http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2202082/Barack-Obamas-election-campaign-engulfed-major-foreign-policy-crisis.html The Obama administration is engulfed in a full-blown foreign policy crisis just two months before the presidential election after the murder of the US ambassador to Libya and three other officials and amid fierce criticism from his opponent Mitt Romney. Footage of the body of Christopher Stevens, United States ambassador to Libya, slung over […]
ObamaCare’s cuts to hospitals will cost seniors their lives | Fox News http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/09/12/obamacare-cuts-to-hospitals-will-cost-seniors-their-lives/ ObamaCare’s cuts to hospitals will cost seniors their lives Betsy McCaughey, FoxNews.com President Obama is wooing seniors with promises to protect Medicare as they’ve known it. On the defensive because of the $716 billion his health care law takes from Medicare, Obama […]
Click here: Put The Spine Back In The Eagle – Maggie’s Farm
http://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/20568-Put-The-Spine-Back-In-The-Eagle.html
Put The Spine Back In The Eagle
If you think I was angry yesterday…then stand by for today. Let’s connect the dots in close to real time. Reasonably, President Bush took aggressive action against the Afghan and Iraqi regimes that sponsored terrorism against the US and its allies, although – along with every intelligence service – in major error believing that Iraq’s WMDs were more and more able. At the same time, reasonably, President Bush exerts himself to inform Americans to separate believers in Islam from radical Islamists.
That latter distinction is still valid. However, experience has demonstrated that the radical Islamists have grasped power in country after country while the voices or efforts of moderates have been inadequate or squelched by both the radical Islamists and by much of the Western media making increasingly tenuous excuses for the radicals.
Cap that off with an Obama administration, from the president himself to his appointed minions in the highest levels at the State Department, apologizing for supposed US sins, as claimed by radical Islamists, and otherwise stubbornly pursuing fairy tale wishes that catering to radicals will transform them into moderates and allies.
This same Obama administration failed to negotiate a reasonable timetable and process for reducing our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan while directing our military to leave more quickly. This has increased instability in those two countries in which Americans have sacrificed, persuaded fence-sitters to lean or go into the radical Isalamist camps, and encouraged bolder defiance from Maliki and Karzai of US and Western interests.
With all that and more background, the attacks yesterday on the US Embassy in Cairo and the US Consulate in Benghazi should come as little surprise. It should also come as little surprise that the response by the Obama administration was so initially apologetic — and little better in its walk-back — to the attackers instead of calling them out as thugs and demanding apologies from the Egyptian and Libyan governments for standing by. It should come as little surprise when there are more attacks on US Embassies and Consulates in the MidEast. The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, which has seized almost all power in Egypt, calls for more nationwide demonstrations this Friday. There are strong signs that Islamists in other Arab countries are stampeding in that path.
Apologists for extremism, abroad, in the White House or media, will continue to twist themselves into putrid pretzels of pusillanimity, and the media play along, with the most prominent prime perpetrator of press cover-up, the New York Times, even being so craven to keep yesterday’s outrages off its front page.
Presidential contender Mitt Romney, while pointedly criticizing the weak Obama response, needs to go much further, and quickly, to demonstrate how his administration would put spine back in the deboned eagle of the past four years. MidEast expert Michael Rubin lays out a program.That’s more and better than these offenses just being bantered and battered about without purposeful action.
It’s past time to return the proud and mighty eagle to prominence, talons bared, and let our enemies stand by for a thrashing wherever and whenever we decide. No longer can they be allowed so much initiative to incite without serious consequence, expecting the US to just whimper from the Oval Office.
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/316633/no-its-ishariai-and-assault-us-missions-andrew-c-mccarthy could not more vigorously disagree with my friend Daniel Pipes, who disappointingly lays fault for yesterday’s carnage at the feet of Reverend Terry Jones. In essence, Daniel — like much of the progressive, bipartisan U.S. ruling class — adopts the reasoning of Muslim Brotherhood jurist Yusuf Qaradawi, who admonishes that women who fail to […]
http://freebeacon.com/the-cairo-tehran-express/
The Cairo-Tehran Express
Egyptian-Iranian intelligence meeting prompts fears of a new Middle East terror axis
U.S. intelligence agencies recently monitored a secret meeting between Egypt’s intelligence chief and a senior Iranian spy that is raising new fears the Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo could begin covertly supporting global terrorism.
According to U.S. officials, the head of the Egyptian General Intelligence Service, Maj. Gen. Murad Muwafi, met in early August with a senior official of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).
Disclosure of the Egyptian-Iranian intelligence meeting comes as the Obama administration is planning to provide $1 billion in aid to bail out Egypt’s new Islamist government. The administration is said to be seeking closer ties to the new regime in Cairo, following the ouster in February 2011 of long-time ally Hosni Mubarak.
Many members of the pro-democratic, anti-Muslim Brotherhood opposition in Egypt believe the Obama administration has made a covert pact to support the Morsi regime.
Meanwhile in Cairo, Islamic protesters on Tuesday stormed the U.S. Embassy and pulled down the American flag to protest what they said was a U.S. film production the protesters claimed insulted Islam.
U.S. intelligence gathering targeting Egypt has been stepped up over the past year as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamist party, came to power in June. The group’s credo includes the phrase, “Allah is our objective; the Quran is our law, the Prophet is our leader; jihad is our way; and death for the sake of Allah is the highest of our aspirations.”
Since the revolution that led to the ouster of the pro-U.S. regime of Hosni Mubarak, a large number of radical Islamists have been released from prison and have gone back to preaching anti-Western and anti-Israel jihad, or holy war.
The meeting between Muwafi and the Iranian, identified by officials only with his last name, Gerami, set off security concerns because the Iranian spy service is a key player in Tehran’s international support for terrorism, as well as anti-U.S. and anti-Israel operations.
Within days of the meeting, however, Egypt’s new President Mohamed Morsi replaced Muwafi in a political shakeup following a terrorist attack in the Sinai Peninsula that killed 16 Egyptians in August.
It is not known if the meeting with Gerami was the cause of Muwafi’s ouster, or if it was the result of the Sinai attack.
News reports in Egypt quoted Muwafi as saying his service had some advance intelligence warning of the Aug. 5 Sinai attack but failed to alert other military and security authorities.
Four Americans killed in Libya embassy attack
CBS News
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
News
Four Americans killed in Libya embassy attack
Libyan officials said Wednesday that U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens was among four Americans killed in an attack by Muslim protesters on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi the previous evening. Only one death had been verified Tuesday night by U.S. officials. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz26Fsh1eW3
Democrat platform strays from Jeffersonian roots
Human Events
Tuesday, September 11, 2012
Commentary
There are no mentions in the Democratic platform of the Declaration of the Independence and only passing references to the Constitution. It is shocking that a party that traces its lineage to Thomas Jefferson would leave out references to the Declaration, the bedrock of American principles. Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz26FrzYe80
PIPES: Obama: ‘My Muslim faith’
PIPES: Obama: ‘My Muslim faith’
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz26Fs8XP6X
China VP disappearance fuels succession concerns
Associated Press
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
News
As Xi Jinping’s absence carried into an 11th day Wednesday, party officials were saying nothing. Their silence added to the momentum of the rumors and raised an important question: What happens to China’s leadership transition if the 59-year old is unable to assume the mantle of power as planned this fall? Read more…
Read more: http://times247.com/#ixzz26FsQ7qdj
http://news.yahoo.com/peres-sets-1-million-grant-brain-research-104528863.html
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel’s president Shimon Peres has launched a $1 million grant program to pursue innovation in brain research technology.
Peres says he hopes the initiative will help turn Israel into an international hub for innovation in brain research technology.
The fund is open to researchers from around the world. The grant of $1 million will awarded next year.
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/mark-tapson/barbarians-at-the-gate/
Yesterday angry protesters scaled the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, tore down the American flag, and held up shredded bits of it to television camera crews. Welcome to the new democratic Egypt, a product of the glorious, Obama-inspired Arab Spring which sent so many thrills up the collective leg of the mainstream media.
The embassy had been cleared of diplomatic personnel earlier that day, ahead of the imminent threat. Shots were fired (by whom it isn’t clear) as a large crowd gathered around the compound. Egyptian police and army personnel attempted to prevent the demonstrators from advancing farther, but not before the protesters planted the black flag of Islam atop a ladder inside the embassy. On it was lettering that read, “There is no God but Allah and Mohammad is his messenger,” the profession of Muslim faith.
The demonstration was apparently in protest of a film which the crowd deemed insulting to their prophet Mohammed. It was unclear which film upset them – in fact, it’s probably unclear even to the protesters, who rarely need a specific reason to become insanely offended and rampage through the streets. Some took the opportunity to express their perceived grievances over U.S. policy, with the usual chanting of anti-American slogans. It’s difficult to imagine what they have to complain about where Obama’s America is concerned, since our President actively assisted the Muslim Brotherhood’s rise to power there and just signed off on a $1 billion aid package to the new regime.
CNN reported that several individuals claimed responsibility for organizing the demonstrations, among them Wesam Abdel-Wareth, the president of Egypt’s conservative Hekma television channel. Mohammed al-Zawahiri – the brother of al Qaeda bigwig Ayman al-Zawahiri – added that “we called for the peaceful protest joined by different Islamic factions including the Islamic Jihad, Hazem Abu Ismael movement.” By “peaceful” he means there was not yet any wholesale slaughter of infidel Americans or any unlucky Copts who might happen to be in the vicinity.
Al-Zawahiri added that “the film portrays the prophet in a very ugly manner, alluding to topics like sex, which is not acceptable.” Sex, eh? Perhaps he’s referring to his prophet Mohammed’s marriage consummation with a nine-year-old, which would indeed be an ugly – yet truthful – portrayal. No wonder the crowd is upset – unlike a film about Christianity’s Jesus, a film that depicts Islam’s model for the perfect man in an historically accurate manner wouldn’t paint their religion in a very flattering light.
“I just want to say,” al-Zawahiri went on, “how would the Americans feel if films insulting leading Christian figures like the pope or historical figures like Abraham Lincoln were produced?”
The answer is that films insulting Christians and American historical figures are produced almost nonstop in the entertainment biz, and Americans don’t form spit-flecked, bloodthirsty mobs to storm Hollywood studios and threaten Bill Maher with death. Christians and patriotic Americans are routinely insulted in pop culture and most don’t even bother to shoot off an irate email to a TV network. But of course al-Zawahiri wasn’t expecting empathy; these mobs don’t want our respect – they want our submission.
And they got it. How did U.S. embassy officials respond to this unacceptable behavior? First they issued a warning to Americans in Egypt, telling them to avoid the demonstrations because “clashes may occur.” Note the neutrality and moral equivalence of the word “clashes,” which suggests equal aggression from both sides, when in fact one side is peaceful and civilized, and the other becomes savagely violent at the drop of an imaginary hat.
Next, the U.S. Embassy issued a stern condemnation – of the filmmakers and their free speech. It stated that it “condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.” So the official stance of our government is that the filmmakers – and bear in mind that it’s unclear who the filmmakers are or even that this supposedly offensive film exists – are misguided and intentionally offending Muslims, and they are the ones responsible for the barbaric behavior of the rioters, not the rioters themselves.
“Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy,” the Embassy statement continued. Sadly, this kind of platitude is always trotted out in defense of the hair-trigger feelings of murderous Muslims but never for the members of any other faith group – largely because no other faith group ever needs placating like Muslims. “We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.” Apparently our own embassy is confused about the definition of free speech, a freedom which is meaningless unless it is protected from people who claim that it “offends” them.
This is craven dhimmitude, pure and simple. When our own embassy in Cairo is under assault; the American flag is torn down and shredded, and another raised in its place; and our official response is to leap to the defense of the delicate sensibilities of the fanatics storming our embassy, then we are no longer a beacon of freedom and human rights in a dark land. We are appeasers and collaborators in their totalitarianism.
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/316565 Everywhere I went Monday, conservatives were spooked by a Gallup poll showing President Obama with a six-point lead over Mitt Romney. Then on Tuesday, a Washington Post/ABC News poll had the margin down to a single-point Obama edge. What is going on? As Election Day draws closer, most major public-opinion surveys shift from interviewing […]
http://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2012/09/11/doj-documents-argued-for-sc-voter-id-approval/?singlepage=true PJ Media has learned that a team of career lawyers, expert analysts, and supervisors in the Justice Department Voting Section recommended that South Carolina’s photo voter identification law be precleared under the Voting Rights Act as non-discriminatory. Presidential appointees in the Justice Department then disregarded the career recommendation and an objection followed, blocking South […]
