Friday Afternoon Roundup - All the Trains Run Through Obama

This week Obama began throwing around his weight more than usual. In the USSR all the trains ran through Moscow in order to centralize control of the country. In the US today, Obama is pushing to make sure that all the trains run through him.

First Obama's minions began pushing the rest of the media to denounce and distance themselves from FOX. This of course is only the latest in the Obama Administration's long addiction to public Stalinist purges and denunciations, but this time it was launched against an entire network.

And second the Obama Administration now appears to be targeting state Democrats who don't "coordinate" with the White House. The Washington Post spins it as the White House distancing itself from a supposedly losing candidate in the Virginia Governor's race, but the practical upshot of it is that it's a warning shot that blames losing candidates for not relying enough on Obama, sending the message that the failure to "coordinate" your campaign with the White House will be a death blow to your candidacy.

Senior administration officials have expressed frustration with how Democrat R. Creigh Deeds has handled his campaign for governor, refusing early offers of strategic advice and failing to reach out to several key constituencies that helped Obama win Virginia in 2008, they say.

Translation, he failed to pay off ACORN, SEIU and whatever other munchkins and 527's the Obama Administration has its deals with.

Of course the next step is to suggest that Deeds is kind of a racist, or forced to be a racist because everyone in Virginia is a racist.

A senior administration official said Deeds badly erred on several fronts, including not doing a better job of coordinating with the White House. "I understood in the beginning why there was some reluctance to run all around the state with Barack Obama," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to speak candidly about the race. "You don't do that in Virginia. But when you consider the African American turnout that they need, and then when you consider as well they've got a huge problem with surge voters, younger voters, we were just a natural for them."

Of course that fails to explain why if race is the issue, Obama won in Virginia.

But a more pertinent point is that Obama's approval rating fell well below 50 percent in Virginia, which might actually make him a liability, for political, not racial reasons. And just maybe Deeds wasn't willing to turn over his campaign to Obama's cluster of radical left wing groups and unions, and mortgage the next four years, just to have Obama come to town for a day or two, and take some pictures.

But national Democrats are contrasting Deeds with New Jersey Gov. Jon S. Corzine and New York congressional candidate Bill Owens, who they say have more actively sought the White House's help and more vigorously and publicly backed its agenda. Polls show Corzine in a competitive position in New Jersey and Owens ahead, while Deeds has turned aggressively to Obama voters in recent days in an effort to overcome a significant deficit in the polls.

Spot the key phrase in that paragraph. That's right, it's "and more vigorously and publicly backed its agenda"

The real point of course is that Corzine is further left and more willing to give the Obama Administration a blank check in New Jersey.

Although Deeds often praises the president on the campaign trail, he has distanced himself from Obama and Democratic policy priorities at times. At a debate in September, he declined the opportunity to label himself an "Obama Democrat." And just this week, he said he did not believe that a public health insurance option is necessary and that as governor he might consider opting out of one if Congress extends that right to states.

Again the key criticism is that Deeds hasn't been willing to lean far enough to the left, to hyphenate his party identification with Obama, and to back a public option.

Democrats on both sides of the Potomac River cite prominent Democratic businesswoman Sheila Johnson's endorsement of McDonnell in July as the first sign of trouble in the Deeds campaign. They say Deeds let several weeks go by after his June 9 primary without calling Johnson, the co-founder of Black Entertainment Television and one of Kaine's leading donors.

Again Deeds just didn't pay enough fealty to the people around Obama. All the trains have to run through Moscow Obama.

Meanwhile in more "people around Obama" news, we have this following lovely tidbit.

Comedian David Cross brought his stand-up routine to Washington's Warner Theatre Wednesday night and made a shocking confession (assuming he wasn't joking...) at the end of his routine: That he snorted cocaine while seated just yards away from President Barack Obama at this year's White House Correspondents' Association dinner.

"But it's crazy and there's security, Secret Service is standing there," said Cross. "I've got photos of all this. ... I'm there and the president is right here and with all these people at the table" Cross snorted some coke, he said. "Maybe 40 feet from the president of the United States!"

Cross said he texted his friend to say, "No way you can ever top that."

I'm sure Obama will be very angry with his fellow cokehead for not sharing.

Meanwhile in the UK there's a flurry of worry over BNP leader Nick Griffin's appearance on Question Time and the BNP's increase in popularity.

Of course it would be childishly easy for any party to steal the BNP's fairly one issue thunder, by getting serious on immigration, deporting Islamists and closing the door to out of control immigration. But none of them show any willingness to do it, which is why the BNP will continue holding on to a valid populist issue that anyone with any common sense understands represents a major national crisis, and yet one that no mainstream party wants to touch.

Until that happens the far right will keep making political gains, while newspaper columnists dismiss the reason for those gains as just the product of xenophobia and ignorance. And while it's easy enough to dismiss the BNP, there is no dismissing the immigration elephant in the room. Those same issues became vital in elections in Italy, Holland and France. It's only a matter of time before they play that same role in the UK and the US as well.

Back in the US, falling temperatures are freezing out global warming dogma.

Global warming is becoming a much tougher sell. A new Pew Research poll says the percentage of people surveyed, who believe climate change is a very serious problem, has dropped from 44 percent last year to 35 percent.

Only 57 percent believe there is solid evidence of rising temperatures. That's down 14 percent. There is a similar drop in those who say global warming is man-made. Just 36 percent believe it, down from 47 percent.

One expert at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, Daniel Weiss, tells the Wall Street Journal the findings were caused by: "Right-wing media personalities... distorting science while the mainstream media remains trapped in its he-said, she-said narrative."

Oklahoma Republican Senator and global warming skeptic James Inhofe says the poll reflects concerns over proposed climate change legislation: "The more Americans learn about cap-and-trade — the more they oppose cap-and-trade."

Naturally the CAP folks will argue that it's all Rush Limbaugh's fault. These of course are the same people incapable of a rational debate, who are now busy tarring and feathering the formerly popular Freakonomics author for questioning an element of global warming dogma.

The duo has been hammered with a smear campaign, unprecedentedly, before the book has even been released.

“It reminds me of what happened when Michael Crichton wrote ‘State of Fear,’” said Myron Ebell, director of energy and global warming policy at the libertarian Competitive Enterprise Institute, which gets some of its funding from the energy industry. “The problem for the left is that there are still some people who don’t toe the party line who have megaphones. And anyone who has a megaphone, they’re going to go after.”

And some of their harshest fire is saved for people on their side of the line, who step just a bit out of line.

Continuing the roundup, Stop Islamization has an article on Islam, A Powerful Doctrine of Cruelty and Hate – Attempted “Honor Killing” (Arizona)

Yesterday, another atrocity perpetrated by a follower of the “religion of peace” occurred, this time outside of Phoenix, Arizona. Apparently, the father of a not-Islamic-enough 20-year old daughter decided that she had become “too western”. His “religion of peace” response – run her (and her friend) over with his car. This peaceful response on the part of the father in this case was meant to result in the death of the daughter (not “peace”). According to CNN, she is in the hospital with life-threatening injuries [1]. CNN provides no details on the friend’s condition.

The “Arizona Republic” has several articles [2] on this case, none of them on the front page of their site. Both victims remain in hospital today; the “peaceful” father is still at large.

Family and friends of the victims told detectives that the suspect had made threats toward his daughter because she was not living according to traditional Iraqi values, Tellef said. However, police cannot immediately determine whether that was the motive in the incident.(Arizona Republic [3])

What could the reporters of the “Arizona Republic” mean by “traditional Iraqi values”? Is there some Baathist tradition of parents killing their children because they aren’t Baathist enough? Is this some new “traditional value” that is post-Sadam? Or is this some Islamic tradition that is meant to destroy children who are leaving or who have left Islam? There is substantive precedent to believe that the cause of this barbarism and cruelty and homicidal intent on the part of the father in Arizona is a direct result of Islamic concepts and “legal” guidelines and obligations and nothing else. This attempted child murder is called an “honor killing”

But naturally, it can't be an Islamic tradition, as we all know it's the religion of peace...

Debbie Schlussel cites a report which shows just how unprepared America is for bioterrorism under Obama's watch.

The Obama administration is . . . failing to address the more urgent and immediate threat of biological terrorism, a bipartisan commission created by Congress is reporting today.

The report . . . cites failures on biosecurity policy by the White House, which the Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction says has left the country vulnerable. The commission, created last year to address concerns raised by post-9/11 investigations, warns that anthrax spores released by a crop-duster could “kill more Americans than died in World War II” and the economic impact could exceed $1.8 trillion in cleanup and other costs.

The government’s efforts “have not kept pace with the increasing capabilities and agility of those who would do harm to the United States,” the report says. “The consequences of ignoring these warnings could be dire.” Says commission Chairman Bob Graham, a Democratic former senator from Florida: “The clock is ticking.” . .

But who needs to prepare for bioterrorism, when we can tackle the far more burning issue of GLOBAL WARMING. Now 10 percent off at Borders.

In another slice of the globe worth watching news, tensions are again escalating between China and India.

Keep in mind that the last time the rhetoric spun out of control over a border dispute, the result was the Sino-Indian War

Beijing - China and India have taken a vituperative war of words and diplomatic barbs to an unusual level of tension in recent days, prompting fears that the traditional rivalry between the two Asian giants could spin out of control.

"The most urgent present job for both sides is crisis management," says Han Hua, an expert on South Asia at Peking University. "I don't think either government wants the situation to go further downhill."

The recent angry exchanges were prompted by a decades-old border dispute over which the two countries went to war in 1962, and which has proved impervious to 13 rounds of negotiations since.

But deeper resentments lie behind the spat, says Shen Dingli, deputy head of China's South Asia Research Institute. "The structural problem is leadership," he argues. "The question is who leads in Asia?"

The real question is who leads globally. With the US under Obama out of the race, there will be far more explosions of local and global tensions, as aspiring governments seek to fill the vacuum that the US surrender on the world stage has left open.

Politico looks at Obama's strategy for marginalizing conservatives, a political cordon sanitare if you will.

Hume challenges the media to be more than WH lapdogs

Via CAMERA, Yoram Ettinger reports on changing demographics in Israel, between its jewish and Muslim population

Kerry flip flops again, this time on J Street

At Gateway Pundit, Evil dictator meets Obama chic comes to DC

A Co-founder of Human Rights Watch blasts his own organization for its pandering to evil

At Human Rights Watch, we always recognized that open, democratic societies have faults and commit abuses. But we saw that they have the ability to correct them — through vigorous public debate, an adversarial press and many other mechanisms that encourage reform.

That is why we sought to draw a sharp line between the democratic and nondemocratic worlds, in an effort to create clarity in human rights. We wanted to prevent the Soviet Union and its followers from playing a moral equivalence game with the West and to encourage liberalization by drawing attention to dissidents like Andrei Sakharov, Natan Sharansky and those in the Soviet gulag — and the millions in China’s laogai, or labor camps.

When I stepped aside in 1998, Human Rights Watch was active in 70 countries, most of them closed societies. Now the organization, with increasing frequency, casts aside its important distinction between open and closed societies.

Moral equivalence wins again.

The Weekly Standard challenges the uninsured figures being spread by the Obama Administration

Meanwhile soldiers being sworn in to the Shimshon Brigade in Israel refused to expel any more Jewish families, to make way for Hamas and Fatah strongholds

Immediately after an IDF swearing-in ceremony at the Western Wall on Thursday night, IDF soldiers being sworn in to the Shimshon Brigade and their parents raised signs vowing not to participate in the evacuation of Homesh.

Homesh is a Jewish town in northern Samaria from which all Jews were expelled by then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2005 to demonstrate that the disengagement expulsion of Jews was not limited to Gaza. Since then, Jews have returned to Homesh time and time again, with the IDF expelling them each time, often on the Jewish Sabbath.

Steven Plaut writes on the man the Gulag could not break

At IsraPundit, Bill Levinson writes that the Democrats are now openly the party of Wall Street profiteering on cap and trade

Senator Gillibrand’s own words, from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, show that the real purpose of Barack Obama’s climate change legislation is to give Wall Street speculators yet another tulip bulb scheme to replace the mess (mortgage backed securities) for which we are still paying with a $750 billion stimulus package, various bailouts at the taxpayers’ expense, and ten percent unemployment.

We encourage our readers to circulate this article, and Senator Gillibrand’s own words, as widely as possible to show that Barack Obama’s cap and trade agenda has very little to do about protecting the environment and everything to do with lining the pockets of fat-cat Wall Street speculators, the same kind that gave us the dot-com bubble and the housing bubble, at the expense of the American people. It is especially important to convey this message to the working people who make up the Democratic Party’s base. We also remind our readers that General Electric, which stands to benefit enormously from cap and trade, raised almost half a million dollars in bundled contributions to elect Barack Obama.

The entire thing is worth reading...

Edgar at the Jihad threat also writes about Mia Farrow's Anti-Israel Tantrum

I have seen some pretty insane anti-Israel rants recently but the Mia Farrow CNN interview I saw yesterday probably takes the biscuit. I tried to find the interview to link to - but it is not on either the CNN site or youtube yet. I didn't catch the start of the interview but my understanding is that the rationale for the interview was that Mia Farrow had visited Gaza as part of her role as 'UNICEF Ambassador'. I heard her say something like the suffering of the Palestinian children in Gaza and the West Bank was 'the worst ever seen in the world', but that was nothing compared to what she said in response to the interviewer Rosemary Church's question about whether her role had led her to see the suffering of Israeli children from Qassam rocket attacks. Her response was that the Qassam rockets fired at them

"were only filled with mud".

At the JIDF, a story on how the Jews dominated Israel in 1695

..No settlement in the land of Israel has a name of Arabic extraction. The names of settlements are mostly of Hebrew extraction; some of Greek or Latin-Roman. In fact, no Arab settlement (except for Ramla) has had an original Arabic name to this day. Most names of Arab settlements are of Hebrew or Greek extraction which have been impaired and replaced by meaningless names in Arabic.

There is no meaning in Arabic for the names Acre, Haifa, Jaffa, Nablus, Gaza or Jenin and the names of cities, such as Ramallah, El-Halil and El-Kuds have no historical or philological roots in Arabic. In the year 1696, the year in which the tour was taken, Ramallah, for example, was called Beit El, Hebron was called Hebron and Mearat HaMachpelah was called El Chalil (a name for Abraham of the Bible). The land was, on the whole, empty and desolate; the inhabitants were few and concentrated in the cities of Jeusalem, Acre, Safed, Jaffa, Tiberius and Gaza. Most of the inhabitants of the cities were Jews, the others were Christian; there were very few Moslems, mostly nomadic Bedouins.