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October 13, 2009
Exclusive: Oval Office Watch – Tuesday, October 13
Most Embarrassing Moment: The Norwegian Nobel Committee makes President Obama look ridiculous. CLICK HERE.
What every American should know, but didn't ask - READ HERE.
Who Really Won? In diminishing American power abroad, Obama and the U.S. choose decline. READ IT HERE.
Obama's woes keep piling up around globe - HERE.
Obama’s Nobel Prize: The World as Farce
Benjamin Kerstein, New Ledger.com
Alfred Nobel established the peace prize with the stipulation that it should be given “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” One assumes that the phrase “done the most or the best work” implies very strongly that the price should be awarded to someone who has actually accomplished something. In all fairness, this has usually been the case with Nobel laureates. There is no denying that the likes of Theodore Roosevelt, Elihu Root, Jane Addams, Ralph Bunche, Martin Luther King, Jr., Andrei Sakharov, Mother Theresa, Anwar Sadat, Menachem Begin, and Lech Walesa, among many others, actually did manage to do things like conclude peace treaties, expose or bring down tyrannical governments, and contribute to the health and prosperity of others on a large scale.
Obama, by contrast, has precisely two concrete accomplishments to his credit: letting the military do its job with a handful of Somali pirates, and pumping enormous amounts of money into the American economy, thus far with inconclusive results. At best, the jury is still out on everything else he has attempted. On the issues that tend to interest the Nobel committee, this particularly apparent.
His engagement of the Iranians has lead nowhere; his efforts toward peace in the Middle East have proved an embarrassing failure; his pledge to reverse Bush-era security policies and close Guantanamo Bay has been, ironically, reversed; the withdrawal from Iraq is precarious; he has snubbed fellow peace prize-winner the Dalai Lama; in regard to Darfur, North Korea, Pakistan, and other trouble spots, he has done nothing; he has made no decision whatsoever in regard to Afghanistan, and will most likely pursue not peace but an escalated war. Read article.
Why No Testimony From McChrystal?
Investors.com
War Strategy: When Bush and Petraeus proposed the surge in Iraq, Democrats demanded that the general testify before Congress. So why has the Senate blocked a similar invitation to our commander in Afghanistan?
Those with memories longer than the 24-hour news cycle recall that in the dark days of the Iraq War, David Petraeus was summoned to Washington to explain the surge strategy that would eventually lead to victory in Iraq.
Democrats hoped for a show trial. MoveOn.org took out a full-page ad in the New York Times labeling the commanding general of our efforts in Iraq "General Betray-us." Then there was Sen. Hillary Clinton telling Petraeus, "I think that the reports that you provided to us really require the willing suspension of disbelief."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is on record boasting of how he "forced" Petraeus to testify before the Senate on his plans for Iraq, a war he had declared we had already "lost." Back then, the goal of Democrats was to embarrass a Republican president and make Reid's statement a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But as it turned out, Petraeus gave a virtuoso performance, giving a realistic assessment of the situation on the ground and explaining to Congress and the American people in unfiltered words how his strategy would work and why it was necessary.
Sen. John McCain wants to give Gen. Stanley McChrystal, our embattled commander in Afghanistan, the same opportunity. Read article.
The Buck Passes Here - According to Obama’s chorus of whiners, nothing is ever his fault.
Victor Davis Hanson, NRO.com
Meet the Obama whiners. “They did it” is the new administration’s credo when things go wrong. Most often, the culprit for disappointment in Obama’s hope-and-change agenda remains George W. Bush — a sort of modern-day fallen angel Azael, whose wickedness is persistent and omnipresent.
Nine months after his departure, the former president insidiously still has his hand in almost everything that seems to plague Barack Obama’s utopian plans. At other times “the Republicans,” “the far Right,” “conservatives,” or even the “mob” have kept America from getting the future it deserves. One would never guess that the Democrats have held the Senate and the House since 2006, own the executive branch, and enjoy the support of the ever-obsequious media.
Instead, demons everywhere are busy at work to stall Obamism.
Civil-rights problems? “Cowards!” Attorney General Eric Holder yells at his countrymen. Energy stasis? “Teenagers!” we Americans are, Energy Secretary Steven Chu sermonizes about the ill-informed electorate. More problems with terrorists? The old bogeyman Bush created a “global war” mindset that served only to “validate al-Qaeda’s twisted worldview” — or so insists the new terrorism czar, John Brennan.
Persistent joblessness? It can only be the aftereffect of the Bush-induced financial panic of over a year ago — not past bipartisan criminality at Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, or present failed stimuli, or massive deficits, or the current climate of chronic uncertainty, given that business has no idea of the cost of promised high taxes to come, health-care reform to come, cap-and-trade to come, or anything else to come. We have forgotten that John Kerry ran in 2004 on the notion of a Bush-induced “jobless recovery” — when unemployment was at 5.4 percent, just a little more than half of what it is currently. Read article.
What Was Obama Thinking?
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., JWR.com
In the wake of the debacle of Chicago's rejection as the Olympic venue for the 2016 summer games, the question probably occurred to most Americans: What was President Obama thinking when he dramatically personalized the U.S. bid by joining his wife in Copenhagen to appeal for the selection of his adopted city?
Apparently, the answer lies with the hubris that has characterized Obama's ascendancy. To be sure, most politicians have outsized egos. It is not just an occupational hazard; it seems to be a necessary character defect for many of those willing to submit themselves to the often-nasty bump-and-grind of elective politics.
Still, Barack Obama has long seemed in a class of his own when it comes to his self-confidence, seemingly born of a charmed life of extraordinary opportunities and, by and large, a lack of accountability for his actions. In this case, his arrogance appears to have caused him and his handlers to believe that, by taking the unprecedented step of having an American president show up in person to lobby the International Olympic Committee (IOC), his rock-star status would assure Chicago's selection.
It is clear that, in the aftermath of the IOC's decision to eliminate America's Windy City in the first round of voting and to select instead Rio de Janeiro, this rejection was not only a stunning personal failure for "The One," (a title Obama's admirers seem to have embraced as much as his critics). It amounts to a repudiation of the United States, contributing - whether intentionally in this instance or not - to the sort of "diminishing of our country" that I have previously described as one of three elements of the "Obama Doctrine." (The other two are "undermining of our allies" and "emboldening of our enemies.") Read article.
Good News for Terrorists: Dem Revisions to the Patriot Act
Morris & McGann, Vote.com
If only terrorists would be so accommodating as not to change cell phones, the new curbs on the Patriot Act being pushed by Democrats in Congress would not be so dangerous. But, unfortunately, even a book entitled Terrorism for Dummies would tell them to use multiple cell phones to plot their mayhem.
In the aftermath of Oklahoma City, President Clinton asked Congress for authority to order roving wiretaps, targeting the terror suspect rather than one specific phone. If he changed phones, the FBI could tap each new phone he used without getting a separate warrant. Congress unwisely and unaccountably refused. But when President Bush renewed the request, after 9-11, Congress included the authorization in the Patriot Act. But this provision and many other essential investigatory tools is subject to sunset at the end of the year. Unless affirmatively renewed by Congress, they will lapse.
Drug enforcement agents have long used roving wiretaps but anti-terror investigators will not be able to use them if Congress doesn't extend the authority. Our anti-terror investigators will be back to the one phone-one warrant rule.
Former Bush Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, writing in an op-ed in Friday's Wall Street Journal notes that roving wiretaps "helped thwart a plot earlier this year to blow up synagogues in Riverdale, New York." Yet liberal Democrats are fighting the renewal of the roving wiretap authority as part of a broad offensive against the very Patriot Act provisions, which have kept us safe (often by narrow margins) since 9-11. Read article.
What The Left Really Pledges Allegiance To
Ben Johnson, NewsRealBlog.com
The focus on America’s moral failures (mostly imagined) is a constant refrain of the Left.
As the Olympics head to Rio, unemployment edges toward ten percent, and Tehran barrels toward a nuclear weapon, the Left continues its “Question the Patriotism of Conservatives” tour ‘09. In one of the more unlikely scenarios of recent television history, MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” compared President Obama’s perpetual criticism of his country favorably against Rush Limbaugh. The episode was outstanding for its audacity and the light it shed on where the Left really pledges its allegiance.
Shortly after slamming conservatives’ “lack of patriotism” and insisting opposition to Obama’s myopic focus on the Chicago Olympics “rivals Jane Fonda sitting on a gun in North Vietnam,” Ed Schultz decided to talk patrotism with Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-IL, who enjoys a cozy relationship with the Chicago branch of the Democratic Socialists of America…
Schultz played a clip of Rush ascribing part of the Olympic Committee’s rejection of Chicago’s bid to the fact that the president has “been running around the world for nine months telling everybody how much our country sucks.” Schakowsky replied, “How dare Rush Limbaugh – how dare he say that this president goes around talking about how bad our country is? [Obama] has finally been able to establish us as real participants in the world community.”
Blithely unaware what she said is itself an anti-American slur (America was not a “participant” in the world community B.B.O. – Before Barack Obama? America is only good if it is held in check by UN regulations?), she not only ignored the president’s harsh rhetoric; she confirmed it. Read article.
Swimming Upstream: The Life of a Conservative Professor in Academia
Ron Lipsman, American Thinker.com
I have been a faculty member at a major State University for 40 years. Several years after my arrival, I voted for George McGovern. Eight years later, I voted for Ronald Reagan. In those eight years, my family and I experienced several traumas that caused me to reevaluate -- and ultimately, drastically alter -- the political, cultural and economic axioms that had governed my life.
Within months of buying my first home in an excellent neighborhood, within walking distance to the University and, most importantly, located in a district with an outstanding local public elementary school, my five year old son was forcibly bussed to an inferior school, many miles away, in a horrible neighborhood in order to satisfy the utopian vision of a myopic federal judge. This betrayal of my fundamental rights was undoubtedly the greatest shock to my political psyche.
Another was a Sabbatical year spent living and working in Jerusalem, during which time the UN issued time the infamous "Zionism is racism" resolution. I was able to observe firsthand that the standard propaganda about Israel and Zionism that was promulgated in America and elsewhere -- almost exclusively by those on the Left that I had formerly supported -- was nothing more than bald-faced, hateful lies. This and other events in the 1970s caused me to rethink everything that I had taken for granted since adolescence about how the world worked.
I emerged from the exercise as an enthusiastic conservative. Thus I was no longer your average faculty member who adhered to the liberal party line, but instead one of a tiny cadre who completely disagreed with the leftist mentality that dominated the thought of campus faculty and administrators. Read article.
Reagan and Obama: Is America a city on a hill or a country in decline?
Jean Kaufman, Weekly Standard.com
Ronald Reagan believed in America.
One way he expressed this faith was through the image of "a shining city on a hill," a phrase Reagan uttered in one form or another in many of his speeches, including his 1989 Farewell Address in which he said, "I've spoken of the shining city all my political life." It was an expression with religious as well as historical origins, and referred to American exceptionalism.
Reagan believed in America's exceptionalism. Obama believes in Obama's exceptionalism.
Obama is not merely observing a downward trend and trying to shepherd this nation through the process. He believes such a downward direction is the morally proper one for America and Americans, the only way we can be forgiven our manifold sins and emerge purified through humility and sacrifice.
Obama also believes that he is the special instrument by which the nation can accomplish this transformation. That, more than any specific policy on any specific issue, is the goal of Obama's presidency: the shriving and humbling of America. That is what Obama means by "fundamental change." Read article.
Elites and Tyrants
Walter E. Williams, Townhall.com
Rep. Diane Watson said, in praising Cuba's health care system, "You can think whatever you want to about Fidel Castro, but he was one of the brightest leaders I have ever met." W.E.B. Dubois, writing in the National Guardian (1953) said, "Joseph Stalin was a great man; few other men of the 20th century approach his stature. ... But also -- and this was the highest proof of his greatness -- he knew the common man, felt his problems, followed his fate." Walter Duranty called Stalin "the greatest living statesman . . . a quiet, unobtrusive man." George Bernard Shaw expressed admiration for Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin.
Mao Tsetung was admired by many academics and leftists across our country. Just think back to the campus demonstrations of the '60s and '70s when campus radicals, often accompanied by their professors, marched around singing the praises of Mao and waving Mao's little red book, "Quotations from Chairman Mao Tsetung." Forty years later some of these campus radicals are tenured professors and administrators at today's universities and colleges, as well as schoolteachers and principals indoctrinating our youth.
It was decent but misguided earlier generations of Germans, like many of today's Americans, who would have cringed at the thought of genocide, who built the Trojan horse for Hitler to take over.
Few Americans have the stomach or ruthlessness to do what is necessary to make their governmental wishes come true. They are willing to abandon constitutional principles and rule of law so that the nation's elite, who believe they are morally and intellectually superior to the rest of us, can have the tools to implement "social justice." Those tools are massive centralized government power. It just turns out last century's notables in acquiring powerful central government, in the name of social justice, were Hitler, Stalin, Mao, but the struggle for social justice isn't over yet, and other suitors of this dubious distinction are waiting in the wings. Read article.
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