Like GW or not, he has conducted himself, as has his father, post their presidencies as models of decorum and restraint. If only Jimmy could rise to the occasion but he is too small. (See 1 below.)
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Obama is a blend between being Christian and Muslim and thus could be a beacon of light to the Muslim world. His problem so far is he tried to Europeanize America and, in my opinion, neither understands the values of our heartland nor basic Economics 101. He is too much of an angry liberal ideologue whose thinking is wrapped in ideas that have proven unfailing failures.
If he can break from this mold, he still has a chance at making a recovery. The question remains two-fold : can he and will most Americans still place their trust in him after his many lies, pettiness and character flaws. He has a rough road ahead and thus, we as well.
Muslims no longer see him as their ally and his declining popularity at home does not help him abroad. Europe loved him when he struck an anti-U.S. tone but now that most Americans have rejected him I suspect even the Europeans feel foolish and suckered.
Despite what readers of my memos think, I hope Obama succeeds in redeeming himself. I just have strong doubts. By redeeming I mean he changes.
If you want to understand our problem in a rapped/rapt way dial up PJTV! Very clever: noreply@pjtv.com
ZoNation: California Voters Give the Golden State the Big Brown Finger
Why are California politics dominated by Democrats and RINO's? Is Governor Schwarzenegger any different than Jerry Brown? AlfonZo Rachel looks at CA politics and reminds public officials that government is not a business, and unlike business, we don't want government to grow.
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Energy independence - a thought about how to achieve it or just more hype? (See 2 below.)
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Has Blackwood ever heard of St John's College - the third oldest in the U.S. with two campuses - Annapolis and Santa Fe and on whose board I sat for nine years? If not, would save his sponsors a lot of money and time but Savannah is a lovely setting for thinking and reading. (See 3 below.)
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Volcker and I on the same page the problem that confronts us regarding cutting unemployment. (See 4 below.)
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Attack on the horizon? Netanyahu burns while Obama fiddles? (See 5 and 5a below.)
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This professor is mathematically correct. The only way, it seems, to win over black and Hispanic voters is to cater to their need and demands they continue to be recipients of government largess. If that is what our nation is coming to we are probably doomed so it really does not matter that Republicans will likely lose future elections. Two powerful must read articles.
We enslaved them ,now blacks remain enslaved and want to visit their historical punishment on white America. How? Through government handouts and employment. Racist? No, just realistic. (See 6 and 6a below.)
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Is this an accurate portrayal of our angry and disturbed president? If so not a pretty picture but a must read. Then decide for yourself. (See 7 below.)
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The wheels of justice turn slowly and grind finely. (See 8 below.)
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Justifiable Christian fear? (See 9 below.)
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Dick
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1)Bush's class Carter could learn something
President George W. Bush was not known for his class. He wore cowboy boots, slapped people on the back and called others by nicknames he made up. Yet tomorrow Americans will see how classy W. can be.
Last week Bush taped an episode of "Oprah" that will air tomorrow. In it, Oprah tries to get Bush to criticize, or at least comment on, President Obama's performance. Bush refuses.
"I don't think it's good for a former President to be out there opining on every darned issue," Bush said. "He's got a plenty tough job. Trust me. And there's gonna be plenty of critics, and he doesn't need me criticizing him. And I don't think it's good for the presidency. Other people have a different point of view."
That used to be the accepted view. Former Presidents didn't criticize sitting ones. Jimmy Carter, however, thought himself above such petty traditionalism. In his pursuit of relevance and attention, he publicly thumped Bush early and often. He even wrote an entire column in The New York Times criticizing Bush on the Iraq War.
President Obama is blundering along like a toddler on a sugar high. But Bush keeps his counsel. As he should. Criticizing one's successors diminishes the office of the President, not to mention the one doing the criticizing.
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2)OPEN FUEL STANDARD ACT: CHOICE AT THE PUMP FOR EVERY AMERICAN
The Open Fuel Standard Act:
S.835 in the Senate is cosponsored by Sens. Brownback (R-KS), Cantwell (D-WA), Thune (R-SD),Klobuchar (D-MN), Lieberman (I-CT), Collins (R-ME), and Grassley (R-IA).
HR.1476 in the House is cosponsored by Reps. Engel (D-NY), Israel (D-NY), Inglis (R-SC), Bartlett (R-MD),Barrow (D-GA), Berman (D-CA), Bishop (D-GA), Braley (D-IA), Carson (D-IN), Cohen (D-TN), Crenshaw R-FL), Johnson (D-GA), Maloney (D-NY), Nadler (D-NY) and Schwartz (D-PA).
• The economic and security vulnerabilities associated with petroleum dependence stem from oil’s status as a strategic commodity. This strategic status derives from oil’s virtual monopoly over transportation fuel, much as in a different era the strategic status of salt was derived from its monopoly over food preservation.
• Oil’s domination over transportation fuel provides OPEC unacceptable leverage over the global economy. OPEC holds 78% of world oil reserves and yet, due to a policy of constraining supply, produces less oil today than it did 35 years ago even as global oil consumption and non-OPEC production have doubled over the same period.
• Competition and consumer choice in the transportation fuel market would serve to end oil’s monopoly in the transportation sector, strip oil of its strategic status, and insulate the global economy from OPEC supply manipulations.
• Existing technology, in the form of flexible fuel vehicles, allows internal combustion engine vehicles to be produced at little or no additional cost which are capable of operating on gasoline, alcohol fuels such as ethanol and methanol, or any combination of such fuels, as availability or cost advantage dictates, providing a platform for fuel competition and consumer choice.
• Fuel flexibility is complementary to other vehicle technologies such as plug in hybrids. It is a simple and inexpensive feature that should be standard in cars, like seatbelts or airbags. The ratio of flex fuel vehicles in Brazil increased from zero to 70% of new cars within three years, and thus as oil prices fluctuate consumers in Brazil can protect themselves by putting alternative fuel in their fuel tank.
• Alcohol fuels such as ethanol and methanol can be made from a wide variety of domestic energy resources including agricultural waste, energy crops, natural gas, coal, and trash.
Bill Summary
• The CEOs of the Big Three auto companies have repeatedly stated their willingness to commit to making 50% of new cars flex fuel vehicles or warranted to operate on biodiesel by 2012.
• The Open Fuel Standard Act (OFS) would buttress this commitment with law, thus providing certainty for investors in a variety of alternative fuels to ramp up production and fuel station owners to install pumps.
• Specifically, OFS requires that starting in 2012, 50% of new automobiles powered by an internal combustion engine, and starting in 2015, 80% of such new automobiles, be flex fuel vehicles warranted to operate on gasoline, ethanol, and methanol, or be warranted to operate on biodiesel.
By enacting the Open Fuel Standard Congress can break OPEC’s hold over the international fuel market, and insulate the global economy from the threat of future OPEC price manipulation
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3)The Woe-Is-Us Books
By STANLEY FISH
Stanley Fish on education, law and society.
Last week, as I was preparing a presentation for still another conference on the fate of the liberal arts in our time, two things happened.
The first was that I read or re-read a bunch of recent books (mostly short and punchy) on the subject — “Crisis On Campus” (Mark C. Taylor), “Not For Profit” (Martha Nussbaum), “Youth in a Suspect Society” (Henry Giroux), “Why Choose the Liberal Arts?” (Mark William Roche), “Debating Moral Education” (Elizabeth Kiss and Peter Euben), “The Marketplace of Ideas” (Louis Menand), “Educating Citizens” (Anne Colby, Thomas Ehrlich, Elizabeth Beaumont, Jason Stephens and Lee S. Shulman), “Reforming Our Universities” (David Horowitz), “No University Is An Island” (Cary Nelson), “Save the World On Your Own Time” (Stanley Fish) and “Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids — And What We Can Do About It” (Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus). (The list could easily be doubled.)
Hacker’s and Dreifus’s book sometimes falls into the right-wing-quickie-demolition mode — course descriptions from Stanford and Yale are made fun of (in fact, they sound like great courses), and the decline of Western civilization occurs when Derrida (supposedly) replaces Dickens — but it touches all the bases and therefore has the merit of displaying in broad form the characteristics these books share: a few anecdotes from which very large conclusions are drawn, dramatically rehearsed statistics pointing to the precipitous drop in liberal arts enrollments, lists of good schools and bad schools, charts and diagrams that breathe (specious) authority, a roster of heroes from the educational past, coy celebrity name-dropping and a series of recommendations.
Some of the recommendations the books offer are specific — end tenure, restore mandatory retirement, reduce presidential salaries, get rid of departments. Some are more general and unexceptionable — make students use their minds, cultivate the mind and heart, encourage reflection and self-scrutiny. Some are grandiose — Taylor thinks that the president of the United States should give the “highest national priority” to a national teaching academy, housed in Chicago and presided over, I presume, by Taylor.
The books vary widely in style and political inflection (the range is from Giroux on the left to Horowitz on the right), but they all have the same bottom line: things are really bad and will get worse if we don’t do something. There is, however, no agreement on just what the bad things are and what we should do about them.
Nussbaum and Giroux complain, from very different perspectives, that the university world has gone too far in accommodating the corporate model, with its emphasis on profit and bottom line efficiency; Taylor complains that that it hasn’t gone far enough. Roche, Hacker and Dreifus plump for a liberal arts education “unconnected to a specific career” (Roche) or any practical goal; Giroux and Taylor deplore (again from different perspectives) an undergraduate experience unconnected to the needs of contemporary society. (Menand is in the middle of this one; he wants to “break down the walls a little”). Horowitz and Fish argue that universities are in bad public odor because they have become too political; Nelson and Giroux argue that they aren’t political enough. Hacker and Dreifus believe that tenure is clogging up the system and standing in the way of innovative change; Nelson believes that the benefits of tenure “cannot be easily overstated” and that its erosion will bring only more “contingent “ (adjunct) faculty and the corrosion of academic values. Nussbaum, Kiss, Euben, Roche, Colby, Ehrlich, Beaumont, Stephens and Shulman worry that the university is not doing enough to produce a democratic citizenry; Fish asserts that producing citizens is not the university’s job.
There is unanimity on the question of money; everyone says there isn’t enough of it. But here again the solutions suggested are different — raise tuition, enmesh the university in the world of patents, technology transfers and venture capital partnerships, more on-line teaching, raise more private funds, cut out athletics and fancy student centers, drop departments, ration disciplines (not every Ivy League college needs to have a philosophy department), grow a new crop of presidents who will “man up” and not kowtow to legislators and trustees. The different suggestions correspond to very different, and somewhat unacknowledged, notions of what a university is for. Each book comes with blurbs saying everyone must read this and do what it says before it’s too late. They can’t all be right.
Curiously enough, in the midst of all this gloom and doom and sounding of various alarms, the high-humanist conviction that liberal arts education can fashion good character and alter outcomes in the world persists. Roche thinks that paying respectful attention to authors in an academic setting teaches “generosity of spirit” and a “level of modesty.” (I see no evidence of this, on campus or in these books.) Nussbaum asserts that “an education process can strengthen the sense of personal accountability, the tendency to see others as distinct individuals, and the willingness to raise a critical voice.”
And, most surprising, Taylor, the tech guru and hard-eyed apostle of the most up-to-date university one could imagine, declares that “I would bet my retirement that if Wall Streeters had read and understood Herman Melville’s ‘The Confidence Man,’ Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Gold Bug,’ William Gaddis’s ‘JR,’ Georg Simmel’s ‘The Philosophy of Money’ and Karl Marx’s ‘Early Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts,’ we would not find ourselves in this economic mess.” (In short, if they had only taken my course.) I would take that bet in a heartbeat and so would Hacker and Dreifus, who observe drily (and correctly) that “the verbal fluency students attain will [not] necessarily led them to lead more selfless lives”; the most we can say is that “holders of bachelor’s degrees tend to be . . . more adept at crafting paragraphs to justify what they want to do,” but what they want to do might very well be bad.
While I was trying, and failing, to make sense of all this, the second thing of the week happened. I received a visit from Stephen Blackwood, a young man fresh from receiving his doctoral degree , who told me — can you believe it? — that he is starting from scratch a new liberal arts college, Ralston College, to be located in Savannah, GA. Either blissfully unaware of the obstacles rehearsed in the woe-is-us books or wrapped in the armor of faith and innocence like a modern St. George, Blackwood, without very much experience or money, has so far managed to secure a promise of buildings to house his new enterprise, gained the moral and honorific support of Harold Bloom, Hilary Putnam and Salman Rushdie, and applied for a tax status that will allow him to recruit and admit students, all of whom will receive full tuition scholarships paid for by the funds he plans to raise in the near future.
When they get to Savannah, the students of Ralston College will find that the school year is the entire year, 12 months, that they are expected to dine together and wear academic gowns, that they will all be reading the same texts organized around a yearly theme (in successive years, the Self, God, Nature, Community and the Beautiful), that the texts will be “supremely difficult” and begin with Greek and Roman authors, many of whom will be revisited the next year under the aegis of a new theme, and that they will also be receiving instruction in the visual arts, mathematics, the sciences and foreign languages (at least two).
“We believe,” declares the college’s Web brochure, “that the goal of general education is to produce a person who can draw on different fields of knowledge and at the same time grasp the whole of which each field is a part.” This means that “Ralston is fundamentally about reading books, thinking about them, and talking about them.” No on-line instruction, no departmental structure, no professorial ranks, no athletic programs, no teacher evaluations (student-centered education but not on the customer model) and no tenure. Back to the future! Plato and students under the plane tree in Savannah.
It is as if Blackwood had been reading the same books I had been reading, noted, as I have, the staggering number of problems liberal arts education apparently faces, and said, “Why don’t we just start all over again?”
Now, that is hardly an option for struggling state universities with enrollments from 30,000 to 70,000, millions of dollars in deferred maintenance, hostile and withholding legislatures, union contracts and weak academic leadership. But the very fact of Ralston College, if it gets off the ground, might stand as a reminder of what the enterprise has always been about and might serve as a beacon, however dimly perceived, to those who value the liberal arts enterprise for what it is rather than for what it might contribute to the bottom line, to the strengthening of democracy, to the fashioning of citizens, to the advancement of social justice or any other worthy but academically irrelevant aim. (I here lay my cards, which were already exposed, on the table.)
My hope for Mr. Blackwood is that he will get on with it and not pause to write a book, although, no doubt, the book will come later.
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4)Volcker: No Quick Way to Cut US Unemployment
Paul Volcker, a top economic adviser to President Barack Obama, said Tuesday he sees no short-term way to reduce high U.S. unemployment and expects slow growth for the next year or more.
Volcker's comments come after the U.S. Federal Reserve said last week it would purchase $600 billion in Treasurys in an effort to boost growth and create jobs, cutting unemployment that stands at 9.6 percent.
"I have no answer to it at the moment, and I think that is the basic problem," said Volcker when asked about unemployment at a financial forum.
"I suspect that it will gradually decline. But the basic fact of the matter is that the economic outlook is for continuing but limited increases in economic activity for the next year or more," he said.
Volcker is chairman of Obama's Economic Recovery Advisory Board and was Fed chief from 1979 until 1987 under presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. He was speaking at a meeting of the International Financial Forum, a group of bankers and finance officials from the United States, China and other countries.
Volcker said growing public frustration and political conflict in the United States has complicated efforts to craft an economic program. He expressed hope the Republicans' gains in congressional elections this month would prompt the party to "share responsibility for government" and work with Obama.
"That's a hope. I don't think it's an unrealistic hope," he said.
"It is equally possible that we will continue to have divisiveness and, really, bitterness in the Congress, which would not help."
Speaking last week in Seoul, Volcker said the Fed's bond plan was unlikely to change the overall economic outlook or boost the recovery.
The Fed's move has sparked complaints by China, Germany, Brazil and others that the Fed's move might fuel inflation or hurt developing countries by triggering an influx of money as investors seek better returns. That would push up exchange rates and hurt exports by making their goods more expensive.
On Tuesday, a Chinese official speaking before Volcker at the financial forum repeated Beijing's criticism of the move.
"If the United States can increase the volume of dollars and it can transmit inflation to other countries to lessen the pressure of debt, then it will bring about a catastrophic influence on the world," said Cheng Siwei, a deputy chairman of China's legislature.
Conflict over the Fed moves could complicate efforts to agree on measures to ease global financial imbalances when leaders from the United States, Japan, China, Germany and other Group of 20 major economies meet in Seoul this week.
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5)From Jakarta to Jerusalem
Obama's puzzling settlement demarche
In recent weeks, Indonesia has endured a tsunami and volcanic eruption. On the positive side, it has a booming economy, a vibrant democracy and a welcoming investment climate. And because this Muslim-majority country has a long tradition of religious moderation and secularism, it serves as a model, or rebuke, to much of the rest of the Islamic world.
So what did President Obama talk about upon arriving in Jakarta yesterday? Israeli construction projects.
Why Mr. Obama chose to pick this fight from the distance of Southeast Asia is anyone's guess. Israel's decision to proceed with the building of some 1,000 housing units in the Har Homa neighborhood of municipal Jerusalem—a "settlement" only in the most jaundiced sense of the term—was made in October. Israeli governments of both the right and left have encouraged similar building projects since Jerusalem was reunified in 1967. And construction of the new housing will not begin for months if not years.
None of that deterred Mr. Obama, who warned the Israeli government that "this kind of activity is never helpful when it comes to peace negotiations." The State Department also chimed in, saying it was "deeply disappointed," while Palestinian spokesman Saeb Erekat added that the new construction proves "that Israel chooses settlements, not peace." This is the same Mr. Erekat who recently wrote an admiring letter to Ahmed Sa'adat, the mastermind of the 2001 assassination of an Israeli cabinet member.
All Israel has done is insist that Jews have a right to live anywhere in their capital city, something that might be controversial in Ramallah but ought not to be in Washington. Mr. Obama's public endorsement of the Palestinian view of what constitutes a settlement only puts the negotiated peace he seeks further out of reach.
Meanwhile, the Indonesian government forbids Israeli citizens from visiting their country. If Mr. Obama wants to bridge the distance between Jakarta and Jerusalem, maybe he can start with that one.
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5a)NETANYAHU TONE CHANGES ON IRAN, BEGINS LAYING GROUNDWORK FOR POSSIBLE MILITARY STRIKES, SANCTIONS NOT WORKING
By Joel C. Rosenberg
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's trip to the U.S. was originally supposed to be three days. It has been extended to five days. He stopped first in New Orleans on Sunday to speak to a conference of American Jewish leaders, and to meet with Vice President Biden. He's now spending several days in New York meeting with UN Secretary General Ki Ban Moon, Secretary of State Clinton, and others. The Obama team is trying to focus on peace talks with the Palestinians. But Netanyahu's focus is different. He is warning military strikes against Iran may be necessary. Indeed, Netanyahu's tone on Iran is changing. For much of the year, he has been fully supportive of economic sanctions. But the PM is now telling the U.S. to put a credible military threat on the table. He is, I believe, beginning to lay the groundwork for a possible Israeli preemptive strike, if the U.S. and the West can't stop Iran any other way.
Yesterday, I did an interview with NewsMax.com. Here are some excerpts. The full interview is posted on my weblog, along with the latest headlines on the Netanyahu visit.
"President Barack Obama isn't doing enough to keep nuclear weapons out of Iran's hands, and Israel may have to launch a military strike as a result, says author Joel Rosenberg, former political consultant to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu," reports NewsMax.com. "Rosenberg, a New York Times best-selling author, recently published The Twelfth Imam, a novel. 'It's not simply dangerous that Iran's leaders have publicly called for the annihilation of Israel and the U.S. and that Iran is rapidly pursuing nuclear weapons,' he tells Newsmax.TV.
"'The problem in Iran is that the regime has an end-of-time theology. It believes we are living in the end of days. It expects the Islamic messiah, Twelfth Imam, to come at any moment.' Furthermore, the regime believes that annihilating Israel - 'the little Satan' - and the United States - 'the big Satan' - is the way to hasten the Twelfth Imam's arrival. 'This is what's so dangerous: nuclear weapons soon in the hands of people who believe it's their God-given mission to end Judeo-Christian civilization as we know it,' Rosenberg says. 'We're rapidly approaching the point where this could become all too real.'
"Netanyahu has said that American economic sanctions against Iran aren't working and that the United States must put a credible military threat on the table, Rosenberg notes. But he doesn't think Netanyahu is convinced that the Obama administration will take decisive action. 'I think the prime minister is laying the groundwork for sometime next year that if the world and U.S. don't take decisive action, Israel may have to take action itself. I pray for peace but think we have to be prepared for war…..'"
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6)The GOP's Racial Challenge
Republicans can't win in the future without more nonwhite votes
By ZOLTAN HAJNAL
Lost in the GOP's euphoria over its landslide midterm victory is the fact that the Republican Party has almost become a whites-only party. Its strategy may win seats now, but it will lose over the long run.
Republicans won big in 2010 primarily because they won big among white voters. The 60% of the white vote that Republicans garnered last Tuesday is, by most estimates, the highest proportion of the white vote that the GOP has won in any national election since World War II.
Relying on white support is not a new strategy for the party. In 2008, 91% of the votes that John McCain received in his presidential bid came from white voters.
The problem for Republicans is two-fold. First, whites may currently be the majority but they are a declining demographic. The proportion of all voters who are white has already declined to 75% today from 94% in 1960. By 2050, whites are no longer expected to be a majority of the U.S. population.
Second, Republicans are alienating racial and ethnic minorities—the voters who will ultimately replace the white majority and who they need to stay in power. In every national election in the past few decades, Democrats have dominated the nonwhite vote. Democrats typically garner about 90% of the black vote, two-thirds of the Latino vote, and a clear majority of the Asian-American vote—and 2010 didn't fundamentally alter this pattern.
Even with Democrats presiding over the worst economy since the Great Depression, racial and ethnic minorities did not turn away from the Democratic Party. Last week Latinos favored Democrats over Republicans nearly 2 to 1 (64% to 34%), blacks voted overwhelmingly for Democrats (90%), and a clear majority of Asian- Americans (56%) supported Democrats.
If minorities didn't give up on the Democratic Party last week, they are unlikely to do so without dramatic changes in the platforms of the two parties. A growing and resolutely Democratic nonwhite population is clearly a serious threat to the Republican electoral calculus.
Republicans thus face a real dilemma. They may be able to gain over the short term by continuing their current strategy of ignoring or attacking minorities. But that is short-sighted.
Over the long term—as white voters become a smaller and smaller fraction of the electorate and Latinos and other racial and ethnic minorities become a larger and larger share of the electorate—any campaign that appeals primarily to whites will be doomed.
Mr. Hajnal, an associate professor of political science at U.C. San Diego, is author of "America's Uneven Democracy" (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
6a)Let's Take This Country Back
By Kevin Jackson
Though this election was a resounding defeat of white liberals and the policies of Obama, members of the Congressional Black (Progressive and Socialist) Caucus went essentially unscathed. Black people continued to support these government-funded extortionists, despite the destruction these black overseers have wreaked in black neighborhoods. Blacks seem annoyed at the idea that Obama lost ground in the last two years, and the Right is said to be taking the country back.
The Right would argue that they are taking the country back from the socialist policies that have weakened the country. Back to the Constitution.
Blacks argue differently, saying that conservatives want to take black people back to slavery. This may explain why black Democrats continue to allow ineffective and criminal leaders to be their caretakers.
One thing is for sure: Black Democrats love handouts. They know that the Congressional Black Caucus will continue to fight for these handouts, which black Democrats now consider "entitlements." Payback for slavery.
These days anything black Democrats want is considered an entitlement. Gucci purses and 60-inch flat-screen TVs in their taxpayer-funded, government-gifted homes -- all are entitlements.
For black Democrats, the government is supposed to provide food, shelter, clothing, cars (tricked out, of course), cable TV and PlayStations (the in-home babysitters), childcare, health care, and, of course, a check.
What the government does not have to provide to black Democrats are safe schools, crime-free neighborhoods, adequate education, or jobs. The government also doesn't have to provide real hope. False hope is fine, however.
Thus, you have the one stipulation black Democrat leaders impose on their minions, as it is mandated from the higher ups in the Democrat Party: Ask for just enough to get by, but not enough to get over!
Black Democrats are socially conservative, but fiscally communist. That reliance on government has made black Democrats the weakest group of people in America, with no sense of pride. Black Democrat pride has been bought...not by the highest bidder, but by the only bidder -- the Democrats.
Based on the results of this election, black Democrat politicians will operate "business as usual." In fact, their intent is to double down on their far Left agenda, evidenced by Keith Ellison's bid to lead the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a group that bragged that they only lost three congressional seats (of their eighty members) in the carnage of Eviction 2010.
Progressives are emboldened by their limited election losses, which is why Obama finds himself between a rock and a boulder. He knows that America has rejected his "Progressive" policies. Nevertheless, he must continue to push for "Progressive" policies, since that is what his most ardent supporters -- blacks with their hands out -- will demand.
Democrat centrists, however, will be shifting right like a Tiger Woods slice. Most have already begun the dramatic move away from Obama's policies, and Obama can expect more of the same over the next two years. Eventually Obama may be forced to abandon his base, though he will leave them kicking and screaming.
At that point, the question becomes, "Can Republicans seize on this opportunity and begin to shift black thought to empowerment?" After all, conservative values are the clear path to black empowerment. Should be an easy sell, right?
I'm not sure that I believe Republicans have the answer or are really even willing to try to reach the black vote. There are those who say that the Republicans really don't need the black vote if we can resonate with the rest of America. Like Reagan did.
Have you seen anybody close to Reagan in the Republican ranks?
When Republicans win, they feel the cancer of liberalism is in remission. In 2008, that cancer came out of remission and infected other cells. Those cells formed into a guy who occupies the oval office, a guy who had no business considering leading this great country.
Republicans seem to expect black Democrats to "get it," as if there were not years of indoctrination to overcome in the black community. As if blacks would suddenly slap the hand that feeds them. Black Democrats often ask, "What has a Republican done for me?" Republicans should fire back, "What have Democrats done to you?"
Unfortunately, this election did nothing to change that thinking within the black community, and it likely just reinforced the liberal narrative that white Republicans rejected Obama...because he is black. The rejection of Obama could not possibly have anything to do with rising unemployment due to his policies that have demonstrably continued to plague the black community, and America at large.
I heard one radio show host ask conservatives not to say that "we are taking the country back," as it could lead to racial tension. Well, I say we are taking the country back, and I don't care who gets offended.
Kevin Jackson blogs at The Black Sphere.
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7)Obama's Slave Ship
By Robin of Berkeley
When I was young and living in Manhattan, I saw an Off-Off-Broadway play called Slave Ship. It was an experience I'll never forget.
Unbeknownst to me, the performance was conducted in total darkness. The audience was subjected for one very long hour to the harrowing sounds of slavery. There were blood-curdling screams, whippings, and more.
Given that we were trapped in pitch blackness, the audience was held captive like the slaves, compelled to experience the same terror, helplessness, and despair. This was undoubtedly the intention of the play.
Memories of that ghastly night at the theater sauntered back into my mind's eye upon hearing some of Obama's recent utterances. To an audience of blacks, he invokes the language of slavery, fashioning himself an abolitionist freeing them from bondage.
Using racially charged language, Obama relegates Republicans to the back of the bus. In a speech to Latinos, he directs the audience to align with him against the "enemy." But Obama doesn't mean the Mexican Cartel, who are holding sections of Mexico and the United States hostage. He's referring to conservatives.
Recent photos of Obama have been alarming; they depict a man boiling over with rage. Have we ever witnessed a U.S. president so pugnacious, so incensed and inflamed by his own people?
But to Obama, we are not his people; this is everything you need to know about Barack Obama in a nutshell. Although Obama was marketed as the post-racial, biracial uniter, this is not the man behind the mask.
And the world according to Obama does not resemble the place in which most of us live. His is a threatening, foreboding universe. It has always been this way and will always be, regardless of the power he amasses. As he writes in Dreams from My Father, "The world was violent, I was learning, unpredictable and often cruel."
This is the world Obama was thrust into, born to a teenage white mother and a Kenyan father. The young child lived with his parents (maybe), and then his mother, and next was carted off to a foreign land, Indonesia, with a new daddy.
In Indonesia, Obama began to cultivate his lifelong identity as the outsider. There he was a black/white boy in a Muslim country. His mother reinforced and celebrated their misfit status. She scoffed at socializing with other Americans because "[t]hey are not my people." (If they weren't her people, then who were?)
Obama's mom, the oddly named Stanley Ann, taught Barry to view the world as she did -- in black and white terms. There are villains and there are victims, with no trustworthy people to whom to attach. Stanley Ann's behavior itself exemplified the faithlessness of others.
A young mom, just 18 when Barry was born, she carted him around like a piece of luggage. She spirited him off to Indonesia to start a new life there. After her marriage dissolved, she returned to the U.S. with the little boy in tow.
When Stanley Ann made plans to haul him back to Indonesia, Barry refused and moved in with his grandparents in Hawaii, where there was no love lost. He has described them as "strangers," and his grandma as belonging to "typical white people."
Obama learned how to be a black man through the tutelage of Frank Marshall Davis, purportedly a Communist, pedophile, and bisexual. Davis imparted such lessons as "never trust the white man."
Barry had to endure his grandfather and Davis, in a boozy state, telling dirty jokes in front of the discomforted boy. The small, vulnerable child just didn't exist.
When a child grows up with no strong arms to protect him and no sense of home, he can evolve in several different ways. He may become a dependent person who clings to others like a life raft.
Or he can go another way entirely and become the consummate loner. He will depend only upon himself; it's him against the world.
In extreme cases, the person may become grandiose and ordain himself as uniquely gifted. This path would be more likely if those around him reinforced his specialness, without, at the same time, offering warmth and closeness.
Of course, a man can reject all of the poisons of the past. He can instead emulate a wholesome and healthy person in his life. But who in Obama's world embodied a life-affirming spirit?
The adult Barack has instead chosen people who support his worldview, those lessons that he learned by Davis' side. In college, Obama gravitated towards the college militants, then married the fiery Michelle, who dubs this country "mean."
Together they befriended the hardcore Left, the Bill Ayerses and Bernardine Dohrns of the world. Fashioning themselves as soldiers in a war within, Ayers and Dohrn configured bombs that maimed and murdered American citizens. They were ecstatic about Charles Manson's butchery, as well as his scheme to incite a race war -- Helter Skelter.
For his adult mentor, Obama picked Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Then Pastor of the Trinity United Church of Christ, Wright is a fan of Black Liberation Theology. BLT teaches that blacks are God's Chosen People, with whites inferior and wicked. Its founder, James Cone, has described the goals of BLT this way:
". . . complete emancipation of black people from white oppression by whatever means black people deem necessary. . . Theologically, Malcolm X was not far wrong when he called the white man ‘the devil.'"
By choosing this church over all others, Obama made a pivotal life decision. For seventeen years, Obama sat in the pews of Trinity consuming the vitriol of racial hate. In one sermon after another, Rev. Jeremiah Wright invoked the specters of slavery and Jim Crow, resurrecting a war that, for him, had never ended.
In his autobiography, Obama lets slip a fascination with something that the biracial Malcolm X once said. Malcolm was so repulsed by his white ancestry that he daydreamed about draining the white blood from his body.
One must wonder: by Obama's choosing Trinity, a church where his own mother wouldn't have been welcome, was he trying to exorcise the evil white spirit in him? And by joining that church, did he finally leave his repugnant white side behind at Trinity's door?
Now at the helm, Obama is avenging the Sins of the Fathers, even though the fathers are long since dead and buried. Consequently, the Department of Justice drops all charges against the new generation of domestic terrorists, the New Black Panthers, who verbalize their desire to kill "cracker babies."
The DOJ turns a blind eye toward egregious acts of injustice towards whites. The Feds will even go so far as suing Arizona and threatening other states should they not toe the party line of importing as many people of color as possible.
When Obama tells black voters that he's freeing them from slavery, this is not hyperbole; he means it. But he's not referring to liberal politics that has only decimated the black culture.
Obama means this: he will put the final nail in the coffin of American exceptionalism. He will end the Civil War. And he will do it his way: by trying to break the backs and the spirits of the white oppressors.
It matters not that the Civil War ended over a century ago, nor that 3% of the population perished in the struggle to free the slaves. For people like Obama and the Revs. Wright and Cone, the war still rages.
Obama thinks we're on his Slave Ship, and he's taking us along for a ride. He wants us to experience the same terror, helplessness, and despair as that New York audience held captive in the theater long ago.
He wants us to suffer. That's why there's an impish gleam in his eye when he consigns Republicans to the back of the bus.
For Obama, the change has come. But it's not prosperity. It's not uniting us as one people, Americans, under God.
It's the chickens coming home to roost. It's this: we're finally firmly and, in his mind, deservingly, under his thumb.
A frequent American Thinker contributor, Robin is a recovering liberal and a psychotherapist in Berkeley.
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8)All top Hizballah commanders face indictment in Hariri murder
Hizballah's four top commanders face indictment by the UN Special Tribunal for Lebanon-STL for the 2005 murder of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in West Beirut, intelligence and counterterrorism sources reveal. The STL expects to issue the indictments next month or early January 2011.
Monday, Nov. 8,The Wall Street Journal disclosed the name of Mustafa Badr al-Din, Hizballah's No. 2 after Hassan Nasrallah as deputy for special security affairs. At least three more leading lights of the Lebanese Shiite militia who face summonses to stand trial before the international tribunal for planning and executing the Hariri assassination.
They are:
Wafiq Safa: Head of Hizballah's special security and intelligence apparatus, one of Nasrallah's closest cronies.
His powers are broader than his title would indicate: Safa acts as deputy of the Iranian Al Qods officer, Gen. Hossein Mahadavi, who has taken command of the Hizballah militia as chief of staff. In this capacity, Safa would be assigned to spearhead the grab for power Hizballah is planning for the moment the STL issues indictments. Safa is also charged with coordinating military cooperation between Hizballah and its two Lebanese allies, Michel Aoun's Christian militia and Walid Jumblatt's Druze forces. Given the tactical talents he displayed by engineering the cross-border abduction of Israeli soldiers in 2006 and other Hizballah border encroachments, Wafa may be wily enough to wriggle out of being extradited to The Hague for trial.
Talal Hamiya: Head of the Special Duties branch of Hizballah's Jihad Council. A former operations deputy under Hizballah's late military commander Imad Mughniyeh (who died in a bomb explosion in Damascus in 2008), his current duties include command of the special details securing Hizballah's various branches and the conduct of "special" (terror) operations around the world. Hamiya is also responsible for Hizballah's intelligence service.
Ibrahim Muhammad Akil, incumbent military commander of southern Lebanon, i.e., the front against Israel.
The tribunal's special prosecutor, Daniel Bellemare, has obtained proof that on the day of the Hariri assassination, the four Hizballah officials named here had set up a makeshift command center for running the operation - a huge explosion which killed another 22 people. From there, they used Hizballah's internal military telephone network to post their orders and coordinate the tasks of the field teams.
Bellemare's investigators have been going around Beirut looking for evidence of this telephone network - often in unlikely places. Last month, their search at a military clinic ran into violent resistance from Hizballah, drawing a complaint from UN secretary Ban Ki-moon.
If Hizballah makes good on its threat to overthrow the Lebanese government and so preempt the STL's indictments and its officers' extradition, debkafile's sources fear Lebanon could find itself governed by terrorists who, moreover, have been inculpated for political assassination by an international tribunal.
In these circumstances, the UN Security Council would have little choice but to lead an international boycott of Lebanon, impose stiff sanctions aimed at toppling the Hizballah regime or even mandate an invasion to restore legitimate government in Beirut.
Hizballah's first act on attaining power would almost certainly be a demand for the UN Secretary General remove the 20,000 UNIFIL peacekeepers policing South Lebanon.
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9)In Iraq, Christians fear they could be wiped out — like Jews before them
By Jane Arraf
A community almost as old as Christianity itself is disappearing rapidly
In the flickering candlelight of Our Lady of Salvation Church, Nagam Riyadh sits against a pillar singing Ave Maria, her voice rising to the shrapnel-marked rafters.
"We are singing the hymns we couldn't finish on Sunday," says Ms. Riyadh, who was in the choir on Oct. 31 when gunmen stormed the church in an attack that has traumatized the Christian community here and raised questions about its future.
On the first Sunday mass after the attack, Nov. 7, she's one of hundred of survivors and mourners who have gathered here. They light candles in the shape of a cross on the marble floor next to the names of more than 50 dead. At the top are photographs of the two slain priests.
Riyadh, wearing a bandage around the bullet wound in her leg, pauses her singing to hand her passport to a church official. She's among more than 50 of the wounded being flown to France and other countries for treatment. Like many hundreds of others who are leaving after the attack, it's not clear whether she will ever come back.
"I was one of the ones who wanted to come back but now we're all leaving," says one member of the community who did not want his name used. "What's happening to us is what happened to the Jews."
ONE PARISH DWINDLES FROM 2,500 FAMILIES TO 300
Iraqi Jews, once an integral part of society here with a history dating back to Babylon, began fleeing in the 1940s. Now only stories of their once vibrant community remain.
Christians, most of them eastern rite Catholics, trace their history in this country to the earliest days of Christianity. Before the 2003 war, there were up to a million Christians here — about 3 percent of the population. Half that number is estimated to have left in the past seven years, continuing an exodus begun after the 1991 Gulf War when Saddam Hussein's secular regime turned increasingly Islamic.
Although thousands of Assyrian Christians and others were killed under Iraq's Ottoman rule a century ago, the attack on the church last week is the worst in the country's recent history. The attack, claimed by an Al Qaeda-linked group, was followed two days later by 16 bombings in Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad that killed at least 70 people.
The vast majority of the tens of thousands of victims of Iraq's violence since 2003 have been Muslim, but the small size of Iraq's Christian minority and the nature of the attack have sent shock waves throughout the community.
"They kill us not because we are Iraqi but because we are Christian," says Father Douglas al-Bazi, who has permanent injuries after being kidnapped and tortured four years ago. "It is different if I die by a bomb or in an accident — I will not say that I'm dying because of Christianity but they entered the church and they know inside the church there are only Christians. Our leaders say, 'We ask the Christians to be patient — to have the courage to live together to live hand in hand with the Muslims ... Why are we begging? Saying, 'Please, please,' for what? To let us survive?"
Father Douglas says his Chaldean Catholic parish in the working class neighborhood of New Baghdad has dwindled from 2,500 families in the 1990s to less than 300. His Muslim neighbors help protect the church, but almost every day, he says, more Christians decide to leave.
"Of course I cannot ask anyone to stay," he says. "Everyone tells me 'Father, I am sorry — I will leave.' I tell them, 'Don't be sorry, OK? No one is pushing you to die, what's the benefit of dying?' "
IRAQI CHURCH LEADERS IN EUROPE URGE EXILE
The siege of the Our Lady of Salvation Church sent shock waves through communities in Europe, which have grown used to news of frequent attacks on mosques in Iraq.
The Islamic State of Iraq, which took responsibility for the attack, has pledged more violence against Christians. A team of gunmen dressed in military uniforms stormed the church and opened fire on worshippers, calling them infidels, before detonating suicide vests after an standoff with Iraqi special forces.
In London on Sunday, a senior Iraqi church leader called on Christians here to leave the country.
"Which is better for us, to stay and be killed or to emigrate to another place and live in peace?" Archbishop Anthanasios Dawood told the BBC after delivering the same message at his Syrian Orthodox church. He asked European governments to grant asylum to Christians in Iraq.
'DOES OUR COUNTRY LOVE US?'
Church officials in Iraq are more circumspect. But in the light of the security breach that allowed the attack, they are far from reassuring about the ability or willingness of Iraqi security forces to protect them.
"Today we the Christians demand that our country answer us — does our country love us or not?" asked Monsignor Pius Kasho in the courtyard of the damaged church the day after the attack. "We humble ourselves and work for our country — does our country love us? Who will answer this question? This land is silent but we demand that the entire situation, the officials and the government answer us."
With neighboring countries overflowing with Iraqi refugees, Christians say the attack has sparked another exodus to the Kurdish territories in northern Iraq. In the overcrowded Christian enclave of Ankawa, on the outskirts of Arbil, property prices rose by thousands of dollars the day after the siege.
"There is nothing left here — staying in this situation with all this threat is very difficult," says Atheer Elias Medhat, a parishioner whose face was marked with the shrapnel. "There isn't a strong government that can imprint its authority on the country."
At other Sunday church services there were far fewer worshippers than usual. Congregants said many were staying in their homes. Some women were covering their hair in the street to avoid being identified as Christian — a practice not widely seen since the peak of sectarian violence in 2006-07.
'VERY STRONG REACTION TO THE MASSACRE'
For years before the Oct. 31 attack, Christians have made up a disproportionate percentage of Iraqi refugees. In a bid to stem the flow two years ago, the Iraqi government appealed to European countries not to accept them simply on the basis of religion. Britain, Sweden, and other countries this year began returning failed asylum seekers of all religions back to Iraq, despite advice from United Nations refugee authorities that it still isn't safe.
Church officials worried about an irreversible exodus had encouraged Christians to remain in Iraq. That position has now become less clear-cut.
"We tell them they should remain here but we can't make them, because they have a very, very strong reaction from the massacre that took place," says Syrian Catholic Bishop Mati Shaba Matoka, one of a delegation of church leaders who met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki last week.
Bishop Matoka says Mr. Maliki told them the attackers were able to get through checkpoints with weapons and a car filled with explosives because of "traitors" in the security forces. The explanation, similar to that following other deadly attacks, worries many in the church and outside as an indication that the government does not have control of security.
"We as men of religion have limits," he says. "I want officials to take it upon themselves to provide a reasonable level of security so when we tell people it is their duty to stay and be patient, they accept it."
Like many Christians, Matoka says the US handling of the war made the situation worse for the Christian community.
"When they came, they should have provided peace so people could live in peace and stability and not let it fall apart the way it did," says the bishop, whose church was bombed in 2004.
As he speaks, the lights go out in one of the city's regular power outages. "There is no electricity, there is no water, the streets are all broken, there's no opportunity for people to work — would the Americans accept this situation developing in their own country?"
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