Holman W. Jenkins, Online WSJ.com

 

With his latest installment of ever-higher fuel mileage requirements for the auto industry, Barack Obama embraces a momentary, crisis-spawned expansion of the art of the possible, unleavened by any art of the rationally desirable.

 

Detroit is dependent on Washington loans for survival. The industry's lobbyists and its congressional allies have collapsed in a heap, offering no resistance. So why not go for broke? If you're alone in front of the shrimp buffet, why not eat all the shrimp -- even if it makes you barf later?

 

Defenders of the Obama administration's Chrysler bankruptcy finagle misguidedly argue that, if not for taxpayer money, the company's secured creditors would have gotten as little or less than they did in the imposed settlement.

 

They miss the point. Anyone can always imagine an outcome more "fair" than the outcome provided by people duly exercising -- and the legal process duly upholding -- their rights. Fairness in a law-abiding society is due process. In the Chrysler bankruptcy, the administration hijacked the legal forms for a political end that it could have delivered honestly by the government buying Chrysler out of liquidation and handing it to the UAW. Read article.

Bruce Walker, American Thinker.com

 

Democrats hold the White House and comfortable majorities in both houses of Congress. Their new president comes from humble beginnings. He grew up without the moral influence of a father. Unlike Gore and Kerry, who were born with silver spoons in their mouths, or even Carter, Dukakis, Mondale, or Humphrey, who came from upper middle class homes, Barack Obama has little in common with presidential candidates of either political party, except for one: Bill Clinton. Both men transcended their humble roots by receiving elite education and succeeding in electoral politics.

 

Watch how "Barry" behaves. Listen to his words. Ignore the inflection in his voice, his body language, his facial expressions, the fawning media, and all the distractions of meaning: listen to his words. He says nothing, just as Bill Clinton said nothing, and if you aren't really paying attention, it sounds good.

 

We are finding that President Obama is really "Slick Barry," just as President Clinton was "Slick Willie." I believe it is a mistake to associate either man with passionate political or ideological beliefs. These perpetual adolescents believe in their own magic, their ability to charm the other kids who came from nuclear families in middle class neighborhoods, their craving insistence to turn everyone into someone who likes them. It is all about them as they vainly struggle to fill a void in the deepest part of the heart. Read article.

Ben Shapiro, Townhall.com

 

If you attack President Barack Obama’s policies, are you attacking America?

 

According to today’s left, the answer is yes: Barack Obama is America. And opposition to Barack Obama or any of his policies is therefore, by definition, anti-American. Just listen to alleged comedienne Wanda Sykes at the White House Correspondents Dinner this past week: "Rush Limbaugh said he hopes this administration fails … He just wants the country to fail. To me, that’s treason. He’s not saying anything differently than what Osama bin Laden is saying."

 

This is not a sentiment mouthed merely by the uncouth followers of the Obama administration. It is a sentiment repeatedly expressed by Obama himself. In his inaugural address, he averred "the ground has shifted" beneath his critics. In his December 2008 meeting with state governors, he informed them, "We are not going to be hampered by ideology."

 

While the Obama administration attacks the Bush administration daily, the Obama administration tolerates no backtalk from outgoing Bush officials; former Vice President Dick Cheney, who recently defended the Bush administration’s interrogation policies, was chided by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs for expressing ideas "the last election rejected." Debate must end; dissent must stop. Read article.

 

Barry Rubin, Gloria-Center.org

 

If you think Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Hizballah sounds extremist and anti-American now, wait till you hear what they say after they win upcoming elections.

 

But here's the bottom line: we are right about the forces of extremism, dictatorship, hatred, aggression, and would-be genocide.

 

And because we are right, perhaps the administration will be capable of learning this lesson as America's enemies make it increasingly obvious.

 

Even if this does happen, though, a great deal of ground can be lost by the signals it's been sending and the errors it's been making. Lebanon might well be under the control of the Iran-Syria bloc; any hope of stopping Iran from building nuclear weapons--already limited--will be altogether gone.

 

There is also the really scary question of how this administration would handle a big, dangerous crisis in the region. If such were to take place, especially during the current period of its thinking, the United States could be in serious trouble. Jimmy Carter gave us an Islamist revolution in Iran and a Marxist one in Nicaragua. These crises were, of course, based on local situations but the terrible outcome was due to a major degree from U.S. policy failings.

 

Yet, yes, I think there is some hope that the Obama administration might change. Any such process will have loads of zigs and zags. The turning point could be too long delayed or never happen at all due to a lack of courage or flexibility or ideology.

 

Perhaps, though, even if based on the most politically motivated selfish interests, the administration will heed to some extent public opinion polls that disagree with its assessments of the Middle East.

And what if he doesn't change? Then Obama might be surprised by what will happen when he runs for reelection after having led the United States through a series of crises, humiliations and defeats. Read article.

 

Party of One

Greg Lewis.org

 

"Party of one." Those are words that the wait staff at posh restaurants don't like to hear, and they're words that the American public shouldn't like to hear. In this case, they describe not a dining patron unlikely to produce a big tip, but a President who, almost literally, can't see beyond himself to understand the implications of the things he mandates for the people he presumably leads. Our President is, in fact, a party of one, incapable of leadership, capable only of bullying the American people based on the regurgitated leftist ideological claptrap he's absorbed as he bounced around during his formative years.

 

He's made virtually every "major" announcement alone. He wasted hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to fly out to Denver, Colorado, for instance, to sign the stimulus bill, something that would have been more appropriately done in the Rose Garden, with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid - the people who put together and passed that legislative monstrosity without so much as consulting any Republicans, let alone reading it - by his side.

 

His idea of leadership goes no further than paying back the people Rahm Emanuel tells him are his supporters, particularly the labor unions, including, especially, Service Employees International Union, the United Auto Workers, and the National Education Association. For narcissistic as he is - and he is a classic narcissistic personality - at his core he stands for nothing . . . nothing, that is, except the need to present himself and the ideas he's been fed to a public whose adulation he's come to expect, thanks to a complicit press corps that worships him almost as much as the core of voters who swept him into office believing he would pay their mortgages and buy them new cars. Read article.

 

Alan Dershowitz, NY Post.com

 

Rahm Emanuel is a good man and a good friend of Israel, but in a highly publicized recent statement he linked American efforts to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons to Israeli efforts toward establishing a Palestinian state. This is dangerous.

 

I have long favored the two-state solution, as do most Israelis and American supporters of Israel. I have also long opposed civilian settlements deep into the West Bank. I hope that Israel does make efforts, as it has in the past, to establish a Palestinian state as part of an overall peace between the Jewish state and its Arab and Muslim neighbors.

 

Israel in 2000-2001 offered the Palestinians a state in the entire Gaza Strip and more than 95% of the West Bank, with its capital in Jerusalem and a $35 billion compensation package for the refugees. Yassir Arafat rejected the offer and instead began the second intifada in which nearly 5,000 people were killed. I hope that Israel once again offers the Palestinians a contiguous, economically-viable, politically independent state, in exchange for a real peace, with security, without terrorism and without any claim to "return" 4 million alleged refugees as a way of destroying Israel by demography rather than violence. Read article.

 

Marsha West, Alain's Newsletter.com

 

Some Americans feel that interrogative waterboarding is “torture” and are quite worried that our enemies are subjected to this sort of practice. I find it appallingly inconsistent that they wring their hands over the alleged mistreatment of suspected terrorists and yet they fully support what goes on behind closed doors in abortion mills like Planned Parenthood.

 

If you’re pro-abortion, consider this: A fetus at 10 weeks bends, stretches, opens and closes her hands, can make a fist, lifts her head, squints, swallows and wrinkles her forehead. Now imagine a noisy suction device entering her peaceful world – to rip her fragile limbs from her body.

 

Liberals do not consider abortion torture. Waterboarding is torture.

 

Here’s what our pro-abort president had to say about waterboarding:

 

"I am absolutely convinced [banning waterboarding] was the right thing to do, not because there might not have been information that was yielded by these various detainees who were subjected to this treatment, but because we could have gotten this information in other ways, in ways that were consistent with our values, in ways that were consistent with who we are."

 

Barack Obama thinks waterboarding is inconsistent with our values. On the other hand, he thinks killing babies is consistent with who we are. Read article.

 

John Hawkins, Townhall.com

 

You really didn't learn everything you needed to know in kindergarten: Liberals love to think of themselves as sophisticated, nuanced intellectuals, but the truth is they have a kindergartner’s view of the world. If it has been defined as "nice" to people they like, they're for it. If it has been defined as "mean" to people they like, they’re against it -- and that is about as deep as it gets. Unfortunately, that lack of adult perspective isn't so cute in political leaders who are making life and death decisions that may still have ramifications fifty years from now.

 

There is no dream more eternal in the liberal heart than completely remaking human nature. If we could all just care about the person across the world as much as we do our families, we could live in a utopia! Unfortunately, in practice, human nature tends to be quite a bit more difficult to subvert than in the liberal imagination. That's why, despite more than 5,000 years of human civilization, very little progress has been made in this area – but, oh, the Left is still trying. One day, if they just spend enough money on the right government programs, all the wars will end and everyone will be living in identical million dollar mansions while we spend our days humming tunes from the latest Woodstock Tribute Album. Read article.

 

Mona Charen, JWR.com

 

Who said "Iran's development of a nuclear weapon, I believe, is unacceptable and we have to mount an international effort to prevent that from happening"? It wasn't Binyamin Netanyahu. No, President Barack Obama said that at his first press conference after winning the 2008 election.

 

The clock is ticking ominously on that front. "We feel a sense of urgency," an Israeli spokesman said as Prime Minister Netanyahu prepared for his first meeting with Obama since both were elected. All Israelis feel that sense of urgency because they have watched, frustrated, as the Bush administration signed on to a lengthy series of negotiations with Iran headed by the Europeans. With U.S. approval, the Europeans offered a smorgasbord of incentives for Iran to give up its nuclear program. They were met with meetings and more meetings. Iran agreed to nothing except more meetings in an attempt to run out the clock. Tick. Tick. Tick.

 

And now a new American administration arrives on the scene convinced, like its predecessor, that negotiations are the way to go — except, oddly, President Obama believes that he is departing from past practice. Read article.

 

Doug Bandow, Spectator.org

 

President Barack Obama has called for an improved dialogue with Islam and is planning a major speech in Egypt. He is not alone in his efforts to reach out. Pope Benedict recently visited Jordan, where he acknowledged "the burden of our common history so often marked by misunderstanding." 

 

Certainly all faiths would benefit from greater understanding. Yet no conversation will have any meaning if it does not address Islam's brutal reality: the consistent persecution of Christians, Jews, and members of other minority faiths.

 

The Organization of the Islamic Conference, made up of 56 Muslim-majority nations, led the UN campaign to denounce the "defamation" of religions. Last November the General Assembly approved a resolution targeting speech criticizing Islam. Read article.

 

Seton Motley, Newsbusters.org

 

On April 9 we wrote of an asinine assertion made about the new Arbitron radio ratings system by soon to be transferred Democratic Federal Communications Committee (FCC) Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein. Well now President Barack Obama has put the imprimatur of his FCC and Administration on Adelstein's addled notion.

 

Since the inception of tracking those who listen to Guglielmo Marconi's marvelous invention, Arbitron had relied on a personal pen-and-paper diary system and the journal-keepers' honor and memory as to what they had listened and for how long they had done so. The potential for misremembering and book-cooking was simply staggering.

 

So Arbitron came up with a pager-esque device called the Portable People Meter (PPM). This gadget automatically tracks to where the radio dial is tuned, thereby virtually eliminating human error and the ability to cheat. 

 

Obviously, this is far more accurate way to establish who is listening to whom, right? If you do find this to be a self-evident truth, you are not a master of the obvious, you are - according to the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters (NABOB) - a racist bigot. How so? Because the ratings under the new regime revealed that the numbers for hip-hop, urban and other racial minority stations had long been incorrectly inflated (and conversely the listenership of talk radio had long been underreported).

 

How so? Because the ratings under the new regime revealed that the numbers for hip-hop, urban and other racial minority stations had long been incorrectly inflated (and conversely the listenership of talk radio had long been underreported). Read article.

 

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