Tag Archives: freedom

Obama, Israel, and Iran

Posted on by
Reply

The Blaze reported on a meeting in Israel several days ago that involved Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R, MI) wherein this apparently happened [emphasis mine]:

At the start of the meeting, [Netanyahu] opened with a sharp attack on the Obama administration which according to him has not done enough on the Iranian issue.  “Instead of effectively pressuring Iran, Obama and his people are pressuring us not to attack the nuclear facilities,” he said, and then moved on to a harsh criticism of the administration’s pronouncements indicating there is still room for diplomacy.  “The time has run out,” he said resolutely.

At one point, an anomalous thing occurred in the office, which is very unacceptable in diplomatic code.  Shapiro who was appointed by President Obama and for years was among his closest advisers decided he’d had enough.  Enough is enough.  He spoke and answered Netanyahu politely but in a manner that left no room for doubt.

The ambassador in fact accused Netanyahu of distorting Obama’s position.  He quoted the president, who promised he would not allow a nuclear Iran and said that all options – including a military strike – are on the table […]

It’s dismaying—and frightening, because it’s so dangerous—that all Shapiro could do was quote Obama’s words—he could cite only Obamatalk.  Shapiro could name no actual deeds as Iran, which has sworn to wipe Israel from the map, moves at an accelerating pace to achieve a nuclear bomb.

In fact, Obama actively is refusing to take concrete action, despite the “promises” of his Obamatalk.  He said, through his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey (who finds it “not useful” for ex-military to express their opinions when those opinions run counter to Party dogma), while speaking to reporters in London,

I don’t want to be complicit if they [Israel] choose to do it [execute their own military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities].

“Complicit?”  You’re “complicit” when you go along with illegal activities….

Obama also pretended, through Dempsey, not to know Iran’s intentions.  The Guardian cited Dempsey as making this claim in those same remarks.  Apparently, the Iranian leadership with whom Obama is so desperate to engage is not to be taken at its word when those words are inconvenient:

Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation’s fury.
–Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Our dear Imam [Ayatollah Khomeini] said that the occupying regime must be wiped off the map and this was a very wise statement.
–Iranian President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

 

I regard supporting the plan for independence of Israel and its recognition a tragedy for the Muslims and an explosion for the Islamic governments.
–Ayatollah Khomeini

Israel must be eradicated from the page of history.
–Ayatollah Khomeini

And the routine invocation during Friday prayers in Tehran:

Death to Israel

 

h/t Power Line

Tolerance

Posted on by
Reply

Last Tuesday night at the Republican National Convention, Saratoga Springs, UT, Mayor and Congressional Candidate Mia Love spoke rousingly and favorably (see related, below) of the Republican ticket for President.  Oh, and she’s black.  And a woman.

Later that night and early last Wednesday, she was brutally assaulted in her virtual world.  Because she’s black, and a woman, and apparently a runaway from the Progressive plantation house.

Here’s a screen shot of her hacked Wikipedia page, captured by Tabitha Hale:

Here’s another example, from The Daily Dot:

An American citizen, Progressives say, is a “sell-out to the Right Wing Hate Machine,” a “dirty, worthless whore,” and a “House Nigger” when s/he doesn’t toe the Party Line.

The open bigotry isn’t all of it, though.  There’s also the soft bigotry of the Left, who’ve said…nothing…about this assault.  Which is why it’s legitimate to lump the “mainstream” Progressives into the same cesspool as these actors.

Moreover, Progressives also have actively ignored the diversity of the evil conservatives and of the Republican Party’s convention.  MSNBC, for instance, covered Nikki Haley’s (R, SC) speech that Tuesday night and…no one else’s.  This with a speech card that included Mayor Love, ex-Congressman Artur Davis (R, AL), Senate candidate Ted Cruz (R, TX), and Governor Brian Sandoval (R, NV).  And on Wednesday night?  Well, they had an article on Vice President-nominee Paul Ryan’s speech, but they completely ignored Governor Susana Martinez’ (R, NM) and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s speeches immediately preceding his.

Government Market Intervention European Style

Posted on by
Reply

From The Wall Street Journal we learn that that the European Central Bank wants to “manage” the interest rates on member nations’ sovereign debt instruments, and it wants to do so by entering the market for government bonds—announcing its buys and sells in a manner intended to “influence” the market’s interest rates imposed on those governments’ borrowings.  The WSJ quotes the ubiquitous “person familiar with the matter” as saying

ECB would guide investors toward a target, or range, for government bond yields of Spain and others by publicly communicating specifics about the amount of the bond purchases it conducts, as well as the details on the types of bonds it buys. For instance, if the central bank says it bought €1 billion ($1.26 billion) worth of shorter-dated Spanish bonds, it could move investors toward the yields it deems appropriate by raising or lowering purchases in subsequent weeks.

But the real thinking was revealed by the ECB’s President, Mario Draghi.  “Exceptionally high” risks are embedded in many government bonds markets, the WSJ cites him as saying, and to the extent to which these “risk premia” include a euro breakup scenario, they are “unacceptable.”  Thus, the market should sit down, shut up, and do what its betters tell them to do.  Investors’ pricings on exploding debt will not be tolerated.  Their duty is to simply keep lending at rates their Betters dictate.

Never mind that, as the Bundesbank’s Jens Weidmann puts it,

In democracies, Parliaments, not central banks, should decide about such comprehensive sharing of risks[.]

He’s not one of the Know Betters, so he’s just whispering in the wind.

***

Then we have this from Spain, in particular.  The government says it expects the Spanish economy to contract 1.7% this year, despite growing exports (from the declining euro more than any real productivity-related effects), and it will contract next year by an additional 0.5%.  Yet that same Spanish government fully intends to impose “billions of euros” in tax increases over these next two years (along with allegedly large spending cuts).  You read that right.  In a contracting economy, the government fully intends to take a ton of money out of the private sector: it intends to defund the very part of the economy that is the engine of economic prosperity—and here, of economic recovery.

***

And then there’s this.  The Obamacare Independent Payment Advisory Board, consisting of “15 philosopher kings,” is starting to be set up, although we don’t get to know who these kadi are until after the election this fall.  This Board will have the power to dictate prices to all participants in the health care industry: hospitals, doctors, insurers, patients alike.  No market forces at all here.  And yes, there will be plenty of patients: customer participation is mandatory.  Of course there’ll be fewer and fewer providers as these are driven out of business by the Board’s price controls; this will turn the Board into a Death Panel.  A third example of government market intervention European style.

The New Jim Crow?

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve written about racism and religious bigotry here, here, and here.

Now I want to take a broader view.  We’ve had, in quick succession in the last very few years, the following.

President Obama’s Health and Human Services mandates that businesses and insurers to provide, at no cost to the insurees, health insurance coverage for contraceptives and abortifacients, without regard for the religious beliefs of the businesses or insurers.  This mandate also requires Americans to buy such health insurance coverage (even though these added items are to be provided at no additional cost), regardless of the religious beliefs of these individual Americans—or to accept the coverage from their employers.  There is an “exemption” that allows businesses to put this off onto their insurers, but this cynically ignores, among others, those entities who self-insure.

Virginia State Senator Louise Lucas (D), says that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is appealing to racists who do not want a black man in the White House.

I absolutely believe it’s all about race, and for the first time in my life I’ve been able to convince my children, finally, that racism is alive and well[.]

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) suggesting that Republicans are simply manipulating American Jews for political gain.

HUNT: That’s why some of the Republican Jewish supporters are really active.

PELOSI: Well, that’s how they’re being exploited. And they’re smart people. They follow these issues.

Unions, in one overt case, are attempting to keep black children down on the plantation, at least in Louisiana.

[L]awyers for the Louisiana Association of Educators, one of the state’s two major teachers unions, threatened private and parochial schools with lawsuits if the schools accept students participating in a new school choice initiative that starts this year.

The Maryland State Board of Education has established a policy of race-based discipline, regardless of the nature of the misbehavior.

President Obama’s Department of Justice, shortly after Obama took office, dismissed a civil case against New Black Panther members, accused of voter intimidation against white voters, after the case had been won by default through the non-appearance of the defendants.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation is threatening Steubenville, OH, with civil suit if the city doesn’t remove a cross from the city’s logo—a logo that

includes several local landmarks, including the Franciscan University’s Christ the King Chapel

which, oh by the way, has a cross on it.

The ACLU has been attacking America’s fallen soldiers and their families for years, using, for instance, the Mt Soledad Veterans Memorial Cross as a vehicle.  The ACLU wants the military decoration—the cross—removed.  Worse, the Obama administration now is attempting to “negotiate” a settlement with the ACLU without including the central party to the controversy, the Mount Soledad Memorial Association, in the talks.

US District Judge Fred Biery, in response to a complaint from a single family, blocked a Texas school district’s “invocation” and “benediction” and banned any prayer at the ceremony altogether, even threatening the valedictorian with jail if she mentioned God in her speech.

The Obama administration’s Department of Veterans Affairs  demanded that the pastor presiding over a private funeral at the Houston National Cemetery not make religious references in his prayers at the soldier’s burial.

Progressive leaders also attack conservative women.  Bill Maher said this of Governor Sarah Palin:

Did you hear this—Sarah Palin finally heard what happened in Japan and she’s demanding that we invade ‘Tsunami,’” Maher said. “I mean she said, ‘These ‘Tsunamians’ will not get away with this.’ Oh speaking of dumb twats, did you—

And we get this about Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R, MN):

Michele Bachmann says certain things that sound crazy to the general public.  But to anybody raised in the environment of the evangelical right wing, what she says makes perfect sense.

The list goes on.  Are we seeing, now, a resurgence of the attitudes of Jim Crow, but with a different, broader, more unfocused set of bigotries?

Some Thoughts on Culture

Posted on by
Reply

I had some words on the subject of culture the other day.    Another man weighed in on the subject last Tuesday; maybe you’ve heard of him: ex-Governor and Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney.  He offered these thoughts on culture and its role in a society’s freedom and prosperity.

[W]hat exactly accounts for prosperity if not culture?  In the case of the United States, it is a particular kind of culture that has made us the greatest economic power in the history of the earth.  Many significant features come to mind: our work ethic, our appreciation for education, our willingness to take risks, our commitment to honor and oath, our family orientation, our devotion to a purpose greater than ourselves, our patriotism.  But one feature of our culture that propels the American economy stands out above all others: freedom.  The American economy is fueled by freedom.  Free people and their free enterprises are what drive our economic vitality.

The linkage between freedom and economic development has a universal applicability. One only has to look at the contrast between East and West Germany, and between North and South Korea for the starkest demonstrations of the meaning of freedom and the absence of freedom.

Israel is also a telling example. Like the United States, the state of Israel has a culture that is based upon individual freedom and the rule of law. It is a democracy that has embraced liberty, both political and economic. This embrace has created conditions that have enabled innovators and entrepreneurs to make the desert bloom. In the face of improbable odds, Israel today is a world leader in fields ranging from medicine to information technology.

I visited three lands—Israel, Poland, and Great Britain—which are defined by their respective struggles for freedom….  I am only strengthened in my conviction that the pursuit of happiness is not an American right alone.  Israelis, Palestinians, Poles, Russians, Iranians, Americans, all human beings deserve to enjoy the blessings of a culture of freedom and opportunity.

What he said.