GOP'S Plea: 'America Needs Its Good Name Back'

This fine quote from an article in Commentary by John Podhoretz talking about today's history-making S & P downgrade of America's credit rating:

"But the ideological stalemate does not mean the political fallout will be evenly distributed. This is a colossal disaster for Barack Obama, and anybody who says otherwise is kidding himself or trying to spin you. We know that the election of 2012 is going to be fought on jobs, the economy, and the wisdom of health care. But now the GOP has an overarching theme that I predict will be at the core of a $500 million advertising campaign: 'America needs its good name back.'"

Go to www.commentary magazine.com for the full column.

Obama's Support Of Mosque An 'Abomination'

Some incisive obesrvations from Jennifer Rubin at Commentary:

At the Iftar (end of Ramadan-day fast) shindig at the White House, Obama sided with CAIR, J Street, the ACLU, and the 29 percent of Americans who favor the Ground Zero mosque:

Recently, attention has been focused on the construction of mosques in certain communities – particularly in New York. Now, we must all recognize and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of lower Manhattan. The 9/11 attacks were a deeply traumatic event for our country. The pain and suffering experienced by those who lost loved ones is unimaginable. So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders. Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground.

But let me be clear: as a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country. That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances. This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country, and will not be treated differently by their government, is essential to who we are. The writ of our Founders must endure.

Rep. Peter King is the first elected official to respond. He issued this statement:

President Obama is wrong. It is insensitive and uncaring for the Muslim community to build a mosque in the shadow of Ground Zero. While the Muslim community has the right to build the mosque they are abusing that right by needlessly offending so many people who have suffered so much. . . .

Obama has shown his true sentiments now, after weeks of concealing them, on an issue of deep significance not only to the families and loved ones of 3,000 slaughtered Americans but also to the vast majority of his fellow citizens. He has once again revealed himself to be divorced from the values and concerns of his countrymen. . . . This is nothing short of an abomination.

For the entire article see Commentary:

Democrats Turn Against Obama

From Peter Wehner at Commentary:

When a presidency and an agenda are collapsing at the rate that President Obama’s are, it isn’t long before his party begins to distance itself from him. We’ve seen plenty of signs of this lately. Politico.com has a story today titled “Family feud: Nancy Pelosi at odds with President Obama.” According to the story:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s increasingly public disagreements with President Barack Obama are a reflection of something deeper: the seething resentment some Democrats feel over what they see as cavalier treatment from a wounded White House.

Then there are the comments by Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, who said, “He [Obama] says ‘I’m for clean coal,’ and then he says it in his speeches, but he doesn’t say it in here. And he doesn’t say it in the minds of my own people. And he’s beginning to not be believable to me.”

Much of what President Obama has said hasn’t been believable to many of us for quite some time now. But when influential figures in a president’s own party begin to make statements such as these — especially when you’re only 13 months into a presidency — it’s clear that things are beginning to become a bit unglued. Party discipline is tossed aside; the intra-party sniping makes the situation even worse. And the vicious cycle Democrats are caught in merely accelerates.

It has dawned on many Democrats that in hitching their fortunes to Obama and Obamaism, they have put themselves at enormous political risk. They are all complicit in this; Obama himself outsourced much of his agenda to Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The entire Democratic establishment is the architect of what is shaping up as an epic political failure. But Mr. Obama is head of the Democratic party, and so the responsibility lies with him more than with anyone else. He is primus inter pares. And he is now, with every passing week, the target of their unhappiness.

More is sure to follow. This isn’t going to end well for them.

Happy Birthday, Israel!

Today is the 61st birthday of the State of Israel.
Jonathan Tobin of Commentary magazine has tried to decipher a clear policy on the part of the Obama Administration with respect to Israel. Here what he concludes:
Other than a desire to placate the Islamic world in general (and Iran in particular), as well as an obvious distaste for Israel’s current prime minister, it isn’t clear that Obama has anything in mind that can be described as a policy. Among the chattering classes who applaud everything Obama does it is the fashion to dismiss the existential threat to Israel from Iran. But Israelis and the vast bipartisan majority of Americans who support the Jewish State don’t think the Iranians are kidding about their desire to wipe it off the map. And that includes the majority of Jews who voted for Obama last year and will expect their president to do more than talk, once the genocidal threat to Israel’s population is no longer in doubt.

Anti-Semitism On Parade

From Abe Greenwald in Commentary:

Today’s Washington Post runs a Pat Oliphant cartoon (above) portraying the state of Israel as a headless jackbooted soldier, marching with sword thrust forward, and pushing a Star of David whose shark’s mouth is gaining on a Gazan mother and child.
To call the Washington Post’s decision to run unadulterated Nazi-inspired anti-Semitism a crisis of judgment is to relegate the incident to a headline-grabbing class of occasional sensitivity lapses. To speak of apologies, hurt feelings, and free speech is to invite “debate” where there is no moral ambiguity. To contextualize by adducing Oliphant’s previous forays into sensation is to miss the point entirely. The cartoon can only be understood as heralding a new popular acceptance of Jew-hatred: the capstone of all that talk about anti-Semitism being “on the rise around the world.”
The acceptance of anti-Semitism moves quickly, in tandem with the ambitions of anti-Semites. Today in America, this means a new forum where a number of hate-filled isolationists can collude with self-righteous liberals to erase entirely the line between criticism of Israel and anti-Semitic fervor. Until recently, suspect critics of Israel made an effort (however unconvincing) to draw distinctions between their objections to Israeli policy and rank Jew-hatred. The cartoon in today’s Washington Post aspires to unify the two phenomena for all to see

If Jewish Voters Knew

From Jennifer Rubin in Commentary:

Had the public (and specifically Jewish voters, who voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama) known that Obama would appoint the Saudi-funded, Israel-bashing, analytically-disabled Chas Freeman (pictured) to a key national security position, I wonder if he would have cleared the bar of acceptability for commander-in-chief. But the appointment has indeed occurred. (And would human rights activists have thought twice about electing a president who picked some who declared that the Chinese’s biggest mistake with regard to the Tienanmen Square massacre was “the failure to intervene on a timely basis to nip the demonstrations in the bud”?)
And as for those friends of Israel on the left who looked Obama in the eye and got a sense of his soul, do they join in on Marty Pertez’s mea culpa? Well, it does appear that Obama appointed someone "who is quintessentially an insult to the patriotism of some [sic] many of his supporters.” Moreover, we have placed someone in a key national security role whose analysis was purchased by the House of Saud and whose contribution to Middle East discourse includes such gems as: “For its part, Israel no longer even pretends to seek peace with the Palestinians; it strives instead to pacify them. Palestinian retaliation against this policy is as likely to be directed against Israel’s American backers as against Israel itself.” (Remarks to the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs, May 24, 2007)
Some enterprising White House reporter might start asking whether the president had any qualms about Freeman’s views and why his financial relationship with a foreign power shouldn’t raise grave concerns about Freeman’s independence and, in turn, the president’s judgment in selecting him.

It Already Happened!

From Jennifer Rubin in Commentary:
This is spot on:

Last night President Obama said, “I asked this Congress to send me a recovery
plan . . . Not because I believe in bigger government — I don’t.” Really? If
that’s true, why was every single policy the President suggested last night…big
government? Mr. President, if you don’t like big government, perhaps you should
consider not making it the centerpiece of your administration. That makes about
as much sense as holding a fiscal responsibility summit days after passing one
of the biggest spending bills in history. Wait. That already happened. Okay, how
about this: saying you don’t like big government while promoting it, would kind
of be like railing against earmarks while getting ready to sign a bill with, oh
say, 9,000 of them. Wait — that’s also really happening, House Democrats passed
it today.

What is most remarkable is that the above comes from Rep. John Shadegg. He is not in the GOP leadership, but his colleagues might take a page from his book.
When the president says or does outlandish things, it’s a good idea to say so. When the president pronounces as fact something patently false, the Republicans should pipe up.
For some time it was politically possible and convenient to blame Congress for the goofy stimulus plan and the irresponsible pork-a-thon, while politely ignoring Obama’s full acquiescence in the Congressional Democrats’ handiwork. But there’s no pretending any longer. The grandiose plans and the economic sophistry are coming straight from the president. And the Republicans have no choice but to oppose them. If they can do it with humor, all the better

Man Who Came To Dinner

From J. G. Thayer at Commentary:
Amazing. Yet another Obama appointee apparently has tax problems. Pardon me, usher, but I think I’ve seen this movie before.
This time it’s White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. It appears that the former congressman found a handy way to save money. Most members of Congress find themselves having to support two households — one in their home district, and one in or around DC. Some members, in the past, have ended up sharing apartments or town houses. Emanuel took that one step further: he moved into the home of his colleague, Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), staying there for five years. Rent-free.
To most people, this is “imputed income” — non-financial gifts or compensation that should be reported to the IRS. Emanuel and DeLauro defend their conduct by saying that House ethics rules permit “hospitality between colleagues.”
Apparently they are not familiar with the old aphorism that “guests, like fish, start to smell after three days.”
And no, there was no impropriety or hanky-panky going on. Representative DeLauro is happily married to one Stan Greenberg. Mr. Greenberg, by the way, is not a lobbyist. No, he’s the next best thing in DC — he’s a pollster.
And, by wild coincidence, Greenberg’s polling company (Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research) lists both Emanuel and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (which Emanuel headed) as clients.
Let’s see… a Democratic representative gets free housing from a pollster who enjoys some very lucrative contracts from both that representative and a very influential group said representative heads up? Why, I’d never even suggest some kind of a quid pro quo arrangement.
All through his campaign, Obama and his surrogates touted his great judgment and his commitment to change and transparency. Yet more and more of his nominees keep getting exposed for their ethical lapses, especially in the area of doing their “patriotic duty” (as Vice President Biden puts it) and paying “their fair share” of taxes.
There are numerous explanations for this pattern of behavior, but here’s a theory that’s becoming less laughable: There simply aren’t enough Democrats who are both competent and honest to fill all the vacancies in Obama’s administration.
(Hat tip: the inimitable Rob Port of Say Anything)