Monday, April 20, 2009
Evan Sayet : How Modern "Liberals" Think...
Want an amazing synopsis of how modern 'liberals' think and why? This video by comedian/writer Evan Sayet is exactly what you're looking for.
Hat tip to Doug Ross
PS: For those of you in Los Angeles, Evan Sayet is doing standup and appearing in his Right to Laugh Concert tomorrow at the world famous Laugh Factory in Hollywood.
Obama Hearts Chavez - And Apologizes For America
Note the seventies-style Lefty 'movement' handshake - it tells the whole story right there.
President Obama attended the latest Summit of the Americas in Trinidad with a host of Latin American leaders and while his basic premise was to meet n' greet, part of that job involved absorbing a number of diatribes aimed at the US, notably from our old commie acquaintance, former Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega.
Obama seems to have succeded in cuddling up to Chavez,who presented him with a book as a gift that was a standard Leftist rant against yanquiimperialism, "The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent," by Eduardo Galeano.
Obama said he was looking forward to reading it - not realizing that it was written in Spanish, which shows that Chavez's gift was about as well thought out as Obama's gift to the UK's Gordon Brown of a $39.95 DVD collection that would only play on US players.
It's interesting to note the contrast between President Obama's rappoir with Hugo Chavez as opposed to his relationship with, say, an ally like Israeli PM Netanyahu - who Obama still has yet to agree to meet with.
Obama's EPA Paves The Way For American Poverty And Economic Decline
In a late ruling on Friday ( it seems this stuff always gets planned so it hits the bottom of the news cycle on the weekends)President Obama's EPA made a ruling that will have far reaching consequences to American prosperity and economic development at least as great as the mountain of debt the Obama Administration has saddled us and our children with - and possibly more:
The US Environmental Protection Agency has shifted course by deeming carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases a health risk, in a landmark turnaround that could impact climate change regulation.
"After a thorough scientific review ordered in 2007 by the US Supreme Court, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a proposed finding ... that greenhouse gases contribute to air pollution that may endanger public health or welfare," said an EPA statement posted on its website on Friday.
The move, which could open the door to stronger regulation on greenhouse gas emissions, marks a significant shift on climate change from the previous presidency of George W. Bush, which failed to heed EPA warnings on the possibly devastating consequences of inaction.
"This finding confirms that greenhouse gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations. Fortunately, it follows President (Barack) Obama's call for a low carbon economy and strong leadership in Congress on clean energy and climate legislation," said EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson.
"This pollution problem has a solution -- one that will create millions of green jobs and end our country's dependence on foreign oil.
"As the proposed endangerment finding states, 'In both magnitude and probability, climate change is an enormous problem. The greenhouse gases that are responsible for it endanger public health and welfare within the meaning of the Clean Air Act,'" she added.
This is nothing more than an attempt to impose an 'energy tax' on the American people by regulation without the political cost of trying to ram it through through Congress. And it's part of Obama's declared intention tobankrupt America's coal industry even if it made energy prices skyrocket, something over 85% of Americans were unaware of during the campaign according to Zogby's polling. We already know how his administration feels about domestic oil drilling.
Rest assured that China, Russia and India have no plans to go along with this farce -because they need to grow their economies.And the 'green jobs' Obama and the EPA are talking about? Not only will new jobs not be created, as displaced workers from coal and oil simply migrate to the new ones, but it's highly likely that there will be a net job loss!
The socialist government of Spain tried this exact formula at the height of the global warming craze, and the results are a pretty good indication of what we can expect:
Every “green job” created with government money in Spain over the last eight years came at the cost of 2.2 regular jobs, and only one in 10 of the newly created green jobs became a permanent job, says a new study released this month. The study draws parallels with the green jobs programs of the Obama administration.
President Obama, in fact, has used Spain’s green initiative as a blueprint for how the United States should use federal funds to stimulate the economy. Obama’s economic stimulus package,which Congress passed in February, allocates billions of dollars to the green jobs industry.
But the author of the study, Dr. Gabriel Calzada, an economics professor at Juan Carlos University in Madrid, said the United States should expect results similar to those in Spain:
“Spain’s experience (cited by President Obama as a model) reveals with high confidence, by two different methods, that the U.S. should expect a loss of at least 2.2 jobs on average, or about 9 jobs lost for every 4 created, to which we have to add those jobs that non-subsidized investments with the same resources would have created,” wrote Calzada in his report: Study of the Effects on Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources.
Not only that, but the jobs President Obama will be replacing in the mines and at the oil rigs are largely unionized high paying blue collar jobs. Want to bet that the new 'green' jobs won't have the same sort of paychecks and benefits?
CO2, AKA Carbon dioxide is a naturally occuring gas that occurs everytime we exhale, and it's necessary for plant growth, which functions exactly the opposite of ours - we inhale oxygen and exhale carbon dioxide while plants do exactly the reverse.
As for global warming, that particular scam has been debunked to the point that slightly over one third of Americans still believe it, according to Rasmussen. If anything we're experiencing a trend towards global cooling.
Putting the kind of stringent regulations on American manufacturers Obama's EPA has in mind is a guaranteed recipe for sending what's left of America's manufacturing jobs overseas while putting the rest of us in the poorhouse as we struggle to meet rising energy costs and taxes.
Hope n' change!
UN Delegates Stage Walk Out After Ahmadinejad Calls Israel 'Racist' And Denies Holocaust
A group of mostly western delegates to the UN's so-called conference against racism in Geneva walked out on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech today, after he referred to Israel's as a racist regime that was founded "on the pretext of Jewish suffering" during World War II.
Around 20 delegates, including envoys from the UK, France, and Finland stood up and left the room at what was considered an anti-Semitic remark by the Iranian leader, who has repeatedly called for Israel to be wiped off the map.
Nine Western countries including Israel and the United States had already decided to boycott the conference entirely because its draft declaration endorsed the conclusions of an anti-racism conference in South Africa eight years ago in which Islamic nations pushed through a text equating Zionism with racism. [...]
The Obama administration announced at the weekend that it would boycott the meeting because its draft declaration makes reference to the text agreed in 2001 at the UN's first anti-racism conference in Durban, South Africa. That document was agreed after the United States and Israel walked out over attempts to liken Zionism - the movement to establish a Jewish state in the Holy Land - to racism.
Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Poland joined the boycott.
The major sticking points in the draft final declaration prepared for the current meeting concern its implied criticism of Israel and an attempt by Muslim governments to remove all criticism of Islam, Sharia law, the Prophet Muhammad and other tenets of their faith.
Let's examine some of this a bit more closely.
President Obama and UN Ambassador Susan Rice have known for weeks what this conference was about, what the problems with the draft final declaration were and that Ahmadinejad would be addressing the conference on Hitler's birthday, which with supreme irony falls on Yom HaShoah, the day when Israel and Jews around the world memorialize the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Yet they waited until the last minute to bow out.,,probably carefully weighing the political effect on President Obama's attempt to appease the Muslim world versus the Obama Administration's Jewish constituency here in the US, and whether it would be less of a problem to simply not show up versus having to walk out later.And for that matter, the American taxpayer is still footing a large chunk of the bills for the conference.
I doubt even Bill Clinton would have been that amoral, cynical and calculating.
As a contrast, Canada and Italy, to their eternal credit, announced from the very first that they would not be a part of this obscene theater.Nor am I surprised at the German and Polish decisions to boycott. They understand what's going on at the conference all too well, because they lived it.
The UN is an idea formed from the ashes of World war II that has outlived its usefulness, and what happened there today simply underlines it. When an organization designed to be a forum for freedom, democracy and dialogue between nations degenerates to the point where someone like Ahmadinejad is an honored guest, there's no saving it - it's terminal.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Israel And The Obama Administration Far Apart On Mid East Peace
The US Special envoy to the Middle East, Arab-American ex-Senator George Mitchell made a trip to Israel and the Palestinian occupied areas of Judea and Samaria to get a feel for how far he could push the new Israeli government and ended up in the middle of what could tactfully be called a 'divergence' of Israeli and American views on the Palestinians and Iran.
In fairness, Mitchell's task was made much more difficult by the Obama Administration, which sent several provocative signals to Israel that the US is preparing to appease Iran at Israel's expense before Mitchell even arrived to talk to them.
President Obama has made it clear many times that he favors a second Arab Palestinian state on the old pre-1967 borders established as quickly as possible and that he backs the Saudi peace ultimatum. Mitchell's job was to pressure the new Netanyahu government to commit to the Saudi plan and the idea of establishing a Palestinian state on Israel's territory, regardless of the problem of Hamas, the prior Roadmap agreements the Palestinians have still not implemented or Israel's very real security considerations.
Israel's Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman quickly let Mitchell and the Obama Administration know that things have changed and they weren't dealing with the likes of Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert any more. he stated emphatically that the Israelis were more than happy to fulfill the actual commitments they made as part of the Roadmap, including the additional provisions spelled out by Ariel Sharon and accepted by then President Bush - as soon as the Palestinians began fulfilling their obligations under the same agreement.He also said that while Israel was committed to the Road Map, it was not committed to the results of the gang rape that occurred courtesy of Condi Rice at Annapolis...where nothing was signed anyway.
Needless to say, the Palestinians were not exactly pleased at being reminded that they actually had to do something to get anything. As a matter of fact, their reaction can best be described as a heel kicking, screaming tantrum.
When Mitchell met with Bibi Netanyahu, Israel's new Prime Minister essentially turned things on their ear by telling Mitchell that he would be happy to resume negotiations on the new Palestinian state President Obama wants and commit to the idea of a two state solution - as soon as the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish State.
Since neither Hamas or Fatah have recognized Israel's right to exist,( although the Palestinian Authority did at Oslo, in order to get the aid money flowing)this presented a problem to President Obama's grand designs.
The Palestinians stated emphatically that they had no intention of recognizing Israel.
"This is an obstacle on the path to peace and the creation of two states," Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas's spokesman said.
There's more to this than meets the eye. Aside from pushing Israel back to what ex-Israel UN Ambassador Abba Eban aptly called the 'Auschwitz lines' the Palestinians insist on the right to swamp what's left of Israel with thousands of genocidal 'refugees' in a so-called right of return, something that has never even been considered for the almost one million Jewish refugees on the 1948 conflict from all over the Arab world. Recognizing Israel would involve the Palestinians making a realistic concession on this point. And realistic concessions are not what Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah or the rival Green Hat Gang in Gaza are about. It's all or nothing and it always has been, which makes the whole idea of 'negotiations' farcical.
Netanyahu and Lieberman pointed that out to Mitchell, with Lieberman explicitly saying that new approaches are needed, because the old approach of israel making concessions and giving up land has been a failure. Netanyahu reportedly told Mitchell that the Israelis were not going to accede to a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria (AKA the West Bank) merely to have it become another part of Hamastan, something that would happen in a heartbeat if the IDF pulled out and left Abbas and Fatah to their own devices.
The US response to this was fairly negative. A planned meeting with Obama and Netanyahu at the White House for May to coincide with Netanyahu's appearance at the AIPAC convention was cancelled, and while both sides made polite noises to indicate that it was a mere scheduling problem, no alternative date was set, and the White House appears as anxious to speak with Netanyahu as they were with Israeli Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazy last month.Mahmoud Abbas is scheduled to be hosted by the White House next month, but there's no indication Netanyahu will be there any time soon.
Mitchell made it clear that the US considers the establishment of a Palestinian state a priority:
"This conflict has gone on for far too long, and the people of this region should no longer have to wait for the just peace that guarantees security for all," Mitchell said.
"The US is committed to the establishment of a sovereign, independent Palestinian state, where the aspirations of the Palestinian people to control their own destiny are realized," he said.
"We want the Arab peace initiative to be a part of the effort to reach this goal. A comprehensive peace in this region is in the national interest of the United States. It is in the interest of the Palestinian people, it is in the interest of the people of Israel and of the entire region. A two-state solution is the only solution," he said.
There is, of course, no mention from Mitchell of Arab violence and rejectionism as a reason why peace in this conflict has been so elusive.
Perhaps the most extraordinary part of the exchange between Israel and the US was a letter sent by National Union chairman and MK Ya'acov "Ketzele" Katz to White House chief-of-staff Rahm Emanuel last week, after Emanuel was quoted as telling an American Jewish leader that the White House was going to ram a Palestinian state through no matter who was prime minister of Israel.
In the letter, Katz, who is not part of the Netanyahu government, reminded Emanuel of his Israeli background and of the biblical Queen Esther, who ended up at using her influence with Persian King Ahashverosh to intervene on behalf of the Jews of the Persian Empire against Haman.
"For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place, but you and your father's family will perish. And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?" Katz wrote, quoting from the Book of Esther (4:14).
I have no information on how the letter was received in the White House.
Posts
