They've Lost That Lovin' Feeling, by Peggy Noonan

They've Lost That Lovin' Feeling: Obama still has supporters, but theirs is a grim support.

The Republican establishment reasserted itself this week, and good thing, too, because the establishment was right. It said Republicans in the House should back and pass the Boehner bill on the debt ceiling because it goes in the right directions, contains spending cuts but not taxes, and is viable. So accept victory, avert crisis, and get it to the Senate.

The establishment was being conservative in the Burkean sense: acknowledges reality, respect it, and make the most progress possible within it. This has not always been true of them. They spent the first decade of this century backing things a truly conservative party would not have dreamed of—careless wars, huge spending and, most scandalously, a dreamy and unconservative assumption that it would all work out because life is sweet and the best thing always happens. They were mostly led by men and women who had never been foreclosed on and who assumed good luck, especially unearned good luck, would continue. They were fools, and they lost control of their party when the tea party rose up, rebuking and embarrassing them. Then the tea party saved them by not going third party in 2009-10. And now the establishment has come forward to save the tea party, by inching it away from the cliff and reminding it the true battles are in 2012, and after. Let's hope the tea party takes the opportunity.

As this is written the White House seems desperate to be seen as consequential. They're trotting out Press Secretary Jay Carney, who stands there looking like a ferret with flop sweat as he insists President Obama is still at the table, still manning the phones and calling shots. Much is uncertain, but the Republicans have made great strides on policy. If they emerge victorious, they had better not crow. The nation is in a continuing crisis, our credit rating is not secure, and no one's interested in he-man gangster dialogue from "The Town." What might thrill America would be a little modesty: "We know we helped get America into some of this trouble, and we hope we've made some progress today in getting us out of it."

***

But that actually is not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about something that started to become apparent to me during the debt negotiations. It's something I've never seen in national politics.

It is that nobody loves Obama. This is amazing because every president has people who love him, who feel deep personal affection or connection, who have a stubborn, even beautiful refusal to let what they know are just criticisms affect their feelings of regard. At the height of Bill Clinton's troubles there were always people who'd say, "Look, I love the guy." They'd often be smiling—a wry smile, a shrugging smile. Nobody smiles when they talk about Mr. Obama. There were people who loved George W. Bush when he was at his most unpopular, and they meant it and would say it. But people aren't that way about Mr. Obama. He has supporters and bundlers and contributors, he has voters, he may win. But his support is grim support. And surely this has implications.

The past few weeks I've asked Democrats who supported him how they feel about him. I got back nothing that showed personal investment. Here are the words of a hard-line progressive and wise veteran of the political wars: "I never loved Barack Obama. That said, among my crowd who did 'love' him, I can't think of anyone who still does." Why is Mr. Obama different from Messrs. Clinton and Bush? "Clinton radiated personality. As angry as folks got with him about Nafta or Monica, there was always a sense of genuine, generous caring." With Bush, "if folks were upset with him, he still had this goofy kind of personality that folks could relate to. You might think he was totally misguided but he seemed genuinely so. . . . Maybe the most important word that described Clinton and Bush but not Obama is 'genuine.'" He "doesn't exude any feeling that what he says and does is genuine."

Maybe Mr. Obama is living proof of the political maxim that they don't care what you know unless they know that you care. But the idea that he is aloof and so inspires aloofness may be too pat. No one was colder than FDR, deep down. But he loved the game and did a wonderful daily impersonation of jut-jawed joy. And people loved him.

The secret of Mr. Obama is that he isn't really very good at politics, and he isn't good at politics because he doesn't really get people. The other day a Republican political veteran forwarded me a hiring notice from the Obama 2012 campaign. It read like politics as done by Martians. The "Analytics Department" is looking for "predictive Modeling/Data Mining" specialists to join the campaign's "multi-disciplinary team of statisticians," which will use "predictive modeling" to anticipate the behavior of the electorate. "We will analyze millions of interactions a day, learning from terabytes of historical data, running thousands of experiments, to inform campaign strategy and critical decisions."

This wasn't the passionate, take-no-prisoners Clinton War Room of '92, it was high-tech and bloodless. Is that what politics is now? Or does the Obama re-election effort reflect the candidate and his flaws?

Mr. Obama seemed brilliant at politics when he first emerged in 2004. He understood the nation's longing for unity. We're not divided into red states and blue, he said, we're Big Purple, we can solve our problems together. Four years later he read the lay of the land perfectly—really, perfectly. The nation and the Democratic Party were tired of the Clinton machine. He came from nowhere and dismantled it. It was breathtaking. He went into the 2008 general election with a miraculously unified party and took down another machine, bundling up all the accrued resentment of eight years with one message: "You know the two losing wars and the economic collapse we've been dealing with? I won't do that. I'm not Bush."

The fact is, he's good at dismantling. He's good at critiquing. He's good at not being the last guy, the one you didn't like. But he's not good at building, creating, calling into being. He was good at summoning hope, but he's not good at directing it and turning it into something concrete that answers a broad public desire.

And so his failures in the debt ceiling fight. He wasn't serious, he was only shrewd—and shrewdness wasn't enough. He demagogued the issue—no Social Security checks—until he was called out, and then went on the hustings spouting inanities. He left conservatives scratching their heads: They could have made a better, more moving case for the liberal ideal as translated into the modern moment, than he did. He never offered a plan. In a crisis he was merely sly. And no one likes sly, no one respects it.

So he is losing a battle in which he had superior forces—the presidency, the U.S. senate. In the process he revealed that his foes have given him too much mystique. He is not a devil, an alien, a socialist. He is a loser. And this is America, where nobody loves a loser.

The Quislings of Norway: By Joseph Klein

“We no longer recognize the State of Israel. We could not recognize the apartheid regime of South Africa, nor did we recognize the Afghani Taliban regime. Then there were many who did not recognize Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or the Serbs’ ethnic cleansing. We need to get used to the idea: The State of Israel, in its current form, is history.The State of Israel has raped the recognition of the world and shall have no peace until it lays down its arms.”….FOREIGN MINISTER OF NORWAY

The infamous Norwegian Vidkun Quisling, who assisted Nazi Germany as it conquered his own country, must be applauding in his grave.

In the latest example of Norwegian collaboration with the enemies of the Jews, Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere declared during a press conference this week, alongside Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, that “Norway believes it is perfectly legitimate for the Palestinian president to turn to the United Nations” to seek recognition of an independent Palestinian state.

Despite Abbas’s decision to throw his lot in with the Hamas terrorists as part of some sort of “unity” government, Stoere signed an agreement with Abbas on upgrading Palestinian representation in Norway. Under the agreement, which effectively rewards Abbas for joining forces with Hamas, the Palestinian representative will have the full diplomatic rank of ambassador.

The foreign minister of Norway, which chairs a group of Palestinian donor nations, also used the occasion to hold the tin cup out for Abbas. Foreign Minister Stoere chided those who have decided to hold back on their contributions. “All donors should make an extra effort to support the Palestinians this summer and autumn,” he said.

None of this should come as a surprise. Let’s not forget, for example, that Foreign Minister Stoere is in charge of the same Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in which Socialist Ingrid Fiskaa — who said in April 2008 that she sometimes wished the United Nations would send “precision-guided missiles against selected Israeli targets” — so proudly serves as a state secretary.

During the Nazi occupation of Norway, nearly all Jews were either deported to death camps or fled to Sweden and beyond. Today, Norway is effectively under the occupation of anti-Semitic leftists and radical Muslims, and appears willing to help enable the destruction of the Jewish state of Israel.

For example, one of Norway’s leading intellectuals, Jostein Gaarder, published an op-ed article in a major Norwegian daily newspaper in 2006 arguing against recognizing the state of Israel in its current form and claiming that Judaism is “an archaic national and warlike religion.”

Gaarder equated the Jewish state of Israel’s attempts to defend itself against Islamic terrorists with apartheid and ethnic cleansing:

We no longer recognize the State of Israel. We could not recognize the apartheid regime of South Africa, nor did we recognize the Afghani Taliban regime. Then there were many who did not recognize Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or the Serbs’ ethnic cleansing. We need to get used to the idea: The State of Israel, in its current form, is history.

The State of Israel has raped the recognition of the world and shall have no peace until it lays down its arms.

Norway’s Labor Party lawmaker Anders Mathisen has gone even further and publicly denied the Holocaust. He said that Jews “exaggerated their stories” and “there is no evidence the gas chambers and or mass graves existed.” While the Norwegian political establishment and opinion-maker elite may not have reached that point of lunacy just yet, they do tend to treat Muslims as the victims of Israeli oppression – as if today’s Muslims are filling the shoes of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust and today’s Nazis are the Israelis.

Thorbjørn Jagland, former prime minister of Norway, the president of the Norwegian Parliament, and the head of the Nobel Prize committee that gave President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize, sided with Turkey and condemned Israel for the defensive actions it took last year against the so-called Free Gaza flotilla.

Socialist leader Kristin Halvorsen has been leading the boycott Israel campaign. While serving as Norway’s finance minister, she was amongst the demonstrators at an anti-Israel protest, in which a poster read (translated): “The greatest axis of evil: USA and Israel.” Among the slogans repeatedly shouted at the demonstration was (as translated) “Death to the Jews!”

Halvorsen has recently supported a measure calling for military action against Israel if it decides to act against Hamas in Gaza, based on the reasoning that the world community’s credibility in confronting the Qaddafi regime would be undermined if it does nothing to help Hamas repel Israeli air attacks in Gaza.

Last year, the Norwegian government decided to divest from two Israeli entities working in the West Bank. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund divested from the Israeli company Elbit, because it has worked on the Israeli security fence that keeps out Palestinian suicide bombers. Israel has also been blocked from bidding for Norwegian defense contracts.

The state-owned TV NRK aired the one-sided movie “Tears over Gaza,” photographed by several Palestinian cameramen during and after Israel’s Operation Cast Lead. Its film director Vibeke Løkkeberg had the gall to compare Israel’s defensive military actions in Gaza, which protect Israeli civilians from Hamas bombs, to “the massacres Qaddafi is conducting against Libyan insurgents.”

As explained by Bruce Bawer, an American literary critic, writer and poet who lives in Norway and has criticized European anti-Semitism and radical Islam, in an interview with the Jerusalem Post, contemporary Norwegian anti-Semitism is alive and well in Norway especially amongst “the cultural elite – the academics, intellectuals, writers, journalists, politicians, and technocrats.”

It is such anti-Semitic tripe and moral equivalency that embolden the Muslims living in Norway to legitimize their own anti-Semitic conduct, which Norwegian officials have been tolerating in the name of multiculturalism.

As Bawer explained:

Part of the motivation for this anti-Semitism is the influx into Norway in recent decades of masses of Muslims from Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia and elsewhere. Multiculturalism has taught Norway’s cultural elite to take an uncritical, even obsequious, posture toward every aspect of Muslim culture and belief. When Muslim leaders rant against Israel and the Jews, the reflexive response of the multiculturalist elite is to join them in their rantings. This is called solidarity.

In 2009, when Muslims rioted violently in downtown Oslo to protest Israel’s actions against Hamas, resulting in extensive damage, there were few consequences for those responsible.

Teachers at schools with large shares of Muslims reported that Muslim students often “praise or admire Adolf Hitler for his killing of Jews,” that “Jew-hate is legitimate within vast groups of Muslim students” and that “Muslims laugh or command [teachers] to stop when trying to educate about the Holocaust.”

Norway is repeating its Quisling treachery of the Nazi era, this time in league with a growing radical Muslim population. And once again the Jews are the victims.

Joseph Klein is the author of a recent book entitled Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations and Radical Islam.



Article printed from FrontPage Magazine: http://frontpagemag.com

On Cartoons, Propaganda and Foreskins

Sometimes even paranoids have enemies.

Being Jewish, a supporter of Israel and conservative, I tend to ask myself frequently whether sometimes I am not being overly zealous in seeing anti-Semitism in what perhaps is valid criticism. Then I read something like this entry in Daniel Hannan’s blog and end up confirming that my fears are not groundless. 
The entry in question deals with a cartoon published in Brussels by the European Union. Ah, leave it to bureaucrats to find ways of spending your money. 

The cartoons are designed to reach parents through their children. And so we have cartoons such as “The Raspberry Ice Cream War, which tells the tale of a group of intrepid youngsters who travel back in time to a barbarous age where there are still sovereign states, and teach the inhabitants to scrap their borders. Older ones prefer Troubled Waters, a Tintin-style cartoon strip, whose heroine is a foxy MEP. Among the lines of dialogue are: “You can laugh! Wait until you’ve seen my amendments to the Commission proposal!” and, “I seem to spend my whole life on the train between Brussels and Strasbourg, but I’d hate to have to choose between mussels and chips and Strasbourg onion tart!”

But the cartoon that caught Hannan’s eye was the one on the super villain D. Vider. Look at the picture above, which shows the baddie, Dr D Vider, surrounded by his henchmen. “What, I wonder, asks Hannan, prompted the creators to give him a hooked nose and a goatee beard, like some anti-Semitic caricature from the Völkischer Beobachter? Am I being over-sensitive? Well, read the way he is described by the authors”:

Ruthless speculator, curator and collector of ancient curiosities, DAVID VIDERIUS is a former financier. He is a multi-millionaire, used to making money no matter if it might involve the suffering of others. Banned and ostracized from the financial world for unprofessional conduct he managed to escape arrest despite his involvement in financial scandal. Having disappeared for many years, he reappeared as DR D VIDER. He manages a holding company, DIVIDEX, controlling hundreds of different businesses across Europe and beyond...

Imagine however if this cartoon had been created by some reactionaries rather than the politically correct bureaucrat in Brussels. A villain named David with a hooked nose who made his money as a speculator.

What is the EU’s agenda here? Well, a few years ago, Daniel Hannan stumbled across an internal Commission report that concluded as follows: “Children can perform a messenger function in conveying the message to the home environment. Young people will often in practice act as go-betweens with the older generations, helping them embrace the euro.”

The notion that the government should get at parents through their children is a characteristic of authoritarian states, not liberal democracies. One thinks of Orwell’s fictional youth organization, the Spies; or of the revolting Pavel Morozov, who became a hero of the Soviet Union when he was murdered after shopping his father for hoarding grain. (Having decreed a state funeral for the boy, Stalin privately remarked: “He was a rotten little shit, ratting on his parents like that.”)

Not that the EU’s kiddieprop seems to be having much effect: in every country, younger voters are more Eurosceptic than their elders. Perhaps no amount of publicity can convince people of a bad idea.

***

In the meantime, another cartoon has emerged, with a new hero: Foreskin Man. 

The San Diego-based group that is laboring to get circumcision banned in San Francisco has perpetrated a comic book. In it, a superhero named Foreskin Man saves a baby boy from being circumcised by the evil Monster Mohel, a vicious-looking Orthodox Jewish rabbi who could have been drawn by an acolyte of Joseph Goebbels.

Indeed, Foreskin Man has a distinctly Hitlerian “Aryan” look to him.

It’s crystal clear from the dialogue that the perpetrator of this literary opus intends to depict the Judaic religious view of circumcision as evil and repulsive. The “comic” hauls out every theme of Jew hatred in the arsenal.

Note that these circumcision-haters could have addressed the issue as one of science, medicine, personal autonomy, or even just a social issue on which reasonable people can disagree.

But they didn’t. The case they’re making is that circumcision is evil because Jews do it as a religious observance.

The Anti-Defamation League is right. The attempt to ban circumcision in San Francisco is driven by anti-Semitism. The case could have been made without depicting a scary rabbi named Monster Mohel slavering over a naked infant – but it wasn’t.

Actually, this group is not insane. It’s evil.


Click Here For More on Foreskin Man

FOUAD AJAMI : The U.N. Can’t Deliver a Palestinian State – WSJ.com

It had been quite a scramble, the prelude to the vote on Nov. 29, 1947, on the question of the partition of Palestine. The United Nations itself was only two years old and had just 56 member states; the Cold War was gathering force, and no one was exactly sure how the two pre-eminent powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, would vote. The Arab and Muslim states were of course unalterably opposed, for partition was a warrant for a Jewish state.

In the end, the vote broke for partition, the U.S. backed the resolution, and two days later the Soviet Union followed suit. It was a close call: 10 states had abstained, 13 had voted against, 33 were in favor, only two votes over the required two-thirds majority.

Now, some six decades later, the Palestinians are calling for a vote in the next session of the General Assembly, in September, to ratify a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. In part, this is an appropriation by the Palestinians of the narrative of Zionism. The vote in 1947 was viewed as Israel’s basic title to independence and statehood. The Palestinians and the Arab powers had rejected partition and chosen the path of war. Their choice was to prove calamitous.

By the time the guns had fallen silent, the Yishuv, the Jewish community in Palestine, had held its ground against the combined armies of Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Iraq. Its forces stood on the shores of the Red Sea in the south, and at the foot of the Golan Heights in the north. Palestinian society had collapsed under the pressure of war. The elites had made their way to neighboring lands. Rural communities had been left atomized and leaderless. The cities had fought, and fallen, alone.

Palestine had become a great Arab shame. Few Arabs were willing to tell the story truthfully, to face its harsh verdict. Henceforth the Palestinians would live on a vague idea of restoration and return. No leader had the courage to tell the refugees who had left Acre and Jaffa and Haifa that they could not recover the homes and orchards of their imagination.

Some had taken the keys to their houses with them to Syria and Lebanon and across the river to Jordan. They were no more likely to find political satisfaction than the Jews who had been banished from Baghdad and Beirut and Cairo, and Casablanca and Fez, but the idea of return, enshrined into a “right of return,” would persist. (Wadi Abu Jamil, the Jewish quarter of the Beirut of my boyhood, is now a Hezbollah stronghold, and no narrative exalts or recalls that old presence.)

History hadn’t stood still. The world was remade. In 1947-48, when the Zionists had secured their statehood, empires were coming apart, borders were fluid, the international system of states as we know it quite new. India and Pakistan had emerged as independent, hostile states out of the partition of the subcontinent in 1947, and Israel had secured its place in the order of nations a year later. Many of the Arab states were still in their infancy.

But the world is a vastly different place today. The odds might favor the Palestinians in the General Assembly, but any victory would be hollow.

The Palestinians have misread what transpired at the General Assembly in 1947. True, the cause of Jewish statehood had been served by the vote on partition, but the Zionist project had already prevailed on the ground. Jewish statehood was a fait accompli perhaps a decade before that vote. All the ingredients had been secured by Labor Zionism. There was a military formation powerful enough to defeat the Arab armies, there were political institutions in place, and there were gifted leaders, David Ben-Gurion pre-eminent among them, who knew what can be had in the world of nations.
The vote at the General Assembly was of immense help, but it wasn’t the decisive factor in the founding of the Jewish state. The hard work had been done in the three decades between the Balfour Declaration of 1917 and the vote on partition. Realism had guided the Zionist project. We will take a state even if it is the size of a tablecloth, said Chaim Weizmann, one of the founding fathers of the Zionist endeavor.

Sadly, the Palestinian national movement has known a different kind of leadership, unique in its mix of maximalism and sense of entitlement, in its refusal to accept what can and can’t be had in the world of nations. Leadership is often about luck, the kind of individuals a people’s history brings forth. It was the distinct misfortune of the Palestinians that when it truly mattered, and for nearly four decades, they were led by a juggler, Yasser Arafat, a man fated to waste his people’s chances.

Arafat was neither a Ben-Gurion leading his people to statehood, nor an Anwar Sadat accepting the logic of peace and compromise. He had been an enemy of Israel, but Israel had reached an accord with him in 1993, made room for him, and for a regime of his choice in Gaza. He had warred against the United States, but American diplomacy had fallen under his spell, and the years of the Clinton presidency were devoted to the delusion that the man could summon the courage to accept a practical peace.

But Arafat would do nothing of the kind. Until his death in 2004, he refrained from telling the Palestinians the harsh truths they needed to hear about the urgency of practicality and compromise. Instead, he held out the illusion that the Palestinians can have it all, from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean. His real constituents were in the refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria and Jordan, and among the Palestinians in Kuwait. So he peddled the dream that history’s verdict could be overturned, that the “right of return” was theirs.

There was hope that the Arafat legacy would go with him to the grave.  The new Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas had been a lieutenant of Arafat’s, but there were hints of a break with the Arafat legacy. The alliance between Fatah and Hamas that Mr. Abbas has opted for put these hopes to rest. And the illusion that the U.N. can break the stalemate in the Holy Land is vintage Arafat. It was Arafat who turned up at the General Assembly in 1974 with a holster on his hip, and who proclaimed that he had come bearing a freedom fighter’s gun and an olive branch, and that it was up to the U.N. not to let the olive branch fall from his hand.

For the Palestinians there can be no escape from negotiations with Israel. The other Arabs shall not redeem Palestinian rights. They have their own burdens to bear. In this Arab Spring, this season of popular uprisings, little has been said in Tunis and Cairo and Damascus and Sanaa about Palestine.
The General Assembly may, in September, vote to ratify a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood. But true Palestinian statehood requires convincing a decisive Israeli majority that statehood is a herald for normalcy in that contested land, for Arabs and Jews alike.

This article was originally published in the Wall Street Journal on June 1, 2011

Have Christians Gone Overboard in Outreach to Muslims?

Posted In Islamist Watch

In the Muslim world, Islamists increasingly target Christians for persecution; in the Western world, Christians increasingly target Muslims for outreach. Extending a hand to followers of Islam can be praiseworthy, but the lengths to which some Christians have gone may come as a shock. Consider a few recent cases on the congregational level:

• Muslims using churches for prayer. Last year, Muslims awaiting construction of their mosque accepted a neighborly offer to pray at Heartsong Church in Cordova, Tennessee. An analogous arrangement exists at Aldersgate United Methodist Church in Alexandria, Virginia. (Interestingly, each of the two Islamic communities is stained by radicalism: the first via Yasir Qadhi and the second via ICNA.) Opposition has grown rapidly, with Anglican priest Mark Durie contending that Muslim worship has "no place in a Christian church" due to Islam's differing view of Jesus and prayers that chide Christianity.
• Christians distributing Korans. In response to Christian pastor Terry Jones burning the Islamic holy book on March 20, leaders of Salt Lake City's Wasatch Presbyterian Church pooled their money to purchase Korans, which later were passed out for free at an area store. This was done to help "push back against the lunatic fringe," said Russell Fericks of the church's governing board. "We're not afraid of the truth," he added.
• Joint Christian-Muslim worship. On May 22, St. John's Episcopal Church in Montclair, New Jersey, held an interfaith service that reportedly began with the Muslim call to prayer and incorporated readings from the Koran — even during Communion. "I've grown concerned about the demonization of Muslims. I want Montclair to develop an understanding of the religion," Rev. Andrew Butler explained.
• Half church, half mosque. A project in the Stockholm suburbs aims to graft a mosque onto an existing church. Bishop Bengt Wadensjö of the Church of Sweden, which owns the property, recently described this as a way to "demonstrate how people can get along together regardless of culture, language, or faith." The plan is to renovate the current facility, expand space rented by Catholics, sell land to a Muslim group, build an adjacent mosque, and link the structures through a "communal foyer" to create "God's House."

In addition, peculiar examples of individual Christian leaders reaching out to Muslims by mixing their faith with Islam include a Belgian Catholic bishop urging everyone to call God "Allah" in 2007, an American emergent church pastor joining the Ramadan fast in 2009, and an Episcopal minister in Missouri practicing aspects of Islam during this year's Lent.

There is nothing wrong with outreach to Muslims. However, when pursued in ways that come off as highly deferential and spiritually confused, it can embolden Islamists by suggesting that Christians are uncertain and weak. Encouraging tolerance of Muslims is laudable, but the unreciprocated trend of Christians effectively promoting Islam is troubling.

CNN's Zakaria: Couldn't He Just Call Netanyahu a Slut? by William Tate

Published in American Thinker

Just when you thought the Obama-Kool-Aid-swilling media couldn't sink any further into their foul muck, along comes ersatz expert-on-everything and Obama sycophant Fareed Zakaria. Attempting to defend Obama's imperious effort to force Israel back inside its indefensible pre-1967 borders, Zakaria has tried to link Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu with a central figure in one of the most vicious anti-Jewish, anti-Israeli regimes in history.

Zakaria compared Netanyahu to former Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in an opinion piece in the Washington Post this week, claiming petulantly that Netanyahu has become, like Gromyko, "'Doctor Nyet,' a man who will be bypassed in history."

Beyond proving that Zakaria has a tin ear, his column proves beyond all doubt that anyone who criticizes, or even disagrees with, Obama -- even in the interest of protecting their own country -- will be savaged by the media beyond any sense of decency, let alone fairness.
It is an attack that is vile, vituperative, and -- as we shall see -- viciously personal. And all because Netanyahu didn't roll over for Obama on a matter vital to his nation's security. (As an aside, one can't help wonder why Netanyahu didn't just tell Obama, much like Obama infamously told Republicans in 2009: We won. Get over it.)

Zakaria compared the Prime Minister of Israel to a man who played a key role in a regime that implemented anti-Israeli policies abroad and an anti-Jewish agenda at home, a regime that actively and systematically persecuted Jews. And Gromyko was the architect of a foreign policy that forced Israel, the world's lone Jewish state and the Middle East's only democracy, into two bloody wars for its very existence.

Gromyko served as Soviet Foreign Minister for most of the Cold War, including during the Six Day War in 1967, in which Israel won the more-defensible territories which Obama would now have it relinquish. Records released since then show that Gromyko's foreign policy helped instigate that battle for Israel's survival.
According to a June, 2000 report in the UK's Guardian newspaper:

The Soviet Union had played a central role in escalating tension in the Middle East and had falsely accused Israel of massing forces on the Syrian border... In memoirs published recently, Nikita Khrushchev said the USSR's military command persuaded its political leadership to support these steps, knowing they were aimed at starting a war to destroy Israel.

As Foreign Minister, Gromyko was a principal member of that political leadership.

And the records also revealed that, when it appeared Israel was poised to win a total victory over the Soviet's Middle Eastern client states, Gromyko's USSR was, itself, prepared to intervene militarily. By way of the hotline between the two superpowers, Gromyko warned then-US President Lyndon Johnson:

A very crucial moment has now arrived which forces us, if military actions are not stopped in the next few hours, to adopt an independent decision. We are ready to do this. However, these actions may bring us into a clash which will lead to a grave catastrophe ... we purpose [sic] that you demand from Israel that it unconditionally cease military action... we purpose to warn Israel that if this is not fulfilled, necessary actions will be taken, including military...

Then Defense Secretary Robert) McNamara recalled: "In effect it said: Mr. President, if you want war, you'll get war."

After Kosygin's menacing message was received, the US under-secretary of state, Nicholas Katzenbach, was dispatched from the Situation Room to 'call in the Israeli ambassador and put pressure on the Israelis to accept a ceasefire'. The Israelis, presumably informed of the Soviet threat, did - after completing their conquest of the Golan.

By most accounts, the Soviet regime, in which Gromyko served so prominently, intensified its internal campaign against Jews after the humiliating rout of its Arab allies.

The hard-won 1967 borders proved vital to the Jewish state's survival when Israel was caught off-guard by a multiple-front, coordinated attack by Syria and Egypt: the 1973 Yom Kippur war.

It was a sneak attack of which Gromyko, and the Soviet Union, were aware -- if not actively involved in the planning -- beforehand.

In his book, The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East, Abraham Rabinovich wrote that the Soviets, and Gromyko, had armed Egypt and Syria with the modern arms necessary to wage war on Israel. Gromyko was even aware of the timing of the surprise assault. Two days before Syria and Egypt attacked, Gromyko summoned his top aides. "What they were about to hear, he said, must be kept completely confidential. Egypt and Syria were to open war on Israel on Saturday at 2 P.M."

Rabinovich noted that Gromyko "was skeptical of the Arabs' chances but acknowledged that a surprise attack might improve their odds."

Overlooking the historical and policy implications of Zakaria's contemptuous comparison, there is the personal aspect as well. Yonatan Netanyahu, "one of Israel's most celebrated heroes," was born in New York City in 1946. He died thirty years later, on the Fourth of July. At the time of his death he was a commander of the elite Israeli commando unit, Sayeret Maktal -- more or less the equivalent of our Navy SEALs. The best of the very best. He was killed during the Entebbe raid, in which the unit he headed rescued 103 hostages held aboard an Air France passenger plane in Uganda.

The Soviet Union, under the foreign policy directed by Gromyko, was the principal supplier of arms to Uganda and its dictator, Idi Amin.

The bullet which killed Yonatan Netanyahu was most likely provided to his killer through the largesse of Andrei Gromyko. The same man to whom Zakaria now compares Yonatan's younger brother, Binyamin.

Perhaps Zakaria just hadn't thought of calling Binyamin Netanyahu, the elected leader of a sovereign nation and a stalwart US ally, a talk show slut.

With Zakaria's column, it becomes clear that Barack Obama's mainstream media will stoop to any low, no matter how vile or disgraceful or personal, to protect their guy.

Just writing about Zakaria's comments leaves a bad taste in one's mouth. And it's not Obama Kool-Aid.

William Tate is an award-winning journalist and author.

DNC Chairman Debbie Wasernan-Schultz

DNC Chairman not aware that illegal alien are committing a crime:

Word of the Decade: 'Unsustainable', by Peggy Noonan

Word of the Decade: 'Unsustainable'

By Peggy Noonan · Saturday, May 28, 2011

We're at a funny place. The American establishment has finally come around, in unison, to admitting that America is in crisis, that our debt actually threatens our ability to endure, that if we don't make progress on this, we are going to near our endpoint as a nation. I am struck very recently by the number of leaders in American business, politics and journalism who now get a certain faraway look at the end of an evening or a meal and say, "It's worse than people think, you know." The debt crisis in Europe is not easing but worsening, the U.S. bond markets could bail tomorrow, the culture of Washington will kill any serious attempts at reform . . .

The American establishment, on both sides of the political divide, is admitting as never before that we are in an existential challenge. And this is progress. It was not always so! It wasn't so two years ago.

That's one takeaway from this week's Peterson Foundation fiscal summit in Washington. Bill Clinton spoke of "permanent structural deficits" and warned that "arithmetic still matters." We must focus on entitlement spending, he said, "for the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: That's where the money is." Virginia's Democratic Sen. Mark Warner: "Congress is Thelma and Louise in that car headed for the cliff." Obama administration economic adviser Gene Sperling -- more on him in a minute -- called for "serious discussion" of the specifics of a debt-reducing plan.

Republicans were on the same page. No one said, "We can grow our way out of this thing," or "The negative effects of chronic debt are exaggerated, let's look at the positive side." They would have been laughed out of the room.

The people, of course, saw the crisis coming before most politicians did, and every elected official in Washington is now quick to preface interviews with, "The people were ahead of us on this." They say this with an air of discovery, the little Sherlocks. The people were ahead of them. Public concern began to deepen in the polls after the introduction of the new spending bills that followed the crash of 2008. Voter concern was made vivid in the 2009 and 2010 elections, when centrists voted like old-style Republicans who worried about red ink.

Elected officials began to get the message. Now they've got it. Our spending and debt are -- and it is interesting that this is the first great buzzword of the new decade -- "unsustainable."

But here's how we're in a funny place. The great question now is whether the people who alerted the establishment to the crisis will trust that establishment to deal with it. The people have been like Paul Revere riding through the night warning, "The bankruptcy is coming!" It's unclear whether they'll now trust the politicians to take the right action.

There are many reasons the public might resist Washington's prescriptions, and we know what they are. There are data demonstrating that people like government programs but not government costs. Many people feel they've personally played by all the rules and will reject any specific cuts or taxes that will put new burdens on them.

There's also this. The very politicians who are trying to get us out of the mess are the politicians who got us into the mess. Why would anyone trust them? As Alan Simpson admitted, for generations politicians "were told to go to Washington and bring home the bacon. Go get the money!" Now they must change: "You can't bring home the bacon anymore, because the pig is dead."

Some of the politicians talking about how to stop the spending crisis are the same politicians who, for many years, said there was no crisis. They're like forest creatures who denied there was a fire when everyone else could smell the smoke and hear the crackle. Then the flames roar in, and the politicians say, "Follow me, I know the path out of the blaze!" It will be hard for them to win the trust that will get the American people to back a path out and through.

Rep. Paul Ryan was at the summit, soldiering on. His main problem on Medicare is that people fear the complexities and demands of a new delivery system.

People who draw up legislation, people capable of mastering the facts of the huge and complicated federal budget, often think other people are just like them. It's almost sweet. But normal people don't wear green eyeshades. Republicans think people will say, when presented with new options for coverage, "Oh good, another way to express my freedom! I can study health insurance now and get a policy that will benefit not only me but our long-term solvency!" But normal people are more likely to sit slouched at the kitchen table with their head in their hands. "Oh no, another big decision, another headache, 50 calls to an insurance company, another go-round with the passive-aggressive phone answerer who, even though she's never met me, calls me Freddy as she puts me on hold."

Republicans believe government gives insufficient respect to the ability of people to decide things for themselves, and that's true. But it's also true that normal humans don't relish making informed decisions about things they're not sure of, and that carry big personal implications.

Here's the great thing about Medicare: You turn 65 and it's there. They give you a card and the nurse takes it.

Supporters of Mr. Ryan's Medicare plan must talk very specifically about how this would all work, and why it would make your life better, not worse. They also have to make two things clearer. One is that if nothing is done to change Medicare, the system will collapse. You'll give the card to the nurse and she'll laugh: "We don't take that anymore." This already happens in doctors offices. Without reform it will happen more often.

Democrats, on the other hand, should be forced to answer a question. If you oppose the highly specific Ryan plan, fine, but tell us your specific proposal. How will you save Medicare? Will you let it die?

If Obama economic adviser Gene Sperling's presentation at the summit was indicative of White House strategy, then we're in trouble. Because that strategy comes down to windy and manipulative statements about how "we're all in this together" but GOP proposals "will lead to millions of children . . . losing their coverage." He added: "We are not criticizing their plan, we are explaining it."

It is a long time since I've seen such transparent demagoguery, such determined dodging. It's obvious the White House political plan for 2012 is this: The Democrats will call for fiscal discipline and offer no specifics or good-faith starting points. They will leave the Republicans to be specific, and then let them be hanged with their candor. Democrats will speak not of what they'll do but only of what they would never do, such as throw grandma out in the snow. In honeyed tones, Mr. Sperling said both parties should "hold hands and jump together," like Butch and Sundance. But it was clear Sundance was going to stop at the edge of the cliff and hope Butch gets broken on the rocks.

David Mamet's Coming Out Party

In March 2008, David Mamet was outed in the Village Voice. The Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright had a comedy about an American president running on Broadway, and—perhaps to help with ticket sales—decided to write an article about the election season. The headline was subtle: "Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal.'"

"They mistitled it," he insists. Mr. Mamet had given the piece the far more staid title, "Political Civility." But the Voice's headline was truth in advertising. "I took the liberal view for many decades, but I believe I have changed my mind," Mr. Mamet wrote, referring to his prior self as, yes, a "brain-dead liberal."

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An Anti-Israel President, by Bret Stephens

Say what you will about President Obama's approach to Israel—or of his relationship with American Jews—he sure has mastered the concept of chutzpah.

On Thursday at the State Department, the president gave his big speech on the Middle East, in which he invoked the claims of friendship to tell Israelis "the truth," which to his mind was that "the status quo is unsustainable, and Israel too must act boldly to advance a lasting peace." On Friday in the Oval Office, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu offered his version of the truth, which was that the 1967 border proposed by Mr. Obama as a basis for negotiating the outlines of a Palestinian state was a nonstarter.

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