US 'losing credibility by the day' on Egypt: ElBaradei

Jakarta Globe  "“You are losing credibility by the day. On one hand you’re talking about democracy, rule of law and human rights, and on the other hand you’re lending still your support to a dictator that continues to oppress his people,” added ElBaradei, the former head of the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency.

"His recommendations to President Barack Obama’s administration were blunt: “You have to stop the life support to the dictator and root with the people.”"
He can't vote "present" on this.

Max Boot: Obama Must Act Now on Egypt  "Problem is, taking no stand isn’t an option for the United States in this situation. For decades, Egypt has been one of the largest recipients of American foreign aid, and Mubarak has been one of our closest allies in the Middle East. Egyptian officers have been educated in the United States, its forces are equipped with American weapons, and they regularly conduct exercises with American troops. We have a large say, whether we want it or not. If Obama stays silent about Mubarak’s future, that will be interpreted within Egypt as American support for an increasingly discredited dictator."

A Time for Leadership  "President Obama’s reluctance to firmly put the moral weight of the United States behind the protesters will not be remembered kindly, just as his failure to support democratic opposition groups during his first two years in office will be recalled by the Egyptian democrats who may soon take power. President Obama tried to use Cairo as a prop in his efforts to engage the Muslim world, but he and leading administration officials refused to talk of democracy and refused, despite their desperate efforts now to rewrite history, to seriously pressure Mubarak to reform."
 Jamie M. Fly is executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative.


Egypt and Iran: Will We Again Fuel the Fires of Revolution?  "If Obama emulates the horrendous decisions Jimmy Carter made during the Iranian revolution, radical Islam will spread through the region like a forest fire."....
"Had Obama done more than basked in the adulation of his Cairo speech and actually leaned on the regime to evolve toward a more legitimate and inclusive government, we might not be confronting the mess ahead of us."

http://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/iran-hostage-crisis/

Taylor Rule II Shows Which Fed Policies Work Best:

Amity Shlaes

Amity Shlaes  "Taylor Rule II doesn’t have math. And it doesn’t say what the Fed should do. It predicts what the central bank will do. [Economist John]Taylor says a period of less Fed intervention and stable strong growth will come, along with a strengthening dollar. But by the time this happens, [Chinese leader] Hu, now 68, might be approaching 80.
"Taylor studied the past 60 years of U.S. policy, and found that the Fed moves in a pendulum pattern, swinging back and forth between discretion-based decisions and loose money on one hand and rules-based choices and tighter money on the other."

What's Keith Olbermann doing now? (Updated)

 

Moonbattery.com

 A Look Back at Keith Olbermann's Most Outrageous Quotes  "MSNBC abruptly ended the run of Keith Olbermann on Friday, bringing to a close an era in which the left-wing host compared conservatives to Nazis, accused them of "murderous deceit," of "urinating on the Constitution" and told President George W. Bush to "shut the Hell up!""

(Update) Politics and the Anatomy of Hate  ..."And the first order of business for Olbermann in his new professional home is to “find a suitable enemy, something he is good at.”http://tunnelwall.blogspot.com/


This and many more posts on American politics and culture at the Tunnel Wall

Does America stand against tyranny?

Blackfive  "The spirit of those words is distilled into a simple Latin phrase that is the motto of US Special Forces "De Oppresso Liber" To liberate from oppression. That captures the idea that we do not live in isolation. We cannot build a wall around America and ignore what happens on the other side. Even so, we are not bound to respond with force every time evil flourishes, we could not. But to quote Reagan again:"

Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.

Rep. Moran: Dems Lost Because Many 'Don't Want to Be Governed by an African-American'

Fox News "The comments were made following President Obama's State of the Union speech Tuesday during an interview with Arab network Alhurra. Asked about the results of the midterm elections, the Virginia congressman compared the political environment to that which preceded the Civil War and suggested race was a determining factor." Please refer to my comments in the sidebar to your right:

The PJ Tatler  "In other words, the “racists” who elected Florida Senator Marco Rubio and Florida Representative Allen West don’t like our president because his skin tone is too dark. “Racists” in New Mexico elected governor Susana Martinez. “Racists” in South Carolina elected Representative Tim Scott."

What a dupnik.

Moran Sneers His 24-Year Army Vet Opponent Offers No 'Public Service' Record  "Mr. Moran recently stated, "What [Republicans] do is that they find candidates - usually stealth candidates - that haven't been in office, haven't served or performed any kind of public service. My opponent is typical." Col. Murray served his country for 24 years in the U.S. armed forces. The fact that Mr. Moran thinks 24 years of service in the Army is not equivalent to public service speaks for itself."

What a dupnik.

Himalayan glaciers not melting because of climate change, report finds

UK Telegraph "Himalayan glaciers are actually advancing rather than retreating, claims the first major study since a controversial UN report said they would be melted within quarter of a century."

The Passu glacier in the Karakorum region of Pakistan Photo: ALAMY

The Left Must End Their War on School Choice

Heritage  "In the fall of 2008, 216 new low-income students were notified by the Department of Education that they had been selected to receive scholarships. Then at the behest of Obama’s education union allies, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan sent letters to the 216 families informing them that he was taking back the $7,500 in scholarship money that the DCOSP had previously awarded them. The Democratically controlled Congress later voted to phase the program out entirely. Mothers like Latasha Bennett were left scrambling to find good schools for their kids. The DCOSP has been a tremendous success. Students that used a scholarship to attend a private school have a 91 percent graduation rate compared to the less than half of children in D.C. public schools that graduate high school."

The Bloomberg Syndrome

 Victor Davis Hanson  "Yet the more the unfolding details informed us that the Communist Manifesto/Mein Kampf-reading Loughner was mentally unstable, apolitical and without discernible interests in contemporary issues, the more the flamboyant Dupnik went on television to expand his cast of culpable characters. He finally ended up blaming everyone from Tea Party opponents of President Obama to talk-show host Rush Limbaugh — and became an instant celebrity and hero to left-wing partisans."

I see Dupnik becoming attorney general in a Kucinich administration. I'm just sayin'.



tobytoons.com



The old Obama in new clothing

Charles Krauthammer  "The November election sent a clear message to Washington: less government, less debt, less spending. President Obama certainly heard it, but judging from his State of the Union address, he doesn't believe a word of it. The people say they want cuts? Sure they do - in the abstract. But any party that actually dares carry them out will be punished severely. On that, Obama stakes his reelection. "

Who Is Charles Krauthammer?  "Charles Krauthammer has long been recognized as one of America’s most astute and authoritative political columnists, acknowledged as a cut above the majority of his scrivening colleagues. And yet there is something cryptic and elusive about him, like the coy Waldo in the famous puzzle. Perhaps he resents being put in boxes and wishes to preserve his independence of judgment, or his unpredictability."

 Krauthammer Correcting Krauthammer  "So — how long does it take a wise columnist to recognize a mistake and call an ideologue and ideologue? Six weeks. Here’s Krauthammer today:"

Mike Ramirez on Obama's vision of America

http://www.nationalreview.com/

At filthy clinic, babies met an inhumane end, grand jury says

http://townhall.com/cartoons/glennmccoy

IN HIS SQUALID West Philadelphia abortion clinic, Kermit Gosnell had a surefire way of dealing with the unwelcome complication of a live birth: He'd allegedly plunge scissors into the squirming newborn's neck, killing it by severing the spinal cord.

Turmoil in Egypt

STRATFOR reports:  Dispatch: Egyptian Unrest Continues "Middle East analyst Kamran Bokhari discusses the Mubarak government’s potential vulnerability as a result of the street protests, which may exacerbate the country’s leadership succession troubles." Via stratfor.com

Sources in Egypt and West: US secretly backed protest "It would also explain the steadfast insistence of President Barack Obama and all his spokesmen on forcing Mubarak to do the virtually impossible, i.e. to refrain from force against the opposition movement and introduce immediate reforms by means of national dialogue. His successors would be waiting in the wings to move in when they could expect to be embraced by the opposition."

Israelis fear unwinding of political stability  "But the lack of Israeli enthusiasm for democratic change in the Arab world also reflects a specific experience: the 2006 elections in the Palestinian territories, which ended in a triumph for the Islamist Hamas movement at the expense of the pro-western Fatah party."
Via The Financial Times   Related: BUSH DEMOCRACY POLICIES HELPED BRING ISLAMIST DICTATORSHIPS TO GAZA AND LEBANON.

Egypt's riots make Israel uneasy  "Israel doesn’t have the luxury of the United States, trying to measure its reaction to unfolding events by balancing support for human rights and democracy against loyalty to an old and important ally. For Israel peace with a stable and reliable Egypt is a vital necessity, and Hosni Mubarak has withstood the test of time. But unlike the United States, Israel is not called upon to make a stand vis-a-vis Murbarak versus the demonstrators. Israel knows that its silence is what the situation requires, that to voice support for one side or the other would be counterproductive." 

Egypt, what's at stake? Just a short bullet list...

Walid Phares On President Hosni Mubarak Video.

Carter Redux? "Like Carter, Obama has made overtures to the Islamists. 1n 1978 Jimmy Carter was on the side of "human rights" and eagerly embraced Ayatollah Khomeini. Carter's UN Ambassador Andrew Young went so far as to call him "some kind of saint"."
Liberals cannot be trusted to handle international crises.

Foreign policy establishment of two minds on Egypt "The world is about to change and the administration is unable to decide what to do to help shape the future to the benefit of US interests. Is it the nature of the crisis that this is so? Or is it that Obama and his State Department are like a deer in the headlights when it comes to proposing options?"

Nobel Peace Winner Returns to Egypt to Lead Anti-Government Protest Movement  "Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, Egypt's top democracy advocate and a key challenger to President Hosni Mubarak, returned to the country Thursday night after declaring he was ready to lead the grass-roots protest movement to a regime change."

National Review Online posts on Middle East riots