Thursday, June 24, 2010

"Palestine", Israel and the Obama Administration

That Obama is arguably a least a closet Muslim, one has only to observe his campaign rhetoric and speeches and policies toward the Middle East since becoming President.  The history of the conflict between the Israeli and the so-called "Palestinians" is provided in this two part series appearing in NRO, written by David Horowitz and Jacob Laskin.  Part one is here, and part two is here.  The disinformation and misinformation regarding "Palestine" and the state of Israel is truly shocking.  For an American administration to side with the likes of Hamas, Hezbollah, the PLO and all the other Muslim Middle Eastern states against the legitimate, democratic state of Israel is also truly shocking.  If, in fact, Obama is not a Muslim, he is surely a Muslim sympathizer.  In either case he is not in the tradition of American foreign policy that promotes and defends democratic states and shuns and condemns theocratic, undemocratic states that abuse the civil rights of their citizens.  This is a disgusting change in policy by the government of the US and one more reason this administration has got to go before it does even more damage.

ADDED:  This post below from the always insightful Powerline blog, actually comes very close to suggesting if not proving that Obama is a Muslim.  You have to ask yourself why his administration goes so far out of its way to rationalize the actions of Islamists/terrorists, and actually changes the generally accepted and understood definition, for example,  of a word such as "Jihad" from a no holds war against infidels to a war within the individual for soul cleansing, or such?  This is all kind of spooky, to say the least.  And BTW, to those who argue Obama's membership in the Reverend Wright's church and his marriage vows there, etc, remember that it has been pointed out that Obama had no known church or religious affiliation until he moved to Chicago and started laying the plans for a political career.  In short, he needed a political base and a black church in heavily black populated Chicago south side provided the perfect access to that base.  The evidence is not conclusive, but it is mouning, that Obama's connection to Islam is more than casual.


RASHAD HUSSAIN EXPLAINS OBAMA

June 25, 2010 Posted by Scott at 6:56 AM
We have written a lot about Rashad Hussain, America's special envoy to the Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC), the Saudi-based body formed in 1969 to "protect" Jerusalem from the Israelis. Hussain is a piece of work. See the posts collected here.
Notwithstanding his flaws, Hussain has made a great contribution to understanding Barack Obama. This week in a speech a the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, Hussain announced a new title for Obama. According to Hussain, Obama is America's "Educator-in-Chief on Islam." He may be in over his head as the president of the United States, but he's not bad at promoting Islam. Obama embodies the the melding of the left with Islamist forces at home and abroad. Stephen Schwartz reports:
The occasion was another "post-Cairo" conference, following on the event that welcomed Islamist ideologue Tariq Ramadan to Washington in April. Hussain also declared that Obama is "Educator-in-Chief" on the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which has produced diplomatic and political events around the capital for some years. Hussain affirmed with satisfaction that presidential iftar dinners, where the fast is broken after sundown, and which had formerly been limited to diplomats from Muslim countries, now welcomed American Muslims from throughout society.
In his remarks, Hussain also congratulated Obama for sending Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser, to last year's annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America, a notorious front for Saudi-financed Muslim radicalism. Worse, Hussain has now divulged that the U.S. will support the OIC in the latter's United Nations effort to criminalize "defamation of religion" - widely perceived as a measure to suppress criticism of Muslim practices that violate human rights. "The OIC and the Obama administration will work together in the UN on the issue of defamation of religion, especially in Europe," said Hussain. He had previously said, at the above-mentioned April "post-Cairo" conference, that the U.S. would work with the OIC to defend the Muslim head-scarf against prohibitions on its display in schools and governmental offices - a measure common to secular France and now Islamist-ruled, but still legally-secular Turkey, as well as Muslim-majority Tunisia and Kosovo.
Obama, Hussain declaimed, has created an "overarching framework" for relations between Muslims and non-Muslims that is lacking in Europe. The problem, according to the president's man at the OIC, is that a once-favorable relationship between the West and the Muslim countries has turned negative in the past decade - presumably, since 9/11. Put plainly, Obama's desire to educate Americans about Islam is founded on nostalgia for a warm and reliable friendship that rarely existed.
Here Schwartz pauses to note Hussain's explanation of the Orwellian linguistic contortions that have become a prominent feature of the Obama administration's treatment of Islam ("a variety of factors") and terrorism ("man-made disasters") and jihad (a "holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam"):
As noted by Hussain, Obama has called for references to "Islamic terrorism" and "jihadism" to be expunged from the official vocabulary employed by his administration, and has pronounced last year's Fort Hood massacre to be unrelated to Islam. As the president has assured the world, terrorism is anti-Islamic and the term "jihad" has been misused. Thus Obama presumes not only to act as "educator" on Islam to non-Muslim Americans, but to define the religion for its own adherents.
Hussain addressed his comments to an event assessing the impact of Obama's Cairo speech. But Hussain employed a phrase that must have been chilling to those who heard in it an echo, saying "Islam is a solution" to the current global challenges emerging from Muslim ranks. A "post-Cairo" phrase indeed: "Islam is the solution" is the slogan of the radical Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
Schwartz concludes with the question: "Are we learning yet?" I think we've learned enough for today. I just don't know what we can do about it.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Obama administration's lie re auto bailout

It is obvious from Hennesey's first hand report here that Obama's administration refused to work with the outgoing Bush administration on  the auto loans in order to take credit for their success if successful, and/or blame Bush if they were not.  Maybe every incoming administration would do this, maybe not.  I believe the crises at hand during the transition was so great that all hands should have been working together.  The dems would not work with Bush on any issues involving the transition, which is typical of these "politics before all" operatives.  This country is never in the best of hands in any democrat administration ever, never.

RE ISRAEL/PALESTINIAN STRUGGLE

Shelby Steele hits the nail on the head here.  IMHO, many if not most of the followers of the Muslim faith have no sense of economic competition and therefore have no answer to the relentless march of innovation and the like that drives material progress in the West.  Becoming more and more frustrated as they fall further and further behind, Muslims play the victim card so often used by the race mongers Sharpton, Jackson, et al, in this country.  What's needed is a good dose of the Protestant work ethic infused into the Muslim religion.

Monday, June 21, 2010

Sowell on the Recession

Once again Thomas Sowell focusses in on the cause of the 30's depression in this brief article, here.  All the alphabet programs and bureaucracies put in place by Hoover and mostly FDR were colossal  failures in that the their only accomplishment was to create unemployment by distorting the economy.  It would be helpful if the Obama administration understood this point, however if it did, much of its underlying philosophy of governance would disappear.