Barack Hussein Obama....

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 30% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-seven percent (37%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of –7 (see trends).

I'm Mad as Hell!
Burt Prelutsky
Friday, July 10, 2009
Frankly, I’m beginning to feel a lot like Howard Beale, the character portrayed by Peter Finch in the 1976 release, “Network.” He insisted that people get up right now and go to the window, open it, stick their heads out and yell, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore!”
I’ve always heard that misery loves company. If true, misery in America has more company these days than it knows what do with.

I realize that conservatives have felt this way ever since the Democrats nominated the Chicago crony of Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, Rod Blagojevich and the assorted felons at ACORN, to be our president, but why aren’t millions of honest, decent, hard-working Democrats up in arms? I can guarantee that if a Republican president had done half the things that Obama has pulled off in his first half year, most of us on the right would be calling for his head. At the very least, none of us would be kissing his heinie.

Even before grabbing up car companies and banks, he got the ball rolling with a trillion dollar, 1100-page pork-filled stimulus package that had to be passed, he insisted, within a few short hours or America was going to be turned into a pumpkin. Well, without anyone having had time to read anything but the price tag, it was passed into law. Obama then took his own sweet time signing it. In the months since its passage, the unemployment rate has soared, entire states are going belly up and, apparently, nobody seems to know what happened to the money.

Then there’s the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill, which started out in life at a thousand pages, and then had a 300-page amendment tacked on to it in the dead of night. It was as if Dr. Frankenstein, after carefully inspecting his nightmarish creation, decided that what the monster really needed was a second head and a hunchback. Again, nobody had time to read the bill, but that didn’t prevent 219 congressmen, including eight Republicans who scurried out from under a rock just long enough to make certain that Christmas, or perhaps I mean Ramadan, would come early for the President.

As I recall, when he was a candidate, Obama assured us that taxes would be decreased for 95% of all Americans. Inasmuch as the Heritage Foundation estimates that the cap and trade bill will wind up costing the average middle class taxpayer nearly $3,000 in additional energy costs, I guess a tax isn’t a tax if you don’t call it one. Of course Obama and Al Gore and their liberal lackeys don’t mention the jobs that people in the oil and coal industries will lose while we’re busily building windmills. Perhaps those folks who were formerly occupied supplying the wherewithal so that America could continue to be a major industrial nation can be hired to stand around and generate energy by blowing at the windmills.

Maybe what Obama meant when he claimed we’d be paying less in taxes was that we’d all be on the dole before the next election rolled around.

During the campaign, when Obama vowed, if elected, he would create or save four million jobs, I speculated that he meant that if at some point there were four million Americans who were still working, he could say he’d kept his campaign promise. I swear I meant it as a joke.

Inasmuch as Obama seems to be doing all he can to turn America into a left-wing third world nation, it stands to reason that he was far more perturbed by a military coup in Honduras than by innocent blood being spilled in the streets after a rigged election in Iran.

It’s amazing, if you stop and think about it, that George H.W. Bush lost his bid for re-election because he was goofy enough to say, “Read my lips…no new taxes,” but Obama does his level best to bankrupt America and destroy the middle class, and yet continues to ride nearly as high in the popularity polls as Michael Jackson. Imagine if the man could moon walk.

But, I guess a lot of us who find ourselves going down the financial drain don’t really mind so long as we can watch Prince Obama and his princess holding hands on their $250,000 date night in New York City.

It’s almost enough to make a person pity Bernard Madoff. That poor shmuck got a 150-year prison sentence, and he only screwed Americans out of about 65 billion dollars.

[url=http://townhall.com/columnists/BurtPrelutsky/2009/07/10/im_mad_as_hell!] Link [/url]

Obama Health Plan to Cover 12 Million Illegals
Sunday, July 19, 2009 6:32 PM
By: David A. Patten

http://www.newsmax.com/headlines/health_care_obama/2009/07/19/237484.html?s=al&promo_code=83A3-1

A recent Rasmussen Reports poll found that an overwhelming 80 percent of Americans oppose covering illegals in any public health care bill.
Anti-immigration activists say the availability of low-cost benefits, including health insurance and in-state tuition, will only lure more immigrants to come to the United States.

Political analyst Dick Morris, in his recently released best-selling book “Catastrophe”, warns that giving illegal free health care will lead to a flood of new illegals who can take advantage of such a benefit not offered in their home countries.
William Gheen, president of Americans for Legal Immigration, agrees with that sentiment, writing, "Each state and federal elected official must know that illegal aliens should not be given licenses, in-state tuition, mortgages, bank accounts, welfare, or any other benefit short of emergency medical care and law enforcement accommodations before they are deported."

But a small fraction of illegals end up deported, as many make widespread use of fake IDs to easily gain access to government benefits programs.
"Experts suggest that approximately 75 percent of working-age illegal aliens use fraudulent Social Security cards to obtain employment," wrote Ronald W. Mortensen in a recent Center for Immigration Studies research paper. Mortensen says one of the big misconceptions about illegals is that they are undocumented.

James R. Edwards Jr., co-author of The Congressional Politics of Immigration Reform, recently wrote on National Review Online that "it's hard to envision how health reform can avoid tripping the immigration booby trap."
Edwards says none of the legislation under consideration actually requires any state, federal, or local agency to check the immigration status of those who apply for the program.

The assumption is that companies have vetted their employees to ensure they are eligibility for legal employment – a difficult task for employers given the active market in fraudulent documents. Thus Edwards maintains "some of the money distributed … inevitably would go to illegal aliens."

The estimates of illegal aliens in the United States without health insurance vary. The most commonly cited statistic, attributed to the Center for Immigration Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau, holds that 15 percent to 22 percent of the nation's 46 million uninsured are illegal aliens. That would be between 6.9 million and 10.1 million people. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama claimed the nation United States has 12 million or more undocumented aliens.

John Sheils of the Lewin Group, a health care consulting firm owned by UnitedHealth Group, recently told National Public Radio that about 6.1 million illegals – about half of all illegals in the United States – lack documentation and therefore would not be legally eligible for benefits under the current health care reforms.

Sheils says the other half of the nation's illegals – 5 million to 6 million – use false documents to obtain on-the-books employment. Many of them are already insured under their employers' plans, he added.
"A lot of those people are getting employer health benefits as part of their compensation," Sheils told NPR.

Certainly, some contend that undocumented workers who are gainfully employed and receiving benefits such as health insurance are contributing to society. But the fact remains that, once equipped with a fake ID, a person in the United States illegally can obtain both a job and the benefits that go with it.

Estimates of the cost of providing illegals with medical care vary. Most uninsured illegals who need medical attention obtain it from hospital emergency rooms. And several states are already straining under the huge burden of paying for the health costs of illegal aliens.
According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), in 2004 California's estimated cost of unreimbursed medical care was $1.4 billion. Texas estimated its cost at $850 million annually, and Arizona at $400 million.

Non-border states shoulder heavy burdens as well. Virginia's annual cost of providing health care for undocumented workers is approximately $100 million per year, FAIR reports, while Florida's health care cost is about $300 million annually.
One of the ironies of the proposed legislation is that it would fine American citizens who opt not to purchase insurance coverage, but would exempt illegals from such fines. This is presumably due to the fact that they are not supposed to participate in the program anyway.

Even if no illegals were likely to benefit from health care reform, Democrats have made it clear that amnesty is the next item on their ambitious legislative agenda.
"I've got to do health care, I've got to do energy, and then I'm looking very closely at doing immigration," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., declared in June.

Reid explained the urgent need for amnesty in terms very similar to those that Democrats have used to press for health care reform. "We have an immigration system that's broken and needs repair," Reid said.
Immigration expert Edwards, for one, says health-care reform may itself need serious medical attention before it is healthy enough pass through Congress.
"The American people may soon realize how much health reform will benefit immigrants and cost the native-born," he writes. "When that happens, the volatile politics of immigration could derail universal health care."

In her shocking new book, Malkin digs deep into the records of President Obama's staff, revealing corrupt dealings, questionable pasts, and abuses of power throughout his administration. --

From the Inside Flap
The era of hope and change is dead....and it only took six months in office to kill it.
Never has an administration taken office with more inflated expectations of turning Washington around. Never have a media-anointed American Idol and his entourage fallen so fast and hard. In her latest investigative tour de force, New York Times bestselling author Michelle Malkin delivers a powerful, damning, and comprehensive indictment of the culture of corruption that surrounds Team Obama's brazen tax evaders, Wall Street cronies, petty crooks, slum lords, and business-as-usual influence peddlers. In Culture of Corruption, Malkin reveals:

* Why nepotism beneficiaries First Lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are Team Obama's biggest liberal hypocrites--bashing the corporate world and influence-peddling industries from which they and their relatives have benefited mightily
* What secrets the ethics-deficient members of Obama's cabinet--including Hillary Clinton--are trying to hide
* Why the Obama White House has more power-hungry, unaccountable "czars" than any other administration
* How Team Obama's first one hundred days of appointments became a litany of embarrassments as would-be appointee after would-be appointee was exposed as a tax cheat or had to withdraw for other reasons
* How Obama's old ACORN and union cronies have squandered millions of taxpayer dollars and dues money to enrich themselves and expand their power
* How Obama's Wall Street money men and corporate lobbyists are ruining the economy and helping their friendsIn Culture of Corruption, Michelle Malkin lays bare the Obama administration's seamy underside that the liberal media would rather keep hidden.

The Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP) has assembled a range of innovative and traditional tools to support Posts' outreach activities during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Here, in contrast, is the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The State Department's Ramadan programs are wide-ranging. "On August 10," the cable continues, "America.gov will publish a ‘Multicultural Ramadan' feature. American Muslims trace their ancestry to more than 80 countries and the feature will highlight the richness of these various cultural traditions through the lens of Ramadan and Eid. Content will include essays by young Muslims who are part of Eboo Patel's Interfaith Youth Core (IYC). Contact: Alexandra Abboud (AbboudAM@state.gov)."

There's more! The Bureau of International Information Programs "will publish three articles for Ramadan 2009 addressing the concept of an Islam in America 'brand'; advocacy (civic and political) of the Muslim American community; and community innovation/community building. The writer will contact Muslim American experts in each of these fields. These articles will be available on America.gov in English, Arabic, and Persian."

The main publication is Being Muslim In America: "Conceived as IIP's flagship print publication on the rich and varied experiences of the nation's growing Muslim population, this lavishly illustrated new book links the Muslim-American experience to those of other American racial, religious, and immigrant groups as they moved into the American ‘mainstream.'"

Can you imagine every Embassy and consulate putting up a Menorah and having some Rabbis as speakers via a webcast?
Can you imagine if we had the Stations of the Cross put on the walls of all of our embassies, consulates, and other posts, as well as the many Department of State buildings across the country, including C Street?

Why aren't priests, pastors, etc. invited during Christmas to give blessings or talk about Christianity in the United States?
Can you imagine if the Buddha were revered and we had some monks coming to do a meditation session with all of the officers of each embassy, consulate, etc.?

Can we get printed and distributed Hare Krishna posters for all of our posts, so as to reach massive audiences?
I mean, put it in reverse and see how crazy it is. Absolutely nuts.

Perhaps this is an initiative of President Barack Obama's newly created Office for Outreach to the Ummah at State. In June Obama had the Secretary-General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, at the White House. Ihsanoglu urged Obama to appoint a U.S. ambassador to the Islamic world - and Obama immediately created a new State Department Office for Muslim Outreach, with a Muslim woman, Farah Pandith, serving as the new U.S. Special Representative for Muslim Outreach. In keeping with Obama's U.S.-Muslim Engagement Project, a charter of dhimmitude, we are to be conditioned to respect Muslim immigrants and accept their culture.

Obama appears to be more than comfortable with this deal with the devil as he abets the institution of an Islamo-Christian ethic, which would destroy the very foundation of this great country. Never mind that Muslims persecute Christians in every country they finally dominate. That is of no importance.
Why is this immense effort necessary? We act as if we were a slave of the Muslim world. This sickness of licking the boots of an ideology that wants to destroy us is incomprehensible.

Burt Prelutsky said it best:
"What is wrong with our leaders? Are they worried that they won't be invited to those cool Ramadan parties? The Islamists have been actively at war with us for 30 years and generally at war with western civilization for well over a thousand years, and still we pay lip service to these people in a way we never did with Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan or the Soviet Union. Is it because the Muslims commit sadism and murder in the name of religion and not country? If anything, I would think that would make their evil acts all the more contemptible."
It does.

Pamela Geller is the editor and publisher of the Atlas Shrugs Web site and former associate publisher of the New York Observer.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/obamas_state_department_submit.html

On Tuesday the Guardian reported that the Obama administration is now making Israel an offer it can't refuse: In exchange for a government order to freeze construction for Jews in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria, the administration will adopt a "much tougher line with Iran over its alleged nuclear weapons program."

Israel should refuse this offer.

What the Guardian account shows is an Obama administration looking to blame Israel for the failure of its policy of attempting to appease the likes of Iranian dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Come September, US President Barack Obama is going to have a difficult time of it. He set a September deadline for his strategy of diplomatically courting the mullahs. This policy involves deferring further sanctions against Teheran and all but openly renouncing the option of using military force to destroy Iran's nuclear installations while waiting politely for the mullahs to sit down for tea with US officials.

Far from accepting Obama's offer, the Iranians have spit on it. Indeed, they have been too busy brutalizing their own people and building bombs and missiles to even respond to him directly. Instead, they have signaled their contempt for Obama by promoting known arch-terrorists to high office. For instance, Ahmadinejad just appointed Ahmad Vahidi, the suspected mastermind of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people and the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia where 19 US servicemen and women were murdered to serve as defense minister.

In support of Obama's appeasement efforts, both the House and the Senate Foreign Relations committees set aside veto-proof bills that would place sanctions on companies exporting refined fuel to Iran. But Congress, now on summer recess, reconvenes in September and members are anxiously awaiting a green light from the White House to put the bills before a vote.

So unless something saves him, Obama will look like quite a fool next month. His appeasement policy has given the mullahs eight precious months of unimpeded work at their nuclear installations. Their uranium enrichment facility at Natanz is now operating some 5,000 centrifuges, with another 2,400 centrifuges about to go on line. That is an eightfold increase in centrifuge activity from a year ago.

Obama now turns to Israel to avoid embarrassment. If he can convince Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that the White House will only get serious about Iran's nuclear weapons program if Netanyahu freezes Jewish building in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem, then Obama can present his sudden willingness to sign on to veto-proof congressional sanctions legislation not as a consequence of his own failure, but as a result of Israeli pressure.

If Obama succeeds in getting Netanyahu on board, the American media discussion of sanctions will focus on the issue of Israeli power over US policy. The so-called Israel lobby will be pummeled as pundits argue about whether Obama was right or wrong to succumb to Israeli pressure to support congressional sanctions. No one will remember that Obama was forced to support the sanctions because he had no other choice, since next month his engagement policy will become indefensible.

On the other hand, if Israel refuses to play ball and doesn't provide Obama with a concession which he will be "forced" to pay for with a harder line on Iran, then he will still have to adopt a harder line. In this case, however, it will be attributed to the failure of his appeasement policy toward Iran rather than to the success of his Middle East diplomacy against Israel.

Obama's apparent interest in setting Israel up as the fall guy for the failure of his engagement policy is the same policy he will doubtless follow if matters continue on course and Teheran acquires nuclear weapons. At that point, Obama can be counted on to claim that it was Israel's recalcitrance in the negotiations with the Palestinians or the Syrians or the Lebanese that forced the mullahs' hands. That is, he will say it is the absence of "progress" in the "peace process" due to whatever imagined Israeli intransigence that made it impossible for the Iranian "moderates" to convince the "hardliners" to give up their nuclear weapons program.

In Obama's defense, it should be noted that at least he worries about being embarrassed by the failure of his Iran policy. He knows that the overwhelming majority of Americans consider Iran to be an enemy of their country. In a poll of US voters taken in May, some 80 percent of Americans claimed that a nuclear-armed Iran would constitute a threat to US national security and 57% said that Israel would be justified in launching a preemptive strike against Iran's nuclear installations.

Things are different on the other side of the Atlantic. Obama's European counterparts do not face a comparable situation. They have no reason to fear being embarrassed when and if Iran emerges as a nuclear power, because their constituents view Israel as threat equal to or greater than Iran.

European politics - particularly as they relate to the Middle East - are not informed by rational interests so much as they are defined by attitude. Facts today mean little in Europe. They are easily crushed under the weight of the fantasies that dominate European political discourse.

The main fantasy governing Europe's attitude toward the Middle East is the belief in Israeli militaristic venality, fundamentalist messianism, and territorial greed. It is this fantasy that protects European leaders from the need to account for their six years of failed appeasement toward Iran, during which Iran has made its swiftest progress toward completing its nuclear weapons program.

It is the predominance of anti-Israel attitudes throughout the continent that enables European leaders to make light of the Iranian nuclear threat even as ever growing swathes of the continent fall within the range of the Islamic republic's ballistic missiles.

A mere glance at the daily Middle East coverage of your standard European newspaper suffices to demonstrate the depths of Europe's obsession with hating Israel. The absence of peace is always Israel's fault. The fact that the Arabs have never accepted Israel's right to exist is either whitewashed or justified. So too, Arab terrorism is explained away while every act - small and large - that in any way asserts Israel's right to defend itself is pounced upon as proof of Israel's criminality and brutality.

Case in point is an interview Intelligence Minister Dan Meridor gave to Der Spiegel's diplomatic correspondent Erich Follath ahead of Netanyahu's visit to Germany this week. The entire interview consisted of interchanges like the following:

Follath: You blame Palestinian intransigence [for the absence of peace]. Western leaders are, of course, demanding that the Arab side compromise on some issues. But they are also putting pressure on Israel to make concessions, as well, especially when it comes to its aggressive settlement policy in the West Bank.

Meridor: There is no such policy.

Follath: You don't regard new settlements in the occupied territories as being a major stumbling block in the peace process?

Meridor: That's exactly why we aren't building new settlements. We haven't approved any.

Follath: You are sidestepping the issue. US President Barack Obama wouldn't urge Israel to stop its settlement policies if he didn't have a reason to do so...

Meridor: What you describe is neither the official policy of Prime Minister Netanyahu nor the official policy of the government."

Follath's questions, and his dogged determination to ignore everything that Meridor said reflect this general European propensity to embrace the fantasy of Israeli criminality over the reality of Israeli willingness to do just about anything for peace.

Israel has for years based its public diplomacy regarding Teheran's nuclear weapons program on successive governments' assessments that given Iran's global reach and the threat it poses to global security, states will be more willing to act to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons than they are to acknowledge Palestinian terrorism which is employed almost exclusively against Israel. What Israeli leaders - including Netanyahu - have failed to recognize is that the antipathy of Europeans toward Israel is so great that they are willing to explain away Iran's nuclear weapons program because it is aimed first of all against Israel.

Case in point is yet another screed by Follath published in Der Spiegel in June. There he characterized Netanyahu and Ahmadinejad as "twins," who are united in their "apocalyptic religious visions."

As Follath sees it, both are equally responsible for the rising likelihood of war between Israel and Iran that is liable to suck in countries around the region and the world. As far as he - and his loyal readers - are concerned, Israel and Iran deserve each other.

Such views inevitably temper any propensity European leaders may have to act against the Islamic republic. This was demonstrated by German Chancellor Angela Merkel during her appearance with Netanyahu in Berlin on Thursday. Merkel rejected Israel's comparison of Iran's stated aim of destroying Israel to the Shoah, saying, "There is no comparison between the Holocaust and the Iranian nuclear program."

If there is no comparison, then Germany, which she claimed is duty bound to defend Israel due to the Holocaust, has no obligation to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

But if Merkel is wrong, and as a result of the lackadaisical attitude she, her European colleagues, and the Obama administration have adopted, Iran acquires nuclear weapons and as promised, uses them to commit a new genocide of Jewry, she has no reason to worry. The anti-Israel attitude now rampant in Europe will ensure that she will pay no price, and will not even be embarrassed for her failure to heed the warnings.

Case in point is the newest Swedish media blood libel against Israel, and the numerous blood libels - most prominently France 2's Muhammad al-Dura blood libel from September 2000 - that preceded it. Stories like Aftonbladet's fiction of IDF theft of Palestinian organs and France 2's false allegation that the IDF murders Arab children sell newspapers and raise television ratings because the popular animus against Israel is so great that people are willing to buy newspapers and watch television networks that propagate obvious lies that feed this irrational hatred. Indeed, it pays to disseminate such lies.

France 2's Charles Enderlain, the father of the al-Dura lie, just received France's Légion d'honneur from President Nicolas Sarkozy. Then, too, anti-Israel activist Felicia Langer just received Germany's Federal Cross of Honor, and Israel-hater and former Irish president Mary Robinson was just awarded the US Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The lesson of all of this for Israel is clear. Whether Netanyahu is dealing with Obama or European leaders, the game is rigged against us. Any move that Israel makes toward these leaders will simply facilitate their further castigation of the Jewish state and support their clear intentions to do nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring the means to destroy Israel.

As we have been all too often in our history, today Israel stands alone against our enemies. We can either defeat them, or we can be defeated. The choice is ours.

CHRIS WALLACE, HOST: Mr. Vice President, welcome back to "FOX News Sunday."
RICHARD CHENEY, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's good to be back, Chris.

WALLACE: This is your first interview since Attorney General Holder named a prosecutor to investigate possible CIA abuses of terror detainees.

What do you think of that decision?
CHENEY: I think it's a terrible decision. President Obama made the announcement some weeks ago that this would not happen, that his administration would not go back and look at or try to prosecute CIA personnel. And the effort now is based upon the inspector general's report that was sent to the Justice Department five years ago, was completely reviewed by the Justice Department in years past.