May 21, 2012
FSM HOT TOPICS
Exclusive: Oval Office Watch – Friday, January 30
by OVAL OFFICE WATCH January 30, 2009
The Idiossey (with Apologies to Homer): The Not-Really-That-Epic Poem of Obamacles
Iowahawk, BigHollywood.breitbart.com
Book the First: A question for the Muse
Speak to me, O Muse, of this resourceful man
who strides so boldly upon the golden shrine of Potomac,
Between Ionic plywood columns, to the kleig light altar.
Fair Obama cles, favored of the gods, ascends to Olympus
Amidst lusty tributes and the strumming lyres of Media;
Their mounted skyboxes echo with the singing of his name
While Olbermos and Mattheus in their greasy togas wrassle
For first honor of basking in their hero’s reflected glory.
Who is this man, so bronzed in countenance,
So skilled of TelePrompter, clean and articulate
whose ears like a stately urn’s protrude? Read satirical poem here.
Obama Faces High-Stakes Poker, Especially With Iran
Arnaud de Borchgrave, NewsMax.com
Obama soon will find himself in high-stakes geopolitical poker. Former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman says, "Iran's leverage is extraordinarily high," adding, "If things in Iraq are going OK, and the Iranians have the power to disrupt things and do, then Obama's goose is cooked."
Obama has no intention of allowing his goose to be cooked by ayatollahs in Tehran or flat-Earth Taliban mullahs in Afghanistan. But Iran, which also borders Pakistan and Afghanistan, can be helpful against Taliban insurgents, as indeed it was in October 2001 during the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan.
So there are many moving parts in a regional crisis that stretches from the Arab-Israeli deadlock on the Mediterranean to the Afghan-Chinese border, with Iran's ticking nuclear plans in the middle. A holistic politico-military approach would be the better part of geopolitical valor. Failure to think this one through six moves ahead could lead us into a military confrontation with Iran. Read article.
Obama Tells Arabia's Despots They're Safe - America's diplomacy of freedom is officially over.
Fouad Ajami, Online WSJ.com
"To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect," President Barack Obama said in his inaugural. But in truth, the new way forward is a return to realpolitik and business as usual in America's encounter with that Greater Middle East.
As the president told Al-Arabiya television Monday, he wants a return to "the same respect and partnership that America had with the Muslim world as recently as 20 or 30 years ago."
Barack Obama is interviewed by Al-Arabiya television on Monday.
Say what you will about the style -- and practice -- of the Bush years, the autocracies were on notice for the first five or six years of George. W. Bush's presidency. America had toppled Taliban rule and the tyranny of Saddam Hussein; it had frightened the Libyan ruler that a similar fate lay in store for him. It was not sweet persuasion that drove Syria out of Lebanon in 2005. That dominion of plunder and terror was given up under duress.
The irony now is obvious: George W. Bush as a force for emancipation in Muslim lands, and Barack Hussein Obama as a messenger of the old, settled ways. Read article.
Does Obama want to close Bagram detention too?
Prairiepundit.blogspot.com
Every Monday, at a Red Cross compound in Kabul, Pashtu families gather for a glimpse by live video feed of brothers, sons and husbands who have disappeared into a feared detention centre at the main American base in Afghanistan.
As President Barack Obama declared with a fanfare his intention to close the controversial Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention camp last week, he made no mention of another growing US-run prison - with more than twice as many inmates and an even murkier legal status.
More than 600 detainees are held at the US Bagram Theatre Internment Facility - known by campaigners as "the other Guantanamo." Not only are there no plans to close it, but it is in the process of being expanded to hold 1,100 illegal enemy combatants; prisoners who cannot see lawyers, have no trials and never see any evidence there may be against them. Read article.
Obama’s Evangelicals: The Liberals’ New Useful Idiots
Doug Giles, Townhall.com
I wanna give a special shout out to all the “major” ministers who fawned and swooned over Barack and swayed their congregations to vote for him in spite of his anti-scriptural stances on life, marriage and sexuality.
Let’s take a look at Obama’s homosexual agenda for our nation:
My colleague and co-belligerent compadre right here on TownHall.com, Matt Barber, pointed out to me during an interview on my show last week that literally within minutes after President Obama took the oath of office Tuesday, the official White House webpage was updated—under the heading of “Civil Rights”—to detail Obama’s wholesale “support for the LGBT (homosexual activist) community.” His stated plans include the following: Read article.
The faithless community?
Joseph Finlay, American Thinker.com
President Obama's effort at religious all-inclusiveness at the Inauguration has not escaped the notice of many African-American Christians. What follows is further evidence that many Christians are less than thrilled with the exaltation of multiculturalism at the expense of the Christian ethos that made America great and distinct.
By mentioning, for the first time in an inaugural address, the 16.1 percent of Americans who check "no"' when asked about religion, Obama turned it into the most controversial line in his speech -- praised by The New York Times editorial board and cited by some Christians as evidence that he is a heretic, and in his well-spoken way, a serious threat.
With that one line, the president "seems to be trying to redefine American culture, which is distinctively Christian," said' Bishop E.W. Jackson of the Exodus Faith Ministries in Chesapeake, Va. "The overwhelming majority of Americans identify as Christians, and what disturbs me is that he seems to be trying to redefine who we are.'" Read article.
A Loophole In the Rules
Mark Hosenball, Newsweek.com
Publicly at least, President Obama has made a clean break with his predecessor's controversial counterterrorism policies, but in private the new administration is leaving itself some wiggle room. A day before Obama signed executive orders closing Guantánamo Bay and banning torture, the White House's top lawyer privately indicated to Congress that the new president reserved the right to ignore his own (and any other president's) executive orders.
In a closed-door appearance before the Senate intelligence committee, White House counsel Gregory Craig was asked whether the president was required by law to follow executive orders. According to people familiar with his remarks, who asked for anonymity when discussing a private meeting, Craig answered that the administration did not believe he was. The implication: in a national-security crisis, Obama could deviate from his own rules. Read article.
Respect for the Law or Disillusionment
Zack Jones, Australia.com
I am a retired (25) police officer and spent 26 years in the United States Air force as a MSGT in charge of Training for the 482 Security Police Squadron. Was in Vietnam and also served in the Gulf War. For the last year I have been watching this site on a daily basis not believing that Barack Hussein Obama has become our president. I coach a High School softball team and everyone of my players had to produce a birth certificate to be eligible to play through the state. I hate to say this, but we in a total crisis and something will happen if this man is allowed to continue to lead this once proud nation.
I have never posted before but know many FBI, Secret Service Agents, CIA and many other Federal Agents who have told me they are not to discuss this issue about Obama or they will be terminated from employment. We all need to take a step back and pray that something will come out on all of these lawsuits. I spoke to the Supreme Court Justice in my state who advised that the US Supreme Court have been ordered to throw out any case that deal with the fraud President elect. May God Help us All. Read article.
Obama Selects Taliban Lawyer For Justice Dept.
Joshua Sharp, Brighthall.aol.com
President Obama, who as a candidate was accused of "pallin' around with" former domestic terrorist William Ayers and other controversial figures, has selected the "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh's defense attorney for a key Justice Department post.
Tony West, a San Francisco-based lawyer who worked in the Clinton Administration's Justice Department, has been nominated for an assistant attorney general position overseeing Justice's Civil Division. He also, conveniently enough, helped raise $65 million for Obama in California as a state finance co-chair during the campaign.
Not a bad down payment.
West is undoubtedly a talented attorney, negotiating a guilty plea for Lindh on reduced charges and helping the ex-Taliban fighter avoid the death penalty or a lifetime jail sentence (Hurray!). And, like Ayers, West doesn't regret his past -- even "said it was the kind of work he believed in." Read article.
Climate: Change You Can't Believe In
Marc Sheppard, American Thinker.com
Obama's inaugural pledge to "restore science to its rightful place" wasn't alone in its incongruity on the subject. He also promised that the era of "protecting narrow interests" is over, reinforcing his campaign pledge that his administration "would not be beholden to special interests."
But in fact, the green lobby represents perhaps the broadest and most dangerous of all influence peddlers -- those who literally want to micromanage not only the air we breathe and the food we eat, but also our homes, our businesses, our pastimes and even our vacation spots - not to mention what, how often and how far we drive or fly in shuttling between them.
Current polls affirm that despite a protracted and intense campaign of misinformation and dissent-gagging, Americans now want the debate Al Gore once declared over to actually begin. And they want it free of the mind-policing tactics advocated by Obama's science director, and long before any action is taken by climate zealots in either his cabinet or Congress. Read article.
Afghan War Could Be Quagmire for Obama
Military.com
Think Iraq was hard? Afghanistan, former Secretary of State Colin Powell argues, will be "much, much harder."
"Iraq had a middle class," Powell pointed out on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" a couple of hours before Obama was sworn in last Tuesday. "It was a fairly advanced country before Saddam Hussein drove it in the ground." Afghanistan, on the other hand, "is still basically a tribal society, a lot of corruption; drugs are going to destroy that country if something isn't done about it."
For Obama, Afghanistan is the signal foreign policy crisis that he must address quickly. Some 34,000 American troops are already fighting an insurgency that grows stronger by the month, making this a dynamically deteriorating situation in a region fraught with consequence for American security aims. Coupled with nuclear-armed Pakistan, with which it shares a border zone that has become a haven for Al Qaeda, Afghanistan could quickly come to define the Obama presidency.
Obama's extra troops will largely be battling a Taliban insurgency fed by an opium trade estimated at $300 million a year. And that insurgency is dispersed among a largely rural population living in villages scattered across 200,000 square kilometers, or 77,000 square miles, of southern Afghanistan. Read article.
It Isn’t Easy Being a Saint
Victor Davis Hanson, Pajamas Media.com
You readers remember that sometime around mid 2007, Obama made a Faustian bargain. Without much national name, without a legislative record in Illinois or the US Senate, but with quite a lot of Chicago baggage, Obama gambled on the hope and change new persona (soon to be followed with the soaring FDR/MLK/JFK prose, Latinate seal, Greek architraves, Victory Column /Sermon on the Mount speeches, Father Abraham's arrival to DC by slow-moving rail car (after flying back to Illinois by jet)). For much of the campaign, he either hoped that Tony Rezko, Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright, Father Pfleger and the other assorted Dailey/Blago baggage would not surface, or, if it did, he could hope and change them all away. And he did—brilliantly . And now they are history and those who dredge them up little more cranky sore-losing has-beens.
But as President, no matter how historic a candidacy (more astounding than any in American history), no matter how calm in the face of continuous pressure, no matter how brilliant in prepared and set oratory, one can't get away with that disconnect forever. There is a reason why a plodding Ike and blunt Harry Truman were greater Presidents than even JFK—and why in 2-3 years even George Bush will begin to seem in retropect honest, sober, and straight-talking rather than word-mangling. As a novice politician without an Arkansas, or Plains, or Crawford mafia, even, or rather especially, Obama, had to import the hardest of the hard core Clintonistas—Emanuel, Podesta, Panetta, Hillary herself—and he had to pay off some overdue IOU's to the left with symbolic gestures and appointments (more rhetoric and symbolism and task forces to come on Don't Ask/Don't Tell, Gay Marriage, Cap and Trade, Kyoto redux, etc.).
As a novice politician without an Arkansas, or Plains, or Crawford mafia, even, or rather especially, Obama, had to import the hardest of the hard core Clintonistas—Emanuel, Podesta, Panetta, Hillary herself—and he had to pay off some overdue IOU's to the left with symbolic gestures and appointments (more rhetoric and symbolism and task forces to come on Don't Ask/Don't Tell, Gay Marriage, Cap and Trade, Kyoto redux, etc.). Read article.
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Occupy Chicago freakout: The LRAD is coming, the LRAD is coming!
May 21, 2012 00:57 AM
Here is an LRAD. It’s a Long Range Acoustic Device better known as a sound cannon and it’s used to disperse unruly crowds. Here is an Occupy Chicago freakout over the LRAD (led by the same livestreamer who freaked out last night over a brief police stop): Two #LRAD s spotted heading to march.— Tim [...]
Michael Moore spreads hysterical, anti-police fable from his Occupy comrades
May 21, 2012 00:37 AM
The crockumentary film-maker should have read Twitchy first. As we told you Saturday night, the trio of Occupy Chicago livestreamers who freaked out over a brief, Chicago police pullover didn’t have their apartment raided, didn’t have any of their equipment damaged, were not “held at gunpoint,” and had none of their high-priced cameras, phones, and [...]
It will rain: Awww, Occupy Chicago's all wet; finally, free showers for all!
May 20, 2012 11:09 PM
Mother Nature is Chicago law enforcement’s best friend. Tonight, the rabble-rousers’ plans for anarchy got spoiled by rain. Twitter had fun as the Occupiers and their fearless livestream crews ran for cover, while a few of the mobsters hung around to harass officers on duty and break out in senseless chants: Fkin Streamers afraid of [...]
Marion Barry has change of heart after being saved by Filipino hospital staff
May 20, 2012 10:00 PM
In what reads like a bad Hollywood movie script Marion Barry has changed his mind about Filipino nurses. Just a few weeks after complaining about how many Filipino nurses work in Washington DC Barry's life was saved by Filipino nurses. That's right, the same people he wanted to push our of DC hospitals ended up treating his potentially life threatening blood clot.
May 20, 2012 06:15 PM
Violence erupts at the end of the NATO Summit protests. Earlier today, members of Black Bloc were arrested for plotting to attack police stations, Mayor Emanuel's home and President Obama's campaign headquarters. Their violence then turned to the protest; police in riot gear move in, wearing gas masks. Protesters are throwing things at police according to video, live photos and reports from on the ground in Chicago.
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