Saturday, October 3, 2009

Political Cartoons by Michael Ramirez

Obama’s Olympic failure will only add to doubts about his presidency

UK Times# "Chicago’s dismal showing yesterday, after Mr Obama’s personal, impassioned last-minute pitch, is a stunning humiliation for this President. It cannot be emphasised enough how this will feed the perception that on the world stage he looks good — but carries no heft."...."Meanwhile, America and its allies are being forced to witness a very public agonising by Mr Obama and his advisers over his Afghan strategy — six months after he announced that strategy. "

The unintended consequences of the UN's latest indictment of Israel.

The New Republic# By Yossi Klein Halevi "Limited victories on the battlefield are being turned into major defeats in the arena of world opinion. That untenable situation may well leave Israel no choice but to return to the post-1967 policy of preventing altogether the presence of terror enclaves on its borders. Better, Israelis will argue, to deal decisively with the terror threat and brace for temporary international outrage than subject our legitimacy to constant attrition, even as the terrorist threat remains intact."

Oliphant

WaPo

Friday, October 2, 2009

Intelligence Averts Another Attack

By MICHAEL B. MUKASEY "Nevertheless, there is a rear-guard action in Congress to make it more difficult to gather, use and protect intelligence—the only weapon that can prevent an attack rather than simply punish one after the fact. The USA Patriot Act, enacted in the aftermath of 9/11, is a case in point."

Investigate Jerry Brown

Mark J. Fitzgibbons "California’s Attorney General Jerry Brown is going to investigate "both ACORN and the circumstances under which ACORN employees were videotaped." That’s right. He’s going after filmmakers James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles. He’d just assume rough up the young folks who caught ACORN committing unlawful acts while Jerry Brown and his staff weren’t catching ACORN committing unlawful acts."

The New Ruling Class

by Hal Gershowitz and Stephen Porter "... bestow leadership positions to what we refer to as a new ruling class, comprised of people who have never held a private sector job, have never personally invested in job creating activities, who know nothing of risk-taking, who are largely ignorant of the daily challenges that businesses small and large have to face and who, in fact, see private for-profit business as evil and profits as ill gotten gains. " H/T to Clarice Feldman

The Obsolescence of a Slur

Victor Davis Hanson= "But are Obama’s critics really racists? ...If false, it means that we have institutionalized vicious smears as legitimate political tactics — and, in the process, discredited the entire dialogue that surrounds racial prejudice. How do we determine the accuracy of the “racism” charges?"

Political Cartoons by Gary Varvel

This Mission Is Not McChrystal Clear

By Andrew C. McCarthy =# "...the same Barack Obama who has decried American “militarism” since he was a Columbia undergrad, whose top foreign-policy priority has been to make nice with Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, and who would have to overcome every fiber of his blame-America-first being to wage the war that needs to be waged. It is foolish to believe that, and it would be much worse than foolish to put American lives at risk based on that belief."

Environmentalists rile tribes

Durango Herald# h/t to Neal Boortz "The leader of the country's largest Indian reservation threw his support behind the neighboring Hopi Tribe, whose lawmakers declared environmental groups unwelcome on the reservation. Navajo President Joe Shirley Jr. and Hopi lawmakers say environmentalists' efforts could hurt the tribes' struggling economies by slowing or stopping coal mining."

Worldwide (Get In Your) Pants, Inc.

DebbieSchlussel.com "Now, the Palin family (classy in not publicly saying anything) is privately having the last laugh, not only because he’s turned out to be the real slut after all, but because at the same time, Sarah Palin’s ghostwriter’s book is number one on many retailer’s bestseller list and it isn’t even out yet."