Months after we began reporting the many ways in which Team Obama was beginning to acknowledge that “Bush was right,” The New York Times seems to have finally caught on.

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“Friday the 13th” opened to a 45 million-dollar box office over President’s Day weekend, killing the competition and setting a record for the horror genre. I guess people are sick of all the daily Islamic violence out there, and craved something a touch less gruesome. [End.]

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(First published in the Vallejo Times-Herald) 

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As he signed into law the $1 trillion pig in a blanket, President Obama said this: “We have begun the essential work of keeping the American dream alive.  I don’t want to pretend that this marks the end of our economic problems…Today does mark the beginning of the end.”

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Popular culture poses challenges for conservatives every day. We have two choices: Consume the work (and thus support the careers) of people who abhor our views; or live like hermits, unaware of most current TV, movies and music.

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I mean no disrespect to the financial minister of Japan who apparently felt so overwhelmed by the global financial crisis, he drowned his sorrows in a bucket of sake. The only problem is he then appeared in that altered state on the world stage on Saturday and then resigned in disgrace Monday morning. I can guess how he feels and I am not going to demean this obviously all too human reaction. It is scary, and if I were the finance minister of a G-7 nation and I had no answers, I might be tempted to belly up to the bar myself.

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In 2004 Muzzammil Hassan, a prominent member of the Muslim community in Buffalo, NY, founded Bridges TV as an effort to portray Muslims in a more positive light and to increase understanding of Islam. To that end, last week he beheaded his wife. [End.]

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In honor of the one-year anniversary of Kosovo’s non-independence this week, I’m posting a particularly hilarious item that appeared about a week before the unilateral declaration of independence. Apparently, just days before the land theft by Albanians and the international community was to be made “official”, there was an exhibit in Belgrade of art work by Kosovo-Albanian artists who, among other things, were honoring one of the terrorists that wrested the province from the Serbs. To the great indignation of enlightened Serbs hosting this event, and of the media that made sure to report this, the exhibition was — believe it or not — disrupted. By the only Serbs who would deign to object. Actual nationalists: Kosovo art show in Belgrade cancelled after attack Thu Feb 7, 2008

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First of all, I thought we were told that Bosnians aren’t “like that.” And yet we have an imam who is a pedophile, just like so many men across the “like that” Muslim world. Secondly, we have chief Bosnian mufti Mustafa Ceric himself equating Islam with pedophilia: From Balkan Insight, thanks to Nancy:

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     Sports are the last bastion of a level playing field.  In schools we’ve introduced quotas, discouraged competition, pretended that excellence is elitist and that self-knowledge is more important than history.  We’ve also insisted that education isn’t about winning or losing but about teamwork and cooperation - as if several people working on a class project is somehow more democratic than one person striving hard to achieve his/her personal best.  Sports have managed to elude the dubious taint of affirmative action or other forms of social engineering;  you either win or lose a tennis tournament and you needn’t feel guilty when you win.

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(First published in the Vallejo Times-Herald) 

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     An ongoing phenomenon in the movement to invalidate Israel is the participation of American Jewish academicians in this enterprise.  We are aware of the power of Arab money to infiltrate Middle Eastern departments of prestigious American universities and to entice American schools to open campuses in Dubai, Qattar and Abu Dabi;  to this we can add the cooperation of leading Jewish faculty and administration in dubious outreach activities.  Leon Botstein, president of Bard,has agreed to a joint program between Bard and Al Quds University in East Jerusalem.  Previous liaisons have already been established between Al Quds and Brandeis and George Washington universities, but this program, funded by Israel-bashing George Soros, will be the first to offer a joint degree.

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Why would the United States Government make an important announcement late on a Saturday night? The reason, of course, is to make sure it doesn’t get too much attention.

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According to the conventional wisdom, one of the main reasons we’re in dire economic straits is because people are defaulting on their mortgages. One of the excuses we’re hearing for these defaults? Buyers didn’t read the details of their mortgage contracts, and were unaware that their payments could go up in the future.

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Post Mumbai analysis in German Magazine

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Symbolism is, obviously, very significant in international politics.  Therefore, this story is disturbing.  In the first month of his presidency, Barack Obama has done some things that should worry all of us - groveling to the Muslim world in a bizarre interview, insulting President Karzai of Afghanistan by saying he has a bunker mentality, and this week snubbing the king of Spain, who is on a visit to the U.S.  Apparently, Mr. Obama hasn’t got time to see him.  But he had plenty of time to make his first call to a foreign leader to the president of “Palestine.”  Further, the Obama administration has hinted at concessions to Russia on our missile-defense program, undercutting our East European allies.

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All that work!  All of those sales jobs and Super Bowl parties and happy hours at the White House.  And yet: not a single Republican House member could be schmoozed into accepting the $1 trillion crap sandwich.  Lesson learned for Obama: sipping cosmos with Republicans in the residence does not “bipartisanship” make.

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“Al Gharam mamn’uh, al Gharam kufr,” screamed the self-declared cleric in al-Ansar’s chat room this Friday. “Love is forbidden, love is infidel” — said the online fatwa about the “legitimacy of loving and being in love.”

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Legislation aiming to protect American authors and publishers from so-called ‘libel tourism’ is back in play in the new Congress. The initiative was sparked by Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld’s refusal to acknowledge a British libel judgment obtained against her by Saudi financier Khalid bin Mafouz for her 2003 book, Funding Evil, How Terrorism Is Financed and How to Stop It.

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The investor class was not nearly as impressed by yesterday’s inauguration as the political class. 

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John McIntyre of RealClearPolitics and I were both on Larry Kudlow’s radio program on Saturday afternoon. Larry asked us both the same question: “Is there anything that Obama could say on Tuesday that will make you feel good about where he is taking the country?” 

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I mentioned last month about my sense that the economic indicators were starting to turn around. It was in no way a seismic shift, however companies and the government were beginning to beat the street’s expectation when it came to losses with the possible exception of the jobs report. Obviously, the government and the media focused on the bad news and ignored the signs that something positive might be starting to develop.

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Last month nearly a million people gathered on the Mall, and millions more riveted to their televisions, watched The Inauguration Concert, an unforgettable experience in American history. The huge crowd, including President-elect Obama and his family, swayed to the music during the highlight, Bruce Springsteen singing Woody Guthrie’s familiar anthem, “This Land Is Your Land”, in front of the Lincoln Monument.

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In contemplating an Iranian bomb, some claim not to be “that” concerned. After all, we learned to live with the Soviet bomb, didn’t we? Thus, we can learn to live with the Iranian model simply by again practicing basic deterrence. And, these observers often add, it’s one thing to have the knowledge to build the bomb, and even the materials, and quite another to build it. They go on to say, further, that transforming the “device” into a weapon is still one more challenge. They like to cite a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate, which many experts do not believe, that claims that Iran stopped part of its nuclear-weapons program in 2003.

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Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders is being prosecuted by a Dutch court for pointing out the same thing that many imams remind parishioners of every day: that Islam and the Koran provide the basis for attacks on, and undermining of, Western democracy and values. If Wilders is imprisoned for speaking out against fascist religions, I’ve got only one question: Are conjugal visits allowed? [End.]

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When Karl Rove moved from the Bush campaign into a senior position in the White House, the Left went mad: how dare they “politicize” the White House, they yelled.  During the 2004 presidential campaign, they went wild with accusations that Rove (and by extension, Bush and Cheney) were working hand-in-glove with the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth to try to sink John Kerry’s candidacy. That was not true, of course, but that hasn’t stopped them from making the accusation to this very day.  It was the obscene politicization of the presidency, they cried.  Rove and his band of conservative operatives were evil and had to be stopped, they implored.

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In the wake of the Munich security conference, CT and military analysts are attempting to read the new trends developing between the US, NATO partners and the Russian Federation regarding international terrorism, Iran, Afghanistan and other relevant issues. The annual conference is a platform for mostly Western powers and democracies to brand their policies and test ideas and suggestions. At times the forum is used to raise challenges, especially since the 2003 Iraq war. This year the US delegation made noted efforts to signal “changes in strategic approaches” regarding Russia, Iran and to some extent Afghanistan. In my reading these changes are still in the abstract stage which means that they can go in different directions. On these matters I had the following media conversation with military expert Thomas Smith published in the World Defense Review and Family Security Matters. I added a related interview on Russia Today TV and a link to my participation in a debate on France 24 TV (English channel) on Afghanistan’s future.

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If this was part of the print media, the editors would proudly flap their wings when an idea their editorials helped advance ended up becoming public policy. The editorials would be flagged as “scoops”–news they broke first or best predicted. Well, you read it here first that Obama ought to offer Hillary the Sectary of State position (here); that the stimulus package will and ought to grow to a trillion dollars or higher (here - we are almost there); and that public buildings should be greened in short order (here and here– the House stimulus package includes $6 billion for the greening of federal buildings).

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One by one, the baseball heroes continue to fall in the ongoing steroids scandal.

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Over the last 18 months, there has been a concerted effort to polarize Wall Street and Main Street. Turn on the television to any business show and see if you don’t see somebody take a shot at the “fat cats” on Wall Street. It could be Bernie Madoff or it could be a CEO who earned a ton in stock options. It doesn’t matter. There is a perception out there that our current struggle could be solved if we could just get “them” to stop hosing “us.” Even the President on Monday night went out of his way to position Elkhart, Indiana as the hometown for all of “us.”

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