http://freebeacon.com/muslim-democrats-not-happy-about-platform-flap/print/ CHARLOTTE — Arab American leader James Zogby called the Democratic Party’s contested platform regarding Israel meaningless and bashed the party for “doing something so dumb” as to reinsert language declaring Jerusalem the Jewish state’s capital after a noisy and contested floor vote. “You don’t try to ram [an amendment] through on the floor and […]
http://dailycaller.com/2012/09/07/biden-obamas-tell-health-care-tall-tales-at-charlotte-convention/#ixzz25mdhGgxy Vice President Joe Biden, First Lady Michelle Obama and President Barack Obama all told a story during the Democratic National Convention about battles the president’s mother waged with health care companies as she fought a terminal illness in 1995. But the version of events presented Thursday night differs dramatically from others, including those of […]
Can you imagine the outrage if Jerusalem had been booed at a Tea Party rally? Well all the commentators would stuff themselves into their hair shirts and attack the Tea Party. Did any of you hear a peep about this? Supposing the word “Islam” had been booed. All the Islamophrenics would go ballistic.
Nonetheless, the apologists are out in force. I guess it all depends on what the meaning of boo is.
Watch the video…
Amidst Boos And Multiple Votes, DNC Reverses Position And Reinstates Jerusalem
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=cncbOEoQbOg
And then let them try to call the Tea Party bigoted…..alas
http://www.wnd.com/2012/09/which-will-it-be-subject-or-citizen/
Back in 2008, during the peak illusory powers of Barack Obama as the post-partisan hopester-and-changer, the media consistently failed to report that the statist beliefs of the Democratic presidential nominee came straight from the socialist playbook. In many cases, the media probably didn’t realize it themselves.
At the same time, though, there was, and is, a feeling that such labeling is taboo. Even after an October surprise, a question from “Joe the Plumber,” prompted candidate Obama to reveal his inner redistributionist – “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody,” Obama told “Joe” in 2008 – the S-word was verboten.
I took issue with this taboo at the time and even got called a “Red baiter” on national TV for asking whether Barack Obama would take the country “in a socialist direction.”
The answer, of course, was yes: The state is more involved in our economy and lives than ever before, and not just because of Obamacare, which, of course, is a handy moniker for socialized medicine.
To be fair, the socialist direction is in no way a new direction for our country, which has, with only occasional pauses, been moving that way since the days of Franklin Roosevelt and his revolutionary socialist program, which we know, folksily, as the New Deal.
Even under Ronald Reagan, the federal government grew 3 percent. Obama’s immediate predecessor, George W. Bush, is aptly described as a “corporate socialist Republican,” as columnist Michelle Malkin has long chronicled. Bush’s saving grace for conservatives may be his signature tax cuts, but his political epitaph remains his socialistically twisted rationale for his “stimulus” plan known as TARP: “I abandoned free-market principles to save the free-market system.”
Truth be told, for 80 years the debate in Washington between Democrats and Republicans has turned on how much government should run our lives, not whether government should run our lives in the first place.
Lately, that seems to be changing. Probably despite their better focus-group-driven judgment, the presidential candidates and the political parties they lead have suddenly emerged from the fuzz of euphemism to inject a rare clarity into election rhetoric.
Democrats believe: “The government is the only thing we all belong to.” That’s the bottom line of a video presentation at the Democratic National Convention this week. Republicans believe: “We don’t belong to the government, the government belongs to us.” That’s the tweeted response to the Democrats’ message by Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
For two campaigns that try to avoid the terminology of ideology and philosophy – as is usual in modern politics – it doesn’t get any clearer, any more “polarizing,” than this. And that’s a good thing. It divides the two political camps according to their distinguishing ideals: the idealization of state power (Democrats) vs. the idealization of individual rights (Republicans). It’s statism vs. liberty.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443589304577635113013597198.html?mod=WSJ_hp_mostpop_read
By JAMES MARSON and LUKAS I. ALPERT
MOSCOW—Russian President Vladimir Putin said the re-election of President Barack Obama could improve relations with the U.S., but that he was also prepared to work with Mitt Romney, calling the Republican candidate’s tough stance on Russia “pre-election rhetoric.”
In contrast to what had been viewed as a chilly attitude toward Mr. Obama, Mr. Putin called his U.S. counterpart “a genuine person” who “really wants to change much for the better.” Speaking to Russia’s state-run RT television channel, he said a second Obama term could help solve disputes over missile defense.
The comments will likely be seized on by the Romney campaign, which in recent months has sharply criticized Mr. Obama’s so-called reset of relations with the Kremlin and pushed a harder line.
Relations with Russia first heated up the campaign in March, when Mr. Obama was inadvertently caught on an open microphone telling Mr. Putin’s predecessor, Dmitry Medvedev, that he would have “more flexibility” after the election to address Russia’s concerns over the proposed U.S. antimissile shield in Europe.
The U.S. says the defense system is designed to protect against a possible missile attack from Iran, but Moscow says the interceptors could neuter Russia’s nuclear arsenal.
Republicans denounced Mr. Obama’s comments as a sign of weakness; Mr. Romney said Russia was America’s “No. 1 geopolitical foe.” Mr. Putin said such talk was “mistaken” electioneering, adding he was prepared to work with whomever Americans elect. He warned, however, that a Romney victory could complicate attempts to resolve Russia’s opposition to the shield.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444273704577633622434051452.html
The hour is upon us. Obama speaks. Again.
A sound that was new as it soared from his acceptance speech in a Denver football stadium four years ago will Thursday night in Charlotte be one of the most familiar sounds in American life—Barack Obama’s voice. If it were possible for a president to talk his way to prosperity, the United States would be rolling in clover.
Some of us who went to the Democratic convention in Denver to see that historic nomination knew that Barack Obama was prone to thinking large. Still, even by the standards of the moment, it was hard to miss the grandiosity of Barack Obama’s intentions for the next four years.
As the Denver speech wound down, Barack Obama cited Martin Luther King Jr.’s dreams on the Washington Mall and then linked them to his own: “America, we cannot turn back . . . (applause) . . . not with so much work to be done; not with so many children to educate, and so many veterans to care for; not with an economy to fix, and cities to rebuild, and farms to save; not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend.”
Columnist Dan Henninger on the promises President Obama made in his 2008 acceptance speech. Photos: Associated Press.
That was August 2008. Mr. Obama must have liked the sound of it because here he is a few weeks ago in Columbus: “Ohio, we’ve come too far to turn back now. (Applause.) We’ve got more students who dream to afford college. We’ve got more good teachers to hire. We’ve got more schools to rebuild. We’ve got more good jobs to create. We’ve got more homegrown energy to generate. We’ve got more troops we’ve got to come home. We’ve got more doors of opportunity to open for everybody who is willing to walk through them. That’s why I’m asking for a second term as president.”
Charlotte is going to be deja vu all over again. If anything, the grandiosity of the early days has expanded. With one exception that isn’t likely to be heard in Charlotte. It was this from 2008: “We measure progress in the 23 million new jobs that were created when Bill Clinton was president . . .”
As Barack Obama makes his four-year passage from one peak of convention rhetoric to a second peak in Charlotte, many Americans have passed his first term in the valley below, with a three-year unemployment rate above 8% and an economy whose average growth rate after emerging from recession has been sinking below 2%.
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2012/09/we_have_ways_of_making_you_change_your_mind.html
Forget about the reasons President Barack Obama (D), Vice President Joe Biden (D), Senator John Kerry (D-MA), Caroline Kennedy, and all the others gushers spouted for re-electing the Obama-Biden duo Thursday night. You’d better vote for them or else…
Or else what? For starters, they can sic the Justice Department on you. Don’t believe me? Just look what happened to Gallup, the eminently fair polling organization, when it mentioned that gasp! Mitt Romney (R) was beating Obama. According to the Daily Caller
Internal emails between senior officials at The Gallup Organization, obtained by The Daily Caller, show senior Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod attempting to subtly intimidate the respected polling firm when its numbers were unfavorable to the president.
After Gallup declined to change its polling methodology, Obama’s Department of Justice hit it with an unrelated lawsuit that appears damning on its face. (snip)
Since Gallup first roused Axelrod’s ire, Obama’s Justice Department revived old allegations against the firm that, according to now former Gallup employee Michael Lindley, the polling company violated the False Claims Act by over-charging the federal government for its services.
In August, Justice signed on to a suit Lindley filed in 2009. Lindley alleged, according to The Associated Press, that Gallup filed false claims with the federal government on contracts it had with the State Department, the U.S. Mint and other federal agencies.
Some of the Gallup people involved felt so intimidated that
In response to that email, a third senior Gallup official said he thought Axelrod’s pressure “sounds a little like a Godfather situation.”
“Imagine Axel[rod] with Brando’s voice: ‘[Name redacted], I’d like you to come over and explain your methodology… You got a nice poll there… would be a shame if anything happened to it…'”
Axelrod would make them an offer they couldn’t refuse. And if that pressure didn’t work why the anonymous worker’s head might end up on the pillow of his boss.
That’s the vaunted Chicago Way the Obamas and Emanuel and Axelrod are so proudly trying to foist on the rest of the country.
And not so incidentally, Chicago has the highest murder rate in the nation while the state’s bond ratings dropped again last week.
Whoops! Watch out ratings agencies–you’re next.
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/raymond-ibrahim/egyptian-father-kills-three-daughters-with-snake/
An eye-opening story concerning an Egyptian father who killed his three young daughters with snakes last April was largely missed in the West. According to Emirates24:
An Egyptian man killed his three young daughters aged 7, 5 and 3 by letting a poisonous snake bite them. According to ‘Al Youm Al Sabea’a’ newspaper, the three kids were found dead in their bed in Bani Mazar town of Al Minya governorate of upper Egypt. Forensic reports confirm the kids died due to snake poison. The man allegedly bought two cobras and let them bite the children while they were asleep so as not to be caught. He was divorced from their mother because he doubted her. He alleged that the children’s mother was in a relationship before marrying him and, therefore, denied that he fathered the kids. But she insisted he support the three daughters. However, when his second wife gave birth to a boy, he decided to do away with the children, he confessed to police under arrest.
While Emirates24 gives the story a Western spin—saying the man doubted his wife’s fidelity and the true parentage of his daughters—the Egyptian show, Al Haqiqa (“the Truth”), which devoted an episode to this matter, never mentioned this angle, but rather portrayed him as killing his daughters simply because they were girls. Among the many people interviewed who verified this was the maternal grandmother, who said that, beginning with the birth of the first daughter, the man became hostile saying “I hate girls” and had to be placated to return to his wife. This scenario was repeated more dramatically with the birth of the second daughter. When he discovered his wife was pregnant with a third daughter, he tried to poison the pregnant woman but failed. He then spent a year plotting how to kill the girls without getting caught and had even tried earlier snakes which proved ineffective, until he finally succeeded.
After stressing that the father was clearly not insane, but acted in a very deliberate manner, the host of Al Haqiqa, Wael Ibrashi, explained that “this matter deserves discussion, since these mentalities are present in Egyptian society. We never thought that these understandings that existed in pagan [jahiliyya] times concerning female infanticide would ever return, but they have returned.”
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/davidhornik/obama%e2%80%99s-war-on-jewish-jerusalem/
On Wednesday we heard that Jerusalem (along with, no less significantly, the Palestinian “right of return” and Hamas) had been omitted from the Democratic Party’s platform for 2012. On Thursday we heard that Jerusalem had been reinstated—by means of the ludicrous voice vote shown in this already viral video, in which it is not at all clear that the ayes really have a two-thirds majority or even a majority at all.
Whether or not the original omission was President Obama’s doing, it was certainly consistent with the content of another much-viewed video from slightly over a month ago, in which White House spokesman Jay Carney, by refusing to say what city the White House considers the capital of Israel, made perfectly clear that the city is not Jerusalem. It is also consistent with Obama’s failure to visit Israel since being president—which would entail coming to Jerusalem in pomp and splendor and at least tacitly acknowledging it as the capital, a message the president does not want to convey to the surrounding countries.
Back in June 2008, candidate Obama, in a speech to AIPAC, surprised everyone by declaring that “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.” That drew a sharp rebuff from Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas among others. And one day after his AIPAC statement Obama backtracked, telling CNN: “Well, obviously, it’s going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues. And Jerusalem will be part of those negotiations.”
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/david-horowitz/reflections-of-a-diaspora-jew-on-zionism-america-and-the-fate-of-the-jews/print/
Editors’ note: In the following speech accepting the Ben Hecht Award for Outstanding Journalism from the Zionist Organization of America, David Horowitz notes that he wants everything that the Zionists want–a muscular Israel willing and able to defy the growing Jew hatred in the world; a Jewish State “armed to the teeth” and ready to use its military; an Israel augmented by the addition of its historical birthright of Judea and Samaria. Yet the paradox is that until now, Horowitz notes, he has never considered himself a Zionist in the sense that Theodor Herzl and other founders used that term. Herzl’s dream was that a Jewish homeland would “normalize” the Jewish people in the eyes of an historically hostile world, end their persecution, and “solve” the “Jewish problem.” Horowitz states that he always considered this possibility to be a “fairy tale” because of his understanding of the way envy and hatred operate on the international scene, especially with the advent of “Third Worldism.” In addition to becoming a refuge, Israel also became a magnet for homocidal intentions. The events of 9/11 changed everything. Because of the rise of Islamism in the U.S.–especially influencing those who were once Israel’s strong defenders–as well as in the Middle East, Horowitz says that “supporters of freedom are all Zionists now.” Below is the text of the speech that Horowitz gave last night, Thursday, Sept. 6, 2012, in Philadelphia.
Let me begin by saying how honored I am to be invited to this podium by the Zionist Organization of America and Mort Klein, its courageous leader. For decades Mort Klein and the ZOA have stood on the frontline defending the state of Israel and American Jews, and they are doing it now in what is certainly one of the darker periods for the Jewish people – darker all over the world – in our 5,000-year history. I applaud you for supporting Mort Klein and his team. I am touched by the recognition of an organization like this for the modest work I have done in behalf of Israel and the Jewish people.
Still, there is a paradox at the heart of this honor awarded me by the Zionist Organization of America, which will take me a moment to explain. It is true that I am widely attacked by anti-Semites and Jew-haters and the enemies of Israel as a Zionist — and an arch Zionist at that. I have been called variously a Zionist Jew, an “Israel Firster Zionist Jew,” “a rabid Zionist” (by Julian Assange no less), a “radical right-wing Zionist,” an “extreme Zionist,” an “extremist Zionist stalwart,” an “unrepentant Zionist,” an “ultra Zionist” and a “Zio-Nazi.”
Today, anti-Zionism is the cause of Jew-haters and anti-Semites the world over, and for Jews embarrassed by the fact that they are Jews and that others fear and despise them for that reason. Even the rare Jewish magazine of the left that is actually a supporter of Israel, is uncomfortable with the connotations of the Zionist label, and with what it means for Jews to defend themselves. In a recent unflattering profile, the Tablet magazine described me as touring the country “making the case for a muscular Zionism.”
I plead guilty to this charge. I plead guilty though I have never actually been a Zionist, or made a case for Zionism in the sense that Herzl and traditional Zionists understand it. Yes, I want muscular Jews and a muscular Israel. I want Jews proud of the extraordinary nation-state Jews created in 1948 out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. I want Jews who are armed, and Jews who will defend themselves with arms if necessary. Muscular in every way. Yes.
I want more than just individual Jews armed. I want a Jewish nation-state possessing in its arsenal the most advanced modern weapons available, a state that can be counted on to defend Jews from their global enemies, and particularly their enemies in the Muslim world who are legion and who have sworn our destruction, and who are openly planning to complete the job that Hitler started. I want a Jewish state, armed to the teeth, because Islamic Nazis, who are the storm troopers of a second Holocaust, are already mobilized, and because — as we discovered during the first Holocaust — there are not enough non-Jews in the world who are willing and prepared to defend us.
I am glad that Israel exists. I am glad that there is a country that will preserve Jewish culture, and be a model to the world of what Jews can do when they are given the chance. Today Israel is per capita the world’s leading scientific and technological innovator and contributor to human advancement. As a Jew I am proud of that.
I am also thrilled that in the creation of Israel Jews have regained their birthright. After 2,000 years of exile, the oldest surviving indigenous people in the world has won the right to some of its stolen homeland. I look forward to the day when Judea and Samaria, the historic centers of Judaism, become part of the Jewish homeland as well.
That homeland is now occupied by Palestinian Arabs who are at war with Israel, who have proclaimed their Jew-hatred to the world, and who have forfeited any right to the territories by conducting five unprovoked, armed aggressions against the Jewish state. The official policy of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is to make Jerusalem and the entire region of Palestine Judenrein. No other country in the world is expected to suffer such genocidal assaults without securing borders that are defensible, and Israel should not be expected to either.
Nonetheless, there is a paradox in this honor given to me, a Jew who has never been to Israel and who has never considered himself a Zionist in the sense that its founders intended. Theodor Herzl and his followers embraced the Zionist idea because they believed that the creation of a Jewish nation would provide a solution to the “Jewish Question” – the fact that Jews had been a homeless people for nearly two thousand years and were ghettoized and persecuted in the alien lands to which they were driven.
Herzl’s Zionist idea was grounded in the belief that the establishment of a Jewish state on Jewish land would finally “normalize” the Jewish people and end their persecution. The Zionist idea was that by including Jews among the nations, Jews would become ordinary, and like other peoples — that their inclusion would finally “solve” the Jewish problem. That was the meaning of Zionism as Herzl understood it, and indeed as it was understood until the Holocaust and the actual creation of the Jewish state.
But Herzl’s dream proved to be a fairy tale, as delusional in its way as the dreams of socialism, communism and progressivism, whose believers hoped would provide solutions to the conflicts and sufferings that blight our human state. All these isms took hold in the 19th Century, and became forms of modern faith. The traditional religions they supplanted had trusted in a Divinity for such a solution, but were forced into retreat before the advance of Darwinian theory and modern scientific developments. All the messianic visions of the modern age were driven by the desire for an earthly redemption that would resolve our human dilemmas and achieve what the heavenly redemption could no longer convincingly offer.[1]
Among these fantasies of a better world than the one we inherited, Zionism was the most conservative, and the most practical. The quests for a socially just future are based on no human reality but on the expectation of a human miracle, a transformation of who we are and what we have been into something wonderfully different. Zionism by contrast was based on the experience of actual peoples who had already taken their place among the nations. It was a quest for normality. Not for a world transformation but for an integration into the existing world of others.
But even this modest hope of the Jews has proved an impossible dream. It is true that half of Herzl’s goal has been realized, and in an astounding way. Yet its very realization has proved the hope that inspired it to be a folly. By all standards of civilization and modernity Israel should be admired and emulated by the rest of the world. Instead, the Jewish state is hated and is a pariah among the nations, just as Jews themselves are pariahs in most of the world outside America today.
Far from creating a refuge, Israel has become the focal point of all the genocidal intentions against the Jews, which have never been more overt or more global. Today Israel is the site of a Holocaust for which the Islamic world openly yearns, and which the rest of the world – with the possible exceptions of America and Canada — will not lift a finger to prevent. This sobering reality has changed the meaning of Zionism, and has made it a more comfortable fit for me. Call it the Zionism of Survival.
In the household I grew up in, I was not brought up to be a Zionist because my parents were Marxist progressives who looked to a socialist future to provide an earthly salvation, and an end to the persecution of the Jews. My parents and their comrades believed that mankind’s conflicts would be resolved by a universal class whose revolution would abolish all nations and unite all peoples, and thus remove the distinctions that made them Jews.
My realization that this was not going to happen occurred through my relationship with a Marxist mentor named Isaac Deutscher. Deutscher had written a book called The Non-Jewish Jew, by which he meant Marxists like us – Jews who were of Judaism but not in it. By the time I came under his influence in the 1960s, he had become a defender of Israel and had been one since the Second World War. Deutscher viewed Israel as a “raft” state – a refuge that Jews could cling to after they had been shipwrecked in the storms that periodically engulfed them. The particular storm he was referring to was Hitler’s “Final Solution.”
During the interwar years, a debate had raged in Europe’s leftwing circles, which carried momentous consequences for those who participated in it. The debate was about how Jews should respond to the looming fascist threat. The Zionists were urging Jews to flee the continent and take refuge in the Palestine Mandate. Marxists like Deutscher argued that the Jews should stay in Europe and fight for the socialist revolution. But as Deutscher ruefully acknowledged later, the Jews who listened to the Zionists were still alive, while those who listened to Marxists like him were dead.
Under Deutscher’s influence, I became a quasi-Zionist, a believer in the raft state. Israel should exist and be defended until the socialist transformation abolished nation-states and solved the problem of the Jews once and for all.
Don’t think for a moment that this is some quaint Marxist delusion now consigned to the historical dustbin. The idea of a world without borders is alive and well in the international left and among liberals and progressives in America. It is the idea that animates the Democratic Party’s attacks on American sovereignty, and it is a vision whose intellectual leaders are Jews.
One of its canonical articles is called “Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism” — for the latter and against the former. It was written by Harvard philosopher Martha Nussbaum. According to Nussbaum, the cosmopolitan ideal which progressive people should aspire to is “the person whose primary allegiance is to the community of human beings in the entire world.” This attitude – that we are not Jews or Americans – but “citizens of the world” — explains why people on the left are so uncomfortable with — or simply hostile to — issues of national security and patriotism. It explains why progressive Jews can be indifferent to the survival of the Jewish state.
Even as I absorbed Deutscher’s lesson about the raft state, my belief in the progressive fantasy was rapidly eroding. I had begun to doubt the possibility of a redeemed future, a future fundamentally different from those with which we were historically familiar. As these doubts grew, they were changing my view of the unredeemed present. By the middle of the next decade I no longer believed in a new world order. This had immediate and profound consequences for my attitude towards Israel and my identity as a Jew, and as an American as well.
There was not going to be a future in which there were no longer nations or peoples in conflict; there was not going to be a future in which Jews would cease to be the objects of envy and resentment, and virulent hatred. There was not going to be a future in which a refuge – a raft state — was no longer useful.
Then came 9/11 and the Islamic attack on the World Trade Center. It was an event that made millions of people aware of the Islamist movement in the Muslim world and the fact that they were conducting a holy war against infidels in general, and Jews in particular. The incubator and leading force of this holy war is the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization founded by an admirer of Hitler and a godfather of the call to push the Jews of Palestine into the sea. Today, the spiritual leader of the Brotherhood is the Egyptian imam, Yusef al-Qaradawi, who has publicly prayed that the Muslim believers will finish the job that Hitler started.
Millions of Jews are in denial when it comes to the determination of Islamists to kill them. In part, this denial is psychological and familiar as when people face a prospect that is too terrible to contemplate. There are a billion and a half Muslims in the world today who worship a prophet who has told them that “the day of redemption will only come when Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, when the Jews hide behind the rocks and the trees, and the rocks and the trees cry out, ‘Oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him.’” For a billion and a half Muslims that is the word of God. Denial is one convenient way of dealing with this fact.
