http://frontpagemag.com/2012/davidhornik/understanding-israels-red-line/ Why, in his speech to the UN General Assembly late last month, did Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu push back the crunch time for Iran’s nuclear program to next spring or summer? The extended deadline came as a surprise considering that Netanyahu and his defense minister Ehud Barak had been saying for almost a […]
On a jury to consider how the Palestinians have been treated were such luminaries as musician Roger Waters and writer Alice Walker.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444024204578044213457310392.html?mod=opinion_newsreel
Those who grew up with Pink Floyd’s 1979 double album “The Wall” will remember it as the perfect antidote to the crueller aspects of teenage life. Chronicling the mental breakdown of a pop star, the rock opera rages against suffocating parents, tyrannical teachers and social conformism. The story concludes with the hero hauled before a nightmarish court, where everyone in his life testifies as an adversarial witness. Before the defendant can say a word in his own defense, the judge bellows a guilty verdict: “The evidence before the court is incontrovertible. There is no need for the jury to retire!”
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443982904578046671220961776.html?mod=opinion_newsreel
Having been routed in the first debate, President Obama has found a comeback strategy: Fly Big Bird. Specifically, mock Mitt Romney’s call to cut federal subsidies for the millionaires at the Sesame Workshop and pledge to defend the Public Broadcasting Service no matter how much money the Treasury has to borrow.
At least he’s finally discovered a second-term agenda.
On Monday night in San Francisco, Mr. Obama claimed Mr. Romney “said he’d bring down our deficit by going after what has been the biggest driver of our debt and deficits over the last decade—public television, PBS. You didn’t know this, but for all you moms and kids out there, you should have confidence that finally somebody is cracking down on Big Bird.” He’s also rolled out a TV ad starring the Sesame Street favorite.
Mr. Obama is mocking a small effort to reduce federal spending, but it would be funnier if Mr. Obama hadn’t also rejected all the larger efforts too. From Congressional Republicans. From his own Simpson-Bowles deficit commission. From a bipartisan group in the Senate. At the San Francisco event, as at the debate, as at every other campaign event this year, Mr. Obama offered no plan to move the government’s spending into the same galaxy with its revenues.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444897304578046260406091012.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop
Imagine a country where challenging the ruling authorities—questioning, say, a piece of data released by central headquarters—would result in mobs of administration sympathizers claiming you should feel “embarrassed” and labeling you a fool, or worse.
Soviet Russia perhaps? Communist China? Nope, that would be the United States right now, when a person (like me, for instance) suggests that a certain government datum (like the September unemployment rate of 7.8%) doesn’t make sense.
Unfortunately for those who would like me to pipe down, the 7.8% unemployment figure released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) last week is downright implausible. And that’s why I made a stink about it.
Before I explain why the number is questionable, though, a few words about where I’m coming from. Contrary to some of the sound-and-fury last week, I do not work for the Mitt Romney campaign. I am definitely not a surrogate. My wife, Suzy, is not associated with the campaign, either. She worked at Bain Consulting (not Bain Capital) right after business school, in 1988 and 1989, and had no contact with Mr. Romney.
The Obama campaign and its supporters, including bigwigs like David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs, along with several cable TV anchors, would like you to believe that BLS data are handled like the gold in Fort Knox, with gun-carrying guards watching their every move, and highly trained, white-gloved super-agents counting and recounting hourly.
Let’s get real. The unemployment data reported each month are gathered over a one-week period by census workers, by phone in 70% of the cases, and the rest through home visits. In sum, they try to contact 60,000 households, asking a list of questions and recording the responses.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/10/how_does_a_president_quit.html What does a politician, deeply involved in a campaign, do if he wants to quit? Does the man who pretended to be president now pretend to be a candidate? That may be the issue Barack Obama is dealing with. A few months ago, everything looked rosy. The Republican Party nominated the man he wanted […]
http://pjmedia.com/blog/romney%e2%80%99s-target-map-expands/ Romney’s Target Map Expands The GOP candidate’s electoral horizons have grown considerably since the debate. GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has had his best week of the campaign. Going into the first debate last Wednesday, the Romney poll numbers both nationally and in key states had slightly improved from the nadir in the weeks […]
http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2012/10/09/of-skulls-and-podiums/?print=1
Chris Rock [1] tweeted shortly after the first Obama-Romney debate that “Obama is bringing Bin Laden’s skull & setting it on the podium for the next debate.” But Mitt Romney [2]‘s speech attacking the president’s foreign policy serves notice that Osama’s skull may not be enough to keep him back; the criticism he delivered suggests he’s going to mix it up.
Andrew Sullivan [3], who only a few days ago was serenely confident in his champion, is so traumatized that he can barely stand to watch Obama climb back into the ring.
Look: I’m trying to rally some morale, but I’ve never seen a candidate this late in the game, so far ahead, just throw in the towel in the way Obama did last week – throw away almost every single advantage he had with voters and manage to enable his opponent to seem as if he cares about the middle class as much as Obama does. How do you erase that imprinted first image from public consciousness: a president incapable of making a single argument or even a halfway decent closing statement?
It’s a sight he’s trying to forget. But Sullivan’s always looking to throw away information. The image he ought to be trying fix in his mind shouldn’t be of Obama wilting under Romney’s humorous chafing but of Obama alone with Putin; of Obama alone with the Chinese premier; of Obama alone with representatives of America’s enemies and rivals without Jim Lehrer to help him out.
Some people haven’t forgotten the president’s meltdown though. He was in L.A. trying to convince big donors [4] to keep backing him and vowing to “close the deal.” With a billion dollars of campaign money [5] riding on him, Obama knows he’s going to disappoint a lot of people who aren’t used to being disappointed if he doesn’t come out swinging against Romney.
One complicating factor now weighing on his shoulders is whether to order drone strikes on the suspected perpetrators of the Benghazi attack. Eli Lake [5] says “five administration officials tell The Daily Beast that the White House is now weighing whether to pursue those responsible through law enforcement or via military means like drone strikes or special operations.” In what has come to be the characteristic absurdity of his administration, the secret operation was being discussed in the New York Times.
The existence of the list was first reported this week by The New York Times. It was compiled with input from several U.S. intelligence agencies and is being constantly revised and edited as new information comes in to the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center. Some U.S. intelligence officials say there is enough detail to begin military operations to kill or capture 10 of the operatives tied to the planning of the attack.
Television has Reality TV. The Obama administration has Reality Secret Ops. The president’s dilemma is exquisite. If he doesn’t act now, the targets may scatter. If he acts now, he may hit the wrong people and start another crisis in the Middle East.
The delay from the White House could allow specific intelligence on the locations of suspects to whither on the vine if the suspects flee the country and evade detection, according to three U.S. intelligence officials working closely on the manhunt in Libya …
“There is always the risk of flight in a situation like this,” this official said. “But it’s probably worth doing right and waiting a bit and trying to get more intel on these guys. You have to worry about relationships. If you do the wrong thing, the ramifications could be serious.” The U.S. intelligence officer said the information on the 10 suspects was “good enough to authorize action if this was Pakistan or Afghanistan.”…
But there is no agreement between the U.S. and Libya to allow the kinds of drone strikes that have become common in the border provinces of Pakistan and lawless regions of Yemen.
Good thing the rebels in Libya don’t read the New York Times. Still, a legend built on a single deed is a fragile thing. There is no depth to it; no reserve of achievement that can be called upon in time of need. The veneer of fiction, once scratched, must instantly be japanned to cover the defect.
Here’s a thought. What Andrew Sullivan saw being pummeled in public last week was the real Obama not the one who is petulantly withholding his genius. The same incompetent he trusts to keep him safe; the very same one who is making the decision on Libya and the one he hopes will win an election to another four-year term. You know, the Billion Dollar Man. Maybe Chris Rock has got it all wrong. It’s not Osama’s skull that is in the president’s hands. It’s our skulls that are in his keeping. People knew that once, back when they remembered that being president was a deadly serious job.
Taliban savages: If 14-year-old peace activist whom we shot survives, we will shoot her again, for she is “secular-minded lady” http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/taliban-savages-if-14-year-old-peace-activist-whom-we-shot-survives-we-will-shoot-her-again-for-she-is-secular-minded-lady?f=puball SWAT: The Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) which attacked National Award Peace winner Malala Yousafzai on Tuesday have said that they will target her again if she survives because she was a “secular-minded lady”. A TTP […]
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/matt-damons-anti-american-movie-funded-by-enemies-of-america Serious, patriotic Americans know that the ultimate solution to America’s national security challenge is energy independence. Our dependence on foreign oil and natural gas results in our funding both sides in the global war on terrorism. The nations that produce and export much of the world’s oil are populated by wealthy princes, emirs, sheikhs, […]
http://www.tothepointnews.com/index.php
THE LATEST SPIN AND TIMELINE ON THE BENGHAZI ATTACK WAS JUST RELEASED BY THE STATE DEPARTMENT…..GEEZ…IT HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FILM…..RSK
“We’ve blunted the Taliban’s momentum in Afghanistan,” President Barack Hussein Obama said in his acceptance speech at the Democrat National Convention Sept. 6. “Al Qaida is on the path to defeat and Osama bin Laden is dead.”
Five days later, on 9/11/2012, Islamists murdered our ambassador to Libya and three other Americans and destroyed our consulate in Benghazi. In an attack on our embassy in Cairo the same day, the mob pulled down the American flag, burned it, and raised the black flag of al Qaida on the embassy flagstaff.
Al Qaida also was behind attacks on our embassy in Yemen Sept. 13, and Tunisia Sept. 14, said Thomas Joscelyn of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Some “path to defeat.”
Al Qaida is back in Afghanistan and is teaming up with the Taliban, said CBS correspondent Lara Logan. Taliban guerrillas destroyed eight Marine Harrier jump jets Sept. 14, our largest loss of warplanes since the Vietnam war. Joint operations were halted temporarily after two British and four American soldiers were killed by their Afghan “allies.” Afghan soldiers killed two more Americans after joint operations resumed last week.
“We’re willing to sacrifice a lot for this campaign. But we’re not willing to be murdered for it,” Gen. John Allen, the U.S. commander, told Ms. Logan in an interview broadcast Sept. 30.
The Taliban is stronger than ever, the Pentagon told Congress in a report in April. American officials have written off hope of battering the Taliban into accepting a peace deal, a “cornerstone” of Obama administration policy, the New York Times reported Oct. 1.
