Richard N. Weltz, American Thinker.com

 

So says Alan Dershowitz, prominent Harvard law professor, longtime supporter of Israel, and authors of the book, "The Case Against Israel's Enemies." In a New York Post Sunday article entitled "Blaming Israel," Dershowitz calls the new Obama/Emanuel policies towards Israel, "exactly backwards.

 

Dershowitz is referring to the current tactic of threatening Israel that the US will not help stop Iran's nuclear weaponry and missile development programs unless the Jewish State bends to blackmail from the Obama administration with regard to concessions to the Palestinians. As Dershowitz says,

 

In this respect, Emanuel has it exactly backwards: if there is any linkage, it goes the other way - defanging Iran will promote the end of the occupation and the two-state solution. Threatening not to help Israel in relation to Iran unless it moves toward a two-state solution first is likely to backfire. [snip]

 

Emanuel's statements were viewed with alarm in Israel because most Israelis, though they want to like President Obama, are nervous about his policies toward Israel. They are prepared to accept pressure regarding the settlements, but they worry that the Obama Administration may be ready to compromise, or at least threaten to compromise, Israel's security, if its newly elected government does not submit to pressure on the settlements. [snip]

 

That cannot be allowed to happen, regardless of progress on the ground toward peace with the Palestinians. These two issues must be delinked if either is to succeed. There are other ways of encouraging Israel to make peace with the Palestinians. Nuclear blackmail is not one of them.

 

This blackmail tactic, of course, is the centerpiece of the newly adopted Obama/Emanuel/Clinton/Mitchell assault on the Israeli government, headed for the first time in years by a Prime Minister and cabinet disinclined toward appeasement or further concessions involving land-for-nothing. Read article.

Dr. Sanity.Blogspot.com

 

Through the clever use of projection and paranoia; by scapegoating the productive and the wealthy, Obama's government will grow bigger and more powerful and never have to take responsibility for the worsening state of the economy. The necessary scapegoats are in place...let the show trials commence!

 

Before we discuss the most recent attempts by the neo-Marxist left via the Obama Administration) to totally scapegoat capitalism and business for our current economic woes; let us turn to the "masters of scapegoating"--the dysfunctional and broken culture of the Middle East.

 

It has always amazed me to observe that the political left in this country is so taken with the Palestinians and the jihadists and have made the Palestinian cause their own.

 

It is only a very short step from marching to support and cleverly rationalizing the homicidal and violent terrorist groups that make up the Palestinian cause to then swallowing whole the vile anti-semitism that motivates the delusions they need to maintain their victimhood status.

 

If we turn to our own country, we must deal with an entire political party and half the nation or more in the grip of projection and early paranoia. It is the same powerful agenda of paranoia and projection that has pulled the political left away from reason, truth and reality.

 

In a sense, the Palestinians have become the poster children for all those on the political left who are as unwilling as they are to face reality. Read article.

 

Dick Morris, Vote.com

 

President Obama's vision of the future is, apparently, an economy guided, steered and -- when the occasion demands -- commanded by the federal government. Some of the companies will remain private. Washington will take others over. But all will look to the White House, as to an orchestra conductor, for signals as to how and when and where to proceed.

 

This summary is the vision that emerges from the Chrysler bailout.

 

Whether or not one believes the claims of attorney Thomas Lauria (I do) that the investment bank Perella Weinberg Partners was strong-armed by the administration, the fact remains that the four firms that accepted the piddling offer of 29 cents on the dollar are all awash in Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money.

 

Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase all dutifully approved the offer from Washington, while Perella Weinberg reportedly held out for 50 cents. Did the combined $90 billion the four compliant firms owed Washington in TARP funds make a difference in their passive acquiescence? You bet it did.

 

They shouldn't have said yes. Clearly, Obama was not about to pull the trigger, which would have sent tens of thousands of autoworkers straight into unemployment. Politically, he would have had no choice but to cough up the $4.5 billion loan the feds just gave Chrysler with or without a debt settlement. The political pressures that have always operated on this Democratic president are still there and still in play. Read article.

 

Jonah Goldberg, NRO.com

 

Some days you have to ask yourself: My God, what if these people were Republicans?

 

Democrats took back Congress in 2006 and the presidency in 2008 in no small part because of their ability to bang their spoons on their high chairs about what they called the Republican “culture of corruption.” Their choreographed outrage was coordinated with the precision of a North Korean missile-launch pageant. And, to be fair, they had a point. The GOP did have its legitimate embarrassments. California Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham and lobbyist Jack Abramoff were fair game, and so was Rep. Mark Foley, the twisted Florida congressman who allegedly wanted male congressional pages cleaned and perfumed and brought to his tent, as it were.

 

Of course, it wasn’t as if Democrats were without sin. Louisiana Rep. William Jefferson was indicted on fraud, bribery, and corruption charges in 2007, after an investigation unearthed, among other things, $90,000 in his freezer. Then–New York governor Eliot Spitzer was busted in a prostitution scandal.

 

But that’s all yesterday’s news. Let’s look at the here and now. Barack Obama, who vowed he’d provide a transparent administration staffed with disinterested public servants with the self-restraint of Roman castrati, appointed an admitted tax cheat to run the Treasury Department — and he’s hardly the only one in the administration.

 

New York representative Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is under investigation for, among other things, failing to report income from his Caribbean villa. Meanwhile, Sen. Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, got sweetheart deals from sub-prime lender Countrywide and has yet to adequately explain his too-good-to-be-true deal on his million-dollar “cottage” in Ireland, which he may have gotten in exchange for finagling a pardon (from President Clinton) for a felon. Oh, Dodd also secretly protected those AIG bonuses that raised such a ruckus. Read article.

 

Lee Culpepper, NMJ.us

 

Remember Washington Irving’s classic in which the title character unwittingly nods off for 20 years? He sleeps through the American Revolution and wakes befuddled by the radical changes that have taken place in America. Today, thanks to President Obama’s first 100 days in office, I feel like Rip Van Winkle.

 

Since the inauguration, time has passed as if I were fading in and out of consciousness. I have not written much as I get too depressed whenever I think of where America might be if liberals would spend just a fraction of their time condemning Muslim lunatics instead of devoting all their time to vilifying Sarah Palin. Who knows? Would the terrorists have capitulated already if they believed America was united and unshakable in its commitment to defeat them? An even more miserable thought comes from the high probability that President Obama’s own words have only inspired our enemies not to give up.

 

I am like Rip Van Winkle trying to make sense of an illogical situation. I keep hoping I will wake up and learn that I’ve been having a bad dream. The ubiquitous image of President Obama and the media’s frenzied spewing of royal crap make me wonder if liberals believe we have anointed a new king as opposed to having inaugurated our 44th president. Read article.

 

Tony Blankley, JWR.com

 

Does anyone take serious words seriously anymore here in Washington?

 

News item No. 1 concerns the testimony of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on April 22. She said deteriorating security in nuclear-armed Pakistan "poses a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world."

 

News item No. 2 is this headline on the front page of the May 4 edition of The Washington Post: "U.S. Options in Pakistan Limited."

 

News item No. 3 is a quote in Jackson Diehl's May 4 column in The Washington Post from a senior Obama administration official: "It's not good when your national security interests are dependent on a country over which you have almost no influence." Read article.

 

Jeff Riggenbach, Mises.org

 

Americans have been warring with each other for more than a century over the contents of the American-history textbooks used in the nation's high schools and colleges. Nor is the reason far to seek. If, as seems to be the case, these textbooks encompass one hundred percent of the information that most high school and college graduates in this country will ever encounter on the subject of American history, the American-history wars would appear to be well worth fighting.

 

For what Americans know and understand about the history of the society in which they live will determine the degree of their willingness to honor and preserve its ideals and traditions. More than that: it will determine what they regard as the ideals and traditions of their society. It will determine nothing less than the kind of society they will seek to strengthen and perpetuate.

 

Until very recently, however, the range of the conflict over American-history textbooks was narrow indeed. All sides tacitly agreed that the story of the United States was the triumphant tale of a people fervently devoted to peace, prosperity, and individual liberty; a people left utterly untempted by opportunities of the kind that had led so many other nations down the ignoble road of empire; a people who went to war only as a last resort and only when both individual liberty and Western civilization itself were imperiled and at stake. Read article.

 

Debra Burlingame, Online WSJ.com

 

In February I was among a group of USS Cole and 9/11 victims' families who met with the president at the White House to discuss his policies regarding Guantanamo detainees. Although many of us strongly opposed Barack Obama's decision to close the detention center and suspend all military commissions, the families of the 17 sailors killed in the 2000 attack in Yemen were particularly outraged.

 

Over the years, the Cole families have seen justice abandoned by the Clinton administration and overshadowed by the need of the Bush administration to gather intelligence after 9/11. They have watched in frustration as the president of Yemen refused extradition for the Cole bombers.

 

Now, after more than eight years of waiting, Mr. Obama was stopping the trial of Abu Rahim al-Nashiri, the only individual to be held accountable for the bombing in a U.S. court. Patience finally gave out. The families were giving angry interviews, slamming the new president just days after he was sworn in. Read article.

 

Stop the ACLU.com

 

There’s absolutely no wonder in this, considering how Obama was in the pocket of Big Ethanol during the campaign that he promised not to undertake till he finished his first term as a Senator

 

The Obama administration on Tuesday will step up efforts to increase the availability of ethanol at filling stations and to speed up subsidies to struggling biofuel producers. But the trade-off is that the administration is also expected to propose a rule that could make certain biofuels look less climate-friendly.

See, there is a wee bit of a problem, in that corn based ethanol and several other versions tend to put out much more CO2 then gasoline, not to mention that the power it provides is considerably less then gasoline. Not to mention the enormous amounts of energy and water required to make it. Not to mention the amount of land required. If all the land is being used to grow corn, where will we put all the solar panels? Read article.

 

Terry Jeffrey, Townhall.com

 

With little fanfare, the Government Accountability Office released a document last week that points to the day when the American dream dies and is buried beneath a middle-class welfare state.

 

You can see death coming for the American dream as surely as you can see cirrhosis coming for a drunk.

 

We are bringing it upon ourselves -- although not all Americans deserve what is going to happen. For one, our children don't deserve it. For another, Americans who have tried to live independent, self-reliant lives don't deserve it, either.

 

But they are going to be dragged down with everyone else, if we don't make dramatic changes in public policies soon. Read article.

 

Karl Rove, Online WSJ.com

 

Few events mobilize as many interest groups and set Washington atwitter as much as a Supreme Court vacancy. In the Bush White House, I served on a five-person committee charged with recommending nominees for Supreme Court vacancies. We had the opportunity to do so twice, though admittedly it took us three nominees.

 

We collected thick binders of background material on prospective nominees -- not just opinions, utterances and legal writings, but everything from college transcripts to tax-return summaries to charity dinner speeches. We had years to prepare, update and review this exhaustive research. It helped get Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed within three months. Just over 100 days in, Barack Obama's White House and Justice Department haven't had the time to properly vet prospects or complete the thorough review this decision requires. So Mr. Obama was wise to suggest that confirmation of David Souter's replacement would take six months. Five administration nominees have already been found with unpaid taxes, and Mr. Obama knows he has used up any capital that could have purchased forgiveness for such offenses by a Supreme Court nominee.

 

Just over 100 days in, Barack Obama's White House and Justice Department haven't had the time to properly vet prospects or complete the thorough review this decision requires. So Mr. Obama was wise to suggest that confirmation of David Souter's replacement would take six months. Five administration nominees have already been found with unpaid taxes, and Mr. Obama knows he has used up any capital that could have purchased forgiveness for such offenses by a Supreme Court nominee. Read article.

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