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Obama is now in full campaign mode as he buses around Iowa trying to convince his audience he does not live in D.C. Only Republicans do. He is preparing a budget that is designed to force them to reject it so he can call them 'do nothings.' The problem with this 'snake oil' strategy is his own party has been in control of the Senate and have not submitted a required budget for 2 years. Is Obama willing to call his own party 'do nothings?'
Obama continues relying on the uninformed and fawning press and media to pick up his 'do nothing' rant so , once again, our nations best hope lies with the informed and involved.
And as for his to be announced program, what took him so long?
There is enough incompetency to go round in politics, in professions, business etc. It is a condition in all walks of life but I maintain Obama, many black mayors etc. are an example of why Affirmative Action has been a failure for he black community. Far too often they do not have the tools and were deprived of learning them because making them go through the hoops of experience was deemed racial and we owed the black community for the sins of slavery and segregation. So we paid them off with empty experiences and now we are all reaping the consequences.
Obama's failures are not GW's fault they are his own but he was set up to fail as well and for that he and we can blame the PC'ers.
Obama is totally out of his element and I took no comfort from the fact that we had McCain as the alternative.
However, you do not help a person by promoting inexperience, rewarding incompetence because you might feel the need to expiate your own misplaced sense of guilt! In fact you harm them. You give them a false sense of accomplishment.
God, save us from the do gooders!(See 2 and 2a below.)
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Black gangs - Tom Sowell comments! Is Philadelphia Mayor Nutter nutty? (See 3 below.)
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It is usually all about him, the king, the messiah. Like attorney Welch said to McCarthy: "Have you no shame?" (See 4 and 4a below.)
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The immorality of liberalism. (See 5 and 5a below.)
I also have my doubts about the sincerity of Glenn Beck. (See 5b below.)
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What's the big deal it is only more worthless U.S. tax dollar toilet paper! (See 6 below.)
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Keeping white voters aboard? Hell, Obama probably will lose a good bit of the black vote. Not because they will vote for 'whitey' but simply because they have no jobs and have not benefited from Obama's 'hope and change' garbage. The bottom has grown and it is not because of those greedy, private airplane, limousine lovers on the top.
Obama is on the top and he has blown it big time. (See 8 below.)
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Dick
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1)Defeating Islamic Terrorism Through Appeasement
By Daniel Greenfield
The Obama Administration has a new strategy for combating Islamic terrorism. The document that lays out its new strategy avoids using “Terrorism” in its title, instead substituting “Violent Extremism”. Jihad is not mentioned anywhere. Even “Muslim” is used as little as possible.
Eight pages of mostly redundant text repeat the same idea, that the only way to fight Islamic terrorism is by partnering with and empowering Muslim communities and organizations. That is the “revolutionary” new idea that merited coverage from the New York Times, NPR and CNN. And if the strategy had to be summed up in one word, it would be, “Collaborate!”
“Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States,” sounds almost as catchy as “Man-Caused Disasters”, and comes from the same school of thought. The University of Denial, whose motto is that the best way to fight Islamic terrorism, is not to talk about it. And “Not talking about it” is a big part of the new strategy. The document warns repeatedly that associating Islam with terrorism leads to terrorism. WWII had “Loose Lips, Sink Ships”, and we have, “Loose Stereotypes Fly Planes into Buildings.”
Released as an answer to Congressman King’s hearings into Islamic radicalization, it completely fails to address the questions raised by those hearings. Instead the strategy compares Islamic terrorism to gangs and pedophiles– treating it as a persistent social issue, rather than a violent threat. And its only answer is to keep working with Muslim groups to teach their youth not to do drugs, join gangs or blow up bombs.
Empowering Local Partners is a transparent defense of CAIR and other Muslim organizations accused of radical activities. But rather than countering the charges raised against them, it pretends those charges have never been made, and urges law enforcement to continue partnering with Muslim groups. A course that leads local and national law enforcement to unwittingly work with the political partners and fundraisers of terrorist organizations.
The White House could not have found anyone better to devise its new strategy than Quintan Wiktorowicz. After September 11, Wiktorowicz co-wrote an article for the Saudi funded Middle East Policy Council Journal, which made a point of distinguishing between Al-Qaeda and more mainstream organizations such as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Wiktorowicz also distinguished between violent and non-violent Salafis. The “good” Salafis have PhD’s from Saudi universities. The “bad” Salafis are a “small radical fringe” who are mostly self-taught and ignorant. Want to fight Islamic terrorism, then you have to put more Islamic scholars with Saudi PhD’s on the job.
This is exactly the argument that Wiktorowicz makes, that “very religious Muslims” are “the most resistant to radicalization” while those most likely to be radicalized lack a good grounding in Islam. Fighting Islamic terrorism with Islamism was his approach in the UK and it derives from his fondness for Salafism.
In another Middle East Policy Council Journal article, Wiktorowicz warned against “radicalizing the Salafis and creating a legion of new supporters for Bin Laden”. This is the fulcrum of appeasement. On the one hand Wiktorowicz and those like him argue that terrorists are a tiny minority of a tiny minority. On the other, if the United States fails to mend its ways, they warn that any number of Muslims can become radicalized and turn into terrorists.
Wiktorowicz’s defense of Salafism as a primarily non-violent movement and his warnings about alienating them expose him as the apologist for a radical movement whose control over mosques in America has been identified as a key factor in radicalization. Mainstream defenders of Islam try to separate Salafism from what they claim is a more moderate Islam– but Wiktorowicz even defends Salafis as peaceful.
The new strategy could have been written in Saudi Arabia. And for all intents and purposes was.
The New York Times cites the ACLU and a study by Political Research Associates as influencing the need for a sanitized presentation of Islamic terrorism to law enforcement. There is a reason however that the Times does not mention PRA by name, referring to it instead as “a liberal group”.
Political Research Associates is a radical left-wing organization that claims Christians are plotting to take over the United States. The hypocrisy of citing a study that claims law enforcement officials are exposed to conspiracy theories about an Islamic takeover of the United States– by an organization that accuses Christians of the same thing– may have been obvious even to the usually tone deaf Times, hence the evasiveness about naming PRA.
What PRA has in common with Saudi Arabia is that neither of them wants to allow a serious discussion about Islamic terrorism. Instead they want the conversation to be about how overblown and how dangerous such talk is. But if talk of Islamic terrorism is overblown, then why is it dangerous? And if it is dangerous, then why is it overblown?
“Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States,” replaces terrorism with euphemism. With words so generic that they mean nothing at all. And the content is equally generic. Swap out a few words and it could be about any social problem.
Even former Hizb-ut-Tahrir member Ed Husain, now at the Council on Foreign Relations, has been critical of the new strategy for not addressing Islamic ideology, and prison and campus radicalization. But that’s the essence of the new strategy. Inaction and ignorance.
The new strategy is eight pages of inaction. Eight pages of silence. Eight pages of noise. It is not a document that sets out real goals and objectives. Its only objective is to sideline serious critical work and replace it with blank buzzwords. With FBI agents and prosecutors visiting mosques, removing their shoes, pressing the flesh and then going back to doing nothing. Because they have no idea what’s out there anymore.
Intelligence is the first line of defense against any threat. To know the enemy is the first step toward defending against an attack. But how do you defend against a threat, when you can’t even spell its name?
The Orwellian blankness of the new strategy is a space of ignorance to mask the truth of terrorism. The enemy is reduced to a social problem, terrorism to violent extremism and the war on terror to programs teaching Muslims about the dangers of violent extremism on the internet. The same dead end European counter-terrorism strategies imported to the United States.
The new strategy begins with Obama carefully using the Arabic transcription spelling of Usama and al-Qa’ida, and ends on cautioning that, “Strong religious beliefs should never be confused with violent extremism.” Unless you’re Christian, of course.
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2)7)On Day 938 of his presidency, Obama says he'll have a jobs plan in a month or so
August 17, 2011.
By Andrew Malcolm
OK, let's see if we can sort out this White House jobs package hocus-pocus because President Obama is counting on us not to. And no one wants to fail to disappoint him:
Last winter in his State of the Union address, oblivious to the gathering storm over the nation's national debt, the Democrat proposed massive new spending and loan programs -- he calls it investments -- to extend unemployment benefits and payroll tax cuts and to rebuild the nation's roads, bridges and other union-made infrastructure kinds of stuff. He had a plan he would share soon.
When in trouble, give a speech. Say, early September. Before all this Rick Perry 40% of the nation's jobs come from Texas stuff really gets going.
The president has mentioned the plan often, despite widespread skepticism due to the lack of stimulus that came from spending $787 billion in stimulus money that was for sure going to hold national unemployment at 8%, but it's now 9.1%.
So, perhaps another such plan might work.
As this administration sees reality, those Republican tea party terrorists kind of hijacked the marathon talks about raising the national debt ceiling, stubbornly and unreasonably making the debt negotiations over reducing the debt and spending rather than over spending spending.
As a result, it's all their fault that Standard & Poor's lowered the federal government's credit rating for the first time because the rating agency didn't see sufficient cuts.
The next day after the spending cuts agreement, with his obedient cabinet in attendance as witnesses, Obama said, yes, spending cuts were important as long as they didn't affect vast investments for the future to extend unemployment benefits and payroll tax cuts and to rebuild the nation's roads, bridges and other union-made infrastructure kinds of stuff.
Other Democrats are designing job plans costing $200 billion per year.
Because the country hasn't heard enough of Obama calling on Congress to do things and his job approval touched a new low of 39%, he laid on a three-day campaign swing through Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois this week at taxpayer-expense because the White House declared it an official trip.
Because Obama wanted to hear from regular Americans, he's encased in an armored Darth Vader bus with heavily-tinted windows so no one can see him looking out at regular Americans.
And as the commander-in-chief meanders through the Heartland in this black vehicle, the entire road in both directions is cleared of regular Americans for the president's entourage and motorcade to pass by safely.
The bus is reported to cost about $1 million, which works out to about $333,000 per day for this foray among regular Americans.
On its second day out Tuesday Obama's bus made a couple of stops to chat with high school athletes and to acquire healthy presidential provisions -- one for ice cream cones (POTUS got vanilla) and another to load several bags of popcorn.
At his speaking engagements, Obama stressed the need to extend payroll tax cuts and to rebuild the nation's roads, bridges and other union-made infrastructure kinds of stuff. Also some free-trade agreements. This was a repetition of what he had said on the first day of his Grand Ground Tour.
On his 938th day in office President Obama also said he would soon have a completed jobs plan. Maybe early fall, something like that. And he complained, "We could do even more if Congress is willing to get in the game."
Tomorrow with all this heavy work in his rear-view mirror, the president is scheduled to join his family on Martha's Vineyard for a nine-day vacation.
2a)From Rock Star to Rock Bottom
By Kevin Jackson
Obama has put away the golf clubs, given up the Kobe steaks, and suspended his membership in the "Vacation-a-Month" club -- and now he's hit the road. Sleeves rolled up to mimic "the ordinary working man," Obama tours the Midwest -- on a bus -- to showcase his new look, replacing Blue Steel (head left, chin askew and up) with Magnum (head tilted...slight right).
As the bus indicates, Obama has returned to being "an ordinary American" with sensible right-leaning values. The bus was chosen to remind Midwesterner moderates, liberals, and racists why they elected him. Obama's election was symbolic -- historic, in fact. The bus says about Obama: "Remember me? I'm the former nobody black guy with the funny name."
Obama poll numbers remind us that the light that burns twice as bright lasts half as long. With only a 40% approval rating, Obama's popularity is pretty much based solely on the opinions of people on the government dole, thus a 40% rating is technically "rock bottom."
The tour is to help raise the poll numbers. To do this, Obama chose states he will need, and he wanted to look like the indigenous. Obama doesn't pander when he visits California, however. He jets in there like Black Sabbath, as he did in April of this year.
During this last visit, Obama blew in, raised a few million towards his campaign of future oppression, and jetted out just as quickly. No need for pretense in California, a state Obama could win even if he showed his grades and his real birth certificate. Wham, bam, thank you, Ma'am...I left you $2B on the dresser.
Obama visited the Golden State in February of this year -- his eighth visit up to that point -- and it wasn't because of earthquakes. Here is how this mini-tour was described:
Air Force One is set to land at San Francisco International Airport at around 5:45 p.m., from where the President will be whisked away to a private residence for a dinner and discussion with leaders from some of the world's most prominent technology companies, the White House said.
The list of guests -- made public Thursday morning -- is set to include Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, according to the White House. Google co-founder and CEO Eric Schmidt and Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers will also be attending the meeting with the President.
The meeting will be held at the Woodside, Calif. home of John Doerr, a Venture Capitalist and partner with the firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, according to the New York Times.
Apparently, when you meet with CEOs, you need a slightly larger carbon footprint (and ego) than when you meet with "ordinary people" from the Midwest.
The Midwest culture is something Obama struggles with. He can't relate to people with conservative values, and he's out of his element. As the British rockers Whitesnake relate:
Here I go again on my own
Goin' down the only road I've ever known,
Like a drifter I was born to walk alone...
One can only speculate about the new formula of snake oil that Obama believes will sell in the Midwest. But according to this report, Obama will be looking for small business successes. He's traveling in three states and five Midwestern hamlets in order to seek out the few small businesses he will hold front and center to showcase his presidency. Obama is forced to do this because he demonizes "big business." Notwithstanding, "big business" has no good news to report.
I'd like to give Obama some advice on what businesses to tout.
Pawn shops are a definite winner in today's economy, as are gold brokers. I'd say check out gun and ammo dealers but that's not his demographic.
Obama is hoping that a few small successes will make people forget the devastation to America, the havoc that his policies have created.
What's a few days here and there "roughing it" in a bus, when Air Force One is in the hanger ready to be deployed on a moment's notice for the next campaign stop? Soon Obama will be back to "business as usual," jet-setting around the country on our tax dollars in friendlier climes. But this won't stop the slide. The damage is done. Obama has Scorpioned us...Rocked us like a hurricane.
How desperate Obama must be to give up his rock-star lifestyle -- the parties, the vacations, hanging with the big dawgs -- to visit an area of the country where he is practically despised? It's the Chitlin' Circuit for a rock star of his caliber.
We now know how far the fall is from rock star to rock bottom.
That's my rant!
Kevin Jackson is author of The BIG Black Lie and The Black Sphere blog.
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3)Somebody Finally Said It
By Thomas Sowell
Someone at long last has had the courage to tell the plain, honest truth
about race.
After mobs of young blacks rampaged through Philadelphia committing violence
-- as similar mobs have rampaged through Chicago, Denver, Milwaukee and
other places -- Philadelphia's black mayor, Michael A. Nutter, ordered a police crackdown and lashed out at the whole lifestyle of those who did such things.
"Pull up your pants and buy a belt 'cause no one wants to see your underwear
or the crack of your butt," he said. "If you walk into somebody's office
with your hair uncombed and a pick in the back, and your shoes untied, and
your pants half down, tattoos up and down your arms and on your neck, and
you wonder why somebody won't hire you? They don't hire you 'cause you look
like you're crazy," the mayor said
He added: "You have damaged your own race."
While this might seem like it is just plain common sense, what Mayor Nutter
said undermines a whole vision of the world that has brought fame, fortune
and power to race hustlers in politics, the media and academia. Any racial
disparities in hiring can only be due to racism and discrimination,
according to the prevailing vision, which reaches from street corner
demagogues to the august chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States
Just to identify the rioters and looters as black is a radical departure,
when mayors, police chiefs and the media in other cities report on these
outbreaks of violence without mentioning the race of those who are doing
these things. The Chicago Tribune even made excuses for failing to mention
race when reporting on violent attacks by blacks on whites in Chicago.
Such excuses might make sense if the same politicians and media talking
heads were not constantly mentioning race when denouncing the fact that a
disproportionate number of young black men are being sent to prison.
The prevailing social dogma is that disparities in outcomes between races
can only be due to disparities in how these races are treated. In other
words, there cannot possibly be any differences in behavior.
But if black and white Americans had exactly the same behavior patterns,
they would be the only two groups on this planet that are the same.
The Chinese minority in Malaysia has long been more successful and
more prosperous than the Malay majority, just as the Indians in Fiji have
long been more successful and more prosperous than the indigenous Fijians.
At various places and times throughout history, the same could be said of
the Armenians in Turkey, the Lebanese in Sierra Leone, the Parsees in India, the Japanese in Brazil , and numerous others.
There are similar isparities within particular racial or ethnic groups.
Even this late in history, I have had northern Italians explain to me why
they are not like southern Italians. In Australia, Jewish leaders in both Sydney
and Melbourne went to great lengths to tell me why and how the Jews are
different in these two cities.
In the United States, despite the higher poverty level among blacks than
among whites, the poverty rate among black married couples has been in
single digits since 1994. The disparities within the black community are
huge, both in behavior and in outcomes.
Nevertheless, the dogma persists that differences between groups can only be
due to the way others treat them or to differences in the way others
perceive them in "stereotypes."
All around the country, people in politics and the media have been
tip-toeing around the fact that violent attacks by blacks on whites in
public places are racially motivated, even when the attackers themselves use
anti-white invective and mock the victims they leave lying on the streets
bleeding.
This is not something to ignore or excuse. It is something to be stopped.
Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia seems to be the first to openly
recognize this.
This needs to be done for the sake of both black and white Americans -- and
even for the sake of the hoodlums. They have set out on a path that leads
only downward for themselves.
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4)
President Obama salutes at an Aug. 9 ceremony at Dover (Del.) Air Force Base for the dignified transfer of U.S. and Afghan personnel who died in...
Leadership: Disrespecting grieving families, the president sneaks a photographer into the ceremony honoring the SEALs who died in Afghanistan. The presidential scrapbook and campaign are more important.
We thought perhaps the White House had received a sufficient dose of condemnation as well as some sensitivity training over a planned Sony film hyping President Obama's "gutsy call" regarding the successful Navy SEAL mission that killed Osama bin Laden. The film was to be released three weeks before the 2012 vote. We were wrong.
When 30 U.S. Special Operations forces, including Navy SEALs from SEAL Team 6, the unit that got the world's most-wanted man, were subsequently shot down in a helicopter, the nation mourned its heroes. The White House, it seems, loaded its cameras.
Nineteen of the families asked for no media coverage of the ceremony at Dover, Del. When President George W. Bush was in office, the anti-war media clamored for photos of flag-draped coffins. The Pentagon honored their request for privacy and said any public depiction of the scene would violate the wishes of the families.
So why and how did a photo of President Obama, in silhouette no less, saluting the return of the remains of these brave men find its way to the White House website as its "Photo of the Day"? Did they not get the memo? For what purpose was the photo taken?
If for historical purposes and posterity, we might understand. This photo by a White House photographer was immediately and widely distributed. The Pentagon said it had no knowledge the picture and others had been taken and noted that it hadn't rejected media requests to take pictures of officials at the ceremony as long as they depicted no caskets.
That was White House Press Secretary Jay Carney's lame excuse for the photos — that they didn't show any caskets, only an opportunistic president. The photos, Carney said, were "released in the interests of transparency," a principle ignored in the drafting of ObamaCare, and "so the American people could have as much insight into this historic and sobering event."
We don't know how much "insight" such silhouettes provide except into the narcissistic ambitions of a failed president desperate to find a way to get re-elected. The only thing transparent here are the motives for this photo and the aforementioned Sony campaign infomercial.
We all remember the famous war room photo of the assembled White House multitude, including President Obama, breathlessly watching the raid that killed bin Laden unfold in real time. Authorizing the raid was the right call, but it was hardly "gutsy." Any president should have made the call in a heartbeat.
We also recall the shameful way this administration failed to keep details and roles of the Navy SEALs classified, with Vice President Joe Biden opening the floodgates in a speech as Hollywood filmmakers responsible for the anti-war Iraq film "The Hurt Locker" were granted exclusive access.
This is a president, after all, who has no respect for the office he holds or sits in, so why should he respect the privacy wishes of grieving military families?
President Ronald Reagan would wear a suit and tie at all times. President Obama will often reside sans coat and tie, putting his feet on the desk like some fatigued staffer at the end of the day. That is, on those rare occasions when he stops campaigning and actually sits in the Oval Office.
When on Nov. 20, 2009, President Obama flew to Osan Air Base in South Korea to speak to American troops, he remarked, "You guys make a pretty good photo-op." Apparently they still do, living or dead.
4a)Media Stifling Racial Violence Coverage
By John T. Bennett
Race matters if we want to understand the current wave of racial mob violence. Flash mobs have a lot of people talking, no thanks to PC journalists who have refused all along to help us understand this emerging social problem.
For those who care about language and the truth, Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune has done a great service. She openly admits that her newspaper refuses to report the race of violent criminals responsible for an outbreak of racial mob violence in Chicago, which mirrors similar violence around the country. So Schmich has proven the old adage that you don't need to muzzle sheep.
Schmich admits that there is a fact about the flash mob attackers that readers "haven't read in the Tribune or seen explicitly stated by most of the official media: The young men were black." Schmich wants to keep it that way. This resolute dishonesty is shared by the Tribune's editor, Gerould W. Kern. Kern wrote, "We do not reference race unless it is a fact that is central to telling the story." Of course, if you're PC, race is never central to a story when misbehavior by approved minorities is in question. Thus, the Tribune will evade race when whites are the victims of interracial crime. Kern and Schmich have demonstrated what self-censorship looks like in our Conversation about Race.
The title of Schmich's article asks, "When a news story omits race, do we really know any less?" with her instinctive response being no. She is wrong. Flash mobs are the product of attitudes which are directly connected to racial group membership in American society.
The racial mob violence is probably rooted in three factors arising from the post-Civil Rights-era black experience in America: a sense of entitlement, a sense of grievance, and fatherlessness. Those factors are neither exclusive to nor reflective upon the black community as a whole. The black community is not uniform or monolithic. That being said, the three factors are present in the black community to a greater degree than they are in other communities, with major consequences for group behavior.
A sense of entitlement makes people think that they deserve things they have not earned. A sense of grievance leads to anger and a greater willingness to use violence. Fatherlessness means that there will be few restraints on greedy, impulsive behavior. According to Popenoe, fathers are needed to teach self-control and empathy, tendencies which antisocial and criminal people lack (1). Taken together, these factors foster the propensity to commit crime. Those factors are not rooted in biology, and were not present in earlier generations of black Americans, as Bill Cosby pointed out.
The entitlement mentality and thug culture emerged relatively recently, beginning in the late 60s and early 70s. Former Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver wrote in "Soul on Ice" that racial injustice drove his desire to rape women (2). Professor Marvin E. Wolfgang, regarded as the most influential criminologist in the world, would write in 1973, "I am increasingly convinced that among many black teen-agers and young adults there is a systematic diffusion of the Soul on Ice ideology that ripping off whites as a kind of compensatory behavior is acceptable, tolerated and even encouraged" (3). Wolfgang was a brilliant scholar; he opposed the death penalty and was independent minded. His insight about criminal attitudes should be taken seriously, and the attitude he described is directly tied to race.
Contrary to Schmich, when a news story omits race, we know less -- less about our society, less about the mores shaping the lives of our fellow citizens, less about the identity of perpetrators of violent crimes, and less about the nature of a social problem that could affect any of us. The eminent University of Chicago political scientist Edward Banfield wrote in 1974 that the morality of lower-class culture is "preconventional" (4). This means that "the individual's actions are influenced not by conscience but by a sense of what he can get away with" and that "[i]nfliction of bodily injury is also sanctioned -- often inculcated- by lower-class culture." That analysis is still valid. Today, there is evidently a preconventional morality ingrained in a subset of our population of all races. The race of the attackers matters because the unique cultural roots of this problem are found predominantly in a subset of the black community. We're never going to find a solution unless we can identify and analyze the root of the problem.
Yet, Schmich and her ilk are not ready to have a conversation about race. Race matters because liberalism has fostered a sense of grievance and entitlement that could be driving this violence. Race matters because the worst acts of violent racism in America today are the black-on-white and black-on-Asian crimes exemplified by the Chicago mob attacks. Prof. Walter Williams has noticed this change in race relations.
Liberals can no longer say that these criminals are making a political statement, or expressing justified outrage at the system, as liberals in the 60s claimed in the Kerner Report and other officious excuses for bad behavior. Schmich can't say that race is not a factor in these attacks. Instead, she tries in vain to minimize race, which is self-censorship.
The state doesn't have to censor when the media voluntarily restricts its reporting within the welfare state ideology; minorities are permanent victims, and racism is essentially a white-on-black phenomenon. Hence, CNN produces a special about the murder of James Craig Anderson. CNN has not shown the same zeal in reporting on Hoang Nguyen, who was killed in a senseless "game" called the knock-out game, in which mostly black attackers attack mostly non-black victims. Nor will there be a special for Tian Sheng Yu, 59, who was punched and killed by two blacks, or Huan Chen, 83, killed by a "group of youths." There's no evidence that someone used a taboo racial epithet before attacking those men, so they don't count in the tally of societal hate. CNN had no special on the Wichita Massacre. Despite the body count and pure sadism, they sloughed the story off to Court TV. CNN had a special on the Knoxville horror -- to insinuate that only white supremacists think the murders have political significance. When the flash mobs emerged, the mainstream media was true to form.
In the Tribune, Schmich writes: "Race alone doesn't predict or explain behavior. Just because this mob was young and black hardly means that all young, black people in groups are a violent mob." Schmich is offering up a phony argument that no serious person is actually making. It is the classic straw man fallacy: There is nobody with a position of real influence in society who would say that "all young, black people in groups are a violent mob." Schmich's recitation of this drivel is unfortunately common, coming from devout multiculturalists. It's an attempt to impute racism to a non-existent segment of relevant public opinion. Schmich's insinuation is contemptible, and her style of argument is a shining example of the left's intellectual bankruptcy on racial matters.
Orwell would have recognized the stunning deception that lies behind the media's sheepish reporting on racial facts. Schmich fails to see how difficult it is to acknowledge simple facts about these attacks. Liberals at the Washington Post, New York Times, and L.A. Times will glibly admit that their own newspapers are refusing to report the race of the attackers. They are conceding that there is a problem with mob violence, and that blacks are causing it. Yet, the Tribune refuses to allow an open inquiry into the issue.
This is not because of state censorship; in a free society the media controls itself. The state doesn't have to censor when the media is infused with the welfare state ideology, meaning white guilt and denial about the growing trend of race riots, a number of which constitute anti-white hate crimes. The sheep at the Tribune have proven that they don't need a muzzle. Let us hope that the same will not be said about the rest of us.
(1) David Popenoe, Life Without Father 154 (1996).
(2) Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice 13-14 (1968).
(3) Personal communication from Wolfgang to Edward Banfield, March 19, 1973, cited in Edward C. Banfield, The Unheavenly City Revisited 195 (1974).
(4) Edward C. Banfield, The Unheavenly City Revisited 184-85 (1974).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------5)Israel, Liberalism, and Moral Cowardice
By James Lewis
There are touchstones of morality in life. In 1938, resisting Hitler was a big one in Europe; in 1990, support for freedom in the Soviet Empire was another one.
Today we have a new test of character.
Americans have never had much of a problem telling the good guys from the bad guys. It isn't that hard. If they are head-chopping murderers who go around burning girls' schools in Afghanistan, committing random rapes in Norway, and truck-bombing civilians in open-air markets in Iraq, chances are that they are bad guys.
See? That wasn't so hard. So why don't the liberals get what's obvious to a child of six? After wrestling with it for years, I think it all comes down to moral cowardice.
Today we are surrounded by moral cowards; people who have chosen to evade choices between good and evil. Every day when they hear the news they shrivel up again like snails drawing into their shells, because moral cowardice is not a one-time thing. It a lifetime practice of shifty evasions. Courage is a muscle that can be trained, and so is cowardice.
Israel isn't the only question liberals keep dodging. Shifty evasion is how they run their lives. Ask an honest question and you'll get a shifty answer. Just watch their eyes.
Israel isn't their only failure of the moral sense. Every time Hollywood pulls another Caligula stunt they know they'll get away with it because of the passive collusion of millions of liberals, who keep paying for their wares, no matter how corrupting. Hollywood's moral monsters keep pushing the limits, and liberals keep paying them. Liberals around the world are paying for the corruption of your children.
No, Israel isn't their only failure.
Israel is our moral touchstone today because that country is on the front line fighting the risorgiamento of Islamist fascismo. If you don't think that's true, take another hard look. You can google tons of indisputable facts.
The Declaration of Independence took a stand on foreign tyranny; the Civil War abolished the intolerable shame of slavery and still preserved the Union; World War I pushed back Prussian imperialism; World War II knocked out Hitler and Imperial Japan; the Cold War brought down the Soviet Empire.
Five historic choices, and all expressed our basic values.
America made the right choices -- and not easy ones -- at five crucial turning points in world history. You may think that's patriotic humbug, but it's true. Lincoln called constitutional government the "last, best hope of mankind," and he was not given to empty rhetoric. Lincoln had to make the toughest choices in American history, and he always came back to basics. In the end, after all was said and done, we knew it in our bones.
The newest upsurge of barbarism in the world is impossible to ignore -- unless you're a liberal and blind. (But I repeat myself.) If you see the same international danger that everybody else does, you can either fight 'em or join 'em. The hard Left, like Bill Ayers and Code Pink, has chosen to join the fascists because they hate and despise free people. They are despicable lowlifes. We know where decent people stand, because morality hasn't changed. It is what it is. You know it and I know it.
Americans didn't go around apologizing for our basic decency until the rise of El Jefe El Magnifico, Barry the Bombastic. Europe had a Prince William the Silent, but we've got 'em beat hands down, 'cause we have Barry Who Won't Ever Shut Up. Every time his numbers drop he makes another whiny complaint to over national TV, and his numbers drop even lower. It's a kind of tic he can't control.
A fresh team of leaders is emerging. Some of them are Republican presidential contenders. Some are freedom fighters in Europe, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders. Millions of modernist Muslims quietly despise their wife-beating and child-abusing ideologues.
If the West would stand up for its own values the rest of the world would heave a big sigh and get back to sanity. Ordinary decency isn't that different in Cairo and Kansas. Turn off the hate propaganda and the Muslim world will find a path back to modernity. They don't really want to live in misery and despair.
Which brings me back to Israel.
In the last couple of weeks Israel has seen its own Cottage Cheese rebellion, a democratic eruption about as alarming as the American Tea Party. While next door in Syria the dictatorship has sent 200 battle tanks to kill as many Sunni rebels as possible, the Cottage Cheesers have carried out a model of peaceful protest. Hundreds of thousands of young people turned out to protest the high price of food and housing. They pitched neat little tents along the center strips of thoroughfares in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. There they have slept overnight and chanted slogans, waved signs, and got the thumbs up sign from thousands of drivers passing by.
I tell you, it's as scary as Tea.
The Netanyahu government reacted quickly. Not a single man, woman or child was attacked by tanks. Nobody got hurt. The cops were out in force, but I haven't seen pictures of rioters throwing Molotov cocktails the way they did in London, Paris and Athens. Nobody even tossed a cottage cheese pie. But hundreds of thousands of ordinary people made their case in perfect freedom, and the Cabinet in Jerusalem took urgent action. Elected officials ran around trying to fix things, the way they're supposed to.
Six months into Obama's "Arab Spring" not a single democracy has emerged in the Arab world, in spite of Obama forcing Hosni Mubarak to resign -- an 82-year old ally who kept the peace for thirty years. The Egypt-Israeli peace treaty is now in tatters thanks to Obama and the phony-baloney "Arab Spring."
The only stable country in the Middle East is little Israel, which hasn't even bothered to call an election to fix the Cottage Cheese crisis. It wasn't needed.
Meanwhile, Obama the Big Bad Wolf has huffed and puffed and blown the house down, except that all the bad old dictatorships are just getting fresh new dictators. So much for the Enlightened One and his Hope and Change for the Muslim world.
Islamic fascism has received a fresh boost from Obama's community disorganizing. The Moo Bro candidate in Egypt has sworn to renew the war with Israel. Iran's fascists have taken over the formerly free country of Lebanon, and Iran has sent its torture battalions to help Syria beat up its eighty percent Sunni Muslim population. Tehran is still purging its Green Movement protesters without a peep of protest from Washington. Ahmadinejad is getting ever closer to ICBMs with nuclear warheads. In three years they may have the range to hit us right here at home.
Today no Arab country can trust the United States. We used to support moderate regimes, but we've shafted our biggest Arab ally right in front of God and everybody. Don't think that lesson's been lost in Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. Or in Beijing and Moscow.
Our Hero has opened Pandora's Box all right, but it was Jimmy Carter who started it by falling for the seductive charms of Ayatollah Khomeini. Thanks to Jimmy Carter the most talented people in the Middle East have been exposed to three decades of abuse, tyranny and war. Jimmy has never bothered to say "sorry." You see, he really meant well.
But it all starts with the moral cowardice of the liberal West. Millions of liberals voted for Bombastic Barack because the media threatened to call them racists if they didn't. So the liberals collapsed, the way they always do, and they forgot to think. They got suckered good and proper by the Chicago Machine and the Demagogues, and they will never admit it.
So -- if you want to see the true enablers of the radical Left-Islamofascist alliance, look no further than your gutless friends and neighbors.
It's not good news, I know, but I thought you oughtta know.
5a)The Left's Faustian bargain
By Caroline B. Glick
Applying Israeli law to Judea and Samaria would be an appropriate reaction to Palestinian unilateralism
The Palestinians' decision to place the issue of establishing a Palestinian state before the United Nations for a vote next month repudiates the principles of the 1993Oslo peace framework, through which the Palestinian Authority was formed out of the PLO. The Oslo framework dictated that the final status of Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Jerusalem would be determined through direct negotiations between the PLO and Israel.
While brazen, the Palestinians' UN gambit is not the first time Israel has been confronted with unequivocal proof that the Palestinians have been operating in bad faith. From the outset, PLO leaders from Yasser Arafat down have made statements and taken actions that have demonstrated that from the PLO's perspective, the entire "two-state paradigm" of peacemaking upon which the Oslo process is predicated was nothing more than a ploy.
For instance, after coming under heavy pressure from then-opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu, in early 1996, then-prime minister Shimon Peres was forced to ask Arafat to convene the PLO's governing council in order to cancel the PLO Charter. The charter repeatedly calls for Israel's destruction. Recognizing that Peres's government was on the line, then-US president Bill Clinton flew to Gaza to "oversee" the Palestinian National Council's conference and its cancellation of the charter.
Despite Clinton's presence, the charter was never abrogated or even amended. Yet the empty pageantry was enough to convince the leftist Israeli media that Israel had a credible partner for peace in Arafat, and so the show went on.
Arafat ended all pretense of good faith in the summer of 2000, when he rejected then-prime minister Ehud Barak's offer of Palestinian statehood and instigated the Palestinian terror war. Ever since Arafat chose terror war over peace, his followers' willingness to admit they reject Israel's right to exists has grown.
For instance, on July 13, Fatah's foreign relations boss Nabil Shaath gave an interview to a Lebanese television station in which he stated point blank that the PLO would never accept Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state. As he put it, only the Palestinians have a right to a nation-state. The Jews of Israel must be subsumed into a "state of all its citizens" that would be dominated by Israeli Arabs and millions of foreign Arabs who would immigrate into the formerly Jewish state.
Shaath's statements, like similar recent statements made by Fatah chairman Mahmoud Abbas and chief "negotiator" Saeb Erekat were completely ignored by the Left. As opposition leader Tzipi Livni makes clear every time she has access to a microphone, the Left insists the full blame for the absence of so-called peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians rests on the shoulders of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu.
Three weeks after Shaath gave his interview, Livni had a chance to respond to his statements in an interview with the Atlantic Monthly. Asked whether she was certain "there's no plan on the part of seemingly moderate Palestinians to try to take apart Israel in stages," Livni responded that even if there were, it was Netanyahu's fault. By asserting Israel's right to be recognized as a Jewish state, Netanyahu is weakening Israel, she said. In her words, "Israel is being weakened now by the way Netanyahu speaks. The stronger he speaks, the weaker Israel is."
Livni also claimed the best thing that could happen was for US President Barack Obama to put even more pressure on Netanyahu to make concessions to the Palestinians. As she put it, Obama's pressure made the government understand "that maintaining the status quo with the Palestinians means that there is no status quo with the United States. They understood that there is a price for not negotiating, or for not saying the right words. So this is the brighter perspective."
When Livni gave her interview on August 5, Netanyahu had reportedly agreed to participate in negotiations predicated on the Palestinian-US demand to base the talks on the indefensible 1949 armistice lines. Netanyahu reportedly stipulated, however, that the Palestinians must recognize Israel's right to exist.
By placing the blame for the absence of negotiations on Netanyahu, like the Palestinians, Livni rejected the prime minister's demand. That is, the leader of Israel's opposition effectively dismissed her government's demand that Israel's "peace partner" recognize its right to exist. Moreover, she asked a foreign power to coerce her government into setting that right aside.
Livni's position is consistent with the position the Left has adopted since Arafat destroyed the Oslo peace process 11 years ago. Whereas in 1995 the Left still expected the Palestinians to pay lip service to peace with Israel, after Arafat destroyed the peace process, the Left that had embraced the PLO needed to make a choice. Its leaders could either admit they were wrong to embrace the PLO, or they could adopt the PLO's position against Israel. They chose the latter.
The results of this choice have been devastating. For the past 11 years, the Left has been divorcing itself from Zionism. This began in the wake of the violent riots in the Arab sector in October 2000, when the Barak government formed the Orr Commission of Inquiry. The Orr Commission, for the first time, conferred extralegal communal rights on radicalized Israeli Arabs, and so denied the police the right to enforce laws equally on all Israelis.
Since then, the trend toward undermining Israeli democracy and the rights of the Jewish majority has been most pronounced in the leftist-dominated Supreme Court. From denying the right of Israeli Jews to develop Jewish communities within the 1949 armistice lines on Jewish privately owned land, to protecting Arab traitors from charges of treason, to striking down the government's legal right to determine immigration policies, the Supreme Court has led the charge in ending Israel's right to assert its right to exist as a Jewish state. Many of these post-Zionist court decisions were authored by retired Supreme Court president Aharon Barak. In June 2009, Barak admitted, "I'm a big believer in 'a state of all its citizens.'"
In leftist activist circles, this trend of joining the Palestinians in rejecting Israel's right to exist has led to foreign funded local NGOs and activist networks instigating domestic and international campaigns to delegitimize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.
On university campuses, expressions of Zionism and patriotism are increasingly demonized as racist or insensitive. For instance, at its recent graduation ceremony, Haifa University decided not to sing "Hatikva" out of concern for the feelings of the university's Arab students.
Recently several leading politicians have argued that Israel should respond to the PLO's UN initiative by abrogating its commitment to the Oslo peace accords and applying Israeli law to Judea and Samaria. This is certainly a reasonable response to the Palestinians' clear bad faith.
Far more difficult than responding to that bad faith, however, is conceiving and implementing a strategy for contending with the Left's decision to side with the Palestinians against its own country's right to exist.
5b) Glenn Beck exploiting Israel
Op-ed: Fired Fox commentator intends to use Israel as prop in his effort to get back on top
M.J. Rosenberg
If there is one thing that pretty much all Israelis agree on, it is the determination not to be perceived as, or to actually be, a “freier,” a Hebrew slang term for “sucker” or “chump.” Nobody likes to be taken advantage of, but Israelis seem more sensitive to this than other people, sometimes even preemptively turning the other guy into a freier rather than let him get you first.
Well, guess what? The entire State of Israel is being played for a freier right now, with the actual freier extravaganza taking place on August 24.
That is the day that fired Fox News commentator Glenn Beck will convene his “Restoring Courage” rally at the Teddy stadium. The gathering, the first major Beck event since Fox News cancelled his television show, is designed to restore Beck’s image by identifying him with the State of Israel, a country popular across the political spectrum in the United States.
Glenn Beck slams 'tent protest', champions settlements
A successful rally in Israel could help transform Beck’s reputation from a failed extreme right-wing demagogue to an international figure popular in a country that is special to many, if not most, Americans.
Beck intends to use Israel as a prop in his effort to get back on top.
Unfortunately, although identification with Israel can only help Beck’s image, it can only harm Israel’s. That is because in the United States, Beck is a divisive and polarizing figure, even among ardent conservatives. That’s the reason Fox News ultimately fired him, which incidentally occurred after virtually all his sponsors abandoned him. Any product touched by Beck is damaged.
If his rally succeeds in achieving mainstream support in Israel, Israel will be damaged, too – especially among the vast majority of Americans who see him as a bigoted extremist.
Tolerance for anti-Semitism
Among the reasons mainstream Americans do not like Beck is his insensitive exploitation of the Holocaust and Nazism to smear his opponents. Most recently, this ugly insensitivity extended to the Norwegian campers who were killed in the Oslo terrorist attack. Because the camp was sponsored by Norway’s Labor Party, Beck likened the murdered kids to the “Hitler Youth.” This slur was reminiscent of Beck’s attacks on the Jewish billionaire, George Soros, who survived the Holocaust as a teenager.
Beck, who hates Soros’ liberal economic views, said that the Jewish Soros was a Nazi collaborator rather than a Nazi victim. (Imagine, anyone saying that about a 14 year old child; of course some of the Oslo campers were 14, too!) He also has repeatedly depicted Soros as the archetypal international Jew who secretly runs the world, going so far as to depict the United States as Soros’s puppet. (Beck’s slurs against Soros led to his being condemned by numerous American Jewish organizations.) Beck has also repeatedly invited extreme right-wing and anti-Semitic speakers to appear on his show, often the kind of speakers who could never appear on mainstream television because of their views.
Not surprisingly, Beck has been roundly denounced for his tolerance for anti-Semitism and his insensitivity to the Holocaust. He always responds the same way: “I love Israel.”
If Israel “loves him back” it will go far toward rehabilitating a disgraced American media figure. It will also antagonize the vast majority of Americans who consider Beck a hateful bigot. Perhaps, most significantly, it will antagonize Democrats who almost universally despise Beck but whose support for Israel is vital in maintaining the US-Israel alliance.
Israel cannot allow that to happen. Glenn Beck is playing Israel for a freier. Hopefully, Israel will turn the tables on him and show him that Israelis will not be used to advance the career of a failed right-wing showman, especially one whose views are so odious.
M.J. Rosenberg is Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at Media Matters Action Network. Previously, he worked on Capitol Hill for 19 years. He also worked for AIPAC and for the Israel Policy Forum
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------6)US considers funding $12 billion Pakistani dam project, despite dissipating anti-terrorism cooperation and the angering of India
By Saeed Shah
The President, it should be remembered, is currently traveling the country in his ObamaBus discussing how he intends to help revitalize America
Even as U.S.-Pakistani cooperation on anti-terrorism programs is withering, the United States is considering backing the construction of a giant, $12 billion dam in Pakistan that would be the largest civilian aid project the U.S. has undertaken here in decades.
Supporters of a U.S. role in the project say American participation would mend the United States' tattered image, going a long way toward quieting widespread anti-Americanism amid criticism that the U.S. lavishes money on Pakistan's military while doing little for the country's civilian population.
Approval of the project still faces many hurdles. India objects to the dam because it would be in Kashmir, an area that India also claims. The project also is likely to face opposition from Pakistan's critics in the U.S. Congress, who've called for all aid to be cut off after Osama bin Laden was found hiding in northern Pakistan earlier this year. Recent Pakistani actions, including allegations this week that Pakistan had allowed Chinese military experts to inspect the wreckage of an American stealth helicopter that crashed in the bin Laden compound, are likely to inflame such criticism.
Still, proponents of U.S. aid for the project recall that the United States was popular in Pakistan in the 1960s and '70s, when Washington backed the construction of two enormous dams, Tarbela and Mangla.
"Getting involved in a long-term project like this is very compelling for us," said a senior U.S. official who asked not to be identified because no final decision on the project has been made. "This would be a huge demonstration of our commitment to Pakistan and our faith in the country's future."
The Diamer Basha dam would provide enough power to overcome Pakistan's crippling electricity shortage. Proponents of the project also claim that its water storage capacity, in a 50-mile-long lake that would be created behind the dam, would be so great that it would have averted last's years devastating floods, which deluged a fifth of the country, pushed 20 million people out of their homes and caused an estimated $10 billion in damage.
The U.S.-Pakistani alliance since 2001 has been plagued by accusations in Washington that Islamabad is playing a "double game" by secretly supporting Afghan insurgents, while Pakistan thinks it's been bullied into acting against its own interests and that it's been unfairly blamed for American failures in Afghanistan. The unilateral American raid that killed bin Laden in May humiliated Pakistan's powerful military, causing anti-terrorism cooperation to be all but halted.
Diamer Basha also could bolster the credentials of the civilian side of Pakistan's government, which traditionally is locked in a struggle with the military over who will dictate policy. The last two military-run governments didn't manage to build a large dam, leaving the country with a shortage of electricity that forces daily blackouts, known as "load shedding," that last for as long as 12 hours. The blackouts disrupt industry, throwing thousands out of work and creating misery in ordinary households.
Diamer Basha, to be located on the Indus River, would provide 4,500 megawatts of power, roughly the country's current shortfall, though it would take some eight years to build.
Shakil Durrani, the chairman of Pakistan's Water and Power Development Authority, said the dam had received Pakistani government approval and that he was confident of American support for the project, after talks with U.S. officials. The authority plans to develop a shortlist of contractors for the massive construction project at the end of this year.
"If we had a reservoir the size of Diamer Basha, the floods last summer would not have occurred," Durrani said. "This would be the largest project ever undertaken in Pakistan. It is our top priority."
The U.S. would provide only a fraction of the $12 billion needed to complete the project. However, the American money would be crucial in enabling other international finance sources to support the dam, especially the Asian Development Bank.
The U.S. official indicated that some $200 million would be provided initially, with the possibility of hundreds of millions more as the project develops.
"We want to see the Diamer Basha project launched. We believe that putting down some money at the beginning will act as a catalyst, accelerate the process," the official said.
U.S. aid to Pakistan, ramped up to $1.5 billion a year under the Obama administration, has been widely dismissed in the country as going mostly to consultants and lacking direction. It remains unclear how much of the money has arrived in Pakistan since the new aid program began in 2009.
The U.S. official said Washington had spent $2 billion on civilian assistance in Pakistan since October 2009, including $550 million on flood relief last year, but Pakistani officials and analysts say the amount is much less.
"The vast majority of the U.S. aid has gone to the Pakistan military, not schools or social services," said Mosharraf Zaidi, an analyst. "Diamer Basha would be tremendously good for Pakistan and would show that the U.S. is invested in a long-term relationship with Pakistan, no matter how bad things look today."
Since 2001, Washington has provided $20.7 billion to Pakistan, according to a recent report from the Congressional Research Service. Of that, $6.5 billion was economic aid, including budget support, an assistance program for the extremism-plagued tribal area and help for internally displaced people. However, it's included no landmark infrastructure projects.
"U.S. aid is neither visible nor tangible, as far as the people of Pakistan are concerned, unlike, say, aid from China or Saudi Arabia," said Tariq Fatemi, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington. "Most Pakistanis want the U.S. to focus on sectors that really matter, namely energy and power."
In contrast, Chinese economic aid in recent years has included nuclear power plants and the construction of a large deepwater port at Gwadar in the country's southwest. The Saudis are constantly pumping money into mosques and religious seminaries in Pakistan and they periodically provide cut-price oil.
The Indian Embassy in Islamabad declined to comment directly but it pointed to a statement that the government of India issued in 2006, after the Diamer Basha project was first proposed. That statement said India had officially protested to Pakistan, as the dam would be "in territory that is part of the State of Jammu & Kashmir, which is an integral part of India by virtue of its accession to it in 1947."
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