Political Digest October 11, 2009

I post articles because I think they are of interest. Doing so doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree with every—or any—opinion in the posted article.

Don’t forget to vote daily to help Obama win the Heisman Trophy!
http://promo.espn.go.com/espn/contests/theheismanvote/2009/
In the "Type your nominee here!" field, enter "Barack Obama."

Who’s the decider?
http://www.galganov.com/editorials.asp?id=1166
Excerpt: Nine months into the Presidency of Lord Obama who is surrounded by everyone who seems to be in charge including the outsiders Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, to the insiders Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs and Valerie Jarrett. Ask anyone of them who’s in charge, and they’ll all tell you that Obama is the President, but in their own minds they believe that each one of them is in charge.

German official insults Arabs and Turks
http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091007/FOREIGN/710069877/1013
Excerpt: A top German central bank official has caused outrage by saying Turkish and Arab immigrants sponge off the state, are incapable of integrating themselves into German society and “constantly produce little girls with headscarves”. (Outrageous—picking on little girls because they were born into a misogynist culture that makes them wear the hijab!)

Brit view of Saudi Arabia
http://dotsub.com/view/84f5c72d-b0ba-408c-ace3-8cc40995e011
Too funny, but right on point.

Democracy: The joke is on us
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Democracy_--The-joke-is-on-us-8361547-63794432.html
Excerpt: The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee bill that emerged on Sept. 17 had actually been voted on by the committee two months earlier. For two months, the Democrats who control the committee refused to let anyone read the bill, not members of the committee, not other Senators, not the American people. Now we know why. While they held the bill hostage, unelected HELP committee staff made over 70 changes to it. No votes were held as substantive parts of the bill were changed or eliminated.

Doctors for Obama, er, America
http://www.pjtv.com/?cmd=video&video-id=2556
Who the docs getting the photo-op white coats were.

What I Heard in Honduras
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703298004574459762462353766.html
I thought BO promised America wouldn’t meddle in the internal affairs of other countries. I suppose he meant countries like Iran and N. Korea which threaten us. Meddling in behalf of socialists is fine. Or maybe BO fines a constitutional limit on presidential terms troubling. Excerpt: After visiting Tegucigalpa last week and meeting with a cross section of leaders from Honduras's government, business community, and civil society, I can report there is no chaos there. There is, however, chaos to spare in the Obama administration's policy toward our poor and loyal allies in Honduras. That policy was set in a snap decision the day Mr. Zelaya was removed from office, without a full assessment of either the facts or reliable legal analysis of the constitutional provisions at issue. Three months later, it remains in force, despite mounting evidence of its moral and legal incoherence. While in Honduras, I spoke to dozens of Hondurans, from nonpartisan members of civil society to former Zelaya political allies, from Supreme Court judges to presidential candidates and even personal friends of Mr. Zelaya. Each relayed stories of a man changed and corrupted by power. The evidence of Mr. Zelaya's abuses of presidential power—and his illegal attempts to rewrite the Honduran Constitution, a la Hugo Chávez—is not only overwhelming but uncontroverted. As all strong democracies do after cleansing themselves of usurpers, Honduras has moved on. The presidential election is on schedule for Nov. 29. Under Honduras's one-term-limit, Mr. Zelaya could not have sought re-election anyway. Current President Roberto Micheletti—who was installed after Mr. Zelaya's removal, per the Honduran Constitution—is not on the ballot either. The presidential candidates were nominated in primary elections almost a year ago, and all of them—including Mr. Zelaya's former vice president—expect the elections to be free, fair and transparent, as has every Honduran election for a generation.

Holder's Witch Hunt
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=33853
Excerpt: Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to prosecute CIA personnel is an outrageous act of political theater that has the potential to significantly damage our nation’s long-term intelligence gathering capabilities. Despite the Administration’s subtle attempts to distance itself from the Justice Department’s investigation, anyone in touch with reality knows that the Attorney General could not pursue this destructive end without the President’s unmitigated support. President Obama has turned a deaf ear to the pleas of seven former CIA directors while using Mr. Holder to oblige the left’s political base. Mr. Holder has a clear history of putting the President’s agenda ahead of the law and the interests of the American people. As Deputy and then Acting Attorney General during the Clinton Administration, Mr. Holder was intimately involved in the controversial pardons issued by President Clinton hours before he left office, particularly the highly controversial pardons of fugitive tax evader Marc Rich and a number of FALN terrorists. In the Rich pardon case, Mr. Holder simply shielded career Justice Department lawyers from any knowledge of the situation so as to preempt any objection from his colleagues. Before paving the way for President Clinton to commute the FALN terrorists’ sentences, Mr. Holder ignored two warnings that such an action would undermine four pending Federal investigations. Mr. Holder’s actions in the Rich and FALN matters do not appear to have been the product of naïveté or misjudgment. Rather, they appear to have been the actions of a man who bent to the prevailing political winds and put aside good judgment in favor of performing personal favors for a President.

Our Laureate: Neda of Iran
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/09/AR2009100903860.html?hpid%3Dopinionsbox1&sub=AR
Washington Post: We understand how much Scandinavians and other Europeans welcomed the end of the Bush administration; in that sense, Mr. Obama's prize confirms that his ascension to the presidency has improved America's image in the world, or at least parts of it. But in offering this latest Euro-celebration of the 2008 election, the Norwegian committee has also demonstrated a certain cluelessness about America. If anything animates Mr. Obama's critics in this country, it is the impression that he is the focus of a global cult of personality. This prize, at this time, only feeds that impression, and thus does him no favors politically. The Nobel Committee's decision is especially puzzling given that a better alternative was readily apparent. This year, hundreds of thousands of ordinary people in Iran braved ferocious official violence to demand their right to vote and to speak freely. Dozens were killed, thousands imprisoned. One of those killed was a young woman named Neda Agha-Soltan; her shooting by thugs working for the Islamist theocracy, captured on video, moved the world. A posthumous award for Neda, as the avatar of a democratic movement in Iran, would have recognized the sacrifices that movement has made and encouraged its struggle in a dark hour. Democracy in Iran would not only set a people free, it would also dramatically improve the chances for world peace, since the regime that murdered her is pursuing nuclear weapons in defiance of the international community.

Comment: absurd decision on Obama makes a mockery of the Nobel peace prize
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6867711.ece
London Times Excerpt: Mr Obama’s prize is more likely, however, to be compared with the most contentious prize of all: the 1973 prize to Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho for their negotiations to end the Vietnam war. Dr Kissinger was branded a warmonger for his support for the bombing campaign in Cambodia; and the Vietnamese negotiator was subsequently seen as a liar whose government never intended to honour a peace deal but was waiting for the moment to attack South Vietnam. Mr Obama becomes the third sitting US President to receive the prize. The committee said today that he had “captured the world’s attention”. It is certainly true that his energy and aspirations have dazzled many of his supporters. Sadly, it seems they have so bedazzled the Norwegians that they can no longer separate hopes from achievement. The achievements of all previous winners have been diminished

Barack Obama Wins Yasser Arafat Peace Prize
http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2009/10/barack_obama_wi.html
Excerpt: As a bonus, let's consider who the Nobel Committee considered less worthy than Barack Hussein Obama to receive to Nobel Peace Prize: Chinese Human Rights Activist Hu Jia - imprisoned for campaigning for human rights in the PRC, not as worthy as Barack Hussein Obama. Wei Jingsheng, who spent 17 years in Chinese prisons for urging reforms of China's communist system. -- not as worthy as Barack Hussein Obama. (Not to mention the symbolic value of awarding a Chinese dissident on the 20th Anniversary of the Tianenmen Square Massacre.) Greg Mortenson, founder of the Central Asia Institute has built nearly 80 schools, especially for girls, in remote areas of northern Pakistan and Afghanistan over the past 15 years - not as worthy as Barack Hussein Obama. Prince Ghazi bin Muhammad, a philosophy professor in Jordan who risks his life by advocating interfaith dialogue between Jews and Muslims, also not as worthy as Barack Hussein Obama. Afghan human rights activist Sima Samar. She currently leads the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission and serves as the U.N. special envoy to Darfur and is apparently also not as worthy as Barack Hussein Obama.

Nobel's Stockholm Syndrome
http://townhall.com/columnists/JerryBowyer/2009/10/09/nobels_stockholm_syndrome
Interesting history of how the prize came about. Excerpt: But the prize has been used as a weapon, too. A Nobel to Carter, a Nobel to Gore, a Nobel to Obama. It appears that the parliament of Norway does not like George W. Bush very much. Carter was given a prize for negotiating a nuclear non-proliferation agreement with North Korea that was violated almost immediately. Gore's came just before his global warming hypothesis began to unravel among serious scientists and practically anyone else with a thermometer. Obama got one, well, just for being Obama. Or, more to the point, for not being Bush. And let's not forget Arafat. Alfred Nobel tried to buy atonement from the intellectual world for the 'sin' of creating an explosive. But in 1994, in its finite wisdom, the Nobel committee bestowed his prize on the greatest recruiter of suicide bombers in history.

Paris-based writer Nidra Poller explains why the President is a perfect recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize -- notably for his betrayal of Israel and aid to the global jihad
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/10/yes-virginia-barack-hussein-obama-deserves-his-nobel-peace-prize.html
Excerpt: Surprised? Shocked? Outraged? Not me. I'm delighted to see that the Nobel-Peace-Prize has been awarded to the person who most richly deserves it. Not only has he made gigantic efforts to promote Nobel-Peace in his nine short months in office but as president of the residually powerful United States of America he has the superforce to impose Nobel-style peace. President and Nobel Prince of Peace Obama is not naïve, inept, inexperienced, or wet behind the ears. He is practicing what he preached. He has already fulfilled more promises than most voters ever suspected were being made. And the way things are going, only a miracle will keep him from delivering on the rest. Bat Ye'or teaches us the meaning of peace in our times, the peace of dhimmitude, the peace that Nobel Norwegians have dutifully honored. It is the peace of convert or die...or hang in by the skin of your teeth. When the heads have been severed from the stiff necks that refuse Islam, when the converted have been folded into the prostrate masses of the ummah, the dhimmis hand over the keys to their granges, their wives and children, their hearts and minds, their lands and dwellings in exchange for a fragile peace requiring endless sacrifice and constant restraint. This is the peace of dhimmitude, this is the peace Nobelly rewarded in...uhhh...Oslo, right? And B Hussein O is the most deserving laureate. On the very day the prize was announced, forty people were killed in a jihad attack in Peshawar Pakistan. Do you remember, way back when, during the campaign, he narrowed his eyes and said Iraq's a distraction, let me get my hands on the trigger and I'll take care of Pakistan. There you have it. A promise keeper of the first order. Iraq was also a distraction from Afghanistan. So mister Taliban tally your bananas, we've got other fish to fry, do your jihad thing and we'll lower our eyes, peace be upon you.

Fidel Castro lauds Nobel prize for Obama
http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20091010/NEWS-US-NOBEL-PEACE-OBAMA-CASTRO/
Of course. The Kennedys tried to kill him. But BO loves leftwing dictators.

Half-Speed Ahead and Unsteady as She Goes
http://townhall.com/columnists/PaulGreenberg/2009/10/10/half-speed_ahead_and_unsteady_as_she_goes
Excerpt: What do you think it's like just now to be a GI somewhere at the end of the earth, say in mountainous Nuristan in eastern Afghanistan, and see the latest video of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid addressing the press outside the White House, just having left still another strategy session on this endless war?... Barack Obama had sounded so determined to win that war -- his war, the one he called the right war -- when he took the oath of office as president (and commander-in-chief) early this year. How long ago that now seems. You don't hear that kind of talk from the Oval Office these days. Its occupant has fallen silent on the subject of Afghanistan. Even while everyone around him talks, talks, talks. His press secretary says the country has no option but to stay in Afghanistan. The isolationists, whom we will always have with us, say the only realistic option is to leave. The word is that the president is now undecided about how decided to be about this war. But the Taliban are decided. That much is clear with every casualty report.

Obamacomedy
http://townhall.com/columnists/DanKennedy/2009/10/10/obamacomedy
Excerpt: What’s hilarious is his omitting any mention of his own reckless risk-taking, on such an epic scale it makes what went on over on Wall Street seem a penny ante poker game. He, the Reckless-Risk-Taker-In-Chief, lecturing anybody about such sin is sillier than John Edwards giving a speech on family values or Al Gigantic-Carbon-Footprint Gore carping about others’ energy consumption. Let’s see … Ozbama has virtually nationalized the entire mortgage market, killing the private industry and transferring all the risk to taxpayers. He is busily killing the private college lending industry and replacing it with government funded, government run massively expanded, easier to obtain financing – with all the risk moved to taxpayers. As a minor matter, he has also helped himself to controlling ownership of General Motors, AIG, and assorted other businesses, putting hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars at risk. If he gets his way, he will fundamentally transform 1/6th of the U.S. economy having to do with health care. And that – healthcare “reform” – is the riskiest play of all, based entirely on a wager that he can do what government has never, ever done; so curb its own waste and fraud in its current, small socialized medicine program (Medicare) that it can pay for a much bigger, harder to manage socialized medicine program with the savings.

Vote Fraud Criminal Darnell Nash Should Be ACORN’s Poster Boy
http://newsrealblog.com/2009/10/09/vote-fraud-criminal-darnell-nash-should-be-acorns-poster-boy/
Excerpt: That’s because Darnell Nash (his mug shot appears above) was recently convicted of vote fraud in addition to the lesser crime of voter-registration fraud. Who is Darnell Nash? He’s a Cleveland-based, cross-dressing male escort whom ACORN registered multiple times to vote. No evidence of criminal activity by ACORN with regard to the Nash case has been discovered — yet. ACORN remains under investigation by the prosecutor’s office in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. The conviction of Nash, known by various aliases including Serina “Sexy Slay” Gibbs, is incredibly significant for a number of reasons, not least of which is the fact that ACORN has long maintained that vote fraud, as opposed to the much more common crime of voter-registration fraud, basically never happens.

Human Rights vs. Sharia: Violence Against Women
http://www.hudsonny.org/2009/10/human-rights-vs-sharia-violence-against-women.php
Excerpt: The great irony of the recent International Conference on Violence Against Women hosted by the Italian Ministry for Equal Opportunities, is that if the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Violence Against Women (CEDAW), ratified by 185 countries, or over 90% of the United Nations, were implemented, there would be no need for this conference. One if the main problems is the distance between laws, international conventions and treaties - and their implementation. In Islamic countries, for example, although 46 out of 57 members of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) ratified it, they did so with “reservations.” It seems there are Muslim intellectuals and human rights defenders who are still ambivalent about pursuing engagement with Islam and Islamic law, and gender equality and women’s empowerment in Muslim societies. Even though the 1990 Declaration on Human Rights in Islam, the 1994 Charter on Human Rights, and the 2005 OIC Covenant on the Rights of the Child in Islam indicate that the relationship between Islam and Human Rights is crucial - - due to the place of Islam and Islamic law in the social, cultural, political, and legal affairs of states’ parties - CEDAW has more “reservations” placed on it than any other Human Rights treaty. States’ parties identified as Islamic have placed “reservations” even broader in scope and ground, maintaining that they will not implement any article against the principles of sharia. The Convention ends up, therefore, as though they had never signed it.

Picture of evil: Bloodthirsty German Al Qaeda fanatic poses with 2ft-long knife for beheading British soldiers in Afghanistan
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1219212/Picture-evil-Bloodthirsty-Al-Qaeda-fanatics-2ft-long-knife-beheading-British-soldiers.html#
Another Muslim who didn’t get the Religion of Peace mewmo.

'Al-Qaeda-link' Cern worker held
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8299668.stm
Excerpt: France has arrested a researcher at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) for suspected links with al-Qaeda, officials have said. The 32-year-old man of Algerian descent was one of two brothers detained in the south-east town of Vienne on Thursday. Police believe they had been in contact over the internet with people linked to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and had been planning attacks in France. (Didn’t get the memo.)

Hizbullah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah on Al-Quds Day: 'Israel Must Be Wiped Out Of Existence'
http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP259109
But, but, they want peace, right?

Obamacare to ban guns in homes?
http://commonamericanjournal.com/?p=3959
Excerpt from Gun Owners of America: Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus has something to say to gun owners: “Own a gun; lose your coverage!” Baucus’ socialized health care bill comes up for a Finance Committee vote on Tuesday. We have waited and waited and waited for the shifty Baucus to release legislative language. But he has refused to release anything but a summary — and we will never have a Congressional Budget Office cost assessment based on actual legislation. Even the summary was kept secret for a long time.