Today, on Fox News Channel’s The Five, liberal panelist Bob Beckel praised President Barack Obama’s efforts at job creation: “One good sign of the economy is there are more manufacturing jobs created in the last two years than the last eight,” he said.

Beckel did acknowledge that American manufacturing was still in a bad state, and lamented that the manufacturing sector “has been bleeding jobs because corporations are going to find cheap labor overseas.”

His conservative colleague, Republican strategist Andrea Tantaros, interjected: “So cut the corporate tax.” Fellow conservative Eric Bolling backed her up–”A hundred percent right, Andrea!”–and added that U.S. corporations pay the highest tax rates in the industrialized world, after Japan recently lowered its rate.

Beckel, on the defensive, retorted: “As much as Botswana?”

Tantaros and Bolling didn’t know what to say, and appeared to concede the point: “Botswana? Botswana is the bar? Botswana?” Tantaros protested. “That was a joke,” Beckel reassured her.

It must have been a joke–because, in fact, Botswana does have a far lower corporate tax rate than the U.S., which has helped propel Botswana to rapid and sustained economic growth. (more…)

This week President Abbas made a disastrous application for a unilateral declaration of Palestinian Statehood at the United Nations. This bid, more than anything, was a result of Barack Obama’s disastrous Middle East policy, but not according to Bob Beckel. Beckel on Friday’s “The Five” suggested that Obama’s policies had nothing to do with the UN disaster, nothing to do with the fact that Abbas refuses to negotiate, and nothing to do with Palestinians’s refusal to recognize Israel as the Jewish State. It’s all the fault of the settlements, the settlements, the settlements.

Honestly, I can’t remember if he repeated the words “the settlements” three or four times but Beckel certainly made his point. He also proved that he is either too partisan to admit the truth, or too lazy to research recent  history, but either way he is wrong.

Allow me to explain the facts and for brevity’s sake I will start with the Obama Administration.

While the Palestinians have never accepted Israeli settlements, secession of all settlement building has never been a precondition to talks. Israel had long ago agreed not to build new communities in Judea and Samaria but would continue to add housing units to existing communities.

During the government of PM Ehud Barak, there were direct talks and construction continued in existing communities.

It was the Obama administration’s naiveté that made the settlements an issue. Hillary Clinton first demanded the freeze in 2009 and was quickly backed up by Obama. What the President and his advisers perceived as a minor concession (a settlement freeze including no new housing units in existing communities) was for Israel a grave sacrifice. From their point of view Obama was telling adult Israelis that their children could no longer live near their parents. He was also saying that a policy not accepted in the United States (allowing people of a certain faith to live anywhere they want) was OK as long as it appeased the Arab world.

It is interesting that the man who pushed for Muslims to build a mosque on Ground Zero, and for illegal immigrants to live in Arizona, believes that Jews should be banned from living on the West Bank of the Jordan River.

Making the settlement a cornerstone of the new administration’s Middle East policy was a major naivete-driven error by the Obama administration. It was further compounded by their inclusion of Jerusalem in the mix and their constant public berating of the Jewish State. This turned the Israeli population against Obama, especially the Israeli left who would be more inclined to support a settlement freeze demand. A May 2011 Smith Poll conducted for the Jerusalem Post showed that only 12% of Israelis believe Obama is pro-Israel while 40% believe he is pro-Palestinian.

Obama’s demand for a freeze of natural community growth broke a US/Israel agreement made during the Bush administration.

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If you were watching the evening shows, or any of their broadcasting, which we know you aren’t, because ratings, this is the vast, in-depth coverage you would have seen:

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“That Jindal thing … that reminded me of  call center ad for Mumbai.”

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With the story of the Islamic supremacist mega-mosque at Ground Zero continuing to dominate the news cycles, I have been doing a lot of media, and readers of my website AtlasShrugs.com are well aware of the campaign of destruction that the leftist/Islamic machine against freedom defenders. Monday night’s Ground Zero mosque segment on Eric Bolling’s Money Rocks on Fox perfectly illustrates this, and the perverse marriage of the left and the jihad.

The particularly vile (though typical for the unindicted co-conspirator, Hamas-linked, Muslim Brotherhood front Council on American-Islamic Relations — CAIR) Ahmed Rehab did his usual Islamic supremacist jig, and he had the grotesque Bob Beckel as his water boy. Beckel is a famous failure: he was Walter Mondale’s campaign manager for his disastrous 1984 presidential campaign. I had been fortunate, up until Monday night, not to have to be in the same studio with that slob, but on this occasion I was not spared the abuse of Beckel’s presence.

I was the only female on the panel, and as we were prepping (getting miked, etc.) for the show, Beckel was regaling his victims (Bill Hemmer, David Webb and Bolling) with sordid tales of pole dancers and the like. It was grotesque and deliberate – and unwelcome: nobody was backslapping this pig, trust me. (more…)

Here’s something you don’t hear very often from a Fox News Contributor “You’re a woman, you better be careful about saying who I carry water for,” but that was the threat Bob Beckel made to my friend, Pamela Geller editor of Atlas Shrugs and Big Journalism contributor during a heated exchange on Eric Bolling’s Fox Business News show Money Rocks last night.

After a discussion of the 60 Minutes report on the Ground Zero mosque controversy (that ran the night before) Bolling brought in Ahmed Rehab of CAIR who instead of discussing the Mosque stooped to calling Ms. Geller names. That’s the same CAIR that was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Terrorist funding case and as recently as this past March, whose terrorist ties were  reaffirmed by the FBI.

Then Beckel, looking visibly angry was brought in to discuss an insensitive statement during his last appearance on Money Rocks, in which he said,

“Look, at some point, I know it’s sensitive here in New York and probably New Jersey, but we have to get over 9/11.”

Beckel’s response to the query about his statement to tear into Pamela, saying that on her site she once said she felt President Obama was an anti-Semite.

Obviously Beckel felt intimidated by Geller because he could not even look at her while he started his childish name calling. But as he got his “sea legs” the progressive apologist began to get abusive toward Pamela, still unable to look her in the eye: (more…)

It seems that some within the Mainstream Media have been trying to send the American public a clear message, “It is time for you to get over the 9-11 attacks.”

A majority of Americans have always seen the attacks of 9-11 as being on par with the attack upon Pearl Harbor since the dual attacks happened within our nation.

The members of the Mainstream Media always saw the attacks as the defining moment of the much-hated Bush Presidency. Now that another of President Obama’s teachable moments has blown up in his face, some of the Mainstream Media have sought to portray the growing opposition to a Community Center/ Mosque, two blocks from Ground Zero as an issue of racism and religious freedom.

From the Daily Kos to Fox news Contributor Bob Beckel, 9-11 victims, first responders and Americans have been attacked for not supporting the project and/or not simply getting over the attacks some nine years later. The Daily Kos went as far as to compare car accidents to 9-11 boasting that, “It was only 3,000 people come on, as more people die in car accidents yearly! (more…)

I didn’t know whether to feel insulted or oddly flattered when Bob Beckel called me a “ho” Monday night on Sean Hannity’s show. He was discussing James O’Keefe’s current situation and for some reason brought me up. But not the real me: not the 20-year old committed Christian, brown-belt Jiu-Jitsu girl and aspiring journalist, who embarked on a secret summer adventure that caused a major political and media disruption in the fall of ‘09.

Nope, evidently the characters I played in the ACORN videos, Kenya and Eden, had Beckel a little confused.  After he called me a ho, the panel informed him I wasn’t a real hooker, only pretending to be one for the sake of the story. He defends himself by saying I was a very “convincing hooker.”

All I can say is, Beckel would know. (more…)