On July 16, radio talk show host Michael Savage said:

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If a former Democratic candidate for vice-president is involved in a possible scandal, and the mainstream media refuses to cover it–does it exist?

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A Croatian hijacker and terrorist who was successful in bringing America to his cause by perpetrating terrorism against Americans in the 1970s has finished serving a 32 year jail term and is back in his U.S.-lauded Nazi motherland. See here.

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Please see here.

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My feature story on entrepreneur Daniel Lubetzky is the cover story of this weekend’s Jerusalem Post magazine.

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David Brooks argues that Obama may be Playing Innocent Abroad but he really gets it and presumably will not act naively:

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I listened recently to three people who claim to advise Barack Obama on foreign policy. They all extolled the virtues of talking to our adversaries and allies. I have read a considerable number of blogs and op-eds arguing for and against Obama’s declaration that he will talk to friend and foe alike. I believe it is a good idea, under practically all circumstances, and a vast improvement over the Bush Administration’s bankrupt unilateralism. However, talking does not a foreign policy make. Neither does the very welcome call for more diplomacy and less saber rattling.  Talking and diplomacy are merely means to an end. The question is: to what end?

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“Let me say something about his (Barack Obama’s) message management. He didn’t have reporters with him. He didn’t have a press pool. He didn’t do a press conference while he was on the ground either on Afghanistan or Iraq. What you’re seeing is not reporters brought in, you’re seeing selected pictures taken by the military, questioned by the military and what some would call fake interviews because they’re not interviews with a journalist so there’s a real press issue here. Politically it’s smart as can be, but we’ve not seen a Presidential candidate do this in my recollection ever before.”–NBC Correspondent Andrea Mitchell

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Unfortunately, too much information is being released on the methods used to fool FARC. It turns out that 2 rescuers posed as journalists. Now the journalist complain that hence “terrorists will not trust us!”

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“Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, these countries are tiny compared to the Soviet Union. They don’t pose a serious threat to us the way the Soviet Union posed a threat to us.”–Barack Obama, May 18th, 2008

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     How much of the box office success of The Black Knight is due to the performance of a dead Heath Ledger?  Even before the film opened to mixed reviews, fans were camped out in line, wanting to be the first to see it.  Of course Batman is a superhero in his own right, but there seems to be an additional frisson in watching the miracle of film transform a dead actor into a bigger than life incarnation of evil, particularly when the actor died suddenly, perhaps accidentally and so very young.  Comics created the twentieth century version of mythic gods brought up to date with inter-galactic references and superhuman powers - it seems altogether appropriate that they could vanquish death along with all the other constraints binding ordinary men.

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Please see here.

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Four years after identifying the Darfur drama as a genocide under international law many around the free world are yet to absorb the power of Jihadism in international relations. Today’s Sudan crisis will only open their eyes to what many in the diplomatic and academic elites are feverishly attempting to camouflage. While many have been arguing that the free nations of the world face a cohort of regimes that sympathize with and support the Jihadist networks, many others  — on the apologist side- have been arguing that there is no such thing as Transnational Jihadism.

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The first thing Barack Obama should do upon returning to America next week is thank John McCain and President Bush for making his trip possible.

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This is all the context anyone needs to interpret the significance, or lack thereof, of the Karadzic capture. From Dr. Srdja Trifkovic in Chronicles Magazine: Karadzic’s Arrest: Bosnian Myths Rehashed

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It has been difficult for many Americans to fathom why a political lightweight like Barack Obama has gotten as far as he has. The answer is simple. Forty years of public school education “chickens” have “come home to roost:” thinking and feelings have become interchangeable.

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The arrest of  Radovan Karadzic boils down to this. It’s short, but if you don’t feel like reading, these pictures say it all:

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In the middle of the Traveling Circus moving through the Middle East stands the Ringleader and Master of Ceremonies, Barack Obama.

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Finally, at the strategic equivalent of “ten to midnight,” the Indian government led by Manmohan Singh put country first and did what it had to do to get the Indian parliament to approve the U.S. India nuclear deal. His race many have made Barack Obama the emotional favorite of the Indian people. Still, Indian strategists cannot but realize that his election may lead to the withdrawal of American support for a most strategically and economically beneficial deal as evidenced by an immediate rally in the Indian stock market.

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I went to see Mamma Mia yesterday, a mediocre production that wastes the talents of excellent performers in a puzzling way. It’s as if the filmmakers had never seen the glorious choreography of the great MGM musicals or even the originality of later disco musicals like Saturday Night Fever or Bollywood’s Monsoon Wedding. Instead, the chorus line does a lot of high octane posing, running and jumping into the sea - very boring substitutes for dance. The entire film is based on songs by ABBA, the mega successful Swedish group of the seventies, and one of the better numbers is Take A Chance on Me. As I watched it, I thought that the song and the movie are perfect emblems of the Obama campaign.

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The solution to the financial crisis, we are told by some of the brightest and best, is more and better government regulation. But as long as the regulators are tied down, tied in knots, and hamstrung by politicians who are legally bribed by those that are supposed to be regulated — a better regulations fix is at best an illusion.

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Every day, there seems to be a new example of Barack Obama’s Jim Jones-like grip on otherwise (semi) rational people. What began as a political phenomenon borne of a particularly charismatic figure has turned into a creepy and possibly malignant force.

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The facade of objectivity the mainstream media have promoted for years is gone. They are in the tank for Barack Obama so totally, their credibility as purveyors of unbiased journalism has been completely demolished.

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So, here we go again. After successfully helping Obama become a legitimate candidate of the Democratic party despite the fact that Hillary Clinton got more primary votes by decalring him candidate before most party members had a chance to cast their votes, the media is trying to declare him president before most American citizens have done the same. How? By treating his trip abroad as a presidential tour.

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In March of last year, I wrote of a pattern encountered by anyone attempting to introduce Croatia to a conscience, in which he or she is reflexively accused of attacking that nation, and asked why he/she hates Croatians. Please see here.

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Some fallout from the Croatian concert mentioned in this recent blog. Again, because of ongoing technical difficulties at Political Mavens, please see here.

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Indubitably these are dangerous economic times. BUT that does not justify the failure to report good news. Consider the following examples. In an article entitled Boom time for the global bourgeoisie, Jim O’Neill points out that not only is global inequality decreasing but just as importantly 70 million people a year are entering the Middle class. As that class is considered pivotal to the growth of freedom and democracy, this is wonderful news.

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Conservatism is dying on the vine [detailed here]; liberalism is not a mainspring of compelling and mobilizing ideas [here]. Obama draws heavily on—and contributes much to—a little known social philosophy known as communitarianism. It is centered around the importance of community, the common good, and service.

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Barack Obama has the erasure talents of a wizard.

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AFP reports: Bahrain confirms Jewish woman as new envoy to US. As could have been expected the appointment was controversial in and out of the country and Bahraini officials have been defending it vigorously:

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I’m just upset about the comments, why does everything have to turn around, become bad and become an issue of the poor helpless Palestinians. We resent that, it as if we can’t do anything without someone insisting that they are obligated to see us as if we were a rainforest of something, a project to save. I wish they would just look forward to a positive thing that can come out of this. Poor lady, she’s been insulted already on this website, which is pro west, I hate to see what the main stream papers would say.I’m sharing this with you because of who you are and the work you do so if you hear the same remarks you can tell them what Palestinians feel, but I will forward this to everyone hoping it will give people the notion that no one need to hate the other and that there can be peace.

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That has certainly opened to door to lawsuits like the one in Michigan. After all, if we can’t dissent from believing same-sex marriage is not in the culture’s best interest, then what do we do with all those pesky religious beliefs and the preachers who teach that stuff? We’ve got to get rid of those as well. Will the gulags not be far behind?

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On Tuesday, Barack Obama gave an address on the Iraq War. It was a bizarre speech, as if it had been written two years ago—when it would have made more sense. Liberals ought to hate the speech. It will make their side vulnerable to the common conservative charge that they ignore crucial facts in favor of manufacturing their own reality.

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For all of Barack Obama’s charisma, rhetorical skills, fundraising machinery, talented advisers, and organizational ground game, he is awfully slow to the draw on things directly related to him.

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George Packer argued that the steam has run out of the conservative movement, that its publications are vacuous, and its pundits a bore [discussed here]. But are there signs of a grand liberal revival? Could George Packer write a similar essay about liberal think tanks, pundits, and books? The Progressive Policy Institute, the think tank of the New Democrats, is barely heard of these days. The Center for American Progress is producing a steady stream of position papers, but these seem to be aimed more at policy makers than at generating liberal movement in the public square. The Brookings Institution used to be a major liberal think tank, and still produces a great variety of papers and books, but these have no shared ideological or political profile. Moreover, two of its leading economists are harping on the need to cut benefits and raise taxes in order to “save” Social Security and reduce the deficit, a rather conservative agenda. The New Republic surely shows less sparkle or verve than the conservative Weekly Standard. The most spirited of the lot is the New America Foundation, but it has no partisan political profile, agenda, or platform. Liberal thinkers may be doing a bit better than conservative ones, but this is not much of a claim.

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