RUTHFULLY YOURS

Did Islam grow softer throughout the Obama years?

The presidential election of 2008 seems so long ago.

When Barack Obama first ran for the presidency, he and his legions of supporters at the time assured us that if only we would elect him, the first black American president with an Islamic-sounding name, that “the world” would love us once more (as if those against whom we were fighting in places like Afghanistan and Iraq ever loved us to begin with.

If only Barack Hussein Obama would become the 44th president of the United States, the murderous hatred of Islamic militants for America (and her allies) would all but vanish as America assumed a new course in foreign relations generally, and a new course vis-à-vis the Islamic world specifically.

“In an interview with the comedian Jon Stewart, the president stated his hope that Americans and their elected representatives will come to see the wisdom of the Iran deal, and then added: “despite the money, despite the lobbyists.” Lee Smith responds:

On Tuesday, the President hinted broadly at anti-Semitic conceits in order to scare off Democrats tempted to vote against nuclear agreement with Iran

Last night, Barack Obama took to The Daily Show With Jon Stewart to promote the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that the White House, along with its P5+1 negotiating partners, signed with Iran earlier this month. It’s a good deal, Obama told the host, it will resolve the issue diplomatically and keep us out of another Middle East war. The president said that hoped the American public would respond positively. “If people are engaged, eventually the political system responds,” said Obama. “Despite the money, despite the lobbyists, it still responds.”

“What do you mean by lobbyists?” the man some viewers regard as the Cronkite of our age never asked the president. It was a lost opportunity to gain some clarity into Obama’s thinking about America’s Middle East policy since he has used the formulation often. For instance, in a press conference following the signing of the JCPOA, Obama said that he hoped Congress would evaluate this agreement fairly, “not based on lobbying, but based on what’s in the national interests of the United States of America.”

It has been well documented that the Assad regime in Syria used chemical weapons against its own people before and after the agreement in which it promised to give them up. President Obama famously proclaimed a “red line” that was never solid, resulting in the Assad regime’s engaging in the use of these weapons with impunity.

In an effort not to be outdone by their enemy, ISIS — the terrorist organization that was allowed to transform into an insurgent rogue regime notorious for beheading, torture, rape, and mass killing — has now one-upped itself by using chemical weapons as well. The American national-security nightmare was always a terrorist organization possessing and using weapons of mass destruction. Some on the left postulated that not even terrorist groups would be bold enough to do so, since the Western powers would surely react with swift and decisive action. The admittedly small example of ISIS’s unabashedly using chemical weapons suggests that the United States cannot be spurred to real action even in the face of such horrendous crimes.

Hillary Clinton’s suburban hometown of Chappaqua, New York has just become ground zero in the Obama administration’s efforts to nullify local control over America’s housing. Obama’s Justice Department has fired a powerful warning shot at Westchester County, New York, where the administration is conducting a dry run of its new Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) regulation.

At issue is whether Westchester’s obligation to “affirmatively further fair housing” compels county officials to crush local opposition to a low-income housing development in downtown Chappaqua.

The Draconian legal settlement imposed on Westchester several years ago by the Obama administration creates a court-appointed “monitor” who has effectively usurped Westchester County’s right to democratic self-governance. The monitor insists, and Obama’s Department of Justice agrees, that Westchester County officials must not only obtain financing for new low-income housing developments in Chappaqua, but must suppress local opposition to the project.

If a college or university has buildings that “are all named after white, heterosexual, upper class males,” that’s a microaggression.

Or more precisely, it’s an “environmental macro-microaggression.”

Yes, the leftist lexicon grows with this latest example, which has apparently been around for a few years but only recently caught the attention of campus watchdogs.

It’s one example cited by a University of Missouri-Columbia “Racial Microaggressions in Every Day Life” list posted on its website, a supporting document of the public university’s effort to make the campus more “inclusive.”

A college with buildings named after such men is an environmental microaggression because it allegedly implies “you don’t belong/you won’t succeed here. There is only so far you can go,” the list states.

This week brought the stunning news that Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and Representative Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.) had discovered, during a meeting with IAEA officials, the existence of secret side deal between the IAEA and Tehran — a side deal that will not, like the main nuclear agreement, be shared with Congress. So critics of the agreement were understandably eager to hear an explanation from Secretary of State John Kerry when he and other senior administration officials testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday.

The hearing produced a new bombshell: In its investigation of Iran’s past nuclear-weapons-related work, the IAEA will rely on Iran to collect samples at its Parchin military base and other locations.

As a former intelligence analyst experienced in the collection of environmental samples for investigations of weapons of mass destruction, I found this allegation impossible to believe when I heard Senator James Risch (R., Idaho) make it yesterday morning.

Surely this wasn’t what Barack Obama had in mind.

One need not revisit the mountains of purple prose that greeted Obama’s ascent to the White House (or his descent, given the Olympian esteem in which many held him). We all remember it well enough. He was a redeemer, a healer, the prophet who vowed to close the partisan divide behind him, like the waters of the Red Sea, after he delivered us to a new promised land.

In 2004, he emerged from the political wilderness to proclaim at the Democratic convention:

The pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue states: red states for Republicans, blue states for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too: We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the red states.

While the government was never actually much interested in libraries in the first place, it does seem quite interested in how people worship that awesome God these days. From forcing nuns to pay for birth control to suggesting at the Supreme Court that churches might lose their tax-exempt status if they refuse to officiate gay weddings, the Obama administration seems keen on imposing its vision on everyone.

“This is an administration which never seems to find a good enough excuse to help Christians, but always finds an excuse to apologize for terrorists … I hope that as it gets attention that Secretary Kerry will reverse it. If he doesn’t, Congress has to investigate, and the person who made this decision ought to be fired” — Newt Gingrich, former Speaker, U.S. House of Representatives.

“The U.S. insists that Muslims are the primary victims of Boko Haram… The question remains — why is the U.S. downplaying or denying the attacks against Christians?” — Emmanuel Ogebe, Nigerian human rights lawyer, Washington D.C.

“Stop building churches. Convert to Islam, which is the true religion. Otherwise we will make a horrible example of you.” — Javed David, head of Hope for the Light Ministries, quoting a biker.

The Free Front of Algeria demands that all Christian churches remaining in the North African nation must be closed and reopened as mosques.

Richard Ferrer is the Editor of the Jewish News.

The Prime Minister was right to highlight the wider narrative that leads to Islamist violence. Trouble is, in British Muslim society “non-violent extremists who radicalise young people” are part of the mainstream, and no-one has the courage to say it.

So, it’s congratulations to Bethnal Green schoolgirl Amira Abase and her Australian “ginger jihadi” sweetheart Abdullah Elmir on the occasion of their wedding.

After all the anguish over Amira and her pals fleeing Blighty during school half-term to join ISIS, finally we have the happy ending we’ve waited for. Romance isn’t dead, although the groom hopefully soon will be.

MPs pretend they don’t know what motivates people to swap suburbia for Syria to become psycho killers or the rape slaves of psycho killers. They walk on eggshells for fear of causing offence.

Well, this week, the prime minister finally did what no other politician has the guts to do. Instead of being politically correct he was just, simply, correct.

Two notorious crooks are helping us wrap up another sordid episode in the saga of the United States biofuel mandates, while further highlighting how bungled and long past its expiration date the program is.

Congress concocted the mandates over fears that US gasoline demand would rise forever and keep the United States dependent on foreign oil, as America’s supposedly limited reserves were depleted. The mandates currently require that we blend 15 billion gallons of ethanol with gasoline every year, and produce over a billion gallons of biodiesel. They hammer us consumers every time we fill our tanks.

Turning corn into ethanol requires vast amounts of land, fertilizers, pesticides, tractor and truck fuel, and natural gas for distillation. It enriches some farmers but raises animal feed prices and thus the cost of beef, pork, chicken, eggs, fish and international food aid. Biodiesel from restaurant waste oil makes some sense, but making it from palm oil or soybeans has similar negative ecological impacts.