Friday Afternoon Roundup - Obama Wins the Budget Battle

THE TAO OF STUPID

 Sheila Jackson-Lee might be the dumbest person in congress. She might even be the dumbest person outside congress. If there were ever a global championship for idiots, the country could send her there. And leave her there; because unlike Lassie, she wouldn’t be able find her way back on her own.

When Enron wanted someone to use as a puppet, they picked Sheila Jackson-Lee. They wanted a woman who didn’t have a mind of her own. Enron executives described her as “agreeable”, which was a polite way of saying, “dumber than a bunch of rocks caught in the hubcaps of a slow bus going the wrong way on a one way street in the middle of a flood.”

That's from my Front Page Magazine article, Sheila Jackson Lee: Racist and Moron. That was the polite title. Unfortunately congressional Republicans aren't exactly outscoring her right now.

The amount of friendly fire by a circular firing squad is what you would expect after losing an election. And the blogs that specialize in shouting, "Fight, Fight" and then standing by and racking up hit counts by pushing more fights aren't exactly helping.

After spending two months kicking around Newt Gingrich, the GOP 2011 has mishandled the budget standoff while learning no lessons from his tenure. Obama's goals were fairly simple and so far he's achieved most of them.

1. Pin the blame for the impasse on Republicans

2. Divide the Republican leadership from the grass roots

3. Force through a "compromise" budget that gives him everything he wants and leaves the other side with nothing of substance that he can't bypass.

The media covered the first part, with the aid of a GOP in communication breakdown mode. The GOP is now deep in circular firing squad mode which covers the second part. And the third is likely still to come.

A budget battle against a media entrenched Oval Office occupant, with only the House, but not the Senate was always a dicey proposition. It would take a strong negotiator with a powerful public presence to hold up the GOP side.

The goal on the Democratic side isn't to pass a budget, but to create a crisis, pin the blame on the GOP, and particularly the Tea Party, wait for the opposition to fracture, and collect the winnings of a frantic compromise budget. And here we are.

Obama's plan was to leave the mess in the House, have the Senate veto anything sent up, and give regular press conferences warning of imminent disaster. And it's worked out fairly well. It's irresponsible and there are Democrats in the know who are disgusted by it. But the same holds true for his entire tenure. It looks increasingly like he was able to bluff the Republican party, then divide and conquer.

This won't destroy the Tea Party or give Obama a second term. But it sets a dangerous precedent in an election year. If the Republican party can be outmaneuvered on this, how good does the election really look?

Boehner is not the problem, but he is "a" problem. He seems to have been chosen for his inoffensive qualities. No one wanted a repeat of Gingrich vs Clinton. Fair enough. But there were better choices. The Republican party has no public face, and while that avoids the danger of being Gingriched, it lets the media put its own face on the party. With no real response.

The GOP does need a public face. A great communicator who's telegenic and articulate, charming and able to be on every news program at the same time. Those aren't impossible requirements. But in a party that puts forward the likes of Boehner, Pawlenty, Paul Ryan and wonders why they won't connect, that is a challenge. More of one than it should be.

The larger problem though is strategic. Going into the budget fight, the only ammunition on the GOP side was an expectation that the Democrats would want to work toward a deal. And that was a mistaken assumption. The Dems had nothing to gain from a deal, and everything to lose.

The Democratic party lost badly in 2010. Obama's polling is equally disastrous. Even if the left wing gang that controls the party now was interested in being good citizens, their only shot is to sabotage the GOP. And that's what they're doing. They're not prepared to take real damage to do it, but they were betting that the Republican party wouldn't either. Because the GOP is rising, and when you're rising, then you have more to lose.

The challenge here wasn't impossible, but it wasn't easy either. And the Republican party blew it. But losing a battle is also valuable. It's a wake up call before losing the war.




MURDER HE WROTE

I've written extensively about an unhinged Norwegian who went on a shooting spree, and I'll write about it some more in the coming week, but I think it's important to note that unlike a Norwegian killing people, Muslim violence remains the norm. Not an aberration.

A Norwegian killing spree is still man bites dog. A Muslim killing spree is dog bites man.

Stop by Religion of Peace or Jihad Watch and look at the latest tolls. Or Fort Hood II, yet another terrorist plot by Muslims in the military, just now.

What is really devastating about Breivik is that despite his video game derived posturing and his grandiose plans to seize power-- he was fairly competent. His journal records multiple setbacks, failed bomb making attempts and a ridiculous trip to Prague to try and buy weapons, but his act of terror succeeded. Those of Muslims tend to fail.

The difference here is First World vs Third World. If even half the Muslim Breiviks successfully pulled off their planned operations, America and Europe would be terror zones. Even 9/11 might have failed a dozen different ways because of the sloppiness of those involved. But they got lucky and 3,000 people died.

But that's the real lesson. The Islamic side only needs to get lucky once to kill a few people or a few thousand. Stack enough terror plots together and they add up to a body count.

While the media is still pursuing their Islamophobia bugaboo, the violence goes on. And it's not Norwegian violence-- it's Muslim violence.

In my defense of Robert Spencer at FPM, I asked a simple question

As Robert Spencer commented, “What exactly is ‘hate speech’ about quoting Qur’an verses and then showing Muslim preachers using those verses to exhort people to commit acts of violence, as well as violent acts committed by Muslims inspired by those verses and others?”

Tellingly, this citation is absent from the New York Times piece and other articles. While Spencer and other researchers have painstakingly shown the connection between incitement to violence and violence — no similar effort has been made by those attacking him.

There's no response, because there can't be a response.

Pointing out that Islam is violent, bigoted and misogynistic is not an act of violence. It is not a call for violence. It is a call for sanity.





WHAT DHIMMI JUSTICE LOOKS LIKE

Let's compare two cases side by side for a moment to understand that the real danger here is not as simple as a subway bombing. It is the implementation of a theocracy which considers non-Muslims to be subhuman.

In England, a 63 year old British man, is being kept on jail for putting pork products outside a mosque.

In Indonesia, the ringleaders of a Muslim mob who lynched three members of a minority sect got three months in jail.

In England, a judge called leaving pork products outside a mosque, "very disturbing offenses". Not because there is anything bad about pork-- but because anything that offends Muslims, whether it is pork, the state of Israel or a cartoon has become a "very disturbing offense".

Meanwhile in Indonesia, a Muslim lynch mob will probably end up serving less time in jail than John White, a 63 year old Englishman, did for littering.

This isn't what's coming. This is already here.

In Jamie Glazov's United in Hate, he draws the connections between the totalitarianism of Islam and that the totalitarianism of the left. The gap between Cap and Trade and Sharia is not great at all. The system to apply Sharia law is already in place. A public ready to consent to the deprivation of their freedoms is also already here.

The left has paved the way for Islam. It has destroyed reason, demolished justice and torn down civil rights. The next logical step after Marx is Mohammed. Destroy the economy and the republic, and replace it with a bigoted medieval theocracy.





THE WORLD THAT DOESN'T MATTER AT ALL

Egypt is descending into Islamism. So is Algeria. Probably the only thing keeping the Islamists from taking Libya is that Cameron has dismantled the RAF and Obama doesn't understand how wars work.

Meanwhile in Turkey, the army is finished, whatever Erdogan recreates out of the ruins will look more like Iran, and be personally loyal to the AKP. Which means that whatever Turkish democracy ever existed is done. And it all happened under the approving eye of the EU.

J.E. Dyer's take

More than 40 military officers are currently being held on charges of being involved in the conspiracy.  It’s hard to pinpoint what the generals’ intentions are with their mass resignation.  They are too old and experienced to believe that they would be currying popular support by perpetrating a dramatic action.  They can’t expect their resignation to put popular pressure on Erdogan, who just won reelection with a healthy majority of the seats in Turkey’s parliament.

The alternative possibilities are that they have simply given up, and decided to spend their golden years doing something else (perhaps outside of Turkey), or that they are organizing to confront Erdogan.

The likeliest possibility is that they are giving up, or rather getting out of the way.

Erdogan has the backing of everyone from the EU and the US to Iran and Saudi Arabia. Not to mention the bigoted and racist Turkish public. He has shown himself to be a strong leader. And he is throwing in enough neo-Ottomanism to sweeten the pot.

The adamant secularism that seemed to mean so much is over. The idea that you can't be a powerful Muslim state has been drowned in gallons of oil money and Western terror appeasement. The process took longer than it did in Egypt, where Islamic mores dominated long before Tahrir Square got around to toppling the last military officers and secularism was a distant memory outside of the circles of the rich. But it's still done.

Ataturk is dead. Turkish Islamists will remember Erdogan as the Islamic Ataturk, who did for Turkish Islamism what Ataturk did for Turkish secularism.

The real threat on the horizon for the Islamists isn't the military, which exists only as a punching bag and a scapegoat for European Turkish experts. It's Kurdish nationalism, which is still the ticking time bomb.

Tensions in Syria and Iraq are feeding Kurdish nationalistic dreams. And while the US and EU continue to look away from Erdogan's racist brutalization of the Kurds, the dismantling of the Turkish military makes a civil war more likely. Not less.

The loss of the upper ranks of the Turkish military and their replacement by Islamist cronies, combined with the growing shift away from the United States, means a weaker and less competent military. A military that's sufficient to murder a few Kurdish teenage girls, but might not fare as well against a full uprising. Or a full scale invasion of Kurdistan.



THE ROUNDUP

What happens to a Lebanese belly dancer who appears on stage with Israelis? Permanent exile.

Breivik's attack already promoting fears of a bigoted backlash among Norwegian Muslims Jews.

What if America had national health care just like the UK? Death panels would delay until patients pay for their own treatment or die.

Ted Belman at Israpundit is fundraising to keep the site going. So is Right Side News which is short of their total.

Zilla is holding Operation United Front in support of counterjihadi writers libeled by terrorism apologists over the Oslo massacres.

Utoya camp hit by terrorist attack... hosted terrorists. Has Norway's left learned a lesson from this about rejecting terrorism? Doubtful. See Debbie Schlussel.

Elder of Ziyon takes down Jeffrey Goldberg on Twitter

What could possibly make auto union members vote Republican? Efficiency standards.

Women are the biggest Islamophobes. Just ask the New York Times.