On Monday, both the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post each published opinion articles attacking President Barack Obama’s foreign policy.

Obama and Venezuela;s Hugo Chavez. (Photo source: Huffington Post)

The LAT article, by former Dick Cheney adviser John Hannah, was entitled: “The U.S.: MIA in the Mideast.” It makes the case that despite Obama’s success in the war against Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, overall his foreign policy of “retreat” has destabilized the region:

In private conversations I’ve had with Middle Eastern officials, the sense of unease and dread expressed are only more severe. Fairly or not, these leaders appear to have taken Obama’s measure and found him wanting. Their bill of indictment includes retreat from Iraq and, soon, Afghanistan; betrayal of longtime U.S. allies, especially Mubarak; indulgence of enemy regimes in Tehran and Damascus; overblown promises to end the Palestinian conflict; and a persistent failure to mount the type of credible military option that these leaders believe is necessary for addressing the region’s most urgent threat — Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons.

The hardening conviction that the U.S. is disengaging from the Middle East should be cause for real concern.

Hannah also attacks “the administration’s lack of strategic vision, its instinct for retreat and its complicity in the unraveling of a benevolent imperium that has for decades underwritten the region’s security.” He notes that a perception of U.S. weakness is “one that left unchecked will breed uncertainty, instability and even war.”

The Washington Post article, by columnist Jackson Diehl, declares: “Obama’s foreign initiatives have failed.” Like Hannah, Diehl questions the conventional political wisdom, which sees foreign policy as a strong card for Obama to play in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death. (more…)

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) – Hugo Chavez is getting a journalism award in Argentina.

The Venezuelan leader regularly clashes with critical media, but the University of La Plata is giving him its Rodolfo Walsh Prize on Tuesday for what it describes as his work giving people without a voice access to the airwaves and newspapers.

Chavez’s government has bankrolled the growth of the Telesur network, providing a state-funded alternative to privately financed broadcast stations across Latin America.

He met Tuesday with his ally President Cristina Fernandez, who is trying to transform Argentina’s communications industry through a law that would break up media monopolies and force cable TV providers to include channels run by unions, Indians and activist groups.

The two presidents also plan to sign commercial accords dealing with food, transport and energy, and to visit a state-run factory where Argentina will build ships for Venezuela’s oil industry. (more…)

Last month, New York Times reporter James C. McKinley Jr. falsely reported that an FBI informant who helped to thwart a left-wing terrorist plot had actually encouraged the conspiracy. In the article “Anarchist Ties Seen in ’08 Bombing of Texas Governor’s Mansion” published February 22, 2011 online and in the print edition a day later, the Times indicated that former left-wing activist and BigGovernment.com contributor Brandon Darby urged two anarchists to firebomb the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota [emphasis added]:

Yet federal agents accused two men from these circles of plotting to make firebombs and hurl them at police cars during the convention. An F.B.I informant from Austin, Brandon Darby, was traveling with the group and told the authorities of the plot, which he had encouraged.

We brought this to your attention on February 24th when we asked the Times to correct the record. We noted that according to the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Minnesota, the assertion Darby “encouraged” the plot was patently false. On February 27th, we brought in Matthew Vadum, an expert on the circumstances surrounding the plot, to provide broader context to the Times’s smear.

Still, the error remained uncorrected.

Then, last week, a source informed BigJournalism.com that the New York Times reporter acknowledged the charge they published against Darby was in fact bogus, but still, the Times did not correct the article.

As of this writing, the false charge against Darby remains in tact.

Today, Brandon Darby filed a lawsuit against New York Times for libel and defamation. An official letter from Mr. Darby:

We’ll be following the story as it develops on BigJournalism.com and BigGovernment.com.

As a wave of left-wing violence threatens to engulf the nation, why is the progressive New York Times running an ugly campaign of character assassination against a real-life American hero who saved lives and helped to safeguard the nation’s sacred democratic process?

Could it be because the newspaper is sympathetic to the goals of the thuggish community organizers and union goons intimidating state legislatures across America and wants to help advance the liberal-left narrative?

The man with the bull’s eye on his back is Brandon Darby, formerly a far-left community organizer. This heroic defector from the Left stands accused by the New York Times and by angry radical groups of becoming an agent provocateur. Unhinged anarchists across the country would love to get their hands on him.

All over the Internet Darby’s name has been dragged through the mud by the Daily Kos and Crooks and Liars crowd. They accuse him of selling out and pushing the wrongdoers hard enough that he essentially became a co-conspirator. Search for his name with the words traitor, rat, or fink and you’ll see what I mean. (more…)

NYMag:

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez bumped into Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Brazil this weekend at the inauguration of Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s first female president, and the two shook hands and chatted. “She had a very spontaneous smile and I greeted her with the same effusiveness,” Chavez later explained.

In a new 2011 feature for Big Journalism, you have the opportunity to play spin doctor and repurpose the news narrative in a manner that best serves the progressive agenda. The photo above might give some people pause, considering Chavez is a tyrant, but not when seen through the beer goggles of media bias!

(more…)

Folks, it’s not called WikiHacks.  Nowhere in the news have I seen reports of hack attacks into CIA or State Department files.  Last time WikiLeaks well, uh, leaked, it had lots of help from an insider -allegedly the low level (read low life) intel flunkie Bradley Manning who described the prospect of disclosing vast amounts of state secrets as “beautiful and horrifying.”

Obvious conclusion that you won’t see in the Make-Believe Media:  This isn’t diplomatic rape — it’s incest.  America’s enemies are attacking from within.  And the Media is running a screen.

Time magazine can Skype with WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange.  And a private computer hacker can shut down WikiLeaks’ site for several hours, something the global governments just can’t seem to do.  Lots to learn there.  But hey, Interpol has just placed Assange on its worldwide wanted list for “sex crimes.” Yes, it takes an international government village to fail where the private sector suceeds.

(more…)

So the Cold War’s Over?

Tell it to Fidel Castro and his agents.  Among the ten spies just nabbed by the FBI and accused of working for the Russian Federation we find a Vicky Pelaez, weekly columnist for New York’s  largest circulation Spanish-language paper, La Prensa/El Diario.  You will never guess who they endorsed for President.

Besides this New York paper, please note who proudly publishes Vicky Pelaez’ articles and displays her byline.

Now please note who proudly publishes the articles confected by the Huffington Post’s Margarita Alarcon and proudly displays her byline. The Huffington Post’s “conflict of interest” was revealed on this site just the other day (if I may so say myself.)

Cubadebate, for anyone poised to spout off about “McCarthyism at Big Journalism!” is blatantly and unapologetically the Castro regime’s house organ.  Note that Fidel, Raul and Hugo’s pronouncements, decrees and fiats appear just to the right of The Huffington Post writer’s articles (and those of the recently arrested and accused Russian spy’s.)

Among Vicky Pelaez most recent articles was a paean to Hugo Chavez for his “lifting Venezuelans’ from abject poverty and restoring their pride” and to Oliver Stone for documenting and publicizing the glorious process. (more…)

To the leftists at Media Matters for America, even mere days after a suspected Islamist bomb plot was defused in Manhattan’s Times Square, national security is one big joke.

They could care less about U.S. security as long as they get to stick the knife in Glenn Beck, the Tea Party movement, conservatives, and others deemed enemies of George Soros’s utopian “open society.” It’s all about scoring against their political enemies and they don’t care if innocents get hurt in the process.

So it’s no surprise that the media bias analysts at the “non-profit,” George Soros-funded “watchdog group” like to mock Glenn Beck at every opportunity. They hate Beck and everything he represents, especially his ability to impact the nation’s political debate: I get it. But they’re playing with fire when they mock Beck for warning about the subversion threat posed by Venezuela’s communist strongman Hugo Chavez. (more…)

Max Blumenthal, a blogger who has frequently accused prominent conservative activists of racism, has trashed a highly respected annual report on antisemitism as “propagandistic.” The report, by the Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University, is the product of meticulous research by a team of scholars that collects and scrutinizes data from all over the world.

Yet to Blumenthal, the Roth Institute and its “collaborators” (more on that word later) “appear more interested in insulating Israel from scrutiny…than in generating education and dialogue to combat bigotry.”

He claims that the Roth Institute shares the objective of the Israeli government “and its international supporters” (again, more on that curious choice of words below) to undermine criticism of Israel’s policies.

As someone who has witnessed the last decade of anti-Israel protest–first as a freelance journalist, and then as a pro-Israel activist–I can testify to the truth of what Blumenthal so blithely denies. At the University of Chicago last fall, outside a speech given by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, I photographed anti-Israel demonstrators carrying swastikas, and was taunted by shouts of “Hitler was a great guy.” (more…)

President Obama this week announced that his administration would ease-up on the long moratorium on offshore drilling for oil and natural gas.  Congress may not have made up its collective mind on the issue but some in the American media have made their positions clear.  Observe if you will this headline from the April 1 edition of the Miami Herald:

Obama offshore drilling plan spares South Florida

Here’s a parallel line from a story on the website of KEYT-TV in Santa Barbara, California:

It looks as if California’s coastline was spared, as President Obama announced plans for renewed efforts of offshore oil exploration.

Without getting into the relative merits of the president’s proposal, my question is, from what exactly are these two states being spared?  It’s not as if ExxonMobil is planning to plop oil derricks along the strip in South Beach or adjacent to the millionaire mansions of Santa Barbara.  But what about the pristine scenery in these areas?

The drilling would not be permitted any closer than 125 miles from any shoreline, which is well into international waters. In fact, nobody would ever see the drilling platforms.  A person of average height can only see about three miles into the horizon and even folks in the tallest luxury hotels have a vista that extends maybe 25 or 30 miles tops.  No, wrecking the view isn’t something that folks are being spared from. (more…)

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was in the U.S. and met with Barack Obama in the White House, but you won’t find any photos of Netanyahu with Obama on the wire services. There aren’t any. Obama wouldn’t allow it. Politico reported:

But the meetings were shrouded in unusual secrecy, in part because U.S. officials, who just ten days earlier called the surprise announcement of new housing in East Jerusalem an ‘insult’ and an ‘affront,’ made sure to reward Netanyahu with a series of small snubs: There were no photographs released from the meeting, and no briefing for the press.

He bows to the Saudi king, he shakes hands warmly with his “amigo” Chavez, but he won’t be seen with the leader of the only democracy in the Middle East, and our only reliable ally there.

And this comes after he has put unprecedented strain on the U.S./Israel alliance by pressuring Israel for allowing Jews to build homes on Jewish land, and blaming Israel for the conflict with the Palestinians Muslims.

Obama is not a passive, weak or naive player in the Muslim/Jewish conflict. He was wet-nursed on Jew-hatred. He grew up in a Muslim country and studied the Koran. He knows what is prescribed for the Jews in Islam. He knows that the Koran says that the Jews are the Muslims’ worst enemies (5:82) and that “ignominy shall be their portion wheresoever they are found” (3:112). (more…)

U.S.-Israeli relations have hit a 35-year low over the contentious east Jerusalem building project. Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren said: “Israel’s ties with the United States are in their worst crisis since 1975…a crisis of historic proportions.” This is because, according to Barack Obama, Jewish homes in the Jewish homeland “hinder peace” with Muslims. According to the Associated Press:

Israel’s already strained relationship with the U.S. hit a new low last week when it announced the construction plans during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden. The timing of the announcement deeply embarrassed the Obama administration and put plans for indirect peace talks with the Palestinians in jeopardy.

What about the timing of the Palestinian Authority’s “honoring” of a mass-murdering female genocidal bomber, for whom the Palestinians are naming a square in Ramallah? The Jerusalem Post reported: “The ceremony was scheduled to take place on the 32nd anniversary of the attack, the worst terrorist incident in Israel’s history, in which terrorists commandeered a bus and murdered 37 people, including 10 children.” It too was scheduled to take place during Biden’s visit, but was postponed for a week after Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu asked Obama’s Middle East envoy, George Mitchell, to get the Palestinians to cancel it.

“The announcement of the settlements on the very day that the vice president was there was insulting,” said Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Obama adviser David Axelrod also said: “This was an affront, it was an insult, but most importantly, it undermined this very fragile effort to bring peace to that region. For this announcement to come at that time was very, very destructive.” (more…)

The atmosphere over at Democratic National Committee headquarters has to be pretty gloomy these days. Their party’s prospects in November have progressed from dismal to disastrous and there’s no telling how much worse it can get. Over at the Dem’s website, nobody has bothered to update news about their famed “50 State Strategy” since September of last year. Perhaps, had they employed a “57-State Strategy” instead, the future might look a little brighter for them.

Let it not be said that conservatives and libertarians are without empathy. We’ve been there. We know how disheartening it is when your party of choice is about to get clobbered and worse, when that happens because party leaders refuse to heed your message. We can only hope that  Democrats won’t get sidetracked by the so-called “pragmatists” within the party trying to lead the party astray by deviating from the progressive agenda. It would be a damned shame if somebody was successful in convincing this administration to pull a Clintonesque pivot toward the middle.

Maintaining one’s focus is important and one can only visit the Daily Kos so many times before the amount of bile there starts eating through your skin and destroying your soul. So, as a public service, I’ve taken the liberty of designing a few motivational posters that will help our Democrat friends stay on point as we approach the November elections. No charge Dems – feel free to print them out, use them as screen-savers, whatever. We’re here to help.

Enjoy: (more…)