Obama promises Arabs Jerusalem will be theirs

President Obama and his administration told Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during a meeting last week the U.S. foresees the creation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, according to a top PA official speaking to WND. "The American administration was very friendly to the position of the PA," said Nimer Hamad, Abbas' senior political adviser. "Abu Mazen (Abbas) heard from Obama and his administration in a very categorical way that a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital is in the American national and security interest," Hamad said.

Another PA official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told WND today that Obama informed Abbas he would not let Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "get in the way" of normalizing U.S. relations with the Arab and greater Muslim world. "We were told from this new administration they will not allow a Netanyahu government to hurt their efforts of rehabilitating U.S. relations with the Arab and Islamic world, which is a high priority of Obama," the official said, speaking during a visit to Cairo.

Also in Cairo today, Abbas met with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, where the Palestinian leader briefed Egypt's president on his recent trip to Washington, saying the U.S. was committed to bringing about an end to Israeli construction in the West Bank.

More HERE

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DOWN MEMORY LANE

If you don't read anything else today, read Byron York's searing account of what happened last time a brilliant Hispanic jurist was nominated to a high-profile appellate post:

Born in Honduras, [Miguel] Estrada came to the United States at 17, not knowing a word of English. He learned the language almost instantly, and within a few years was graduating with honors from Columbia University and heading off to Harvard Law School. He clerked for Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, was a prosecutor in New York, and worked at the Justice Department in Washington before entering private practice.

Estrada's nomination for a federal judgeship set off alarm bells among Democrats. There is a group of left-leaning organizations -- People for the American Way, NARAL, the Alliance for Justice, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the NAACP, and others -- that work closely with Senate Democrats to promote Democratic judicial nominations and kill Republican ones. They were particularly concerned about Estrada.
In November, 2001, representatives of those groups met with Democratic Senate staff. One of those staffers then wrote a memo to Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin, informing Durbin that the groups wanted to stall Bush nominees, particularly three they had identified as good targets. "They also identified Miguel Estrada as especially dangerous," the staffer added, "because he has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment. They want to hold Estrada off as long as possible."

It was precisely the fact that Estrada was Hispanic that made Democrats and their activist allies want to kill his nomination. They were determined to deny a Republican White House credit, political and otherwise, for putting a first-rate Hispanic nominee on the bench.

They succeeded, too. They filibustered Estrada for years and he never made it onto the bench. So, when you see Barack Obama--who voted to filibuster Sam Alito!--piously denouncing "the political posturing and ideological brinksmanship that has bogged down this process" in the past, remember Miguel Estrada. Somewhere on this earth, there is a worse hypocrite than Barack Obama. I just can't think who he is offhand....

SOURCE

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Trust in the individual: The Fundamental Divide between Left and Right

By Bjaffe

As a recovering liberal for the last 13 years, I sometimes lose sight of the thought processes that led me to the beliefs I used to hold. Fortunately, I still have many Democratic and liberal friends to remind me what the fundamental difference is between the left and the right. That difference can be summed up in one small but powerful word – trust.

The fact is, liberals have no trust at all in anyone except elected liberal officials and the government when run by liberals. They do not trust the American people to do the right thing unless the government forces them into it. Hence the push for hate crimes legislation, gun bans, forced charitable giving in the form of taxes that pay for entitlement programs, mandatory participation in Social (in)Security and so on. Liberals just do not believe most Americans will do the right thing left to their own devices. The same is true of businesses. Liberals believe that, in the absence of government regulation and oversight, business will always do the wrong thing and engage in bad business practices. Fortunately, in their worldview, we have them to guide us in the right direction and to steer the nation as a whole toward the proper destination.

The conservative, on the other hand, believes in the inherent greatness each person possesses. We believe that everyone in this nation has it within themselves to succeed at anything they put their minds to. We also believe that the individual is responsible for their own success or failure. Sure, life is unpredictable, and stuff happens that we have no control over, but ultimately, it is how we handle ourselves in those situations and what we learn from them that determines where we end up. Most importantly, we believe most individuals, when left to their own devices, will not only do the right thing, but will do it far better than under government “guidance.” We also know the free market, left to its own devices, would weed out those businesses that engage in poor practice while well-run businesses succeeded. Additionally, we know that when old businesses fail, if there is a market for the goods or services that business provided, new ones with sound business practices will rise up to replace them.

This cuts to the very core of what defines liberals and conservatives. Belief in the greatness of government or belief in the greatness of the individual. I was reminded of this just recently, when having the following exchange with a very honest Democrat I have been friends with most of my life. We were discussing the new credit card regulations, which he supports, when he said this: “…as much as I hate the government stepping into anything... I have no faith in people these days to have self control, and ultimately banks will just continue this practice if controls aren't in place.”

Many Democrats I know, and most liberals, share this lack of faith in people. This is what leads them to craft the policies I mentioned above, aimed at regulating behavior. They do not feel that people can be trusted with any responsibility, and will ultimately fail without government to save them. We see this not just in the credit card reforms recently passed, but in all of the recent bailouts. Banks cannot be trusted to run effectively or efficiently, so rather than failing and paying the price for poor business decisions, they need to be propped up and run by the government. Imagine, the government, the largest debtor in the entire country, with a debt larger than every bank in the nation combined, telling these businesses how to run themselves effectively. Is this a joke? This is like asking a chronically homeless person for advice on how to build wealth! The government is itself a failed business venture, and would have collapsed decades ago if it had to run itself by the rules it foists upon other businesses. But the banks failed, and the liberal thinking is that the government has to step in and do something. So we get bailouts that even financially healthy institutions were coerced into accepting – presumably because even the well-run banks could not be trusted to keep doing the right thing. And this does not even begin to cover the auto industry bailouts or the homeowner bailouts – which ironically saw more than half of the bailed out homeowners back in default within six months. Way to go government!

What is missed in this equation is the fact that failure is necessary and healthy. People fail, businesses fail, and that is part of the natural order of things. It is not success that creates prosperity and success, it is failure, and the lessons it brings. Maybe most people will not do the right thing if left to their own devices, but if they are allowed to fail, they will learn from the experience, and will eventually change the behaviors causing them to fail. This is the only way to ever achieve true success – to overcome failure and adversity. This is what gives a foundation for success, and the process by which people learn what works, and what does not work. A great example of this is Thomas Edison, who failed hundreds upon hundreds of times to create a working, practical light bulb. Had he been propped up by the government after his first dozen failures, and simply given up, would we ever have developed the light bulb? When the government forces people to behave in certain ways to do “the right thing,” it does no favors for anyone.

The liberal mindset that people cannot be trusted to do the right thing, and that the government must take action to prevent people and businesses from failing, while very well intentioned, is ultimately debilitating and will lead to the exact opposite of what its intent is. Rather than helping things run smoothly and effectively, this lack of trust and enforced guidance will perpetuate a system that does not work while preventing new and innovative systems that will work from coming into existence. Only by allowing people to have the maximum amount of freedom possible, including the freedom to fail, can progress be made and ineffective/inefficient systems and behaviors be purged and replaced with ones that work. And this is what conservatives believe in.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

When the law is one-sided, people will seek balance in other ways: "US President Barack Obama has expressed outrage at the fatal shooting of a controversial Kansas doctor who performed late-term abortions. "I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr George Tiller as he attended church services this morning,'' Mr Obama said. "However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence.'' Tiller was shot dead in the lobby of Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, Kansas. A suspect was arrested three hours later, police said. Over the years Tiller had been picketed, bombed and shot in both of his arms by anti-abortion protesters. The shooting occurred just two weeks after Mr Obama sought "common ground'' over the divisive abortion debate in a controversial speech at one of the top Catholic universities in the United States."

Barack Bush: "“The Obama administration insists it has no obligation to provide access to a top secret document in a wiretapping case, setting up a showdown next week with the judge who ordered it released. Justice Department lawyers, in a response Friday with the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, also argued that Judge Vaughn Walker had no cause to penalize the government over its refusal to turn over the document.”

Ireland set to go bust, says economic historian: “A dire warning that the Republic is a prime candidate to go bust has come from one of the world’s leading economic historians. ‘The idea that countries don’t go bust is a joke,’ said Niall Ferguson, Harvard professor and author of The Ascent of Money. ‘The debt trap may be about to spring’ he said, ‘for countries that have created large stimulus packages in order to stimulate their economies.’ His chosen prime candidate to go bust is ‘Ireland, followed by Italy and Belgium, and UK is not too far behind.’ Argentina is top of his list of shaky countries but ‘the argument that it can’t happen in major western economies is nonsense.’ Professor Ferguson believes the economists are ill qualified to analyse the current economic situation since they lack the overview of historians such as himself.”

Sotomayor and the Last of the WASPs: “If Judge Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed, the US Supreme Court will consist of six Catholics, two Jews and precisely one white Anglo-Saxon Protestant in the form of Justice John Paul Stevens, who is 88 years old and boasts of two important WASP insignia: inherited wealth and a bow tie. He also thinks that Shakespeare’s plays were written by the Earl of Oxford. But then, so does Antonin Scalia. The other WASP among the nine, until he announced his retirement — thus paving the way for Sotomayor’s nomination — is David Souter. The two WASPS have been the most liberal members of the court.”

Legalize it: "“City pushcart vendors could legally prepare food with a type of license that already exists in the parks. Why not let them? … [Miguel] Sanchez makes about $100 a day at the cart; working nearly every afternoon and evening, and picking up some painting and carpentry jobs on the side, he supports his family of six. But he lives under the near-constant threat of being fined by the city. What he’s doing is illegal in Chicago, and as demand for his food grows in the spring, so does the likelihood that he’ll be slapped with tickets for anywhere from $200 to $1,000.”

The unpersuasive orator: “Let’s stipulate that President Obama is a wonderful speaker, vigorous in promoting his policies and even eloquent at times. But there’s a problem: He’s not persuasive. Obama is effective at marketing himself. His 64 percent job approval (Gallup poll) is a reflection of this. But in building public support for his policies, Obama has been largely unsuccessful. You’d never guess this from the laudatory press coverage of Obama. With every major speech or press conference, the media and a sizable chunk of the political community — including many Republicans — assume Obama has carried the day. Actually, he rarely has.”

The “unseen” deserve empathy, too: “As important as compassion and empathy are, one can have these feelings only for people that exist and that one knows about — that is, for those who are ’seen.’ One can have compassion for workers who lose their jobs when a plant closes. They can be seen. One cannot have compassion for unknown persons in other industries who do not receive job offers when a compassionate government subsidizes an unprofitable plant. The potential employees not hired are unseen. One can empathize with innocent children born with birth defects. Such children and the adversity they face can be seen. One cannot empathize with as-yet-unborn children in rural communities who may not have access to pediatricians if a judicial decision based on compassion raises the cost of medical malpractice insurance.”

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Michael Savage sues brainless British Leftist politician

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith faces a claim for £100,000 damages by the American radio ‘shock jock’ she banned from entering Britain. Broadcaster Michael Savage has employed top UK law firm Olswang to sue Ms Smith for libel after she put him on the Home Office’s 16 ‘least wanted’ list.

Mr Savage said he was ‘outraged’ the Government had put him in the same category as Islamic hate preachers and terrorists.

The letter from Olswang, due to land on Ms Smith’s desk tomorrow, accuses her of making ‘serious and damaging defamatory allegations’ against him. It says Mr Savage, whose show The Savage Nation has eight million listeners in America, has asked for ‘substantial damages’. The Mail on Sunday has been told he is demanding £100,000.

Mr Savage says ‘lunatic’ Ms Smith had no right to put him on the same list as a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, a skinhead gang leader and a Hezbollah militant who served 30 years in prison.

The lawyers’ letter states: ‘Our client requires the payment of a substantial sum in damages to be agreed and retraction of the allegations. He also requires a personal apology from you and an acknowledgement that the Home Office has agreed to pay a substantial sum in libel damages.’ The letter says Ms Smith must also provide a ‘written undertaking from you and the Home Office not to repeat the allegations complained of and the payment of our client’s legal costs’. It continues: ‘This matter is extremely urgent as the false and defamatory material concerning our client has had enormous circulation both inside and outside the UK.’

Mr Savage said last night he will not give up his battle to make Ms Smith pay damages and say sorry. ‘I am living in fear and have had to employ security guards after being outrageously named on this list of terrorists and killers. ‘The first I knew about it was when it was issued as a Press release and I was absolutely shocked. ‘Why me? I’m not a terrorist. I’m one of America’s most popular radio hosts and a happily married father of two. ‘Maybe Jacqui Smith just plucked my name out of the hat because I’m controversial and white – to counter-balance all the Arabs named on her list. ‘It is totally preposterous but it’s deadly serious because she has made me a target. ‘My lawyers have told me I have a very strong case for defamation.’

SOURCE

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The Real Sotomayor Issue is NOT her race

By Wendy Long

The Sotomayor Supreme Court nomination got a quick start out of the gate, focusing debate about something very important: How are judges supposed to decide cases? Are they, as Judge Sotomayor says, supposed to rule based upon identity politics, using their own personal views and biases in making decisions? Or is it to put aside all personal experiences and policy desires and apply the Constitution and laws as written?

Somehow, this important debate is turning into an argument about race and identity politics.

Many of us in the conservative movement believe that Judge Sotomayor is intelligent, and that, at least on paper, she has professional qualifications that are certainly sufficient for occupying a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

But what needs deeper examination, because it is very troubling, is her overarching judicial philosophy one that, judging from her public remarks and law review articles, she has thought about seriously and embraced only after much reflection. It's the judicial philosophy shared by President Obama a philosophy with which most Americans, who support judicial restraint, vehemently disagree.

It is only this President Obama's and Judge Sotomayor's judicial philosophy that drives us to raise serious concerns about Judge Sotomayor's fitness to serve on the nation's highest court.

At its core, the thrust of most conservatives' concerns from the past several days centered around three items all of which, by the way, the White House press operation has tried mightily to brush aside: First, a video clip of Judge Sotomayor from a 2005 appearance at Duke Law School, where she stated that appellate courts make policy.

Second, a 2002 law review article in which Judge Sotomayor says that race, gender, and ethnicity necessarily affect the way judges decide cases and that's a good thing.

Third, a 1996 law review article challenging the belief that law needs to be knowable and predictable, in which she borrowed from the philosophy of early 20th century Legal Realists who rejected the idea that judging involves the impartial application of neutral principles. This body of work is not the product of stupidity, or reverse racism, or a bad temper. Rather, it appears to be a view of the courts as engines of social and political change in short, wrought out of a devotion to judicial activism.

We need to move forward with a confirmation process that focuses on what really matters: Does Judge Sotomayor embrace a view of judging that is constrained by the text, history, and principles of the Constitution and our laws? Or does she favor an interpretive enterprise in which a judge's personal feelings, views, background, and politics drive the outcome of cases?

SOURCE

The Democratic Underground is doing its best to dig dirt on the author above but is not having much success. The comment section of the post is however dripping with hate. The comment that amused me most was "Have you ever noticed how many of these RW women are "blonde & blue eyed"?". Blonde hair and blue eyes are incorrect? To the gas ovens with them!

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Could Obama’s Left Wing Flap him to Death?

Naturally from our vantage point, Barack Obama is a left-wing terror as president. To name just a few things, he is turning our system from one of capitalism to one of socialism, he is attempting to undermine the Constitution by placing an activist on the Supreme Court, he is weakening our national security by frittering away the gains of the previous administration and by bending over backwards for our enemies while constantly flipping off our allies, he is looking to destroy our national healthcare system by introducing a disastrous single payer system, and he is attempting to give anti-business unions the power to destroy what is left of the business community that he himself hasn’t gotten around to crushing as of yet. We on the right are alarmed by his trip down the ruinous road that Europe has already well traveled to rueful results.

One would think that the American left (or the anti-American left as the case may be) would be thrilled that their most fantasized about social, political, and economic sledgehammers were being wielded by their Obammessiah. But, one might be surprised to see that the extremists on the left are beginning to rumble in seething anger over the fact that, to date, Obama hasn’t gone fast enough or far enough to the extreme left to suit them. One of these wild-eyed, bomb-throwers has even just called for his resignation.

So, are we beginning to see waning the far left’s love affair with The One? Might this disappointment turn into the sort of lefty outrage that it did with Lyndon Baines Johnson? Will Barack Obama’s left wing flap him to death?

It is too early to tell, of course, but there are rumblings that seem to be revealing a great disappointment in Barack Franklin Fitzgerald Abraham Hussein Obama.

More HERE

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ELSEWHERE

China: All blogspot blogs are once again blocked in China. But my mirror sites are all still accessible there. So if you know anyone in China, give them the link.

Keith Burgess Jackson has an interesting attack on militant atheists such as Richard Dawkins, although Keith is not religious himself. I think he does a better job of refuting atheistic arguments than many Christians do. I too am always surprised when atheists issue virulent attacks on religion. They sound just like the religious fundamentalists whom they criticize. They must be insecure in their atheism. I am the most complete atheist imaginable. I don't even think the word "God" is meaningful. But I never attack Christianity and believe that I am in good company among Christians. All religions are not the same, however, and I certainly do attack the socialist, global warming and anti-obesity religions. Rather amusingly, I suspect that Richard Dawkins would support those three religions.

Zoellick Warns Stimulus ‘Sugar High’ Won’t Stem Unemployment: "World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned policy makers that fiscal-stimulus plans are insufficient to turn around the “real economy” and rising joblessness threatens to set off political unrest across the globe. “While the stimulus has given an impulse, it’s like a sugar high unless you eventually get the credit system working,” Zoellick said in an interview yesterday with Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt.” “When unemployment increases, that’s probably the most political combustible issue.”

What Sotomayor said about Latina superiority was NOT simply "poor word choice": "Heaven knows, we all say things in impromtu speeches or on TV or in blog posts that we wish we could take back. But how are you the victim of poor word choice in a speech, as Ed Whelan pointed out the other day, that was apparently delivered from a prepared text and that was then turned into a law review article months later? (Ed refers to it as the "unscripted" law review article.) The problem wasn't the word choice; the problem was quite obviously what Sotomayor meant to say and said several times in several different ways very clearly."

There is British blog here for those who are concerned at the increasing authoritarianism of the British State

There is a new lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- on his usual vastly "incorrect" themes of race, genes, IQ etc.

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Nancy Pelosi in China, 2009:

In answering a question from a student about how Pelosi was going to get Americans to cut back on their carbon emissions, the leading Democratic lawmaker said it was important to educate children on how to conserve energy and for citizens to build more environmentally friendly homes. "We have so much room for improvement," she said. "Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory ... of how we are taking responsibility."

SOURCE

V.I. Lenin in Russia, 1917:

"Account must be taken of every single article, every pound of grain, because what socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything"

SOURCE

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LOL: Obama's revenge on the Clintons

Asked why he was naming some of his rivals to top administration jobs, President Lyndon B. Johnson said it best: "I'd rather have them inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in." President Obama seems to echo Johnson's management style in his handling of Bill and Hillary Clinton. By bringing them into his inner circle, he has marginalized them both and sharply reduced their freedom of action.

It may appear odd to describe a secretary of State as marginalized, but Obama has surrounded Hillary with his people and carved up her jurisdiction geographically. Former Sen. George Mitchell (D-Maine) is in charge of Arab-Israeli relations. Dennis Ross has Iran. Former U.N. Ambassador Dick Holbrooke has Pakistan and Afghanistan. And Hillary has to share her foreign policy role on the National Security Council (NSC) with Vice President Biden, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, CIA chief Leon Panetta, and NSC staffer Samantha Powers (who once called Hillary a "monster"). With peers who are competitors and subordinates who can deal directly with the president, Hillary is reduced to announcing foreign aid packages for Pakistan while Holbrooke does the heavy lifting.

Part of Hillary's problem is the institutional shrinking of the State Department. During the Bush years, while war raged, the Defense Department became more relevant to the conduct of foreign policy. And, under Obama, the financial crisis has propelled the Treasury into the forefront. State, with its emphasis on traditional diplomacy, has been forced to take a back seat. Even though Obama appointed Hillary, he clearly has not been willing to make her a co-president and confines her to the diminished role of her department.

For his part, Bill Clinton has been asked to be a special envoy to Haiti. Yes, Haiti. Obama's predecessor asked the former president to orchestrate the response to the Asian tsunami and then to Hurricane Katrina. Obama gives him Haiti.

Meanwhile, both Clintons are effectively muzzled and cannot criticize Obama even as he reverses President Clinton's free market proclivities and budget balancing discipline. Hillary, the supposed friend of Israel, must sit by quietly and watch Iran get the bomb while trying all the while to stop Israel from preventing it.

Bill can't even make money. Denied the ability to accept speeches from foreign governments or their organs and fenced out of continuing his profitable relationship with the Emir of Dubai, he and his wife must accept the loss of the $13 million they spent on her campaign and sit by passively, unable to earn the money to replace it.

More HERE

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BrookesNews Update

Obama's economics brains trust is still getting it wrong on the US economy: Obama's economic brains trust has a brilliant plan to rescue the US economy: print oodles of money and when prices start zooming cut off the supply. That this will also cause interest rates to zoom and bond prices to dive is just something Americans would have to live with once the economy was comatosed again. There is more than just one flaw in the plans of these economic descendents of Wile E. Coyote
Can president Obama's policies heal the US economy? : Obama and his economic advisors are making a dreadful economic error. The heart of the current financial crisis is the boom-bust policies of the Fed. It is these policies that caused massive real wealth destruction and hence weakened the economy's ability to generate real savings. Obama's policy will only make the situation worse
Obama's bubble car economy: Obama's super duper new car policy was once popular in Europe in the 1950s and early 1960s. They were called bubble cars. They were small and they were dangerous. What the hell: they had great mileage, even if they tended to get you killed. But as Obama says, we must make sacrifices, He means you, not him and his mates
Bush's war against terrorism vindicated: When called upon, President Bush and Vice President Cheney took their responsibilities seriously. They made tough decisions to keep America safe from the predations of terrorists whose ultimate goal is to murder Americans and destroy US civilization
Obama at Notre Dame: In his Notre Dame speech Obama had the audacity to compare abortion to the civil rights struggle. He closed his speech with the Golden Rule and hoped his audience would respond to the call to treat one another as they wish to be treated. If only babies were given such an opportunity
Republicans need to return to their conservative principles: We need to tell the real story of what Republicans stand for — individual freedom, individual responsibility, conservative social ideals, smaller government, lower taxes, free enterprise — not socialism, and the opportunity for everyone to succeed without government interference

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ELSEWHERE

Michelle Malkin has got the lowdown on the huge taxpayer-finded ACORN group, showing that they worked hand in glove with the Obama campaign during the last election -- something that they were by law prohibited from doing. It is of course only the latest revelation about these crooked Leftist Brownshirts. The original Brownshirts under Ernst Roehm were socialists too, of course. Roehm was one of the very few people who spoke to Hitler per "du", the intimate form of address.

Good post from Taranto pointing out that the Democrats have now adopted Archie Bunker values. Taranto also argues that Sotomayor's claim of superiority to white men is not racist but "an expression of prejudice, an exercise in stereotyping". He fails, however, to recognize that if a white male had made the same clain in reverse, he would have been condemned as a "racist" by the Left.

I have put a new heading on this blog, in accord with what seems to be the new Democrat emphasis on the permissibility of racial claims.

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Shavuot (Commemorating the time when G-d gave the Torah to Moses)

Happy Shavuot to my Jewish readers!

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Obama the disappointer: Hot air gives way to reality

Janet Albrechtsen comments from Australia

FEW leaders have brought so many tears to the eyes of so many people as US President Barack Obama. Oprah Winfrey says she almost cried her eyelashes off when the young Democrat from Chicago accepted the party’s nomination. Jane Fonda admits she became a bundle of nerves, crying all night at the thought of Obama losing the election.

Our own Guy Rundle summed up the election of Obama for many progressives. Writing last November, he described how he and the young desk clerk in the lobby of his Washington hotel, who had just come off a 12-hour shift ("because that’s how you work in (George W.) Bush’s America"), “just held hands and wept for a minute or so, in happiness, in relief, in the victory of something larger than both of us, that contained us both”. “It is a victory for the global Left,” Rundle wrote. “These are the great days.”

More likely those were the salad days. Now, plenty of Obama’s most ardent admirers are rethinking their exuberance. Rundle has attacked the “small stuff” - gaffes over gifts to Russians and bad jokes about the Special Olympics - and the “big stuff”: complaining at the paltry size of Obama’s $1.2trillion stimulus package. Democrats are meant to spend more. Bob Dylan, who once described Obama as “redefining the nature of politics”, is shrugging hisshoulders, describing politicians as “interchangeable”.

Al-Qa’ida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri is also disappointed: “America came to us with a new face.” But it was a ruse, he says. They have not “changed their crimes, aggressions, thefts and their scandals”, he says in a statement released by the SITE Intelligence Group.

And Wall Street bankers - who barracked for Barack by bankrolling his campaign to the tune of $US9.9million (not to mention giving Hillary Clinton $US7.4 million) - whine about getting hit by higher taxes. What did they expect? Democrats lowering taxes for the uber-rich?

Of course, Obama could never meet the great expectations surrounding his presidency. Indeed, the greatness of Obama’s presidency will depend on him disappointing Rundle’s “global Left”, not to mention al-Qa’ida. The responsibility of power means the 44th President has already proved he is more pragmatic than ideological. As much as the Left will loathe this, the unfolding of his presidency is a lesson in the old adage that the office changes the man more than the man changes the office.

Last November The New York Times was effusive in its praise about Obama’s promise to “restore Americans’ civil liberties and their tattered reputation around the world”. In office, Obama is talking like a Bushie, disappointed Times editorial writers noted in March.

Given Obama’s continuous backpedalling, The Wall Street Journal was right to advise the friends of newspaper editors to remove all sharp objects from their vicinity. Now it’s a case of: How do I not love thee? Let me count the ways.

Obama has refused to support the release of photographs detailing abuse of detainees, has supported warrantless wiretapping, boosted US involvement in the Afghanistan war, opposed the prosecution of those allegedly involved in torture and called a halt to rendition practices only to maintain what are conveniently called temporary facilities.

Campaigning for the presidency, Obama said: “As president I’ll close Guantanamo Bay, reject the Military Commissions Act, adhere to the Geneva Conventions.” He described Bush’s military commissions as a “legal framework that does not work” and promised to release Guantanamo Bay detainees, transfer them to foreign countries or try them in federal US courts. Four months after taking office, Obama says “military commissions have a long tradition in the United States” as he confronts the political reality - and presidential responsibility - of what to do with the 240 detainees still in Gitmo. The President’s lame changes to military commissions are acknowledgment of what Bush knew from the outset: military commissions are essential in dealing with suspected terrorists. And Obama admits indefinite detention will continue for some.

Ah, the fecklessness of those in search of a messiah. Anti-war group Code Pink is wondering whether Obama is a “war criminal”. The American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch are also disappointed. But Obama needn’t have bothered inviting human rights leaders to his 90-minute tea and biscuits, please-still-love-me routine at the White House last week. The more they cry foul, the clearer it becomes to a wider audience that Obama is behaving like a President responsible for the nation’s security, just as president Bush did.

Last week a leaked Pentagon report revealed that one in seven of the 534 prisoners released from the facility in Cuba since 2002 has returned to terrorism. FBI director Robert Mueller has told Congress that he, too, has concerns about the release of Guantanamo Bay detainees.

Then came the ultimate rebuff to Obama supporters. Last Wednesday, in a 90-6 vote, even Democrats in Congress rejected Obama’s request for $US80 million to close down Guantanamo Bay - blocking the release of detainees - until he explains his precise plan. Montana’s senator Max Baucus said: “We’re not going to bring al-Qa’ida to Big Sky Country.” Nebraska’s Democratic senator Ben Nelson said: “I wouldn’t want them and I wouldn’t take them”; and Dianne Feinstein’s office in California said: “Alcatraz is a national park and a tourist attraction, not a functioning prison.”

Notice too that Europe, only too eager to describe Gitmo as Bush’s legal black hole, hasn’t rushed out the welcome mat for detainees. Indeed, Europe’s embrace of Obama as multilateralism man has produced little in the way of multilateral results. When the US received minimal assistance from European allies in Afghanistan, it was blamed on Bush’s brand of unilateralism. When Obama failed to secure more troops from NATO allies during meetings with European leaders in April, it was apparently just a case of Europeans pursuing their national interest. And the US is once again left to do the heavy lifting.

Not much happening over at the UN Security Council either. As the council convenes to consider its response to North Korea’s latest nuclear test, it pays to remember that last month it could manage only a lame, non-binding presidential statement because members disagreed on a binding resolution.

Alas, Bush is no longer the reason for UN intransigence.

For some on the Left, the Obama presidency may well be a case of what began in tears ends in tears, of a different, more bitter taste. More canny observers knew that the Obama who presented before the presidential elections would change once in office. When Bob Ellis - who described Obama as “the present world’s likely saviour” - expresses his disillusionment, we will know Obama is on the right track.

SOURCE

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Obama is a "Centrist" to the Left

Below is part of a transcript from a recent Chris Matthews Show. The transcript is of comments about 4:20 minutes from the end.

"MATTHEWS: It seems to me that they're--what they're going to do in politics--I'm going back to my baseball metaphor, win big games at the beginning of the season, roll up the score, you don't have to win them in October. It seems to me what they're going to try to do is get a second-rate Republican effort against them. Every week they've--since they've been in office they've ignored the Republican Party. They've gone after the screamers like Rush Limbaugh and Cheney and Newt Gingrich. They don't want there to be another governing party. And I'm wondering if they're just hoping to get a Mondale election against them, or a Bob Dole election, a second-rate effort by the other side so they can sweep 60 percent.

Mr. IGNATIUS: Well, I think they feel the Republicans are very demoralized. But they do want to get legislation passed and they would like to have Republicans voting for it. They're very pleased, for example, they just got a procurement reform bill with a lot of Republican supporters. It was a big John McCain issue. What's striking to me in these first few months is that--is that--is that Obama really is going for the center in American politics. He's really trying to redraw the map.

And Leftist cartoonist Ted Rall is disappointed with Obama too, though with better reason:

Encroaching Fascism: “In practice, Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and anyone else they deem annoying off the street. Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military dictatorship. Because dictatorial regimes rely on fear rather than consensus, their priority is self-preservation rather than improving their people’s lives. They worry obsessively over the one thing they can’t control, what Orwell called ‘thoughtcrime’ — contempt for rulers that might someday translate to direct action.”

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Rewriting History

A few minutes ago, I did a radio-show piece with Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick, who voiced her hope that this confirmation process would be dignified and merits-based, and not involve the “dumpster-diving” and smear-tactics to which, she asserted, extremists on the left and the right have resorted in the past, etc.

Look for expressions of regret, and calls for seriousness, civility, and the like, in the days to come from President Obama’s surrogates in the press and in the activist groups. You will have to look harder, though, for journalists to observe, and these surrogates to admit, that

(a) the “let’s use Supreme Court nominations as occasions to smear good people” tactic is one that the Democrats — but not, in fact, the Republicans — have practiced enthusiastically;

(b) that Justices Breyer and Ginsburg were easily confirmed, with substantial Republican support, not because they were “moderate,” but because the Republicans voted in accord with the “President gets his (qualified) nominees” standard; and

(c) that dozens of Democratic senators, including the president, abandoned this standard (to the extent they ever respected it) and disgraced themselves by voting against Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts, easily among the most impressive nominees in history.

It also seems safe to predict that the press will, as they swoon over Judge Sotomayor’s personal story and Ivy League credentials, forget the extent to which Justice Thomas’s own story did not protect him from outrageous attacks, and his own prestigious degrees did not prevent snide insinuations that he was merely the beneficiary of affirmative action.

Oh, and I am just guessing that we will not hear any mutterings among those on the left about the nomination of (yet another) Roman Catholic.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

A Leftist disparages a disabled person: "Alongside not talking with your mouth full and wiping, one of the elemental lessons in manners that civilized societies teach their young is not to mock the physically disabled. Someone should remind Joe Klein, the ostensibly adult political columnist for Time magazine. In a Politico story last week about conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer, Mr. Klein said "there's something tragic" about the quadriplegic writer's work, as it "would have had a lot more nuance if he were able to see the situations he's writing about." In other words, don't trust the cripple because he can't take trans-Atlantic flights. [Imagine the uproar if a conservative had done likewise!]

Obama's men block prosecutiion of black thugs: "Justice Department political appointees overruled career lawyers and ended a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense of wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place last Election Day, according to documents and interviews. The incident - which gained national attention when it was captured on videotape and distributed on YouTube - had prompted the government to sue the men, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring would-be voters with the weapon, racial slurs and military-style uniforms. Career lawyers pursued the case for months, including obtaining an affidavit from a prominent 1960s civil rights activist who witnessed the confrontation and described it as "the most blatant form of voter intimidation" that he had seen, even during the voting rights crisis in Mississippi a half-century ago."

A President who wants to emasculate America: "Barack Obama's legacy is coming sharply into focus, four years early. He's out to transform "a nation of laws," once the pride of the Anglo-Saxon heritage and exemplar to the world, into "a nation of feelings." We won't need judges, just social workers damp with empathy. This is in line with the president's larger vision, to cut America down to a size a community organizer could manage, making it merely one of the nice nations of the world, like Belgium or Brazil. The home of the brave and the land of the free would become what our English cousins call "wet," weak, ineffectual, fragile, fearful, and inconsequential. Sonia Sotomayor is one of the building blocks of the president's envisioned Mediocre Society."

GM bondholders offered a stake in the Titanic: "General Motors Corp said on Thursday it had reached a deal with some major bondholders that would give them a bigger stake in a reorganized automaker and could pave the way for a fast-track bankruptcy backed by the U.S. Treasury within days. The announcement was the clearest indication yet that GM, the No. 1 U.S. automaker, is close to filing for bankruptcy under the direction of the Obama administration. It would be the biggest-ever bankruptcy for a U.S. industrial company. Under the proposed deal, which is supported by major institutional creditors holding about a fifth of its debt, bondholders representing $27 billion in debt would be offered 10 percent of a reorganized GM -- the same stake they had been offered previously. In a sweetener, bondholders would also receive warrants to acquire another 15 percent of the equity in the new company, provided they support a quick Treasury-backed sale process similar to one now being used for rival Chrysler."

Indian verbal ability wins the day again: "There were thrills, spills and misspells aplenty as a 13-year-old girl took the crown at the US Scripps National Spelling Bee final in Washington today. Kavya Shivashankar, who at 13 is a four-time veteran of the competition, was the last speller standing after correctly reciting the letters of the word laodicean, which means means to be lukewarm or indifferent in religion or politics. She beat 11 other junior spellers, who emerged from a record field of 293 participants, in today's network-televised final. The favourite to take out ths year's 82nd annual competition was Sidharth Chand, who was runner-up last year. Chand missed apodyterium, the entry cubicles to a Roman public baths, and appeared inconsolable burying his head in his hands, even as he received a standing ovation from the crowd and other contestants. The national spelling bee gained a greater cultural profile after the 1999 documentary Spellbound and Kavya cites the winning speller from that film. Nupur Lala, as her hero." [All three kids mentioned above are of Indian origin]

The subversion of capital punishment: “What they lack in popular support, death penalty opponents more than make up in tenacity, skill — and success. When a one-per-27 minutes, 36-year, 707,000 homicide holocaust results in 1,136 executions (0.16%), capital punishment has been all but abolished. What remains is a costly and agonizing farce, with a token few murderers served up to fool the public. The United States Supreme Court and other courts have played a major role, enormously aided by the media in suppressing critical information.”

You can’t handle the truth?: “I have alleles that suggest that I have a lower than average risk of suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. Other alleles, however, indicate that I am slightly more likely to experience age-related macular degeneration than other people of European ancestry. In addition, if I need to use the blood thinner warfarin in the future, I should let my physician know that I have a version of the CYP2C9 gene, suggesting that I have a greater sensitivity to the drug and probably should start with a low dose. How do I know this genetic information? Because I paid for a direct-to-consumer genotype test from the California start up 23andMe. … does such direct-to-consumer (DTC) genotyping need to be regulated — or banned? Last month, Germany banned direct-to-consumer genetic testing. In 2007, the Genetics and Public Policy Institute found that 24 states limited or restricted direct-to-consumer genetic testing in some ways.”

Army starts testing “Judge Dredd” weapon: “The U.S. Army is set to start testing a computerized, high-tech projectile launcher that can take out bad guys hiding around corners and in caves or trenches, even if they’re out of the soldier’s line of sight. Some experts call it the ‘Judge Dredd’ gun, after the Sylvester Stallone movie. The Pentagon calls it the XM-25 Individual Air Burst Weapon, which uses a laser rangefinder to precisely measure the distance to a target, then primes a fuse on a timed grenade so that the projectile explodes exactly where it should.”

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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White House to critics of Obama's racist court nominee: Be 'careful'

Hey! I've got an idea! Why not be as careful as the Donks were when they were interviewing Robert Bork or Clarence Thomas?



White House press secretary Robert Gibbs issued a pointed warning to opponents of Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination Wednesday, urging critics to measure their words carefully during a politically charged confirmation debate. “I think it is probably important for anybody involved in this debate to be exceedingly careful with the way in which they’ve decided to describe different aspects of this impending confirmation,” Gibbs said.

He was replying to a question from CBS’s Chip Reid about a blog post by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich accusing Sotomayor of imposing identity politics on the bench and declaring: “A white man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. A Latina woman racist should also withdraw.” “I think we're satisfied that, when the people of America and the people of the Senate get a chance to look at more than just the blog of a former lawmaker… they'll come to the same conclusion that the president did” about Sotomayor’s qualifications, Gibbs replied.

The White House also took shots at politicians and commentators who have questioned whether Sotomayor has the intellectual capacity for the Supreme Court. In a statement Tuesday, Senator John Ensign (R-Nev.) said he planned “to thoroughly review Judge Sotomayor’s record to make sure she has the right intellect and understands the proper role of a judge.” “A lot of people in the last couple of days…they've mentioned ‘intellect,” Gibbs said. “I'm not sure what number they graduated in their class at Princeton, but my sense is it's not second.”

Latino activists were up in arms over what one called “innuendo” challenging the smarts of Sotomayor, who graduated with highest honors from Princeton and was editor of the law review at Yale Law School. [We know what Clarence Thomas thought his Yale degree was worth] “Her intelligence is apparent. It is outrageous that she is being attacked on those grounds,” said Ramona Romero, president of the Hispanic National Bar Association. “I’m assuming these folks are grasping at straws….I wonder if she were a white male we would be hearing that about somebody with the same credentials.”

Gingrich and other commentators leveling the charge that Sotomayor is racist have seized on her comments in a 2001 lecture about how her Hispanic background contributed to her judicial work. “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life,” Sotomayor said.

Gibbs said critics had taken out of context Sotomayor’s attempt to declare that “she has lived a different life than some people have, based on her upbringing—that she understands that.” He said Sotomayor was simply acknowledging that a different background “could certainly lead to different conclusions.” Journalists at the White House briefing were dubious about the press secretary’s explanation, with several shouting back in unison: “She said ‘better.’” “Look at the totality of it,” Gibbs replied....

More HERE

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A revolution is underway

While conservatives have been working to improve our democracy and our free-market economy, liberals have been working to replace our democracy with a dictatorship, and our free-market economy with a command economy controlled by the government. The liberals couldn't say this aloud, because if they did the American people would have tossed them out of office on their ears. So the liberals worked covertly, feigning support for democracy and for the free market while working diligently to undermine both.

This is why our politics has been so partisan, so vicious, and so deadlocked. This is why words have lost their meaning in Washington, why we can never get to the bottom of anything, why we lurch from one manufactured scandal to another. It's all been part of a decades-long effort by the liberals to throw sand in our eyes -- to keep us from seeing clearly where they really want to take us. (And this explains why, when we question their judgment on some issue, they go berserk and accuse us of questioning their patriotism. They're afraid we're on the verge of catching on. If you want to have some fun, the next time you're chatting with a liberal and he goes nuts when you call him a socialist, say to him: "I'm so sorry you're offended. Please tell me, what is there about socialism you don't like?" You won't get a coherent answer; he'll just accuse you of a hate crime.)

With the election of Barack Obama as president, the liberals have launched a massive, two-front offensive they believe will end in victory. They have judged that our public education system is so degraded that only a few Americans are left who even understand what a democracy is, and how the free market actually works. They are convinced that the majority of Americans are too frightened by the current recession to care about preserving the principles that made us the most powerful, productive and innovative country the world has ever known. In short, the liberals are reaching for victory because they believe that history now is on their side.

The speed of their offensive is breathtaking. At the core of democracy is the rule of law, and we have already lost it. The liberals lecture us incessantly that everything is "relative," but that's not true; some things are absolutes. You cannot claim to be faithful to your spouse because you never cheat on her -- except when you're in London on business. And you cannot claim to have the rule of law if the government can set aside the rule of law when it decides that "special circumstances" have arisen that warrant illegality. When the President and his aides handed ownership of Chrysler Corp. to the United Auto Workers union, they tried to avoid sending that beleaguered company into bankruptcy by muscling its bondholders into accepting less money for their assets than the law entitled them to collect. These contracts, and the law under which they were signed, were mere obstacles to a thuggish President bent on paying off his political supporters.

It's going to get much worse, fast. President Obama has told us time and again that among his criteria for choosing Federal judges will be "empathy." Empathy is a wonderful quality in any human being, but a judge's job is to rule according to the law. Once our courts are presided over by judges who will reach verdicts based on how they feel about an issue -- such as abortion or the right of citizens to bear arms -- the law will be whatever the judges wish it to be; the rule of law will become an empty phrase rather than the architecture of our civilization.

We have lost our free-market economy as quickly as we have lost the rule of law. Money is to an economy what blood is to a body; life and death resides within the organ that controls its flow. The government already owns our country's leading banks, which means the government now controls our economy. (And in all fairness to President Obama, it was the Bush administration that started us down this ghastly road.) One indicator of the Obama administration's real objective: When some banks that had taken federal money attempted to repay their loans, the Treasury Department refused to accept repayment and step aside. This shows the government's goal isn't to prop up the banks, but rather to control them.

Here, too, things are going to get much worse, fast. The government now owns General Motors Corp., is reaching for control of insurance companies, and has launched plans to take over our country's healthcare industry. It even wants authority to set the salaries of executives in industries that, at least for now, aren't being subsidized or underwritten by the government.

Put all this together, and what we have in our country today isn't a democracy and it isn't a free-market economy. Reader, what we have now is a revolution.

This revolution won't be stopped, and our country won't be rescued, by the Republicans in Washington. This isn't because they lack the votes. It's because most of them are careerist hacks who've been playing footsie with the Democrats for too long; with very few exceptions they lack the intellectual firepower to articulate the present danger, and the political courage to stand up to this Administration and really fight. But for the absence of frock coats and pince-nez glasses, these Republicans in Washington remind me of those bumbling Weimar Republic politicians in Berlin who never grasped where Hitler and the Nazis were going until it was too late to stop them, or of those hapless Mensheviks in Moscow's Duma who let themselves be tossed into history's dustbin by Lenin and his Bolsheviks. (Yes, of course I realize it's explosive to keep bringing up the Nazis and the Bolsheviks in an essay about the Democrats. I'm not doing this to be incendiary; I'm doing this to be accurate.)

Our country's future now lies within our own hands -- yours, mine, all of us who comprise what the Washington insiders sneeringly call the grass roots. Good, because unless I'm very much mistaken the liberals have over-estimated their strength. There still are more of us than there are of them. I mean ordinary, decent Americans from across the political spectrum who may disagree about specific issues, but who understand who we are and how we became who we are; who love our country, have a genius for self-organizing, and won't let the United States go down without a fight.

We need to launch a counter-offensive, so to speak, and the place to start is at the local level. Working with our county and state political parties when we can -- or working around them when we must -- our objective will be to elect as many people as we can to public office who understand what a democracy is and how the free market works. This will include city council members, county commissioners, school board members, judges, sheriffs and even members of the local parks commission. With the strength and political momentum their elections will provide, we can surge to the state level and then -- before it's too late -- take back the power in Washington DC.

I know this isn't the kind of battle most of us want to fight; we would rather watch the talking heads slug it out on Fox News than stand on a street corner handing out campaign flyers. And given our country's history, for a while it will be uncomfortable to find ourselves fighting against the revolution and for the status quo. But we'll get used to this as we make our case over and over again -- to our friends, our neighbors, at barbeques and PTA meetings and at public rallies like those marvelous April tea parties that drove the liberals insane. And we'll draw strength as our ranks swell with new recruits.

The alternative to launching this kind of peaceful and political counter-attack is horrific. Right now sales of guns and ammunition are rising sharply. This reflects an intuitive grasp by grass-roots Americans of what history teaches may lie ahead. It was only after the Nazis had secured their grip on power in Germany, and only after the Bolsheviks had seized control of Russia, that they set out to disarm and destroy the vast numbers of ordinary citizens who - to the astonishment and fury of the revolutionaries -- just wouldn't go along. That's when the real shooting started, and when blood began flowing in the streets.

More HERE

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And the Angels Rejoice

There is nothing so inspiring as public service, so I’ve been incredibly moved over the past few weeks to watch squads of corporate executives come to the White House so President Obama could announce that he was giving away their money.

A few weeks ago, we were privileged to see a gathering of health care executives standing behind the president as he announced that they would be donating $2 trillion in future revenue to the cause of health care reform.

Recently we were uplifted when the president informed Chrysler’s secured creditors that they had agreed to donate their ownership stake in the company to the United Auto Workers. Just last week, we were enthralled to see a group of auto executives beaming with pride as the president announced that in order to reduce gas consumption, they would henceforth be scaling back on all those car lines that consumers actually want to buy.

These events have heralded a new era of partnership between the White House and private companies, one that calls to mind the wonderful partnership Germany formed with France and the Low Countries at the start of World War II. The press conferences and events marking this new spirit of cooperation have been the emotional highlights of the administration so far.

These events usually begin when the executives gather in the Oval Office, where they experience certain Enhanced Negotiating Techniques. I’m not exactly sure what the president does to inspire the business leaders’ cooperation and sense of public service, though those who remember the disembowelment scene in “Braveheart” will have a general idea.

Then the president leads the executives out onto the White House lawn for the announcement ceremony. Often, the president will still be carrying the riding crop and the pliers used in the private negotiation. He moves to the microphone while the executives take their pre-assigned places behind him, the jingle of their leg shackles blending with the dulcet tones of spring. I thought one hospital executive was so moved by the occasion that he had slipped into catatonic shock, except that he was blinking “Save Me! Save Me!” in Morse code to his shareholders.

“We meet at an exciting moment for our country, a time of unprecedented cooperation between government and private industry,” the president intones, lifting his foot from the trachea of an unconscious pharmaceutical executive. “Many of the business leaders behind me have seized an exciting opportunity to join the nonprofit sector without even switching jobs.”

At this, the C.E.O.’s behind him don frozen smiles, exuding the sort of spontaneous enthusiasm often seen at North Korean pep rallies.

During the press conference with health care executives, I don’t even think Obama meant to give away $2 trillion of their money. He was going to give away just $750 billion, but he got carried away by the Era of Responsibility. “The stakeholders behind me have promised to cut costs by nearly 2 percent a year,” the president riffed. (The executives’ lips were like dead worms stretched across mirthless smiles. Their cheeks were like hardened clumps of concrete.) “They have agreed to support the administration’s reform package.” (Coronaries, epileptic seizures all around.) “They have agreed to donate their kidneys in my office right after this ceremony.” (The executives were now flopping about the stage, like a 3-D version of the Heimlich poster.)

These executives have been invited to make these donations in the same spirit that the Cossacks invited my ancestors to emigrate to the Lower East Side. And yet there is a moment during each of the ceremonies when the spirit of the Almighty descends upon the congregation. It usually happens while the president is describing the glorious future. He’ll be describing how, in three years, he will slash the deficit by cutting taxes and doubling spending. He will be describing how, in three years, he will create millions of jobs by raising energy costs.

You can see the ecstasy of Washington promise-making spread joy from soul to soul. Infected by these visions, automakers vow that in three years they will have created a resurgence of enthusiasm around the Chevy Aveo. Financiers vow they will build an entirely new banking industry that doesn’t rely so much on loan repayment. Health care executives vow that in three years they’ll perform CAT scans at Kinko’s.

Some say these are just meaningless promises that ignore hard choices and that no one has any intention of keeping. But this is ungenerous. At these events, the president has taken former rivals and has joined them in the holy bonds of mutual fantasy. He has taken a divided nation and has given us photo-ops to bind us and remind us of our common humanity. Business lies down with government. Management embraces labor. You call it what you will; I call it beautiful.

SOURCE

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The Final Solution

From the Palestinian ambassador to Lebanon Abbas Zaki, a member of Fatah which, as we all know, unlike Hamas is the ‘moderate’ party which will deliver a two-state solution and peace with Israel:

Therefore, it is high time that we found a final, comprehensive solution...With the two-state solution, in my opinion, Israel will collapse, because if they get out of Jerusalem, what will become of all the talk about the Promised Land and the Chosen People? What will become of all the sacrifices they made – just to be told to leave? They consider Jerusalem to have a spiritual status. The Jews consider Judea and Samaria to be their historic dream. If the Jews leave those places, the Zionist idea will begin to collapse. It will regress of its own accord. Then we will move forward.

... The use of weapons alone will not bring results, and the use of politics without weapons will not bring results. We act on the basis of our extensive experience. We analyze our situation carefully. We know what climate leads to victory and what climate leads to suicide. We talk politics, but our principles are clear. It was our pioneering leader, Yasser Arafat, who persevered with this revolution, when empires collapsed. Our armed struggle has been going on for 43 years, and the political struggle, on all levels, has been going on for 50 years. We harvest U.N. resolutions, and we shame the world so that it doesn't gang up on us, because the world is led by people who have given their brains a vacation – the American administration and the neocons.

The P.L.O. is the sole legitimate representative [of the Palestinian people], and it has not changed its platform even one iota. In light of the weakness of the Arab nation and the lack of values, and in light of the American control over the world, the P.L.O. proceeds through phases, without changing its strategy. Let me tell you, when the ideology of Israel collapses, and we take, at least, Jerusalem, the Israeli ideology will collapse in its entirety, and we will begin to progress with our own ideology, Allah willing, and drive them out of all of Palestine.

This is what the American, British and EU governments are attempting to force Israel to accept. As the man says, it’s not a two-state solution -- it's a final solution.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Muslim charity leader jailed for 65 years: "The leader of what was once the largest Muslim charity in the United States was sentenced to 65 years in jail today for supporting Palestinian militants, in a major US-based terrorism financing case. The Texas-based Holy Land Foundation and five of its leaders were convicted late last year of funnelling more than 12 million dollars to Hamas. Jurors returned guilty verdicts on 108 charges of providing material support to terrorists, money laundering and tax fraud. Skukri Abu Baker, whose brother Jamal Issa is the head of Hamas operations in Yemen, was Holy Land's chief executive officer and the first to be sentenced. Holy Land cofounder Mohamed El-Mezain, who is related to Hamas deputy political leader Mousa Abu Marzook, was sentenced to 15 years in jail. Three other Holy Land organisers were expected to receive their sentences later today. The Holy Land case was a major victory in the "war on terror" of former President George W. Bush. Holy Land was one of several Muslim organisations the Bush administration shut down in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks for allegedly raising money for overseas Islamic extremists".

Stimulus projects bypass hard-hit states: "States hit hardest by the recession received only a few of the government's first stimulus contracts, even though the glut of new federal spending was meant to target places where the economic pain has been particularly severe. Nationwide, federal agencies have awarded nearly $4 billion in contracts to help jump-start the economy since President Obama signed the massive stimulus package in February. But, with few exceptions, that money has not reached states where the unemployment rate is highest, according to a USA TODAY review of contracts disclosed through the Federal Procurement Data System. In Michigan, for example — where years of economic tumult and a collapsing domestic auto industry have produced the nation's worst unemployment rate — federal agencies have spent about $2 million on stimulus contracts, or 21 cents per person. In Oregon, where unemployment is almost as high, they have spent $2.12 per capita, far less than the nationwide average of nearly $13."

Government Motors: "The government would retain significant control over the restructured General Motors under an Obama administration plan that would allow U.S. officials to directly name or influence the appointments of the vast majority of a new 13-member board that would oversee the company, sources familiar with the discussions said. The plan calls for federal officials to directly appoint five or six members to the board after GM emerges from its expected bankruptcy, the sources said. Another six would roll over from GM's existing board, but even these directors would reflect the government's influence since GM is reconstituting its board under government direction. The United Auto Workers' health-care trust would name one director to the company board, the sources said, adding that Canada is likely to appoint a board seat as well."

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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Obama's SCOTUS nominee

Sonia Sotomayor, President Barack Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court, "has an inflated opinion of herself" and is "kind of a bully on the bench."

That view doesn't come from a conservative -- it's the view expressed by a former clerk for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, where Sotomayor now serves, to Jeffrey Rosen, legal affairs editor for The New Republic. The New Republic is a decidedly liberal publication -- but the magazine published a harsh portrait of the new Obama nominee three weeks ago, when she was being mentioned as a contender for the Court post.

Rosen's article, headlined "The Case Against Sotomayor," also noted that he had spoken to a range of people who have worked with Sotomayor. Rosen wrote: "Most are Democrats and all of them want President Obama to appoint a judicial star of the highest intellectual caliber who has the potential to change the direction of the court.

"Nearly all of them acknowledged that Sotomayor is a presumptive front-runner, but nearly none of them raved about her. They expressed questions about her temperament, her judicial craftsmanship, and most of all, her ability to provide an intellectual counterweight to the conservative justices, as well as a clear liberal alternative.

"The most consistent concern was that Sotomayor, although an able lawyer, was 'not that smart and kind of a bully on the bench,' as one former Second Circuit clerk for another judge put it. 'She has an inflated opinion of herself, and is domineering during oral arguments, but her questions aren't penetrating and don't get to the heart of the issue.'"

Rosen added: "Her opinions, although competent, are viewed by former prosecutors as not especially clean or tight, and sometimes miss the forest for the trees."

Even Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald, who defends Sotomayor, cites some of her less-than-praiseworthy behavior in court. Greenwald writes that he remembers, "... she was very assertive and aggressive - at times unpleasantly so - in how she presided over her courtroom. "In the first case I had with her ... I committed some sort of substantial procedural mistake ... and she very harshly excoriated me in a courtroom packed with lawyers from other cases. I certainly did not enjoy that, and at the time harbored negative sentiments towards her (who wouldn't?), but that behavior - for judges - is the opposite of uncommon."

The most controversial case in which Sotomayor participated as an appellate judge is Ricci v. DeStefano. She sided with the city of New Haven, Conn., in a discrimination case that white firefighters brought after the city threw out results of a promotion exam because too few minorities scored high enough.

SOURCE

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America is re-segregating

Sotomayor wasn't chosen solely for her liberal judicial philosophy, although that was a prerequisite. She was chosen for her status as a Latina woman. As Stuart Taylor of National Journal writes, "If Republicans attack Judge Sotomayor's more controversial actions, they risk provoking a backlash among Hispanic voters, who have already been moving into the Democratic column in droves.” Following on the heels of President Obama's election, which was largely about his status as a black man, we have entered a period in which politics is becoming more, not less, racial in nature.

With the election of Obama, many Americans believed that racial polarization in the country was over. White Americans in particular assumed that Obama's election would be a transformative moment, effectively capping America's centuries-long odyssey toward racial equality.

Unfortunately, this has not been the case. Over the past decade, racial groups have become more polarized, not less. A simple example will suffice. A personal friend, a white man who teaches at an inner-city school in Los Angeles County with an almost entirely Hispanic population, polled his students shortly before the 2008 election regarding their parents' presidential preferences. Every hand in the classroom went up for Obama. After class, my friend approached one of the students. "Why are your parents voting for Obama?” he asked a 10-year-old Hispanic girl. She answered him in four words: "Because he's not white.”

"Because he's not white” has become the rallying cry for racial minorities all across the country. There are 24 members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Twenty-three are Democrats, and one is an independent. Leaving aside U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., and two members of Congress who represent no district, the Hispanic population in the districts they represent averages 59.23 percent. That means that concentrated pockets of Hispanics elect Hispanics.

The same is true for the Congressional Black Caucus. There are currently 44 members of the Congressional Black Caucus; all are Democrats. Leaving aside Senator Roland Burris, D-Ill., and two nonvoting, at-large members of Congress, the black population in the districts they represent averages 48.47 percent. That means concentrated pockets of blacks elect blacks.

The same is largely true of whites, of course. The difference is that whites elect members of both parties -- racial identity is not bound up in political identity. For the Hispanic and black communities, however, racial and socioeconomic identity increasingly mean allegiance to one party: the Democratic Party. Thus, when Miguel Estrada is grilled by Democrats, no one worries about the electoral ramifications for the Democrats among Hispanics, yet when Sotomayor is nominated, critics worry that Republican criticism will drive away Hispanics. The same holds true for the black community: When Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is raked over the coals by Democrats, no one worries that blacks will run from the Democratic Party; when Barack Obama is criticized by Republicans, however, the press declares that Republicans will lose the black vote forever.

The implications of the racial separation of our republic are supremely dangerous. It seems that racial groups more and more often vote along tribal lines; multiethnic democracy now means racial re-segregation, at least in terms of electoral politics. Small-R republicanism relies on the willingness of individuals to discern and vote for the politicians with whom they agree, not the politicians with whom they share a skin color, racial heritage, and economic background.

Barack Obama's candidacy was supposed to usher us into a post-racial America. It seems that his election, and his continuing exploitation of racial differences through nominations like Sotomayor's, has only deepened the racial divides.

SOURCE

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GM Bondholders Are People Like You and Me

The government is punishing one group of workers to reward another

I am an American retiree. Like many small investors, I am relying on "safe" investments such as bonds backed by America's largest companies to fund my retirement. One of these companies is General Motors.

First, let's set the record straight about who owns GM's bonds. We are hardworking families, individual investors and retirees who purchased billions of these bonds in $25, $50 and $100 increments. Many bonds were bought directly and others are held in our pension funds, 401(k) plans and other retirement programs. I purchased GM bonds in 2005 and own $91,000 worth. These bonds account for a very sizeable portion of my retirement income, and so it is absolutely devastating to watch GM's problems bring the once venerable company to the brink of failure. My standard of living is truly in jeopardy.

Despite the terrible position my fellow bondholders and I are in, we are being portrayed as the cause of GM's problems and inability to restructure. Who is perpetrating this myth? The American government, which is at once encouraging investment in U.S. companies and vilifying those who have already invested. Billions upon billions of taxpayer dollars have been used to stabilize companies to restore investor confidence. But how can investors be confident when they're at risk of ending up on the wrong end of the government's stick?

Even more disturbing: The government's proposed restructuring plans benefit one class of retirees at the expense of another. I understand that we each have equal claims in bankruptcy. However, under the current plan GM's union retirees will receive 39% of the restructured company and $10 billion in cash in exchange for $20 billion in claims. Bondholders, however, receive a mere 10% for $27 billion in claims in the form of stock (and no cash).

I am a retired dye-making trade worker and even worked in the auto industry during my career. I don't understand why the government is penalizing people like me just for having funded my retirement with GM bonds. Bondholders, especially small bondholders, are being ignored in negotiations and singled out to bear the greatest share of the cost of restructuring GM.

We are not an unreasonable group. We understand that to save GM everyone will need to endure economic pain. But we are very troubled by the government's decision to give UAW retirees -- equal members, with the bondholders, of the unsecured creditor class -- preferential treatment. The government cannot be permitted to rewrite bankruptcy rules on a whim to selectively benefit equal groups.

Small bondholders use the interest from GM bonds for everyday living expenses and cannot afford to see GM go bankrupt. And though we've been branded as an obstacle, small investors like me are in fact the solution. Our continued investment in U.S. companies and markets is critical to an economic recovery. By treating investors fairly, GM could take the lead in making the market attractive once again.

SOURCE

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ELSEWHERE

Government Expected to Own 70% of Restructured G.M.: "In better times, many employees of General Motors called their company “Generous Motors” because of its rich benefits. Now G.M. may stand for something else: Government Motors. The latest plan for the troubled automaker, which is expected to file for bankruptcy by Monday, calls for the Treasury Department to receive about 70 percent of a restructured G.M. Including the more than $20 billion that has already been spent to prop up G.M., the government will provide G.M. at least $50 billion to get the company through Chapter 11, people with direct knowledge of the situation said Tuesday. By some estimates in Detroit, tens of billions beyond that amount may be required. The United Automobile Workers, meanwhile, will hold up to 20 percent through its retiree health care fund, and bondholders and other parties will get the remaining share. Shareholders would be virtually wiped out."

Homosexuals demonstrate against new law: "Around 175 people were arrested in San Francisco in peaceful protests against a California Supreme Court decision to uphold a ban on same-sex marriage, police said. A spokeswoman for the San Francisco Police Department said the arrests came as demonstrators blocked an intersection near the court building. Those arrested were released at the scene, Sergeant Lyn Tomioka said. Rallies were being held in several cities across California yesterday following the court ruling, which reaffirmed the results of a referendum that redefined marriage in California as unions between men and women."



Crooked NYC top cop: "[Former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik -- above] faces trial in Washington on charges he lied to White House officials who were vetting him for the position of Homeland Security secretary. … Kerik is charged with falsely denying to White House officials that as a public official he had any financial dealings with individuals seeking to do business with the city. Prosecutors say contractors seeking work with the city spent more than $255,000 renovating Kerik’s apartment.”

10th Amendment movement: Return power to the states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people. — U.S. Constitution, Tenth Amendment. Fed up with Washington’s involvement in everything from land use to gun control to education spending, states across the country are fighting back against what they say is the federal government’s growing intrusion on their rights. At least 35 states have introduced legislation this year asserting their power under the Tenth Amendment to regulate all matters not specifically delegated to the federal government by the Constitution.”

Army chief: US ready to be in Iraq 10 years: “The Pentagon is prepared to leave fighting forces in Iraq for as long as a decade despite an agreement between the United States and Iraq that would bring all American troops home by 2012, the top U.S. Army officer said Tuesday. Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, said the world remains dangerous and unpredictable, and the Pentagon must plan for extended U.S. combat and stability operations in two wars. ‘Global trends are pushing in the wrong direction,’ Casey said.”

Obama Blinks. Union bullying fails: "On April 30th, the Obama Administration sent to the California state government an unmistakably blatant letter threatening to withhold California's Medicaid "stimulus" money if a home healthcare workers wage cut was not rescinded.... To its credit, California pushed back—hard—stating that the budget cuts were necessary to make up for a $23 billion budget shortfall. The truth is, California had every duty to act in its own interests as a sovereign state to save $74 million on home healthcare workers. California's receipt of some $6.8 billion in federal stimulus, supplemental Medicaid money had been conditioned upon rescinding the cut, which reduces the state's maximum contribution to home health workers' pay from $12.10 per hour to $10.10 in July. Last week, ALG News and other media had called for Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to uphold the principle of federalism, and to rescind the ultimatum. Fortunately, Obama cowered when the blatantly thuggish Obama-union aggression was exposed. The Obama Administration was finally forced to back off its threat to withhold the supplemental Medicaid funds from California."

Millionaires Go Missing: "Here's a two-minute drill in soak-the-rich economics: Maryland couldn't balance its budget last year, so the state tried to close the shortfall by fleecing the wealthy. Politicians in Annapolis created a millionaire tax bracket, raising the top marginal income-tax rate to 6.25%. And because cities such as Baltimore and Bethesda also impose income taxes, the state-local tax rate can go as high as 9.45%. Governor Martin O'Malley, a dedicated class warrior, declared that these richest 0.3% of filers were "willing and able to pay their fair share." The Baltimore Sun predicted the rich would "grin and bear it." One year later, nobody's grinning. One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller's office concedes is a "substantial decline." On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year -- even at higher rates."

My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena

List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here or here or here

****************************

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)

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