Ronald Kessler, NewsMax.com

 

President Obama’s strongest supporters among Jewish leaders are deeply troubled by his recent Middle East initiatives, and some are questioning what he really believes, Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, tells Newsmax in an exclusive interview.

 

Though Hoenlein says he is only offering his personal views, the conference he represents is a political powerhouse that includes 50 major Jewish groups. Among them are the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), B’nai B’rith International, the American Jewish Congress, the American Jewish Committee, the Zionist Organization of America, Hadassah, and the Anti-Defamation League. Hoenlein has been the professional head of the conference since 1986, overseeing its day-to-day activities as the coordinating body for American Jews on issues of concern in the U.S. and globally.

 

Jewish leaders “are expressing concern about what was said [in Obama’s Cairo speech],” Hoenlein says. “I’ve heard it from some of his strongest supporters. It’s expected from his detractors. Even people close to him have said to us that there were parts of the speech that bothered them.”

 

Obama’s speech to a Muslim audience in Cairo in early June was his second effort early in his administration to re-define America’s posture toward the Arab world. In April, Obama traveled to Ankara, Turkey, to offer a similar outreach to the Muslim world.

 

But many in the Jewish community, including some of Obama’s most ardent supporters, are troubled by his comments in the Middle East, especially his remarks to his Cairo audience. Read article.

Christine Simmons, One News Now.com

 

Former President Bill Clinton has told an Arab-American audience of 1,000 people that the U.S. is no longer just a black-white country, nor a country that is dominated by Christians and a powerful Jewish minority

 

In a speech to the group on Saturday, Clinton said that given the growing numbers of Muslims, Hindus and other religious groups here, Americans should be mindful of the nation's changing demographics, which led to the election of Barack Obama as president.

 

Clinton said by 2050 the U.S. will no longer have a majority of people with European heritage and that in an interdependent world "this is a very positive thing."

 

Speaking in a hotel ballroom to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee during its annual convention, Clinton also praised Obama's speech in Cairo, Egypt, that was focused on the Arab world.

 

Clinton told the audience that it's important that they push government leaders for a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Read article.

 

Henry Mark Holzer.com

 

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected President of the United States November 8, 1932, and America would never be the same. It’s well known that, for example, within days of taking office he closed the banks and then illegalized and confiscated private gold.

 

Less well known by modern generations is that FDR tried to rig the Supreme Court of the United States, and virtually unknown today is what caused the attempt.*

 

There is a rich and plentiful history about that period in America, and no mere summary can do it justice. But a sketch of what happened in the 1930s is necessary for an understanding of FDR’s Machiavellian scheme and what Obama might do.

 

By November 8, 1932 voters had their bellies full of, if not victuals, then of Herbert Hoover and the Republicans. Wall Street crashed in 1929, employment had fallen drastically, breadlines and soup kitchens abounded, Hoover’s response to the financial crisis was not working. Read article.

 

Victor Davis Hanson, NRO.com

 

In the first six months of the Obama administration, we have witnessed an assault on the truth of a magnitude not seen since the Nixon Watergate years. The prevarication is ironic given the Obama campaign’s accusations that the Bush years were not transparent and that Hillary Clinton, like her husband, was a chronic fabricator. Remember Obama’s own assertions that he was a “student of history” and that “words mean something. You can’t just make stuff up.”

 

Yet Obama’s war against veracity is multifaceted.

 

Trotskyization. Sometimes the past is simply airbrushed away. Barack Obama has a disturbing habit of contradicting his past declarations as if spoken words did not mean much at all. The problem is not just that once-memorable statements about everything from NAFTA to public campaign financing were contradicted by his subsequent actions. Rather, these pronouncements simply were ignored to the point of making it seem they were never really uttered at all.

 

What is stunning about Obama’s hostile demagoguery about Bush’s War on Terror is not that he has now contradicted himself on one or two particulars. Instead, he has reversed himself on every major issue — renditions, military tribunals, intercepts, wiretaps, Predator drone attacks, the release of interrogation photos, Iraq (and, I think, soon Guantanamo Bay) — and yet never acknowledged these reversals. Read article.

 

Sean Hannity, Fox News.com

 

President Obama claims that he wants the American people to hold him accountable for his decisions, but as Peter Baker of The New York Times points out, since taking office the president has dodged responsibility for any of our nation's problems.

 

Instead he's been engaging in one of the liberal left's favorite pastimes: blame Bush, blame Bush, blame Bush.

 

Let's take a look:

 

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA, 2/9/2009: We also inherited the most profound economic emergency since the Great Depression.

 

OBAMA, 2/24/2009: With the deficit we inherited.

 

OBAMA, 3/6/2009: We inherited a big mess.

 

OBAMA, 3/12/2009: Because of the deficits we inherited.

 

OBAMA, 3/18/2009: Because of the massive deficit we inherited.

 

OBAMA, 3/19/2009: Because of the massive debts that we've inherited.

 

OBAMA, 3/20/2009: Because of the massive deficits we inherited.

 

OBAMA, 3/25/2009: And because we've inherited a historic fiscal mess.

 

OBAMA, 6/1/2009: We inherited a financial crisis unlike any that we've seen in our time.

 

OBAMA, 6/9/2009: The financial crisis this administration inherited is still creating painful challenges for businesses and families alike.

 

This is a broken record. Isn't it time for the president to retire that line and maybe start to take some responsibility for his own? Read article.

 

Relief is too slow

Editorial, Philadelphia Inquirer.com

 

President Obama's claim that his economic stimulus plan has "saved or created" 150,000 jobs is all but meaningless, given a 9.4 percent unemployment rate.

 

Nobody can plausible measure a "saved" job. The only saved jobs we can document in Philadelphia are at the Board of Revision of Taxes - and that has nothing to do with the stimulus bill.

 

But Democrats are touting the phony concept of "saved" jobs because they know it's impossible to disprove, too. It's a lame attempt to spin criticism that the federal recession-fighting plan isn't fighting the recession very effectively so far.

 

And it's insulting to the huge number of people still looking in vain for work while their unemployment benefits expire.

 

Since the president signed the $787 billion economic stimulus bill on Feb. 17, about 1.6 million workers have lost their jobs. That's the number that really counts. And it's evidence that federal, state, and local officials aren't moving swiftly enough to put all that tax money to its best use.

 

Washington has spent $44 billion of the stimulus money so far - about 9 percent of the total that isn't going to tax cuts. The Obama administration initially projected that this effort would have lowered the jobless rate to 8 percent by now. Instead, the unemployment rate stands at a 25-year high. Read article.

 

David Broder, RCP.com

 

It was probably inevitable that the elections for governor, taking place in November in New Jersey and Virginia, would be seen by many people outside those states as a referendum on Barack Obama's performance as president.

 

Those will be the first statewide contests since he entered the White House, and they are taking place in states he won last year. But forces of history and economics add to the presidential stakes in the outcomes.

 

History: In 1993, a year after the last previous Democratic president, Bill Clinton, was elected, Republicans captured the Virginia governorship with George Allen and New Jersey's with Christine Todd Whitman. Their victories set the stage for the GOP takeover of Congress in 1994 that in turn prepared the way for George Bush's presidency.

 

After losing Congress in 2006 and the White House last year, Republicans are desperate for some good news -- and look to be competitive in both these states. Read article.

 

W. James Antle, III, Spectator.org

 

When Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) announced Tuesday that confirmation hearings would begin for Judge Sonia Sotomayor on July 13, Republicans cried foul. "[Democrats] want the shortest timeline in recent memory for someone with the longest judicial record in recent memory," complained Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to the Associated Press. "This violates basic standards of fairness and it prevents senators from carrying out one of their most solemn duties."

 

Some would say that duty is just to hold hearings and then rubberstamp whoever the president nominates, barring some major scandal. In fact, Republicans made versions of this very argument throughout the Bush years when decrying Democratic efforts to deny qualified conservative judicial nominees a straight up-or-down vote.

 

You can disagree strenuously with these aggressive and unprecedented tactics, but you have to grant this much: Democrats are much more serious about imposing their vision of the Constitution -- a vision that reduces it to the legal equivalent of Robert's Rules of Order -- on the federal judiciary than Republicans are theirs. Read article.

 

William Teach, Right Wing News.com

 

When ideology trumps compassion

 

President Barack Obama outlined another $313 billion in cuts to government health care spending over 10 years, largely impacting hospitals, as he hunts additional dollars to pay for expanded coverage for the uninsured.

 

Some major health industry groups swiftly criticized the proposal in one of the clearest signs yet that the industry is bristling at White House plans to overhaul the nation's health system.

 

The new proposals would decrease payments to hospitals and others that provide Medicare services in a variety of ways.

So, you old folks, you just stop getting medical care, OK? Suck it up and deal with it. You're old news, a drain on the treasury, a mess Obama doesn't want to clean up.

 

"We are disappointed to see cuts of this magnitude to hospitals, especially in these tough economic times," said Alicia Mitchell, a spokeswoman for the American Hospital Association, the industry's main trade group. The proposed cuts would hurt hospitals that provide intensive, pediatric and trauma care for recipients of Medicare and Medicaid, she said.

 

You poor folks need to suck it up and go away, too. You're insignificant flies in the ointment of Obama socializing the health care system. Read article.

 

Daniel Mandel, Spectator.org

 

President Barack Obama recently nominated Judge Sonia Sotomayor of New York, a Latina jurist, to replace retiring Justice David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court.

 

Prior to her nomination, there were many advising Obama to select someone at least in part on the basis of gender, ethnicity or some other disadvantaged or minority criterion.

 

This type of thinking -- that we should aspire to proportionate representation of the broader society in non-elective bodies -- is not new or unique. For example, when late last year the Australian government was deliberating on appointing a new judge to its High Court (equivalent of the U.S. Supreme Court), an Australian law professor, Ross Buckley, contended that

 

the gender of our judges matters.… A more representative judiciary promotes the public's confidence in it, which in turn strengthens the rule of law. Women bring a different perspective to the bench borne of their different life experience. We do not elect judges. We appoint them. And we should appoint females and members of minorities because they will make good judges, not because they are women or members of minorities. A judge is there to apply the law equally, without regard to personal parti pris, something which a competent judge of any sex, age, religion or ethnicity can and should do. A court is not a representative body.

 

A court is not a representative body. Read article.

Print This E-mail This

Share It: