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…)

I read the Washington Post’s article, “Violence and the occupy movement,” expecting to see a discussion of the sexual assaults and rapes being reported during the Wall Street protests. Instead, the author, Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, writes about “the violence of systems that create and sustain economic and social injustice on a wide scale.” She is apparently talking about capitalism, a system that has lifted more people out of poverty than any in human history.

Brandon Darby broke the story at Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com that the protests “pose special dangers for women” because of the rapes and sexual assaults taking place. He notes several such incidents:

• A 14-year-old runaway was allegedly sexually assaulted at Occupy Dallas.
• A 19-year-old student activist was allegedly raped at Occupy Cleveland.
• A man was arrested on charges of indecent exposure to children at Occupy Seattle.
• A female reporter was threatened by activists at Occupy Oakland.

Also at BigGovernment, John Nolte wrote about the protesters’ “rap sheet,” which numbers 119 cases of sexual assault, violence, vandalism, anti-Semitism, extortion, perversion, and lawlessness. These are hardly law-abiding protesters, as the lawyers at the National Lawyers Guild and Center for Constitutional Rights maintain. These incidents are occurring because of the complete breakdown of law and order in the makeshift tent cities of the Occupy movement. Under political pressure, the local and even federal authorities have ceded the space to the protesters, effectively abdicating law enforcement’s role. As a result, when police finally do move into these places, as we saw in Oakland, they are met with violence from organizers of the protests. When the police defend themselves, they are accused of police brutality. This accusation was a prominent charge made in Thistlethwaite’s piece.

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Within hours of the news, the AP reported “Gadhafi’s Death Clears Way for Oil Exports,” gleefully explaining that Gadhafi’s death will result in lower oil prices the world over!  Energy crisis is solved!  Recession ended!

Remember the Left’s incessant ”No Blood for Oil“ smear against President Bush for the ”illegitimate” wars in Iraq?  According to the Left, and rarely challenged by the Make-Believe Media, Bush’s war in the Middle east was only about getting oil.

But it’s now 2011, not 2003.  There’s a new sheriff in town.  Apparently, blood for oil is a good thing now.   The radical leftwing media source The Guardian only reports how Obama has ”chalked up Libya as another foreign policy success to place alongside the killing in May of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden” and, more ominously, that Gadhafi’s bloody assassination signals a “prescription” for actions against other Middle East countries including Syria.  Syrian President Assad may be wondering if he’s on the White House Secret Assassination List. No mention of blood-for-oil. No mention of illegal regime change.

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There is a certain evil hidden in semantics. One of the greatest powers the press holds is their subtle control of the way readers understand complex issues. These tiny pushes, over time, build up and corrupt the way the unsuspecting consumer pictures that story. The New York Times is a master of this insidious manipulation.

On Monday former Israeli Member of Knesset Rabbi Hanan Porat passed away after an extended illness. In its obituary of this leader of the Religious Zionist movement had this gem of a line (my emphasis):

Mr. Porat was a child of the kibbutz Kfar Etzion, which is on land that was later won by Jordan during Israel’s 1948 war of independence. He re-established the community after the 1967 Middle East war, when the land was conquered by Israel.

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Its really amazing how little the progressive mainstream media really understands. In yesterday’s NY Times, media reporter Jeremy Peters issued a warning to young journalists in a front page article “Covering 2012, Youths on the Bus” The warning?  There are partisan bloggers out there who are out to embarrass mainstream journalists. By partisan bloggers Peters means conservative bloggers, because to the NY Times a liberal bias is the definition of fair coverage.

CNN fired Octavia Nasr, its senior editor for Middle East affairs, after she composed a 19-word Twitter message expressing sadness after the death of a Hezbollah leader.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank tends to use an unusual barometer to select his topics.  He likes to write about subjects for which he has a very strong opinion, but very little knowledge. His latest column, “Joe Lieberman joining Glenn Beck: a shanda” proves my point.  Unfortunately Milbank would not know a shanda (Yiddish for embarrassment), if one jumped up kissed him on the lips and wished him a gut morgan (good morning).

The purpose of this column was to criticize Senator Joe Lieberman for joining Glenn Beck for his August rally in Jerusalem called “Restoring Courage.”

“I’d love to participate,” Lieberman confirmed when The Post’s Felicia Sonmez found him in a Capitol hallway. “It’s just going to be a rally to support Israel and the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

This nearly caused me to plotz [faint].

Notice how cleverly Milbank stuck a Yiddish word into his column to prove his Jewish “street cred?”

Joe Lieberman, first Jew on a presidential ticket, was embracing Beck, the leading purveyor of anti-Semitic memes in the mass media. One of the most visible Jews in America was making common cause with a man who invoked apocalyptic Christian theology in promoting his rally in Israel.

I admire Lieberman, and I’ve defended him over the years when he defied party and faction. But if he shares a stage with this creature, he will surrender the decency that has defined his public life. [my emphasis]

Its interesting that Milbank uses Yiddish to establish his Jewish “street cred”, but calls him the leading purveyor of anti-Semitic memes” If Milbank truly wants to prove his Jewishness, perhaps he should learn the concept of, “motzi shem ra“is the spreading of malicious lies,” which according to the Rabbis is a severe sin. With this comment, Milbank is showing he buys into the George Soros/ Media Matters strategy of trying to destroy Glenn Beck by branding him as an anti-Semite (the history of this strategy is outlined here).

For those of you who are not familiar with the Beck rally allow me to present this explanation.

Israel is in the most precarious position she has faced since the 1967 War. Palestinian terrorists are on three of its borders, Fatah in Judea and Samaria,  Hamas in Gaza,  Hezbollah in Lebanon. Adding to the threat is that the Syrian regime is  facing collapse, so it is tying to divert its people’s attention from hating it leaders to hating Israel, Egypt is becoming radicalized and most of the parties with potential to twin the next election and take over leadership of the country are promising to tear up the Camp David treaty. And Iran, close to developing the capability to send a nuclear warhead into Tel Aviv continues to threaten to wipe the Jewish State off the map.

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The New York Times does it again and again—endangers the lives of those operating abroad. This past Sunday, the New York Times released an article titled U.S. Underwrites Internet Detour Around Censors. This article is not the first written by the New York Times where anti-American propaganda crossed numerous lines of freedom of press. The New York Times can very well be construed as the next Wikileaks.

This specific article attacks young academics and entrepreneurs who have taken serious risks to better the livelihoods of those living abroad. It also attacks U.S. initiatives overseas. Most disturbing, the New York Times specifically stated that some of the information obtained came directly out of “classified diplomatic cables.” When will the New York Times madness stop?

Historically, this is nothing new for the New York Times. On the 24^th of May 2010, the New York Times had written another article titled U.S. Is Said to Expand Secret Actions in Mideast. Within the 2010 article, it stated that an expansion of clandestine activities were to occur in the Middle East.

“The top American commander in the Middle East has ordered a broad expansion of clandestine military activity in an effort to disrupt militant groups or counter threats in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and other countries in the region, according to defense officials and military documents.” (more…)

I sometimes wonder if the media thinks the public has a universal case of amnesia. Like we can’t remember what they were saying way, way back in the days when George W. Bush was president.

Bush was president right after Grover Cleveland, I believe.

You remember Bush, don’t you? The media hated the guy. They hated him because he started two wars. He started them because this guy named Saddam Hussein (who became nicer the more they hated Bush) picked a fight with Bush’s Daddy and it was basically that simple (oh, there was some oil mixed in there too, so you can pick either reason). There was also a Good War and a Bad War. Afghanistan was Good, Iraq was Bad.

Today the same people who hung on every word said by anti-war Cindy Sheehan during the Bush presidency can’t find Cindy anymore and there are only Good Wars.” We actually have three wars going on now and they are suddenly all good. One is kinetic, which means it just happened and nobody could help it or stop it. We certainly can’t blame anybody for it. Besides, nobody is really getting killed in this latest war (somewhere in Africa, I believe) because we don’t see them being killed on TV anymore. It’s tough to get video signals for those live shots out of Libya these days, and cameras don’t work well in the deserts of North Africa. There’s sand and all that stuff. You know what happened the first time you took a camera to the beach. (more…)

The Associated Press was, at one point, considered a reputable news source. Founded in 1846, its “news” articles and photographs are published in 1700 newspapers and used by thousands more television and radio broadcasters. There have been some controversies in its long history, most of which were in the last decade, but it is still considered by many to be an impartial news source.

It’s not. It hasn’t been for a while. For years, it has been slanting news stories against the right, against America and against Israel. It has done this subtly in many cases. However, when it comes to the Middle East, the organization no longer seems to care about even the appearance of impartiality.

Following Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech to both houses of Congress, the “news” organization published a Fact-Check of the speech. When they say “fact check,” they really mean “blatant attack and distortion of facts as well as misrepresentation of what was said in the first place.”

The author of the hit piece, Josef Federman attempts to take cherry picked quotes and then refute them.

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It’s always nice to know where one stands and over the past three days Jewish Americans have been told by the Progressive Movement exactly their role: their place is to shut up or leave the country.

On Thursday, President Obama threw Israel under the bus with his declaration that negotiations should start with the premise of Israel returning to the 1967 borders. At the same time he unilaterally ripped up an agreement between Israel and the United States made during the last administration.

As expected supporters of the Jewish State were very upset and they cheered Israeli PM Netanyahu when he stood up for his country during a White House press op the next day.

But to the progressives this act of insubordination by Netanyahu was deplorable. The support of Bibi Netanyahu by some American Jews proved was a reason to bring out their anti-Semitic meme that Jews are not really Americans, they are frauds whose first loyalty is to Israel not to the United States. They also brought out their bigoted contention that the powerful Jewish lobby controls the government and the media.

George Soros funded M.J. Rosenberg, who regularly uses anti-Semitic buzz words claiming the Jews control the government and the media was quick to announce that the outrage displayed by friends of Israel was both bogus and a product of what anti-Semitics describe as their dual loyalty, although Rosenberg calls them “Israel-firsters.”

And suddenly all hell broke loose. But not immediately. Initially, the right-wing of the “pro-Israel” claque praised Obama for not saying anything that challenged Netanyahu but then Netanyahu said that he was outraged by the reference to the 1967 lines.

And then the robotic Israel-firsters switched their line as quickly as Red 1930’s folk singers changed their lyrics when Moscow complained of deviation. (Stop bashing Nazi Germany; we just signed a pact with it).

This is not to say that MJ is an anti-Semite or one of those “self-hating Jews,” he is a capitalist. He understands generally the progressive left is anti-Israel and the progressive media is a major source of income. Heck George Soros pays part on his salary. So in order to prove his loyalty to the progressive media he acts with venom toward Israel and stereotypes his own people. Rosenberg is just trying to show his progressive handlers that MJ stands for Malign Jews.

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Once again, its time to add to the official Jeff Dunetz, “Stupid Things Blamed on Global Warming” list. During the past two and a half years, global warming moonbats have blamed each of  the following on global warming, climate change or whatever the latest they have decided to give their over-hyped environmental calamity.

Incredible shrinking sheep, Invasion of jellyfish in the Mediterranean, Surge in fatal shark attack, Boy Scout tornado deaths, Global conflict, Beer tasting different, Suicide of farmers in Australia, Bigger tuna fish, longer days, shorter days, Collapse of gingerbread houses in Sweden, Cow infertility, UFO sightings in the UK, Rise in insurance premiums, Heroin addiction, Frigid Cold Winters in Great Britain, Cancer, Death from heart disease, diabetes, stroke, respiratory disease and even accidents, homicide, suicide, water -borne disease outbreaks, heavier, wetter snowstorms treacherous for travel and ambulation, Lyme disease, swarms of allergy-inducing, stinging insects, along with mosquitoes and devastating pine bark beetle infestations and the spread of forest and crop pests, 40,000 dead crabs , unrest in the Middle East. screwed-up love making, the Japanese earthquake-tsunami, horrible rash of tornadoes in southeast United States.

The latest addition comes from  Dan Ferber and Dr. Paul Epstein, authors of a new book, Changing Planet, Changing Health: How the Climate Crisis Threatens Our Health and What We Can Do about It. Ferber is a reporter, and the good Doctor is Associate Director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School (wow, an MD and Harvard Medical School, his mother must be so proud).

Some might say the two authors simply chose something new to alarm the public about.  However, I disagree. These guys may have stumbled upon a solution to climate change and the violence in the Middle East. Miraculously they their book has “killed two birds with one stone.” Allow me to explain.

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Mr. Nobel Peace Prize has launched hundreds of Cruise Missiles into Libya inflicting major damage and killing civilians. He has also kept two wars going while ramping up the battle in Afghanistan.

Sounds like a warmonger.

Now, I’m not here to judge the merits, or lack thereof, of Obama’s war policy, just to point out the inconsistencies in the media’s reporting on the issue of Obama and his wars. Did I mention this is a Nobel Peace Prize winner launching these attacks? In getting that award he was honored for, “extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” I could make a joke out of that statement, but this is serious stuff.

First, notice how carefully the media works to not peg the invasion of Libya (yes, sending missiles is an invasion) on their Dear Leader. The international coalition is doing this, not Obama, is what they are telling us. Put that in the context of what the media told us with George W. Bush and Iraq.

Bush had 40 nations join the efforts in Iraq; do you think the media ever considered that war anything other than “Evil Bush’s War?” They still mention the Mission Accomplished banner in derision, long after the mission was actually successfully accomplished. Also, the media will rarely point out that this attack on Libya would not have happened without US backing. Had Obama said no, there would’ve been no “international coalition,” yes, it is that simple.

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Peter Beinart, who writes for the Daily Beast, is clueless. I say this because I don’t quite understand how he sees the Middle East. He takes various conservative pundits to task for selectively pushing Democracy. He brings examples of where it seems, at first blush, the US even went so far as to attempt to thwart burgeoning democracies by agitating for coups. He does this while praising Barack Obama for helping push Mubarak out, urging fundamental political reform, etc. etc.

Now, I don’t know which Obama he’s been watching, but I only recall an Obama who’s been flailing about helplessly when it came to Egypt and unwilling to support pro-Democracy groups in Iran.

My main issue comes with the meat of Beinart’s claims about conservative foreign policy as respect to democratic idealism. He takes the Bush administration to task for supporting coup attempts against all regimes Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and Hamas in Gaza. Of course, he claims that both were democratically elected; which is true. Of course they’ve both turned into serial human rights abusing regimes where any pretense of democracy has been swept under the carpet, but hey, it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it?

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Fill ‘er up folks. Gas prices in Southern California have hit $4.59 a gallon.

Oh, the media has finally started covering “Pain at the Pump” but they are not giving us the real reasons for the jump. Unrest in the middle east has given the cabal of President Obama and the media, “cover” to blame others for the spike to the stratosphere.

The real reasons are three-fold, with unrest in the middle east being the least of the three.

1)      Devaluation of the dollar. The incessant printing of money by this administration began the rise of gas prices months long before the middle east blew up. I’m no Alan Greenspan, but I can figure out that if oil prices are tied to the dollar, and you print more dollars, the oil price will go up, up, up.

2)      An energy policy that calls for less drilling for oil at home, not more.

3)      Unrest in the middle east. (more…)

Jose Maria Aznar, former prime minister of Spain, grasps how free people should respond to the revolt in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East: On the one hand, they must do all within their power to “support those seeking to establish democracy and freedom in their countries, where men and women will have equal rights and dignity, leading to prosperity and stability.” And they must also “be equally vigilant about the possibility of these autocracies being replaced by theocratic regimes that will be hostile, dangerous, and even more oppressive.”

Specifically, autocracies in the region have too long “sown the seeds for the infiltration of radical Islamism as a false solution to society’s problems.”

From the outset of the anti-government protests in Egypt, many in the media hearkened effervescently, albeit shallowly, to the first part of this mandate. The narrative? Protestors were a jubilation composed of people from different walks of life, all united in their hunger for political and economic freedom.

The second part of Aznar’s formula, vigilance regarding the possible infiltration of inglorious evildoers in Glorious Revolutions, pointedly did not figure in the MSM’s reportage.

Most mainstream media outlets bent over backwards to ignore evidence that the country’s best-organized opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, is anything but a pacified, benign force deserving of respectful inclusion in any transition government and projected elections.

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As the protests in Egypt have raged on now for more than a week, President Obama and members of his administration continue to practice restraint in their communications and careful selection of the words that are spoken.  Hillary Clinton has cautioned against anything that could increase chaos.  U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told television networks that the “complex, very difficult situation in Egypt requires careful progress toward a peaceful transition to democracy rather than any sudden or violent change that could undermine the aspirations of the protesters.”

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs echoed the sentiments that while Egypt needs to change, it’s not the place of the United States to publicly support or oppose the removal of Mubarak.  Likewise, most Republicans are also on the same page as the Obama administration, speaking out in support of democratic reforms in Egypt, yet taking great care not to back or oppose Mubarak either way – at least not publicly.  Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, “I don’t have any criticism of President [Barack] Obama or Secretary [Hillary] Clinton at this point.  It’s important for U.S. officials “to speak as one voice during this crisis.”  As many have noted, Egypt is perhaps one of the only issues that’s rendered an overwhelmingly bi-partisan response.

But one man in particular is not exactly in agreement with that bi-partisan response:  George Soros.  And he’s warning us to toe the line – his line, that is.

The leftist billionaire who made his fortune on the back of US capitalism is taking aim at all the “rigid and ideological supporters of Israel” and “the religious right” for standing in the way of democracy for Egypt.

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Many people who are informed about what’s actually happening in the Middle East constantly wonder why Israel fares so badly in the information wars. The following example gives us a pretty good idea why.

Jawaher Abu Rahmah, a ‘Palestinian’ activist, died on January 1st. Saeb Erekat, the right fork of Yasser Arafat’s tongue, claimed that she died during a demonstration in the ‘Palestinian’ town of Bil’in, killed by “poison” contained in tear gas fired at the demonstration by Israeli soldiers after it deteriorated into what could best be termed a riot.

‘Palestinian’ President Mahmoud Abbas called Abu Rahmah’s death a “new Israeli crime carried out by the occupation army against our helpless nation.”

She was given a martyr’s funeral as a victim an Israeli “war crime”, with crowds of mourners and the usual Palestinian stringers who work for the dinosaur media in attendance.

The story was almost instantaneously reported around the world as fact by the AFP, the Guardian, The AP, The Independent, UPI, Voice of America, and even the Jewish Telegraphic Agency among others, while TIME’s resident Israel basher Tony Karon got off a piece celebrating this as the occasion of an alliance between ‘Palestinian’ activists and Israeli Leftists.

The real story? According to the IDF, there’s no evidence Abu Rahmah was even at the Bil’in demonstration, nor does she show up on any of the videos.

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Call us cynical but we wonder whether Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s passionate backing of the building of a controversial mosque near Ground Zero stems as much from Bloomberg’s belief in America’s “freedom of faith” as it might from the Mayor’s belief in the “virtues of Islamic finance?”

Does the Mayor’s unshakable support have anything to do with The Bloomberg (company) becoming a ‘single provider of information that caters to the Islamic business market’?  A Bloomberg five-year business plan for an Islamic finance portal via a Bloomberg hub at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) is already a reality.

Michael Bloomberg, has become a staunch supporter of the Cordoba House (Park51) Ground Zero Mosque.  In the process, the Mayor has lectured opponents on “religious liberty” and, by extension, implied that opposition to the mosque is largely based on bigotry.

Lately, Bloomberg has become so insistent on the mosque’s being built at its planned location that The New York Post has labeled him Pro-Mosque Mike.”

A defiant Mayor Bloomberg, saying there should be no compromise, insisted last night that a mosque be built near Ground Zero, declaring, “We must do what is right, not what is easy.

While Bloomberg hasn’t been shy about questioning the motives of those opposed to the mosque’s location, the media has shied away from the Mayor‘s motivations.  But what of the Mayor’s motives? What might they be? Does a strong passion for religious liberty explain all?

Some of Bloomberg LP’s officials may hold some clues. (more…)

Fourth of a series.  Find parts one, two and three here.  And don’t miss this report, either.

Martha Coakley declares that terrorists are “gone from Afghanistan” and has no idea the Taliban are either terrorists or our sworn enemies.

No one ever accused Martha Coakley of having any foreign-policy experience.  After all, as a career lawyer, prosecutor, state attorney general and lifelong Democrat party hack, the “Massachusette” can’t rationally be expected to be as up on the nuances of the “war on terror” as, say, Joe Biden.

Still, her remarks during her one debate with Scott Brown on January 11 should trouble anyone who hopes that a potential successor to the warm body currently occupying the deceased Lion of the Senate’s seat would have, shall we say, a greater grasp of the geo-political situation.

First, in her own words, her foreign-policy credentials:

I have a sister who lives overseas and she’s been in England and now lives in the Middle East.  I’ve spent a lot of time on my own traveling, ‘cause I’m interested in it.  Less so as attorney general, and my responsibilities don’t take me overseas.

Unbelievable?  See for yourself:

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