Barry Rubin, Gloria-Center.org

 

April, wrote T.S. Elliott, is the cruelest month of all. But for hopes of peace, freedom, and moderation in the Middle East, June will play that role this year.

In Iran, Ahmadinejad backed by the spiritual guide is about to be reelected. In Lebanon, a regime backed by Iran and Syria is about to be installed.

 

It shouldn't be that way. Remember the famous sign in the Clinton for President Headquarters back in 1992, which said, "It's the economy, stupid," as the main issue? Well, in the Middle East the equivalent sign would say, "It's the Islamist revolutions, stupid."

 

And yet instead we see strategies based on a desire to believe or do anything to avoid confronting this great challenge, this uninvited battle that is sure to take up the rest of our lifetimes and very possibly much of this century's first half. Read article.

Tom DeWeese, NWV.com

 

The uproar began a few weeks ago when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a nine page report, entitled “Right-wing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.” That official document of an agency of the United States Federal government said, “Right-wing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly anti-government, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.”

 

The report also singled out returning veterans, calling them “disgruntled.” The report expresses fear that some veterans, now trained in the art of military weapons, are being recruited by “right-wing extremists” to help these groups “boost” their violent capabilities. Of course the poster child for DHS is Oklahoma bomber Timothy McVeigh.

 

That news has been reported far and wide and most have heard it. So why am I bringing this up again? Because the full story has been only marginally covered, I’ll try to connect more of the dots. Read article.

 

Conrad Black, NRO.com

 

In 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt, facing a 33 percent unemployment rate, a collapsed banking-and-exchange system, and starvation-level agricultural prices, proclaimed the gravity of the challenge and pledged to surmount it. He explained his measures carefully to the public, presented them as a comprehensive plan of action fulfilling a mandate “to put people to work,” and sent carefully drafted bills to the Congress, where they were adopted almost unaltered. His message was an attack on fear “in the warm courage of national unity.”

 

President Obama, facing a fraction of the problems that greeted Roosevelt, began by fanning fears, not calming them, and has been translating his mandate into a more radical transformation than polls indicate the country approves. Ramshackle legislation has moved through the Congress like Christmas trees on a conveyor belt, with the Democratic barons festooning them with earmarked pork baubles. The president’s rhetoric has often been divisive. Secured creditors in the automobile industry have been reviled as “speculators”; TARP-laden banks have been muscled with threats of attack by the IRS and SEC.

 

As of now, this administration is building a plane in the air, and it doesn’t look like the craft will fly far or land softly. The proposed cap-and-trade measures and increased income taxes on those who are already paying the most will stifle recovery. The bunk about “tax cuts for 95 percent of Americans” — including the 45 percent who don’t pay taxes and will be receiving cash payments called “refundable tax credits” — really just means taking money from people who have earned it and paying it out to those who haven’t. This promotes what Roosevelt called “the pauperism of the dole.” Read article.

Let Freedom Ring Blog.com

 

Rush was right in describing California’s May 19 vote as a political nuclear blast. It isn’t a stretch to say that most people are disgusted with the federal government in general and with the Obama administration’s policies in specific. They aren’t seeing results that are changing their lives.

 

In 1992, George H.W. Bush insisted that the recession had ended. That was later confirmed. Bill Clinton insisted that it hadn’t ended, even saying that President Bush 41 was out of touch. The Clinton gambit payed off because, while the recession had technically ended, people hadn’t noticed it in their lives.

 

This recession may or may not be history when the 2010 midterm elections are held but it’s almost certain that people will be feeling pessimistic about the future, especially if the unemployment rate tops 10 percent. Running into that headwind will prove to be quite the challenge.

 

That’s why Democrats can start worrying right now. Read article.

 

Rachel Marsden, Townhall.com

 

“Sitting at a restaurant table in Munich in the summer of 1932, Hitler designed the prototype for what would become the immensely successful Beetle design for Volkswagen (literally, the "car of the people"),” says the Hitler Historical Museum’s website. He then said to the head of Daimler-Benz: “Take it with you and speak with people who understand more about it than I do. But don't forget it. I want to hear from you soon, about the technical details."

 

This week, Obama imposed on American car manufacturers strict fuel efficiency and emissions standards, to be introduced in 2012. Manufacturers will reportedly get extra pats on the head for cranking out electric cars like General Motors’ Chevy Volt – which will soak American consumers for about $40,000. In other words, they’re going to make cars only hippies want, at prices only CEOs can afford. Don’t like it? Then ride a bike or take the bus. Read article.

 

Astute Blogger.Blogspot.com

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday rebuffed U.S. calls for a full settlement freeze in the occupied West Bank and vowed not to accept limits on building of Jewish enclaves within Jerusalem.

 

The note of defiance set the stage for a possible showdown with U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration, which, in talks with Netanyahu in Washington last week, pressed for a halt to all settlement activity, including natural growth, as called for under a long-stalled peace “road map.”

 

“The demand for a total stop to building is not something that can be justified and I don’t think that anyone here at this table accepts it,” Netanyahu told his cabinet, referring to Jewish settlements in the West Bank, according to an official.

 

Netanyahu said Israel had no plans to set up any new West Bank settlements. But he told Obama, according to the official, that his government “does not accept limitations on building” within what Israel defines as its capital, the Jerusalem municipality, an area that includes Arab East Jerusalem and parts of the West Bank captured in a 1967 Middle East war. Read article.

 

B. Raman, South Asia Analysis.org

 

During the US Presidential primaries last year, I had expressed my misgings that Barack Obama might turn out to be another Jimmy Carter, whose confused thinking and soft image paved the way for the success of the Islamic Revolution in Iran .

 

The subsequent Iranian defiance of the US and his inability to deal effectively with the incident in which some Iranian students raided the US Embassy in Teheran and held a number of US diplomats hostage led to the disillusionment of sections of the US electorate with him and his failure to get re-elected in 1980. The strong line taken by him against the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet troops towards the end of 1979 did not help him in wiping out the image of a soft and confused President.

 

2. The defiant action of North Korea in   testing a long-range missile with military applications last month and its latest act of defiance in reportedly carrying out an underground nuclear test on May 25, 2009, can be attributed----at least partly, if not fully--- to its conviction that it will have nothing to fear from the Obama Administration for its acts of defiance. Read article.

 

Victor Davis Hanson, NRO.com

 

After listening to Obama's speeches of the last few weeks, I think almost everyone now knows the boilerplate.

 

In essence, the script is the following: First, the president clears his throat by trashing Bush and/or the prior administration.

 

Then, as many have noted, Mr. 50/50 creates the proverbial straw men on the two extremes (e.g., those who wish to shred the Constitution to fear-monger, those who do not take threats as seriously as he does), as he places himself in-between two false poles.

 

Next he evokes his past (three themes usually here: He has lived in a different country; he is of a different race than mainstream America; and, in extremis, his father was of a religion other than Christianity), with a grand finale of pulling all that together to imply to us that if we don't share his present views, then a rare avatar of hope and change such as himself would never have been president — he being the true reification of what America always could have been (a refined trope of Michelle's "first time" she was proud of her country.)

 

Frankly, and with all due respect to our president, it is time to get a life and move on. It is almost midsummer of President Obama's first year and there is no longer any need to constantly reference the past administration, usually in disingenuous fashion. Read article.

 

Bob Pappas, Colonel USMC (Ret), Gulf1.com

 

SCULLY: When you see GM though as "Government Motors," you're reaction?

 

OBAMA: Well, you know - look we are trying to help an auto industry that is going through a combination of bad decision making over many years and an unprecedented crisis or at least a crisis we haven't seen since the 1930's. And you know the economy is going to bounce back and we want to get out of the business of helping auto companies as quickly as we can. I have got more enough to do without that. In the same way that I want to get out of the business of helping banks, but we have to make some strategic decisions about strategic industries...

 

Pappas: And, if you believe that, check with San Francisco, Mayor Newsom for the keys to the Golden Gate Bridge. The "I have enough to do without that" comment is over the top.

 

SCULLY: States like California in desperate financial situation, will you be forced to bail out the states?

 

OBAMA: No. I think that what you're seeing in states is that anytime you got a severe recession like this, as I said before, their demands on services are higher. So, they are sending more money out. At the same time, they're bringing less tax revenue in. And that's a painful adjustment, what we're going end up seeing is lot of states making very difficult choices there...

 

Pappas: California needs to dump its socialist politicians and agenda, dump illegal immigrants who alone are responsible for a huge portion of the State's debt, dump non-essential State programs, and dump Schwarzenegger.

 

SCULLY: William Howard Taft served on the court after his presidency, would you have any interest in being on the Supreme Court?

 

OBAMA: You know, I am not sure that I could get through Senate confirmation...

 

Pappas: And Obama's answer above for good reason. Despite the fact that Obama supposedly taught Constitutional law for a number of years, he has stated in so many words that he has no use for the Constitution, this despite his oath to support and defend it.

 

Pappas: It is notable that Obama has authority through the Democrats, to spend three times the total of the Bush deficits in the first four months of his Administration. It is also notable that until the Democrats were ushered into office by a righteously disgusted public over Republican political malfeasance, the country had prospered.

 

It is further notable that the root cause of the financial debacle has its roots in Democrat legislation and policies forced onto the banking system. Read article.

 

Arnold Ahlert, Political Mavens.com

 

The margin was “razor-thin,” but a Democratically-controlled Senate (59-40, awaiting the Coleman/Franken result which will likely make it 60-40 Democrat) rejected the Obama administration’s plan to bring Gitmo terrorists to the United States. The vote was 90-6.

 

Democrats are caught in a trap of their own making. The party which, for the last eight years, elevated political opportunity over national security, have suddenly–and painstakingly–realized they no longer have “someone else” to blame if terrorists launch another successful attack on America.

 

Not that they wouldn’t try. No doubt many of them still believe “blame Bush/Cheney” has a somewhat extended shelf life, at least until the next election in 2010. Any terrorist attack between now and then would most assuredly be blamed on the “inflammation of anti-American feelings in the Arab world” attributable to the “immoral” and “illegal” tactics used by the former administration to prevent such an attack.

 

Yet even now, reality intrudes. Read article.

 

Dennis Prager, JWR.com

 

In his latest address — on Guantanamo detainees — President Obama said something of extraordinary importance that seems to have been missed by the media:

 

"I know some have argued that brutal methods like water-boarding were necessary to keep us safe. I could not disagree more…I reject the assertion that these are the most effective means of interrogation."

 

Note that Mr. Obama did not say what nearly all opponents of water-boarding say — that water-boarding is not an effective method of extracting reliable, life-saving, information. Rather, what he says is that "methods like water-boarding were not necessary to keep us safe" — not necessary, not ineffective. And why does he believe this? Because they are not "the most effective means of interrogation."

 

In other words, the President's view seems to be that water-boarding the three terrorists did elicit vital, life-saving, information. However, he contends that we could have obtained all that information using means of interrogation that were both non-brutal and more effective.

 

I pray the President is right. Read article.

 

Mark Steyn, JWR.com

 

I was in Vermont the other day and made the mistake of picking up the local paper. Impressively, it contained a quarter-page ad, a rare sight these days. The rest of the page was made up by in-house promotions for the advertising department's special offer on yard-sale announcements, etc. But the one real advertisement was from something called SEVCA. SEVCA is a "nonprofit agency," just like The New York Times, General Motors and the state of California. And it stands for "South-Eastern Vermont Community Action."

 

Why, they're "community organizers," just like the president! The designated "anti-poverty agency" is taking out quarter-page ads in every local paper because they're "seeking applicants for several positions funded in full or part by the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA)" — that's the "stimulus" to you and me. Isn't it great to see those bazillions of stimulus dollars already out there stimulating the economy? Creating lots of new jobs at SEVCA, in order to fulfill the president's promise to "create or keep" 2.5 million jobs. At SEVCA, he's not just keeping all the existing ones, but creating new ones, too. Of the eight new positions advertised, the first is:

 

"ARRA Projects Coordinator." Gotcha. So the first new job created by the stimulus is a job "coordinating" other programs funded by the stimulus. What's next?

 

Gotcha. So the first new job created by the stimulus is a job "coordinating" other programs funded by the stimulus. What's next? Read article.

 

 

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