Carter in Love

From the June 13 edition of the Jerusalem Post:

Former US President Jimmy Carter was honored by the Palestinian Authority government Saturday (June 13) and pledged to support the Palestinians' campaign for independence to the end of his days.

"I have been in love with the Palestinian people for many years,"
he said Saturday, adding that this is a feeling shared by members of his family.

"I have two great-grandsons that are rapidly learning about
the people here and the anguish and suffering and deprivation of human rights
that you have experienced ever since 1948," he said.

Referring to President Barack Obama's call for an Israeli settlement freeze, Carter said that "in the future, I am sure, he will call for the dismantling of the settlements that exist."

Carter, 85, pledged his "assistance, as long as I live, to win your
freedom, your independence, your sovereignty and a good life.

Is there a more vile human being on the planet? It isn't
enough that Carter facilitated the downfall of the Shah 30 years ago and ushered
in the thugs who now murder innocent Iranians without consequence. Now he
spends his remaining days engineering the creation of an apartheid state
whose charter calls for the destruction of Jews. And to top it all
off, he has proudly infected his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren
with his sickness.

Oh happy will be the day when the earth is rid of this fetid twisted soul.

Elections Have Consequences

The U.S. House of Representatives this evening passed the largest tax increase and job killer in U.S. history.

It is clear that cap-and-trade is very expensive and amounts to nothing more than an energy tax in disguise. After all, when you sweep aside all the complexities of how cap and trade operates--and make no mistake, this is the most convoluted attempt at economic central planning this nation has ever attempted--the bottom line is that cap and trade works by raising the cost of energy high enough so that individuals and businesses are forced to use less of it. Inflicting economic pain is what this is all about. That is how the ever-tightening emissions targets will be met. Ben Lieberman, and I am the Senior Policy Analyst for Energy and Environment in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

Read Mr. Lieberman's testimony to the Senate Republican Conference on June 22.

Yes, my friends, elections do have consequences.

Iran Round-Up

The King of Pop is dead. But the saturation coverage of it lives on. So you may have missed these pieces of commentary and opinion about the Iran election protests:

Hope and Change in Iran. Cliff May of the Foundation in Defense of Democracies (FDD) was a foreign correspondent who was posted in Teheran 30 years ago during the first elections held after the Islamic revolution. He recalls being skeptical of the idea that Khomeini would bring openness and freedom to Iran, while many of the wiser and older veteran journalists believed that the revolution would bring sweetness and light to the country. It turns out that May and others who saw the regime for what it is were right. Under Khomeini's revolution Iran saw "more people executed, imprisoned, and driven into exile than under the shah, egregious violations of human rights, sponsorship of terrorism, Holocaust denial, and genocidal threats." In response, says May, today's Iranian demonstrators "are waging a revolution for hope that has been denied and change that, it seemed, would never come." The least that Obama could do is to lend them moral support.

Iranian Women Leading the Way. Michael Ledeen, the Iran expert at FDD and author of a number of books about Iran's nuclear ambitions, notes that women are playing a lead role in the protests against the Iranian theocracy. Women pose a threat to the regime, which is why they have been subjected to verbal attacks, violence and death. Ledeen even suggests that the targeting and killing of Neda Soltan (the now-famous young woman whose murder by the regime's authorities was captured on video) was an intentional act of intimidation and misogyny by the mullahs against all Iranian women. Ledeen also reports on what he sees as "cracks in the regime" based on reports of a major confab in Qom by some senior ayatollahs unhappy with the status quo.

The Obama Effect. Columnist Caroline Glick notes that the coverage by the media of the Iran story shows the tragic consequences of a media willing to "abandon the basic responsibilities of a free press in favor of acting as propagandists for the president." Even Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, both adored by the press, faced a healthy degree of media skepticism and resistance. The media's sycophancy isn't just reflected in the positive attention it gives the president, but also in its selective reporting on important events, like the Iran crisis. This in turn denies the public the information it needs to make informed decisions about the world. Says Glick, "It is due to the media's historic role in maintaining and cultivating an informed discussion and debate about current affairs that they became known as democracy's watchdog. When media organs fail to fulfill their basic responsibilities, they degenerate quickly into democracy's undertaker. "

The End of the Beginning. Roger Cohen writing in The New York Times asserts five reason why the fundamentalist regime in Iran is weakened if not doomed. One reason is that the once lofty Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini now has been exposed as nothing more than a "ruthless infighter" to his own people and has lost whatever prophet-like aura he had maintained. Another is that the "soft" intimidation of the Iranian people by the regime will now morph into brutal repression, which will create further anger and resistance among the people. A third reason is that post-"Neda," the rhetoric of Ahmadinejad about "truth and ethics" will ring hollow in the international community. Cohen fails to mention the utter absurdity of Barack Obama's Iran engagement policy in the wake of the post-election actions of the regime.

Obama’s Iran Policy Is a Bomb. So says Jonah Goldberg at The National Review, who-- unlike Cohen-- calls Obama out on his now-defunct Iran policy. Obama apparently clings to hope that he can still talk the mullahs out of their nukes. This will not work, says Goldberg, since even the President's staunchest supporters are repulsed by the brutal nature of the ayatollahs. If the regime prevails, says Goldberg, "anyone who shakes Ahmadinejad’s hands will have a hard time washing the blood off his own."

Let Them Eat Ice Cream. In her inimitable style Ann Coulter calls Obama spineless in his failure to support the Iranian uprising. But why try to paraphrase Ann Coulter when you can read her column right here? (Best line: "you might be a scaredy-cat if...the president of France is talking tougher than you."

My Open Letter to Senator Menendez

Dear Senator Menendez,

As a politically conservative Jew with a strong attachment to Israel, I commend you, a liberal non-Jewish congressional Democrat, for your strong public stance in favor of the Jewish State. Your speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate last week, widely circulated on “YouTube,” directly contradicts the sentiments of our President vis-a-vis Israel as expressed in his June 4th Cairo speech and in other contexts. I hope and pray that your forceful rejoinder to the President’s mischaracterization of Israel’s founding premise his ushers in a growing chorus of similar repudiations of the President’s Israel policy from congressional Democrats and Republicans alike.

In light of the heinous act of violence by James von Brunn, the neo-Nazi anti-Semite who murdered the security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Museum the other week, you are quite correct in your assertion that anti-Semitism has not been eliminated. You rightly condemned anti-Jewish words and deeds in America, Europe and the Middle East. But I was especially gratified by your focus on the issue of Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state, which has unfortunately been called into question at the highest levels of government.

Barack Obama asserted that Israel’s founding in 1948 as an independent state was a direct result of centuries of oppression of Jews in Europe culminating in the virtual elimination of European Jewry by the murderous Nazis. Superficially a condemnation of the Jew-hatred that resulted in the Shoah, Obama’s locution was in fact designed to plant the seed of doubt about Israel’s legitimacy in the Middle East. According to his view, Israel’s existence is nothing but an artifact of European post-war guilt. Why should Arabs continue to suffer for the misdeeds of Germany and its sympathizers when Jews are perpetrating morally reprehensible acts of their own against Arabs?

In a powerful riposte you made the undeniable case that modern Israel’s re-establishment as a nation-state is rooted not in the Holocaust but in events occurring in the time of Abraham: “The argument for Israel’s legitimacy does not depend on what we say in speeches…it has been made by history.” You acknowledge that Israel’s legitimacy has been further secured by “the men and women who have made the desert green… by Nobel Prizes earned…by lives saved…democracy defended…peace made and battles won.” From your own experiences in Israel you know that in the heart of every Jew is a strong yearning for peace.

The Arabs have invented a narrative that insists that in anticipation of its declaration of independence in 1948 the Jews of Israel forcibly evicted the Arabs of “Palestine” from their homes. Many Americans—non-Jews and Jews alike--are unaware that this Naqba –“catastrophe”-- did not happen. This is not to deny that isolated acts of brutality and terror by Jews occurred during this time period. But as historian Mitchell Bard points out, “The Palestinians left their homes in 1947-48 for a variety of reasons. Thousands of wealthy Arabs left in anticipation of a war, thousands more responded to Arab leaders' calls to get out of the way of the advancing armies, a handful were expelled, but most simply fled to avoid being caught in the cross fire of a battle.”

To listen to President Obama, it would appear that he has bought into the Arab false narrative without reservation, which explains his willingness to solve the Arab “refugee” crisis at Israel’s expense. You, however, pointed out that while 700,000 or so Arabs left Israel either voluntarily or under pressure from leaders of the surrounding Arab countries, an equal number of Jews were expelled from Arab and Muslim lands they called home for a millennium. At last check no Jew has asked these countries for reparations, territorial concessions or a right of return.

Unlike President Obama, who apparently believes an irredentist terror group like Hamas, which currently “governs Gaza,” can be brought into a unity government with Fatah and negotiate peace with Israel as its equal, you state correctly that there is no moral equivalence between Israel and Hamas:

Israel is a sovereign democratic state of Jews, Muslims and Christians…Hamas is a terrorist organization which won control of Gaza when men in ski masks waged gun battles with another branch of Palestinians. Hamas then used their control of Gaza to launch rockets at sleeping children in Israeli cities. This is the thanks Israel got for withdrawing from Gaza. Hamas does not recognize agreements that Palestinian leaders have made with Israel, does not recognize Israel’s right to exist at all and in fact is ideologically committed to Israel’s annihilation.

I wish that our President and his Secretary of State were possessed of such simple moral clarity. Instead they insist that Israeli citizens stop building in their towns and cities while Palestinians “assassinate [Israel’s] people with rockets and its national character with poisonous rhetoric.” While our Secretary of State doles out a billion dollars to Gaza, its bloody regime continues to import arms financed by Iran and Syria with the help of Egypt and Sudan for the sole purpose of killing innocent Jews.

President Obama says he is “moved” by normal Iranian citizens who risk their lives to protest a stolen election (and the Islamist theocracy), yet insists on “engaging” the brutal regime once they finish cracking the skulls of its citizens. By Obama’s lights the mullahs can be persuaded to give up their nuclear aspirations if only they will sit down across the table from him.

Indeed Israel is in your words a “rose in a desert rampant with repression.” Obama sees Israel as the problem; you see it correctly as the solution to the problem of Arab fundamentalism and extremism. As you said, “we cannot erase the moral distinctions between tyranny and freedom and we must not edit history.”

Sadly, many in the world and even in our own country would attempt just that—to blur the line between the forces of good and evil. Our President specializes in hiding his anti-Israel bias under the cloak of “evenhandedness.” It is not evenhanded to suggest that the life of the Palestinians under Israeli “occupation” is or has been anything like the extermination of the Jews under Hitler. It is the cheapest kind of moral equivalency. It is editing history.

May you be blessed by the God of Israel with the strength and courage to keep standing for Israel and the Jewish people.

Sincerely,

Scott Italiaander

"All The News That Fits...Our Agenda"

That should be the real motto of The New York Times. Blogger and writer Roger L. Simon, founder of center-right Pajamas Media, sheds light on one of the darkest chapters in 20th century history, and how it was distorted by Stalin apologist Walter Duranty, The Times' top foreign corrrespondent circa 1932.

Sadly, not much has changed at The Gray Lady. To this day the newspaper refuses to consider returning the Pulitzer awarded to Duranty in 1932, even though his lies and falsehoods in downplaying the Stalin-induced Ukranian famine of the 1930s are widely acknowledged. If the "paper of record" one day falls under the weight of its accumulated breaches of journalistic integrity and agenda-driven reporting, the Sulzberger-Ochs family will have no one to blame but themselves.

Take 6 minutes and view Roger's second installment of "Burning down The New York Times." (think Jayson Blair).

The Debt: A Visual Aid for the Math Impaired

A year ago liberals and conservatives alike excoriated George Bush for spending money like Paris Hilton on a bender. Of course, way back then we were all a little naive, believing as we did that a $450 billion fiscal year deficit was outrageous and irresponsible.

Apparently liberals have had a change of heart, now that their patron saint is president. With an FY 2009 projected deficit of almost $2 trillion, and a 10-year accumulated deficit projected by Obama's own budget team at $1o trillion, liberal outrage at spending has been strangely absent. You know, like liberal outrage over David Letterman's sexist "slut" jokes about Sarah Palin's daughter.

Next time a liberal tells you how all Obama is doing is trying to get us out of the mess that George Bush got us into, you might want to send him this two-and-a-half-minute visual aid and then ask him exactly how what Obama is doing is going to make anything better.

(HT: Chuck Stein).

Obamacare Posters

From http://www.michellemalkin.com/:

Obama's Muslim Outreach Fails First Test

Only an American administration headed by an utterly arrogant and naive ideologue could have asserted that the Iranian elections were characterized by a "robust debate" which will advance the U.S.'s ability to engage Iran in "new ways." This assertion rings hollow not just because the administration's preferred candidate lost in a rigged election. Even if the so-called "reformist" Mir Hossein Mousavi had won he would have likely followed the party line (and there is only one party in Teheran) laid out by the mullahs, the real bosses of Iran.

Of course Mousavi did not win, and the fact that Team Obama thought he could betrays either a stunning failure of intelligence vis-a-vis events in Iran or a shocking inability to understand the world as it really is. More than likely it wasn't the intelligence that was faulty, it was the way it was massaged by the utopians who populate the State Department and the White House's National Security Council. Using the Left's own derisive characterization of the Bush administration's case for war against Iraq, the Obamacons politicized the intelligence.

Notwithstanding the outcome of the Iranian election (which the nutty Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won by an apparent landslide), Obama's faux-visionary "Hope and Change" routine has morphed pathetically into "Hope for Change." Obama gives a speech in Cairo 10 days ago in which he hails Islam's "tolerance" and its indispensable contributions to humanity that his minions in government and the media hope will result in sweeping change throughout the Muslim world. (I am a little fuzzy on the need for all this change when according to Obama all is fine and dandy in Islam). This is wishing against the evidence that mere words (as long as they are Obama's) can change the directional flow of human nature and thus change the course of human events to Obama's liking.

If the election results were not a definitive rebuke to those who engage in such wishful thinking, then the events immediately following should be. According to reports, "by Saturday afternoon, riot police and Revolutionary Guards thugs were clashing with thousands of protesters who surged onto the streets of Tehran after their defeated hero, Mousavi, said he strongly protests 'the many obvious violations that could lead to tyranny in Iran.' The Iranian government has blocked Mousavi's ability to communicate to his supporter via text messaging and has refused to allow him access to Iranian TV. Even the "BBC," the Left-leaning British government controlled media, reported that their satellite has been jammed by the Iranians, preventing them from transmitting to its Persian and Middle east viewers the true state of affairs in post-election Iran.

When asked about such irregularities, including the blocking of the publication of allegations of election fraud by Mousavi's house newspaper, Ahmadinejad abjured his questioner not to worry about such things as press freedoms. ""Newspapers come and go and reappear. Don't worry about it."

Perhaps this is the Iranian regime's understanding of "robust debate." And yet it is unlikely that any of these gross displays of power and intimidation will in any way dissuade Obama from attempting to "dialogue" with the rogue regime.

And all of this comes at a time when Iran threatens Israel daily with nuclear destruction while North Korea seems determined to ratchet up the pressure on the Obama administration by threatening a nuclear confrontation if Obama enforces the U.N. Security Council's sanctions against the country. It is no coincidence that America's enemies are probing our new president for weakness, just as V.P. Biden said they would. It is apparent to them that President Obama has no stomach for standing up to those who would threaten us.

It is becoming increasing obvious that Obama is as clueless when it comes to the nature of dictatorial regimes (other than his own, at least) as he is when it comes to fiscal and economic policy. In either case such detachment from reality is dangerous. But with regard to our dealings with apocalyptic regimes like Iran and North Korea, Obama's flight from reality can be downright catastrophic.

"We are going to change the world. Please, don't interfere."

So said an American official to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, according to Israel's Channel One televison. Netanyahu's aides reportedly took that as a "threat."

Ya think?

Europe swings Right as depression deepens

So says Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, the U.K. Telegraph's International Business Editor based in London, in his business blog Monday. He notes that in European parliamentary elections "left-wing incumbents in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Poland, Denmark, and of course Britain were either slaughtered, or badly mauled." Evans-Pritchard is not quite sure why, given the "ultimate crisis of capitalism" so many of the "blue-collar working base has swung almost overnight from Left to Right," but he suspects rising unemployment is the key to it all.

Evans-Pritchard was an early economic doom-and-gloomer, and remains so even while most economists and pundits keep tending those 'green shoots" we keep hearing about. He believes that the deficit countries (U.S., U.K., Spain, etc.) have sharply increased their savings rate and thus reduced consumption while the "surplus countries" of China, Japan and Germany have not stimulated demand sufficient to offset this. According to Evans-Pritchard the global system is in depression, with a potentially devastating "Stage II" still to come (a la 1932 after the "green shoots" of 1930-31).

Speaking of green shoots, Evans-Pritchard concludes his recent piece with this:

Don't count on the political fabric of Europe holding together if our green shoots shrivel and die in the credit drought of the long hot rainless summer that lies ahead.

Tough stuff. You won't find that sort of frankness in the American business press.

Obama in Wonderland

I read parts of President Obama's appalling "Muslim outreach" speech given last week in Cairo but haven't watched the whole thing...yet. I heard it was almost an hour long and I'd rather take a root canal without Novacaine than sit through that.



Thanks to columnist and military expert Ralph Peters I may never have to. He has delivered a devastatingly sarcastic piece summarizing the whole dismal thing. Peters says thanks to Obama's speech he has learned quite a lot about Islam that he never knew before, like “Islam has a proud tradition of tolerance” and “Islam has always been a part of America’s story.” He wonders how the Founding Fathers missed that last part.



Peters most pungent line is in response to Obama's statement that “America’s strong bonds with Israel are . . . unbreakable.” "Yup," says Peters, "And they're issued by Chrysler."

Proven Wrong in Less Than a Day?

Yes, its true...I may have to admit that I erred. In Wednesday's post about journalist Caroline Glick's PJTV interview in advance of Obama's speech yesterday, I mentioned security policy expert Frank Gaffney's prediction that once Obama's policies vis a vis Israel come to light, the president will encounter resistance even from liberals in Congress. I pooh-pooed that as a "faint hope," in that liberals in Congress seemed quite ok with Obama's Middle East policies.

Today Politico.com reports that some Congressional liberals are indeed chafing at Obama's audacious bid to change drastically America's Israel policy, especially the pressure being brought to bear on Israel to halt settlement expansion. Rep. Anthony Wiener, a reliably liberal New York Democrat, said: “There’s a line between articulating U.S. policy and seeming to be pressuring a democracy on what are their domestic policies, and the president is tiptoeing right up to that line." Even the rabid defender of Obama policy Rep. Robert Wexler of Florida takes issue with the administration's broad definition of "settlements."

Democrats, or some of them anyway, apparently think it is unwise for Obama to be equating the relatively small issue of Israeli settlement expansion with Palestinian terrorism, Arab hostility to Israel and Iranian intransigence in regard to the nuclear issue. They are not likely to be comforted by Obama's Cairo speech, which continued the moral equivalence game to an outrageous degree, in effect blaming Israel for the "intolerable" plight of the Palestinians.

So it does appear, as Gaffney suggested, that there is a growing reluctance among Democrats to support fully Obama's new Israel policy, at least at the margins. Whether that reluctance will lead to full-throated resistance, or whether in any event it will have any effect on Obama's headlong rush into the arms of the enemies of freedom, is an open question.

June 4th, 2009: Day of Infamy?

Tomorrow, one day before the 42d anniversary of the famed "Six-Day War" between Israel and the Arab countries surrounding it, Barack Obama will deliver an address in Egypt, the primary antagonist and big loser of that war. While only Obama and his advisers know what is in the speech, it is not hard to predict that it will be dismaying to Israel's leaders and citizens, and millions of Jews elsewhere. Not only will Obama reiterate the themes of his interview with Al-Arabiya Arab television early in his presidency in which he advocated closer ties between America and the Arab-Islamic world, but he will likely use the speech to signal to Israel's friends and foes alike that the "special relationship" between the U.S. Israel is drawing to a close.

On the eve of this historic event it would be well to take time to watch this 15- minute PJTV interview of The Jerusalem Post's Caroline Glick. Ms. Glick is known to many who follow security issues in the the Middle East and in particular Israel for her insight and moral clarity with respect to the threats facing Israel and the West. Like her writing style, her tone and demeanor is direct, dry and humorless, which tracks rather well with her downbeat outlook on a depressing series of events. Nevertheless, I think her assessment of the current state of play between the U.S., Israel and the rest of the world is, regrettably, dead on.

Some examples:

--Obama is intentionally engineering a crisis in U.S. relations with Israel in advance of Obama's trip to the Middle East. The crisis is designed to marginalize the Israeli government in the hopes that it will crack (fall) under the pressure.

--It is now American policy to forcibly remove almost a million Jews from their homes in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria, the historical biblical lands of the Israelites) to make way for an "apartheid" Arab state in which no Jew will be permitted.

--America is openly and clearly overturning a range of strategic agreements with Israel established under previous American administrations (Democrat and Republican alike), but particularly understandings with President Bush concerning Israel's security and borders.

--The U.S. policy is now abject appeasement of the Arab world, and Israel is the "currency" we are using to do this.

--Rahm Emanuel (about whom I wrote in this space several weeks ago) is Obama's hatchet man in implementing this policy. He is actively trying to destabilize the Netanyahu government by pressuring American (liberal) Jewish organizations to criticize Israel's policies regarding settlements and borders as well as control of Jerusalem's holy sites. In effect Emanuel is trading on Obama's popularity among American Jews in order to convince them to sell out Israel.

--Obama has raised the possibility of sanctions on Israel if it doesn't follow Obama's demands on halting settlements. He has also suggested that the U.S. cannot be counted on to veto anti-Israel resolutions in the U.N.

--Palestinian leader Abbas continues to incite his populace against Israel and has not one iota of interest in peace with the Jewish state. He refuses even to entertain the notion that Israel would or should retain its Jewish character.

--The fact that there is no one among the Palestinians with whom Israel can negotiate seems not to trouble Obama one bit, for he is intent on shoveling money and support to the failed-state-in-waiting.

--Obama's decision to bypass Israel on this trip to the Middle east is a deliberate and "dismal" signal to Israel's enemies that it is now open season on Israel.

It is worth noting that Glick's colleague Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy doesn't believe that Americans will ultimately support this dastardly policy:

It is hard to believe the Obama Middle East agenda enjoys the support of the American people or their elected representatives in Congress. Historically, the public and strong bipartisan majorities on Capitol Hill have appreciated that an Israel that shares our values, that is governed democratically and that is in the cross hairs of the same people who seek our destruction is an important ally. Quite apart from a sense of moral and religious affinity for the Jewish people's struggle to survive in their ancient homeland, most of us recognize it is in the United States' strategic interest to stand with Israel.

Gaffney hopes that as Obama's policies and their implications become more widely known "he will find himself facing the sort of popular and congressional revolt that has confronted him in recent weeks on Guantanamo Bay." This is a faint hope indeed, since Obama appears to have support for his policies from the vast majority of liberal Jews and Jewish congressmen.

In the meantime, if as predicted Obama's Cairo speech is the opening salvo in a campaign to marginalize Israel, then tomorrow, June 4th, 2009, will truly be a day of infamy.