WE MUST NEVER FORGET…NOW MORE THAN EVER..!
In God We Trust
When I was a kid, Ike was president, I couldn’t ever imagine why he was so popular. Maybe this has something to do with it:
General Eisenhower Warned Us
It is a matter of history that when the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, General Dwight Eisenhower,found the victims of the death camps he ordered all possible photographs to be taken, and for the German people from surrounding villages to be ushered through the camps and even made to bury the dead.
He did this because he said in words to this effect:
‘Get it all on record now – get the films – get the witnesses -because somewhere down the road of history some bastard will get up and say that this never happened’
This week, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it ‘offends’ the Muslim population which claims it never occurred. It is not removed as yet.. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving into it.
It is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in Europe ended.. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the 6 million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10 million Christians, and 1,900 Catholic priests Who were ‘murdered, raped, burned, starved, beat, experimented on and humiliated’ while the German people looked the other way!
Now, more than ever, with Iran , among others, claiming the Holocaust to be ‘a myth’,it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets?
This e-mail is intended to reach 400 million people! Be a link in the memorial chain and help distribute this around the world.
How many years will it be before the attack on the World Trade Center
‘NEVER HAPPENED’,
because it offends some Muslim in the U.S. ???
FREEDOM ISN’T FREE…SOMEONE HAD TO PAY FOR
—
Pastor Freddy McMillen
John 3:30
The Obama Administration: A Systematic Failure
Janet Napolitano’s incompetence is merely the tip of the iceberg.
by Bill Levinson
Many circus and Coney Island sideshow performers have genuine talent and qualifications; the human blockhead act, for example, requires skill and practice to avoid self-injury. In 2008, however, the American people played a sick practical joke on themselves by electing a clown (more like the Joker as portrayed by the late Heath Ledger) with no talent or qualifications whatsoever, and said clown promptly staffed his Administration with a collection of equally unqualified freaks as shown below. Unless voters close this sideshow by removing the Democratic majority in the House and Senate, its admission price will consist of trillions of dollars in taxpayer money and economic damage to the United States.
Janet Napolitano demonstrated her total unfitness to lead Homeland Security when she defined gun owners, pro-lifers, veterans of our Armed Forces, and people who oppose illegal immigration (i.e. they oppose something that is a crime under the laws of the United States) as potential terrorists, while apparently overlooking militant “Muslims” who correspond with Al Qaida. After one of the latter allegedly tried to blow up an airplane with explosives he had smuggled aboard, she declared that the system that supposedly protects us from such acts worked. Dolores Umbridge pink is exactly the right color for Napolitano, noting that the fictional villainess of the Harry Potter series said that people like Harry Potter, as opposed to Lord Voldemort, were the “potential terrorists” of her world.
Next we come to Eric Holder’s “Justice” Department, which seeks to prosecute CIA agents who protect us from terrorism (but Lord Voldemort doesn’t exist, and Harry Potter is the boy who lies, correct?) but overlooks alleged intimidation of voters by the Obama campaign, as well as potentially illegal Internet gambling by the Obama campaign. The former was alleged not by Republicans but by Hillary Clinton (Barry’s current Secretary of State) while we have personal knowledge of the latter; we received solicitations for “Dinner with Barack” that required a donation of $5 or more to enter.
Only after complaints from Minnesota law enforcement did the Obama campaign modify this solicitation to allow entry without a donation, thus making it not a lottery. In addition, the announcement of a winner (Dorothy Unruh) before the entry deadline suggested that not every entrant had an equal chance to win, thus making it not only a lottery but a dishonest lottery whose organizers cheated. Even an illegal numbers game that is run by organized crime is more honest, because at least everybody who enters has the same chance to win.
More recently, a veteran Justice Department attorney was removed from his post and transferred–possibly for doing his job by seeking prosecution of stick-wielding Black Panthers who allegedly intimidated voters during the 2008 election.
The complaint, which accused party members of intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place while wearing black berets, black combat boots, black dress shirts and black jackets with military-style markings, and wielding a nightstick, was later dismissed by Obama administration political appointees at the Justice Department.
Since it is apparent that Eric Holder is going to enforce one U.S. Code Title 18 for Barack Obama’s campaign and the Black Panthers, and a different U.S. Code Title 18 for ordinary citizens, and also Barack Obama’s executive order that grants diplomatic immunity to Interpol agents, we must now familiarize our readers with their rights and responsibilities as jurors and also what to say when questioned by the police (or, more importantly, a member of Obama’s civilian security force, private army, Obamajugend, or whatever): “I have nothing to say, Sir,” or “I have nothing to say, Officer.” See also “Do Not Talk to the Police” as presented by an attorney and a veteran police officer.
The above does not apply, of course, if you see a militant “Muslim” assembling what appears to be a bomb, chanting to Allah, and placing phone calls to Al Qaida while waiting at an airport terminal. In that case, you talk to the police on the spot, and hope you don’t get sued for “profiling.” We meanwhile just reported an illegal online pharmacy to the DEA for offering to sell Xanax over the Internet. “Do Not Talk to the Police” does NOT apply to your moral and possibly legal duty to report a felony, and especially a violent felony, or to testify about what you saw. The YouTube presentation points out, however, that Martha Stewart would not have gone to jail had she simply refused to talk to Federal investigators, and there is the classic example of the traffic cop who pulls you over and asks, “Do you know why I pulled you over?” If you tell him what you thought you might have done, he can write a ticket without having to worry about a successful defense in court. On the other hand, if he was confident that he could write a ticket that would hold up in court, he wouldn’t need to ask.
There was also the situation, admittedly on George Bush’s watch, in which New Orleans police illegally confiscated firearms from city residents during the flood. Citizens could have handled this by replying to the question, “Do you have any guns in the house?” with “I have nothing to say, Officer.” If he asks if he can come inside and look, ask “Do you have a warrant, Officer?” Since he doesn’t, the answer is, “No, Officer, I cannot allow you inside without a warrant.” It is unfortunate that we must discuss these things but, in light of the Eric Holder Justice Department’s two sets of U.S. Codes along with an executive order that grants diplomatic immunity to foreign law enforcement personnel, they now need to be discussed.
Next we come to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, who recently proclaimed a gas we all exhale every few seconds a hazard to human life. The Wall Street Journal published a credible allegation of scientific misconduct, specifically suppression of research or information that does not support a given commercial or political agenda, in Ms. Jackson’s organization. The buck stops with her, and she is responsible for the alleged scientific misconduct and academic dishonesty.
Dr. Alan Carlin, a 37-year agency veteran, was muzzled earlier this spring. Dr. Carlin offered a report poking holes in the science underlying the theory of manmade global warming. His superior, Al McGartland, complained the paper did “not help the legal or policy case” for Team Obama’s decision to regulate carbon, told him to “move on to other issues,” and forbade him from discussing it outside the office.
Scientific misconduct is cause for a private business or university to be banned from receiving Federal contracts, and Lisa Jackson’s EPA underscores our belief that there is now one set of laws for Barack Obama and his cohorts, and an entirely different set of laws for everybody else. This in turn reinforces the need for what we just discussed above.
Finally we have Obama’s Green Jobs czar Van Jones: the moral equivalent of a Holocaust denier who signed a letter that questions what “really happened” on 9/11. It speaks for itself, and it is vital that Americans end the Democrats’ majority this November to prevent further damage to the country. Then we must correct the root cause of the problem in November 2012.
Obama’s Worst Policy Decisions –by Thomas Del Beccaro
From Guantanamo to Health Care, Obama is certainly seeking to Change America – or more accurately -to accelerate the pace of change from a private enterprise-freedom based civilization to a Big Government-run society. According to Thomas Paine, “It is the duty of a patriot to protect his country from his government.” I realize that is a slightly different definition than Joe Biden would use, but nevertheless, in that light, here is my listing of the worst of his policy decisions:
6. Bailing Out GM. “His policy of public investments prevented necessary liquidations. The businesses he hoped thus to save either went bankrupt in the end, after fearful agonies, or were burdened . . . by a crushing load of debt. [He] undermined property rights . . .pushed federal credit into the banks and bullied them into inflating . . .” Historian Paul Johnson wrote that of Herbert Hoover. You can almost substitute Obama’s name for Hoover’s in every detail. By the way, Government Motors sales are declining at 3 times the rate of the industry as a whole. Hoover would be proud.
5. The Energy Farce. In what universe does economics work like this: A $14 trillion economy is sinking and employers are cutting jobs, so…let’s raise the costs of doing business even more and that will lead to a recovery fueled by an industry, i.e. green technology, which barely exists? Cap & Trade is right out of a classic “command economy” model worthy of 1940’s Eastern Bloc imaginations. If it passes, its regulations will stifle the US economy for decades before someone is wise enough to junk it amidst global cooling.
4. The So-Called Stimulus Bill. So far, this is Obama’ signature legislative “accomplishment.” In time it will be his albatross. The basic policy decision made by Obama was directly the opposite of the choice Reagan made. Reagan said government was not the solution to our problems – Government was the problem. Reagan dramatically cut taxes and regulations, the economy rebounded and tax revenues doubled. Obama’s policy, on the other hand was, and is, to have government spend our way out of our economic problems. Sadly for us, spending, taxing and borrowing is not an economic remedy for too much existing debt and the far too high existing tax burden. Indeed, as the Congressional Budget Office pointed out, in the long run, Obamanomics will hurt more than it will help. Given its short term-failure, it’s hard to imagine something worse and it is even harder not to dub this one of his worst policy decisions.
3. Socialized Health Care. Do I really have to explain the demerits of this decision? Socialized medicine doesn’t work, never has and never will and will be nearly impossible to repeal – oh, and it will bankrupt us. Next!
2. Trying Terrorists in American Courts. As I stated my article, Internment, CSI and Eric Holders Disarming of America, throughout our history, we have treated enemy combatants as those committing an act of war. That is so because (a) they are not US citizens, and (b) their acts were acts of war. In other words, they were not criminal acts of a US citizen committed during peace time. Now however, Obama has allowed at least one enemy combatant to be tried in a US criminal court subject to the constitutional laws of our country. The parade of horribles that will emerge from this decision are numerous and include putting America on trial, tearing down the barriers between citizens and non-citizens and changing the way we fight wars.
1. Cancelling the Missile Defense System. On November 16, 2008, fresh off Obama’s victory, Time Magazine carried an article that read: “Missile-defense skeptics yearning for a fresh look at the wisdom of pumping $10 billion annually into missile defense aren’t going to get it from Barack Obama when he moves into the Oval Office.” How so very wrong Time was. Obama did cancel the long range system – just as every liberal Democrat has been want to do to American defense systems in pursuit of less guns and more butter. So why was that Obama’s worst policy decision? Even worse than nationalization of health care?
Let me count the ways:
1) Defense spending on defense technology is dollar-for-dollar very productive (compared to most gov’t spending) and leads to break-throughs thereby employing and encouraging US scientists – I thought the liberals told me we needed to encourage future scientists?
2) You do not negotiate for years with an at-risk ally, i.e. Poland, and then pull the plug on the deal – what does that say to future at-risk allies, like say Israel! It says you can’t count on the U.S.
3) Obama’s decision to abandon the longer range missiles is based on an assumption that Iran is no longer interested in longer based offensive missiles. You read that right, Obama is trusting Iran against the advice of Bush era advisors,
4) The decision leaves the U.S. without a long range system for the Eastern Seaborg – You are on your own NYC – don’t worry it can’t happen twice,
5) The Decision tells Middle Eastern countries, like Saudi Arabia, that you better defend yourself, i.e. it could/will start a local arms race.
6) It was an obvious caving into Russia without a serious, tangible benefit, and
7) It is in keeping with his other defense cuts which send a strong message when you consider his weak rhetoric. Dean Acheson, who turned his back on South Korea, which led to the Korean War, could not be more impressed.
All in all, when it comes to the nuclear world, ignoring Jefferson’s advice that “Weakness provokes insult & injury,” seems beyond a bad policy decision – it is his worst policy decision.
So there they are – the 6 worst. Stay tuned, however, the worst may be yet to come!
http://biggovernment.com/2009/12/28/obamas-6-worst-policy-decisions/
Buyer’s Remorse on Obama will finally cause a Jewish shift to the right?
By NORMAN PODHORETZ
One of the most extraordinary features of Barack Obama’s victory over John McCain was his capture of 78% of the Jewish vote. To be sure, there was nothing extraordinary about the number itself. Since 1928, the average Jewish vote for the Democrat in presidential elections has been an amazing 75%—far higher than that of any other ethno-religious group.
Yet there were reasons to think that it would be different in 2008. The main one was Israel. Despite some slippage in concern for Israel among American Jews, most of them were still telling pollsters that their votes would be strongly influenced by the positions of the two candidates on the Jewish state. This being the case, Mr. McCain’s long history of sympathy with Israel should have given him a distinct advantage over Mr. Obama, whose own history consisted of associating with outright enemies of the Jewish state like the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and the historian Rashid Khalidi.
Nevertheless, Mr. Obama beat Mr. McCain among Jewish voters by a staggering 57 points. Except for African Americans, who gave him 95% of their vote, Mr. Obama did far better with Jews than with any other ethnic or religious group. Thus the Jewish vote for him was 25 points higher than the 53% he scored with the electorate as a whole; 35 points higher than the 43% he scored with whites; 11 points higher than the 67% he scored with Hispanics; 33 points higher than the 45% he scored with Protestants; and 24 points higher than the 54% he scored with Catholics.
These numbers remind us of the extent to which the continued Jewish commitment to the Democratic Party has become an anomaly. All the other ethno-religious groups that, like the Jews, formed part of the coalition forged by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1930s have followed the rule that increasing prosperity generally leads to an increasing identification with the Republican Party. But not the Jews. As the late Jewish scholar Milton Himmelfarb said in the 1950s: “Jews earn like Episcopalians”—then the most prosperous minority group in America—”and vote like Puerto Ricans,” who were then the poorest.
Jews also remain far more heavily committed to the liberal agenda than any of their old ethno-religious New Deal partners. As the eminent sociologist Nathan Glazer has put it, “whatever the promptings of their economic interests,” Jews have consistently supported “increased government spending, expanded benefits to the poor and lower classes, greater regulations on business, and the power of organized labor.”
As with these old political and economic questions, so with the newer issues being fought out in the culture wars today. On abortion, gay rights, school prayer, gun control and assisted suicide, the survey data show that Jews are by far the most liberal of any group in America.
Most American Jews sincerely believe that their liberalism, together with their commitment to the Democratic Party as its main political vehicle, stems from the teachings of Judaism and reflects the heritage of “Jewish values.” But if this theory were valid, the Orthodox would be the most liberal sector of the Jewish community. After all, it is they who are most familiar with the Jewish religious tradition and who shape their lives around its commandments.
Yet the Orthodox enclaves are the only Jewish neighborhoods where Republican candidates get any votes to speak of. Even more telling is that on every single cultural issue, the Orthodox oppose the politically correct liberal positions taken by most other American Jews precisely because these positions conflict with Jewish law. To cite just a few examples: Jewish law permits abortion only to protect the life of the mother; it forbids sex between men; and it prohibits suicide (except when the only alternatives are forced conversion or incest).
The upshot is that in virtually every instance of a clash between Jewish law and contemporary liberalism, it is the liberal creed that prevails for most American Jews. Which is to say that for them, liberalism has become more than a political outlook. It has for all practical purposes superseded Judaism and become a religion in its own right. And to the dogmas and commandments of this religion they give the kind of steadfast devotion their forefathers gave to the religion of the Hebrew Bible. For many, moving to the right is invested with much the same horror their forefathers felt about conversion to Christianity.
All this applies most fully to Jews who are Jewish only in an ethnic sense. Indeed, many such secular Jews, when asked how they would define “a good Jew,” reply that it is equivalent to being a good liberal.
But avowed secularists are not the only Jews who confuse Judaism with liberalism; so do many non-Orthodox Jews who practice this or that traditional observance. It is not for nothing that a cruel wag has described the Reform movement—the largest of the religious denominations within the American Jewish community—as “the Democratic Party with holidays thrown in,” and the services in a Reform temple as “the Democratic Party at prayer.”
As a Jew who moved from left to right more than four decades ago, I have been hoping for many years that my fellow Jews would come to see that in contrast to what was the case in the past, our true friends are now located not among liberals, but among conservatives.
Of course in speaking of the difference between left and right, or between liberals and conservatives, I have in mind a divide wider than the conflict between Democrats and Republicans and deeper than electoral politics. The great issue between the two political communities is how they feel about the nature of American society. With all exceptions duly noted, I think it fair to say that what liberals mainly see when they look at this country is injustice and oppression of every kind—economic, social and political. By sharp contrast, conservatives see a nation shaped by a complex of traditions, principles and institutions that has afforded more freedom and, even factoring in periodic economic downturns, more prosperity to more of its citizens than in any society in human history. It follows that what liberals believe needs to be changed or discarded—and apologized for to other nations—is precisely what conservatives are dedicated to preserving, reinvigorating and proudly defending against attack.
In this realm, too, American Jewry surely belongs with the conservatives rather than the liberals. For the social, political and moral system that liberals wish to transform is the very system in and through which Jews found a home such as they had never discovered in all their forced wanderings throughout the centuries over the face of the earth.
The Jewish immigrants who began coming here from Eastern Europe in the 1880s were right to call America “the golden land.” They soon learned that there was no gold in the streets, as some of them may have imagined, which meant that they had to struggle, and struggle hard. But there was another, more precious kind of gold in America. There was freedom and there was opportunity. Blessed with these conditions, we children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren of these immigrants flourished—and not just in material terms—to an extent unmatched in the history of our people.
What I am saying is that if anything bears eloquent testimony to the infinitely precious virtues of the traditional American system, it is the Jewish experience in this country. Surely, then, we Jews ought to be joining with its defenders against those who are blind or indifferent or antagonistic to the philosophical principles, the moral values, and the socioeconomic institutions on whose health and vitality the traditional American system depends.
In 2008, we were faced with a candidate who ran to an unprecedented degree on the premise that the American system was seriously flawed and in desperate need of radical change—not to mention a record powerfully indicating that he would pursue policies dangerous to the security of Israel. Because of all this, I hoped that my fellow Jews would finally break free of the liberalism to which they have remained in thrall long past the point where it has served either their interests or their ideals.
That possibility having been resoundingly dashed, I now grasp for some encouragement from the signs that buyer’s remorse is beginning to set in among Jews, as it also seems to be doing among independents. Which is why I am hoping against hope that the exposure of Mr. Obama as a false messiah will at last open the eyes of my fellow Jews to the correlative falsity of the political creed he so perfectly personifies and to which they have for so long been so misguidedly loyal.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203440104574402591116901498.html
Obama is possibly the most dangerous and destructive president we have ever had
An Interview with Nat Hentoff
By John W. Whitehead
December 11, 2009
“I try to avoid hyperbole, but I think Obama is possibly the most dangerous and destructive president we have ever had.”—Nat Hentoff
Nat Hentoff has had a life well spent, one chock full of controversy fueled by his passion for the protection of civil liberties and human rights. Hentoff is known as a civil libertarian, free speech activist, anti-death penalty advocate, pro-lifer and not uncommon critic of the ideological left.
At 84, Nat Hentoff is an American classic who has never shied away from an issue. For example, he defended a woman rejected from law school because she was Caucasian; called into a talk show hosted by Oliver North to agree with him on liberal intolerance for free speech; was a friend to the late Malcolm X; and wrote the liner notes for Bob Dylan’s second album.
A self-described uncategorizable libertarian, Hentoff adds he is also a “Jewish atheist, civil libertarian, pro-lifer.” Accordingly, he has angered nearly every political faction and remains one of a few who has stuck to his principles through his many years of work, regardless of the trouble it stirred up. For instance, when he announced his opposition to abortion he alienated numerous colleagues, and his outspoken denunciation of President Bill Clinton only increased his isolation in liberal circles (He said that Clinton had “done more harm to the Constitution than any president in American history,” and called him “a serial violator of our liberties.”).
Born in Boston on June 10, 1925, Hentoff received a B.A. with honors from Northeastern University and did graduate work at Harvard. From 1953 to 1957, he was associate editor of Down Beat magazine. He has written many books on jazz, biographies and novels, including children’s books. His articles have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Commonwealth, the New Republic, the Atlantic and the New Yorker, where he was a staff writer for more than 25 years. In 1980, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Education and an American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award for his coverage of the law and criminal justice in his columns. In 1985, he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Laws by Northeastern University. For 50 years, Hentoff wrote a weekly column for the Village Voice. But that publication announced that he had been terminated on December 31, 2008. In February 2009, Hentoff joined the Cato Institute as a Senior Fellow.
Hentoff’s views on the rights of Americans to write, think and speak freely are expressed in his columns. He is also an authority on First Amendment defense, the Bill of Rights, the Supreme Court, students’ rights and education. Friends and critics alike describe him as the kind of writer, and citizen, that all should aspire to be—”less interested in ‘exclusives’ than in ‘making a difference.’” Critiquing Hentoff’s autobiography, Speaking Freely, Nicholas von Hoffman refers to him as “a trusting man, a gentle man, just and undeviatingly consistent.”
Hentoff took to heart the words from his mentor, I. F. “Izzy” Stone, the renowned investigative journalist who died in 1989: “If you’re in this business because you want to change the world, get another day job. If you are able to make a difference, it will come incrementally, and you might not even know about it. You have to get the story and keep on it because it has to be told.”
Nat Hentoff has earned the well-deserved reputation of being one of our nation’s most respected, controversial and uncompromising writers. He began his career at the Village Voice because he wanted a place to write freely on anything he cared about. And his departure from the publication has neither dampened his zeal nor tempered his voice.
Hentoff, whose new book, At the Jazz Band Ball—Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene (University of California Press), is due out in 2010, took some time to speak with me about Barack Obama, the danger of his health care plan, the peril of civil liberties, and a host of other issues.
John W. Whitehead: When Barack Obama was a U.S. Senator in 2005, he introduced a bill to limit the Patriot Act. Now that he is president, he has endorsed the Patriot Act as is. What do you think happened with Obama?
Nat Hentoff: I try to avoid hyperbole, but I think Obama is possibly the most dangerous and destructive president we have ever had. An example is ObamaCare, which is now embattled in the Senate. If that goes through the way Obama wants, we will have something very much like the British system. If the American people have their health care paid for by the government, depending on their age and their condition, they will be subject to a health commission just like in England which will decide if their lives are worth living much longer.
In terms of the Patriot Act, and all the other things he has pledged he would do, such as transparency in government, Obama has reneged on his promises. He pledged to end torture, but he has continued the CIA renditions where you kidnap people and send them to another country to be interrogated. Why is Obama doing that if he doesn’t want torture anymore? Throughout Obama’s career, he promised to limit the state secrets doctrine which the Bush-Cheney administration had abused enormously. The Bush administration would go into court on any kind of a case that they thought might embarrass them and would argue that it was a state secret and the case should not be continued. Obama is doing the same thing, even though he promised not to.
So in answer to your question, I am beginning to think that this guy is a phony. Obama seems to have no firm principles that I can discern that he will adhere to. His only principle is his own aggrandizement. This is a very dangerous mindset for a president to have.
JW: Do you consider Obama to be worse than George W. Bush?
NH: Oh, much worse. Bush essentially came in with very little qualifications for presidency, not only in terms of his background but he lacked a certain amount of curiosity, and he depended entirely too much on people like Rumsfeld, Cheney and others. Bush was led astray and we were led astray. However, I never thought that Bush himself was, in any sense, “evil.” I am hesitant to say this about Obama. Obama is a bad man in terms of the Constitution. The irony is that Obama was a law professor at the University of Chicago. He would, most of all, know that what he is doing weakens the Constitution.
In fact, we have never had more invasions of privacy than we have now. The Fourth Amendment is on life support and the chief agent of that is the National Security Agency. The NSA has the capacity to keep track of everything we do on the phone and on the internet. Obama has done nothing about that. In fact, he has perpetuated it. He has absolutely no judicial supervision of all of this. So all in all, Obama is a disaster.
JW: Obama is not reversing the Bush policies as he promised. But even in light of this, many on the Left are very, very quiet about Obama. Why is that?
NH: I am an atheist, although I very much admire and have been influenced by many traditionally religious people. I say this because the Left has taken what passes for their principles as an absolute religion. They don’t think anymore. They just react. When they have somebody like Obama whom they put into office, they believed in the religious sense and, of course, that is a large part of the reason for their silence on these issues. They are very hesitant to criticize Obama, but that is beginning to change. Even on the cable network MSNBC, some of the strongest proponents of Obama are now beginning to question, if I may use their words, their “deity.”
JW: Is the so-called health commission that you referred to earlier what some people are referring to as death panels? Is that too strong a word?
NH: That term was used with hyperbole about the parts of the health care bill where doctors are mandated, if people are on Medicare and of a certain age or in serious physical condition, to counsel them on their end-of-life alternatives. I don’t believe that was a death panel. It was done to get the Medicare doctors to not spend too much money on them. The death panel issue arose with Tom Daschle, who was originally going to be the Health Czar. Daschle became enamored with the British system and wrote a book about health care, which influenced President Obama.
In England, you have what I would call government-imposed euthanasia. Under the British healthcare system, there is a commission that decides whether or not, based on your age and physical condition, the government should continue to pay for your health. That leads to the government not doing it and you gradually or suddenly die. The present Stimulus Bill sets up the equivalent commission in the United States similar to that which is in England. The tipoff was months ago on the ABC network. President Obama was given a full hour to describe and endorse his health plan. A woman in the audience asked Obama about her mother. Her mother was, I believe, 101 years old and was in need of a certain kind of procedure. Her doctor didn’t want to do it because of her age. However, another doctor did and told this woman there is a joy of life in this person. The woman asked President Obama how he would deal with this sort of thing, and Obama said we cannot consider the joy of life in this situation. He said I would advise her to take a pain killer. That is the essence of the President of the United States.
JW: Do you think Obama is shallow?
NH: It’s much worse than that. Obama has little, if any, principles except to aggrandize and make himself more and more important. You see that in his foreign policy. Obama lacks a backbone—both a constitutional backbone and a personal backbone. This is a man who is causing us and will cause us a great deal of harm constitutionally and personally. I say personally because I am 84 years old, and this is the first administration that has scared me in terms of my lifespan.
JW: But he is praised for his charisma and great smile. He can make people believe things just by his personality.
NH: That was a positive factor in his election. A good many people voted for Obama, and I’m not only talking about the black vote. A lot of people voted for Obama because of our history of racial discrimination in this country. They felt good even though they didn’t really know much about him and may have had some doubts. But at least they showed the world we could elect a black president. And that is still part of what he is riding on. Except that, too, is diminishing. In the recent Virginia election, the black vote diminished. Now why was that? I think a lot of black folks are wondering what this guy is really going to do, not only for them but for the country. If the country is injured, they will be injured. That may be sinking in.
JW: One of the highest unemployment rates in the country is among African-Americans.
NH: Not only that, the general unemployment rate is going to continue for a long time and for all of us. I have never heard so many heart-wrenching stories of all kinds of people all across the economic spectrum. As usual, the people who are poorest—the blacks, Hispanics and disabled people—are going to suffer more than anyone else under the Obama administration. This is a dishonest administration, because it is becoming clear that the unemployment statistics of the Obama administration are not believable. I can’t think of a single area where Obama is not destructive.
JW: A lot of people we represent and I talk to feel that their government does not hear them, that their representatives do not listen to them anymore. As a result, you have these Tea Party protests which the Left has criticized. What do you think of the Tea Party protests?
NH: I spent a lot of time studying our Founders and people like Samuel Adams and the original Tea Party. What Adams and the Sons of Liberty did in Boston was spread the word about the abuses of the British. They had Committees of Correspondence that got the word out to the colonies. We need Committees of Correspondence now, and we are getting them. That is what is happening with the Tea Parties. I wrote a column called “The Second American Revolution” about the fact that people are acting for themselves as it happened with the Sons of Liberty which spread throughout the colonies. That was a very important awakening in this country. A lot of people in the adult population have a very limited idea as to why they are Americans, why we have a First Amendment or a Bill of Rights.
JW: Less than 3% of high school students can pass the immigration test while over 90% of people from foreign countries can pass it. The questions are simple—such as, “What is the supreme law of the land?” or “Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?” Civic education in the United States is basically dead.
NH: I have been in schools around the country, and I have written on education for years. Once, I was once doing a profile on Justice William Brennan and I was in his chambers, and Brennan asked, “How do we get the words of the Bill of Rights into the lives of the students?” Well, it is not difficult. You tell them stories. When I speak to students, I tell them why we have a First Amendment. I tell them about the Committees of Correspondence. I tell them how in a secret meeting of the Raleigh Tavern in Virginia, Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, who did not agree with each other, started a Committee of Correspondence.
Young people get very excited when they hear why they are Americans. It is not hard to do. We hear talk now about reforming public education. There are billions of dollars at stake for such a reform. But I have not heard Arne Duncan, who is the U.S. Education Secretary, mention once the civic illiteracy in the country.
JW: Adults are constitutionally illiterate as well.
NH: A few years ago, I was lecturing at the Columbia Journalism School of Education. I asked them about what was happening to the Fourth Amendment. I said, “By the way, do you know what is in the Fourth Amendment?” One student responded, “Is that the right to bear arms?” It’s hard to believe these are bright students.
JW: I ask law students who attend our Summer Internship Program to name the five freedoms in the First Amendment. I have yet to find one who can.
NH: That is a stunner.
JW: You lived through the McCarthy era in the 1950s. Is it worse now than it was then?
NH: McCarthy’s regime was ended by Senators who realized that he had gone too far. What we have now may be more insidious. What we have now in America is a surveillance society. We have no idea how much the government knows and how much the CIA even knows about average citizens. The government is not supposed to be doing this in this country. They listen in on our phone calls. I am not exaggerating because I have studied this a long time. You have to be careful about what you do, about what you say, and that is more dangerous than what was happening with McCarthy, but the technology the government now possesses is so much more insidious.
JW: You don’t sound very optimistic.
NH: If James Madison or Thomas Jefferson were brought back to life and they looked at television and read the papers, they would not recognize the country.
The media has been very bad about informing us about what is going on. They focus on surface things. They do not focus enough on the fact that the Fourth Amendment is on life support and that we need a return to transparency in government. The media ignores what is really going on. But I am optimistic. I have to be optimistic, as I know you are. That is why you keep writing and keep doing what you do. You have to do this because we have been through very dark periods before. There are enough people who are starting to be actively involved that we can turn things around. And we need to encourage others to become involved.
http://www.reviewmessenger.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3704:america-under-barack-obama&catid=19:guest-opinion
Obama’s Landscape of Anti-Semitism – by Jamie Glazov
Frontpage Interview’s guest today is Pamela Geller, founder, editor and publisher of the popular and award-winning weblog AtlasShrugs.com. She has won acclaim for her interviews with internationally renowned figures, including John Bolton, Geert Wilders, Bat Ye’or, Natan Sharansky, and many others, and has broken numerous important stories — notably the questionable sources of some of the financing of the Obama campaign. Her op-eds have been published in The Washington Times, The American Thinker, Israel National News, Frontpage Magazine, World Net Daily, and New Media Journal, among other publications. She is the co-author (with Robert Spencer) of the soon to be released, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America (forward by Ambassador John Bolton).
FP: Pamela Geller, welcome back to Frontpage Interview.
I would like to talk to you today about Obama, his administration and anti-Semitism.
Let’s begin with Obama’s anti-Israel policies, your thoughts on them and what you think explains them. Tie this into the role of his friends and advisers.
Geller: Obama had a disturbing track record from the beginning. The Obama landscape, the landscape of his personal and professional associations, is littered with anti-Semites and rife with Israel haters.
Only three weeks after Barack Hussein Obama took office, Israeli pundit Caroline Glick noted that “since it came into office a month ago, every single Middle East policy the Obama administration has announced has been antithetical to Israel’s national security interests.”
Obama in April 2009 asked Congress to revise American laws preventing financial aid to terrorist organizations so that the United States could keep funding the Palestinian Authority even with Hamas as part of the government.
Then in May 2009 came the revelation that the United States and allied military, under the command of Lt. Keith Dayton, was training 1,500 Palestinian troops.
Would American-trained Palestinian troops one day go into battle against the forces of American ally Israel? It was possible.
On September 23, 2009, Barack Obama made a speech at the UN that former UN Ambassador John Bolton called “the most radical anti-Israel speech I can recall any president making.”
Obama was the most anti-Israel President the United States had had since the State of Israel was formed. Yet American Jews voted in large numbers for this man.
They should have known better.
FP: Tell us about some of Obama’s advisers in this context.
Geller: Well, let’s begin with one Obama foreign policy adviser, Samantha Power, who, in a 2002 interview with Harry Kreisler of the Institute for International Studies at Berkeley, called for military action against Israel to secure the creation of a Palestinian state.
Power said that establishing a Palestinian state would mean “sacrificing — or investing, I think, more than sacrificing — billions of dollars, not in servicing Israel’s military, but actually investing in the new state of Palestine, in investing the billions of dollars it would probably take, also, to support what will have to be a mammoth protection force, not of the old Rwanda kind, but a meaningful military presence.” She said that this would “require external intervention.”
Many observers quite reasonably concluded that in this Power meant that the United States should invade Israel in order to secure the creation and protection of a Palestinian state. Confronted about this during the Obama presidential campaign, Power made no attempt to explain or excuse her statement: “Even I don’t understand it…This makes no sense to me….The quote seems so weird.” She assured supporters of Israel that she did not believe in “imposing a settlement.”
But Power was not alone. The anti-Israel statements of Robert Malley, whom Obama tabbed for an important mission right after he was elected President, were even worse than Power’s.
Early on in his campaign, Obama named Robert Malley one of his primary foreign policy advisers – to the immediate consternation of Israeli officials. One Israeli security official noted in February 2008: “We are noting with concern some of Obama’s picks as advisers, particularly Robert Malley, who has expressed sympathy to Hamas and Hizbullah and offered accounts of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that don’t jibe with the facts.”
Once Obama was elected President, he sent Malley to Egypt and Syria. “The tenor of the messages,” explained an aide to Malley, “was that the Obama administration would take into greater account Egyptian and Syrian interests.”
Malley had nothing on Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security Adviser during the Carter Administration. Obama consulted Brzezinski for advice during his campaign, calling the octogenarian Brzezinski “one of our most outstanding scholars and thinkers” and saying that he was “someone I have learned an immense amount from.”
Bizarrely, Brzezinski called for the United States to protect Iran from an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. “We are not exactly impotent little babies,” he declared in a September 2009 interview. If the Israelis struck Iran, he said, “they have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?” Brzezinski advocated military action against Israel to stop it from striking Iran: “If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not.”
Brzezinski holds no official position in the Obama Administration. But Rosa Brooks does: she is an advisor to the undersecretary of Defense for policy. Brooks is venomously anti-Israel. During Israel’s defensive action in Gaza in January 2009, Brooks wrote an op-ed in the Times entitled, “Israel can’t bomb its way to peace.” Stephen A. Silver of the media watchdog Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America pointed out that while Brooks gave the number of Palestinian casualties in this conflict, she didn’t mention that most of these were combatants, not innocent civilians. “She also takes no interest,” noted Silver, “in the fact that Hamas fires missiles at Israeli civilians from the midst of Palestinian population centers — a double war crime specifically intended by Hamas to manufacture Palestinian civilian casualties for public relations purposes whenever Israel tries to defend itself from Hamas terror.”
Former Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) would probably have agreed with Brooks. According to the Jerusalem Post, he was “one of a handful of senators who frequently didn’t sign AIPAC-backed letters related to Israel and the peace process during his time in the Senate and opposed additional sanctions on Iran.” In the Senate he amassed a significant track record as one of a hardline hater of Israel who would not affix his name even to the most innocuous pro-Israel initiative. In late October 2009 Obama appointed Hagel co-chair of his Intelligence Advisory Board.
These were Barack Hussein Obama’s closest advisers. And the effect of all this showed in his policies, beginning almost immediately when he took office.
FP: What explains this hatred of Israel in Obama’s administration? What is it that is motivating Obama and these anti-Semites around him?
Geller: Obama’s anti-Semitic associations go all the way back to the beginning of his career: the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who worked with Louis Farrakhan and gave him an award from Trinity United Church of Christ; Bill Ayers, whose Communist rhetoric from the 1960s – the Weather Underground manifesto Prairie Fire — was full of anti-Semitic attacks on Israel; and others. Israel has always been an ally of the United States and was an enemy of the Soviet Union and socialist internationalists. Barack Obama is a socialist internationalist, as are the people he has surrounded himself with. It’s no surprise in light of that that his administration would be so anti-Israel.
Little attention is paid to Obama’s childhood study of Islam and his Koranic studies in Indonesia. Knowing what we know about Islamic anti-Semitism and Jew-hatred in the Koran, it may have been a powerful influence on Obama’s attitudes towards the Jewish homeland.
FP: What are the consequences of this landscape of Jew-hate in the Obama administration?
Geller: The main consequence is that Israel is on its own to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat, and the U.S. may even try to stop Israel from doing anything about that threat. A nuclear Iran threatens the entire free world, not just Israel, but no one in the Obama administration seems very concerned about that. They’ve even opposed new sanctions on Iran.
When the cop walks off the beat, thugs go wild. With a weak Islamophilic President in the White House, there is a vacuum, a void — one that evil is only too happy to fill. The UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recently called on the Iranian mullahs to stop their uranium enrichment activities. Two days after that, showing how much they fear the wrath of the U.N. and Barack Hussein Obama, the mullahs okayed a plan to build ten new uranium enrichment plants.
This is the same IAEA whose chief, Mohamed Mostafa ElBaradei, said in October that “Israel is number one threat to Middle East.” The IAEA, led by Mohamed ElBaradei, has given covert cover to jihad nuclear weaponization for decades. Would we be in this predicament if the UN had even tried to do its job? Yet even this lapdog called out the Iranians, and not surprisingly, they laughed at him.
And all this comes after Iran defiantly rejected a deal that the UN brokered on its nuke program – although Obama has been mum about the rejection for understandable reasons. He knows what it will show about his determination to negotiate with the Iranians “without preconditions.” One colossal failure after another. All hail O-blunder.
But what did he expect? Why would Iran have endorsed this deal? Would Hitler have stopped in the Thirties? Did handing over Czechoslovakia satiate Germany’s bloodlust?
There is a weak leader installed in the Oval Office. It’s not hard to fool the invertebrate in the White House. He wants to be conned. The Islamic Republic of Iran is counting on it. Iran’s rogue regime has been unimaginably successful in achieving its goals while spitting in the face of the world. Why stop now?
For Iran, it’s all systems go.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton has sounded the alarm: “Once Iran gets nuclear weapons, we are in danger on a worldwide basis … Iran isn’t the end of the problem. The real difficulty with that analysis is that Saudi Arabia will get nuclear weapons, probably Egypt, probably Turkey, possibly others. So within a five to ten year period, you’ll have half a dozen nuclear countries in the Middle East … almost guaranteeing a nuclear exchange at some point or another.”
FP: The Israelis are, as you mention, now alone — with the Obama administration in office. What should and must Israel do in this situation?
Geller: Force is all that is left. Ambassador Bolton said that too – that “the use of force is required” to stop Iran’s nuke program. Required. “The other options,” he said, “have failed, are failing and will fail.”
Bolton restates the obvious. Bolton says clearly what is necessary. This is the kind of leadership the very survival of the free world requires. But instead, we have the post-American president.
Jamie, I expose the whole story of Obama’s anti-Israel policies and more in my forthcoming book, The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America, which I am writing with Robert Spencer. It is scheduled to be published by Simon and Schuster in July.
FP: We’ll all be waiting to read it. Thank you for joining us Pamela Geller.
http://frontpagemag.com/2009/12/08/obama%E2%80%99s-landscape-of-anti-semitism-by-jamie-glazov/
Israel ….Part 2……
The city of Tel Aviv, a bustling city that almost never sleeps. The people all spoke English and drank expresso. Fresh orange juice on every corner and taxi’s readily available at the wave of a hand. It was like being in New York, except instead of the American flag flying it was an Israeli flag with the Star of David flying proudly everywhere. It gave me a feeling of such calm it is almost impossible to explain. We spoke to many people and …we decided not to run our way through Israel but to live in Israel for a couple of weeks and really get to know the people and the land. This was not a vacation to us ;it was an education that we had come here for.
The first man we met was our driver. He is a single man who served in the army and was a native born Israeli. He had never lived anywhere else. He was friendly, kind and wanted so much to help us meet Israel. He had a hard time understanding that we really wanted to learn the truth of this land and not just be taken on a tour of the old and historic places like normal tourist…not us…! We wanted to live and understand as much of Israel as we could in 16 days. When it finally dawned on him that we were serious he was so accommodating. He took us to meet a family in Metula. We landed in this beautiful farming town that sits in the Golan Heights very close to the Lebanon border. The family farms and has since before the Rothschild’s donated the land to Jews who were willing to farm that area. Apples, wonderful apples. We ate an apple called Pink Lady. The taste was magic and the apple is really pink. The husband was a wise old man who reminded me of my father and told us if we really wanted to learn the truth he would take us for a tour and have we met others in the town who had suffered during the 6 day war. From his farm we could actually see the Lebanese border and I got so close I could see a picture of a man (a billboard) with the words “death to Israel” written across the top of his head. The Head of Hezbollah, they told us that he wants nothing more than to destroy our country. A little ways further down the farm we could see 3 flags flying over the Lebanese homes. One of Lebanon, one of the PLO and one of Hezbollah. The military police were patrolling there. In looking at the faces of these young men I felt pride, sadness and wanted nothing more than to hug them and say Thank you. Thank you protecting our country, for being so brave and so strong…thank you. We noticed that they were so eager to talk so we sat with them for some time and listened while they told us stories of war, fear, school and their dreams. Suddenly, it dawned on us that we were sitting having a conversation with several young men holding machine guns and some of them were so young they weren’t even shaven. In that instant I knew I had to do something. I had to find a way to reach my people back home in America and fight for our Israel; they depend on us…for without us they will surely lose. We must as a country stand behind Israel. Our ally our friend.
They again were telling us stories of when Lebanon and Syria began shelling Israeli towns in north, and the conflict escalated into air strikes. Many homes of these farmers were destroyed along with their crops. They sent their children away to Tel Aviv where they would be safe but the men couldn’t leave their homes. The Wives also refused to leave their husbands and their homes. They sat through the bombings and the shelling and helped the families who lives were destroyed. Miriam (the wife of the old farmer) ran the Inn where we stayed. ….lord she made soup like you have only dreamed of. If I could can it and bring it back I would (not a bad Idea). A recipe of her mothers who was a holocaust survivor and she came here to Israel when she was released from Auschwitz. She had lost her parents, brother and sisters at the camp and had been sent here to live with an aunt. What amazing people with amazing love for the people of this country…it was this woman who told me …”where ever you are in the world no matter what happens “you can always come home to Israel”. You are always welcome. All of our people are welcome. It is something you have not yet faced so you don’t understand how important it is. I hope there never comes a day when you find that you are not wanted. But it there does we are here with open arms.”
I had so many incredible different experiences in Tel Aviv. We met a man who worked in the Diamond district, the largest I have ever seen. He took us on a tour and it took my breath away. All the books I have read about my people being expert cutters and shiners of diamonds, now I was here watching them work…from the rough raw stone right to the final beauty that is created. It is an experience I will never forget and in a way it is Israel itself. A raw and ugly stone when it began…now a beautiful shining star. A star so bright that everyone around it wants to take it away.
This man became our friend is a hard working man with a wife and two children. He loves Israel and has fought and been through two wars for his country. He is a man who reminds me of my step father. Warm, kind, soft spoken and worries beyond what we could understand for the safety of his children. They are both of age to join the army and are going in within the next few months. When asked if he could run and leave the country so they wouldn’t have to go…he stops and thinks of a moment, and with all sincerity says “First of all my children wouldn’t allow it. This is their country and this is their duty…to protect it and fight for it. Secondly, this is my country and I love this country as I love my children, I want that there is a place for them always and that they never know a feeling of not having a home land. For this we all must sacrifice. As the Jews have for millions of years. I believe this is just the way of our people. I do not see a time when the world would just leave us alone. That is all we want, to be left alone so we can live outlives in peace. What is the problem? Why is it that we cannot even have a place, out in the middle of the desert, a place that no one wanted, to live with our families in peace? We don’t want to fight with anyone. It is they that want to fight against us, and they always have. What will become of us and our country if America walks away from it’s treaty with Israel. Now that is what we worry about today not the bombing or the terrorists. It is our friends in America that can do us the most harm.
The people in Tel Aviv are also young and inspirational. When speaking to them it was hard not to notice a maturity to them that you just don’t see in America. They have seriousness about them and when asked about their studies or their lives it always began with their time in the army. Most were proud to have served and yet on the other hand feel as though they missed out on a lot of time to begin their lives. They feel a little left behind. I suppose that is totally normal for young men and woman who have pledged to give up either 2 or 3 years of their lives to do something most do not want to do but yet feel proud since that they are the ones that must protect their country; If not them then who? America, was always behind us…we always knew that we had a father in America that would always make sure we were strong…now they feel that is slipping away and it is evident in the t-shirts they wear…”don’t worry America; Israel’s got your back”. Meant to be humorous but with oh so serious a meaning. I loved Tel Aviv with its hustle and bustle. A mezuzah on every door of every hotel room and every shop. It’s a world trying to find its place between Jerusalem and New York. The beach was sandy and the shops elegant, yet on Friday the Sabbath all closes down. It is unification I have never witnessed. One purpose for all. If you want to find a cup of expresso on a Friday afternoon after 4pm… You cannot. It is forbidden to use appliances on the Sabbath. From the religious to the young everyone seems to observe this day and this ritual now matter how modern the young speak of being. It is a beautiful thing. It would seem that Tel Aviv had been separated from the fear in many ways. Their talk is of the future not the past, but even with this, it seems we still end up in the same place. What is in store for Israel now? And even though it is sheltered from much of the fear one can still feel it as you walk through an Arab area. As much as I hate to admit the feeling changes a bit. One is more alert in these areas. I have never been called a racist but maybe I am not totally unblemished when it comes to walking though an Arab neighborhood. I don’t like the idea but I didn’t want to be there. There was just a slight turn of the head when someone walked by you…just a brief hesitation when asked if you were American and a Jew. Graffiti on the walls that say “death to the Jews” It felt like being in any other place but Israel, in a way it made me angry. This is my country, a place where I am supposed to be safe. Therein lays the problem. I know not all Arabs hate Jews, but as my Israeli friend put it…”some of us have very good friends that are Arab. But if push comes to it…we would turn against each other in a moment if war broke out and we were fighting for our home land.” This is an ominous way to live for both sides. Ohhh…so even in the modern city of Tel Aviv fear creeps in and it would seem in Israel it is everywhere.
AMERICA MUST STAND BEHIND THIS SMALL COUNTRY WHO DOES SO MUCH TO PROTECT US….THEY ARE OUR FRIENDS, OUR EYES AND OUR EARS IN THIS VAST AND DANGEROUS PLACE…THE MIDDLE EAST.
The Man Who Despises America
http://spectator.org/archives/2009/11/11/the-man-who-despises-america/
By Mark Hyman on 11.11.09 @ 6:09AM
The very next paragraph is going to make the nut jobs on the far left excitable beyond belief. I am not referring to all Democrats or even a majority of liberals. I am singling out the “they’ve-lost-all-touch-with-reality” crowd. This includes Media Matters for America led by the admitted hit-and-run, drunk-driving serial liar. The group includes the unshaven, bathrobe-clad unemployed who live in their mother’s basement and are devout followers of MoveOn.Org. It is also the bitter, aging spinster working at the New York Times, the morbidly obese documentary film maker, and cable TV news’ resident drama queen who hosts MSNBC’s Countdown. They are about to simultaneously suffer from brain aneurisms. So without further delay, I’ll say it.
Barack Obama despises America.
When people who voted for Obama in 2008 — including registered Democrats — start speaking in normal conversational voices at dinner parties, neighborhood gatherings and PTA meetings that the over-inflated ego from Chicago has it “in for America,” then it’s clear most reasonable people have reached the same conclusion.
The central conviction of Obama’s ideology is that America is guilty of limitless moral failures and is the chief architect of the world’s ills. Obama has boundless enmity for America, its key institutions, and its longtime allies. Consider these facts.
The 30-years of Obama’s post-adolescent life are radical by any measure. First, he grew up listening to the ramblings of committed Communist Frank Marshall Davis. It had such a profound effect on him that he wrote fondly of Davis in his first book. In fact, that book is replete with statement after statement about how the U.S. is deeply flawed. Most Americans believe in American exceptionalism. Not so with Obama.
Patriotic Americans would not have listened to the bigoted, anti-Semitic, hate-America rants of a fringe religious leader for 20 seconds let alone for 20 years. Yet, Obama who admitted he attended services at Trinity United Church at least twice a month for two decades called Jeremiah Wright his mentor and his moral sounding board.
Nor would most Americans cultivate a close friendship with an admitted domestic terrorist and his wife whose most notable life’s accomplishments were to set off bombs that killed and maimed innocent people.
Joining Al Sharpton and Jeremiah Wright in organizing attendance at Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan’s 1995 march on Washington is beyond imaginable. Especially after Farrakhan demonstrated public support for Colonel Muammar Qaddafi during the Libyan Leader’s most bellicose years against the U.S., which included Libyan complicity in numerous terrorist attacks.
Obama’s view of America in national security and foreign affairs is profoundly disappointing to say the least.
Americans overwhelmingly view the men and women who saved Europe and the Far East during World War II as comprising the Greatest Generation. By his comments and actions, President Obama obviously thinks otherwise.
Obama did not honor American greatness on the 60th anniversary of the Berlin Airlift while on his first European trip. Instead, he accused “America [of having] shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive” toward its European allies.
He also denigrated the accomplishments of the American G.I. during World War II in the Pacific theater when he offered a thinly veiled apology for the U.S. having dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those acts brought the war to a swift conclusion, perhaps saving hundreds of thousands of lives when it appeared Japan was prepared to wage an island-by-island battle to the last man.
Obama ordered the release of the so-called CIA “torture memos,” seriously damaging delicate intelligence relations with allied nations and placing at grave risk the safety of U.S. intelligence officers working overseas. The impact of his action handcuffs the ability of U.S. intelligence officials to protect the U.S. and American interests from acts of terrorism.
In a matter of weeks last spring, Obama gave deference to a variety of belligerent leaders while stiff-arming longtime American allies. First, he called for closer relations with Cuba while ignoring that nation’s long list of continuing human rights abuses. Then he warmly welcomed Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez at an Organization of American States summit.
Next, he failed to respond and set the record straight after Nicaragua’s Communist leader Daniel Ortega listed alleged U.S. crimes and atrocities during a nearly one-hour rant at the OAS meeting. It is unsettling that in his own remarks Obama incorrectly claimed the OAS has 36 members rather than the actual 34. Ortega and the hemisphere’s other Socialist leaders claim the OAS would include 36 members if Cuba and an independent Puerto Rico were allowed to join. Mere coincidence or Freudian slip?
Immediately following the OAS embarrassments, Obama ignored a request from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to meet. Obama would repeat this snub six months later before agreeing at the last moment to meet Netanyahu after the Israeli leader was en route the U.S.
In his speech before the Muslim world, Obama made the patently absurd claim of equivalency between the status of displaced Palestinians and the slaughter of millions of Jews during the Holocaust. His claim that 7 million Muslims live in the U.S. is a figure inflated by as much as 700%.
In an earlier speech, Obama claimed that the U.S. is not a Christian nation, which is at odds with the fact that 79% of Americans self-identify as Christians and the nation’s founders were devout Christians.
In less than six months in office, Obama apologized for Guantanamo Bay; for alleged mistakes committed by the CIA; for U.S. policy in the Americas; for America’s history of slavery; for “sacrificing [American] values;” for “hasty decisions” in the war on terror; for “America’s standing in the world;” for American errors in foreign policy; and for U.S. relations with the Muslim world.
He pronounced Iran’s pursuit of nuclear technology acceptable and he warned Netanyahu against targeting Iran’s nuclear facilities. Obama’s approach to Iran is eerily similar to that of Jimmy Carter, whose actions contributed to the fall of that nation into the control of Islamic radicals.
This summer, the door to greater individual freedoms in Iran was firmly closed shut when Obama announced the U.S would not meddle in Iran’s election and he offered no encouragement to democracy activists who protested the obviously stolen elections. His silence was deafening when regime security agents savagely attacked and killed countless Iranians who took to the streets.
In contrast to his deference to anti-American leaders such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Hugo Chavez, and Daniel Ortega, Obama strong-armed Netanyahu on key Israeli matters. In addition to snubbing the Israeli Prime Minister’s requests to meet, Obama demanded an end to Israeli settlements and insisted on the creation of a two-state Palestine solution.
Obama abandoned NATO members Poland and the Czech Republic by canceling the central Europe missile defense plan just as rogue nations North Korea and Iran make advances in nuclear and ballistic missile production. The cancellation was demanded by Moscow authorities who have adopted a more confrontational posture toward the west.
Solidarity with freedom-loving East Germans has been a staple of the American presidency for nearly 50 years. John Kennedy pronounced himself a Berliner. Ronald Reagan demanded Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev “Tear down this wall!” Yet, this bricks and mortar icon of first, Soviet totalitarianism, and then, second, the end of Soviet domination did not make the cut as Obama chose not to attend the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall. In the summer of 2008, Obama altogether skipped mentioning the role of the U.S. — or even the West, for that matter — in bringing down the wall, instead crediting “a world that stands as one.”
Obama’s disagreement with American values and institutions is evident in domestic issues. He has stocked his administration with wild-eyed radicals who believe foreign law trumps the U.S. Constitution (Harold Koh); include an avowed Marxist and “truther” who believes George Bush was complicit in the 9/11 attack and is also an ardent supporter of cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal (Van Jones); and include a devoted admirer of Mao Tse-tung who slaughtered as many as 75 million people (Anita Dunn). (In contrast, George W. Bush’s Attorney-General nominee John Ashcroft was savaged by the news media for being an Evangelical Christian.)
Three weeks after America’s first black president was sworn in, the nation’s first black Attorney-General who was hand-picked by Obama, called America “a nation of cowards” for some perceived race relations shortfall. The understood meaning of Eric Holder’s comments is that white people are still racists. However, the reality is the people most preoccupied with fomenting the racial divide are those who populate the ranks of the Obama Administration.
Obama’s Homeland Secretary designated military veterans as terrorists-in-waiting to be equally as dangerous as other domestic terrorists including pro-lifers and citizens opposed to the flood of illegal aliens.
One of Obama’s very few suggestions to cut into his $1.4 trillion budget deficit was to have servicemen and women pay for their own war injuries. He’s all for providing free health care to illegal aliens but believes wounded warriors should foot their own hospital bills. In fact, the Defense Department is about the only sector of government in which Obama has proposed slashing spending.
Hours after a belligerent “African-American Studies” Harvard professor engaged in behavior unbefitting anyone let alone a professional man, Obama accused the exceedingly tolerant Cambridge police officers as having “acted stupidly” and then digressed into how people of color have been unfairly treated by white America.
Bush was prolific in quietly and privately visiting the military wounded and family of the fallen. In contrast, Obama attempted to make political capital of his one visit to Dover Air Force Base. Obama’s motives were so transparent that families of 17 of the 18 fallen denied permission for Obama to engage in a photo-op alongside the returning caskets.
In May, Obama immediately issued a statement that he was “shocked and outraged by the murder” of a Kansas doctor specializing in partial-birth abortions. He called it a “heinous act of violence.” Attorney-General Holder mobilized U.S. Marshals nationwide to provide protection to abortion clinics.
But Obama remained silent the very next day when two U.S. soldiers were gunned down by a Muslim extremist outside a Little Rock recruiting station. After repeated prodding for a presidential comment, the White House faxed an after-hours statement to select media outlets two days later offering a tepid remark that Obama was “saddened” without even mentioning the soldiers were murdered.
Five months later, another Muslim fanatic gunned down nearly four dozen Americans, killing 13, at the Ft. Hood army base. It was an act that demanded the most serious demeanor of the military’s Commander-in-Chief. Yet, Obama referenced the massacre in the most insincere fashion just seconds after a jocular shout-out to an audience member during a public speaking engagement. It was the equivalent of attending a funeral in swimwear while en route to the beach.
The odd inadvertent comment or occasional verbal faux pas can be explained away as just that. However, Obama has a lifetime of comments and actions including 10 months as president that belie his real attitude toward the U.S. The difference between Obama and his immediate predecessors such as Ronald Reagan, the George Bushes and Bill Clinton who actually revere and honor the greatness of America and its citizens and institutions cannot be overstated.
A series of reports from Israel….
Part one…..
I just got back from the most unexplainable trip of my life. People are asking both Geoff and I “how was it?” Did you have fun?” On every other vacation (trip) we have ever been on we could have answered with any number of adjectives““wonderful, fun, beautiful “and the adjective would have describe it accurately enough, but not on this trip. Not with this experience.
To begin, we arrived at the airport in Rome to catch our flight to Israel. Our layover was for 10 hours (on purpose) so my husband, who has never been, could experience the wonder of Rome. That in of itself was incredible. Roma rapido, as my husband called it was fast to say the least and furious. A day to see all the magnificent sights to see….after dinner we arrived at the airport and off to Israel…
The security you go through is a level that we really hadn’t experienced before but in a strange way it made us feel safe. Interesting, how as adults that is a desire we take with us to the grave. A needing to feel safe. Safe in our mothers womb and then in her arms. ..So the adventure began with that feeling…we would feel safe. That was an important question for up until that moment we were sure we would. So, today I am so grateful my husband insisted that I spend my 50th birthday in a land I am fighting for and a place I believe somewhere in my heart is also my home. A dream came true this day…October 12th, 2009.
We landed and The Star of David was flying over head with a kind of warmth and welcoming as if to say “welcome…we are so glad you are finally here. The feeling of safety continued and I felt comfortable. A feeling of home came over me. A feeling of being with my people. …a very real sincere welcome. A proud feeling of being Jewish. For the first time I took a moment to remember how I felt being a Jew anywhere else in my life. It hit me that maybe I never really had felt safe as a Jew anywhere else. Not completely. Not that I ever felt afraid for my live but I didn’t feel openly proud whenever I was asked if I was Jewish. I’d instantly stop before I’d respond. …“why do they want to know, why are they asking me that? Just for a moment and it was just a moment I would hesitate before I answered. I never really gave much thought to this until now. It was true…I was just a little different where ever I was on the planet. But not here. This was my country and when I answered “I am Jewish” the light from the face looking back was exuberant. It floored me that it was true.
This is every Jews country from all corners of the earth. As one Israeli women put it, “somewhere in your heart in every Jews heart, down deep in your soul, maybe somewhere you have never had to go as we have, you know, you must know…that if the world turned on you, if at anytime you were not welcome, you always, always have a home to come to. You always have Israel. You will never be turned away. Like when a child leaves home, they never think of ever coming back, but they know in their hearts somewhere that if they ever needed to, home would be there”.
What a statement, it made me jump inside. I had never felt that or even thought it for that matter…or had I? Had I ever for a single solitary moment in my life thought that it could or would ever happen, That there may come a time, as a Jew, we would need to safe place to run to?
We were in Israel and the questions began. What was all the fighting about really? The place where from the moment we landed it was as if G-d himself lived here. It was if we stepped into the bible itself.
To be continued…..