaders – even those rare men and women who see what is happening and want to act – to take timely, prudent measures before war is upon them. Leaders like Winston Churchill are relegated to the opposition until the battle is unavoidable. Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to fight desperately to win Congressional approval for a national military draft a few months before Pearl Harbor.
Then, as now, the initiative lies with the enemies of the West. Even today, when we are engaged on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, there is little apparent recognition that we are under attack by a familiar sort of enemy, and great reluctance to act accordingly. This time, ignorance cannot be claimed as an excuse. If we are defeated, it will be because of failure of will, not lack of understanding. As, indeed, was almost the case with our near-defeat in the 1940s.
Mr. Ledeen, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author, most recently, of "The Iranian Time Bomb" (St. Martin's Press, 2007)
Obama explains how the 'Jewish lobby' works
Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Hussein Obama's official web site has provided seemingly unlimited blogging space for anti-Semites of every race, color and creed to spit their venom about Israel and Jews. Doug Ross has discovered yet another blog on Obama's official web site that explains how the 'Jewish lobby' works. The blog has been around since at least April.
NO LOBBY IS FEARED MORE or catered to by politicians than the Jewish Lobby. If a politician does not play ball with the Jewish Lobby, he will not get elected, or re-elected, and he will either be smeared or ignored by the Jewish-owned major media.
All Jewish lobbies and organizations are interconnected and there are hundreds upon hundreds of them. The leaders of the numerous Jewish Lobby Groups go to the same synagogues, country clubs, and share the same Jewish investment bankers. And this inter-connectedness extends to the Jews who run the Federal Reserve Bank, US Homeland Security, and the US State Department.
In other words, “Jews stick together.” Americans must know how extremely powerful the Jewish Lobby is and how it operates to undermine America’s interests both at home and abroad. At home - by corrupting America’s political system, and abroad - by dictating American Foreign Policy against America’s best interests.
Do I need to quote more? Do I need to post any of the disgusting posters about the "Jew Senator Lieberman" to convince you all that something is seriously wrong here? 'Change you can believe in? Looks more like more of the same old thing to me.
OBAMA’S VP SEARCH MISTAKE
By Dick Morris And Eileen McGann
06.4.2008
Published in The New York Post on June 5, 2008.
On his first day as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama made his first clear, serious mistake: He named Eric Holder as one of three people charged with vice-presidential vetting.
As deputy attorney general, Holder was the key person who made the pardon of Marc Rich possible in the final hours of the Clinton presidency. Now, Obama will be stuck in the Marc Rich mess.
If ever there was a person who did not deserve a presidential pardon, it’s Marc Rich, the fugitive billionaire who renounced his US citizenship and moved to Switzerland to avoid prosecution for racketeering, wire fraud, 51 counts of tax fraud, evading $48 million in taxes, and engaging in illegal trades with Iran in violation of the US embargo following the 1979-80 hostage crisis.
Seventeen years later, Rich wanted a pardon, and he retained Jack Quinn, former counsel to the president, to lobby his old boss.
It was Holder who had originally recommended Quinn to one of Rich’s advisers, although he claims that he did not know the identity of the client.
And he gave substantive advice to Quinn along the way. According to Quinn’s notes that were produced to Congress, Holder told Quinn to take the pardon application “straight to the White House” because “the timing is good.”
And once the pardon was granted, Holder sent his congratulations to Quinn.
In 2002, a congressional committee reported that Holder was a “willing participant in the plan to keep the Justice Department from knowing about and opposing” the Rich pardon.
It is one thing to reach back to Obama’s pastor to raise doubts about his values. But it is quite another to scrutinize the record of his first appointee.
It couldn’t be a bigger mistake.
Sounded to me like Barry has agreed to pay her campaign debt
All those statements she made in ads and during debates questioning his judgement will come back to haunt him as the RNC will make good use of them
Voting for Commander in Chief
There can only be one.
by Frederick W. Kagan
06/16/2008, Volume 013, Issue 38
It would be hard to design a better test for the job of commander in chief than the real-life test senators John McCain and Barack Obama have undergone in the last two years. As the situation in Iraq deteriorated during 2006 and the war reached its most critical moment, both senators served on national security committees:McCain on Armed Services, Obama on Foreign Relations. From those positions, with access to classified situation reports as well as the public testimony and private advice of those who knew the situation in Iraq best, each man reached an understanding of the facts on the ground and the interests at stake. And each proposed a strategy. It was as close as a presidential candidate could get to showing how he would respond to a national security crisis without already being in the White House.
Both men's proposals are a matter of public record, available on the Internet. McCain set forth his in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute on January 5, 2007 (at an event marking the release of AEI's "Choosing Victory," which I wrote, outlining a strategy like the one Bush later ordered). Obama presented his in the "Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007" (S. 433), which he introduced in the Senate on January 30. We also know the strategy the president chose--the surge of forces he announced on January 10, very similar to what McCain described--and the outcome it has brought.
McCain's recommendations drew on his conversations with commanders on the ground in Iraq,
where he traveled in late December 2006. McCain called for a minimum of three to five additional brigades in Baghdad and at least one in Anbar province. Their mission, he said, would be
to implement the thus far elusive 'hold' element of the military's clear-hold-build strategy, to maintain security in cleared areas, to protect the population and critical infrastructure, and to impose the government's authority--essential elements of a traditional counterinsurgency strategy.
McCain cited the "excellent" track record of U.S. troops in stopping sectarian violence. He noted that, "where American soldiers have deployed to areas in turmoil, including Baghdad neighborhoods, the violence has ceased almost immediately." And he was specific about the tasks troops would perform: "establish local outposts; forge relationships with local leaders, which by the way is proceeding in Anbar province; build intelligence networks; engage in economic reconstruction activities; oversee other employment-generating projects; and wean the populace off their reliance on militias for safety." All this the Americans would do "in cooperation with the Iraqi forces until such time as the Iraqis can do it on their own."
In his speech, McCain predicted what the surge would achieve. First, it would cause "more casualties and extra hardships for our brave fighting men and women." But then it would bring violence under control. This would "pave the way for a political settlement." McCain went on, "Once the government wields greater authority, however, Iraqi leaders must take significant steps on their own. These include a commitment to go after the militias, a reconciliation process for insurgents and Baathists, a more equitable distribution of government resources, provincial elections that will bring Sunnis into the government, and a large increase in employment-generating economic projects."
McCain acknowledged "many, many mistakes since 2003" and the difficulty of reversing them. Still, the consequences of defeat would be "catastrophic." His bottom line: "By surging troops and bringing security to Baghdad and other areas, we will give the Iraqis and their partners the best possible chances to succeed."
Barack Obama's approach differed from McCain's in its basis as well as its goals and methods. Not having traveled to Iraq since January 2006--before the Samarra Mosque bombing, the explosion of sectarian violence, and the two failed U.S. attempts to quell that violence--Obama relied on others' testimony in assessing the situation on the ground. His bill quoted a skeptical Colin Powell and an even more skeptical CENTCOM commander, General John Abizaid. Abizaid said he had discussed the usefulness of a surge of U.S. troops with "every divisional commander, General Casey, the corps commander, General Dempsey," and all had agreed that a surge of troops would not "add considerably to our ability to achieve success in Iraq." Worse, it would "prevent the Iraqis from doing more, from taking more responsibility for their own future."
Given this analysis, Obama's legislation forbade the surge and ordered most U.S. troops out of Iraq by the spring of 2008. It said,
The redeployment of the Armed Forces under this section shall be substantial, shall occur in a gradual manner, and shall be executed at a pace to achieve the goal of the complete redeployment of all United States combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008, consistent with the expectation
of the Iraq Study Group, if all the matters set forth in subsection (b)(1)(B) are not met by such date, subject to the exceptions for retention of forces for force protection, counter-terrorism operations, training of Iraqi forces, and other purposes as contemplated by subsection (g).
In the media, Obama repeatedly predicted that the surge would fail. The day the president announced the new policy, Obama told Larry King he "did not see anything" in the president's surge that would "make a significant dent in the sectarian violence." The same day, he said on MSNBC,
I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse. I think it takes pressure off the Iraqis to arrive at the sort of political accommodation that every observer believes is the ultimate solution to the problems we face there. So I am going to actively oppose the president's proposal.... I think he is wrong, and I think the American people believe he's wrong.
Four days later, Obama told Face the Nation, "We cannot impose a military solution on what has effectively become a civil war. And until we acknowledge that reality--we can send 15,000 more troops, 20,000 more troops, 30,000 more troops, I don't know any expert on the region or any military officer that I've spoken to privately that believes that that is going to make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground."
So what happened? President Bush ordered the surge. He committed an additional five Army brigades and two Marine battalions to Iraq with the mission of protecting the Iraqi population. In accomplishing this, U.S. forces partnered with Iraqi troops precisely as McCain had suggested, helping them "hold" areas that they had jointly "cleared." Meanwhile, American troops established bonds with local leaders, as McCain had said they would, which led to the expansion of the "Anbar Awakening" movement throughout central Iraq. And U.S. troops developed numerous economic and infrastructure projects that provided jobs.
Sectarian violence stopped almost completely. Al Qaeda in Iraq was dealt what CIA director Michael Hayden now assesses as "a near strategic defeat." This allowed Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to commit Iraqi Security Forces directly against the last remaining illegal militias in Iraq, clearing them out of Basra and Sadr City--weaning "the populace off their reliance on militias for safety," as McCain had put it. American casualties initially rose, as McCain had warned they would, but then fell dramatically: Last month was the lowest-casualty month of the entire war.
Once violence was under control, the Iraqis began to make serious political progress, as McCain had predicted. They passed almost all of the "benchmark" legislation that Obama's bill would have required.
What would have happened if Obama's bill had passed? There is no way to know for sure, but it seems likely that, facing less resistance, Al Qaeda in Iraq would have continued to gain strength, the fragile Iraqi Security Forces would have collapsed, as would the fragile Iraqi government, militias would have flourished--and the United States would have departed under fire, accepting a humiliating defeat in the war against al Qaeda that would have reverberated globally.
For any voter trying to choose between the two candidates for commander in chief, there is no better test than this: When American strategy in a critical theater was up for grabs, John McCain proposed a highly unpopular and risky path, which he accurately predicted could lead to success. Barack Obama proposed a popular and politically safe route that would have led to an unnecessary and debilitating American defeat at the hands of al Qaeda.
The two men brought different backgrounds to the test, of course. In January 2007, McCain had been a senator for 10 years and had served in the military for 23 years. Obama had been a senator for 2 years and before that was a state legislator, lawyer, and community organizer. But neither presidential candidates nor the commander in chief gets to choose the tests that history brings. Once in office, the one elected must perform.
--Frederick W. Kagan, for the Editors
Worried About a Recession? Don't Blame Free Trade
by Daniel T. Griswold
Daniel Griswold is director for the Center for Trade Policy Studies at Cato Institute.
Added to cato.org on June 4, 2008
This article appeared in World Trade Magazine on June 3, 2008.
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Speculation is growing that the U.S. economy may have already slipped into recession. If the past is any guide, politicians on the campaign trail will be tempted to blame trade and globalization for the passing pain of the business cycle. But an analysis of previous recessions and expansions shows that international trade and investment are not to blame for downturns in the economy and may, in fact, be moderating the business cycle.
In recent decades, as foreign trade and investment have been rising as a share of the U.S. economy, recessions have actually become milder and less frequent. The softening of the business cycle has become so striking that economists now refer to it as "The Great Moderation." The more benign trend appears to date from the mid-1980s.
If the U.S. economy does tip into recession this year, free trade and globalization will be among the likely scapegoats.
The Great Moderation means that Americans are spending more of their time earning a living in a growing economy and less in a contracting economy. Our economy has been in recession a total of 16 months in the past 25 years, or 5.3 percent of the time. In comparison, between 1945 and 1983, the nation suffered through nine recessions totaling 96 months, or 21.1 percent of that time period.
America's recent experience of a more globalized and less volatile economy has not been unique in the world. Other countries that have opened themselves to global markets have been less vulnerable to financial and economic shocks. Countries that put all their economic eggs in the domestic basket lack the diversification that a more globally integrated economy can fall back on to weather a slowdown. A country that increases trade as a share of its gross domestic product by 10 percentage points is actually about one-third less likely to suffer sudden economic slowdowns or other crises than if it were less open to trade. As the authors of this study concluded:
Some may find this counterintuitive: trade protectionism does not "shield" countries from the volatility of world markets as proponents might hope. On the contrary...economies that trade less with other countries are more prone to sudden stops and to currency crises.
Globalization is not the only possible cause behind the moderation of the business cycle. Improved monetary policy, fewer external shocks (what some economists call "good luck"), and other structural changes in the economy may have all played a role. For example, the decline in unionization and the resulting increase in labor-market flexibility have allowed wages and employment patterns to adjust more readily to changing market conditions, mitigating spikes in unemployment. Better inventory management through just-in-time delivery has reduced the cyclical overhangs that can disrupt production.
Combined with those other factors, expanding trade and globalization have helped to moderate swings in national output by blessing us with a more diversified and flexible economy. Exports can take up slack when domestic demand sags, and imports can satisfy demand when domestic productive capacity is reaching its short-term limits. Access to foreign capital markets can allow domestic producers and consumers alike to more easily borrow to tide themselves over during difficult times.
Daniel Griswold is director for the Center for Trade Policy Studies at Cato Institute.
More by Daniel T. Griswold
A weakening dollar has helped to boost exports and earnings abroad, but the main driver of success overseas has been strong growth and lower trade barriers outside the United States. American companies have been earning a larger and larger share of their profits overseas for decades now. According to economist Ed Yardeni, the share of profits that U.S. companies earn abroad has increased steadily from about 5 percent in the 1960s to about a quarter of all profits today.
If the U.S. economy does tip into recession this year, free trade and globalization will be among the likely scapegoats. The pain of recession will be real for millions of American households, but raising barriers to foreign trade and investment will provide no relief for most affected workers. In fact, reverting to protectionism would only reduce the capacity of our economy to regain its footing and resume its long-term pattern of growth.
The Art of Ostracism [Victor Davis Hanson]
There are two disturbing—and now predictable—patterns to Obama's serial distancing from prior intimates. First, the post facto embarrassment is personalized in terms of "I" and "me," as if a Wright or Rezko is somehow doing something out of character aimed at Obama, rather than persisting in entirely predictable behavior that offends society at large. Thus in reaction to the racist Wright, we get "That's a show of disrespect to me," while Pfleger's venom prompts, "I am deeply disappointed in Father's Pfleger." But the issue is racial hatred, not a matter of pleasing or respecting Obama himself.
The second reaction is a sort of amnesia: So suddenly the past benefactor Rezo has radically changed with his indictment: "That isn't the Tony Rezko I knew". And after Rev. Wright himself confirmed that his hatred once labeled as "snippets" and "loops" was, in fact, representative of his world view, Obama pivoted with "Well, I may not know him as well as I thought."
The truth?
Obama has required a vocabulary of needed ostracism, as he insidiously sheds most of his prior life and environment of the last twenty years. Wright, Moss, Pfleger, Ayers, Rezo, etc. are all figures that have to be "disavowed" or, better, Trostkyized in some fashion. The method apparently is to suggest that they, not Obama, have suddenly changed (when, in truth, they, not Obama, have remained entirely consistent) and are now out to hurt or embarrass Obama (when, again, they are surprised that their longtime predictable behavior is suddenly producing different results).
Like many of his prior positions on the Middle East, Iran, guns, abortion, taxes, the war, etc. Obama must metamorphosize from a hard-core Chicago racial leftwing activist, into a liberal idealist who transcends politics.
Will it work? Two things are in his favor. One, his message is messianic ("this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal"), and the devoted not only don't want to know of their prophet's mortal lapses, but like all devotees will turn in anger on those who remind them of such mortality. Second, many of these bombs have been exploded in the primaries, months before the election. Even in Chicago, there are only so many Rezkos and Wrights.
Michelle Obama's amazing rhetoric, of course, is a different question (since it can't be relegated to a matter of dishonoring Obama or sudden character change), and so requires that her speeches from now on be delivered from pre-approved set scripts, rather than ex tempore give and take.
So America already knows of Obama's disturbing past and McGovernite agenda, but sets all that against his hope and change charm offensive.
Hooked voters seem troubled about what they want, but so far want it nonetheless.
06/06 11:59 AM
Why energy independence won’t happen any time soon
Posted by: McQ
In 1972, the US imported 12% of its oil needs. Now we're near the 60% range. In those intervening thirty-something years, we, as a nation have done very little to address that problem.
R.J. Samuelson, addressing the proposed cap and trade program, provides a litany of why it is a bad idea. A cap and trade system essentially outlaws carbon (and will most heavily impact the poor), but there's an even more important point to be made. There is nothing to replace what is essentially banned:
Reviewing five economic models, the Environmental Defense Fund asserts that the cuts can be achieved "without significant adverse consequences to the economy." Fuel prices would rise, but because people would use less energy, the impact on household budgets would be modest.
This is mostly make-believe. If we suppress emissions, we also suppress today's energy sources, and because the economy needs energy, we suppress the economy. The models magically assume smooth transitions. If coal is reduced, then conservation or nonfossil fuel sources will take its place. But in the real world, if coal-fired power plants are canceled (as many were last year), wind or nuclear won't automatically substitute. If the supply of electricity doesn't keep pace with demand, brownouts or blackouts will result.
At this point (nor anytime in the near future) we have no alternative fuels to switch too which can fill the capacity such cuts in carbon will demand just to keep us even, much less address the future demands of a growing economy. We haven't any real plans for increasing nuclear power. Cellulosic ethanol is not a commercially viable process. And wind and solar are hardly refined enough or big enough (or technologically advanced enough) to fill the bill.
We still have a huge need for oil and coal, at least in the short term, and we're ignoring the assets we have for the vaporware of the future. Maybe it's just me, but I usually don't sell my car until I have another car sitting in the driveway.
A perfect example, however, of what we face in the realm of bringing new carbon based assets on-line or refining them can be found, in all places, in Elk Point, SD. There, the citizens have voted in the majority to build the first new refinery in 32 years:
By a solid 58 percent to 42 percent margin, county voters approved Hyperion's request to rezone 3,292 acres of farm land for a new classification, Energy Center Planned Development.
The obvious advantage to everyone, of course, is the increase in refining capacity of the nation overall. More product into a market which is seeing increasing prices - and, promises Hyperion, it'll do so with the latest "green" technology:
Hyperion touted the so-called "green" technology in its proposed energy center, which it claims would be the world's cleanest. The refinery would process 400,000 barrels of tar sands crude a day from Alberta into low-sulfur gasoline, diesel and jet fuel.
Then there is the local economic impact in an area that could use it:
Supporters cited the once-in-a-lifetime economic opportunities the $10 billion project would bring.
An average of 4,500 construction jobs would be required over four years. With the refinery up and running, Hyperion pledges to create 1,826 full-time jobs at hourly wages of between $20 and $30.
But even with the vote approving the project (i.e. the democratic process at work), and even with obvious economic benefit to both the community and the nation, I have to wonder if it will ever be built:
While conceding defeat, opponents vowed to keep fighting the controversial project on every imaginable front, pressing on with a lawsuit it filed against the county over the zoning procedures and opposing Hyperion as it applies for a bevy of state and federal permits.
"We have strategies in place to slow or delay all the permit processes," Ed Cable, chairman of the anti-Hyperion group Save Union County, said after the vote.
And, of course, there are plenty of groups out there which will be happy to fund their fight against the will of the people.
This is a microcosm of why we find ourselves in the shape we do today. Because of it, we get further and further behind the energy power curve and are approaching the point where, in my opinion, this problem will become insurmountable. At some point we won't be in the shape to bring viable alternatives on-line (nuclear) nor will we have positioned ourselves to take advantage of the assets we presently have in abundance (oil and coal) for the short term.
What will suffer, of course, is the economy, as it falters and stagnates. And who will suffer? As is always the case when the economy goes south, those who can least afford it suffer the most.
We must wake up to the fact that our energy independence depends on a short-term plan of exploiting (in as environmentally friendly way as we can, given current technology) present carbon based assets as well as future plans to exploit viable alternatives (nuclear) as much as possible while we bring future alternatives on line to replace our carbon based fuels. However, the path we're on at present, as exemplified by what I think will happen (or, in reality, not happen) at Elk Point, SD, will only bring future economic disaster.
Opportunism knocks, part 2
During the run-up to the primaries, Senator Obama failed to show up in the Senate for the vote on the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment calling on the government to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force a terrorist entity. On the day of the vote, Obama issued a statement announcing that he would have voted against it. In the statement, the closest he came to addressing the merits of the amendment was his assertion that "he does not think that now is the time for saber-rattling towards Iran." The amendment passed the Senate 76-22 on September 26 with many Democrats including Hillary Clinton voting in its favor.
Obama subsequently advanced three explanations for his opposition to the amendment. The McCain campaign has usefully compiled them here. Obama specifically condemned Hillary Clinton for her vote in favor of the amendment. At a Democratic candidates' debate in December before the Iowa caucus, for example, Obama returned to the theme of his September 26 statement. The New York Daily News reported:
Monday's revelation that the Iranian nuke threat was hugely overblown gave Clinton's rivals new zeal to criticize her vote to brand Iran's Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization.
Obama likened it to her 2002 vote authorizing the Iraq war. "This saber-rattling was a repetition of Iraq," he said.
We can infer from his statements that Obama is opposed to "saber-rattling," and that designating the IRGC a terrorist organization is rattling the dread saber. On Wednesday, however, the time for Obama to rattle the saber arrived. Or at least the time had come to support the designation of the IRGC as a terrorist organization, eight months after the Senate vote on the subject. The time coincided with end of the primary season, and with Obama's appearance at the AIPAC policy conference. At his speech to the AIPAC policy conference in Washington on Wednesday, Obama called for "boycotting firms associated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, whose Quds force has rightly been labeled a terrorist organization."
By the standards of presidential politics, Obama may not be an unusually cynical politician. But he is extraordinarily cynical, and he must believe that included among his mystical powers is the power to make voters believe whatever he says, even when what he says today contradicts what he said yesterday.
Opportunism knocks
Earlier this year, three-fourths of the Senate voted in favor of a resoution designating the Iranian National Guard as a terrorist organization. Among those who voted for the resolution were Hillary Clinton, Richard Durbin, Harry Reid, and Chuck Schumer. Obama voted against it.
Yesterday, however, Obama told the AIPAC convention that the Iranian National Guard is, in fact, a terrorist organization. He attempted to explain his recent vote to the contrary by claiming that the resolution contained language about military action. But this is false, and transparently so -- if it had contained such language Clinton, Durbin, Reid, and Schumer would have opposed it.
Obama's change in position on the Iranian National Guard is mirrored in other flip-flops, with more likely to come. On the vital issue of the Iraq war, for example, Obama spoke out against it as a state legislator. But when running for the U.S. Senate in 2004, he declared that there is little difference between his position on Iraq and that of President Bush. After his election, differences quickly reappeared, and Obama's position continued to evolve over the next several years. When it comes to Iraq, Obama makes the John Kerry of 2004 look constant.
There's not much mystery any more about what Obama is. He's a default hard-leftist with a streak of opportunism as big as all outdoors. When he's competing in a general election, the opportunist mode naturally prevails. But if he 's elected president, especially assuming (as I do) a solid working majority in Congress, we can expect Obama to default to his hard-leftism.
“Naive and dangerous”: Bolton rips Obama
posted at 5:53 pm on June 5, 2008 by Allahpundit
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So tasty that I would have slapped the red-meat graphic on it if not for the fact that all Bolton posts must be adorned with photos prominently displaying The ‘Stache. (Official Hot Air policy.) I wonder why McCain hasn’t given Bolton a bigger role in his campaign, on the order of what Joe Lieberman has. Granted, there’s a cost in associating with any former Bush official, but my sense is that JB is so well loved by conservatives and flew low enough under the radar as ambassador to the UN that he’d be more of an asset to McCain in bringing the base on board than a liability in scaring off independents, especially if Maverick arranged for some high profile counterbalancing appearances alongside prominent “realists” like, say, James Baker. Then again, my sense of what conservatives do and don’t love or hate derives mainly from what right-wing blog readers do and don’t love and hate, and as we’ve seen in the cases of Fred Thompson and Hillary Clinton, the two sets don’t always perfectly coincide.
Anyway. Dangerous naivete:
Consider the following statement, which was lost in the controversy over his comments about negotiations: “Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us. … Iran, they spend 1/100th of what we spend on the military. If Iran ever tried to pose a serious threat to us, they wouldn’t stand a chance.”…
Had Italy, for example, gone communist during the 1950s or 1960s, it would have been an inconvenient defeat for the United States but a catastrophe for the people of Italy. An “asymmetric” threat to the U.S. often is an existential threat to its friends, which was something we never forgot during the Cold War. Obama plainly seems to have entirely missed this crucial point. Ironically, it is he who is advocating a unilateralist policy, ignoring the risks and challenges to U.S. allies when the direct threat to us is, in his view, “tiny.”
What is implicit in Obama’s reference to “tiny” threats is that they are sufficiently insignificant that negotiations alone can resolve them. Indeed, he has gone even further, arguing that the lack of negotiations with Iran caused the threats: “And the fact that we have not talked to them means that they have been developing nuclear weapons, funding Hamas, funding Hezbollah.”
This is perhaps the most breathtakingly naive statement of all, implying as it does that it is actually U.S. policy that motivates Iran rather than Iran’s own perceived ambitions and interests.
Indeed, a point I’ve made before myself. Who does he think Obama’s prepared to sacrifice, though, on the altar of isolationism? We’re obliged to intervene militarily on behalf of a NATO ally and St. Barack’s already sworn up and down that he won’t let Israel be threatened by Iran. I’m guessing he means Colombia vis-a-vis Chavez and Taiwan vis-a-vis China (and the Koreas?), but, sad to say, I suspect more of the public would prefer an “ah, let ‘em have it” Obama negotiated settlement in those cases than a ‘Stachian line in the sand. Plus, any pressure brought to bear now on Obama to commit to intervention in the case of X, Y, or Z ally will only make for opposite pressure on McCain to explain how many interventions worldwide he’s prepared to manage simultaneously to keep our enemies honest. Still a useful op-ed, though, in that it’s aimed transparently at Iran, a subject which both sides agree needs to be addressed and which Obama desperately needs to be more specific about. As I’ve asked before, what is he prepared to give up and not give up once the glorious day of dialogue arrives? What if Iran simply refuses to suspend enrichment while agreeing to make concessions on other matters? What, in other words, is your leverage? Because if this new Rasmussen poll is any indication, the public’s going to want you to have some.
Update: An encouraging sign: When it comes to Israel, he’s willing to go the extra mile and break out a lapel pin.
Blowback
The Most Wildly Inappropriate Statement Ever?
Barack Obama's friend, financier and political supporter Tony Rezko was convicted by a Chicago jury today on sixteen counts involving various forms of political corruption. Obama released this statement:
I’m saddened by today’s verdict. This isn’t the Tony Rezko I knew, but now he has been convicted by a jury on multiple charges that once again shine a spotlight on the need for reform. I encourage the General Assembly to take whatever steps are necessary to prevent these kinds of abuses in the future.
I don't doubt that Obama is saddened by his mentor's conviction, but the rest of his statement is from outer space. "This isn't the Tony Rezko I knew." Deja vu, anyone? I could swear I've heard it somewhere before. Sure enough--the racist, anti-American Rev. Wright whom we've all seen on video wasn't the Rev. Wright whom Obama knew for 20 years, either. And the outrageously bigoted Father Pfleger wasn't the Pfleger whom Obama assiduously supported with earmarks--another form of political corruption.
Obama seems to suffer from a singular inability to "know" his most intimate associates. One day soon, will a "saddened" Obama tell us that the Michelle Obama we see on video is "not the Michelle Obama I knew?" Time will tell.
Obama continues by saying that Rezko's conviction "shine[s] a spotlight on the need for reform." Well, sort of. It certainly shines a spotlight on the inadvisability of committing extortion, money laundering, and so on. It may also shine a spotlight on Obama's need to choose a better class of friends.
Obama suggests that Illinois' General Assembly should "take whatever steps are necessary to prevent these kinds of abuses in the future." Hmm. I think Congress (and no doubt Illinois' General Assembly too) already did that. Which is why Rezko is about to serve a long sentence in the federal pen.
Earth to Obama: the world didn't fall off a turnip truck when you came of age. Fraud, extortion, money laundering, etc. have been illegal for some time, just as, contrary to the conclusion of Obama's speech last night--"this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick"--doctors, nurses and hospitals have been providing health care to Americans for a considerable time, and will continue to do so regardless of whether Obama wins in November.
But can he walk on water?
According to the Hebrew Bible, Moses enlisted divine assistance to part the Red Sea and allow the Jews to pass through it. King Canute is known to legend as the monarch whose courtiers persuaded him he could command the seas to go back. He is also known as the king who could not stop the sea but stemmed the Viking tide. And now Barack Obama claims the possession of powers that leave them in the dust.
At the end of his victory speech last night in St. Paul, Obama declared that we would be able to look back on his election to the presidency as "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." Lest you think this seems a bit presumptuos, he also noted that he makes this claim "with profound humility, and knowledge of my own limitations."
I'll second that
It's not nise to fool with Mother Nature
New global temp numbers released
Posted by: McQ
While Congress debates global warming and what to do about it, Anthony Watts reminds us of the latest findings:
Confirming what many of us have already noted from the anecdotal evidence coming in of a much cooler than normal May, such as late spring snows as far south as Arizona, extended skiing in Colorado, and delays in snow cover melting in many parts of the northern hemisphere, the University of Alabama, Huntsville (UAH) published their satellite derived Advanced Microwave Sounder Unit data set of the Lower Troposphere for May 2008.
You can go to Watt's site for the numbers, but their significance is this:
Compared to the May 2007 value of 0.199°C we find a 12 month ?T is -.379°C.
But even more impressive is the change since the last big peak in global temperature in January 2007 at 0.594°C, giving a 16 month ?T of -0.774°C which is equal in magnitude to the generally agreed upon "global warming signal" of the last 100 years.
Is anyone in Washington paying the least bit of attention to this?
It's all about scale
What influence does Kahane have??
Meanwhile, I'm sure you're aware of the percentage of Israeli citizens who are Arab and have full voting rights, yes?
What about the rights of Jews in Saudi Arabia........
You said " taking land and giving it to Israel. "
I merely asked you to support that statement- and you can't.
I wasn't trying to justify the Shah, but as a side point, in terms of basic human rights the Shah had a better record in terms of brutality than the mullahs do.
I guess I missed the part where we've taken away Iranian land and given it to Israel
Please explain
I'll just put you down as agreeing with Ward Churchill/ Rev Wright that 9/11 was completely justified due to our past poor behavior
Larry Jihnson's Michelle Obama "Whitey " video finally aired
My Old Party [William J. Bennett]
This is an astounding moment in American politics. You cannot credibly say the Clintons are a political dynasty the way, say, the Kennedys or Bushs are. But I think one has to say the Clinton rule of the Democratic party has been dynastic. Bill Clinton is the only Democrat to have served two terms as president in two generations, the only Democrat to twice beat Republican nominees for president and his wife is a two term U.S. senator who will likely be in the Senate for years to come. Bill Clinton has been rated one of — if not THE — most popular person in the world, and yet Clinton rule in American politics ends tonight. Whatever it was the Republicans and so many independents did not like about the Clintons, we’ve learned the Democrats have had enough as well.
And thus the Democratic party is about to nominate a far left candidate in the tradition of George McGovern, albeit without McGovern’s military and political record. The Democratic party is about to nominate a far-left candidate in the tradition of Michael Dukakis, albeit without Dukakis’s executive experience as governor. The Democratic party is about to nominate a far left candidate in the tradition of John Kerry, albeit without Kerry’s record of years of service in the Senate. The Democratic party is about to nominate an unvetted candidate in the tradition of Jimmy Carter, albeit without Jimmy Carter’s religious integrity as he spoke about it in 1976. Questions about all these attributes (from foreign policy expertise to executive experience to senatorial experience to judgment about foreign leaders to the instructors he has had in his cultural values) surround Barack Obama. And the Democratic party has chosen him.
Textbook Islamic Antisemitism
By Andrew G. Bostom
Palestinian cleric Wael Al-Zarad during a television program which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on February 28, 2008 intoned the following about the Jews of Israel: "By Allah, if each and every Arab spat on them, they would drown in Arab spit." Wael Al-Zarad's seemingly hallucinatory statement also included this allegation,
From the dome of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, they proclaim that Ezra the Scribe is the son of God.
The reference to Ezra is actually a false, intentionally defamatory Koranic accusation (Koran 9:30) against Jews, citing a claim which Jews, in fact, have never made.
But the crux of Al-Zarad's remarks explained that the Muslims' blood vengeance against the Jews, "will only subside with their [the Jews] annihilation, Allah willing, because they tried to kill our Prophet several times."
These allegations are part of a central antisemitic motif in the Koran which decrees an eternal curse upon the Jews (Koran 2:61/ reiterated at 3:112) for slaying the prophets and transgressing against the will of Allah. It should be noted that Koran 3:112 is featured in the pre-amble to Hamas' foundational Covenant. This central motif is coupled to Koranic verses 5:60, and 5:78, which describe the Jews transformation into apes and swine (5:60), or simply apes, (i.e. verses 2:65 and 7:166), having been "...cursed by the tongue of David, and Jesus, Mary's son" (5:78). Muhammad himself repeats this Koranic curse in a canonical hadith (Sunan Abu Dawoud, Book 37, Number 4322). And the related verse, 5:64, accuses the Jews-as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas did in a January 2007 speech, citing Koran 5:64-of being "spreaders of war and corruption," a sort of ancient Koranic antecedent of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
The centrality of the Jews' permanent "abasement and humiliation," and being "laden with God's anger" in the corpus of Muslim exegetic literature on Koran 2:61/3:112, is clear. By nature deceitful and treacherous, the Jews rejected Allah's signs and prophets, including Isa, the Muslim Jesus. Classical Koranic commentators when discussing Koran 5:82, which includes the statement ("Thou wilt surely find the most hostile of men to the believers are the Jews.."), concur on the unique animus of the Jews towards the Muslims, which is repeatedly linked to the curse of Koran 2:61/3:112.
Indeed the Koran's overall discussion of the Jews is marked by a litany of their sins and punishments, as if part of a divine indictment, conviction, and punishment process. The Jews' ultimate sin and punishment are made clear: they are the devil's minions (4:60) cursed by Allah, their faces will be obliterated (4:47), and if they do not accept the true faith of Islam-the Jews who understand their faith become Muslims (3:113)-they will be made into apes (2:65/ 7:166), or apes and swine (5:60), and burn in the Hellfires (4:55, 5:29, 98:6, and 58:14-19).
Unfortunately, the orthodox Islamic archetypes of Jew hatred promulgated by Hamas, are also being disseminated by the most respected, mainstream Islamic institutions. Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi wrote these words in his 700 page treatise rationalizing Muslim Jew hatred, [Jews in the Koran and the Traditions], originally published in 1968/69, and then re-issued in 1986:
[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [Koran 2:61/ 3:112], corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people's wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness...only a minority of the Jews keep their word....[A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims {Koran 3:113], the bad ones do not.
Tantawi was apparently rewarded for this scholarly effort by being named Grand Imam of Al-Azhar University in 1996, a position he still holds. These are the expressed, "carefully researched" views on Jews held by the nearest Muslim equivalent to a Pope-the head of the most prestigious center of Muslim learning in Sunni Islam, which represents some 90% of the world's Muslims. And Sheikh Tantawi has not mollified such hatemongering beliefs since becoming the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar as his statements on "dialogue" (January 1998) with Jews, the Jews as "enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs" (April 2002), and the legitimacy of homicide bombing of Jews (April 2002) make clear. Tantawi's statements on dialogue, which were issued shortly after he met with the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Israel Meir Lau, in Cairo, on December 15, 1997, provided him another opportunity to re-affirm his ongoing commitment to the views expressed about Jews in his Ph.D. thesis.
Al-Azhar Grand Imam Tantawi's case illustrates the prevalence and depth of sacralized, "normative" Jew hatred in the contemporary Muslim world. Arnon Groiss' thorough examination of modern Egyptian school textbooks, published in April, 2004, reveals that this sacralized hatred continues to be inculcated among future generations of Egyptian Muslims. Groiss observed, regarding the critical depiction of Muhammad's interactions with the Jews of Arabia,
The Jews are stereotyped and presented in a prejudiced manner, and the themes of treachery and hostility on the part of the Jews toward the Muslims are present here...
Once again, in this context Koran 5:82 ("Thou wilt surely find the most hostile of men to the believers are the Jews..") is invoked to remind these students, what "God Almighty says about the Jews' hatred toward the Muslims."
And a 3-month long NY Daily News investigation of textbooks widely used in New York city area Islamic schools published March 30, 2003, demonstrated that the same Antisemitic archetypes-based on central motifs in the Koran, hadith, and sira-are being taught to American Muslim students. The report provided these examples:
In Long Island City, Queens, for example, fifth- and sixth-graders at the Ideal Islamic School on 12th St. learn that Allah has revealed [pace Koran 2:61/3:112] that "the Jews killed their own prophets and disobeyed Allah."...Yet a third book, in use at the Ideal school, describes the hostile relations between Jews and the [Muslim prophet] Muhammad in Medina in the 7th century. "The reasons for Jewish hostility lies in their general characteristics," the book says. Numerous Koranic citations follow with negative references to Jews - for example, "You will ever find them deceitful, except for a few of them." [3:71; 4:46]
On Jewish hostility to Islam: "The reasons for Jewish hostility toward the Muslims of 7th century Medina lies in their general characteristics described in the Koran." Example: "You will find the most implacable of men in their enmity to the faithful are the Jews and the pagans." [Koran 5:82; from a textbook "The Messenger of Allah," p. 34; targeting Grades 6-9]
Finally a review of textbooks from the Islamic Saudi Academy of Fairfax, VA published in October 2007 by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, concluded, according to commissioner Nina Shea, that they contain "...blatant Antisemitism, blaming the Jews even for divisions within Islam.." The latter charge is an allegation made continuously for over a millennium since the earliest Sunni historiographies (for example by al-Tabari, d. 923) that a renegade Yemenite Jew, Abdallah b. Saba, is responsible-identified as a Jew-for promoting the Shi'ite heresy and fomenting the rebellion and internal strife associated with this primary breach in Islam's "political innocence," culminating in the assassination of the third Rightly Guided Caliph Uthman, and the bitter, lasting legacy of Sunni-Shi'ite sectarian strife.
When questioned for the March, 30 2003 NY Daily News story on New York area Islamic school textbooks, Yahiya Emerick, head of a Queens-based nonprofit curriculum development project for the Islamic Foundation of North America, defended the language in these books, denying they were inflammatory. Emerick opined,
Islam, like any belief system, believes its program is better than others. I don't feel embarrassed to say that...[The books] are directed to kids in a Muslim educational environment. They must learn and appreciate there are differences between what they have and what other religions teach. It's telling kids that we have our own tradition.
Emerick's triumphant denial at once affirms standard Islamic theological supremacism, while deliberately ignoring Islam's intrinsic, virulent Antisemitism-the latter denial being pathognomonic of the mindset of its Jewish victims, past and present.
Almost 850 years ago, elaborating on the depth of Muslim hatred for the Jews in his era, Maimonides (in ~ 1172 C.E.) made this profound observation regarding the Jewish predilection for denial, a feature that he insists will hasten their destruction.
We have acquiesced, both old and young, to inure ourselves to humiliation...All this notwithstanding, we do not escape this continued maltreatment [by Muslims] which well nigh crushes us. No matter how much we suffer and elect to remain at peace with them, they stir up strife and sedition.
The Jews and their communal leaders like Maimonides living under Islamic rule in the Middle Ages-vanquished by jihad, isolated, and well-nigh defenseless under the repressive system of dhimmitude-can be excused for their submissive denial. There is no such excuse in our era given the existence of an autonomous Jewish State of Israel, and a thriving Western Jewish diaspora living under the blanket of hard won protections for their religious freedom, physical security, and dignity.
When the late 23 year-old Parisian Jew Ilan Halimi was being tortured to death in February 2006, his Muslim torturers, as Nidra Poller wrote in the Wall Street Journal "...phoned the family on several occasions and made them listen to the recitation of verses from the Koran, while Ilan's tortured screams could be heard in the background." In the heart of Western Europe, Ilan Halimi's torturers/murderers did not invoke any non-Islamic sources of anti-Jewish hate, only the Koran.
As a pre-condition to real dialogue-not its miserable simulacrum-Jews and their leadership-religious, political, and intellectual-must demand a mea culpa from their Muslim counterparts for the sacralized Islamic Jew hatred which is still being taught in Islamic schools, and contributed to Ilan Halimi's death, and countless other similar atrocities across space and time, since the advent of Islam.
Let us demonstrate as Jews that we are no longer living with 12th century expectations of Muslims, otherwise they will oblige us.
Andrew G. Bostom is the author of The Legacy of Jihad (Prometheus, 2005) and The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism.
Comments
Be sure to avoid getting your pumps dirty as you squat over the grave
I'm sure you'll correct me here, I don't recall the Iranians attacking any other country.
I guess you figure their sending troops and arms to support fighting in Lebanon doesn't count?
Like Hezbollah is not a proxy for Iranian aims. Not to mention their alliance with Syria against Israel
They have long been promoters of terrorism worldwide ( i understand in your world view it's only the US and Israel that can engage in terrorism- any action by the Pals and Hezbollah, no matter how heinous is completely justified )
But, yeah you're right, they're good actors being harrased by the US and Israel without cause