Syrian Activists Form Opposition Coalition; Don't blow this one, Obama!

GlobalSecurity.org  "Opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have formed a "national council" that they say will coordinate efforts to oust the embattled leader.

"Activists meeting in Turkey announced the group's formation on Tuesday, but they provided few details on the group's make-up."  Also here.

Syrian dissidents opposed to Bashar al-Assad give a press conference in Istanbul

Syria opposition tries to unite, divisions remain  "Syria's fragmented opposition took steps toward forming a national council Tuesday, but serious divisions and mistrust among the members prevented them from presenting a unified front against President Bashar Assad's regime more than five months into the country's uprising, participants said."

Michael Ledeen:  Lessons of Libya (and Syria, and, Some Day, Iran)  ...."Fourth, dithering makes things worse, and we dithered over Libya and Syria, and at best — at best — we are still dithering over Iran. .... Remember that the fear of mass slaughter there was what produced the Obama Doctrine: Lead With the Behind."

DEBKAfile:  Mass executions in Hama's main square as Syrian resistance mounts (Aug 5th)

Council on Foreign Relations:  Obama's Options in Damascus: "It is time for Obama to exercise leadership and press the United States' preferences for the region on Ankara. As Iran evidently explained to Turkey, the Turks must make a choice. The United States, for its part, does not owe Assad a soft landing."  ....

"Only a great power could do so and balance the complex agendas of the Middle East's several regional players. Turkey is not a great power. That role remains the United States' alone."  I'm afraid that is not Mr. Obama's position, meaning while he is in office the world is without that stabilizing force.

http://www.mideasttruth.com/cartoons.html

Post Quake, West Coast Teases East On Social Networks; Photo of devastation!

KCBS5 San Francisco  "“If you watch any type of national news, you would think that Washington, DC was a rubble of buildings,” she said.

"“Really all this excitement over a 5.8 quake??? Come on East Coast, we have those for breakfast out here!!!!” wrote Dennis Miller, 50, a lifelong California resident whose house in Pleasanton sits on an earthquake fault line."   Via Lucianne 

D.C. Earthquake Devastation

Obamanomics

http://terrellaftermath.com/

Heritage:  Obama’s “Green Jobs” Pipe Dream  "As President Obama stays the course, pursuing a well-worn path toward government-subsidized green jobs failures, it's important to point out that there is another way toward real job growth that doesn't require taxpayer subsidies. As Heritage lays out in its "Saving the American Dream" plan, by reversing the growth of the federal government, eliminating unnecessary regulations, and repealing Obamacare, Congress can set America on a better course. It's one that preserves the reality of the American dream, rather than chasing the fiction of a green pipe dream."

Cowboys and Aliens

http://www.comicallyincorrect.com/comicallyincorrect_002.htm

Libya's WMD in hands of Iran's allies; Should we give Obama a break on his vacation time?

Rick Moran  "Except criticism of Obama going on vacation is not limited to the right - it is universal. Many on the left have taken the president to task, not only for vacationing while the rest of America is hurting, but also for his choice of vacation spot - the estate of a rich crony.

"This is hardly a "partisan" criticism and Frum would know this if he wasn't always so blessedly eager to tear at conservatives who don't think very much of him.

"I would also point out that criticism of Obama going on vacation predates the rebel march into Tripoli by several days. To suggest that the criticism is pushback against some imagined Obama triumph ignores that reality as well."

Also by Rick Moran: Have we fallen for rebel propaganda in Libya?

Libya Rebels Have Sold Gaddafi’s Chemical Weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah  "The United States’ credibility has been hurt worldwide by this military muddle. The unintended consequence of this ill-conceived action is, the world is a much more dangerous place for having meddled in what may have come and gone as a mild civil skirmish among Muslims. Why were we there? Why did we spend a billion dollars only to endanger Israel?"

US and Israeli intelligence agencies have tracked the WMD consignments from eastern Libya as far as Sudan in convoys secured by Iranian agents and Hizballah and Hamas guards. They are not believed to have reached their destinations in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, apparently waiting for an opportunity to get their deadly freights through without the US or Israel attacking and destroying them.

Libyan rebels sold Hizballah and Hamas chemical shells  "

"It is also not clear whether the shells and gases were assembled upon delivery or were travelling in separate containers. Our sources report that some of the poison gas may be intended not only for artillery use but also for drones which Hizballah recently acquired from Iran."

Still think Israel is the oppressor of the Arabs?

Israeli-Arab Crisis Approaching

STRATFOR  "The U.N. decision raises the stakes in this debate within the Palestinian nation that could lead to intense conflict. As vicious as the battle between Hamas and Fatah has been, an uneasy truce has existed over recent years. Now, there could emerge an internationally legitimized state, and control of that state will matter more than ever before. Whoever controls the state defines what the Palestinians are, and it becomes increasingly difficult to suspend the argument for a temporary truce. Rather than settling anything, or putting Israel on the defensive, the vote will compel a Palestinian crisis."
Israeli-Arab Crisis Approaching is republished with permission of STRATFOR.

Related, and becoming more important: Modernize FISA, But Don't Hobble American Intelligence Operations:  "Congress should make the Protect America Act permanent and enhance its provisions to provide retroactive and permanent liability protection to American businesses that cooperate with reasonable intelligence requests. The House of Representatives should not impose unconstitutional restrictions on the ability of the executive branch to carry out one of its primary, constitutionally mandated functions: protecting Americans from acts of war by foreign enemies."

http://fawstin.blogspot.com/

From Atlas Shrugs: Perry's Pandering: "Much is being of Rick Perry's support of Israel, which is essential. Loving Israel is great but off topic.Bush loved Israel too, but ultimately did it harm in his concessions to Islamic supremacists.

"Anytime Muslims and Jews conflict, Jews get thrown under the bus. You cannot appease the annihilationists while supporting their target.

"We are vetting our candidate now. This is the process. We must voice our concerns now."

Caroline Glick: The Israeli Left's Faustian bargain 

"Arafat ended all pretence of good faith in the summer of 2000 when he rejected then prime minister Ehud Barak's offer of Palestinian statehood and instigated the Palestinian terror war. Ever since Arafat chose terror war over peace, his followers' willingness to admit they reject Israel's right to exists(sic) has grown."

Good grief; I can imagine the American left's fecklessness, but how can Israel's left be so obtuse? The rockets are falling on them! TD

Cartoon: Jerusalem Post

From Debbie Schlussel: HUH? Israel Apologizes; This is What “Peace” w/ Palestinian Muslims Looks Like  "And what will the apology get the Israelis?  Nothin’ (other than snickers).  In fact, the Egyptians won’t be nicer and are already saying the apology is “not enough.”  Egypt won’t stop more HAMAS and Fatah and Al-Qaeda terrorists from attacking Israel from the Sinai and entering Gaza from the Rafah gate. Nothing will get better.  It will only get worse.  And it has gotten worse.  HAMAS has been sending rockets over Israel non-stop, and after murdering people, has a temporary “cease-fire” . . . or as they call it in Islam, “relock and reload.” "

Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ 12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign LORD says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 Then you, my people, will know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. 14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the LORD have spoken, and I have done it, declares the LORD.’”  Ezekiel 37:1-14, NIV

The cartoonists on Martha's Vineyard

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/michaelramirez

The Obama jobs plan cometh soon





Neal Boortz: Laying the path for Obama's job "plan"  "Nothing that people shouldn’t be able to agree on? Just guessing – but let’s see:

•Strengthen unions.

•Government infrastructure work for only union contractors.

•Tax increases. Oops --- I mean “revenues”

•Reform patent laws. This is a biggie!

•No roll-back of the massive number of new government regulations under Obama. More than 379 new government regulations were added to the mix in July ALONE.

•Continue the fight against Boeing for daring to locate a manufacturing facility in a non-forced union state to warn other businesses that they had better not try a similar stunt.

•Continue to sit on the new trade agreements with Columbia, Panama and South Korea so that congress cannot act on them. Unions don’t like these agreements.

•Extend unemployment benefits because they create so many jobs.

"Oh yeah. There’s absolutely nothing there that reasonable people could disagree with, right? What we need to remember is that the people who put this dangerous hack into office were NOT reasonable people."

I'm sure Mr. Boortz means that in a nice way.  He adds this.

Is Obama's "specific" plan now just an outline?  "The president is going to outline a short-term plan to accelerate the economy," Axelrod said on ABC's This Week, "in the face of the hits we've taken, because of the Arab Spring and oil prices, because of the Japanese earthquake, because of Europe that have slowed down economic growth.

"On Meet the Press, Gibbs used similar language, "The president is going to outline some ideas, the president has outlined ideas every day he's been in the White House." " Philip Klein

Meanwhile, heres My Plan: the job will again fall on the Republican-led Congress and Obama will demagogue their proposals. The press will amplify that and public opinion will harden against the right and Obama will show more positive than Congress.

 But, hey; that's just my opinion.

Keep this in mind when Obama proposes "green" jobs, as you know he will:  Surprise! Green Jobs Not Actually Helping Employment Figures  " "Of course, we want to be a part of the new innovation and the green jobs," Rep. Maxine Waters said on MSNBC Thursday. "But you know, the green jobs have been about a lot of talk and not a lot has been happening on that." A few hours later, also on MSNBC, Waters said flatly: "All of this talk about the green jobs never materialized." "

Wall Street looks to the White House to inspire confidence after wild week  "“The president needs to come out and put a stake in the ground and say ‘This is where I stand,’” he said. “That would be the biggest thing he could do, and quite frankly, I don’t know why he hasn’t done it already.”

"It looks as if the president will take a step in this direction in September, when he rolls out a brand new plan to reduce the deficit, which will also offer several stimulus measures and tax breaks intended to get the economy moving again."

http://www.newsday.com/opinion/walt-handelsman-1.812005

Why Hasn’t the Economic Recovery that Obama Promised Happened?  "Now, class, why did the 2008 economic collapse happen? You there, waving your teleprompter: Mr. Obama: what say you? George Bush? Wrong answer.

"I’ve been over this before. Review an earlier reading assignment: “Who caused the global economic crisis (Hint: it Wasn’t George W. Bush“). Here’s the formula:"....Read on.

Roger Kimball

Perfectly Timed Friday Afternoon Obamacare Waiver Dump

Verum Serum  "Ever since the waivers became a news item the administration has been working hard to downplay them. First they changed the website where the new waivers were announced, with no announcement or link to the new site. Now they’ve started waiting until Friday afternoons to release the latest figures:" 

The Obama administration granted another 106 waivers last month from part of the healthcare reform law — the first round of three-year waivers the Health and Human Services Department has approved.

The new approvals bring the total number of waivers to 1,472, according to HHS.

What is a Friday document dump?  "At the Clinton White House, Mr. Fabiani's preference was to release potentially damaging information right before the weekend. "My friends in the media used to call them Fabiani Fridays. … You had hard-copies of stuff. You'd put them all in a room," he said. "We would say to people, ‘Here are six stacks. You go on through them.' "

Just as he promised, Obama has fundamentally transformed America..

Wall Street Journal  "One of the Obama administration's central (and most damaging) beliefs is that tax rates must be raised for what President Obama calls "millionaires and billionaires," which he defines to include individuals and small businesses making as little as $200,000. Interestingly, Christina Romer, who was chairman of Mr. Obama's Council of Economic Advisors, has done some research on the impact of tax increases, and concluded that increasing taxes by 1% of GDP for deficit-reduction purposes leads to a 3% reduction in GDP."  Emphasis added.

DeMint: No American President More Anti-Business Than Obama (video) 

"Jim DeMint says Obama is the worst offender when it comes to promoting American business."

Via Boortz

This cartoon gives a counterpoint to the article

 

Will foreign policy be a campaign issue in 2012?

It was with Neville Chamberlain; who remembers him for sound economic policies in Britain during the 1930's? Or is he remembered for selling out his ally to appease an evil dictator?

Obama Administration’s Eyes Are Closed on Completely Predictable Middle East Crises  "President Barack Obama’s determination not to give headaches to America’s enemies guarantees that he brings them onto U.S. interests. Here are examples happening right now and certain to blow up before the November 2012 elections."

....

"...a time bomb is going to go off in late September or October when the Obama administration vetoes the Palestinian bid and all hell breaks loose as Muslims and Arabs proclaim that Obama is worse than his predecessor! All the president’s apologies and all the president’s courting won’t put his (alleged) popularity together again.

"Indeed, Marwan Barghouti, the Fatah leader who started the bloody 2000 intifadah, is warning that a U.S. veto would be an act of “terrorism” that would wreck Palestinian relations with the United States. All that money and diplomatic support doesn’t count. Unless you do 100 percent of what they want — very detrimental to U.S. interests–it amounts to zero percent in their eyes. And he is openly threatening anti-American terrorism." Barry Rubin

Success Against al Qaeda Depends on Success in Afghanistan  "Simply put, if the U.S. abandons the mission in Afghanistan before achieving the objectives President Obama announced at West Point, the “counter-terrorism” operations in Pakistan will also fail."

about.com/

How the GOP should attack Obama's foreign policy in 2012  "But it is not too early to begin thinking about how they should be distinguishing themselves from President Obama. Herewith a few foreign policy themes that GOP presidential candidates should consider highlighting as challenges to the Obama administration:"....

Diminished American power....

Declining American leadership....

Politics trumping policy....

Deferring problems....

Flailing on free trade....

"GOP candidates should offer agreement where agreement is merited, since as the above points show, there is plenty else to disagree with."

Russia in talks to build more nuclear plants in Iran: report

How Budget Cuts Will Limit the United States’ Global Role "The recent deal over the debt ceiling guarantees that the U.S. government will reduce its spending on foreign policy, which will force America to scale down its ambitions abroad."

The EPA- here it comes!

Getting ready for a wave of coal-plant shutdowns  "The regulations, they say, will cost utilities up to $129 billion and force them to retire one-fifth of coal capacity. Given that coal provides 45 percent of the country’s power, that means higher electric bills, more blackouts and fewer jobs. The doomsday scenario has alarmed Republicans in the House, who have been scrambling to block the measures. Environmental groups retort that the rules will bring sizeable public health benefits, and that industry groups have been exaggerating the costs of environmental regulations since they were first created."  Check out this timeline.

But how will we be able to charge up our Chevy Volts?

Tunnel Dweller's hometown of Garibaldi, Oregon before the EPA struck

The Garibaldi mill today.

Energy prices on rise.

Utilities warn of higher rates because of pollution rules  "The new rule has been in development for several years but the first phase of compliance hits utilities in 2012. WPS said it won't have time to install pollution controls by next year at its plants, but will be able to comply by purchasing credits from other utilities that have cut emissions."

Via Drudge

States Start Realizing that the Obama EPA is Threatening Their Economies (Update: Texas Hits Peak Demand)  "I’ve written quite a bit about the Obama EPA’s regulatory assault on Texas, mainly because I happen to live in Texas. The fact is, the EPA is chipping away at 26 states and their economies via the cross-state rule and the Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) rule. The MACT rule alone could force enough power plant shutdowns to cost 30 to 70 gigawatts of power (one gigawatt powers about 750.000 homes). Some of the targeted states are starting to wake up to the threat: rate hikes, lost power production leading to outages, lost jobs, worse economies. Here’s a sample of reaction in states beyond the Lone Star."