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2012

DAVID HOROWITZ: OBAMA STILL WANTS TO FUNDAMENTALLY TRANSFORM AMERICA

Obama Still Wants to Fundamentally Transform America

http://frontpagemag.com/2012/david-horowitz/obama-still-wants-to-fundamentally-transform-america/print/

The article below is reprinted from The Washington Times.

To order a copy of David Horowitz’s latest book, “Radicals: Portraits of a Destructive Passion,” click here.

An American compound in Libya is invaded by al Qaeda terrorists and an American ambassador is purportedly tortured before being killed. Muslim mobs attack American embassies in 27 countries chanting,”Death to America.” The White House response? A statement blaming the outrages on a filmmaker in the United States, along with apologies to the Muslim world.

The American economy languishes with millions unemployed in the worst times since the Great Depression. Yet the president spends his first years in the White House focusing on a plan to create a trillion-dollar socialized health care system opposed by a majority of Americans. Then he campaigns for re-election on a platform blaming rich Americans for the economic woes.

What’s going on here?

The answer lies in a famous statement the president made on the eve of his election, when he told a crowd of cheering supporters: “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” These are not the words of a traditional, pragmatic-minded American politician. A practical politician attempts to address problems and fix them, not to fundamentally transform an entire nation. Transforming nations is what radicals aspire to do. But Mr. Obama’s actions in the past four years — beginning with putting Obamacare in front of the economic crisis — are nothing if not radical.

Radicals are sometimes referred to as “liberals in a hurry.” They share goals but not means. Both Mr. Obama and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, expressed early sympathy for the Occupy Wall Street movement, whose rage at the American social order quickly turned violent and destructive.

But while Mr. Obama and Mrs. Pelosi may pursue their agendas through the traditional process of democratic government, ends still determine means. The radical nature of the goals they pursue does have consequences, the first of which is to divide the nation in an hour when they should have been uniting it.

In a national crisis such as America faced in 2009 when 800,000 of us were losing our jobs every month, traditional leaders would have regarded their first task as one of rallying the country on a common agenda and bringing Americans together. Instead, Mr. Obama and Mrs. Pelosi put their radical agenda first — passing a massive health care bill, the most transformative legislation in American history, and passing it over the opposition not only of Republicans but even of Democratic voters in Massachusetts, who elected Republican Scott Brown to cast a vote against it.

Far from pursuing national unity to solve the crisis, Mr. Obama put his goal of transformation in front of everything. In order to achieve the change he wanted, he shut out the congressional Republicans in drafting his revolutionary legislation, and then disregarded the majority of Americans when they rejected his plan, defeating Democrats in special elections in New Jersey and Virginia — states that he had won. His radical goals caused Mr. Obama to squander his political capital on a divisive campaign in the first two years of his administration that has changed and embittered the political landscape, and that has persisted for four years and could continue.

EZRA LEVANT:Out of Guantanamo and Into a Canadian Prison

On Saturday, Omar Khadr, al Qaeda member and killer of a U.S. serviceman, headed north to a civilian prison.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444592404578028600592805828.html?mod=opinion_newsreel

Two years ago this month, a Guantanamo Bay military jury sentenced a Canadian-born al Qaeda terrorist to 40 years in prison. Omar Khadr was convicted of war crimes in Afghanistan, including the killing, during an ambush, of a 28-year-old U.S. Special Forces medic named Christopher Speer, the father of two young children.

But what the jury didn’t know was that, even as they were deliberating the charges of “murder in violation of the law of war, attempted murder in violation of the law of war, conspiracy, providing material support for terrorism, and spying,” Pentagon prosecutors had already struck a plea-bargain deal with Khadr, at the direction of Obama administration officials.

No public explanation for the deal has ever been given. But regardless of what the jury decided, Khadr would receive a sentence of just eight years. And he would have to serve only a single year of that sentence in U.S. custody before applying, with Washington’s blessing, to transfer to Canada. The application process took time, but eventually was complete.

William McGurn:Call a Terrorist a ‘Savage’? How Uncivilized on Pamela Geller ****

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444592404578030423958154556.html?mod=opinion_newsreel An anti-jihad message is ‘hate speech’ by today’s topsy-turvy standards. In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat Jihad.” So reads an advertisement that went up a week ago in New York City subway stations. Sponsored by Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative, the ads […]

BRET STEPHENS: BENGHAZI WAS OBAMA’S 3:00 A.M. CALL ****

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444592404578030202508251578.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop

“It was five in the afternoon when Mr. Obama took his 3 a.m. call. He still flubbed it.”

Why won’t the Libya story go away? Why can’t the memory of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and his staff be consigned to the same sad-and-sealed file of Americans killed abroad in dangerous line of duty? How has an episode that seemed at first to have been mishandled by the Romney camp become an emblem of a feckless and deluded foreign policy?

The story-switching and stonewalling haven’t helped. But let’s start a little earlier.

The hour is 5 p.m., Sept. 11, Washington time, and the scene is an Oval Office meeting among President Obama, the secretary of defense, the national security adviser and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi has been under assault for roughly 90 minutes. Some 30 U.S. citizens are at mortal risk. The whereabouts of Ambassador Stevens are unknown.

What is uppermost on the minds of the president and his advisers? The safety of Americans, no doubt. So what are they prepared to do about it? Here is The Wall Street Journal’s account of the meeting:

“There was no serious consideration at that hour of intervention with military force, officials said. Doing so without Libya’s permission could represent a violation of sovereignty and inflame the situation, they said. Instead, the State Department reached out to the Libyan government to get reinforcements to the scene.”

So it did. Yet the attack was far from over. After leaving the principal U.S. compound, the Americans retreated to a second, supposedly secret facility, which soon came under deadly mortar fire. Time to call in the troops?

90% of US Households Face Huge Tax Hike Next Year: Mike Flynn

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/10/01/90-households-face-huge-tax-hike-in-january On November 7th, while cleaning crews are still tidying up from election night parties, America’s political class will be hurling themselves into another essential battle over government spending, taxes and debt. On January 2nd, 2013, absent some kind of budget deal, America will fall off the “fiscal cliff” and face a massive tax increase […]

ISLAMISTS OFFER $200,000.00 FOR THE SEVERED HEAD OF FILMMAKER

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2012/10/01/Islamists-Offer-200k-Reward-For-Severed-Head-Of-Filmmaker

A second Pakistani politician has offered a reward for anyone who kills the maker of the anti-Islam film that has angered Muslims around the world.
Ikramullah Shahid put up the $200,000 bounty at a rally in Peshawar, before a crowd of about 15,000 people.

The gathering was led by the Difa-e-Pakistan Council, an umbrella group of radical Islamic and militant groups. Shahid is a member of the group.
This is the second such offer made by someone in Pakistan. A federal cabinet minister earlier offered $100,000 for the man behind the US-made film that portrays the Prophet Mohammed as a fraud, womaniser and child molester.

THE FOOL’S PARADISE OF SWEDISH MULTICULTURALISM

http://daphneanson.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-fools-paradise-of-swedish.html

Australia has been dubbed “The Sweden of the South,” and from Peter Wertheim, executive director of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry comes a robust statement deploring the attack on the Jewish community centre in Malmö, Sweden last Friday:

“It is bad enough that the Jewish Community Centre in Malmö was attacked with an explosive device and bricks through its reinforced entrance just after Yom Kippur. What is worse is that in Sweden, a country that prides itself on its progressive human rights record, the authorities lack the courage to confront the pervasive Jew-hatred that produced this attack in the first place and to bring the perpetrators of past attacks to justice. Worse still is the apparent public and media indifference.

Seventy years after Europe was devastated by the Nazis, antisemitism is once more commonplace and tacitly accepted on that continent. European civilisation has failed to cast off its long and disgraceful history of anti-Jewish prejudice and persecution. The mark of Cain remains etched indelibly on its forehead, and for this it will one day again pay a terrible price.”

ROGER KIMBALL: WHY ROMNEY WILL WIN

http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2012/10/01/the-narrative-in-london/?print=1 At a dinner party in London Saturday, I was asked to say a few words about the upcoming presidential election in the United States. All of the guests were what my friend Otto Penzler calls “politically mature,” i.e., they regarded Barack Obama with varying degrees of fear, loathing, and distaste. But they had also, […]

ROGER SIMON: WE LIVE UNDER A MEDIA COUP D’ETAT

http://pjmedia.com/rogerlsimon/2012/10/01/media-coup-detat/ Coup d’états come in a variety of forms. Some are violent with arrogant colonels pointing forty-fives at the temples of their predecessors and blowing their brains out; others are stealthy with the citizens awakening on an ordinary morning to find their whole world has changed yet not a drop of blood has been shed. […]

Muslim Brotherhood to Ryan Mauro: We Support Violence against ‘Aggressors and Invaders’ by RYAN MAURO

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/muslim-brotherhood-to-ryan-mauro-we-support-violence-against-aggressors-and-invaders On August 10, I posed a question to the Muslim Brotherhood on its official English-language Twitter page about whether it supports attacks on Israelis and U.S. soldiers in Muslim lands. The supposedly “non-violent” Islamist group’s reply was, “if they were aggressors and invaders of our lands no matter what nationality.” The answer was evasive, […]