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Nothing to See Here, Folks: Meltdown with Keith Olbermann Part 50

David Forsmark — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 15:00:13 +0000

Keith Olbermann, who ran approximately 943,347 stories on how Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney and probably even George W. Bush should go to prison because—as it turned out—Richard Armitage “leaked’ the name of a CIA bureaucrat whose husband had already listed her in Who’s Who, Friday night had this response to the revelation that Bill Clinton was dispatched to find out what it would take to get Congressman Joe Sestak to quit running against Obama’s Most Valuable Defector Arlen Spector:

Move along, folks, nothing to see here.

Americans are taking this advice when it comes to Olbermann’s show, and I think it’s time I do the same. Not for the reason you might expect. My blood pressure is fine. Frankly, I’m bored to tears.

Olbermann has been phoning it in since he returned from his extended break; and his unending interviews with commentators Richard Wolfe Lawrence O‘Donnell Chris Hayes Jonathan Alter Howard Fineman Gene Robinson Ezra Klein Markos Moulitsas Chris Kofina, along with hard Left pols like Senators Sharrod Brown, Bernie Sanders and Rep. James Cliburn (and for comic relief, Maxine Waters), with the monotonous regularity of a sitcom cast going through the motions when they know their time has passed.

After daily outrageous commentary on topics like Sarah Palin, the racial makeup of the Tea Party movement, and one on newly elected Senator Scott Brown that famously led to a smackdown from Jon Stewart of all people, Olbermann has gone limp. His homepage on MSNBC can’t even come up with a Special Commentary they are excited about that is more recent than this pallid piece from May 4^th, nearly a month ago.

For the uninitiated, that might seem pretty bad, but after all out assaults like this next one, it’s hard to be interested in Keith going mainstream Left:

So, one might have expected an energetic rant from Keith about the Sestak affair, and the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy set to take over the world through slander and racism. Instead we got:

OLBERMANN: I heard a charge today that the media has been asleep on this story since it began. How much traction will Fox News and people like those who made that charge or do cheap impressions of Fox News, how much—and the political party they serve—how much mileage will they get out of this from here on in? Or did that mileage just run out and stop varying today?

WOLFFE: Well, the story that never was is no more. But traction applies—implies that they need some kind of momentum or gravity. This is not a news organization that requires the laws of physics. They will keep on running with the story as much as people will listen to them. And it makes about as much sense as investing in gold.

The story that never was, is the actual influence of Countdown. At its peak,during the Obama campaign, it reached nearly a third of the audience that O’Reilly gets as a matter of course, night in and night out.

I’m sure we will revisit Keith on occasion. Insanity and hatred don’t just go away that quickly. But he’s no longer worth a weekly series in his present state.

Good night, and good luck.

Lord of the Rings Commentary by Howard Zinn & Noam Chomsky

Jenn Q. Public — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 07:31:58 +0000

If we were living in Middle Earth what would Zinn and Chomsky’s political commentary sound like?

McSweeney’s presents the unused DVD commentary recorded by Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky for The Fellowship of the Ring (platinum series extended edition, natch):

Chomsky: A terrible thing the Orcs do here, isn’t it? They destroy nature. But again, what have we seen, time and time again?

Zinn: The Orcs have no resources. They’re desperate.

Chomsky: Desperate people driven to do desperate things.

Zinn: Desperate to compete with the economic powerhouses of Rohan and Gondor.

And don’t miss Part II:

Zinn: The white hand of Saruman on the heads of the Uruk-hai. Of course, the hand in control is white. And good lord, these giant statues on the Anduin River. The Sentinels of Númenor. These huge, monolithic statues that have their hands thrust forever up. I think I can intuit what these sentinels are saying: “Stay away, Orcs.”

Chomsky: “Keep out of our land.”

Zinn: “Keep out of our land. Don’t come in.” It is little wonder that the Orcs are so warlike and angry.

h/t: a commenter at Reason’s Hit & Run Blog

Horowitz Questions Zinn Legacy on NPR

NewsReal Blog — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 15:10:15 +0000

Mr.DAVID HOROWITZ (Author): There is absolutely nothing in Howard Zinn’s intellectual output that is worthy of any kind of respect.

KEYES: Conservative pundit and author David Horowitz is among critics who fiercely disagree with Zinn’s politics. Horowitz calls “A People’s History of the United States” a travesty.

Mr. HOROWITZ: Zinn represents a fringe mentality which has unfortunately seduced millions of people at this point in time. So he did certainly alter the consciousness of millions of younger people for the worse.

Click here for the audio.

UPDATE: David Horowitz’s comments to NPR were edited into soundbites. They cut out his main point which was this:

David Horowitz: The important part of my commentary that they cut was that this man was a Stalinist and a lifelong supporter of America’s enemies up to and including the Islamic terrorists.

Scott Brown is no radical on economics – Bloomberg.com

Jacob Laksin — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 18:20:40 +0000

Before and since Scott Brown locked up his Senate victory in Massachusetts, Democrats have tried to portray him as an economically illiterate radical.Senator Charles Schumer of New York distributed a fundraising appeal that called Brown a “far-right tea bagger,” an accusation that rose to a chorus after his election. Among serious followers of policy, it didn’t help Brown that he once posed nude for Cosmopolitan magazine.The special election in Massachusetts sprung on everyone so quickly that somebody crazy certainly could have slipped through the cracks. A look at Brown’s platform and economic statements suggests exactly the opposite.

via Articles & Commentary.

Norman Podhoretz: It’s Not Rush Limbaugh Who Should Apologize – Commentary

Jacob Laksin — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 19:15:14 +0000

In my new book, Why Are Jews Liberals?, I argue that it no longer makes any sense for so many of my fellow Jews to go on aligning themselves with the forces of the Left. I also try to show that our interests and our ideals, both as Americans and as Jews, have come in recent decades to be better served by the forces of the Right. In the course of describing and agreeing with the book the other day, Rush Limbaugh cited a few of the numerous reasons for the widespread puzzlement over the persistence of liberalism within the American Jewish community. And while discussing those reasons, he pointed to the undeniable fact that for “a lot of people” — prejudiced people, as he called them twice — the words “banker” and “Wall Street” are code words for “Jewish.” Was it possible, he wondered, that Obama’s attacks on bankers and Wall Street were triggering a certain amount of buyer’s remorse within the American Jewish community, which gave him 78 percent of its vote?

via Commentary » Blog Archive » It’s Not Rush Limbaugh Who Should Apologize.

The Day Obamcare Died– Sung by Barack Don MacLean Obama

David Forsmark — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 01:45:07 +0000

I will never forget the first day I tuned into the “new” Rush Limbaugh show, which had recently begun broadcasting on 1270AM in Detroit in the late 80s.

I enjoyed the lively commentary, but then in a dead-on parody of Ted Kennedy, “The Philanderer,” a take off on Dion’s “The Wanderer” came on.

That began a two decades– and counting love affair with talk radio– and it nearly ended my life as I almost drove off the road with tears of laughter blurring my vision.

The following brilliant song parody of “American Pie” comes to us by way of Rush Limbaugh’s favorite song satirist, Paul Shanklin. It was written and released after the Tea Parties last Summer, but in the wake of the Massachusetts Special Election seems even more apropos:

If Air America had been half this funny, they would still be on the air.

Palin: “I Won’t Back Off” on Death Panels

Calvin Freiburger — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 23:03:49 +0000

Politifact.com might have named Governor Sarah Palin’s infamous “death panels” commentary their “Lie of the Year” (even though Palin was right and President Barack Obama has told far more deserving whoppers), but that hasn’t scared her away from the subject. To the contrary, yesterday she again sounded the alarm on government rationing of healthcare on Sean Hannity’s radio show.

Part 2 is available here; thanks to GOP 12 for transcribing the relevant passage:

If the health care bill goes the way Obama wants it, we’re gonna have something very much like foreign countries’ systems of health care like the British, and it’s the American people – if we have our health care paid for by the bureaucracy, by government – depending on our health condition, depending on our age – we’re gonna be subject to bureaucrats deciding, panels and commissions deciding – just like they do overseas – will be worthy of receiving the health care that government is going to provide. So that is the death panel that I referred to, and I won’t back off on criticizing that aspect of the health care bill.

Palin’s original statement never claimed there was some explicit “death panel” provision in ObamaCare (although she did follow up with substantive concerns about certain language in the bill); she was concerned that nationalizing American healthcare would eventually lead to rationing services, with a predictable bias in favor of the most productive and least expensive patients.

She was right then, and she’s right now: we now know that the current legislation includes an “Independent Payment Advisory Board” responsible for setting priorities in healthcare spending, which Senate Democrats have insulated with a rule mandating that future Congresses can only repeal it by a supermajority vote.

More importantly, socialist schemes like this, in which the government is to assume combined costs previously assumed by many separate payers, cannot help but lead to rationing. The tremendous costs will predictably exceed government projections, creating quite a strain when added not only to that same government’s legitimate expenses (national defense, basic infrastructure), but also to liberals’ never-ending wish list of current and future government endeavors (federal control of education, stimulus bills that aren’t big enough, amnesty for illegal immigrants, cap & trade…need I go on?). To prolong the boondoggle’s stability, new ways to cut costs will regularly have to be found, and allocating resources to those who are the easiest and cheapest to treat, as well as those who will be the most socially productive for the longest period of time, is the most obvious.

ObamaCare supporters’ campaign to shut Palin up and their efforts to prevent future legislatures from changing the law reveals how the Democrats’ progressive ideology is really anti-democratic. To progressives, the voters’ participation in the democratic process is basically limited to choosing which goals government should pursue—health care for all, equality, peace, clean air, etc. How to achieve those goals, on the other hand, is the domain of administrators and “experts,” and the ignorant, biased people cannot be trusted with the details. This mindset is perfectly encapsulated in President Woodrow Wilson’s admission that “I believe in the people: in their honesty and sincerity and sagacity; but I do not believe in them as my governors.”

Not only is Sarah Palin’s “Lie of the Year” not a lie, but it truthfully calls attention to just what is at stake in the battle over health care: individual freedom, fiscal sanity, the sanctity of human life, and even self-government itself.

_____

Hailing from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Calvin Freiburger is a political science major at Hillsdale College. He also blogs at the Hillsdale Forum and his personal website, Calvin Freiburger Online.

Ross Douthat: Obama’s Nobel Speech, NYTimes.com

Jacob Laksin — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 22:22:54 +0000

Since I gave him so much grief for accepting the prize in the first place, I have to give the president credit for the speech itself. He faced the impossible task of having to give multiple addresses at once: A speech his European hosts expected to hear from a Nobel Prize winner; a speech that would work as a statement of foreign policy principle from an American president abroad; and the speech that would play well with a skeptical public back home. It could have easily collapsed into incoherence. Instead, it mostly cohered, and often impressed.

via Commentary on Politics and Culture – Ross Douthat Blog – NYTimes.com.

Newsweek Talks About Sarah Palin – Sort Of

Karen Northon — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:00:03 +0000

When it comes to talk of President Obama, Newsweek editor Evan Thomas couldn’t find his way out of a hyperbole bag with a map of moderation. He is completely, indisputably “in the bag” for Obama.

“I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.”

– Newsweek’s Evan Thomas on Obama’s speech at Cairo University in June 2009

The only correlation that can be made between God and Obama comes down to blind faith. Belief in Obama is equally based on an emotional need rather than tangible evidence, which is what makes his devoted following a cult-like exercise in idolatry.

We could expect no less from the grandson of Norman Thomas, a card-carrying American socialist nominated six times as the presidential candidate for the Socialist Party. Evan Thomas embraces every hypocrisy of the left, foremost of these being his exultation and adulation of a president who would remake America into a society based on the socialist principle of wealth distribution, while Thomas himself enjoys the comforts of a life of privilege that began in his youth with his elite private school education.

So when Thomas, and other proud partisan writers at Newsweek, recently took on the phenomenon that is Sarah Palin, liberal bias was too be expected – and boy did they ever deliver, starting right on the magazine’s cover, which claims of Palin:

“She’s [Palin’s] Bad News for the GOP – and for Everybody Else, Too.”

– Newsweek cover, Nov. 23

The Root of Liberal Media’s Fear

Though his article, led by a half-page photo of Sarah Palin, begins with two paragraphs devoted to boxing Palin into the corner of “in-your-face” conservatism, Thomas quickly transitions into a lesson on political compromise. The result yielded by his efforts is little more than a lesson in partisan semantics: Republicans should be willing to compromise for the good of the people. Democrats should not be expected to settle for anything less than what they demand in order to placate the opposition.

What Thomas, and many others in the left-leaning media, fears is a candidate who cannot be bullied into submission by derisive editorials and television commentary. Sarah Palin challenged their ideals and their intellect with tough questions and unwavering principles, and stood intractable to their criticism.

In Obama, they find a malleable politician who is highly susceptible to the media messages that drive public sentiment, making him an appealing candidate. Thomas has done much to build the Obama Cult of Personality to towering heights, blindly touting his leader as an undefeatable force and minimizing Palin as a “right-wing populist” who cannot possibly win the Oval Office, “no matter how good she looks in a skirt.”

“He [Obama] cannot help but relish the prospect… that the Republicans will nominate Palin to oppose his reelection in 2012,” Thomas wrote. “A student of history, Obama could be thinking of his predecessor in presidential coolness, John F. Kennedy.”

At times, Thomas’ words are eerily reminiscent of those spoken by Vice President Joe Biden during his recent appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Thomas says:

“Governing effectively requires a ‘big tent’ approach to politics.”

Biden says:

“The good news about a big tent is a lot of people can get under it,” explains Vice President Joe Biden. ”The bad news is, the bigger the family, the harder [it is] to get agreement.”

Thomas says:

“Moderate Republicans—they are not yet extinct, though most are in hiding…”

Biden says:

“The Republican Party has nothing but hard-core conservatives. There’s no moderates left.”

Between his frequent recitations of Bidenisms and regular devotionals to Obama, Thomas’ words carry little weight as credible political commentary, having devolved over time into myopic worship of a man created by media mouthpieces like Thomas.

“He [Obama] is the great teacher. He is this guy that stands above everybody. There’s some condescension in it. But, he stands above everybody and says, ‘Now, listen. You people have to stop blaming each other unreasonably. You have to get along here and I am going to show you the way.’ It is a pretty brave role in many ways.”

Sunday Comment of the Day: Pursuing Holiness and Understanding God

David Swindle — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 01:51:00 +0000

I tend to find myself agreeing with Nick’s commentary on the nature of God and how to pursue holiness. He left it on today’s David Horowitz Quote of the Day:

2009 November 29

Nick Chagouris permalink

The most challenging of these questions emerge when after one agrees to seek, he considers the Nature of God. Is God an impersonal spirit of “order” in the universe? Or is God more? Is there a God personal to me with Whom I can have a relationship?

Here is where people begin to bristle. You will see it. Many get angry at the mere suggestion. They are lost kids, who think they know.

“We don’t know one millionth of a percent of anything.”
- Thomas Edison

If there is an all knowing God, would he/she/it make it impossible for him/her/it to be known by His/Her creations? That makes little sense.

I submit that all is mere speculation and cannot be proved intellectually. Searching for God with the intellect is like searching for the sun with a flashlight.

God must and can be “experienced” through a 6th sense that He installed in all of us. That sense becomes atrophied due to lack of use just like our others. Therefore, we must exercise – practice.

We know God through INPIRATION only. Inspiration literally means “God Breathed.” In-Spirit-ation. Through our vital 6th sense. We are not whole with merely 5 senses.

“Be still and know that I am God.”

It is through stillness of the mind body and emotions that we are Inspired which is where all true creativity comes – through God.

The mind, body, and emotions CANNOT be still whn they contain certain things, such as lies (dishonesties), selfishness, fear, and anger. This is the problem of ours and every generation. We do not know how to rid ourselves of these things, and in today’s world, some our encourages and celebrated. This is an evil. To encourage blocking of the spirit.

When a person successfully empties these obstructions from his self, there is temporarily no ego (self) that blocks him from union with God.

Ego is the conscious feeling of separation from.

We are not separate, but all connected. We are a part of evrythingness. Our ego insists we are different, unique, and separate.

This is the great lie of the ego.

People wrongly think they must get good to get God, but instead we must get God to do good.

The Truth, which will indeed set us Free, is that we are One with God and the Uni-(One)-verse. There is no separation other than our perception.

Interestingly, from the Anglo word “Hal” these other words are derived”

HALLOW
HALLOWED
HAIL
HEAL
HEALTH
WHOLE
WHOLENESS
HOLY
HOLINESS

May we all find our path that leads us Home.

Reagan and Obama by Jean Kaufman – Weekly Standard

MB Snow — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 06:33:37 +0000

Reagan and Obama

Is America a city on a hill or a country in decline?

by Jean Kaufman

10/07/2009 12:00:00 AM

Ronald Reagan believed in America.

One way he expressed this faith was through the image of “a shining city on a hill,” a phrase Reagan uttered in one form or another in many of his speeches, including his 1989 Farewell Address in which he said, “I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life.” It was an expression with religious as well as historical origins, and referred to American exceptionalism.

In a 1974 speech Reagan expanded on America’s special place among nations:

…I have always believed that there was some divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage…

Somehow America has bred a kindliness into our people unmatched anywhere…We are not a sick society. A sick society could not produce the men that set foot on the moon…

We cannot escape our destiny, nor should we try to do so. The leadership of the free world was thrust upon us two centuries ago in that little hall of Philadelphia. In the days following World War II, when the economic strength and power of America was all that stood between the world and the return to the dark ages, Pope Pius XII said, “The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish actions. Into the hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind.”

via Reagan and Obama.

No, you can’t see the health care bill | Washington Examiner

MB Snow — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 05:15:30 +0000

No, you can’t see the health care bill

Examiner Editorial

October 7, 2009

When then-Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama promised not to sign major legislation until it had been posted on the Internet for public reading at least five days, trusting voters took him at his word. Now they know better. Not only is the actual language of what is likely to become the main legislative vehicle for Obama’s signature health care reform not available on the Internet, it hasn’t been given to members of the key Senate committees or the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), either. All that is available to those worried about a massive government takeover of our health care system is a 262-page description of the bill’s provisions. Bill descriptions mean nothing and bind nobody.

via No, you can’t see the health care bill | Washington Examiner .

Behind Afghan War Debate, a Battle of Two Books Rages – WSJ.com

MB Snow — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:51:32 +0000

OCTOBER 7, 2009

Behind Afghan War Debate, a Battle of Two Books Rages

By PETER SPIEGEL and JONATHAN WEISMAN

WASHINGTON — The struggle to set the future course of the Afghan war is becoming a battle of two books — both suddenly popular among White House and Pentagon brain trusts.

The two draw decidedly different lessons from the Vietnam War. The first book describes a White House in 1965 being marched into an escalating war by a military viewing the conflict too narrowly to see the perils ahead. President Barack Obama recently finished the book, according to administration officials, and Vice President Joe Biden is reading it now.

The second describes a different administration, in 1972, when a U.S. military that has finally figured out how to counter the insurgency is rejected by political leaders who bow to popular opinion and end the fight.

It has been recommended in multiple lists put out by military officers, including a former U.S. commander in Afghanistan, who passed it out to his subordinates.

Crew members ride a U.S. Chinook helicopter over the mountains after leaving Cop Cherokee base in Kherwar district in Logar province Tuesday.

The two books — “Lessons in Disaster,” on Mr. Obama’s nightstand, and “A Better War” on the shelves of military gurus — have become a framework for the debate over what will be one of the most important decisions of Mr. Obama’s presidency.

On Tuesday, in a White House meeting that went well over its allotted hour, Mr. Obama discussed the war with 31 members of Congress. Republican leaders, and some Democrats, pressed him to quickly accept the judgment of his commanders and send as many as 40,000 additional troops to Afghanistan. But some Democrats asked if the war was winnable.

via Behind Afghan War Debate, a Battle of Two Books Rages – WSJ.com.

Another Failed Presidency: American Thinker

MB Snow — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:27:09 +0000

August 31, 2009

Another Failed Presidency

By Geoffrey P. Hunt

Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson.

In the modern era, we’ve seen several failed presidencies–led by Jimmy Carter and LBJ. Failed presidents have one strong common trait– they are repudiated, in the vernacular, spat out. Of course, LBJ wisely took the exit ramp early, avoiding a shove into oncoming traffic by his own party. Richard Nixon indeed resigned in disgrace, yet his reputation as a statesman has been partially restored by his triumphant overture to China.

George Bush Jr didn’t fail so much as he was perceived to have been too much of a patrician while being uncomfortable with his more conservative allies. Yet George Bush Sr is still perceived as a man of uncommon decency, loyal to the enduring American character of rugged self-determination, free markets, and generosity. George W will eventually be treated more kindly by historians as one whose potential was squashed by his own compromise of conservative principles, in some ways repeating the mistakes of his father, while ignoring many lessons in executive leadership he should have learned at Harvard Business School. Of course George W could never quite overcome being dogged from the outset by half of the nation convinced he was electorally illegitimate — thus aiding the resurgence of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

But, Barack Obama is failing. Failing big. Failing fast. And failing everywhere: foreign policy, domestic initiatives, and most importantly, in forging connections with the American people. The incomparable Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal put her finger on it: He is failing because he has no understanding of the American people, and may indeed loathe them. Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard says he is failing because he has lost control of his message, and is overexposed. Clarice Feldman of American Thinker produced a dispositive commentary showing that Obama is failing because fundamentally he is neither smart nor articulate; his intellectual dishonesty is conspicuous by its audacity and lack of shame.

via American Thinker: Another Failed Presidency.

Lose Afghanistan, Lose Pakistan, Lose Iran, Lose It All – American Thinker

MB Snow — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 18:40:46 +0000

October 06, 2009

Lose Afghanistan, Lose Pakistan, Lose Iran, Lose It All

By James Lewis

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

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

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

But Saddam had a warehouse full of yellowcake uranium, as we now know, and to make a terror weapon all he had to do is load a plane full of that stuff and crash it into the LA Library Tower. You don’t need a nuclear explosion to spread terror. All you need is a lot of radioactive stuff thrown together with explosive; agricultural fertilizer will do. For radioactive material you could use the Cesium in your local X-ray unit. Saddam did not do that because he feared our inevitable retaliation.

via American Thinker: Lose Afghanistan, Lose Pakistan, Lose Iran, Lose It All.

Obama Snubs the Dalai Lama – WSJ.com

MB Snow — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:48:09 +0000

REVIEW & OUTLOOK OCTOBER 6, 2009

No Time for the Dalai Lama

Obama is willing to anger China on tire tariffs but not on Tibet.

In nearly nine months in office, President Obama has found time to meet with Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega and Vladimir Putin. But this week he won’t see the Dalai Lama, a peaceful religious leader who has long been a friend to the U.S. and an advocate of human rights for China’s six million Tibetans.

Mr. Obama’s slight is the first time a sitting president will not meet with the Dalai Lama during a Washington visit since President George H.W. Bush met with him in 1991. No meeting was ever formally on the agenda for this week, but the exiled Tibetan’s trip had been planned for years, and earlier this year he had expressed his hope to meet with the President. Last month, White House aide Valerie Jarrett and Maria Otero, undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs, traveled to Dharamsala to confer with the Dalai Lama. The next day, the Dalai Lama’s office announced that he hoped to meet with Mr. Obama only after November, when Mr. Obama will visit Beijing.

As a White House official explained: “Both the Dalai Lama and we agree that a stable and positive U.S.-China relationship will help advance progress on the Tibet issue, and that a meeting after the President’s trip would further the likelihood of making progress on Tibetan issues.” In other words, not offending Chinese President Hu Jintao is a higher U.S. priority, at least on Tibet. By contrast, Mr. Obama was more than willing to risk offending China by imposing tariffs on Chinese tires last month to please his union supporters.

via Obama Snubs the Dalai Lama – WSJ.com.

How Israel Was Disarmed by Bret Stephens – WSJ.com

MB Snow — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 05:39:03 +0000

OPINION: GLOBAL VIEW OCTOBER 5, 2009, 11:33 P.M. ET

How Israel Was Disarmed

News analysis from the near-future.

By BRET STEPHENS

Jan. 20, 2010

NEW YORK—When American diplomats sat down for the first in a series of face-to-face talks with their Iranian counterparts last October in Geneva, few would have predicted that what began as a negotiation over Tehran’s nuclear programs would wind up in a stunning demand by the Security Council that Israel give up its atomic weapons.

Yet that’s just what the U.N. body did this morning, in a resolution that was as striking for the way member states voted as it was for its substance. All 10 nonpermanent members voted for the resolution, along with permanent members Russia, China and the United Kingdom. France and the United States abstained. By U.N. rules, that means the resolution passes.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad meets IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei.

The U.S. abstention is sending shock waves through the international community, which has long been accustomed to the U.S. acting as Israel’s de facto protector on the Council. It also appears to reverse a decades-old understanding between Washington and Tel Aviv that the U.S. would acquiesce in Israel’s nuclear arsenal as long as that arsenal remained undeclared. The Jewish state is believed to possess as many as 200 weapons.

Tehran reacted positively to the U.S. abstention. “For a long time we have said about Mr. Obama that we see change but no improvement,” said Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki. “Now we can say there has been an improvement.”

The resolution calls for a nuclear weapons-free zone in the Middle East. It also demands that Israel sign the 1970 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and submit its nuclear facilities to international inspection. Two similar, albeit nonbinding, resolutions were approved last September by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.

via Stephens: How Israel Was Disarmed – WSJ.com.

Exposing Obama – by Emily Esfahani Smith – Weekly Standard

MB Snow — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 05:26:17 +0000

Exposing Obama

Naked Emperor News reveals the truth about the president one YouTube video at a time.

by Emily Esfahani Smith

10/06/2009 12:00:00 AM

Pamela Key does not work for the Republican National Committee. She has no formal training in journalism. An illustrator of children’s books, she never finished college. And yet, her oppositional research, her investigative journalism, and her philosophical convictions have all come together to shape the national mood, receiving even the attention of the White House. On August 4 of this year, Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White House, released a video where she instructed the public, “My job is to keep track of all the disinformation that’s out there about health-insurance reform. And there are a lot of very deceiving headlines out there right now, such as this,” she reads the Drudge Report from her computer screen, “‘Uncovered Video: Obama Explains How His Health Care Plan Will Eliminate PRIVATE Insurance.’”

What most don’t know is that Douglass was targeting a video unearthed by Key, first released on her video news website, Naked Emperor News, and then picked up by the Drudge Report. The video, which pieces together various Obama statements, damningly quotes the president at an SEIU forum in 2007 saying, “I don’t think we’re going to be able to eliminate employer coverage immediately. There’s going to be, potentially, some transition process: I can envision a decade out, or 15 years out, or 20 years out.”

The same day the White House posted Douglass’ video on its blog, it also released this message: “If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform

that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”

via Exposing Obama.

Black Leaders Ignore Black-on-Black Crime – American Thinker

MB Snow — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 05:12:02 +0000

October 06, 2009

Black Leaders Ignore Black-on-Black Crime

By E.W. Jackson Sr.

On Thursday, September 24th, after an apparently productive day at Fengler High School in Chicago, Derrion Albert, a black 16 year old honor student was knocked to the ground by a blow to the head with a railroad tie. He was then punched, kicked and stomped. Those who responded to rescue him were too late.

Derrion had walked into the middle of a fight between two rival black gangs. He attempted to help one of the victims in the melee and was killed for his trouble. This took place in Barack Obama’s Chicago. All his work for “social justice” did a great deal for Obama, but it did nothing for Derrion Albert. Of course the President is not responsible for this tragedy, but it does expose the fatuous claim that such occurrences are the result of social injustice rather than the personal choice to engage in lawless behavior. The ghettos, drugs, gangs and violence are on display for all to see in spite of Jeremiah Wright, Louis Farrakhan, Acorn and all the community organizing.

Treating poor black people as victims to be “organized” has been an abject failure. They are human beings to be educated, inspired and required to take responsibility for their own lives. The tragedy here is that Derrion was doing just that and it was working, but the malignant pathology of the ghetto spread to him on that unfortunate day and ended his promising life.

via American Thinker: Black Leaders Ignore Black-on-Black Crime.

Rangel is Robin Hood in reverse – NY Post

MB Snow — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 05:01:48 +0000

Rangel is Robin Hood in reverse

By CHARLES HURT

Last Updated: 8:17 AM, October 4, 2009

For those who have studied most closely the decades of Charlie Rangel’s financial tangles and fiscal subterfuge, one doggedly puzzling question overshadows all the rest.

How does Rangel have so much money and where did it come from?

This is a man who draws a salary from the government of about $175,000 a year.

It’s a comfortable salary, but it certainly isn’t going to make anybody this rich — especially someone living in one of the world’s most expensive cities.

Rangel did not inherit a fortune and did not marry one. And nor had he built some huge fortune before he first won election to Congress in 1970.

So, how is it possible that the man is now worth as much as $2.5 million and collects as much as $140,000 in unearned income every year? How does the man have more property than he can keep track of, including prime real estate in the Caribbean?

And how many people earning a government salary walk around with more than $250,000 in their checking account?

The short answer is that it is impossible to tell with what he has revealed so far.

And good luck getting the powerful chairman of the tax-writing committee to shed any new light on the question.

Rangel has a long history understating his income and his assets.

via Rangel is Robin Hood in reverse.