censoring free speech

Riddle me this, will this law against free speech be enforced in Muslim nations to ban anti-Semitism and hostility towards Jews, Christians, Bahais, Hindus, etc? Or will it just be a cudgel to be used against the West to chill or kill free speech that attempts to portray extreme Islamists truthfully?



The Human Rights Council provides cover for nations such as Libya, China and Sudan to engage in human rights violations. They get a pass while Israel gets the full-court press and America gets investigated for not providing adequate housing for all its citizens-with the investigator traveling around America having a background in investigating discrimination.



I thought in joining the Human Rights Council we would use our sway to moderate its policies and goals. Instead now we joined in sponsoring a resolution that even moderate liberals (like Stuart Taylor, Jr. below) oppose.



Anyone respect the Constitution? In my first year of law school, we learned the basic principles of Con Law-this flies in the face of those.





http://www.nationaljournal.com/njmagazine/openingargument.php

Troubling Signals On Free Speech

In his eagerness to please international opinion, President Obama has taken a small but significant step toward censoring free speech.

Saturday, Oct. 31, 2009
by Stuart Taylor Jr.

It was nice to hear Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton say on October 26, "I strongly disagree" with Islamic countries seeking to censor free speech worldwide by making defamation of religion a crime under international law.

But watch what the Obama administration does, not just what it says. I'm not talking about its attacks on Fox News. I'm talking about a little-publicized October 2 resolution in which Clinton's own State Department joined Islamic nations in adopting language all-too-friendly to censoring speech that some religions and races find offensive.

The ambiguously worded United Nations Human Rights Council resolution could plausibly be read as encouraging or even obliging the U.S. to make it a crime to engage in hate speech, or, perhaps, in mere "negative racial and religious stereotyping." This despite decades of First Amendment case law protecting such speech.

To be sure, the provisions to which I refer were a compromise, stopping short of the flat ban on defamation of religion sought by Islamic nations, and they could also be construed more narrowly and innocuously. It all depends on who does the construing.

Is it "negative stereotyping" to say that the world's most dangerous terrorists are Islamists, for example? Many would say yes.

I sketch below how the resolution could be construed to require prosecuting some offensive speech and how it could be used in the long run to change the meaning of our Constitution and laws, based on doctrines developed by legal academics including Obama appointee Harold Koh, the State Department's top lawyer.

Also troublesome on the free-speech front are various remarks by Mark Lloyd, the Federal Communications Commission's associate general counsel and chief diversity officer. Lloyd asserted in a 2006 book, "The purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance." He co-authored a 2007 report calling for regulatory changes to close "the gap between conservative and progressive talk radio." In 2008, he praised the "incredible ... democratic revolution" of Hugo Chavez and implied approval of the thuggish Venezuelan strongman's pattern of shutting down news media opposed to him.

That's how I read Lloyd's videotaped statement, first aired by Glenn Beck of Fox News, in which he said: "The property owners and the folks who then were controlling the media rebelled [against Chavez], worked, frankly, with folks here in the U.S. government, worked to oust him. But he came back with another revolution, and then Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country."

Then there was the June 5 high school commencement speech in which White House Communications Director Anita Dunn called Mao Zedong -- one of history's greatest mass murderers and an implacable enemy of free speech -- one of "my favorite political philosophers." Dunn has, coincidentally, been the point person in President Obama's attacks on Fox News.

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The administration is seeded with left-liberal thinkers who have smiled on efforts to punish speech that is offensive to favored racial and religious groups.

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This is not to suggest that Dunn approves of mass murder or that Obama wants to censor critics. But the ideologies of appointees such as Lloyd and Dunn can have consequences. And in his eagerness to please international opinion, Obama has now taken a small but significant step toward making bad law.

Law -- especially international law -- evolves below the radar, in small moves largely ignored by the mainstream media. Although international resolutions have traditionally not been seen as binding law, the Obama administration is seeded with left-liberal thinkers who have long sought to spin what some call "transnational" law out of such stuff, and who have smiled on efforts to punish speech that is offensive to favored racial, religious, and other groups.

Such attitudes may help explain the administration's decision to join the U.N. Human Rights Council in the first place. Obama reversed a Bush administration policy of shunning this deeply politicized body, which counts as members several flagrant human-rights abusers and which is preoccupied with attacking Israel.

The council's October 2 resolution is ostensibly an endorsement of "freedom of opinion and expression," which seems ironic, given the track records of such members as China, Cuba, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia.

But the real problem is a provision, which the U.S. championed jointly with Egypt, exuding hostility to free expression.

That provision "expresses its concern that incidents of racial and religious intolerance, discrimination and related violence, as well as of negative racial and religious stereotyping continue to rise around the world, and condemns, in this context, any advocacy of national, racial, or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility, or violence, and urges States to take effective measures, consistent with their obligations under international human-rights law, to address and combat such incidents" (emphasis added).

What is this clot of verbiage supposed to mean?

It could be read narrowly as a commitment merely to denounce and eschew hate speech. But it could more logically be read broadly as requiring the United States and other nations to punish "hostile" speech about -- and perhaps also "negative stereotyping" of -- any race or religion. It's a safe bet, however, that the Islamic nations that are so concerned about criticisms of their religion will not be prosecuting anyone for the rampant "negative racial and ethnic stereotyping" and hate speech in their own countries directed at Jews and sometimes Christians.

Eugene Volokh of the University of California (Los Angeles) Law School pointed out on his Volokh Conspiracy blog that the reference to "obligations under international human-rights law" could be seen as binding the United States to a provision of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights requiring that hate speech "shall be prohibited by law." The U.S. has previously rejected that provision.

Added Volokh: "Advocacy of mere hostility -- for instance... to radical strains of Islam [or any other religion] -- is clearly constitutionally protected here in the U.S.; but the resolution seems to call for its prohibition. [And] if we are constitutionally barred from adhering to it by our domestic Constitution, then [the administration's vote was] implicitly criticizing that Constitution, and committing ourselves to do what we can to change it." Such a stance could be seen as obliging the executive branch to urge the Supreme Court to overrule decades of First Amendment decisions.

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Obama should not take even a small step down the road toward bartering away free speech for the sake of international consensus.

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Far-fetched? Not according to the hopes and expectations of many international law scholars. "An international norm against hate speech would supply a basis for prohibiting it, the First Amendment notwithstanding.... In the long run, it may point to the Constitution's more complete subordination," Peter Spiro, a professor at Temple University Law School, asserted in a 2003 Stanford Law Review article.

Similarly, if more ambiguously, Koh wrote in another 2003 Stanford Law Review article, "Our exceptional free-speech tradition can cause problems abroad, as, for example, may occur when hate speech is disseminated over the Internet." The Supreme Court, suggested Koh -- then a professor at Yale Law School -- "can moderate these conflicts by applying more consistently the transnationalist approach to judicial interpretation" that he espouses.

Translation: Transnational law may sometimes trump the established interpretation of the First Amendment. This is the clear meaning of Koh's writings, although he implied otherwise during his Senate confirmation hearing.

In my view, Obama should not take even a small step down the road toward bartering away our free-speech rights for the sake of international consensus. "Criticism of religion is the very measure of the guarantee of free speech," as Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School, wrote in an October 19 USA Today op-ed.

Even European nations with much weaker free-speech traditions than ours were reportedly dismayed by the American cave-in to Islamic nations on "racial and religious stereotyping" and the rest.

The pressure to censor harsh criticisms of Islam, as well as other religions and groups, began to intensify after bloody riots by Muslims around the world in 2006 over the publication in Denmark of cartoons ridiculing Muhammad.

People have reportedly been prosecuted in Austria, Finland, and India for asserting that Muhammad's marriage to a 9-year-old girl made him a "pedophile." Brigitte Bardot was convicted in 2008 of provoking racial hatred for saying in a letter to France's interior minister that Muslims were ruining France. A 15-year-old boy in Britain was charged under the Racial and Religious Hatred Act last year for holding up a sign outside a Scientology building calling the practice "a dangerous cult." And so on.

We have had no such overt federal government censorship in this country so far. But we have seen plenty of private censorship and self-censorship, especially at our universities, most of which have thinly disguised speech codes.

One example is the spineless decision in August by Yale President Richard Levin and the Yale University Press to remove the Danish cartoons (and all other pictures) of Muhammad from a book about the drawings.

The reaction of the academic world to such episodes has been apathy. The same is true of the response by the academic world, the news media, and civil-liberties groups to the October 2 resolution.

Take The New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union. Both were once dependable guardians of uninhibited, robust, and wide-open debate, regardless of whose ox was gored. But as best I can tell from their websites, neither has said a word about the Obama administration's collaboration with would-be censors sitting on the U.N. Human Rights Council.

missing the key issue!!!

Steve Grossman, a former president of Aipac and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said that the administration’s approach on the settlements issue had caused “an enormous sense of anxiety” among many American Jews.

They are missing the point. the key issue is Iran, not the settlements and Obzma is doing nothing and therefore his inaction will allow them to get nuks, the worst indecisio in history!!!

$175,000 per job to create?

In May it says this but the Oct 30 2009 study said it cost double this!!!
White House: $92K to Create Each New Job Under Stimulus

It will cost $92,000 to create each new job under President Obama's $787 billion stimulus planned passed earlier this spring, the White House said today, a figure far greater than the yearly salary of that job.

The report is a forecast for the stimulus plan's main goal: creating and saving jobs.

The report estimates that 1.5 million jobs will be created or saved by the end of this year, another 3.5 million by the end of next year, 1.7 million by the end of 2011 and 300,000 by the end of 2012, when the stimulus money runs out of steam.

The report concludes that, using the stimulus, it will take $92,136 in government money to create a single job-year, or a full-time job for one year.

The report estimates that it would take $116,603 in state fiscal relief and $145,351 to create the same job-year.

wastes $24,000 per car on clash for clunkers

wastes $24,000 per car on clash for clunkers
The Obama administration and the CEO of the nation's largest car dealership chain are taking aim at Edmunds.com's finding that the true cost of the "Cash for Clunkers" program involved a $24,000-per-vehicle subsidy by taxpayers. Edmunds is firing back.

The White House called the analysis "faulty" on the blog on its web site, saying it looks like Edmunds examined car sales on Mars and not on Earth.

Edmunds is firing back. "Apparently, the $24,000 figure caught many by surprise. It shouldn’t have. The truth is that consumer incentive programs are always hugely expensive when calculated by incremental sales – always in the tens of thousands of dollars. Cash for Clunkers was no exception" the car research web site said in a statement.

it also disputed the sales spillover effect of the promotion, saying there is little evidence to support the claim. "It does, after all, seem a bit odd that masses of consumers would elect to buy a vehicle because of a program for which they don’t qualify," Edmunds wrote.

Photo of clunker sign outside of Suburu dealership in Oregon City, Ore., last summer by Rick Bowmer/AP

Obama another carter in foreign Policy WSH 10-30-09

By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON

Upon entering office, Barack Obama knew little about foreign policy. But then neither did Vice President Harry S. Truman when Franklin Delano Roosevelt died suddenly on April 12, 1945.

President Obama often invokes the supposed mess abroad—especially in Iraq and Afghanistan—left to him by George W. Bush. But Mr. Obama's inheritance is mild compared to the myriad crises that nearly overwhelmed the rookie President Truman.

All at once Truman had to finish the struggle against Hitler, occupy Europe, and deal with a nominally allied but increasingly bellicose and ascendant Soviet Union. Within months of taking office he had to make the awful decision to drop atomic bombs on Imperial Japan.

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Joseph Stalin, Harry Truman and Winston Churchill in Potsdam, 1945.
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At war's end, Truman was faced with a global propaganda nightmare. Stalin's victorious Soviet Union—soon to be nuclear—cynically posed as the egalitarian leader for millions of war-impoverished and newly liberated colonial peoples. In contrast, America accepted the difficult responsibility and expense of rebuilding the destitute former European colonial powers and rehabilitating ex-Axis Japan and Germany.

Some of Truman's initial military decisions proved nearly disastrous. After the atomic bombs forced Japan's surrender, he was stubbornly convinced that a nuclear air force could ensure American security on the cheap.

The result was that between 1946 and 1949 Truman tried to emasculate the Marine Corps. He mothballed much of the Navy and slashed the Army. Only the Communist invasion of South Korea in the summer of 1950 finally woke him to the reality that there would still be plenty of limited conventional threats in the Cold War, and that he'd better rearm if the U.S. was going to protect its interests and allies.

But the public had already lost confidence in Truman's military leadership during the so-called Revolt of the Admirals in spring and summer 1949, when top Navy officials blasted the president's plans to reduce conventional maritime forces. In just four years (between 1947 and 1951), Truman went through four secretaries of defense.

His necessary firing of Gen. Douglas MacArthur in 1951 set off an even greater firestorm. For months Truman had allowed MacArthur far too much leeway to attack his civilian superiors. But when Truman finally dismissed him, he did so in clumsy fashion that won the general iconic status and only fueled doubts about the commander in chief.

No matter: Truman constantly learned from his mistakes. Gradually, the president shed his Wilsonian trust that there would be a postwar global consensus under the aegis of the new United Nations. Instead, he came to believe that too many trans-Atlantic diplomatic elites had been terribly naïve about Stalin's murderous agenda.

Against the advice of his angry State Department, Truman supported the establishment of the Jewish state of Israel in 1948. The Berlin Airlift, the Marshall Plan, the salvation of Greece and Turkey, and success pushing the Communists north of the 38th parallel in Korea all established the parameters of the next half-century of bipartisan American foreign policy. To craft a strategy of communist containment, Truman brought in conservative advisers like Paul Nitze, while working closely with Republican Sen. Arthur H. Vandenberg.

Truman's no-nonsense Secretary of State Dean Acheson summed up the president's doctrines: "Released from the acceptance of a dogma that builders and wreckers of a new world order could and should work happily and successfully together, he was free to combine our power and coordinate our action with those who did have a common purpose."

Ever since, most Democrats have embraced Truman's "common purpose." That means containing rival anti-Western ideologies, establishing alliances of similarly-minded democratic allies, and periodically standing up to regional thugs.

Jimmy Carter's presidency was a departure from this strategy. Mr. Carter started out cutting defense. He questioned the U.S. commitment to South Korea and offered homilies about the inordinate fear of communism. Then there was the short-sighted decision to arm radical Islamists in Pakistan, the abrupt abandonment of the previously allied Shah of Iran, and initial courting of the exiled radical Ruhollah Khomeini. The president seemed stunned into inaction by the subsequent Iranian hostage crisis and the rise of militant Islam. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Communist inroads into Central America, and the alienation of European governments further weakened American interests.

Mr. Obama exhibits both the initial inexperience—and some of the naïveté—of Harry Truman when he took office. He has framed the challenge of radical Islam largely in terms of what a contrite America must do to apologize to the Muslim world, instead of addressing endemic religious intolerance, autocracy, statist economies, tribalism and gender apartheid that help fuel extremism.

The Obama administration reaches out to enemies such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al Assad, the Castro brothers and Hugo Chávez. It pays far less attention to British, Colombian, French, Israeli and Japanese allies. In unilateral fashion we withdrew promises of land-based antiballistic missile defense from Eastern Europe, giddy that we might appease the Russians into abrogating their patronage of Iran's nuclear ambitions. But so far the centrifuges keep spinning while we appear unreliable to friends, compliant to rivals, and weak to enemies. The administration has also promised greater support to the U.N., seemingly unworried that the organization's illiberal majority has often appeased or abetted autocratic governments.

Will an inexperienced Barack Obama, in the fashion of Harry Truman, learn quickly that the world is chaotic and unstable—best dealt with through strength and unabashed confidence in America's historic role galvanizing democratic allies to confront illiberal aggressors?

Or will a sermonizing Mr. Obama follow the aberrant Democratic path of the sanctimonious Jimmy Carter: finger-wagging at allies, appeasing enemies, publicly faulting his less than perfect predecessors, and hectoring the American people to evolve beyond their supposed prejudices?

America awaits the president's choice. The world's safety hinges upon it.

Mr. Hanson is a senior fellow in classics and military history at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Most recently he is the editor of "Makers of Ancient Strategy," forthcoming from Princeton University Press.

Obama letting Iran play games

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/28/AR2009102803804.html



Iran: Can Obama play hardball?

By Robert Kagan
Thursday, October 29, 2009

Watching the Obama administration launch its "new era of engagement" over the past 10 months, most seasoned observers have pondered two questions: First, if engagement fails, will the Obama team ever acknowledge that it has failed? And what then?

The first question is about to be answered. The main object of the "new era of engagement," Iran, has settled back into its old game-playing. The joint proposal agreed to by the United States, France and Russia, to have Iran ship 70 percent of its low-enriched uranium to Russia this year, was a compromise, as administration officials acknowledge. It might theoretically have delayed Iran's bomb program by a year or so -- assuming we know everything about that program -- and thus bought some time to get a better and more definitive agreement with Tehran. But it would not have stopped Iran from continuing to enrich uranium, which has been the goal of the United States and Europe for the better part of a decade. The deal, blessed and promoted by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei, not exactly a hawk, was really more a test of Iran's intentions than a decisive breakthrough.

So now the test results are in: Iran's intentions, it seems, are not good. Tehran apparently will not accept the deal but will propose an alternate plan, agreeing to ship smaller amounts of low-enriched uranium to Russia gradually over a year. Even if Iran carried out this plan as promised -- every month would be an adventure to see how much, if anything, Iran shipped -- the slow movement of small amounts of low-enriched uranium does not accomplish the original purpose, since Iran can quickly replace these amounts with new low-enriched uranium produced by its centrifuges. Iran's nuclear clock, which the Obama administration hoped to stop or at least slow, would continue ticking at close to its regular speed.

Tehran is obviously probing to see whether President Obama can play hardball or whether he can be played. If Obama has any hope of getting anywhere with the mullahs, he needs to show them he means business, now, and immediately begin imposing new sanctions.

And what about Russia, that other great object of the "new era of engagement"? Administration officials claim to have won Moscow's agreement to join in sanctions should Iran refuse to make a deal, and Obama paid in advance for cooperation by acquiescing to Moscow's demand to cancel planned missile-defense deployments in Poland and the Czech Republic.

So now comes the test. Russia joined France, the United States and ElBaradei in agreeing to the proposal on Iran's low-enriched uranium. Iran is now rejecting that proposal. If the administration's engagement strategy is working, then Moscow should come through by joining in sanctions. If, on the other hand, Moscow declares that Iran's counterproposal is satisfactory, or calls for further weeks or months of negotiations, then we will know that Russia, too, is playing Obama. Here again, Obama will have to show whether he is someone whom other powers have to take seriously, or if he is an easy mark in a geopolitical con game. If Moscow continues to act as Iran's facilitator, then doesn't Obama need to make clear that, just as cooperation brings rewards, noncooperation will have consequences?

Many of us worry that, for Obama, engagement is an end in itself, not a means to an end. We worry that every time Iran rejects one proposal, the president will simply resume negotiations on another proposal and that this will continue right up until the day Iran finally tests its first nuclear weapon, at which point the president will simply begin negotiations again to try to persuade Iran to put its nuclear genie back in the bottle.

Russia, meanwhile, will continue to be accommodated as a partner in this effort, on the perpetually untested theory that if Obama ever did decide to get tough with Iran, Moscow would join in. Russia thus reaps all the rewards of engagement without ever having to make a difficult decision.

The worst of it is that the Tehran regime is now desperately trying to buy time so it can regain full control of the country in the face of widespread anger after the fraudulent presidential elections in June and a still-vibrant Iranian opposition. For the clerics, an endless negotiating process is not merely a means of putting off any real concessions on its nuclear program. It is also, and more important, a way of putting off any Western sanctions that could produce new and potentially explosive unrest in their already unstable country. That is the best card in Obama's hand right now. It's time for him to play it -- or admit that poker is not his game.

Loves human rights violators

/ 9 Mar-Cheshvan 5770

The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static

By Paul Greenberg


These days even the United States, under our new administration, is adopting a softer, gentler tone toward the genocidal regime in Khartoum. For that matter, Washington is moving to "engage" Teheran and Moscow, too. And the military dictatorship in Burma to boot. Any regime that really violates human rights can hope to get a sympathetic hearing from this new crew at the State Department.

Why Government Health Care Keeps Falling in the Polls

Why Government Health Care Keeps Falling in the Polls
The health-care debate is part of a larger moral struggle over the free-enterprise system.

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By ARTHUR C. BROOKS

Regardless of how President Barack Obama's health-care agenda plays out in Congress, it has not been a success in public opinion. Opposition to ObamaCare has risen all year.

According to the Gallup polling organization, the percentage of Americans who believe the cost of health care for their families will "get worse" under the proposed reforms rose to 49% from 42% in just the past month. The percentage saying it would "get better" stayed at 22%.

Many are searching for explanations. One popular notion is that demagogues in the media are stirring up falsehoods against what they say is a long-overdue solution to the country's health-care crisis.

Americans deserve more credit. They haven't been brainwashed, and they aren't upset merely over the budget-busting details. Rather, public resistance stems from the sense that the proposed reforms do violence to three core values of America's free enterprise culture: individual choice, personal accountability, and rewards for ambition.

First, Americans recoil at policies that strip choices from citizens and pass them to bureaucrats. ObamaCare systematically does so. The current proposals in Congress would effectively limit choice across the entire spectrum of health care: What kind of health insurance citizens can buy, what kind of doctors they can see, what kind of procedures their doctors will perform, what kind of drugs they can take, and what treatment options they may have.

Meanwhile, ObamaCare would limit the ability of people to choose affordable insurance coverage through less-comprehensive, consumer-driven insurance plans. And it wouldn't allow Americans to shop for better health-care plans from out-of-state carriers.



Second, Americans believe we should be responsible for the consequences of our actions. Many citizens bitterly view the auto and Wall Street bailouts as gifts to people who took imprudent risks, imperiled the entire economic system, and now appear to be walking away from the mess.

Similarly, Americans are cold to a health-care system that effectively rewards individuals for waiting to get insurance until they get sick—subsidizing their coverage by taxing those who responsibly carry insurance in good times and bad.

On its face, the reformers' promise to provide health insurance to nearly all, regardless of pre-existing conditions, is appealing. But as most instinctively realize, if people don't have to worry about carrying insurance until they need it, many won't buy it. Already, the Census Bureau tells us that 21% of the uninsured are in households earning at least $75,000. Although there are certainly plausible reasons for this in some cases, this phenomenon will worsen under ObamaCare.

Third, ObamaCare discourages personal ambition. The proposed reforms will institute a set of government mandates, price controls and other strictures that will make highly trained specialists, drug researchers and medical device makers less valued now and in the future. Americans understand that when you take away the incentive to make money while saving lots of lives, the cures, therapies and medical innovations of tomorrow may never be discovered.

Yet we are told this is all for the best. In his commencement speech at Arizona State University earlier this year, Mr. Obama told the graduates not to "fall back on the formulas of success that have been peddled so frequently in recent years": "You're taught to chase after all the usual brass rings . . . let me suggest that such an approach won't get you where you want to go."

Crass materialism is indeed a tyranny that can lead to personal misery. But most Americans believe it's up to individuals, not a nannying government, to decide what constitutes too much income and too much ambition.

An April 2009 survey conducted by the polling firm Ayers, McHenry & Associates for the conservative nonprofit group Resurgent Republic asked respondents which of the following statements about the role of government came closer to their view: (a) "Government policies should promote fairness by narrowing the gap between rich and poor, spreading the wealth, and making sure that economic outcomes are more equal"; or (b) "Government policies should promote opportunity by fostering job growth, encouraging entrepreneurs, and allowing people to keep more of what they earn." Sixty-three percent chose the second option; just 31% chose the first.

This is consistent with nonpartisan surveys showing that most Americans think our increasingly redistributionist government is overstepping its bounds. For example, a September 2009 Gallup Poll found that 57% believe the government is "doing too much"—the highest percentage in more than a decade. Just 38% said it "should do more."

We will continue to hear both sides of the health-care debate argue about particulars of insurance markets, the deficit impacts of reform, and the minutiae of budgetary assumptions. These arguments, while important, do not address the deeper issues involved.

The health-care debate is part of a moral struggle currently being played out over the free enterprise system. It will be replayed in every major policy debate in the coming months, from financial regulatory reform to a cap-and-trade system for limiting carbon emissions. The choices will ultimately always come down to competing visions of America's future. Will we strengthen freedom, individual opportunity and enterprise? Or will we expand the role of the state and its power?

Mr. Brooks is president of the American Enterprise Institute and author of "The Battle: How the Fight Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America's Future," to be published by Basic Books next June.

WSJ WILD SPENDING

The White House disclosed the other day that the fiscal 2009 budget deficit clocked in at $1.4 trillion, amid the usual promises to do something about it. Yet even as budget director Peter Orszag was speaking, House Democrats were moving on a dozen spending bills for fiscal 2010 that total 12.1% in more domestic discretionary increases.

Yes, 12.1%.

Remember, inflation is running close to zero, or 0.8%. The good news, if we can call it that, is that Senate Democrats only want to increase nondefense appropriations by 8% for 2010. Because these funding increases become part of the permanent baseline for future appropriations, the 2010 House budget bills would permanently raise annual outlays for discretionary programs by about $75 billion a year from now until, well, forever.

These spending hikes do not include the so-called mandatory spending programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which exploded by 9.8% and 24.7%, respectively, in the just-ended 2009 fiscal year. All of this largesse is also on top of the stimulus funding that agencies received in 2009. The budget for the Environmental Protection Agency rose 126%, the Department of Education budget 209% and energy programs 146%.
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House Republicans on the Budget Committee added up the 2009 appropriations, the stimulus funding and 2010 budgets and found that federal agencies will, on average, receive a 57% increase in appropriated funds from 2008-2010. By contrast, real family incomes fell by 3.6% last year. There's no recession in Washington.

More broadly, the White House and the 111th Congress have already enacted or proposed $3.4 trillion of new spending through 2019 for things like the health-care plan, cap and tax, and the children's health bill passed earlier this year. Very little of this has been financed with offsetting spending cuts elsewhere in the budget.

Throughout the era of Republican rule in Washington, we scored GOP lawmakers for their overspending and earmarks—and so did Nancy Pelosi and other Congressional Democrats. So how do their records compare? From 2001-2008 the average annual increase in appropriations bills came in at 6.4%—or about double the rate of inflation. In this Congress spending is now growing six times faster than inflation.

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Associated Press
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And here is the kicker. Mr. Obama's 10-year budget forecast predicts that the budget deficit will fall in future years in part because federal spending on discretionary programs will grow at less than the rate of inflation. But spending is already up nearly 8% (including defense) in the first year alone.

For a laugh-out-loud moment on all of this, we recommend yesterday's performance by New York Senator Chuck Schumer on NBC's "Meet the Press." Mr. Schumer declared that "Barack Obama and we Democrats—this is counterintuitive but true—are really trying to get a handle on balancing the budget and we're making real efforts to do it." Counterintiutive? He said this four days after Senate Democrats lost a vote to add $250 billion to the deficit for doctor payments without any compensating spending cuts.

Democrats must figure that they can get away with this sort of rap because no one will call them on the reality of what they're spending. And they're probably right about a press corps that has ignored the spending boom since Democrats took over Congress in 2006. Meanwhile, the spending machine rolls on, all but guaranteeing monumental future tax increases.

Charles Krauthammer on Obama's danger

Last Monday was a profound evening, Dr. Charles Krauthammer spoke to the Center for the American Experiment. He is a brilliant intellectual, seasoned & articulate. He is forthright and careful
in his analysis, and never resorts to emotions or personal insults. He is NOT a fear monger nor an extremist in his comments and views . He is a fiscal conservative, and has received a Pulitzer Prize for writing. He is a frequent contributor to Fox News and writes weekly for the Washington Post.
The entire room was held spellbound during his talk. I have summarized his comments, as we are living in uncharted waters economically and internationally. Even 2 Dems at my table agreed with everything he said! If you feel like forwarding this to those who are open minded and have not drunk the Kool-Aid, feel free.

Summary of his comments:

1. Mr. Obama is a very intellectual, charming
individual. He is not to be underestimated He is a cool customer who doesn't show his emotions. It's very hard to know what's behind the mask.
The taking down of the Clinton dynasty was an amazing accomplishment. The Clintons still do not understand what hit them.
Obama was in the perfect place at the perfect time.

2. Obama has political skills comparable to Reagan and Clinton . He has a way of making you think he's on your side, agreeing with your position, while doing the opposite. Pay no attention to what he SAYS; rather, watch what he DOES!


3. Obama has a ruthless quest for power. He did not come to Washington to make something out of himself, but rather to change everything, including dismantling capitalism. He can't be straightforward on his ambitions, as the public would not go along.

He has a heavy hand, and wants to level the playing field with income redistribution and punishment to the achievers of society. He would like to model the USA to Great Britain or Canada .

4. His three main goals are to control ENERGY, PUBLIC EDUCATION, and NATIONAL HEALTHCARE by the Federal government. He doesn't care about the auto or financial services industries, but got them as an early bonus. The cap and trade will add costs to everything and stifle growth. Paying for FREE college education is his goal. Most scary is his healthcare program, because if you make it FREE and add 46,000,000 people to a Medicare-type single-payer system, the costs will go through the roof. The only way to control costs is with massive RATIONING of services, like in Canada . God forbid!

5. He has surrounded himself with mostly far-left academic types. No one around him has ever even run a candy store.

But they are going to try and run the auto, financial, banking and other industries.
This obviously can't work in the long run. Obama is not a socialist; rather he's a far-left secular progressive bent on nothing short of revolution. He ran as a moderate, but will govern from the hard left. Again, watch what he does, not what he says.

6. Obama doesn't really see himself as President of the United States, but more as a ruler over the world. He sees himself above it all, trying to orchestrate & coordinate various countries and their
agendas. He sees moral equivalency in all cultures. His apology tour in Germany and England was a prime example of how he sees America , as an imperialist nation that has been arrogant, rather than a great noble nation that has at times made errors. This is the first President ever who has chastised our allies and appeased our enemies!

7. He is now handing out goodies. He hopes that the bill (and pain) will not come due until after he is reelected in 2012. He would like to blame all problems on Bush from the past, and hopefully his successor in the future. He has a huge ego, and Dr. Krauthammer believes he is a narcissist.

8. Republicans are in the wilderness for a while, but will emerge strong. Republicans are pining for another Reagan, but there will never be another like him. Krauthammer believes Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty & Bobby Jindahl (except for his terrible speech in February) are the future of the party. Newt Gingrich is brilliant, but has baggage. Sarah Palin is sincere and intelligent, but needs to really be seriously boning up on facts and info if she is to be a serious candidate in the future. We need
to return to the party of lower taxes, smaller government, personal responsibility, strong national defense, and state's rights.

9. The current level of spending is irresponsible and outrageous. We are spending trillions that we don't have. This could lead to hyperinflation, depression or worse. No country has ever spent themselves into prosperity. The media is giving Obama, Reid and Pelosi a pass because they love their agenda. But eventually the bill will come due and people will realize the huge bailouts didn't work, nor will the stimulus package.These were trillion-dollar payoffs to Obama's allies, unions and the Congress to placate the left, so he can get support for #4 above.

10. The election was over in mid-September when Lehman brothers failed, fear and panic swept in, we had an unpopular President, and the war was grinding on indefinitely without a clear outcome. The people are in pain, and the mantra of change caused people to act emotionally. Any Dem would have won this election; it was surprising it was as close as it was.

11. In 2012, if the unemployment rate is over 10%, Republicans will be swept back into power. If it's under 8%, the Dems continue to roll. If it's between 8-10%, it will be a dogfight.. It will all be about the economy. I hope this gets you really thinking about what's
happening in Washington and Congress. There is a left-wing revolution going on, according to Krauthammer, and he encourages us to keep the faith and join the loyal resistance. The work will be hard, but we're right on most issues and can reclaim our country, before it's far too late.

Oct 21

so how are you going to pay for the tarp? Bailouts? stimulus?
1-3 trillion health plan?
America deserves to know.

You promised new jobs and we have net losses.

falling fast

Those old enough to have grown up with Nixon's enemies list, should see disturbing parallels in the Obama Administration's attempt to delegitimize the Fox News Channel. Tom Bevan lays out the case. Of course, wit the exception of Jake Tapper, the weasels and cowards in the mainstream media, who have been in thrall to Obama since his Presidential campaign began, are silent.
http://tinyurl.com/yhuxmqo
As Michael Barone lays out, welcome to Chicago on the Potomac. America elected as President, a candidate who said he was post- partisan. The Democrats have all the power- a near 80 seat margin in the House and a filibuster proof majority in the Senate. The Democrats can not blame Republicans or Fox News for their problems, which are self-inflicted. Turns out America did not elect partisan hacks like Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, or Valerie Jarrett to run the country. But that is what they are getting. And the faces of change in Washington are now Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Some of us warned last year, that we were electing a man to be President, who had a radical history, and had never run anything. But $750 million in campaign funds, and a trusty teleprompter produced good visual images and winning message- I do not look like,and I am not George Bush. Scarily, that was enough for 53% of Americans. But as the Gallup Poll shows, no new President has ever fallen faster in his approval ratings .
http://tinyurl.com/yk8x98a

ties to radical Bill Ayers

Who is Bill Ayers?
2008 CAMPAIGN | Former radical or respected prof, he's a liability if Obama's nominated, Hillary warns
Comments

April 18, 2008

BY CHRIS FUSCO AND ABDON M. PALLASCH Staff Reporters

Bill Ayers went underground again Thursday.

But this time, it was to avoid a political maelstrom, not the FBI.
» Click to enlarge image
Bill Ayers
(John H. White/Sun-Times)


» Click to enlarge image
Bill Ayers is shown in a Chicago Police mug shot in August 1968. He spent the 1970s as a Weather Underground fugitive.
(Courtesy)


RELATED STORIES
Palin: Obama was 'palling around with terrorists' Obama's Ayers connection never bugged anyone Obama coverage on Lynn Sweet's blog
From the Sun-Times Archives
# 4-18-2008: Who is Bill Ayers?
# 4-19-2008: Ayers' brother charges Clinton camp with 'McCarthyism'
# 10-6-2008: Palin criticizes Obama's ties to Wright, Ayers in Florida
# 10-7-2008: When did Obama know about Ayers terrorist background? My search for Ayers and Dohrn
# 10-7-2008: McCain's latest barrage not likely to be enough
# 10-9-2008: McCain, Palin turn to risky politics

Ayers, 63, spent 10 years as a fugitive in the 1970s when he was part of the "Weather Underground," an anti-Vietnam War group that protested U.S. policies by bombing the Pentagon, U.S. Capitol and a string of other government buildings. Nobody was hurt in the attacks by the defunct organization, which the FBI labeled a "domestic terrorist group."

Today, Ayers and his wife -- fellow former Weather Underground fugitive Bernardine Dohrn -- live in Hyde Park, where they moved after surrendering in 1980. Federal charges against the two were dropped because of improper surveillance, so they avoided prison.

Ayers and Dohrn have raised two sons of their own and adopted a third boy whose parents were Weather Underground members who went to prison. They've built stellar reputations as professors: Dohrn at Northwestern's law school, Ayers as an education professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Along the way, they met a rising political star named Barack Obama, who lived in their neighborhood.

The Ayers-Obama relationship became a hot topic in Wednesday's Democratic presidential debate. It is "an issue certainly Republicans will be raising" should Obama be the Democratic nominee for president, Obama rival Hillary Clinton said.

In the mid-1990s, Ayers and Dohrn hosted a meet-and-greet at their house to introduce Obama to their neighbors during his first run for the Illinois Senate. In 2001, Ayers contributed $200 to Obama's campaign. Ayers also served alongside Obama between December 1999 and December 2002 on the board of the not-for-profit Woods Fund of Chicago. That board met four times a year, and members would see each other at occasional dinners the group hosted.

In addition, Ayers and Obama interacted occasionally in their roles with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, a not-for-profit group charged with spending tens of millions of dollars it obtained through its affiliation with a school-improvement foundation created by late Ambassador Walter H. Annenberg. Obama chaired the Chicago Annenberg Challenge's board of directors. Ayers served on the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, which made recommendations to the board on which organizations should get grants. The groups worked on school-reform efforts between 1995 and 2000.

Reached by the Sun-Times on her cell phone, Dohrn declined to comment. Ayers, who was traveling, did not return messages.

But friends like Chicago political strategist Marilyn Katz said Ayers should not be a campaign issue.

Katz met Ayers when he was 17 and they were members of Students for a Democratic Society, a group from which the Weather Underground splintered.

She noted Ayers' work with Mayor Daley to overhaul the Chicago Public Schools and likened him to Black Panther-turned-U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush.

"What Bill Ayers and Bobby Rush ... did 40 years ago has nothing to do with" the presidential campaign, Katz said. Ayers "has a national reputation. He lectures at Harvard and Vassar. He writes the textbooks that are the standard for innovative approaches to reaching inner-city youth."

Ayers, a Glen Ellyn native who became active in SDS while attending the University of Michigan, is the son of late Commonwealth Edison CEO Thomas G. Ayers. Ayers has praised his dad for standing by him while he was on the lam.

A book Ayers penned about those years, Fugitive Days, landed him in hot water on Sept. 11, 2001. That morning, the New York Times ran a story about the book in which Ayers said, "I don't regret setting bombs. I feel we didn't do enough." Ayers' statement was made before the World Trade Center attacks, but its timing led some to believe it was in response. "My book is in fact a condemnation of terrorism in all its forms -- individual, group and official," Ayers later said in a letter to the Chicago Tribune.

Ayers has a Web site, billayers.org, in which he blogs about politics and other subjects. He lets friends and foes post comments.

In response to an Ayers posting, "End the War," a reader wrote, "You are an anti-American communist and a terrorist. I hope you get what you deserve over and over and over."

Ayers has not formally endorsed Obama for president.

Rezko and Obama

Obama's Rezko ties deeper than land deal
Comments

December 23, 2006

BY FRANK MAIN Staff Reporter
In addition to a land deal, Sen. Barack Obama’s ties to indicted dealmaker Antoin “Tony” Rezko include an internship the senator provided the son of a contributor at the request of Rezko, an Obama spokesman confirmed today.

John Aramanda served as an intern for Obama for about a month in 2005, said Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs. His father is Joseph Aramanda, a Rezko business associate who was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in a federal corruption case against Rezko. Aramanda has contributed $11,500 to Obama since 2000, Gibbs said.

“Mr. Rezko did provide a recommendation for John Aramanda,” Gibbs said. “I think that it’s fairly obvious that a few-week internship is not of anything of benefit to Mr. Rezko or any of his businesses.”

The revelation of the internship comes after Obama acknowledged a mistake in buying property from Rezko in January 2006 — a deal that enlarged the senator’s yard in the Kenwood neighborhood on the South Side. The transaction occurred at a time when it was widely known Rezko was under investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office.

“It was a mistake to have been engaged with him at all in this or any other personal business dealing that would allow him, or anyone else, to believe that he had done me a favor,” Obama — a likely presidential candidate — told the Sun-Times in November.

Rezko was indicted in October for allegedly trying to collect nearly $6 million in kickbacks from government deals and trying to shake down a Hollywood producer for $1.5 million in campaign contributions to Gov. Blagojevich.

Obama and Rezko have been friends since 1990, and the Wilmette businessman has raised as much as $60,000 in campaign contributions for him.

After Rezko’s indictment, Obama donated $11,500 to charity — the amount Rezko contributed to the senator’s federal campaign fund.

Gibbs said he did not know whether Obama was considering returning any contributions from Aramanda given his alleged role in the federal corruption cases against Rezko and former Teachers Retirement System board member Stuart Levine.

Aramanda is identified as “Individual D” in Rezko’s indictment. And when Levine pleaded guilty in October, Aramanda again was listed as “Individual D.”

Aramanda was identified by the Sun-Times as “Individual D,” who allegedly received a $250,000 kickback tied to a scheme to steer lucrative state pension deals to firms and consultants that donated to Blagojevich. Aramanda is not specifically named or charged with criminal wrongdoing in the court papers. He could not be reached for comment Saturday.

Aramanda has contributed $11,500 to Obama's campaigns since 2000, Gibbs said. He gave $1,000 toward Obama’s run for Congress against Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Chicago) in 2000; $500 to Obama’s Senate campaign in 2003 and $10,000 to his Senate campaign in 2004, Gibbs said.

Gibbs said John Aramanda served in Obama’s Capitol Hill office from July 20 to Aug. 26, 2005, during which he received an $804 cost-of-living stipend. Aramanda was one of nearly 100 interns who worked for Obama in 2005, Gibbs said.

fmain@suntimes.comObama outrage of the day

* Posting

Knee deep with acorn

The ACORN Obama knows
by Michelle Malkin
Creators Syndicate
Copyright 2008

If you don’t know what ACORN (the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) is all about, you better bone up. This left-wing group takes in 40 percent of its revenues from American taxpayers — you and me — and has leveraged nearly four decades of government subsidies to fund affiliates that promote the welfare state and undermine capitalism and self-reliance, some of which have been implicated in perpetuating illegal immigration and encouraging voter fraud. A new whistleblower report from the Consumer Rights League documents how Chicago-based ACORN has commingled public tax dollars with political projects.

Who in Washington will fight to ensure that your money isn’t being spent on these radical activities?

Don’t bother asking Barack Obama. He cut his ideological teeth working with ACORN as a “community organizer” and legal representative. Naturally, ACORN’s political action committee has warmly endorsed his presidential candidacy. According to ACORN, Obama trained its Chicago members in leadership seminars; in turn, ACORN volunteers worked on his campaigns. Obama also sat on the boards of the Woods Fund and Joyce Foundation, both of which poured money into ACORN’s coffers. ACORN head Maude Hurd gushes that Obama is the candidate who “best understands and can affect change on the issues ACORN cares about” — like ensuring their massive pipeline to your hard-earned money.

Let’s take a closer look at the ACORN Obama knows.

Last July, ACORN settled the largest case of voter fraud in the history of Washington State. Seven ACORN workers had submitted nearly 2,000 bogus voter registration forms. According to case records, they flipped through phone books for names to use on the forms, including “Leon Spinks,” “Frekkie Magoal” and “Fruto Boy Crispila.” Three ACORN election hoaxers pleaded guilty in October. A King County prosecutor called ACORN’s criminal sabotage “an act of vandalism upon the voter rolls.”

The group’s vandalism on electoral integrity is systemic. ACORN has been implicated in similar voter fraud schemes in Missouri, Ohio and at least 12 other states. The Wall Street Journal noted: “In Ohio in 2004, a worker for one affiliate was given crack cocaine in exchange for fraudulent registrations that included underage voters, dead voters and pillars of the community named Mary Poppins, Dick Tracy and Jive Turkey. During a congressional hearing in Ohio in the aftermath of the 2004 election, officials from several counties in the state explained ACORN’s practice of dumping thousands of registration forms in their lap on the submission deadline, even though the forms had been collected months earlier.”

In March, Philadelphia elections officials accused the nonprofit advocacy group of filing fraudulent voter registrations in advance of the April 22nd Pennsylvania primary. The charges have been forwarded to the city district attorney’s office.

Under the guise of “consumer advocacy,” ACORN has lined its pockets. The Department of Housing and Urban Development funds hundreds, if not thousands, of left-wing “anti-poverty” groups across the country led by ACORN. Last October, HUD announced more than $44 million in new housing counseling grants to over 400 state and local efforts. The White House has increased funding for housing counseling by 150 percent since taking office in 2001, despite the role most of these recipients play as activist satellites of the Democratic Party. The AARP scored nearly $400,000 for training; the National Council of La Raza (”The Race”) scooped up more than $1.3 million; the National Urban League raked in nearly $1 million; and the ACORN Housing Corporation received more than $1.6 million.

As the Consumer Rights League points out in its new expose, the ACORN Housing Corporation has worked to obtain mortgages for illegal aliens in partnership with Citibank. It relies on undocumented income, “under the table” money, which may not be reported to the Internal Revenue Service. Moreover, the group’s “financial justice” operations attack lenders for “exotic” loans, while recommending 10-year interest-only loans (which deny equity to the buyer) and risky reverse mortgages. Whistleblower documents reveal internal discussions among the group that blur the lines between its tax-exempt housing work and its aggressive electioneering activities. The group appears to shake down corporate interests with relentless PR attacks, and then enters “no lobby” agreements with targeted corporations after receiving payment.

Republicans have largely looked the other way as ACORN has expanded its government-funded empire. But finally, a few conservative voices in Congress have called for investigation of the group’s apparent extortion schemes. This week, GOP Reps. Tom Feeney, Jeb Hensarling and Ed Royce called on Democrat Barney Frank, chair of the House Financial Services Committee, to convene a hearing to probe potential illegalities and abuse of taxpayer funds by ACORN’s management and minions alike.

Where does the candidate of Hope and Change — the candidate of Reform and New Politics — stand on the issue? Barack Obama, ACORN’s senator, is for more of the same old, same old subsidizing of far-left politics in the name of fighting for the poor while enriching ideological cronies. It’s the Chicago way.
Posted in: ACORN Watch, Barack Obama, Corruption, Immigration, Subprime crisis, Voter fraud

tally so far

Highest unemployment (he promised it would lower)
Highest forecosure
Dollar is plummeting
4 bailouts so far have not worked and he wants more
wages are dropping
debt is highest ever by a huge margin
2 wars

wants to use courts to socialize country

Obama On Tape In 2001: Warren Court Not Radical Enough
October, 26, 2008 — nicedeb

Says it’s a “tragedy” that the constitution wasn’t reinterpreted to force redistribution of wealth, and discusses the best way to bring about redistributive justice for blacks, (Joe the Plumbers all across this nation should perk up their ears):

PROOF HE WANTS SOCIALIZED MEDICINE

SHOCK UNCOVERED: Obama IN HIS OWN WORDS saying ...
1 min 52 sec

Video proof: Obama wants a single-payer system
By: Michael Barone
Senior Political Analyst
August 9, 2009
President Barack Obama speaks on the economy, Friday, Aug. 7, 2009, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

One video is worth a thousand words (or, as in this column, about 730). The video in question, put together by a group called Verum Serum, shows public statements by three advocates of single-payer (government monopoly) health insurance explaining that a health care bill with a “government option” would move America toward a single-payer government health care system. You may not have heard of the first two, Rep. Jan Schakowsky and professor Jacob Hacker. But you have heard of the third, President Barack Obama.

Schakowsky is a left-wing Democrat from the north side of Chicago and adjacent suburbs and, as chief deputy whip, part of the House Democratic leadership. The video shows her speaking to an enthusiastic group last April. She cites an insurance company spokesman as saying, “A public option will put the private insurance industry out of business and lead to single-payer.” The audience cheers. “My single-payer friends,” she goes on, “he was right.” Later she adds, “This is not a principled fight. This is a fight about strategy for getting there, and I believe we will.”

Obama's racism and facism

The Politicization of Justice: Kinston, North Carolina

* Posted October 20th, 2009 at 1.55pm in Rule of Law.

The Washington Time’s lead story today is about the Justice Department’s objection to a change of elections in Kinston, North Carolina. Why is this an important story? Because it is another worrisome sign of how the Holder Civil Rights Division is using the Voting Rights Act to benefit a political party instead of to protect voters. Kinston is a majority black town, and in November of 2008 its citizens voted 2 to 1 to change their city council elections from partisan to nonpartisan. It is also a one party town – all elected members of the city council and the mayor are Democrats. Yet despite its overwhelming support by the voters of the town, the Civil Rights Division objected to the change to nonpartisan elections under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act because it would potentially hurt Democratic candidates.

I wrote about this in September at National Review, but the Times story today is a must-read for newly-discovered details. Particularly relevant is the admission by a black member of the city council that “nothing is stopping black voters in Kinston from going to the polls” other than apathy. In other words, there are absolutely no barriers of any kind preventing blacks from voting, which is what the Voting Rights Act is intended to achieve. Even the head of the local NAACP expresses skepticism about DOJ’s involvement. The DOJ is improperly using the Voting Rights Act to guarantee that Democratic candidates win elections, rather than using it as intended to ensure that minority voters have the same opportunity as other voters to get to the polls and elect their candidate of choice.

the danger

The Essence of Islam

Now let's move to the essence of Islam. Islam was born with the idea that it should rule the world.

Let's look, then, at the difference between these three religions. Judaism speaks about national salvation - namely that at the end of the story, when the world becomes a better place, Israel will be in its own land, ruled by its own king and serving God. Christianity speaks about the idea that every single person in the world can be saved from his sings, while Islam speaks about ruling the world. I can quote here in Arabic, but there is no point in quoting Arabic, so let me quote a verse in English. "Allah sent Mohammed with the true religion so that it should rule over all the religions."

The idea, then, is not that the whole world would become a Moslem world at this time, but that the whole world would be subdued under the rule of Islam. When the Islamic empire was established in 634 AD, within seven years - 640 - the core of the empire was created. The rules that were taken from the Koran and from the tradition that was ascribed to the prophet Mohammed, were translated into a real legal system. Jews and Christians could live under Islam provided they paid poll tax and accepted Islamic superiority. Of course, they had to be humiliated. And Jews and Christians living under Islam are humiliated to this very day.

Mohammed Held That All the Biblical Prophets Were Moslems Mohammed did accept the existence of all the Biblical prophets before him. However he also said that all these prophets were Moslems. Abraham was a Moslem. In fact, Adam himself was the first Moslem. Isaac and Jacob and David and Solomon and Moses and Jesus were all Moslems, and all of them had writings similar to the Koran. Therefore, world history is Islamic history because all the heroes of history were Moslems.

Furthermore, Moslems accept the fact that each of these prophets brought with him some kind of a revelation. Moses, brought the Taurat, which is the Torah, and Jesus brought the Ingeel, which is the Evangelion or Gospel - namely the New Testament.

The Bible vs. the Koran

Why then is the Bible not similar to the Koran?

Mohammed explains that the Jews and Christians forged their books. Had they not been changed and forged, they would have been identical to the Koran. But because Christians and Jews do have some truth, Islam concedes that they cannot be completely destroyed by war [for now].

Nevertheless, the laws a very clear - Jews and Christians have no rights whatsoever to independent existence. They can live under Islamic rule provided they keep to the rules that Islam promulgates for them.

Islamic Rule and Jihad

What happens if Jews and Christians don't want to live under the rules of Islam? Then Islam has to fight them and this fighting is called Jihad. Jihad means war against those people who don't want to accept the Islamic superior rule. That's jihad. They may be Jews; they may be Christians; they may be Polytheists. But since we don't have too many Polytheists left, at least not in the Middle East - their war is against the Jews and Christians.

A few days ago, I received a pamphlet that was distributed in the world by bin Laden. He calls for jihad against America as the leader of the Christian world, not because America is the supporter of Israel, but because Americans are desecrating Arabia with their filthy feet. There are Americans in Arabia were no Christians should be. In this pamphlet there is not a single word about Israel. Only that Americans are desecrating the home of the prophet.

Two Houses

The Koran sees the world as divided into two - one part which has come under Islamic rule and one part which is supposed to come under Islamic rule in the future. There is a division of the world which is very clear. Every single person who starts studying Islam knows it. The world is described as Dar al-Islam (the house of Islam) - that's the place where Islam rules - and the other part which is called Dar al-Harb - the house of war. Not the "house of non-Muslims," but the "house of war." It is this house of war which as to be, at the end of time, conquered. The world will continue to be in the house of war until it comes under Islamic rule. This is the norm. Why? Because Allah says it's so in the Koran. God has sent Mohammed with the true religion in order that the truth will overcome all other religions.

Islamic Law

Within the Islamic vision of this world, there are rules that govern the lives of the Moslems themselves, and these rules are very strict. In fundamentals, there are no differences between schools of law.

However, there are four streams of factions within Islam with differences between them concerning the minutiae of the laws. All over the Islamic world, countries have favored one or another of these schools of laws. The strictest school of law is called Hanbali, mainly coming out of Saudi Arabia. There are no games there, no playing around with the meanings of words. If the Koran speaks about war, then it's war.

There are various perspectives in Islam with different interpretations over the centuries. There were good people that were very enlightened in Islam that tried to understand things differently. They even brought traditions from the mouth of the prophet that women and children should not be killed in war. These more liberal streams do exist, but there is one thing that is very important for us to remember. The Hanbali school of law is extremely strict, and today this is the school that is behind most of the terrorist powers. Even if we talk about the existence of other schools of Islamic law, when we're talking about fighting against the Jews, or fighting against the Christian world led by America, it is the Hanbali school of law that is being followed.

Islam and Territory

This civilization created one very important, fundamental rule about territory. Any territory that comes under Islamic rule cannot be de-Islamized. Even if at one time or another, the [non-Moslem] enemy takes over the territory that was under Islamic rule, it is considered to be perpetually Islamic. This is why whenever you hear about the Arab/Israeli conflict, you hear - territory, territory, territory. There are other aspects to the conflict, but territory is highly important.

The Christian civilization has not only been seen as a religious opponent, but as a dam stopping Islam from achieving its final goal for which it was created. Islam was created to be the army of God, the army of Allah. Every single Moslem is a soldier in this army. Every single Moslem that dies in fighting for the spread of Islam is a shaheed (martyr) no matter how he dies, because - and this is very important - this is an eternal word between the two civilizations. It's not a war that stops. This was is there because it was created by Allah. Islam must be the ruler. This is a war that will not end.

Islam and Peace

Peace in Islam can exist only within the Islamic world; peace can only be between Moslem and Moslem.

With the non-Moslem world or non-Moslem opponents, there can be only one solution - a cease fire until Moslems can gain more power. It is an eternal war until the end of days. Peace can only come if the Islamic side wins. The two civilizations can only have periods of cease-fires. And this idea of cease-fire is based on a very important historical precedent, which, incidentally, Yasser Arafat referred to when he spoke in Johannesburg after he signed the Oslo agreement with Israel.

Let me remind you that the document speaks of peace - you wouldn't believe that you are reading! You would think that you were reading some science fiction piece. I mean when you read it, you can't believe that this was signed by Israelis who are actually acquainted with Islamic policies and civilization.

A few weeks after the Oslo agreement was signed, Arafat went to Johannesburg, and in a mosque there he made a speech in which he apologized, saying, "Do you think I signed something with the Jews which is contrary to the rules of Islam?" (I have obtained a copy of Arafat's recorded speech so I heard it from his own mouth.) Arafat continued, "That's not so. I'm doing exactly what the prophet Mohammed did."

Whatever the prophet is supposed have done becomes a precedent. What Arafat was saying was, "Remember the story of Hodaybiya." The prophet had made an agreement there with the tribe of Kuraish for 10 years. But then he trained 10,000 soldiers and within two years marched on their city of Mecca. He, of course, found some kind of pretext.

Thus, in Islamic jurisdiction, it became a legal precedent which states that you are only allowed to make peace for a maximum of 10 years. Secondly, at the first instance that you are able, you must renew the jihad [thus breaking the "peace" agreement].

In Israel, it has taken over 50 years in this country for our people to understand that they cannot speak about [permanent] peace with Moslems. It will take another 50 years for the western world to understand that they have got a state of war with the Islamic civilization that is virile and strong. This should be understood: When we talk about war and peace, we are not talking in Belgium, French, English, or German terms. We are talking about war and peace in Islamic terms.

Cease-fire as a Tactical Choice

What makes Islam accept cease-fire? Only one thing - when the enemy is too strong. It is a tactical choice.

Sometimes, he may have to agree to a cease-fire in the most humiliating conditions. It's allowed because Mohammed accepted a cease-fire under humiliating conditions. That's what Arafat said to them in Johannesburg. When western policy makers hear these things, they answer, "What are you talking about? You are in the Middle Ages. You don't understand the mechanisms of politics."

Which mechanisms of politics? There are no mechanisms of politics where power is. And I want to tell you one thing - we haven't seen the end of it, because the minute a radical Moslem power has atomic, chemical or biological weapons, they will use it. I have no doubt about that.

Now, since we face war and we know that we cannot get more than an impermanent cease-fire, one has to ask himself what is the major component of an Israeli/Arab cease-fire. It is that the Islamic side is weak and your side is strong. The relations between Israel and the Arab world in the last 50 years since the establishment of our State has been based only on this idea, the deterrent power.

Wherever You Have Islam, You Will Have War

The reason that we have what we have in Yugoslavia and other places is because Islam succeeded into entering these countries. Wherever you have Islam, you will have war. It grows out of the attitude of Islamic civilization.

What are the poor people in the Philippines being killed for? What's happening between Pakistan and India?

Islamic Infiltration

Furthermore, there is another fact that must be remembered. The Islamic world has not only the attitude of open war, but there's also war by infiltration. One of the things which the western world is not paying enough attention to is the tremendous growth of Islamic power in the western world. What happened in America and the Twin Towers is not something that came from the outside. And if America doesn't wake up, one day the Americans will find themselves in a chemical war and most likely in an atomic war - inside the U.S.

End of Days

It is highly important to understand how a civilization sees the end of days. In Christianity and in Judaism, we know exactly what is the vision of the end of days. In Judaism, it is going to be as in Isaiah - peace between nations, not just one nation, but between all nations. People will not have any more need for weapons and nature will be changed - a beautiful end of days and the kingdom of God on earth.

Christianity goes as far as Revelation to see a day that Satan himself is obliterated. There are no more powers of evil. That's the vision.

I'm speaking now as a historian. I try to understand how Islam sees the end of days. In the end of days, Islam sees a world that is totally Moslem, completely Moslem under the rule of Islam. Complete and final victory.

Christians will not exist, because according to many Islamic traditions, the Moslems who are in hell will have to be replaced by somebody and they'll be replaced by the Christians.

The Jews will no longer exist, because before the coming of the end of days, there is going to be a war against the Jews where all Jews should be killed. I'm quoting now from the heart of Islamic tradition, from the books that are read by every child in school. They Jews will all be killed. They'll be running away and they'll be hiding behind trees and rocks, and on that day Allah will give mouths to the rocks and trees and they will say, "Oh Moslem come here, there is a Jew behind me, kill him." Without this, the end of days cannot come. This is a fundamental of Islam.

Sunstein bizarre radical

Another of President Obama’s appointments is coming under fire. This time it is Professor Cass Sunstein, tapped by the Obama administration to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. On the surface he does not seem nearly as extreme in his views as Van Jones. The hearing held by the Senate Homeland Security and Government Oversight Committee revealed a pragmatic approach to regulation viewed as centrist in nature. What is not centrist about Professor Sunstein are his beliefs on hunting, animal rights, and agriculture.

* View photos of Van Jones and Cass Sunstein
* Additional information on hunting and fishing legislation
* Cass Sunstein believes animals should have access to legal representation

Professor Sunstein has stated in the past that all hunting should be eliminated by regulation. This is extremely dangerous to hunters as this is one of the most powerful positions in the White House, controlling all kinds of regulations that will directly affect hunting. At a Harvard University conference, he said “We ought to ban hunting, I suggest, if there isn’t a purpose other than sport and fun. That should be against the law. It’s time now.” Even though he seems to have left the door open to some hunting for sustenance in that statement, his other beliefs on animal rights preclude nearly all animal use. That is an extreme viewpoint not shared by most Americans.

* Learn more about Cass Sunstein's animal rights beliefs
* Learn more about Cass Sustein and the Second Amendment

It could be that Professor Sunstein’s appointment to a politically powerful position is pay-back for animal rights groups supporting the president during the campaign. As the public begins to hear more about these extreme viewpoints there is the potential of an even greater push-back against the administration and this appointment in particular. The president does not need another debate about a radical appointment when he is trying to pass such controversial legislation as health care reform but that is what is happening as this approval process moves forward. Already the National Rifle Association and hunting groups such as Safari Club International are aligning to prevent his appointment not to mention all the agriculture lobbying groups. This is not a man the outdoor sports community needs in a sensitive, powerful position in any sector of government.

He appoints more marxixts

Obama has done it again .... another Czar who just looooves the communists.
(interesting pattern ... isn't it? )

Obama created a position for Mark Lloyd. He is to be the FCC's 'Diversity Officer'.
Here is a quote from Mark Lloyd - His book can be found here - and how he feels about freedom and the press.

"It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies.

"[T]he purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance."


This is the guy that Obama has raised up in the FCC?

Open Market

Many officials in the Obama Administration are sympathetic to Marxist regimes. For example, Obama’s appointee to be the FCC’s “diversity officer” is Mark Lloyd, a big fan of Venezuela’s socialist dictator, Hugo Chavez. Although Chavez has shot unarmed demonstrators, Lloyd has called socialist Venezuela a model, praised its authoritarian leader’s “incredible revolution” and defended his attacks on independent media. Obama’s nominee to be Assistant Secretary of State, Arturo Valenzuela, has a reputation as a loud defender of Venezuelan dictator Chavez’s terrible record on freedom of the press.


News Busters

Lloyd is in fact a Saul Alinsky disciple. In his 2006 book entitled Prologue to a Farce: Communication and Democracy in America, he calls for an all-out "confrontational movement" against private media. He wants leftist activists - through incessant political pressure - and the government - through the creation of a totally untenable operating environment of fees, fines and regulations - to work together to force the commercial broadcasters out, to be replaced by public broadcasters.

Lunatics cheats and scandals he appoints

Anita Dunn
Anita Dunn, the White House Communications Director is making headlines. This is because of the video shown in Glenn Beck’s show featuring Anita Dunn.In this video, Anita Dunn praises Mao Tse Tung, a well-known communist. She said that Mao Tse Tung and Mother Theresa are her favorite philosophers
(Not onl;y a well known communist-he killed 70 million people!!!

attorney general
You may not always agree with his political analysis but Dick Morris, perhaps better than anyone willing to talk about it, knows his Clinton-ology. Morris reminded us that Eric Holder played a leading role in one of the most infamous events of a presidency filled with infamy: the pardon of billionaire fugitive Marc Rich. Morris dubbed candidate Obama’s decision to select Holder as one of three people charged with vice-presidential vetting his “first clear, serious mistake.”

tax cheats
We have another name to add to Obama's list of tax cheats. Now to go along with Geithner, Daschle, Solis, and Killefer is former Dallas mayor and U.S. Trade Representative nominee Ron Kirk. What right does Obama have to ask us to pay our taxes with all the tax cheats he has within his administration and his party?



Obama’s Radical Appointees Piling Up
Posted on February 27, 2009

-By Warner Todd Huston

We all remember the drubbing that conservatives took during the campaign when they openly worried, and even directly charged, that Barack Obama was a far left radical. Pointing to the racist Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the domestic terrorist William Ayers and wife, and several others of Obama’s close friends and associates conservatives sounded a clarion call to alert the country that we were about to get one of the most extremely leftist presidents ever.

Health care costs

The Baucus Death Spiral [James C. Capretta]

Full disclosure: I do consulting work for private health insurers, but I had no prior knowledge of the PriceWaterhouseCoopers study before it was released. Having said that, its conclusions were not at all surprising, nor was the heated reaction of the Obama White House. Democrats understand how dangerous the PwC study is to their effort to pass a health-care bill because it exposes a crucial and irrefutable flaw in the health-care plan approved this week by the Senate Finance Committee.

And what is that flaw? In short, the plan sponsored by Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus would almost certainly lead to a death spiral in many private health insurance markets.

Insurance death spirals occur when regulators force insurers to offer coverage (“guaranteed issue”) at premiums below the known risk of those they are insuring, without any assurance that the shortfall can be made up elsewhere. When insurers comply with these rules and offer relatively low cost health insurance policies to all comers, quite predictably, many sick people step forward to sign up. When the insurers then try to turn around and charge higher premiums to the relatively healthy to cover their costs, the healthy, also quite predictably, are more reluctant to enroll because they can see the premiums they would have to pay would very likely exceed their health-care costs. So they often say "no thanks" to the insurance and decide to take their chances by going without coverage instead. As more and more healthy people exit the marketplace, insurers are then forced to raise premiums for everyone who remains, which only further encourages the lower risks to opt out. This vicious cycle of rising premiums and an increasingly unhealthy risk pool is called a ‘death spiral’ because it eventually forces the insurer to terminate the plan.

This is not a hypothetical, textbook scenario of what might happen to a poorly run insurance market. It has happened before — many times and in many places. See, for instance, the experience in Kentucky, and in Washington state, and in Maine too. There’s no reason it couldn’t happen nationwide.

The Obama White House and congressional Democrats convinced themselves months ago that they could avoid the fate of these failed state reform efforts by forcing the young and healthy to buy insurance, whether they wanted it or not. And so, all of the bills under consideration in the House and Senate would make government-approved health insurance enrollment compulsory for all Americans. Those not complying would have to pay a new tax, collected by the IRS.

But the assumption that Congress would be able to hold the line and permanently sustain a punitive new tax on Americans for not buying government-approved insurance was always dubious. And, sure enough, Democrats, staring political reality in the face, have been backing away from a tough “individual mandate,” step by step, ever since they returned from their August recess. The Finance Committee adopted amendments that delayed the mandate’s full implementation and dramatically reduced the tax penalties for non-compliance.

But as Democrats watered down the mandate, there was no commensurate adjustment in the insurance rules. The Baucus plan continues to require insurers to take all comers without regard to health risk starting in 2013. And therein lie the makings of an insurance market fiasco.

Robert Laszewski, a long-time observer of the health-insurance scene and no political partisan, wrote a devastating blog post on Monday documenting the folly of the Baucus plan. He cites several very real examples of low- and moderate-wage families that would clearly be better off financially if they paid the tax and waited to sign up for insurance until they were really sick. It’s hard to imagine any insurance actuary coming to a different conclusion about what would happen if the Baucus plan were actually enacted into law.

Of course, the insurance industry is bringing renewed attention to this problem because it is hoping to get a tougher mandate back into the Senate bill. That seems highly unlikely at this point, and would be a real mistake in any event. The problem with Obamacare is not insufficient governmental force; the problem is that the Democrats are pursuing the wrong goal. They are desperate to enact something they can call “universal coverage” without any coherent plan to slow the pace of rising costs. In that context, a new entitlement for subsidized insurance is exceedingly expensive, which is why the sponsors try to hide some of the costs behind mandates, hidden taxes, compulsion, and insurance regulation. However, as they are now finding out, there’s no free lunch here. Someone has to pay for it all. It’s just a question of who and how much.

What Democrats should be doing is working with Republicans on a sensible plan to gradually introduce reforms that would inject more market discipline into the health sector, thus making coverage more affordable for everybody. If, however, they insist on trying to pass something like the Baucus plan instead, they should be informed of the consequences, whether they like them or not. As matters stand now, if the Baucus bill were to become law, in a couple of years Congress would be forced to take up the issue again to clean up the mess the bill will have created.

10/14 03:24 PMShare

his waffling...

I'm not sure what the international community loved best; his waffling on Afghanistan, pulling defense missiles out of Eastern Europe, turning his back on freedom fighters in Honduras, coddling Castro, siding with Palestinians against Israel, or almost getting tough on Iran" Rep Gresham Barret SC

why won't he sanction Iran?

Obama attempts to delay Iran sanctions
Jewish Policy Center Deputy Executive Director Jonathan Schanzer writes that Pres. Obama is ducking a tough choice about imposing sanctions on Iran:

Legislators are growing increasingly frustrated with President Barack Obama's seeming unwillingness to pull the trigger on an Iran sanctions package that is already locked and loaded. The American public should be frustrated, too.

The Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act (IRPSA), if enacted, would put the squeeze on foreign oil companies that currently help the Mullahs refine petroleum, as well as the insurance companies that underwrite this trade. If the sanctions work, they could stem the flow of 30 to 40 percent of Iranian oil, since the Mullahs don't actually have sufficient refining capacity to meet their domestic needs. In short, IRPSA could deal a fiscal body blow to Iran and destabilize the regime, as a means to derail its nuclear ambitions.

So, why are Democrats like Senators Chuck Schumer (NY) and Chris Dodd (CT) unhappy? The same reason why Republicans ar

attacking Fox

He is attacking Fox News. Is this guy Stalin? Imagine if Bush had gone after CNN

Disaster of the award

Today's NYT OPED
"Meanwhile, the prize makes every foreign-policy problem Obama faces seem ever so slightly more burdensome. Now he’s the Nobel laureate who has to choose between escalating a counterinsurgency in Afghanistan or ceding ground to a theocratic mafia. He’s the Nobel laureate who’ll either have to authorize military strikes against Iran or construct an effective, cold-war-style deterrence system for the Middle East. He’s the Nobel laureate who’ll probably fail, like every U.S. president before him, to prod Israelis and Palestinians toward a comprehensive settlement."

This award is a disaster. Now that he is a peace Nobel, he will be ever more unlikely to do what it takes to stop Iran from finishing it's nuclear bomb quest. He is the only one in the world who can stop them. His failure to do so will be the biggest blunder in 50 years.
The consequences of that may well be dirty bombs in US and European cities, missiles with nuclear tips, God forbid, at Israel, which may or may not be able to stop them (hence 25% of Israelis saying they will leave once it is confirmed Iran has them).
In addition, the 4% of Israelis who support Obama will drop to 2%, as the "man of peace"
feels the mandate to pressure Israel even more. The nightmare grows.
I hope I am wrong. Let's revisit this in 2 years and see what happens. Meanwhile, pray a lot.

Peace prize?

Yes virginia, Barack Hussein Obama deserves his Nobel-Peace-Prize

Paris 9 October 2009

Nidra Poller

Surprised? Shocked? Outraged? Not me. I=92m delighted to see that the
Nobel-Peace-Prize has been awarded to the person who most richly =
deserves
it. Not only has he made gigantic efforts to promote Nobel-Peace in his =
nine
short months in office but as president of the residually powerful =
United
States of America he has the superforce to impose Nobel-style peace.

President and Nobel Prince of Peace Obama is not na=EFve, inept,
inexperienced, or wet behind the ears. He is practicing what he =
preached. He
has already fulfilled more promises than most voters ever suspected were
being made. And the way things are going, only a miracle will keep him =
from
delivering on the rest.

Bat Ye=92or teaches us the meaning of peace in our times, the peace of
dhimmitude, the peace that Nobel Norwegians have dutifully honored. It =
is
the peace of convert or die=85or hang in by the skin of your teeth. When =
the
heads have been severed from the stiff necks that refuse Islam, when the
converted have been folded into the prostrate masses of the ummah, the
dhimmis hand over the keys to their granges, their wives and children, =
their
hearts and minds, their lands and dwellings in exchange for a fragile =
peace
requiring endless sacrifice and constant restraint.

This is the peace of dhimmitude, this is the peace Nobelly rewarded
in=85uhhh=85Oslo, right? And B Hussein O is the most deserving laureate. =
On the
very day the prize was announced, forty people were killed in a jihad =
attack
in Peshawar Pakistan. Do you remember, way back when, during the =
campaign,
he narrowed his eyes and said Iraq=92s a distraction, let me get my =
hands on
the trigger and I=92ll take care of Pakistan. There you have it. A =
promise
keeper of the first order. Iraq was also a distraction from Afghanistan. =
So
mister Taliban tally your bananas, we=92ve got other fish to fry, do =
your
jihad thing and we=92ll lower our eyes, peace be upon you.=20

President Obama=92s Cairo speech alone earned him enough points to get =
this
prize hands down. His bow to the king of Saudi Arabia. His consistent
snubbing of European leaders. His betrayal of Poland and the Czech =
Republic.
His outstretched hand that reaches all the way to Iran=92s nuclear sites =
and
protects them from rain, hail, and Israel. His betrayal of Persians =
yearning
for democracy. His reluctance to look into McChrystal=92s ball and find =
some
kind of half way plausible strategy for the overseas contingency
whatchamegig in Afghanistan.=20

Am I being coy? Why haven=92t I mentioned his master plan for the =
nuclear
disarmament of=85

Israel!

Leaving the best for last. Even if he had not done all of the above, =
dayenu,
he would be worthy of being hoisted on high in the Nobel firmament =
because
he has declared war on Jewish construction in choice neighborhoods of al
Quds and wannabe Palestine. Donche know, if you want peace be prepared =
to
make war. And if you want the peace of jihad, make war on the Jews. =
Point
your finger at them like a smoking gun. Sock it to =91em like a latter =
day
koranic saint. Grab them by the scruff of the neck and scold them for =
all
the world to see. Sic =91em with Goldstone, saddle them with Abbas, and =
send
them to bed without dinner and ammunition. They wanted planes to fight =
to
win? Stop the program, cancel the contracts, and if they holler strangle
them with peace. Play footsy with Hamas, set up a mahjong date with
Ahmadinejad, make cuddly eyes at Assad, and secretly decorate the =
private
quarters of the White House with shahid posters, who would dare to =
protest?

Did you hear the latest? Anonymous sources have leaked to the press a =
flood
of indignation from the peaceful Obama to you know who in the holy land.
Aha! You thought he was fed up because his moderate ally Abu Mazen has
reverted to PLO same o same o? Stirring up trouble on the Temple Mount
because a bunch of French tourists got in the way of some irate =
Palestinian
rocks? Which naturally led the Palestinians to go on a rampage in the =
narrow
lanes of the Old City. How can President Obama call for the creation of =
a
Palestinian state the day after tomorrow when his prot=E9g=E9s are =
rousing a
billion and a half Muslims to protect al Aqsa=85from French tourists?

No. That=92s not why the Nobelly anointed young man is indignant. He is =
pissed
off because Israelis are badmouthing him. Big shots and little guys in =
the
street and on the beach, officials and cab drivers and housewives and =
left
wing columnists are criticizing him.=20

Watch out. Even a Nobel-Peace-Prizer can lose his temper and explode. =
But
then, who would blame him? What=92s more dangerous for world peace, a =
flock of
Taliban or a gaggle of chuzpadike Israelis?

Hail to the Chief for reaching out to the Taliban and forgiving them for =
he
knows not what they do, reaching out to the Muslim Brotherhood in all =
its
forms and machinations, reaching out to the democratically elected
Ahmadinejad and drawing a veil over the rape of the innocents, reaching =
out
to Putin over the half dead body of Georgia=85and trying to close Gitmo =
if
only the jack-in-the-box would sit down and shut up.

And if he manages to push his health care revolution bill down US =
throats,
they=92ll give him the Nobel Prize for Medicine next year. On the other =
hand,
if he can maintain double digit unemployment and bring the dollar down =
to
parity with the yuan he could outdistance Mugabe for the Nobel Prize for
Economics.=20

A Nobel Prize to the wise is sufficient: when you hear the word =
=93peace=94
praise the lord and pass the ammunition.=20

and Obama jokes with this guy

.Hugo Chavez's Iran Uranium Offer: A New Security Threat?
Buzz up!18 votes Send
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Delicious Digg Facebook Fark Newsvine Reddit StumbleUpon Technorati Twitter Yahoo! Bookmarks .Print ..By TIM PADGETT Tim Padgett – Fri Oct 9, 2:30 pm ET
When Venezuela's Mining Minister Rodolfo Sanz walked into a televised Cabinet meeting this week, President Hugo ChÁvez impishly asked, "So how's the uranium for Iran going? For the atomic bomb." ChÁvez was joking, but few were laughing outside Caracas and Tehran. Ever since ChÁvez announced last month that he was seeking Russia's help to develop nuclear energy in Venezuela - and especially since Sanz turned heads a couple of weeks ago by disclosing that Iran is helping Venezuela locate its own uranium reserves - the South American nation and its socialist, anti-U.S. government have become a new focus of anxiety over regional if not global security.


But how big a concern should Venezuela be? ChÁvez delights in getting a rise out of the U.S., and his alliance with Iran and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is largely a calculated affront to Washington - his version of Cuba's Cold War partnership with the Soviet Union. It's little coincidence that Sanz made his announcement the same day the U.S. and its allies called Iran on the existence of a secret nuclear-fuel plant near the Iranian city of Qum. The U.S. and the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) fear that Iran is on the verge of bolting the global Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and developing not just nuclear energy but a nuclear weapon, a charge Tehran denies. Venezuela's ties to the Islamic Republic, as a result, have taken on dimensions beyond just tweaking Uncle Sam's nose. (See the 10 worst-dressed world leaders.)