Obama and American Weakness Abroad. A Nation Gets the Leaders it Deserves

"Why don’t perceptions that the country has become less powerful abroad seem to redound to Obama’s detriment?"

Richard Winchester  "Why are less than half of Americans upset by increasing evidence that the United States is becoming a paper tiger?  Recently, the U.S. government has not prevented bad things from happening in its international relations.  Obama’s budgetary butchery on our military virtually guarantees that worse will come.  His disastrous handling of the Ukraine crisis is the latest example of his ineptitude and weakness in foreign affairs."....
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"Perhaps the best explanation comes from the “Limbaugh theorem,” which has been approved by Peter Wehner in Commentary.  Limbaugh notes that Obama is always able to be seen as “opposing everything that is happening, even things he is causing to happen.”  Obama is seen, especially by low-information-voters,  as perpetually campaigning, never as governing.  Rush contends that Obama “gets away with everything precisely by appearing to have no involvement with it….  He is not tied to anything going wrong.' ”

http://obamacartoon.blogspot.com/2012/09/obamas-foreign-muslim-policy.html

Self-Defense in the classroom is in your head and under your butt

American Thinker  "A multiple stabbing attack by a lone perpetrator in a Pennsylvania school, in which more than 20 were wounded, has everyone crying for more metal detectors in schools, and for more guns in the hands of teachers, other school personnel and even students.

 

"Now, I’m a big proponent of an armed citizenry. I think an armed citizenry is one of the greatest, most effective deterrents to crime.

 

"But when I heard about this incident, my first thought was, “Whatsamatta, weren’t there any chairs in that school?' ”
 

To watch for: Congress Votes Unanimously To Deny Iran UN Envoy a Visa - Will Obama Sign The Bill?

J O S H U A P U N D I T: 

 

"You have to wonder how far the Obama team is willing to go to appease Iran.

"In their latest provocation, 'moderate' Iranian president Hasan Rouhani appointed Hamid Aboutalebi to serve as Iran's UN envoy, which means he would enjoy diplomatic immunity in America.

"Aboutalebi, pictured above then and now ( he's on your left in the older photo) participated in taking our diplomats in Tehran hostage and holding them for ransom back in 1979.

"Amazingly, the Obama Administration didn't raise a murmur at this blatant extension of the middle digit by Iran. That was left to the U.S. Congress."

Krauthammer: Thought police on patrol

Charles Krauthammer  "Two months ago, a petition bearing more than 110,000 signatures was delivered to The Post, demanding a ban on any article questioning global warming. The petition arrived the day before publication of my column, which consisted of precisely that heresy.

"The column ran as usual. But I was gratified by the show of intolerance because it perfectly illustrated my argument that the left is entering a new phase of ideological agitation — no longer trying to win the debate but stopping debate altogether, banishing from public discourse any and all opposition."

 

... "The good news is that the “war on women” charge is mostly cynicism, fodder for campaign-year demagoguery. But the trend is growing. Oppose the current consensus and you’re a denier, a bigot, a homophobe, a sexist, an enemy of the people." ...

The New Inquisition

Victor Davis Hanson

 

... "The president bragged of using "a pen and phone" to circumvent the legislative branch, and urged his supporters to "punish our enemies." The attorney general calls Americans who have different views from his own on matters of affirmative action "cowards."  "All of that them/us rhetoric has given a top-down green light to radical thought police to harass anyone who is open-minded about man-caused global warming, or believes that gay marriage needs more debate, or that supporting Israel is a legitimate cause, or that breaking federal immigration law is still a crime and therefore "illegal."
"Our civil liberties will not be lost to crude fascists in jackboots. More likely, the death of free speech will be the work of the new medieval Torquemadas who claim they destroyed freedom of expression for the sake of "equality" and "fairness" and "saving the planet.' " 

 The New Torquemadas; Brendan Eich would not recant, so he had to be punished.
 

OUR POLITICIZED, WEAPONIZED BUREAUCRACY: Key Lawyer in DOJ Office Charging Dinesh D’Souza is Obama Campaign Donor.

Instapundit  “David Kennedy is the designated District Election Officer in the U.S. Attorney’s office in the Southern District of New York. According to Federal Election Commission records, Kennedy is also a campaign contributor to Barack Obama as well as to John Kerry. Kennedy has also contributed to state campaigns, including New York Democrat Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz. . . . Not only is DEO Kennedy a Obama campaign contributor, he also has a reputation as a proud and vocal liberal, not afraid to boast about his ideological worldview.”
Full article here.

“While there is no doubt that federal employees are entitled to make political donations, DEOs – who make decisions on the investigation and prosecution of election crimes – should not make such donations,”  Von Spakovsky said.  “Doing so inevitably compromises their credibility and will raise the appearance of bias and a conflict of interest in the eyes of the public.”

The Democrats’ Fake Problems; Democrats, flopping on the economy and health care, try to create new issues.

NRO  

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"The Democrats have made their midterm agenda clear: passing a minimum-wage hike, fighting the menace of the Koch brothers, and expressing loud concern about climate change without actually bringing a cap-and-trade bill to the Senate floor."...
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"In his first term, President Obama was fond of claiming that Republicans had driven the economy into the ditch. This year, GOP candidates will have an easy argument that the economy is still in the ditch, and our health-care system is now stuck in the mud down there, too."  Full article

The Meltdown of the Obama Genderhawks

They protest male/female imbalances everywhere except in their own workplace.  

 

Michelle Malkin   "Meet genderhawk Jennifer Palmieri. The Clinton-administration veteran faithfully defended a lecherous philanderer-in-chief against what his sexist operatives called “bimbo eruptions.” Then she served as spokeswoman for adulterous crapweasel John Edwards. Now, she is Obama’s communications flack and chief social-media gender warrior. On Tuesday, which Team Obama and its feminist pals dubbed “Equal Pay Day,” Palmieri took to Twitter to call out the sexist White House press corps:" ...

On the road

Tunnel Dweller is away from the computer and will be posting in the evenings instead of the mornings for a number of days. Please be patient.  TD

24-Injured In Stabbing At Franklin Regional High School

Via Drudge  ..."Witnesses said the boy with the knives at first tackled a freshman and stabbed him in the belly, then got up and ran wildly down the hall, slashing other students.

"Nate Moore, 15, said he saw the first attack and was going to try to break it up when the boy got up and slashed his face, requiring 11 stitches.
“It was really fast. It felt like he hit me with a wet rag because I felt the blood splash on my face. It spurted up on my forehead,” he said.

"The attacker “had the same expression on his face that he has every day, which was the freakiest part,” Moore said. “He wasn’t saying anything. He didn’t have any anger on his face. It was just a blank expression.”

"KDKA has confirmed that 16-year-old Alex Hribal is the suspect arrested for the stabbings. He is a sophomore at the high school.

 16-Year-Old Suspect In Custody After Franklin Regional H.S. Stabbing

Ayaan Hirsi Ali and the Shame of Brandeis University

The story: Brandeis U. decides against honor for Islam critic   "After taking heat from some of its own over a decision to grant an honorary degree to an advocate for Muslim women who has made comments critical of Islam, Brandeis University withdrew the planned honor Tuesday night.

"The university said in a statement that Somali-born Ayaan Hirsi Ali would no longer receive the honor at the May 18 commencement." ...

The fallout:
WILLIAM KRISTOL:  Ayaan Hirsi Ali Speaks   ... “ 'Yesterday Brandeis University decided to withdraw an honorary degree they were to confer upon me next month during their Commencement exercises. I wish to dissociate myself from the university’s statement, which implies that I was in any way consulted about this decision. On the contrary, I was completely shocked when President Frederick Lawrence called me—just a few hours before issuing a public statement—to say that such a decision had been made." ...

Again from William Kristol: A Note to Supporters of Brandeis  ... "Brandeis University has in recent years bestowed an honorary degree on Tony Kushner, who called the creation of Israel as a Jewish state “a mistake” and who attacked Israel for ethnic cleansing and for causing “terrible peril in the world.” Brandeis has also honored Desmond Tutu, who compared Israel to Hitler, attacked the “Jewish lobby” as too “powerful” and “scary,” and complained of the “Jewish monopoly of the Holocaust.' ”

Brandeis University Rescinds Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Honorary Degree Because She Criticized Islam   ... "She and Theo Van Gogh produced a short film critical of Islam’s treatment of women, called Submission. A Muslim murdered Van Gogh on an Amsterdam street in 2004. His killer used a knife to pin a note to Van Gogh’s body, and in that note he threatened Ali."

Legal Insurrection: The silence of Western feminists is still deafening  
"I’ve been thinking about what to say regarding the decision of Brandeis University to withdraw an invitation to Ayaan Hirsi Ali for an Honorary Degree.
It comes on the heels of attempts to keep The Honor Diaries off campus, The silence of Western feminists is deafening."

John Podhoretz: The Shame of Brandeis 
... "What Lawrence has done here is the nothing less than the act of a gutless, spineless, simpering coward.

"My late uncle, Marver Bernstein, served as the university’s president from 1972 to 1983. I know Marver would have been appalled beyond belief at his shameful successor’s monstrous capitulation to the screaming voices of unreason. As should we all be."



 

Do you know what Dhimmitude is? Everyone should know.

The Washington Times  We need to learn a new word: dhimmitude. I’ve written about dhimmitude periodically, lo, these many years since September 11, but it takes time to sink in. Dhimmitude is the coinage of a brilliant historian, Bat Ye’or, whose pioneering studies of the dhimmi, populations of Jews and Christians vanquished by Islamic jihad, have led her to conclude that a common culture has existed through the centuries among the varied dhimmi populations. From Egypt and Palestine to Iraq and Syria, from Morocco and Algeria to Spain, Sicily and Greece, from Armenia and the Balkans to the Caucasus: Wherever Islam conquered, surrendering dhimmi, known to Muslims as “people of the book [the Bible],” were tolerated, allowed to practice their religion, but at a dehumanizing cost." ...  Full Article