George Freedman of Starfor tries to put the best face on Obama’s recent scuttling of the plans to place component of American defensive shield in Eastern Europe. He writes:

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     This year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has decided to close its doors to the public on Wednesday, September 23rd for what is called a UN event.  Since most orders of UN business would be conducted in their own ample auditoriums, this event is undoubtedly an opportunity to welcome members of the UN and their families with an exclusive private visit.  In previous years, such courtesies were extended on a Monday, when the museum was already closed but this year it will take place mid-week when other tourists might have planned their own visits.  Among the dignitaries who might enjoy this special invitation is Ahmed Ahmadnejad who has previously been feted in our city by Columbia University and other academic and religious groups using that slippery and misapplied rubric of academic freedom.  The notion that a government expressing the intention to destroy a member state in the UN is entitled to a privileged invitation to spout more anti-semitic venom is exactly the kind of sophistic reasoning that makes dictators delight in American Liberal naivete.  After the recent violent restraint and imprisonment of his rising opposition in Iran, Ahmadinejad must be looking forward to his visit in New York where he will be more graciously received than in Teheran.

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What kind of putzes are we that we would continue to allow, and pay for the privilege, of  having the world’s worst dictators and despots come to our country and insult us and our allies, right in our own home?

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In a fit of petty pique, President Obama boycotted Fox News Sunday morning as he did a PR blitz on every other news network for Obamacare.

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He’s a self-loving Russian while I’m a Russian-born Russophobe, but I couldn’t have said it better than Stanislav Mishin did on his blog over the summer. I’ll highlight the parts you should pay particular attention to:

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In an amazing development, what was supposed to have been a day of demonstrations in support of the Iranian government’s anti-Israel, anti-West policies, has instead turned into widespread protests against the government and its policies.

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Is she really stuck in the 70s?

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“Hamas officials welcomed the Goldstone report’s unusually harsh condemnation of Israel, but rejected criticism of itself,” reports the BBC. No kidding. After all, the report is even less critical of Hamas’s behavior than Ghazil Hamadi, the Hamas representative who guided “Zionist” Richard Goldstone on his fact finding mission to Gaza, has been.

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First, in the report’s account, “some 1,400 Palestinians, including hundreds of civilians, were killed in the December-January offensive, which sought to stop rocket fire by Gaza militants on southern Israeli towns. Thirteen Israelis also died, including four civilians.”

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The Obama administration is getting ready to throw the proposed Eastern European-based US missile-defense system under the bus. The move is a sop to the Russians (and to lefties here at home) — but will render us increasingly vulnerable to the growing Iranian nuclear/missile threat.

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Next week, an important summit will be held by a number of legislators from the European Parliament, the US Congress and the Canadian Parliament to discuss “al Qaeda’s and other Jihadi forces’ campaigns worldwide against Democracies.” The closed meeting, to take place in the US, is sponsored by the newly formed “Transatlantic Group on Counter Terrorism (TAG),” launched in Washington and Brussels last year. TAG was launched in the winter of 2008 by Members of the European Parliament, led by MEP Jaime Mayor Oreja, Vice Chairman for Policy of the EPP Group at the European Parliament (present majority Party) and Members from both Parties of the US Congress, led by Representative Sue Myrick, Co-Chair of the Anti-Terrorism Caucus in the US House of Representatives. The goal of TAG is to create a working relationship between legislators from Europe and the United States (North America) to address terrorism and the threat it poses to democracies.

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I got the following message this morning from Caroline Glick:

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1.  House Democrats, led by their two fearless leaders, “Crazy Eyes” Pelosi and “Stone Cold” Steny Hoyer, are set to formally rebuke Congressman Joe Wilson for blurting out “You lie!” during the president’s speech last week. There is a specific House rule that prohibits calling the president a liar in the House, so the Dems are wasting our taxpayer time and money (yes, even more of it) by spanking him with a “resolution of disapproval.”  Here’s an idea: why doesn’t the House adopt a rule that no president shall lie in the chamber?  If that rule had been in place, the Bama would have had to have given his speech in the Senate or from the Oval Office.

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The new documents are seen as crucial to avert election fraud in the upcoming parliamentary election in June. They have also been one of the conditions of the European Union before it will include Albanian in its ‘White Schengen List’ that allows visa-free travel to and within the bloc.

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Hint: Neither is food

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RICHARD GOLDSTONE’S COMMISSION CONCLUDED:  ”There is evidence that both the Israeli army and Palestinian militants committed war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity, during the recent conflict over the Gaza Strip, the United Nations said on Tuesday. “  International terror has just received an amazing shot in the arm. A UN appointed committee has placed Israel and Hamas on the same moral/legal plane. By so doing, it has further increased the effectiveness of the terrorist strategy of using human shields.

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Hundreds of thousands of us descended on Washington last weekend to stand for something. The lamestream media (well, the lamestream media that even bothered covering the 9/12 March) tried to cast those attending as standing AGAINST something. And yes, those of us who have come out for tea parties and town halls and this weekend’s March DO stand AGAINST this rogue government.  We oppose the ever-bigger government they are inflicting on us, the government takeovers of big sectors of the economy, the proposals to control our health care and energy, higher taxes, eye-popping spending that cannot possibly ever be paid for, astronomical deficits as far as the eye can see, and a national debt that is exploding so fast that the President is asking Congress to raise the debt limit from $12.1 TRILLION.

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The Jihadi attacks against New York and Washington created an unforgettable date in the collective psyche of Americans: this nation was bled by men indoctrinated by an ideology that, both in its texts and in its actions, knows no mercy for free societies. The terrifying three numbers and a hyphen 9-11 took their place in the country’s national identity, alongside Pearl Harbor in the high drama of American history. 

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As I watched the tragedy of 9/11 repeated all over the airwaves, and commemorated around the country in the past few days, I couldn’t help wondering how long we’ll be able to keep it up.

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Liberals have attacked Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty for making a “states’ rights” argument on health-care reform.  Apparently, any use of the term “states’ rights” - or even an invocation of federalism - is a throwback to the Dixiecrats or even the Confederates. It is hard to take such charges seriously. Consider who else uses “states’ rights” arguments:

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The Associated Press reported recently that an Israeli ad campaign against Jewish assimilation was yanked after outraging Jews abroad.

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Even some Muslim women in France are speaking out against being forced to wear the Islamic body-and-face enveloping burqas and niqabs, according to a recent Associated Press story, and that’s great, though it may be a case of too little too late. 

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Rumor has it that the UN ordered fact finding report on Israel’s conduct during the Gaza operation will be released this Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, in order to undermine Israel’s ability to respond swiftly. I hope it is not true. I hope the hubris of it’s director, Richard Goldstone, will not extend that far. I write hubris because he is a Jew who so believes in his own infallibility that he agreed to head (and thereby increase the credibility) of a commission former Canadian Justice minister Irwin Cotler characterizes as tainted to the core. Golstone even claims that he will single handedly change the inherently biased mandate of the Commission.

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And with the change of administrations, though policy and execution levels are at last united, their goal is to cease the combat, not win the war. In short, it is bleak, but it is not yet over and this is why:

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Afghanistan needs more sociologists, not more troops. Sociologists would point out that Americans tend to see this country as one nation, with a central government and national security forces. But it actually is a collection of tribes—(including Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara). The first loyalty of most members of these tribes is to their own kind, not to the national government. Most Afghans correctly perceive the national government as corrupt to the core, in cahoots with drug lords, promoted by foreign powers, and the beneficiary of fraudulent elections.

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It is September 11th, the eighth anniversary of the day of terror.  This is a rather unique observance of that day, though.  It is the first time we mark it without George Bush in the White House.

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The Bill Clinton Statue is complete and about to move to its home:

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Barack Obama has always talked a good game about bipartisanship.  During the campaign and then during these early months of his presidency, he often referred to Republicans as “friends” with whom he’d like to “partner” in order to “find common ground.”

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Tonight in his speech on health care, President Obama acknowledged the values of self-reliance, rugged individualism, love of freedom, and healthy skepticism of government which, held dear by so many Americans, make the U.S. such a remarkably successful country. But I did not hear much in his speech–or in the ghostly outlines of a plan that he delineated–that honored those values.

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From the prepared text:

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The first one goes to Madonna who, after a two-decade hiatus, is finally controversial again. In a departure from her opposite-of-controversial bashing of Christians, military, and Republicans, she has finally taken a real and unequivocal stand for the only Jewish and therefore pariah state of Israel, ending her last concert there by draping herself in the Israeli flag and meeting even with non-left politicians this time. Worse, she didn’t bother to give equal time during her Middle East visit to the killers of Jews the way every other “balanced” personage does. I’m starting to think that maybe she really is the mother of the messiah, as her name alludes, and perhaps does receive messages from the Other Side, as she claims, to impart to us benighted masses. Though one still wonders what divine inspiration led to the name of her current tour, “Sticky and Sweet.”

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In a cynical review of a sensationalistic book, the New York Times featured–front page–the thesis that there is nary a difference between men who must wine and dine women before they fork over sex, and johns who pay for prostitutes. In a discussion that would (or at least should) embarrass a bunch of fraternity boys, the New York Times argues, “Money is the elephant in every bedroom.” Toni Bentley’s review (”Meet, Pay, Love”) of Hos, Hookers, Call Girls, and Rent Boys, a collection of essays written by sex workers, finds nothing problematic about equating sex between romantic partners and sex between clients and prostitutes, asking “Why is sex supposed to be free? It never is.” Ms. Bentley complains that “it is still taboo to regard sex and money as inextricably interwoven” and quotes approvingly British artist and author Sebastian Horsley, who asserts, “The difference between sex and money and sex for free…is that sex for money always costs a lot less.” (The book itself is concerned only with straight-up money-for-sex transactions and has little to say about role of money in personal, intimate relationships.)

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So, an Israeli human rights group has concluded that more than half the Palestinian casualties in the recent Gaza conflict were civilians.

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It’s been, as analyst Ralph Peters wrote, a winning time for terror.

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