A cartoon from Craig Holloway at ConservativePunk.com that says it all.
Now enjoy your Soap Box, citizen.
Posts Tagged ‘obama’
Linkage
by bar ( 41 Comments › )Filed under Open thread at February 28th, 2009 - 12:36 pm
Tea Party photo album:
I’ve got tons of photos and e-mails pouring in from Tea Party people across the country. I joked to a Christian Science Monitor reporter covering the events that fiscal responsibility is the new counterculture. More coverage/photos/livestreaming at TCOT Report.
Michelle Malkin
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Dr Dobson’s resigns from Focus on the Family.
Focus on the Family announced today that founder James Dobson is officially stepping down as chair of the organization. It’s a move that’s long been in the works–six years ago, Dobson resigned his position as president and CEO of Focus, and internally the organization has been paving the way for current CEO Jim Daly to take full control.
Time
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Clint Eastwood Slams Political Correctness
Actor Clint Eastwood sees nothing funny about political correctness.The “Dirty Harry” actor told Germany’s Der Spiegel that modern society lives in a state of fear over the possibility of being labeled racist for telling jokes based on ethnicity or nationality.”People have lost their sense of humor,” he told the magazine. “In former times we constantly made jokes about different races. You can only tell them today with one hand over your mouth otherwise you will be insulted as a racist.
Newsmax
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The Politically Incorrect Black American Hero
February is Black History Month. But Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who rose from poverty and overcame racism to become a leading black conservative thinker and jurist, wasn’t on the list of famous African Americans that my son brought home from school.
AIM
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Obama’s budget: Taxing for fairness or class warfare?
Reporting from Washington — From front to back and on nearly every page, President Obama’s new budget plan delivers a stark message: It’s time for the rich to lighten the load on the middle class.
In education, healthcare and an array of other proposals, the budget focuses more benefits on middle-class and lower-income Americans and looks to the affluent to help pay for them.
LATimes
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Asia’s Jewish Myths
Such conspiracy theories are not rare in Asia. Japanese readers have shown a healthy appetite over the years for books such as To Watch Jews is to See the World Clearly, The Next Ten Years: How to Get an Inside View of the Jewish Protocols and I’d Like to Apologise to the Japanese – A Jewish Elder’s Confession (written by a Japanese author, of course, under the made-up name of Mordecai Mose). All these books are variations of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Russian forgery first published in 1903, which the Japanese came across after defeating the tsar’s army in 1905.
FLAME
Obama To Appoint Israel Hater To Head National Intellegence Council
by WrathofG-d ( 22 Comments › )Filed under Anti-semitism, Barack Obama, China, Democratic Party, Israel, Leftist-Islamic Alliance, Politics at February 26th, 2009 - 11:32 am
Tell President Obama To Withdraw His Appointment of Charles Freeman As Head Of National Intelligence Council.
Being Anti-Israel and believing in an all powerful “Zionist Lobby”, isn’t where the problems with appointing Charles “Chas” W. Freemen end. He has also on record supporting China’s right to stamp out free speech and dissent against the Government, and applauded Saudi Arabia’s record on democratic rights.
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Politico.com reports that President Obama will soon publicly name Charles “Chas” W. Freeman to head the National Intelligence Council (NIC), athough no public announcement has been made. (1)
Regarding Mr. Freeman, Matthew Brooks, RJC Executive Director stated the following: “We are very troubled by reports that President Obama plans to appoint Chas W. Freeman to be NIC chairman. Freeman’s past writing and statements with regard to the Middle East cast serious doubt on his fitness for such an important and sensitive position. [Mr. Freeman] apparently holds the view that Israel is the source or cause of all the suffering, terrorism, and instability in the region and that a so-called ‘Israel Lobby’ induces American governments to adopt policies not in keeping with American interests.“
Brooks continued, “The NIC is the source of the National Intelligence Estimates and the long-term strategic analysis of the U.S. intelligence community.” The nature of intelligence analysis, which can be devastatingly misdirected by any bias, requires the president to choose NIC staff with the greatest sensitivity and impartiality possible. Chas Freeman falls far from meeting this standard.
“Freeman’s statements about Israel about the nature of the U.S.-Israel relationship, and about the totalitarian regimes in Saudi Arabia and China call into serious question his judgment and character.
“Freeman, who served as U.S. ambassador to from 1989 to 1992, is president of the Middle East Policy Council (MEPC). His statements and writings, as well as the work of the MEPC, are strongly critical of Israel and the U.S.-Israel alliance. He regards Israel as a colonial power, whose “occupation” of Arab land “is inherently violence.” (2) He blamed terrorist attacks in Britain, Thailand, India, and other countries on “the continuing injustices and crimes against humanity in the Holy Land. (3)
As president of MEPC, which publishes the Middle East Policy journal (MEP), Freeman boasted about MEP’s publication of the Mearsheimer and Walt article “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy,” telling an interviewer from the Saudi-US Relations Information Service that “No one else in the United States has dared to publish this article, given the political penalties that the Lobby imposes on those who criticize it. So we continue to do important things that are not done by anybody else, which I think fill some gaps.” (4)
MEPC became the center of some controversy when it was named in a Jewish Telegraphic Agency report in 2005 detailing Saudi-funded educational materials that teach an anti-Israel perspective of the Middle East. (5) MEPC co-produced a curriculum, entitled “Arab World Notebook,” which an American Jewish Committee report described as “a text that appears largely designed to advance the anti-Israel and propagandist views of the Notebook’s sponsors, the Middle East Policy Council (MEPC) and Arab World and Islamic Resources (AWAIR), to an audience of teachers who may not have the resources and knowledge to assess this text critically.” (6)
As Gabriel Schoenfeld pointed out today in the Wall Street Journal, Freeman has also spoken about other countries in ways that run counter to American interests:
On the massacre at Tiananmen Square in 1989, Mr. Freeman unabashedly sides with the Chinese government, a remarkable position for an appointee of an administration that has pledged to advance the cause of human rights. Mr. Freeman has been a participant in ChinaSec, a confidential Internet discussion group of specialists. A copy of one of his postings was provided to me by a former member. “The truly unforgivable mistake of the Chinese authorities,” he wrote there in 2006, “was the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud.” Moreover, “the Politburo’s response to the mob scene at ‘Tiananmen’ stands as a monument to overly cautious behavior on the part of the leadership, not as an example of rash action.” Indeed, continued Mr. Freeman, “I do not believe it is acceptable for any country to allow the heart of its national capital to be occupied by dissidents intent on disrupting the normal functions of government, however appealing to foreigners their propaganda may be.” (7)
And the Jewish Telegraphic Agency noted this Freeman remark about Saudi Arabia which provides significant funding to MEPC:
Participating in a 2002 panel for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Freeman said that “in the case of Saudi Arabia reform has always come from the top down. It has been the ruling family that has sought to liberalize society and to open it up.” Saudi exiles over the years who have sought democratization might disagree. They have fled in fear for their lives and continue to be harassed in their new homelands. (8)
(1) http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0209/Freeman_facing_resistance_for_NIC_post.html
(2) http://www.mepc.org/whats/conf.remarks.pdf
(3) http://www.mepc.org/whats/conf.remarks.pdf
(4) http://www.saudi-us-relations.org/articles/2006/interviews/060920-freeman-interview.html
(5) http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/2247
(6) http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/2247
(7) http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123552619980465801.html
(8) http://jta.org/news/article/2009/02/24/1003237/potential-intel-boss-peddled-text-accused-of-bias
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DON’T JUST SIT THERE……DO SOMETHING!
Tell President Obama that Chas Freeman is an unacceptable choice for the job of National Intelligence Council chairman!
(1) Contact the White House directly at 202-456-1111 or by using the web form.
(2) Then contact your representatives in Congress (Senate and House, or 202-224-3121) and demand that they deliver the same message to the administration.
U.S. Now Sees Iran As Pursuing Nuclear Bomb
by WrathofG-d ( 11 Comments › )Filed under Democratic Party, George W. Bush, Iran, Nuclear Weapons at February 12th, 2009 - 12:53 pm
It was reported today in the LA Times, that U.S. Intellegence officials are now reversing their previously staunch position regarding the infamous 2007 N.I.E report which claimed that Iran had halted all work on nuclear bombs in 2003. It seems that they now believe that Iran will reach “developmental milestones” this year!
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U.S. now sees Iran as pursuing nuclear bomb
In a reversal since a 2007 report, U.S. officials expect the Islamic Republic to reach development milestones this year.Reporting from Washington — Little more than a year after U.S. spy agencies concluded that Iran had halted work on a nuclear weapon, the Obama administration has made it clear that it believes there is no question that Tehran is seeking the bomb.
In his news conference this week, President Obama went so far as to describe Iran’s “development of a nuclear weapon” before correcting himself to refer to its “pursuit” of weapons capability.
Obama’s nominee to serve as CIA director, Leon E. Panetta, left little doubt about his view last week when he testified on Capitol Hill. “From all the information I’ve seen,” Panetta said, “I think there is no question that they are seeking that capability.”The language reflects the extent to which senior U.S. officials now discount a National Intelligence Estimate issued in November 2007 that was instrumental in derailing U.S. and European efforts to pressure Iran to shut down its nuclear program.
As the administration moves toward talks with Iran, Obama appears to be sending a signal that the United States will not be drawn into a debate over Iran’s intent.
“When you’re talking about negotiations in Iran, it is dangerous to appear weak or naive,” said Joseph Cirincione, a nuclear weapons expert and president of the Ploughshares Fund, an anti-proliferation organization based in Washington.
Cirincione said the unequivocal language also worked to Obama’s political advantage. “It guards against criticism from the right that the administration is underestimating Iran,” he said.
Iran has long maintained that it aims to generate electricity, not build bombs, with nuclear power. But Western intelligence officials and nuclear experts increasingly view those claims as implausible.
U.S. officials said that although no new evidence had surfaced to undercut the findings of the 2007 estimate, there was growing consensus that it provided a misleading picture and that the country was poised to reach crucial bomb-making milestones this year.
Obama’s top intelligence official, Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, is expected to address mounting concerns over Iran’s nuclear program in testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee today.
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It is best summed up by Carl In Jerusalem:
Am I the only one who is wondering whether someone tried to sabotage the Bush administration’s ability to take action against Iran? Why?
The NIE was criticized from the day it came out. Some speculated that it was issued to facilitate a rapprochement with the Iranians at Israel’s expense. Others claimed the CIA had been hoodwinked into issuing the report. Even the US’s senior intelligence officers retreated from it. But the retreat had little effect. Despite specific intelligence presented by Israel, the Bush administration no longer had a military option. And it wouldn’t let Israel have one either.
Now that there’s a new administration in power, whose goal is ‘discussions’ with Iran and not force, the NIE is being discarded into the dustbins of history. Anyone else smell a rat here?
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This should be a very interesting development insofar that the MSM, and liberal establishment jumped all over the 2007 N.I.E. report to call President Bush a “war monger”, etc., embarrass him, and otherwise make it impossible for him to take military action against Iran. Now, although no actual new evidence has been put forth, those same people, now working under the Obama administration, are very quickly backing away from the 2007 report. At best, it was a mistake; at worst they put the entire security and safety of the United States at risk, and played nuclear Russian roulette just to score political points.
