The Obama Obami Whammy

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Read this from Barry Rubin and ask yourself, well, don't really. Just sigh.

The June 20 White House statement opens thusly:

"The President has described the situation in Gaza as unsustainable and has made clear that it demands fundamental change."

One would expect that a rational policy would use the words "unsustainable" and "demands fundamental change" to mean that the president demands the overthrow of Hamas. In fact, it signifies the exact opposite: he demands the stabilization of that regime.

The statement continues:

"On June 9, [Obama] announced that the United States was moving forward with $400 million in initiatives and commitments for the West Bank and Gaza. The President described these projects as a down payment on the U.S. commitment to the people of Gaza, who deserve a chance to take part in building a viable, independent state of Palestine, together with those who live in the West Bank."
Just think of the calm insanity of that paragraph. The United States is going to pump money into Gaza. That money is a "down payment on the U.S. commitment," that is, it is not an act of generosity for which the United States deserves to get something in return. No, the phrasing makes it seem that the United States owes them the money.

Obama's Islamic Envoy: Obama Is America’s “Educator-in-Chief on Islam”

Envoy Rashad Hussain says U.S. will work with Organization for the Islamic Conference in the UN to stop "defamation of religion."

BY STEPHEN SCHWARTZ

June 24, 2010 10:18 AM

Weekly Standard

Rashad Hussain, America’s special envoy to the Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC), the Saudi-based body formed in 1969 to “protect” Jerusalem from the Israelis, announced a new title this week for President Barack Obama.  According to Hussain, Obama is America’s “Educator-in-Chief on Islam.”

Hussain so designated Obama in a keynote speech Wednesday, June 23, at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.  The occasion was another “post-Cairo” conference, following on the event that welcomed Islamist ideologueTariq Ramadan to Washington in April. Hussain also declared that Obama is “Educator-in-Chief” on the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which has produced diplomatic and political events around the capital for someyears.  Hussain affirmed with satisfaction that presidential iftar dinners, where the fast is broken after sundown, and which had formerly been limited to diplomats from Muslim countries, now welcomed American Muslims from throughout society.

In his remarks, Hussain also congratulated Obama for sending Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser, to last year’s annual convention of the Islamic Society of North America, a notorious front for Saudi-financed Muslim radicalism.  Worse, Hussain has now divulged that the U.S. will support the OIC in the latter’s United Nations effort to criminalize “defamation of religion” – widely perceived as a measure to suppress criticism of Muslim practices that violate human rights.  "The OIC and the Obama administration will work together in the UN on the issue of defamation of religion, especially in Europe," said Hussain. He had previously said, at the above-mentioned April “post-Cairo” conference, that the U.S. would work with the OIC to defend the Muslim head-scarf against prohibitions on its display in schools and governmental offices – a measure common to secular France and now Islamist-ruled, but still legally-secular Turkey, as well as Muslim-majority Tunisia and Kosovo.  

Obama, Hussain declaimed, has created an “overarching framework” for relations between Muslims and non-Muslims that is lacking in Europe.  The problem, according to the president’s man at the OIC, is that a once-favorable relationship between the West and the Muslim countries has turned negative in the past decade – presumably, since 9/11.  Put plainly, Obama’s desire to educate Americans about Islam is founded on nostalgia for a warm and reliable friendship that rarely existed.

As noted by Hussain, Obama has called for references to “Islamic terrorism” and “jihadism” to be expunged from the official vocabulary employed by his administration, and has pronounced last year’s Fort Hood massacre to be unrelated to Islam.  As the president has assured the world, terrorism is anti-Islamic and the term “jihad” has been misused.  Thus Obama presumes not only to act as “educator” on Islam to non-Muslim Americans, but to define the religion for its own adherents.

Hussain addressed his comments to an event assessing the impact of Obama’s Cairo speech.  But Hussain employed a phrase that must have been chilling to those who heard in it an echo, saying “Islam is a solution” to the current global challenges emerging from Muslim ranks.  A “post-Cairo” phrase indeed: “Islam is the solution” is the slogan of the radical Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.  Are we learning yet?

Obamadowop, Obamadowop, Obamadowop-dowah

Note:  The Blogmocracy presented a little humor last night and wanted to share with everyone, o here it is - a little "aggravation" brought to you by Obama!  (Not sure if clicking on the photo will work, so included the song Aggravation with this posting.  Bee Sting

“I’ve met Norman Fox & the Rob Roys, and I can tell you that Barrack Obama is no Norman Fox.” –Senator Lloyd Benson, 2006.

If you want some Aggravation, click on the image and then we’ll have an Overnight Open Thread.  ..... The Blogmocracy

 Aggravation -Norman Fox & The Rob Roys 

 

Book: Obama dressed down Pentagon brass

Support our troops

May 5th, 2010

AP

 Obama was not happy about the public requests for troops

President Barack Obama reprimanded top Pentagon officials last year for pressing publicly for a troop increase in Afghanistan. 

That’s according to "The Promise," a book on Obama’s first year in office by Newsweek writer Jonathan Alter. It goes on sale May 19. 

The book says Obama laid into Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen in an Oval Office meeting last October. 

Obama was irked by the leak of a confidential report by Gen. Stanley McChrystal calling for an expanded military presence in Afghanistan, and by McChrystal saying he could not support a strategy relying on special forces and unmanned drone attacks. 

Obama was conducting a lengthy review of operations in Afghanistan at the time. He largely sided with the generals and agreed to deploy 30,000 more troops.

Read More: 

Note:  Obama is irked by "confidential" leaks and yet, reveals to the world what was once "Top Secret" reports on the nuclear capabilities of the United States on the first day of the UN meeting in New York - same day the madman from Iran defies the world community, mocks and threatens the United States and Israel, while defending Iran's on-going nuclear capabilities.  Obama's continued, twisted ideas of what is and is not "confidential" is extremely twisted, to the point of placing the United States in danger of future attacks by terrorists and rogue nations, such as, Iran.  His lack of respect towards top Pentagon officials is one more example that he listens to the wrong advisers, while bowing to foreign desert kings.   Bee Sting

Obama Puts NY In The Crosshairs

Gathering of Eagles: NY

Fighting the Insurgency at Home

April 5, 2010 in

In a stunning display of radical leftist ideology, Barack Obama has decided that the United States will no longer hold the threat of nuclear annihilation over the heads of anyone who decides to attack the United States with chemical, biological and in some cases nuclear weapons.

Essentially he has unilaterally decided that it is OK to put New York in the crosshairs of state sponsored terrorists.

Of course he is not a New Yorker. He did not witness almost three thousand of our fellow citizens brutally murdered in a surprise attack on a beautiful September morning. He did not know any of the 343 firefighters who sacrificed their lives in an attempt to save others. He did not know any of the police or medical workers who died trying to do the same. For him, that was a man caused contingency. For us it was War.

Now, by pursuing this ’strategy’, Obama is opening the door to new attacks with all manner of weapons of mass destruction by state sponsored terrorists, without fear of the ultimate penalty.

It must be nice to live in a mental fantasy world in which there are no enemies who wish to kill your citizens and their families. A world in which everything is Unicorns and Rainbows. Most people who live in such worlds are confined to institutions. We have one sitting in the oval office.

Obama Declares War on Fishing

EXPOSE OBAMA

April 2nd, 2010

By Beth Daley, Boston Globe

Obama is really cracking down on fishing

The federal government finalized the most fundamental changes in New England fishing rules in more than a generation yesterday, over the strenuous objections of many fishermen who say they will be put out of business.

The new rules, which take effect May 1, come after years of effort by the federal government and environmental groups to stop overfishing of the region’s fabled cod, flounder, and other bottom-dwelling species that once were said to be so plentiful that colonists caught them simply by lowering baskets into the sea.

The rules encourage boat owners to organize into groups that will be allocated a share of the annual quota for each species, and already fishermen who account for the vast majority of the catch in New England have voluntarily formed groups, called sectors. The system is designed to give fishermen more financial incentive to be good stewards of the sea and more flexibility in deciding who fishes and when, such as allowing fishermen to avoid bad weather.

The government is also lowering the total amount of many species of fish that can be caught.

Although some fishermen say the idea has merit, most say it is going into effect too quickly and the catch limits are too harsh. The end result, they say, will be fishermen losing jobs across New England.

“The bottom line is there hasn’t been enough analysis on these catch shares,’’ said Richie Canastra, co-owner of the Whaling City and Boston Seafood auctions. He said he fears that 50 percent of the region’s fishermen could be squeezed out of business by the rules.

“We are getting these sectors forced down our throat,’’ he said.

For almost three decades, New England fishermen have been subject to a dizzying array of restrictions that have attempted to control fish populations by limiting how many days fishermen could fish each year, where they could go in the ocean, and how many fish they could land on each voyage. But technology outpaced the tightening restrictions, allowing fishermen to find fish more easily and continue to catch too many overall, according to the federal government. The end result, federal regulators say, is too many boats chasing too few fish — preventing many depleted fish populations from fully rebuilding.

Although the new rules allow boats to still catch fish under the old rules, they make it financially unattractive to do so. About 812 of the region’s 1,480 boats that fish for bottom-dwelling species have opted for sectors — they represent 98 percent of fish landings in recent years.

“Fishermen are understandably apprehensive about the changes, not only because they mean significant catch cuts, but also because for many it means doing business in a completely new way,’’ said Patricia Kurkul, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Northeast fisheries regional administrator. “Taking these actions is critical to the long-term health of the fish and the fishing businesses that rely on them.’’

The new rules are also highly complicated. Although catch shares have worked in many fisheries, this is the first time the concept is being broadly applied to New England’s unique bottom-dwelling fish, where species of many types are found together and hauled up in nets.

NOAA has committed about $47.2 million in the last two years to help start sectors, conduct at-sea research, and work to create better fishing gear that enables fishermen to be more selective in the fish they catch.

Fishermen, with the support of Governor Deval Patrick, say they believe the federal government is undercounting many species of fish, including pollock. Under the new rules, undercounting could have serious implications because all fishing could stop if fishermen haul up too many fish that are doing poorly, such as yellowtail flounder.

“Under the plan, the weakest fish controls everything else,’’ said Brian Rothschild, Montgomery Charter professor of marine science and technology at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth. Last week, Mayor Scott Lang of New Bedford asked NOAA officials to temporarily delay the new rules until they get the “science straight’’ on fish populations.

But NOAA officials said the new rules allow Kurkul to alter catch limits far more quickly than in the past if stocks are shown to be improving. The agency is currently reanalyzing two species, including pollock.

“If these stocks are improving — and we do not know that yet — we will work to put that information into action, which could mean an increase in the allowable catch for both stocks without damaging rebuilding,’’ said Eric Schwaab, assistant administrator for the NOAA Fisheries Service.

Beth Daley can be reached at bdaley@globe.com.

© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.

Note: Maybe Obama can force his new health care reform down the throats of the fish! Living in a New England state that depends upon the sale of fishing/hunting licenses to help support Fish and Game, I would say this new "war on fishing" will have a greater impact not just for fishermen, but also the State Department that monitors fishing, a recreatonal sport. Bee Sting

Obama: Americans have lost faith in government

AFP

no surprise here

Many Americans have lost faith in their government, US President Barack Obama admitted Wednesday, tackling a pervasive sentiment hobbling his hopes for enacting sweeping reform.

American suspicion of government was deepening, he said in a speech from the heartland state of Missouri, where he pushed his endangered health reform drive that has been branded by Republicans as a government takeover.

"People have lost faith in government — they had lost faith in government before I ran (for president), and it has been getting worse," Obama said at a rally in St. Louis.

He quoted his political hero, US Civil War-era president Abraham Lincoln, as saying that the role of government was to do what needed to be done but could not be done by citizens themselves without help.
"That pretty much sums up my attitude," Obama said.

The president used the trip to roll out a plan to crack down on waste and fraud in federal health programs for the poor and senior citizens as well as other government spending, which he said amounted to billions of dollars per year.

"I don't accept business as usual... and the American people don't accept it either," Obama said, adding the plan would help cut massive long-term deficits casting a shadow over economic recovery hopes.

In many ways, Obama's entire political program represents a bid to show that government can work, despite inbred US skepticism about federal power and Republican claims that he wants to orchestrate a takeover of much of American life.

Obama has embarked on a fierce week-long campaign to secure crucial votes in Congress on his health care plan before he leaves on a trip to Indonesia and Australia on March 18.

In a bid to evade Republican blocking tactics, he wants the House to ditch legislation it approved in November and pass the Senate's version of health care reform coupled with "fixes" to that bill.

But the approach is high-risk as some conservative Democrats oppose it and others have a wary eye on the polls, with a third of senators and all of the House of Representatives up for re-election in November's mid-term elections.

Barack Obama has made me want to boycott America

March 12th, 2010

By Alex Singleton, UK telegraph

So much for making America popular again….

The special relationship is over. We gave America years of unwavering support after September 11. And now we see how Barack Obama’s administration repays us.

First, Obama declared that America was “neutral” over the sovereignty of the Falklands, ignoring the clear wishes of the islands’ population. And, second, his Assistant Secretary of State, Philip Crowley, snubbed Britain by failing to use their proper name and instead calling them the “Malvinas”.

I don’t know where Obama learned about diplomacy, but his stinks. I’m normally pro-American, but Mr Obama’s seeming support for Argentinian aggressors, who have no legitimate claim over the Falklands, is gratuitously offensive. So from today, I’m boycotting America as a tourist destination. This summer, I’ll be going to France, not California.

Let me be clear: I’m not normally in favour of boycotts, and I love the American people. I holiday in their country regularly, and hate the tedious snobby sneers against the United States. But the American people chose to elect an idiot who seems hell bent on insulting their allies, and something must be done to stop Obama’s reckless foreign policy, before he does the dirty on his allies on every issue.

If our American friends want to stop Obama shredding the respect the rest of the planet has towards America, they need to stop Obama’s destructive policies – and fast.

Obama’s Homeland Security now digging into all internet communication

Expose Obama
March 6th, 2010

By Siobhan Gorman,WSJ

“All internet communication” is subject to be searched by Obama dept. of homeland security

The Obama administration lifted the veil Tuesday on a highly-secretive set of policies to defend the U.S. from cyber attacks.

It was an open secret that the National Security Agency was bolstering a Homeland Security program to detect and respond to cyber attacks on government systems, but a summary of that program declassified Tuesday provides more details of NSA’s role in a Homeland program known as Einstein.

The current version of the program is widely seen as providing meager protection against attack, but a new version being built will be more robust–largely because it’s rooted in NSA technology. The program is designed to look for indicators of cyber attacks by digging into all Internet communications, including the contents of emails, according to the declassified summary.

Homeland Security will then strip out identifying information and pass along data on new threats to NSA. It will also use threat information from NSA to better identify emerging cyber attacks.

NSA’s role is a careful balance because of the political battles that ensued over the agency’s role in domestic surveillance in the George W. Bush administration. Declassifying details of the NSA’s role, in a program initially developed during the Bush administration and continued in the Obama administration, will likely ignite new debates over privacy.

and more:

Details of “Einstein” Cyber Shield Disclosed by White House

By Siobhan Gorman

The Obama administration lifted the veil Tuesday on a highly-secretive set of policies to defend the U.S. from cyber attacks.

It was an open secret that the National Security Agency was bolstering a Homeland Security program to detect and respond to cyber attacks on government systems, but a summary of that program declassified Tuesday provides more details of NSA’s role in a Homeland program known as Einstein.

The current version of the program is widely seen as providing meager protection against attack, but a new version being built will be more robust–largely because it’s rooted in NSA technology. The program is designed to look for indicators of cyber attacks by digging into all Internet communications, including the contents of emails, according to the declassified summary.

Homeland Security will then strip out identifying information and pass along data on new threats to NSA. It will also use threat information from NSA to better identify emerging cyber attacks.

NSA’s role is a careful balance because of the political battles that ensued over the agency’s role in domestic surveillance in the George W. Bush administration. Declassifying details of the NSA’s role, in a program initially developed during the Bush administration and continued in the Obama administration, will likely ignite new debates over privacy.

The White House’s new cyber-security chief, Howard Schmidt, announced the move to declassify the program in a speech at the RSA conference in San Francisco–his first major public address since assuming the post in January. He said addressing potential privacy concerns was one of the ten initial steps he planned to take. “We’re really paying attention, and we get it,” he said.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/03/02/%E2%80%9Ceinstein%E2%80%9D-program-disclosed-as-us-cyber-shield/?blog_id=100&post_id=11601

Obama Now Selling Judgeships for Health Care Votes?

TheWeeklyStandard.com
March 4th, 2010

BY JOHN MCCORMACK, The Weekly Standard

Obama is wheeling and dealing to get healthcare through

Tonight, Barack Obama will host ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November at the White House; he’s obviously trying to persuade them to switch their votes to yes. One of the ten is Jim Matheson of Utah. The White House just sent out a press release announcing that today President Obama nominated Matheson’s brother Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

“Scott Matheson is a distinguished candidate for the Tenth Circuit court,” President Obama said. “Both his legal and academic credentials are impressive and his commitment to judicial integrity is unwavering. I am honored to nominate this lifelong Utahn to the federal bench.”

So, Scott Matheson appears to have the credentials to be a judge, but was his nomination used to buy off his brother’s vote?

The timing of this nomination looks suspicious, especially in light of Democratic Congressman Joe Sestak’s claim that he was offered a federal job not to run against Arlen Specter in the Pennsylvania primary. Many speculated that Sestak, a former admiral, was offered the Secretary of the Navy job.

Barack Obama: Super Hero Falls to Earth

ExposeObama.com
March 5th, 2010

By Floyd and Mary Beth Brown, Expose Obama

Obama has come plummeting down to earth

Barack Obama was feted by many as a messiah. His supporters compared him to Jesus.

He even equated himself to Superman, saying at a dinner that he had been “born on Krypton and sent here … to save the planet Earth.” The remark was presented as a joke, but the effect of Obama’s ego is no laughing matter.

Now, just over a year into his term, his legislative agenda lies in ruins. Despite poll after poll showing that Americans’ main priority is jobs, the president has focused on taking over the U.S. healthcare system.

Observing the wreckage, noted political pundit Charlie Cook candidly told Politico, “I think choosing to take a Captain Ahab-like approach to healthcare — I’m going to push for this even in the worst downturn since the Great Depression — is roughly comparable to Bush’s decision to go to war [in Iraq], It basically destroyed the first year of a presidency.”

What a fall, from “Super Hero” to obsessed Captain Ahab chasing his great white whale.

To save his whale, Obama and his legislative allies Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are resorting to bare knuckled politics. The aptly named “nuclear option,” a classic piece of legislative trickery involving the reconciliation fast-track, which he denounced while campaigning, has become his final option.

Rather than a white whale, we should call ObamaCare his white elephant. Even if it passes, most knowledgeable legal scholars believe it will be ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Matt Patterson, in an analysis prepared for the National Center for Public Policy Research, says the bill is unconstitutional for multiple reasons: “Both the House and Senate versions of ObamaCare contain penalty taxes on Americans who do not have government-approved health insurance, the so-called ‘individual mandate.’ Such a tax would function as a direct, or capitation, tax, as opposed to a tax on activity, such as excise or income taxes, and would therefore fall outside Congress’ authority to tax income granted by the 16th Amendment to the Constitution.”

The Constitution places strict restrictions on Congress’ power to lay capitation taxes under Article I, Sec. 9, which reads “No Capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.”

Exemptions for some people built into the Senate bill’s individual mandate tax would make it impossible for ObamaCare to meet this constitutional standard.

Patterson summarizes this way, “Some of the finest legal minds in the country have concluded that the enforcement provisions of ObamaCare’s individual mandate would violate the both spirit and the letter of the U.S. Constitution. Apparently, President Obama and members of Congress think they are smarter than these scholars — and smarter than the authors of the Constitution.”

The penalties for following Obama on his search for Moby Dick will be brutal for Democrats in Congress. With over 60 percent of Americans opposed to Obamacare the fall campaign could turn into a referendum on this unwise scheme. Senior citizens are understandably upset by the massive $400 Billion-plus cuts in Medicare mandated in the plan. Democrats are predicted to lose dozens of congressional seats, and they could even lose their Senate or House majorities.

Even if the Democrats don’t lose their majorities, and the new Congress doesn’t have the votes to repeal ObamaCare, the Supreme Court is likely to do the job. And they should; the bill isn’t just unconstitutional, full of new taxes, too big and unmanageable — it is un-American.

Barack Obama: Terrorists are Just “Folks”

Gathering of Eagles.com

February 8, 2010

STILL NOT LISTENING: Obama Wants KSM in NYC

In a Pig’s Eye!

This maroon still wants to hold the terrorist trials in NYC, give these terrorist ‘folks’ the same rights as American citizens and a platform to entertain their jihadi brethren while insulting the families and survivors of 9-11.

This is beyond “stuck on stupid” this is wallowing in idiocy.

http://michellemalkin.com/2010/02/08/attention-nyc-white-house-still-stuck-on-stupid/

Obama Says Bipartisanship, But What He Wants Is GOP Surrender

CBSNEWS.COM
Posted by Mark Knoller

Unannounced, President Obama took to the lectern in the White House briefing room today to give a personal readout of his meeting earlier with congressional leaders of both parties.

"Despite the political posturing that often paralyzes this town, there are many issues upon which we can and should agree, he said.

It was more a plaintive plea than a political observation. His top legislative priorities are going nowhere and he's searching for a way to get them out of lockup.

In this 13th month of his presidency, he's anxious to pass a jobs bill and be seen addressing an unemployment rate that only last week declined from double digits. And his efforts to enact bills on energy, financial regulatory reform and especially health care are stuck in Congress despite the solid majority his party holds in both chambers.

He's appealing for a spirit of bipartisanship - urging Democrats and Republicans alike "to put aside matters of party for the good of the country."

It's a familiar refrain from U.S. presidents who can't get their way in Congress.

"We must put aside our political differences if we're ever to set our economy to rights," said President Reagan in 1982.

"It is time to put aside partisan rivalries and work together for our nation's future," said President Reagan in 1987 in trying to get Congress to enact deficit reduction

"We must put aside partisanship for the sake of our nation," said the first President Bush in 1990 in appealing for congressional cooperation on the budget.

"We must now put aside bitterness and rancor, move beyond partisanship," urged President Clinton in 1993 in trying to get Congress to pass his economic plan.

What these presidential appeals for bipartisanship always mean is: do it my way.
Mr. Obama said he "won't hesitate to embrace a good idea from my friends in the minority party." But he wants his way. He wants his energy policy enacted along with his jobs bill, his financial regulatory reform and his health care plan.

And if the opposition continues to block his objectives, he said he "won't hesitate to condemn what I consider to be obstinacy that's rooted not in substantive disagreement but in political expedience."

When a sitting president calls for bipartisanship by the opposition – he really means surrender. And if they block his proposals, its "obstinacy" and not political views they hold as strongly as he holds his.

Mr. Obama again said the American people are frustrated by the political stalemate in Congress. And he can be counted among the frustrated as well.

He wants to be seen calmly pursuing his legislative goals – and he told reporters today that his meeting with congressional leaders from both sides of the aisle went well. So well, in fact, he joked that the Senate leaders, Democrat Harry Reid and Republican Mitch McConnell had gone out to the South Lawn to make snow angels – together." (Watch Mr. Obama's comment.)

It still leaves them with a chilly relationship.

Mark Knoller is a CBS News White House correspondent. You can read more of his posts in Hotsheet here. You can also follow him on Twitter here: http://twitter.com/markknoller.

State of the Union Address - Responses

John Kerry Sen. (D-Mass.) :

Tonight's address promised a seismic shift in the climate and energy debate.

President Obama reaffirmed that comprehensive climate and energy independence legislation is a top priority for his White House and threw the weight of his presidency behind a principled compromise that prices carbon to reduce pollution, invests in new energy, and also embraces nuclear, clean coal, and even drilling.

These are core elements of the plan Lindsey Graham, Joe Lieberman and I are working on every day. The inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom that this issue has stalled is dead wrong. This is not and never has been a partisan issue, and Senators Graham, Lieberman, and I will continue building consensus on both sides of the aisle with all those willing to engage to create jobs, advance our security interests, reduce pollution, and make America more competitive. We’ve made more progress in the past year than we have in the past decade on this issue, and we can cross the finish line. We can surprise a lot of people as we work towards 60 votes in the Senate. Comprehensive legislation will not only speed economic recovery but will also put our country on the path to sustainable long-term economic growth/

______________________________________________

James J. Zogby President, Arab American Institute :

What the President didn't talk about.

When I read the President's remarks about his frustrations with Arab-Israeli peace-making in his interview with Time Magazine's Joe Klein, I was concerned. When he didn't mention this effort at all in tonight's speech, I felt even greater distress. I hope he's not getting ready to walk away from the process. This would be a huge mistake. In the Time Magazine interview the President suggests that he underestimated the difficulties in moving Israelis and Palestinians forward. Harder than health care? Harder than energy reform? Than banking reforms? While the President correctly indicates that he's ready set down markers and meet these challenges head on, he should demonstrate the same resolve and fighting spirit in the effort to move Israelis and Palestinians to a solution that he has acknowledged is in our national security interests.

____________________________________________________

Rory Cooper Dir., Strategic Communications, Heritage Foundation :

Tonight, President Obama did what he does best. He stared into two pieces of glass and delivered an emotional campaign stump speech that has no hope of solving our economic or national security dilemmas. But different from previous speeches, this one seemed to have dozens of authors as it contradicted itself and his policies often and emphatically. He said he didn't want to re-litigate the past, when the primary focus of the address was exactly that. He said he didn't want to penalize bankers, right after he gloriously announced his punitive tax on bankers who have paid back the U.S. Treasury in full with interest.

He said he wanted to control spending, and then rattled off a laundry list of liberal investments (free money!). He asked for alternatives to health care reform, ignoring that conservatives have been offering them up by the dozens all year. He said he hadn't raised taxes, which simply is not true. He envisioned government subsidized railroads, jobs and industry. And he intimidated and scolded the Supreme Court who sat there by duty taking it. That was not a very presidential moment, nor calculated very wisely.Reduce...

He spent maybe ten sentences on terrorism 40 minutes into his speech after a year where Fort Hood and an airliner over Detroit were attacked. Terrorism simply is not a priority for this president still, and it shows. His continued need to treat terrorists as constitutionally protected Americans strains credibility and is indefensible.

I’m sad to say the state of our union is not strong. The people are strong, and vocal, engaged and informed. But the government is not responding to their strength in equal measure. Instead of looking for a message to pivot, the President needs a fresh set of ideas, domestic and foreign. And fresh ideas do not include an inconsequential spending freeze that was rightly laughed at. The President didn't even mention entitlement reform, the 800lb gorilla in the room, which is the only responsible path towards a sound fiscal future and a true health care reform.

According the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom, America is now less free than Canada economically, and for the first time in the history of the Index, the U.S. has fallen out of the “free” category. This is a big deal that is accelerated by the President’s policies he discussed tonight. Instead of creating jobs and economic growth, the President continues to foster liberal ideas that stifle investment and cause great uncertainty.

The American public is getting used to seeing the President deliver a speech from a teleprompter. Even thirty or so school kids were recently forced into this position when he visited a small classroom last week. He really brought a teleprompter! The President needs to look past the glass and start a conversation with America on how we can get back on track. Tonight, he did not accomplish such a feat.
________________________________________________

Richard Albert Professor of Law, Boston College :

It was utterly shocking to hear the President decry the recent Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which lifted restrictions on corporate and union expenditures in political campaigns. By emphatically urging Congress to pass a bill reversing what he views as the Supreme Court's misguided judgment--"a bill that helps to right this wrong," in the President's own words--the President undermined two sacred institutions in American constitutional government: the separation of powers and judicial independence.
__________________________________________________

Scott Stanzel Pres., Stanzel Communications, former Dpty. WH Press Secretary :

Tonight in a lengthy speech, President Obama gave lip service to market-based approaches to strengthening the economy (like trade and tax relief, which he and his party vehemently oppose in practice). He inappropriately condemned the justices of the Supreme Court sitting in front of him by criticizing their recent judgment reaffirming free speech. His remarks, while well-crafted, will be remembered for being forgettable. There were no bold proposals or signature lines. He may be a prisoner of his speaking prowess, as a well-delivered speech which lacks provocative thinking and doesn’t shatter high expectations is quickly discarded.
_________________________________________________

David Mark Moderator :

Aaron David Miller
Public Policy Scholar
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

Judging by the substance of the president's State of the Union address, Barack Obama's first year has been a teachable moment -- for him.

Despite the self-justifying kudos for his own policy and his commitment to health care, energy, and climate change, the white flag is up. And the president has surrendered to the reality that moments for transformative change in America are truly rare, and this isn't one of them.

The "we can do everything and i am the agent of change to remake America approach" has given way to a welcome focus on the economy, the middle class, and jobs. That focus on jobs is right, necessary and critical if the president wants to keep his. And the downsizing that was evident in the president's very practical suggestions to address unemployment and growth may well prove over time to be a victory for the president (and for us). A year in, Barack Obama is learning that campaigning and politics is often about what people want; governance in America -- if done right -- is about what they can actually get. and now more than ever that means putting Americans back to work, keeping them in their homes and secure.

____________________________________________________

Karen Kerrigan President, Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council :

I was disappointed. For a President who needs bipartisanship to get meaningful legislation through the Congress to help our economy, the speech had a divisive edge. Too much sarcasm and too many jabs despite his opening line thats Americans deserve a government that matches their decency. It was totally inappropriate and tasteless to scold the Supreme Court -- some of the Justices bristled at this move. The President got it wrong on what went wrong with his health care bill -- the more he "explained" it, as I recall, the less popular it became. This was not the speech I was expecting -- I thought for sure it would be more humble, more bipartisan and offer market oriented ideas and incentives for creating jobs and getting our economy going again. Small businesses will have a mixed reaction to his proposals. If enacted, some of the measures may help some, but his insistence on moving forward with the massive health care bill (roundly rejected by the voters of Mass.), cap-and-trade legislation and tax increases on small business owners will keep them hunkered down. So much for creating jobs.

_____________________________________________________

Craig Shirley Reagan biographer and president, Shirley and Banister Public Affairs :

Jimmy Obama


This so-called speech by President Obama tonight will go down in as one of the worst in American history. Attacking the American citizenry while championing government bureaucrats was Jimmy Carteresque. Shameless.

You may call this State of the Union, "Malaise II."

Please permit the use of a personal pronoun, but I have never in my life ever heard the Congress actually laugh in derision at a president as they did tonight when he tried to lecture then about budgets, nor has anyone ever heard such a partisan attack on the opposition party, nor such a galling and puerile attack on the members of the US Supreme Court.

With his excessive self-absorption and whining about what he claims he inherited from George Bush, the US Constitution affords Obama a choice to leave office. All he need do is send a letter to the Secretary of State.

But I wouldn't recommend it.

___________________________________________________

Bradley A. Smith Professor, election law and campaign finance :

This was a very partisan, unpresidential SOTU, but there is one particular on which I will comment. The President said: Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign corporations -- to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities.

Here the President is referring to the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v .Federal Election Commission, the case in which the government claimed the authority to ban books. The President's statement is false.

Foreign nationals, which is specifically defined to include foreign corporations, are prohibited from making "a contribution or donation of money or ather thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State or local election." They are also prohibited from making any contribution or donation to any committee of any political party, and they prohibited from making any "expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication... ." 2 United States Code Section 441e. This is demogoguery of the worst kind by our President.

Pakistan’s Rebuff Over New Offensives Rankles U.S.

By ERIC SCHMITT and DAVID E. SANGER
Published: January 24, 2010

WASHINGTON — The Pakistani Army’s announcement last week that it planned no new offensive against militants for as long as a year has deeply frustrated senior American military officers, and chipped away at one of the cornerstones of President Obama’s strategy to reverse the Taliban’s gains in Afghanistan and Pakistan. When Mr. Obama announced his decision in December to send 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, he and his aides made clear that the chances of success hinged significantly on Pakistan’s willingness to eliminate militants’ havens in its territory, including in the tribal region of North Waziristan. United States officials described the American and NATO surge of troops as a hammer, but they said it required a Pakistani anvil on the other side of the border to prevent the Taliban from retreating to the mountains.

Now that strategy appears imperiled by Pakistan’s latest statement. On Thursday, soon after Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates arrived on a two-day trip to the country, the Pakistani Army’s chief spokesman, Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, rebuffed American pressure to step up attacks in North Waziristan. That area is the main base of operations for the Haqqani network, which stages operations against American and Afghan forces in Afghanistan. It is believed to be responsible for many of the attacks on Kabul, including a devastating assault early last week near the presidential palace.

Fighters from Al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban have also been concentrated in North Waziristan, including many who were driven out of their positions in South Waziristan by recent Pakistani Army operations.

“This has become the center,” a senior administration official said, speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to discuss American strategy publicly.

American officials said they had not been surprised by the Pakistani announcement. Since the last two years of the Bush administration, the United States has been arguing for a far more active Pakistani military presence in North Waziristan. But some said they had been surprised that the rebuff was issued while Mr. Gates was in the country, rather than after he left.

General Abbas told reporters it could be 6 to 12 months before the army consolidated its current operations and began any new offensive. Some American officials think it could be longer.

The critical question is how much the Pakistani decision will undercut Mr. Obama’s strategy. During a speech at West Point on Dec. 1, he said his administration would reassess the plan at the end of 2010, after all the troops deployed as part of the increase were in place. But if the Pakistani position does not change, the operations on Pakistan’s side of the border will not have begun by the time Mr. Obama has made his assessment.

Mr. Obama made no public demands on Islamabad when he announced the troop increase at West Point, but he said he was acting “with the full recognition that our success in Afghanistan is inextricably linked to our partnership with Pakistan.” He quickly added: “We need a strategy that works on both sides of the border.”

Mr. Obama praised the Pakistani Army for waging an offensive in Swat and South Waziristan, where the Pakistani Taliban were taking aim at the country’s fragile government. He promised to work with the Pakistanis to strengthen their ability to combat the militants, but he said the United States had “made it clear that we cannot tolerate a safe haven for terrorists whose location is known and whose intentions are clear.”

Pakistani officials have not refused to go after Qaeda or Taliban fighters in North Waziristan. But they have made it clear that their forces are too tied up now to conduct new, larger operations on Washington’s schedule.

As a practical matter, American officials said, Pakistan’s inability or reluctance to open a new front in North Waziristan will increase the reliance on missile strikes from drones operated by the C.I.A. to disrupt attacks aimed at Afghanistan.

American officials said that Pakistani military leaders had never promised a specific timetable for beginning a new offensive, but that announcing a delay of as much as 12 months could aid the militants’ planning and morale on both sides of the border.

“It’s disappointing, but not entirely surprising,” said a senior Defense Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid jeopardizing his ties with Pakistani counterparts.

Mr. Gates and other American officials sought to put the best face on the situation last week, saying that the Pakistani Army was stretched thin from its previous offensives against militants.

“Pakistani leadership will make its own decisions about what the best timing for their military operations is, about when they are ready to do something or whether they are going to do it at all,” Mr. Gates told Pakistani journalists on Friday, the day after General Abbas’s comments.

“The way I like to express it is, we’re in this car together, but the Pakistanis are in the driver’s seat and have their foot on the accelerator,” Mr. Gates said. “And that’s just fine with me.”

Gen. David H. Petraeus, the head of the military’s Central Command, said at a conference in Washington on Friday that American officials must be mindful of the limitations facing Pakistan’s military.

General Petraeus said that the Pakistani leaders would need to negotiate agreements with local tribal leaders to hold the gains that the Pakistani military has achieved in places like Swat and South Waziristan. But he emphasized that any deals must be more resilient than previous pacts in the tribal areas, which fell apart and allowed the militants to regain control.

Senior American officers in the region said that cooperation with their Pakistani counterparts had improved in recent months.

NATO military leaders, for instance, recently provided a detailed briefing on the campaign in Afghanistan to Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the Pakistani army chief of staff, a senior American officer said. Pakistani officers reciprocated last week with a briefing for NATO officers on their campaign plans, the American officer said.

7 Bodies Found With Warnings

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — The bodies of seven people accused by the Taliban of spying for the United States were found in North Waziristan on Sunday, officials and residents said.

Notes attached to the bullet-ridden bodies accused the victims of working with the United States as it carries out a wave of drone strikes in the region, and warned that anyone else who did so would meet the same end.

Drone attacks in the region have increased significantly since the bombing of a C.I.A. base in Khost, Afghanistan, that killed seven Americans on Dec. 30.

Elisabeth Bumiller contributed reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan.

Slowly but surely ... US Terror Blacklist Whitewashes Hamas, Enables Funding

Israpundit
January 24, 2010

US Terror Blacklist Whitewashes Hamas, Enables Funding

(IsraelNN.com) The United States Treasury has taken all but one member of Hamas off the international list of terrorists, thus enabling funds from the European Union to enter Hamas-controlled Gaza.

It is an open secret that large sums of money from the EU flow into Gaza in the guise of humanitarian aid and salaries for officials, but are actually funneled into the coffers of Hamas, which controls Gaza with an iron grip. This method of transferring funds into terrorists’ hands could have been blocked by an international lawsuit, but according to journalist Avi Tarango, the United States Treasury has made this impossible by removing all but one Hamas man – Deputy Chairman of the Political Bureau, Musa Abu Marzouk – from the list of international terrorists.

Obama Administration Lifts US Ban on Muslim (IsraelNN.com) The Barack Obama administration has decided to lift a ban preventing Muslim Scholar Professor Tariq Ramadan from entering the United States. Ramadan, an Egyptian currently living in Switzerland, is a leading member of Europe’s Muslim Brotherhood branch and the grandson of the movement’s founder Hassan al-Banna. The Muslim Brotherhood is the parent organization for Hamas and some of the groups that recently merged into al-Qaeda, including Ayman al Zawahiri’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

Bin Laden takes credit for Christmas Day attempt

In a recording carried by the Al-Jazeera Arabic news channel, Bin Laden addressed President Barak Obama saying the attack was a message like that of September 11 and more attacks against the US would be forthcoming.

“America will never dream of security unless we will have it in reality in Palestine,” he added. “God willing, our raids on you will continue as long as your support to the Israelis will continue.” Brotherhood Leader

All Process, No Peace The Obama administration needs to press the reset button on its Middle East diplomacy.

An Israeli soldier guards the West Bank
settlement of Elon Moreh near Nablus.

WeeklyStandard.com

BY Elliott Abrams

January 25, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 18

Peace in the Middle East has been on the Obama administration’s mind from the beginning. Two days after his inauguration the president traveled to the State Department to announce the appointment of George Mitchell as his Middle East peace negotiator. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the administration’s approach as “an intensive effort from day one.” Here was the plan: Israel would freeze construction in all the settlements and in Jerusalem; Arab states would reach out to Israel in tangible ways visible to their own publics and to Israelis; and the Palestinians would do better at building political institutions, ending incitement against Israel and fighting terror. With these achievements in hand the administration would lead the parties into peace negotiations to be concluded within the president’s first term. Nobel Prizes would be the frosting on the cake.

That’s not how it turned out, except for the Nobel Prize. As the Obama administration begins its second year in office, its Middle East peace efforts are widely regarded as a shambles. Its initial goals have all been missed. Israelis, Palestinians, and Arab governments have lost confidence in American leadership. The challenge for Year Two will be how to get out of this mess and on to a more positive track—but that will require some candor inside the administration in assessing what went wrong.

From the start the White House—led by the president himself and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel—has pushed hardest for Israeli concessions, a reversal of the standard pattern where the legendary Arabists in the State Department’s Near Eastern Affairs bureau criticize Israel while top officials defend her. This time, those at the top—including Mitchell and Clinton—publicly and repeatedly demanded a total Israeli construction freeze. And this time, the experts in the Near Eastern Affairs bureau and in U.S. embassies throughout the Middle East were the voices of caution and realism, for whatever their biases they knew Obama’s approach wouldn’t work. The Arabs would not step forward. Israel’s coalition politics would not permit adoption of a total freeze. What’s more, once we demanded it as a precondition for new negotiations, Palestinians could demand no less. And unlike us, they would not be able to walk away from that demand when Israel predictably said no.

The Health Care Bill Is Dead And other repercussions of Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts.

The Weekly Standard

BY Fred Barnes

January 20, 2010 12:30 AM

The impact of Republican Scott Brown’s capture of the Massachusetts Senate seat held for decades by Teddy Kennedy will be both immediate and powerful. It’s safe to say no single Senate election in recent memory is as important as this one.

Here are a few of the repercussions:

1) President Obama is weakened. For the third time in three months, he couldn’t deliver for a Democratic candidate. Last November, he abetted the defeat of Democrat Creigh Deeds in the Virginia governor’s race and failed to prevent Democrat Jon Corzine’s ouster as New Jersey governor. Now in Massachusetts, his appearance for Martha Coakley was a bust. A president who can’t aid his party’s candidates loses influence with Congress and inside his party.

That’s not all. Obama’s agenda, chiefly health care, took a beating in Massachusetts. In fact, it was the chief cause of Coakley’s defeat. Without the intrusion of national politics, she would have defeated Brown. But Obama and Democrats in Washington have created a hostile environment for Democratic candidates even in liberal and Democrat-dominated Massachusetts. So there’s a double whammy for Obama: he can’t help if he personally shows up to campaign on behalf of Democrats and his policies are ruining their chances of being elected.

2) Independents are lost to Democrats, at least for the time being. In 2006 and 2008, they fled Republicans in large numbers and facilitated Democratic triumphs for the House, Senate, and White House. Now they’ve staged a mass migration to the Republican camp. In Massachusetts, where they make up half the electorate, they overwhelmingly voted for Brown. This followed the 2-to-1 advantage they gave to Republicans in Virginia and New Jersey last year.

Democrats may win them back, but not if they stick with the liberal policies--especially the unbridled spending and $1 trillion deficits--of Obama and congressional Democrats. These are killer issues among independents. Perhaps it will take another unpopular Republican administration in Washington to push them toward Democrats again. And that is years away.

3) In the midterm election in November, Republicans are poised to win 25 or so House seats. But it will take a net of 40 to take control the House. For this, they need more open Democratic seats, which are easier to win than incumbent-held seats. Brown’s victory in Massachusetts is a good bet to scare many more Democrats into retirement.

If a Republican can win in Massachusetts, why not in Missouri or Pennsylvania or a solidly Democratic state like New York? Last week, Democrat Vic Snyder of Arkansas announced his retirement, citing the political climate as the reason. It’s an anti-Democratic climate.

4) Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell is the new king of Capitol Hill. His skill in keeping 40 Republicans united against Democratic health care reform was masterful, and it wasn’t easy. A number of Republican senators are drawn to co-sponsoring or at least voting for Democratic bills. Not this time.

By keeping his minority together, McConnell put enormous pressure on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who had to keep every Democrat in line to gain the 60 votes need to halt a Republican filibuster. On health care, it meant he had to make unseemly deals with a host of senators, most egregiously in the Medicaid payoff to Nebraska to appease Senator Ben Nelson. Reid got the votes, but the deals were political poison.

5) Oh, yes. The health care bill, ObamaCare, is dead with not the slightest prospect of resurrection. Brown ran to be the 41st vote for filibuster and now he is just that. Democrats have talked up clever strategies to pass the bill in the Senate despite Brown, but they won’t fly. It’s one thing for ObamaCare to be rejected by the American public in poll after poll. But it becomes a matter of considerably greater political magnitude when ObamaCare causes the loss of a Senate race in the blue state of Massachusetts.

Then there’s the House, where Speaker Nancy Pelosi insists some version of ObamaCare will be approved and soon. She’s not kidding. She’s simply wrong. At best, she has the minimum 218 votes for passage. After the Massachusetts fiasco, however, there’s sure to be erosion. How many Democrats in Republican-leaning districts want to vote for ObamaCare, post-Massachusetts? Not many.

Pelosi met with House Democrats yesterday to tell them how the negotiations on a compromise health care bill between the House and Senate were going. As she spoke, one Democratic member whispered to another, “It’s like talking about your date on Friday, but the date’s in the emergency room.” ObamaCare went into the emergency room in Massachusetts and didn’t make it out alive.

A Messiah Treading Instead of Walking on Water

The magic, the tingle and the thrill were gone

Canada Free Press.com
By Judi McLeod Wednesday, January 20, 2010

There’s a bone-chilling, Siberian-like chill flowing among Obama’s czars today; a biting wind that can’t help but remind them that while seized power doesn’t last forever, the need to pay one’s bills does.

While the hippie czars were trimming their ponytails for the party bound to follow next week’s State of the Union address, something called reality happened.

Some guy, not even a redneck, drove right through Obama’s image as the Messiah leaving it in smithereens. It was a honkin’ green truck, and not even one of those dinky toys promoted by Greenpeace, Maurice Strong, George Soros and company!

The silence at the White House on the First Anniversary of the Obama inauguration is deafening. But in order to see how they’re all feeling, all you have to do is to tune in on the histrionics of MSNBC where the tingle of the thrill is gone.

Call off the cops. Obama senior adviser David Axelrod is not really missing. He’s only hunkering down under all his astroturf. Even the definition of astroturf: “Manufactured grassroots support” is today an ironic Axelrod humiliation. The manufactured grassroots of the Tea Party won big in Boston last night.

The fallout is rich in possibilities. Perhaps it won’t be long before big-talking White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel will come tiptoeing across the stage exiting left in his crisis-seeking ballerina slippers.

Must have been a glum pajama party last night when slum landlord Valerie Jarrett, New Age Queen Oprah Winfrey and Michelle, the three women to whose apron strings the president is hopelessly tied, held their wake.

When it was all over their emperor was standing there with no clothes.

The magic, the tingle and the thrill were gone, and the the emperor left standing there was only another politician as vulnerable as any other.

Worst of all it all happened on the very day when Madam Toussaud unveiled the wax form of Michelle standing next to her husband in a “fake Oval office.”

In reports of the fawning mainstream media, Michelle was still trying to find herself, to strike out for herself, to determine where to leave her mark.

Like many self-centered community street organizers, Michelle thinks it is important for us to know that she is still trying to find herself. Still trying to find oneself at age 46 is absurd.

Having her wax form unveiled by Madam Toussaud’s on yesterday of all days was a disaster because they may as well have carved Scott Brown’s face on it.

It’s over, the voters of Mass. took aim and shattered forever Obama’s image as “The Messiah”.

The last word here belongs to Canada Free Press commenter Turner Echols who posted these words this morning: “New Post-Election slogan: “So Can We!”

Judi McLeod Most recent columns

Copyright © Canada Free Press
Judi McLeod is an award-winning journalist with 30 years experience in the print media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared on Rush Limbaugh, Newsmax.com, Drudge Report, Foxnews.com, and Glenn Beck.

Judi can be emailed at: judi@canadafreepress.com

Older articles by Judi McLeod

No mention of Islam in official Fort Hood Report

Protecting the Force, Lessons Learned from Fort Hood

Canada Free Press
By Doug Hagmann Tuesday, January 19, 2010

On 15 January, 2010, the U.S. Military released its 86-page report “Protecting the Force, Lessons Learned from Fort Hood,” an independent review by the Department of Defense of the causes behind the November 5, 2009 massacre by Islamic terrorist insider Nidal Malik HASAN. Thirteen were murdered, plus one unborn child and another 43 were injured.

Omitted from the report was any direct reference to Islam, Islamic terrorism, or the motives of HASAN, which were clearly influenced by his beliefs or interpretation of the Muslim ideology.

These obvious omissions were explained by two of the report’s authors, former Army Secretary Togo West and former Navy’s Admiral, Vernon Clark, who spoke to reporters last week when the report was released. According to the investigators, they didn’t “drill down into HASAN’s motives.” Any person of reason would be compelled to ask why motive was not a factor in this investigation, when it must be considered as one of the primary factors in any normal investigation.

The reason is obvious and became abundantly clear from the minute Barack Hussein Obama addressed the nation on the day of the massacre. To address HASAN’s motives would require a level of honesty about the Islamic ideology this administration is unwilling to discuss: true believers in fundamentalist Islam cannot legitimately serve in our armed forces due to a conflict of ideological interest.

The fact that the authors intentionally omitted any doctrinal based assessment of the killings should be an indictment of not only the authors, but of our current administration. To purposely omit the Islamic motivation that was the sole basis of HASAN’s murderous rampage is not only disingenuous, but traitorous as it places our armed forces at risk for future killings, sabotage, and treason. Therefore, the report is either a clear exhibit of our senior leadership’s knowledge deficit pertaining to the ideology of enemy we are fighting, or illustrates just how deeply entrenched the enemy really is within our military infrastructure and political bodies of policy and oversight.

Doug Hagmann Most recent columns

Copyright © Douglas Hagmann
Douglas Hagmann, founder & director of the Northeast Intelligence Network, and a multi-state licensed private investigative agency. Doug began using his investigative skills and training to fight terrorism and increase public awareness through his website.

Doug can be reached at: director@homelandsecurityus.com

Older articles by Doug Hagmann