Friday Afternoon Roundup - Speech, Speech

SPEECH, SPEECH

After a petty showdown with Republicans and a temper tantrum, Hussein the First has agreed to move that speech which no one particularly cared about anyway to another day. There's nothing that O can say that will convince the country that sunny skies are ahead. With 80 percent of Americans saying that the country is in a recession, the Summer of Recovery propaganda. All that leaves is more useless proposals and the old blame game.

Three years ago columnists fainted at his feet every time his mouth imitated the teleprompter, today even they have to admit that the magic is gone. In a wholly negative campaign, his best bet would be to avoid the limelight and let his pet poodle press do his dirty work for him. The less people remember that he's around, the less likely they are to blame him.

It's a smart strategy, but O's ego would never let him bend that far. Instead he has begun delivering speeches like Castro, with much less to say. And the more the public sees him making the rounds, the more they associate him with the disastrous situation.

All Obama can offer is more programs that will waste money without creating more jobs, while warning about the irresponsible Republicans and their crazy tax cutting ways. And we've heard it all before. All the pomp and circumstance of the office reduced to a petty nose thumbing, while millions remain out of work.

Speeches about economic proposals don't matter when you have zero credibility on the economy. Last election, the Dems and the pet poodle press could pitch Obama as the bright young thing with an Ivy League Degree who was going to turn things around with new media and green jobs. Today that brings bitter laughter from people who know better.

Obama's only real shot at credibility is to admit his mistakes and claim that he learned from them-- and it's the one thing that he's least likely to do. Instead he and his staffers give in to paranoia and petty tantrums.

“It is a big deal that the House said ‘no’ to the president from our end,” a White House source with intimate knowledge of what took place between the House and the president told me Thursday. “This confirms what we all know: They will do anything in the House to muck us up.”

Next thing you know, Obama will have to get his own bunker.



REPORT, REPORT

Some of you may have heard about the Center for American Soros Progress report which showed that organizations which investigate Islam are funded by money, not sunshine and bunnies. Here's my more in depth piece on the subject at Front Page Magazine,

The Center for American Progress’ campaign for donor transparency, however, stops at its own doors. While its own budget is many times that of the organizations that its report targets — the CAP’s policy is to keep the identities of its own donors secret.

The CAP report attempts to suppress dialogue on Islamic terrorism with the charge of Islamophobia, but the center itself is part of a conservaphobia and Israelphobia network. An industry that pays quite well, as its annual budgets in the tens of millions show.

Where does the money for the Center for American Progress come from? From shady billionaires, like Herb and Marion Sandler​, listed by Time Magazine (together) as one of the 25 people to blame for the financial crisis, and George Soros, convicted in France of insider trading.

Of course we know that CAP is the real Fear Inc, but their report did have a slight Jewish problem. As I explored in my follow up article, The Center for American Progress’s Jewish Conspiracy Theory

According to the Center for American Progress, the reason that nearly half of all Americans have a negative view of Islam is because of three and a half Jews and an Irishman. If such an allegation were being made by a Saudi cleric or an Egyptian newspaper, we could laugh it off along with the aphrodisiac gum, the GPS shark and other regional conspiracy theories about the Jews. But that’s not the case here.

Time Magazine described the Center for American Progress as the most influential outside group in the Obama Administration. Run by Clinton’s former Chief of Staff, and funded by shady billionaires, the growing influence of the shadowy organization on the Democratic Party has troubled even the mainstream media.

“It is difficult to overstate the influence in Obamaland of CAP,” Time wrote. It is even more difficult to overstate its influence on the media, which relies on talking points created by the Center and its blog, ThinkProgress.

REAGAN DEMOCRATS

The Turner vs Weprin race for Weiner's old seat is bringing the Reagan Democrats question back with a vengeance. The poll numbers certainly stack up that way.

In NY-9 much comes down to the Jewish working class vote, which is generally neglected by both parties who usually only see the movers and shakers. The Obamanoids who thought that they could bring in J Street and dismiss the Jewish community as a bunch of out of touch fogeys made a mistake that they will pay for electorally. But it's not likely to be too significant, outside of Florida.

Turner vs Weprin remains up in the air,  but if Turner wins it would be stunning, especially as he's not a very good candidate. But neither is Weprin, who has inherited some family grudges and is completely out of his depth on national issues.

There's no question though that having the Democratic party divert its attention from national issues for a race in what should be a safe district, only to have their candidate awkwardly disassociate himself from Obama has to be humiliating.

Will I eventually support Obama on his reelection? Probably. Do I disagree with him on his Israel policy? Absolutely. I will probably not refuse to endorse him because I think I will be more effective by supporting him but at the same time being very strongly against him on some of his policies

Not to mention Weprin making the argument that he can be a more effective advocate against Obama's policies as a Democrat has to be a head scratcher.

None of this is good news for Democrats, not because a single district loss will be too devastating, but because when safe districts are in play, then things are really bad.

It's doubtful that things would have gotten this bad under a more experienced administration, but the technocracy of social media has left behind a large electorate that doesn't fit into the neat slots for activists.




FEAR OF VETTING

So Michele Bachmann ran a fairly effective ad aimed at Perry's record, albeit with a cheesy voiceover, and the discussion was 50 percent voiceover, 49 percent "she's crazy and should drop out) and 1 percent ad content.



The reluctance to vet Perry isn't new, as Michelle Malkin, Robert Spencer and many others have discovered. Some in the party insist that they have their man and that he's the only one who can beat Obama and it's best not to look too closely at him or at his record. The lack of serious discussion about his record is troubling, and it's going to backfire, if not now, then during the general election.

Bachmann's ad was fairly mild. She didn't use a photo of Perry surrounded by smiling ACORN members as he signs a bill, or Perry at a La Raza conference where he tells them that an Arizona style immigration law is wrong for Texas.

The points she made are some of the same ones that the media is going to be hammering over and over during the campaign. Along with Texas' unemployment stats. Texas' debt will come up every time Perry mentions the National Debt. And Texas' spending will come up every time that cutting spending nationwide does. That's the flip side of having a record.

None of this means that Perry shouldn't run, it means that it's a lot better to deal with this now, than to wake up in the middle of a general election having to deal with issues that everyone was shielded from by a cone of silence.

The reliance on lazy talking points that don't mean anything has become ubiquitous, for example, I have lost track of how many times the Defender of Jerusalem award has been brought up, when that award was not given by the government or the city, has nothing in common with the original such award given out by the Jabotinsky Foundation, and was actually awarded to Perry by the private foundation of a Brazilian oilman.

Why bother pointing that out? Because the NJDC and every liberal group will, and they will do it far more ruthlessly, because that Brazilian oilman's antics provide quite a lot of material. And it's better to know all this ahead of time, than to be caught flat footed by talking points that don't hold up because they were developed in the absence of contrary facts.

To put it bluntly this is why we have primaries, not coronations. Perry may win, but he doesn't deserve to win unless he can answer ads like these. There is no consensus that he is the most conservative candidate and there's no reason that he should be shielded from criticism.

Bachmann deserves credit for challenging his record.




ILLEGAL TOPICS

Speaking of illegal topics, I happened to hear Limbaugh today warn Republicans against addressing the tax credits claimed by illegal aliens. His reasoning seemed to be that it would distract from the jobs issue.

I don't follow that reasoning. Making the argument that illegal aliens are pushing up unemployment is actually a handy talking point. So why come out against it? I don't know. Certainly there are always worries of upsetting the Latino vote. But then again the Republican frontrunner is now a bit of an open borders guy. Just maybe illegal aliens are a thing we don't discuss anymore.




SHAWARMA REDUX

Lawrence Auster at View from the Right has an interesting take on my piece on the Shawarma Republics

Islam cannot develop stable, reasonably humane societies because Islam consists of crushing everything but itself. From the beginning, the victory of Islam has meant the suppression of the culture, ethnicity, religion, and all other traditions of the Islamized country. The whole Islamic world thus consists of suppressed cultures/peoples struggling to live within the stranglehold of Islam. The only way this will-to-life can express itself is through eternal civil war against other cultures/peoples. Whichever group emerges victorious becomes the oppressor, using the fist of Islam to keep down all other groups.

Religion as the justification for endless war. Since religious validation in Islam occurs with victory, then Allah literally is on the side of the biggest cannons, so long as they aren't manned by infidels.

I would add one point that Greenfield doesn't make. Why is the West so utterly blind to the reality of Islam and imagines that each new breakout of the eternal Muslim civil war is a quest for constitutional liberal democracy? Because the West has become imperialistic. Meaning that it sees itself as the only true form of political order in the world. Therefore it cannot acknowledge the existence of other forms of order (or disorder) unlike itself. It must imagine these other forms of order as merely immature versions of itself, seeking to become like itself, to "transition" to democracy. So the West can never take Islam seriously or try to understand it in its own terms. 

There is certainly that element there, even the Soviet Union at one point tried to view Islam as a kind of prehistoric Communism, and Islamists certainly cater to Western leftists in this way by presenting it as a beacon of human rights and feminism.

But the West, under leftist influence, is subject to two contradictory beliefs, on the one hand it believes that human values are universal, on the other it believes that its own system is the best way. Exceptionalism and universalism make difficult bedmates. The only way to resolve this basic contradiction is to believe that our system is the best... and that everyone practices it already.

Muslims are guilty of the same kind of convoluted reasoning when they insist that everyone is actually a Revert from Islam.. since Islam is the original religion.

In any case there's more to Auster's piece that you should read.



WHEN SHARIA MET FIDEL

The Italian daily Corriere della Sera is reporting that Hezbollah is setting up a base of operations in Cuba in order to extend its ability to reach Israeli targets in Latin America…According to the Tel Aviv daily Yedioth Ahronoth, three members of Hezbollah have already arrived in Cuba to set up the cell, which will allegedly “include 23 operatives, hand-picked by Talal Hamia, a senior member tasked with heading the covert operation. The clandestine terror operation is reportedly called "The Caribbean Case." 

And so the growing alliance between South American Marxists and Middle Eastern Islamists continues.




LIVING IN TRASH

Then came the "Yard Waste" bins because, well, in large cities large cities were suppose to compost all this crap from yards into rich humus. This of course led to humus mountains outside of all large cities and programs where the cities would give you some compost if you picked it up. That you were hauling the composted yard waste back to the yard after it had been hauled to the compost heap from the yard was, well, sort of glossed over. But the compost mountains grew anyway.

At this point you had, behind your house or to the side, a trash can, a glass and plastic recycling bin, and a yard waste bin... minimum. But you do not, it seems, have enough bins behind your house since the city can, it seems, charge you for picking up each and every bin as well as sell you the bin in the first place.

This is a good deal for the city and now it seems the cities want to extend it to yet another bin. This is the small green bin for the "organic kitchen waste" previously known as "garbage" that previously went into, well, your "garbage can."

The deal here is that you are supposed to pick through your garbage with your hands and put into the new tiny green bin only the choicest bits of pre-compost compost. Then you set that bin out on the day for it's collection after a week of pawing through the crap.

That makes four (count 'em) 4 bins to keep track of and to pay for, each one more foul than the one before.

There's a metaphor here for liberalism, but I don't want to touch it.




CRAZY LIKE A FOXMAN

Abe Foxman is still at it again with his Sharia is just a myth invented by crazy racist things. And Adam Taxin has Jerry Gordon's rebuttal to it here.



THE ROUNDUP

Western Rifle Shooters counts up Gunwalker scalps for the weekend

IRON DOME? Not all it's cracked up to be

America's Uncle Omar Problem (and it's a big one)

Stultus est sicut stultus facit

President Obama’s economic policies would need to improve dramatically to even be described as ‘Incompetent’

The Apple Polluters

Color Osama Hiding Behind a Burqa

Anti-Israel Campaign Reaches Classical Music

Speaking Of: Didn't Soros Recently Invest in Coal

Obama's War on Gibson Guitars (well he had to find something to do after Libya)

Thou Hast Insulted the King, Peasant

Perry/Aga Khan Redux

Finally, An Apology to Turkey

Enjoy the Weekend