Barry Rubin, Gloria-Center.org

 

Many Western analysts and journalists are treating the stolen election in Iran as something of no international significance. After all, they say, it is only an internal matter. Why should it affect Western attempts to engage with the Islamist regime?

 

 If we hadn't been previously conditioned by so many crazy ways to view Middle East politics this alone would be a shocker. True, in international affairs one has to deal with many dictatorships and national interests sometimes require putting aside one's repugnance at repression.

 

(Though, by the way, are we now going to see efforts at academic boycotts and nonstop human rights' denunciations of Iran in the manner apparently reserved for democratic Israel?).

 

Let me put it this way. I certainly expected Ahmadinjad to win but figured the regime would play out the game. He'd either genuinely gain victory in the second round or they'd change just enough votes to ensure his victory. What no one expected is that the regime would tear up the whole process like this. Their brazen way of doing so--if you don't like it you can go to hell, we're going to do whatever we want, and we don't care what anyone thinks--signals to me that this ruling group is even more risk-taking and irresponsible than it previously appeared. Read article.

 

Powerlineblog.com

 

On Friday, President Obama had this to say about the election in Iran:

 

We are excited to see what appears to be a robust debate taking place in Iran. Whoever ends up winning the election in Iran, the fact there has been a robust debate hopefully will advance our ability to engage them in new ways.

 

This was an extremely foolish comment for at least two reasons. First, the debate in Iran was circumscribed. The candidates were screened by the mullahs. Four were permitted to run; hundreds were deemed insufficiently in tune with the "Revolution." And there appars to have little or no debate on the issue of primary concern to the U.S. -- Iran's nuclear program. Ahmadinejad's main rival, Mir-Hossein Moussavi, was in full agreement with the regime on this matter.

 

Second, there was always a strong possibility of election fraud. Robust debate, even had it existed, would be meaningless in the face of a fraudulent election. Thus, Obama should not have lauded the election, much less characterized it as advancing our ability to engage Iran in new ways, until he was satisfied that the election was honest. A fraudulent election in which the existing, intransigent regime claims a landslide victory will not advance our ability to engage in Iran in new ways.

 

A day later, it seems clear that the election was fraudulent. U.S. officials have said as much off-the-record. They find it "not credible" that Mousavi would have lost the balloting in his hometown or that a third candidate, Mehdi Karoubi, would have received less than 1 percent of the total vote.

 

So Obama has praised an election that appears to have been a travesty. It's difficult to see how either Iran's rulers or its dissidents can view him as other than a fool -- usefully so in the case of the rulers; criminally so in the case of the dissidents. Read article.

Mark Alexander, Patriot Post.us

 

Churchill delivered his "finest hour" speech, to the House of Commons: "I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Upon it depends our own British life, and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that ... if we can stand up to him, all Europe may be freed and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age.... Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves, that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'"

 

On 4 June 2009, Barack Hussein Obama endeavored to appease the world's most dangerous fascist movement since the Third Reich. Islam has long provided safe haven for the Islamist movement of "Jihadistan," that borderless nation of countless jihadis devoted to the destruction of the West and the imposition of a worldwide caliphate and Shariah law. If we seek to appease this abominable movement rather than confront it, the world most certainly will, as Churchill warned, "sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age."

 

Last fall, Obama campaigned on a promise to mollify our Islamic foes and "re-set" the terms of understanding between American democracy and Middle Eastern tyranny -- to great applause from his legions of mesmerized peacenik sycophants.

 

In January, Obama recommitted to making peace with Islam, saying, "I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries."

 

Before his departure for the Middle East on 2 June, a key Obama aide reiterated Obama's Muslim roots: "The president himself experienced Islam on three continents ... you know, growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father -- obviously Muslim Americans are a key part of Illinois and Chicago."

 

Then Obama served up this gem: "Now, the flip side is I think that the United States and the West generally, we have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam. And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslims Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world." Read article.

 

Thomas Sowell, Townhall.com

 

In an age that values cleverness over wisdom, it is not surprising that many superficial but clever books get more attention than a wise book like "The Character of Nations" by Angelo Codevilla, even though the latter has far more serious implications for the changing character of our own nation.

 

The recently published second edition of Professor Codevilla's book is remarkable just for its subject, quite aside from the impressive breadth of its scope and the depth of its insights. But clever people among today's intelligentsia disdain the very idea that there is such a thing as "national character."

 

"The Character of Nations" is about far more than the fact that there are different behavior patterns in different countries-- that, for example, "it is unimaginable to do business in China without paying bribes" but "to offer one in Japan is the greatest of faux pas."

 

The real point is to show what kinds of behaviors produce what kinds of consequences-- in the economy, in the family, in the government and in other aspects of human life. Nor do the repercussions stop there. Read article.

 

Lynn Stuter, NWV.com

 

During the 2008 presidential campaign, rumors circulated that Also Known As (AKA) Obama was a Muslim; that he had studied Islam extensively while an Indonesian citizen attending school in Jakarta, Indonesia.

 

In response to these rumors, AKA's website fightthesmears posted the following:

 

"Barack Obama is a committed Christian. He was sworn into the Senate on his family Bible. He has regularly attended church with his wife and daughters for years. But shameful, shadowy attackers have been lying about Barack’s religion, claiming he is a Muslim instead of a committed Christian. When people fabricate stories about someone’s faith to denigrate them politically, that’s an attack on people of all faiths. Make sure everyone you know is aware of this deception."

 

Unfortunately, it seems, fightthesmears is the one "fabricat[ing] stories." The more the American people watch AKA perform, the more convinced they are that AKA is a closet Muslim. A few of the incidents that give indication: Read article.

 

Richard L Benkin, Interfaith Strength.com

 

There is growing concern in the United States over President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, especially in South Asia and West Asia. Although Mr Obama still enjoys media support and spillover goodwill from the election, more Americans are questioning his policies’ wisdom. He is alienating friends and trying to woo enemies; pushing away his strongest allies in the war against Islamist extremism, Israel and India, and pretending that nations behind global jihad (Iran and Pakistan) will help defeat it.

 

Even members of his own party are wary. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently appeared before the US House Appropriations Committee to deliver the Obama line on Israel, it was Democrat Nita Lowey (along with Republican Mark Kirk) who replied that if the Administration was going to tie Israel’s hands, the House would counter by “restricting aid to the Palestinian Authority”.

 

Missing in the debate thus far has been concern for the developing ‘Hindu Holocaust’ in South Asia. In several policy pronouncements numerous speeches about the situation in South Asia, Mr Obama never once mentioned the human rights disaster that is rapidly bringing an end to the remaining Pakistani Hindu community. Nor has protecting 13,000,000 Bangladeshi Hindus ever figured in his grand design for South Asia.

 

While President Obama speaks of the need for international support and regional cooperation, he never once suggested that international aid be sent to care for the thousands of Pakistani Hindus who have been streaming into Indian Punjab. He has never challenged human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to investigate regularly-reported atrocities against Bangladeshi Hindus and the ensuing refugee nightmare; nor has he ever suggested that Bangladesh’s Vested Property Act is a racist law that is incompatible with his vision of peace in South Asia. Read article.

 

Morris & McGann, Vote.com

 

It's increasingly looking like President Obama may be sunk by his own deficit.

 

Yes, the recession started under George W. Bush -- and voters will still blame him for unemployment and related woes. But rising interest rates and inflation are the coming fears -- and Americans will increasingly see Obama's big-spending ways as the cause.

 

Deficit spending has always been Americans' bete noir; the gospel of balanced budgets is deeply ingrained in our political and economic psyche. Through all the Keynesian experiments of the '60s and '70s, voters remained committed to a balanced budget. They worried as deficits rose in the Reagan years -- then calmed as the economy turned up.

 

But when the news turned bad under the first President George Bush, they blamed the deficit -- the issue was a major source of Ross Perot's appeal in the 1992 election. And when President Bill Clinton (and a Republican Congress) finally balanced the budget, the economy bloomed -- reinforcing public beliefs about the dangers of deficits.

 

Still in shock over the financial collapse, voters tolerated the massive government stimulus package in January. But now they're starting to turn on the deficit-makers.

 

In the latest Gallup Poll, Obama's favorability remains high (67 percent), as does his job-approval rating (61 percent). But only 55 percent approve of his handling of the economy, just 45 percent approve of his handling of federal spending and only 46 percent approve of his treatment of the budget deficit.

 

Meanwhile, the Rasmussen poll finds that the public now trusts Republicans over Democrats in managing the economy (for the first time in two years) by 42 percent to 36 percent. Read article.

 

Noel Sheppard, Fox Forum.Blogs.com

 

“The greatest threat to America is not necessarily a recession, or another terrorist attack. The greatest threat to America is a liberal media bias.”

 

So said Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) last week as he announced the creation of a new Media Fairness Caucus, telling NewsMax, “If the American people can’t get good information, can’t get the facts, and can’t make good decisions, then we simply don’t have a viable democracy.”

 

Although folks in the liberal blogosphere predictably ridiculed Smith’s comments, any honest assessment supports his concerns about the continually declining journalistic standards employed by today’s news media.

 

All one need do is examine what happened during the 2008 presidential campaign, as well as since, and it is quite easy to conclude that not only is democracy being subverted by a relatively small number of people, but the net result could be far more long-lasting than the aftermaths of the 9/11 attacks and the Great Depression.

 

Before casting this aside as so much conservative posturing, ask yourself whether Barack Obama would be president today if the press had fully vetted him back in 2007 when he first announced his candidacy. Read article.

 

Francis Cianfrocca, Commentary Magazine.com

 

That some should be rich shows that others may become rich,” said Abraham Lincoln, “and hence, is just encouragement to industry and enterprise.” Barack Obama has made it quite clear he wants to be seen as Lincoln’s heir. But in this instance, he is an heir in open rebellion. He is promising a range of policy initiatives that will have the effect of closing off new pathways to wealth, to the detriment not only of our economy but of our national life as well.

 

It’s a matter of some debate among economists whether the private generation of wealth is a necessary precondition for providing the means for a decent prosperity that can be shared by all. Clearly, there are and always have been societies throughout the world in which a small class of wealthy families controls the wealth of their nation or region and does little or nothing to spread it around. In those cases, usually in economies that maintain aspects of feudalism or that run along mercantilist lines, the rules of the marketplace are rigged in their favor.

 

But what of economies organized along market principles, like ours? These are a very different matter. Milton Friedman and his intellectual forebears in the Austrian School famously argued that free-market capitalism, in which people engage in largely ungoverned commercial activity that places them in active competition with each other, produces maximal prosperity for all levels of society in the aggregate. Read article.

 

Dr. Laurie Roth, The Roth Show.com

 

How can we forget the Hillary Clinton ad and Barack Obama’s response back during the hard fought presidential race? “It’s 3 a.m. and your children are safe and asleep.” The announcer says “But there’s a phone in the White House, and it’s ringing - something’s happening in the world. Your vote will decide who answers that call.”

 

Of course Obama was not happy with that ad at all and issued a rather terse statement:

 

“I don’t think these ads will work this time because the question is not about picking up the phone. The question is, what kind of judgment will you exercise when you pick up that phone. In fact, we have had a red phone moment: it was the decision to invade Iraq.”

 

Is anyone home at the White House? Van Hipp, the former Deputy Secretary of the Army and President of American Defense International www.americandefense.net said it best this week on Fox and on my national radio show, “The 3 AM call came and it went straight to voice mail.”

 

Van was referring to the complete absence of a proper response to N. Korea for their continued nuclear tests, threats to our military ships and to our allies in South Korea. Naturally it doesn’t mean that North Korea’s latest nuclear test will cause a nuclear attack but given their defiance to the west and the world, they have declared nuclear ambitions of equipping terrorists to attack us.

 

Van Hipp was one of the first defense experts who pointed out the close interaction and history of sharing missile and nuclear technology between N. Korea and Iran. The world watched and did nothing as the sharing of missile technology escalated. Now, N. Korea is dramatically more threatening, nuclear, still involved closely with Iran and a SERIOUS national security threat Read article.

 

Roger Schlesinger, Townhall.com

 

Since the President announced his health plan where we add half the free world to our list of those who will have health coverage, and announced that we will save money doing it, I know something is "rotten in Denmark". Under the most liberal of all translations, I had trouble with this claim. Most of my compatriots simply say who cares about what is being said, "If it is being said by a politician then it isn't true." I care because the investment community actually uses these data points to make decisions.

 

Right now, the figures being used are not helping us and in fact are hurting our chances to come out of the recession in a short period. It's bad enough that as a nation we are borrowing more money than we have since the day this nation was formed. We are arranging the figures to overstate the recovery, which is tentative at best, resulting in pushing the interest rates higher. Why does this happen? Read article.

 

Alex Alexiev, NRO.com

 

With the media’s rhapsodic paeans to President Obama’s “historic” Cairo speech now receding into the background, this may be an opportune moment to take a sober look at America’s policies vis-à-vis the Muslim world and, no less important, at where Islam itself may be heading.

 

It is now clear that the president is either unable or unwilling to come to terms with the nature of the radical Islamic threat to America and the West. To him, the problem is a few violent extremists, a “small but potent minority of Muslims,” which leaves one wondering how a small minority got to be quite so potent.

 

In any case, the West is dealing not with a few militants, or even with terrorism as such, but with a murderous, totalitarian doctrine couched in Islamic terms that has already become the dominant idiom in much of the Muslim world and its diaspora communities. Whether it is called “radical Islam,” “Islamism,” “Salafism,” or “Islamofascism,” it aims at nothing short of the conquest of the world for Islam, by violent means if need be. And not just any kind of Islam, but the most reactionary and intolerant interpretation of the Muslim faith. Read article.

 

Philip Klein, Spectator.org

 

The biggest obstacle President Obama faces in selling his health care agenda could be the albatross of his own economic stimulus package.

 

During its last major sales push, the Obama administration promised the $787 billion stimulus legislation would create up to 4 million jobs over the next two years, serve as a model of transparency, and be free of earmarks. But those claims haven't held up so well.

 

In the months since Obama signed the bill in February, more than 1.6 million jobs have been lost. His own vice president, Joe Biden, tasked with overseeing the implementation of the stimulus package, declared last week that "We know some of this money is going to be wasted.…Some people are being scammed already." Meanwhile, USA Today reported that lawmakers were working behind the scenes to make sure that money gets directed to their own pet projects, such as "$5 million for the removal of pine trees killed by bark beetles in Colorado." There are signs of a growing public skepticism about the stimulus package. A Rasmussen poll released on Wednesday found that 45 percent of Americans favor canceling the rest of the stimulus money, compared to just 36 percent who disagree and 20 percent who aren't sure.

 

There are signs of a growing public skepticism about the stimulus package. A Rasmussen poll released on Wednesday found that 45 percent of Americans favor canceling the rest of the stimulus money, compared to just 36 percent who disagree and 20 percent who aren't sure. Read article.

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