President Obama’s “lead by example” nuclear-nonproliferation policy of strategic-weapons cuts and treaties (such as the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia) isn’t having the desired effect. In fact, the “fallout” is quite the opposite: All the news points toward a more nuclear world.

More »

Barack Obama spent the first two years of his presidency blaming his predecessor for everything. Bad economy? Bush’s fault. Frayed relations with our allies? Bush’s fault. Poor reputation in the world? Bush’s fault. Wars in the Middle East? Bush’s fault. Can’t get a great cheeseburger? Bush’s fault.

More »

Some recent poll results:

More »

Almost immediately after Barack Obama was elected in November 2008, it dawned on the then-Illinois Governor, Rod Blagojevich, that he had the power to name Obama’s replacement in the U.S. Senate. Even in Chicago, which runs on corruption, opportunities this dazzling didn’t come up often.

More »

     Throughout the news this weekend, there were accounts of rape, violence, homicide bombing and the terrors of war committed by Muslims in their own countries as well as others.  On Sunday, June 26th, an article in IsraelNationalNews.com reported that in Norway in 2010, there were 86 documented cases of assault-rape - they were all perpetrated by Muslim men on Norwegian women.  The Sunday Times reported the following news:  Car Bomb Leaves at Least 20 Dead At Hospital in Eastern Afghanistan;  Iraqi Feud Brings Government to Standstill;  It is not clear that the Taliban want to negotiate or who even represents the organization….the administration now recognizes that a final American withdrawal depends on a political settlement with the Taliban, a fundamentalist Islamic movement equated closely with the murderous ideology of Al Qaeda;  The Department of Defense has identified 1,620 American service members who have died as a part of the Afghan war and related operations.

More »

“One hasn’t got time,” the great American philosopher Frank Sinatra once sang, “for the waiting game.” He was referring to girls, but that applies equally to restaurants. Thus I avoid all hot new eateries — who wants to stand packed with the fashionable for an hour, waiting to spend $400 on spoonfuls of foam and shot glasses of soup?

More »

In the last few weeks, two of the major credit rating agencies, Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s, have warned that unless the federal government does something to reduce the exploding national debt, America’s triple-A rating may very well be downgraded. S&P warned again this week.

More »

In a few months I’ll get back to a letter I started writing over a year ago, in response to an Italian Catholic acquaintance who was wounded by my Feb. 2010 Jerusalem Post article which unflatteringly depicted Cardinal Alojzije (Aloysius) Stepinac, who headed Croatia’s Catholic Church during WWII and presided over the Croatian genocide of Serbs, Jews and Roma. The acquaintance sent me a 22-page paper written by a Croatian Jewish woman in defense of Stepinac, and part of my letter is a response to that, including an explanation of the Croatian Jew Complex.

More »

I came across this great press release I thought I’d share.

More »

More »

Don’t blame Delta Airlines for kicking Jews off their Saudi Arabia-bound planes, the Wall Street Journal story says. Blame Saudi Arabia, since it’s the country’s policy of not allowing Jews on its soil that’s at fault.

More »

arents say all kinds of dumb things, at least dumb to the ears of their children.

More »

This is a great day for freedom of speech—anywhere in the world. And it’s also a day that saw a major blow to one of the more insidious tactics of the Islamists: lawfare, or using Western laws to stifle free speech with regard to Islam. That has been the basis for the witch-hunt against Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, an outspoken critic of Islam, who once dared to create a short video of Islamists in their own words called “Fitna.” For that and other statements exposing the sources of Islamist violence and infiltration, Wilders was brought up on hate speech charges in the Netherlands.

More »

When the president spoke at West Point about the Afghanistran troop buildup , he didn’t call it a “surge.”  Now that he’s calling it off, he uses the word.  Curious.

More »

This is the new buzz word, and you’ll be hearing it much more often.  And for good reason.

More »

A new Gallup poll released today shows President Obama sinking 4 points in job approval, to 45%, and spiking in job DISapproval by 5 points, to 48%.

More »

Too many people the world over are prepared to believe anything negative about Jews – the more outrageous, the more easily believed.

More »

The administration claims that the War Powers Act does not apply to Libya because US actions there do not amount to “hostilities.” Recent news accounts suggest difficulties with this position:

More »

According to new reports, students remain woefully ill-informed about government and history, and citizens worry about the inadequacy of civic education. Meanwhile, the number of Americans renouncing citizenship is going up.

More »

The ridiculous “This or That” questions put to the Republican presidential candidates in Monday’s debate were not exactly CNN’s finest hour. If it really wanted to provide a public service it would have used the same format to ask 20 meaningful questions of Barack Obama in 2008.

More »

Sometimes a very limited exchange of words captures well a much greater issue. This was the case last Saturday during the weekly presidential radio broadcast and the Republican rebuttal.

More »

I just listened to these late May comments by Kiss guitarist Gene Simmons. They were welcome words indeed, explaining that Obama doesn’t live in the world and therefore shouldn’t tell Israel where its borders ought to be.

More »

Americans are still dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the United States is taking part in combat against Libya. So why is there so little protest?

More »

     It seems that Anthony Weiner goofed by not hiring a top professional p.r. firm that specializes in damage control for the walking stupid.  He may still end up doing that but it’s a pricey proposition and if he wants to go the cheaper route, I have ten suggestions:

More »

So it turns out that Anthony Weiner’s wife is a Muslim who works for Hillary Clinton. This explains a lot. He must have figured that if she likes Hillary so much, then — like Hillary — she wouldn’t mind if he showed his pee-pee to others.

More »

In my most recent book, The Coming Revolution: Struggle for Freedom in the Middle East (completed July 4, 2010), I argued that civil societies in the Greater Middle East (GME) and Arab World had reached a “critical stage” in their repudiation of all authoritarian forms of government:  regime, theocracy, military and ultra-nationalist.  The projections therein were based on a thorough study of antecedent Cedars and Green Revolutions in Lebanon (2005) and Iran (2009) respectively, both with limpid narratives, particularly online, and both auguring a continuation of bottom-up, regime-crumbling uprisings in the region. 

More »

Right after the so-called “Arab spring” sprung, I recall suggesting that despite the optimism this produced in the West, this development was, likely, very bad news.

More »

     Now that Oprah’s talk show has finally stopped molding America’s character, perhaps we can admit that it has left some serious casualties in its wake.  Foremost among them was her endorsement of the circus of public apologies - the secular ritual that replaced the private Catholic confessional and spawned a generation of Americans vying with each other to gain absolution by admittance to the culture of rehab.  The most recent exponent, 46 year old Anthony Weiner, first tried the familiar tactics of dodging, lying and attacking the press before dramatically changing course and hoping that America would respond better to a tearful admission of weakness with the suggestion that he might be someone requiring “clinical” assistance in the near future.  In Oprah’s world, wrongdoers gain our sympathy by owning up to their peccadilloes and humbly seeking outside help to straighten out their inside problems.

More »

I awoke Monday thinking about what a profound anniversary it was: June 6. Sixty-seven years ago today, thousands upon thousands of our extraordinary, brave young men stormed the beaches of Normandy and began the greatest liberation from evil the world has ever known. Most were mere teenagers. They came from every corner of the nation. They knew not what lay ahead of them as they crossed the choppy waters of the English Channel in the early morning hours of June 6, 1944. All they knew was that their nation needed them, and they answered the call. The American (and British and Canadian) forces landed on Utah, Gold, Sword, Juno, and the bloodiest of them all, Omaha, and fought past Hitler’s Atlantic Wall. The casualties were so heavy that only the battle of Antietam during the Civil War surpassed it in terms of American battle dead and wounded.

More »

If you want to know what is going to happen next to your investments, the job and housing markets, and more generally to the economy, you may want to follow what is happening to the ideas of British economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes argued that when economies are sputtering, the government must increase deficits, because its increased expenditures will stimulate the economy to growth better. (The time to slash government spending is when the economy is running at full clip.) This is the theory Presidents Bush and Obama, as well as the Federal Reserve, have followed. However, the anti-Keynesians have long maintained that cutting government expenditures is the course to follow—because the more money that is left in private hands, the better for the economy. The Tea Party is full of anti-Keynesians, and these days, so are the GOP leaders in Congress.

More »

Today is the 67th anniversary of D-Day. As the invasion was under way, what did FDR do? He led the nation in prayer. Forty years later, President Reagan recalled the amazing courage of the Army Rangers who scaled the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc.

More »

I was surprised to read recently that not only has Archie Comics introduced a gay character into the feature, but that Archie is now married and his teacher Mrs. Grundy had died of cancer. The idea, says an Archie Comics artist, is to make comic book classics “more contemporary and relevant,” always a smart idea these hip days.

More »

On July 9, 1944, Corporal H. W. Crayton paused “somewhere in France” to write a letter to the parents of Raymond Hoback.

More »

The writer Maya Angelou once said, “When somebody tells you who they are, believe them.”

More »

The John Edwards scandal probably won’t help the GOP. The Weiner affair might be different. More here.

More »