News and Commentary on Politics, Media and Culture

This is what passes for good legislation these days. Cap and Trade taxes. For those of you living under a rock, this is the Global Warming (or is it “Climate Change” now that everyone is freezing to death in June?) nonsense bill being rushed through congress as my furious fingers type. They’re going to put a cap on how much carbon dioxide everyone is allowed to emit. (That’s right…learn to breathe less). The companies will be the first to suffer this ridiculous directive…and of course they will pass the expenses of having to buy “carbon footprint credits” right on to you, the consumer. This is a brilliant plan very similar to every plan the Democrats have. TAX THE @!$? OUT OF EVERYONE. Of course they call it “tax on the rich”, but then the rich simply raise the prices on the goods they provide the consumer and the consumer pays. (That’s YOU, for the Obama voters out there…YOU…even the ones who voted for him) Here’s an excerpt from the WSJ about what this will actually do to the economy (vs. what the Democrats say it will do to the economy which is “everyone will dance with joy, the oceans will recede, the markets will soar, the poor will get rich, the rich will die a horrible death, and Christopher Reeve will return from the dead!”)

The hit to GDP is the real threat in this bill. The whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars. Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment. Some companies will instead move their operations overseas, with the same result. Read whole article HERE

Great. Well people, Ayn Rand continues to be proven right at every turn (read Anthem if you don’t have time for Atlas Shrugged-it’s only 100 pages). The Statists (I’ve stopped calling them liberals since reading Liberty and Tyranny…go get it now) are determined to return us to the dark ages. We will literally be reading by candlelight soon. Your government is about to FORCE you to use less electricity and gas by hiking up the rates so high, you won’t be able to buy it. How are you going to get to work? How are you going to heat your house? We’re all going to be tearing up our wood furniture and burning it soon to keep warm. This is what the Statists want for you. They want you destitute, freezing, cut off from all communication, while they rape and pillage the country’s wealth for themselves. This is not crazy raving. This is what happens when countries go down this road to serfdom. We’re taking all the right steps…there’s no way this won’t lead to the worst place you’ve ever been. I hope you’re burning up the phone lines to Congress while you still have a phone and can afford the bill.

(Discuss at The Intolerant Fox)

1 Comment »

Howard Schneider reports in the Washington Post on Netanyahu’s Peace Stipulation (h/t Backspin)

I suppose what’s disturbing about the article is its portrayal of Netanyahu’s demand as “new.”

The documents accepted by Israeli leaders during breakthrough peace talks with the Palestinians in Oslo in 1993 said nothing about their country’s status as a Jewish state or homeland — a concept absent as well from other accords negotiated by the two sides as recently as 2007. “It has never been an Israeli demand,” said Ron Pundak, a member of Israel’s negotiating team in Norway and now director of the Peres Center for Peace in Tel Aviv. “When we negotiated Oslo, the issue of the characteristics of our state was never an issue. I think it is a mistake that we demand of others how we define ourselves.”

Well, no the nature of Israel was not explicitly part of the Oslo agreements. It was, however, implicitly there. One of the fundamental demands of the Palestinians was that they would change their Charter to eliminate all the clauses calling for the destruction of Israel.

That would have included article 20 of the Charter:

The Balfour Declaration, the Mandate for Palestine, and everything that has been based upon them, are deemed null and void. Claims of historical or religious ties of Jews with Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history and the true conception of what constitutes statehood. Judaism, being a religion, is not an independent nationality. Nor do Jews constitute a single nation with an identity of its own; they are citizens of the states to which they belong.

(See here too.)

Quite clearly this denies that Jews have any right to a state and serves as a tenet of Palestinian nationalism and a justification for further terror. Though Arafat supposedly convened the Palesitnian legislature twice to remove those sections of the charter, the PA never replaced the charter and this language remains a core belief of the PA and its leaders. Pundak parrots the PA’s claim that the nature of Israel was never discussed. But that’s misleading, the failure of the Palestinian leadership to acknowledge the historical ties of Jews to Israel and consequently Israel’s legitimate claim to the land.

When PM Netanyahu asks that the Palestinians acknowledge that Israel is Jewish state he is asking them to acknowledge the historical Jewish ties and rights to the land. This is a lot to ask, because it goes against their fundamental beliefs. But it is not a new demand. The chutzpah isn’t that Netanyahu is making this demand, but that nearly 16 years after the peace process started that the Palestinians still have not accepted Israel’s right to exist.

(Discuss at Soccer Dad)

No Comments »

“We don’t know yet how this is going to play out.” Over at The Campaign Spot Jim Geraghty is writing that privately the Obama administration is taking credit for Obama inspiring the Iran protectors with his Cairo speech. Really.

Remember how it was important to recognize that these protests in Iran were triggered by ordinary Iranians’ response to the election, and it was important for the U.S. government to be quiet, soft-spoken, and understated in its response to evolving events? Remember when the most important thing was that the Iranians, and the world, conclude that this uprising was generated entirely by internal sources?

Yeah, apparently that’s no longer the case:

Obama’s approach to Iran, including his assertion that the unrest there represents a debate among Iranians unrelated to the United States, is an acknowledgment that a U.S. president’s words have a limited ability to alter foreign events in real time and could do more harm than good. But privately Obama advisers are crediting his Cairo speech for inspiring the protesters, especially the young ones, who are now posing the most direct challenge to the republic’s Islamic authority in its 30-year history.

{…}

So, remember, it’s very important that we not react to this uprising in an antagonistic way, and all of our efforts at re-engagement with Iran have to continue, even inviting their diplomats to July 4 parties at our embassies abroad. But when we do see popular uprisings against the regime, remember that the credit really goes to President Obama.

Truly, this administration has no shame — none, nada, ZERO SHAME! It’s the Maytag drier administration, ’cause the spin never stops!

Ace gets it just right:

It’s not just that Obama is tepid, feckless, anti-democratic, appeasing, cowardly, and weak. That’s his, well, that’s his foreign policy. He has chosen this foreign policy, deliberately, pre-meditatedly, and with malice aforethought.

The galling thing is that, having chosen this path, he also wants credit for Reaganite boldness and unwavering moral conviction in the face of evil.

Yep — It’s ALL about Barack, ALL the time!

 

Ramirez

Barack Hussein Obama — our Narcissist-in-Chief!

(Discuss at Okie On The Lam)

No Comments »

As you all know, over the years I’ve been fascinated by male and female roles in America.  As the mother of a very manly little 10 year old, I take male role models in this culture very seriously.  I’ve therefore noticed (and commented upon) the way in which our society consigns boys to perpetual adolescence.  Just walk down the streets, and you’ll see teen girls dressed like hookers (tight, skimpy clothes) and teen boys dressed like babies (backwards hats, falling down pants, unlaced shoes).

Hollywood is an important part of the way in which American man are infantilized.  I’ve written about this subject twice at American Thinker.  In one article, I looked at two movies with two very different messages about men:  Brokeback Mountain and The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.  In the other, written during the primaries, I looked at manliness in pop culture generally and in the primaries specifically.

If you’ll pardon me quoting myself, in my article from the primaries, I looked back on movie males during Hollywood’s golden era and compared them to our current crop of stars:

Any analysis of American pop culture has to start in Hollywood.  If we enter the Wayback Machine, we can see that, before and during World War II, Hollywood’s male stars were grown-ups (at least on the screen).  There was nothing immature or adolescent in the screen presence of such great stars as Clark Gable, John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Joseph Cotten, Joel McCrea, or Walter Pidgeon, to name but a few.  These were men’s men, with strong faces and deep voices.

When the war started, the most boyish of Hollywood’s hot stars, Jimmy Stewart, ditched Hollywood entirely to serve in the war himself, which he did with extraordinary distinction.  Mickey Rooney, another boyish actor, also did his bit.  Nor were these two alone in abandoning the world of pretend war on the silver screen in order actually to participate in the real war.  Clark Gable, Henry Fonda, William Holden, Gene Autry, Robert Montgomery, David Niven, and a host of others enlisted.  (Ronald Reagan did too, but a hearing problem, combined with the military’s pressing need for morale boosting films, kept him on the home front, something that dogged him politically in later years.)

Today’s Hollywood stars, even when they take on testosterone packed action roles, never seem to rise above boyishness.  Go ahead - take a look at modern such screen luminaries as Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Orlando Bloom, or Ben Affleck.  All of them are distinguished by their chipmunk cheeks and teen heartthrob attractiveness.  The same holds true for the older, post-adolescent actors.  Whether you’re watching an increasingly wrinkled, although still quite charming, Hugh Grant; Tom Cruise with his shark-like grin;  or a goofy Adam Sandler, they all get by playing men who, for the bulk of any given movie, can barely seem to grow up.  Even George Clooney, who boasts old-fashioned silver hair and a gravely voice, shies away from emotionally adult roles, both on and off the screen.  With this type of competition, it’s small surprise that Daniel Craig has proven to be such a popular James Bond.  While his physical attractions elude me, there’s no doubt that he’s the first craggy-cheeked man to play James Bond since Sean Connery made the role.

I’m not the only one paying attention to this trend.  At Pajamas Media, Andrew Klavan has also noticed the perpetual state of immaturity that characterizes guys in way too many movies:

The guys are all children whose manhood consists exclusively in hell-raising.  The women are either fun-loving party girls or grim, death-of-pleasure wife/mommies who seem ever ready to take their little menchildren by the ears and force them to wash the dishes while they stand by wagging their fingers.  These dames remind me of  a wonderful line in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night about “the American woman, aroused”  whose “clean-sweeping irrational temper… had broken the moral back of a race and made a nursery out of a continent.”

A lot of critics get all huffy about this depiction of the sexes - read the silly little fellow who wrote the review in the New York Times by way of example.  The standard line seems to be to blame it all on childish filmmakers pandering to adolescent audiences.  But you know what?  I suspect a lot of it is simple realism.  More and more often I meet young guys just like this:  overgrown kids who are their grim wives’ poodles.  They sheepishly talk about getting a “pink pass,” or a “kitchen pass,” before they can leave the house.  They can’t do this or that because their wives don’t like it.  They “share” household and child-rearing tasks equally - which isn’t really equal at all because they don’t care about a clean house or a well-reared child anywhere near as much as their wives do.  In short, each one seems set to spend his life taking orders from a perpetually dissatisfied Mrs. who sounds to me - forgive me but just speaking in all honesty - like a bloody shrike.  Who can blame these poor shnooks if they go out and get drunk or laid or just plain divorced?

It’s easy just to pass this off as meaningless pop culture, but there’s something deeper going on.  Our culture is becoming feminized.  Women now make up the majority of college graduates, and one could easily call this recession the “men’s recession,” since they’re the ones who have been hardest hit.  That hit will resonate in the home.  While Mom is still going out and earning a living, Dad sits there, unemployed and unemployable.

I’m not sure what can be done about this problem.  I’m certainly not advocating a return to some troglodyte time of brutal cave men and repressed women.  We don’t need to live as they do in Saudi Arabia.  But the pendulum has swung to far and it would be good for American society if it stopped swinging so wildly in the feminine directing and started trending back to a happy-ish medium.

(Discuss at Bookworm Room

No Comments »

Our Flemish correspondent VH writes:

( Discuss at Gates Of Vienna)

Only a few days after the D-Day WWII memorials, concerning which the Dutch blog GeenStijl paid tribute to American soldiers with an impressive photo-series, it has been made public that there will be a President Ronald Reagan memorial in London as tribute to freedom and the victory of the Cold War: a statue, a plaque, and a piece of the Berlin Wall.

From The Young Conservative:

Westminster Council approves Reagan statue

London is to have its memorial to freedom after Westminster council granted full planning permission for a statue of Ronald Reagan outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square. The monument will, appropriately, feature a section of the Berlin Wall. At a meeting of the council the planning request met with unanimous approval, and the council waived its ‘minimum 10 years after death rule’ to grant permission.

Steve Summers, chairman of Westminster City Council’s planning applications sub committee, said: “Regardless of politics, nobody can dispute that President Reagan was a true ally of this country.

“During his presidency the term ‘special relationship’ reflected not just the close working partnership of our respective governments, but helped reinforce Britain’s unquestionable cultural and historic ties with the United States. “Subsequent presidencies have continued that unique bond between our countries so it is only right and proper we exempt President Reagan, as a former head of state, from the usual rules on statues.”

The memorial to Reagan will also feature a section of the Berlin wall, reflecting his decisive leadership which brought the Cold War to a bloodless end and dismantled Communism in Europe.

Mr Summers added: “Those who witnessed the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989 described the feeling in the air that night as electric, as if some great force had been let loose and it is fitting we should pay tribute to Reagan’s contribution to bringing down this barrier between east and west, and subsequently changing the world.

Continue Reading »

1 Comment »

Remember the hoo-ha about the Bush administration’s decision to fire a handful of US attorneys (as opposed to the noncontroversial Clinton decision to fire almost all the US attorneys)?  Well, Obama’s in a firing mood now, too.

I wonder if Republicans will have the cojones to check out whether the following is a legitimate firing, or whether Obama is using his political power to fire an inspector general who has discovered millions in wasted taxpayer dollars and, incidentally, embarrassed one of Obama’s political friends:

President Barack Obama plans to fire the inspector general who investigates AmeriCorps and other national service programs amid a controversy between the IG and Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, who is an Obama supporter and former NBA basketball star. The IG, Gerald Walpin, was criticized by the U.S. attorney in Sacramento for the way he handled an investigation of Johnson and his nonprofit group, St. HOPE Academy, which received hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grants from the Corporation for National Community Service. The corporation runs the AmeriCorps program.

On Thursday, Obama said in a letter to Congress that he had lost confidence in Walpin. Neither the president nor deputy White House press secretary Josh Earnest would give details.

As for Obama’s failure to explain why he had lost confidence in Walpin, that’s a bit of a problem.  The law requires that a president provide substantive reasons for removing an inspector general precisely to avoid the cloud of suspicion (already rising here) that the firing is politically motivated.

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is not pleased by the President’s current refusal to provide details justifying his decision to fire Walpin:

Grassley said Walpin had identified millions of dollars in AmeriCorps funds that were wasted or misspent and “it appears he has been doing a good job.”

There’s no doubt that the charges against Mayor Johnson, if true, are yet another blot on the Democratic party name.  (They’re also another blot on Johnson’s name, since he might have a problem with the ladies.  I say might because it’s easy for attention seekers to launch false sexual harassment claims against rich, handsome, famous athletes.)

The IG found that Johnson, a former all-star point guard for the Phoenix Suns, had used AmeriCorps grants to pay volunteers to engage in school-board political activities, run personal errands for Johnson and even wash his car.

The AP article gets interesting here, because the time line is a bit fluffy.  The article states that, in August, Walpin reported his claims against Johnson to the Sacto U.S. attorney’s office.  It also says that subsequently, that office slapped Walpin around a bit for making those same charges against Johnson:

In August 2008, Walpin referred the matter to the local U.S. attorney’s office, which said the IG’s conclusions seemed overstated and did not accurately reflect all the information gathered in the investigation.

What the AP article doesn’t say is precisely what the gap was between Walpin’s reporting the problem and the U.S. Attorney playing down the charges.  The letter giving the wet noodle approach to Walpin’s charges seems to date from April 29, 2009 and was written by Acting U.S. Attorney Lawrence Brown, an Obama appointee:

“We also highlighted numerous questions and further investigation they needed to conduct, including the fact that they had not done an audit to establish how much AmeriCorps money was actually misspent,” Acting U.S. Attorney Lawrence Brown said in an April 29 letter to the federal counsel of inspectors general.

In other words, I can’t tell whether a Bush appointee or an Obama appointee concluded that Walpin’s charges were over the top.

The U.S. Attorney’s blase attitude towards Walpin’s charges notwithstanding, something seems to have gone wrong.  In order to make this whole thing go away, Johnson and his organization agreed to settle the claim for almost 50% of the grants his organization received:

The U.S. attorney’s office reached a settlement in the matter. Brown cited press accounts that said Johnson and the nonprofit would repay half of nearly $850,000 in grants it received.

That’s a pretty big settlement for a nuisance value case that’s allegedly all smoke and no fire.  All in all, the whole thing sounds suspicious, and it would behoove President Transparency to spell out his reasons for firing Walpin to allay any concerns that he is trying to protect yet another one of his friends caught with a hand too close to the till.

(Discuss at Bookworm Room)

No Comments »

Sixty Five years ago today the allied armies invaded the cliffs of Normandy in an effort to fight back the German forces that had enslaved nations and rescue Europe from the shadow of tyranny. These men knew the stakes and fought for liberty without reservation, to the death if necessary. Their sacrifice secured our freedom.  We are in awe of such greatness and thankful that the greatest generation of Americans stood tall against our enemies and defeated them where they stood.

Another great American honored those WWII heroes 25 years ago. President Ronald Regan remembered their sacrifice on June 6, 1984 from Pointe Du Hoc, Normandy, France.

President Reagan’s Speech on June 6, 1984, Pointe Du Hoc, Normandy, France

We’re here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved, and the world prayed for its rescue. Here, in Normandy, the rescue began. Here, the Allies stood and fought against tyranny, in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.

We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but forty years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, 225 Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs. Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here, and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.

The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers at the edge of the cliffs, shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting, only ninety could still bear arms.

Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them here. These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war. Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender’s poem. You are men who in your “lives fought for life and left the vivid air singed with your honor.”

I think I know what you may be thinking right now — thinking “we were just part of a bigger effort; everyone was brave that day.” Well, everyone was. You remember the story of Bill Millin of the 51st Highlanders? Forty years ago today, British troops were pinned down near a bridge, waiting desperately for help. Suddenly, they heard the sound of bagpipes, and some thought they were dreaming. Well, they weren’t. They looked up and saw Bill Millin with his bagpipes, leading the reinforcements and ignoring the smack of bullets into the ground around him.

Lord Lovat was with him — Lord Lovat of Scotland, who calmly announced when he got to the bridge, “Sorry, I’m a few minutes late,” as if he’d been delayed by a traffic jam, when in truth he’d just come form the bloody fighting on Sword Beach, which he and his men had just taken.

There was the impossible valor of the Poles who threw themselves between the enemy and the rest of Europe as the invasion took hold, and the unsurpassed courage of the Canadians who had already seen the horrors of war on this coast. They knew what awaited them there, but they would not be deterred. And once they hit Juno Beach, they never looked back.

All of these men were part of a roll call of honor with names that spoke of a pride as bright as the colors they bore; The Royal Winniped Rifles, Poland’s 24th Lancers, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, the Screaming Eagles, the Yeomen of England’s armored divisions, the forces of Free France, the Coast Guard’s “Matchbox Fleet,” and you, the American Rangers.

Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief. It was loyalty and love.

The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead, or on the next. It was the deep knowledge — and pray God we have not lost it — that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.

You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One’s country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it’s the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.

The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought — or felt in their hearts, though they couldn’t know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4:00 am., in Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying, and in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.

Something else helped the men of D-day; their rock-hard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer, he told them: Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we’re about to do. Also, that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.”

These are the things that impelled them; these are the things that shaped the unity of the Allies.

When the war was over, there were lives to be rebuilt and governments to be returned to the people. There were nations to be reborn. Above all, there was a new peace to be assured. These were huge and daunting tasks. But the Allies summoned strength from the faith, belief, loyalty, and love of those who fell here. They rebuilt a new Europe together. There was first a great reconciliation among those who had been enemies, all of whom had suffered so greatly. The United States did its part, creating the Marshall Plan to help rebuild our allies and our former enemies. The Marshall Plan led to the Atlantic alliance — a great alliance that serves to this day as our shield for freedom, for prosperity, and for peace.

In spite of our great efforts and successes, not all that followed the end of the war was happy or planned. Some liberated countries were lost. The great sadness of this loss echoes down to our own time in the streets of Warsaw, Prague, and East Berlin. Soviet troops that came to the center of this continent did not leave when peace came. They’re still there, uninvited, unwanted, unyielding, almost forty years after the war. Because of this, allied forces still stand on this continent. Today, as forty years ago, our armies are here for only one purpose: to protect and defend democracy. The only territories we hold are memorials like this one and graveyards where our heroes rest.

We in America have learned bitter lessons from two world wars. It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We’ve learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent. But we try always to be prepared for peace, prepared to deter aggression, prepared to negotiate the reduction of arms, and yes, prepared to reach out again in the spirit of reconciliation. In truth, there is no reconciliation we would welcome more than a reconciliation with the Soviet Union, so, together, we can lessen the risks of war, now and forever.

It’s fitting to remember here the great losses also suffered by the Russian people during World War II: 20 million perished, a terrible price that testifies to all the world the necessity of ending war. I tell you from my heart that we in the United States do not want war. We want to wipe from the face of the earth the terrible weapons that man now has in his hands. And I tell you, we are ready to seize that beachhead. We look for some sign from the Soviet Union that they are willing to move forward, that they share our desire and love for peace, and that they will give up the ways of conquest. There must be a changing there that will allow us to turn our hope into action.

We will pray forever that someday that changing will come. But for now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that protects it.

We’re bound today by what bound us 40 years ago, the same loyalties, traditions, and beliefs. We’re bound by reality. The strength of America’s allies is vital to the United States, and the American security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe’s democracies. We were with you then; we are with you now. Your hopes are our hopes, and your destiny is our destiny.

Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: “I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.”

Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their valor and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.

Thank you very much, and God bless you all

No Comments »

It started with top administration official snubbing Israel’s Chief of Staff on a special trip here or to discuss Iran. and with special new Pentagon rules put in place by the Obama administration that that amount to a de facto cut in military aid to Israel.

It’s continued with Secretary of State Clinton’s insulting demands that Israel stop building homes for Jews who happen to live in Jewish communities like Jerusalem, Efrat, Gush Etzion, Ariel or other any other Jewish communities the Palestinians want to occupy, and with the Obama Administration’s refusal to respect Israel declaration of Jerusalem as its undivided capitol creating  what amounts to almost outright hostility and intimidation of the sort one would expect from the UN rather than from America.

It’s continuing with outright freezes and deliberately created bureaucratic delays on Israeli arms requests:

The Obama administration has blocked Israel’s request for advanced U.S.-origin attack helicopters.

Government sources said the administration has held up Israel’s request for the AH-64D Apache Longbow attack helicopter. The sources said the request was undergoing an interagency review to determine whether additional Longbow helicopters would threaten Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip.

“During the recent war, Israel made considerable use of the Longbow, and there were high civilian casualties in the Gaza Strip,” a source close to the administration said.

The sources said Israel has sought to purchase up to six new AH-64Ds in an effort to bolster conventional and counter-insurgency capabilities. They said Israel wants to replenish its fleet after the loss of two Apache helicopters in the 2006 war with Hizbullah. {…}

Israel’s Defense Ministry and air force have discussed procurement of additional Longbows with the U.S. firm Boeing. But the sources said the Longbow as well as other defense requests have been shelved by the administration amid its review of the potential use of American weapons platforms by Israel.

 

No Comments »

When Sonia Sotomayor made her comments about white guys, she was simply displaying what nowadays passes for mainstream dedicated-lefty thinking…which means it passes for mainstream thinking on behalf of us all.

Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases,” she declared. “I am…not so sure that I agree with the statement. First…there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life. [emphasis mine]

Better to have this thing done by that ethnic group than a bunch of white males, better to have that thing over there done by this group over here than a bunch of white males…et cetera. It’s not the same reverse-discrimination I remember from years ago, which sought to make the point it was someone else’s “turn” and left things at that. The message had to do with fairness and equality. Nowadays it has more to do with suitability. And differences. We like to talk about how little sense it ever made, to allow the white males to do anything. We w.a.s.p.’s have weaknesses other groups don’t have. Weaknesses, vices, phobias, we’re ignorant, we’re greedy, we’re cowardly…we lack empathy.

The next step after that is when someone calls you on your racist bullshit, you backpedal like crazy. So we’ve seen this stuff Before Sonia, and we’ll see it long after she’s confirmed. Or withdraws. Whatever.

James Taranto, writing in Best of the Web, notices something even more skewed. And I don’t know how you can top this. Today’s liberals behave exactly the way Archie Bunker used to behave…for laughs.

It reminds us of an exchange on an early episode of “All in the Family,” which we caught as part of a retrospective aired earlier this week on the TV Land cable network. Archie Bunker and the Meathead are arguing over a brochure advertising a slate of candidates for local office:

Archie: What’s the matter with this? I call this representative government. You’ve got Salvatori, Feldman, O’Reilly, Nelson–that’s an Italian, a Jew, an Irishman and a regular American there. That’s what I call a balanced ticket.

Meathead: Why do you always have to label people by nationality?

Archie: ‘Cause, how else are you going to get the right man for the right job? For instance, take Feldman there. He’s up for treasurer. Well, that’s perfect. All them people know how to handle money. Know what I mean?

Meathead: No, I don’t.

Archie: Well, then you got Salvatori running for D.A. He can keep an eye on Feldman. You know, I want to tell you something about the Italians. When you do get an honest one, you really got something there.

Meathead: Aw, c’mon, Arch.

Archie: Well, then here you got O’Reilly, the mick. He can see that the graft is equally spread around, you know. You got Nelson, the American guy. He’s good for TV appearances, to make the rest of them look respectable.

Like Sotomayor, Archie is not propounding a theory of racial or ethnic supremacy but describing the world in terms of culturally contingent stereotypes. He is engaging in identity politics.
:
Today, you can easily imagine a conservative uttering the Meathead’s earnest query: “Why do you always have to label people by nationality?” But somewhere along the line, liberalism lost its ideals and adopted Archie Bunker’s theory of representative government.

There was an elegantly veiled undertone of preaching in this show, for those who are too young to recall. The message was always crystal-clear: Only a cigar-chomping rube from Queens would stoop so low as to think ethnic groups have characteristics that separate them from other ethnic groups. It doesn’t matter if you hold one group to be superior to another (which, pointedly, Bunker doesn’t do in the exchange above). Simply believing in such differentials is enough. Because we’re all the same.

Sotomayor went further than Archie Bunker, though, since her comment made it quite clear that she holds white males to be inferior. Sure her primary point was that the white males have missed out on some kind of experience(s), not that they would be white, or male. But the whiteness-and-maleness was somehow worth mentioning.

The whiteness-and-maleness accentuates the inexperience…or it is more of a hindrance to rendering a reasonable decision than the inexperience. Does it matter which one? Either way, the whiteness-and-maleness, in her mind, is obviously some kind of liability.

So go ahead and confirm her. Just bear in mind, though, that she represents exactly the mindset that, in a day long gone, “everyone” was so eager to leave behind. Since, y’know, when you’re walking in circles, it’s important to at least recognize that’s what you are doing.

( Discuss at House of Erastosthenes)

No Comments »

It’s not just the video that’s good, it’s John Hindraker’s comment about Obama’s tax policies:

I think President Obama’s worst weakness is that he is ignorant, not only of economics as an academic discipline, but of business as it is commonly experienced and understood by those in the private sector. This lack of understanding promises to be an endless source of bad policy.

( Discuss at Bookworm Room)

No Comments »