What Is This World Coming To?

Yesterday President Bush removed the executive-branch moratorium on offshore drilling. Today, at a news conference, Bush repeated his new position, and slammed the Democratic Congress for not removing the congressional moratorium on the Outer Continental Shelf and elsewhere.

Crude-oil futures for August delivery plunged $9.26, or 6.3 percent, almost immediately as Bush was speaking, bringing the barrel price down to $136.

The Democrats refuse to permit drilling, evidently based on the principle that it will take “oh, ten or twenty years” before drilling has any effect on global oil prices. Ignoring the reality that we’ll still need fuel in ‘ten or twenty years’ that argument seems kind of , ummm, well, stupid to the point of moronic, but if the shoe fits. .

Oil closed down nine bucks today just because we might drill. Imagine if we actually followed through on the threat?

Barack Obama addressed a meeting of AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) last month in which he claimed he supported Israel’s right to Jerusalem as it’s undivided capital.

“Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided,” Obama declared on June 5 to a standing ovation. But that was June 5, before the Arab world began to recall its endorsement of his candidacy. Even Hamas said it was no longer enamored of hm.

On CNN’s new pro-Islamic talk show, Fareed Zakaria — GPS over the weekend, Obama revealed he has undergone yet another ‘clarification of policy’. It would appear that his statement, “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided” was misinterpreted’ to mean Obama believes” Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel and must remain undivided.” No, no, that’s not what he meant at all!

“You know, the truth is that this was an example where we had some poor phrasing in the speech, and we immediately tried to correct the interpretation that was given . . . The point we were simply making was, is that we don’t want barbed wire running through Jerusalem, similar to the way it was prior to the ‘67 war, that it is possible for us to create a Jerusalem that is cohesive and coherent. I was not trying to predetermine what are essentially final-status issues.”

Obama’s 180 degree reversal (oops, I mean ‘clarification’ of ‘interpretation’) came following his appointment of Daniel Kurtzer as his Arab-Israeli policy advisor. Noted Worldnetdaily:

“Kurtzer, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel, has long been recognized by Israeli leaders, including prime ministers, as biased against Israel and is notorious for urging extreme concessions from the Jewish state. He was appointed as a primary Obama adviser on the Middle East earlier this year.”

If there is any consolation to be had, it is found only in the fact that very few Jews believed him in the first place. After all, his lips were moving.

Former White House Press Secretary and Fox News anchor Tony Snow died early this morning from complications associated with treatment for colon cancer. He leaves behind a wife and three children.

Snow, 53, was a broadcaster for Fox News Channel and Fox News Radio when he replaced Scott McClellan as President Bush’s press secretary in May 2006.

Snow served just 17 months as press secretary, a tenure interrupted by his second bout with cancer. He resigned as Bush’s chief spokesman six months later, in September 2007. Read the rest of this entry »

Judicial Watch, group that investigates government corruption has filed separate complaints with the Federal Election Commission and the Senate Ethics Committee against Barack Obama for allegedly accepting a below market rate loan mortgage not available to the general consumer.

According to the Judicial Watch complaints, Senator Obama (D-Illinois) received a home loan of $1.32 million from Northern Trust at a rate of 5.625 percent — although two different surveys indicated that the average going rate that day was around 6 percent.

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton contends that Obama got a special below market “super super jumbo” loan because he was a United States senator. “…[W]e filed ethics complaints with the Senate Ethics Committee concerning the receipt potentially of an illegal gift,” he said. “The other issue is that it may be an illegal campaign contribution by a corporation in that it is a substantial financial gift to Barack Obama of at least $125,000,” suggests Fitton.

Fitton also filed the complaint with the Federal Election Commission, and says there is another shady aspect to this mortgage deal. He says Obama’s real estate dealings are also linked with Tony Rezko, a convicted felon, which Fitton contends raises a “whole host of questions” about Obama’s relationship with the man.

Former Clinton official Anthony Cordesman addressed a recent meeting of the Institute of National Security Studies regarding the probability of an Israel air strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

According to Cordesman, as reported by the Jerusalem Post, the United States has refused to give Israel permission for the airstrike. Cordesman said that IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi was notified of the United States’ stance regarding Iran by Joint Chief’s Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen.

The US opted at this point to stick to the diplomatic track in its efforts to keep Iran from going nuclear, and has made clear to Israel that it shouldn’t attack Iran without White House approval, Cordesman said. Read the rest of this entry »

The reports were breathless: “The plane carrying Senator Barack Obama has been diverted to St Louis, allegedly due to ‘mechanical problems.”    FoxNews brought resident pilot and official Air Disaster Guy John Scott (a licensed pilot, if you’ve not seen live coverage of an impending aircraft accident on Fox before). 

Scott gave a rambling explanation of all the things the pilots must have been doing (although the problem was unknown)  but soon,  the aircraft carrying Barack Obama landed safely in St Louis.   Leaving John Scott to explain in a Fox News Alert over a generic view of the tarmac of St Louis Airport that “Barack Obama’s plane landed safely in St Louis.”  �

Somehow, the headline, “Hamas Breaks Truce” seems to fit best into the “Dog Bites Man” category. Evidently, firing rockets into Israel is like smoking — it’s a hard habit to break cold-turkey.

Islamic Jihad in the Gaza Strip says they carried out the attack to avenge an Israeli military raid that killed one of their terrorist colleagues in the West Bank.

The West Bank isn’t part of the truce, but that’s not important, say the terrorists. Islamic Jihad says it “cannot keep its hands tied” when its “brothers” in the West Bank are being “targeted”.

Flying High . . .

A pro-marijuana group is calling on the government to allow marijuana in smoking lounges at airports across the country. Read the rest of this entry »

Obama’s address to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) got a resounding round of applause from his audience for his statement that “Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain ‘undivided.’

Obama received a half-dozen standing ovations for his comments, more than any other dignitary on the platform, including Hillary Clinton and John McCain. So it would appear that, after a whole bunch of gaffes, Obama’s speechwriters hit a home run this time. Or not.

Instead, Obama simply highlighted (again) is abysmal grasp of foreign policy. It seems he forgot that the Palestinians can read.

Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, went ballistic at Obama’s remarks. He told reporters at a hastily-convented press conference in Ramallah:

“This statement is totally rejected. The whole world knows that East Jerusalem, holy Jerusalem, was occupied in 1967 and we will not accept a Palestinian state without having Jerusalem as the capital of a Palestinian state.”

Abbas aide Saeb Erekat said Palestinian negotiators engaged in U.S.-sponsoredpeace talks would continue to insist on securing East Jerusalem, captured by Israel in 1967, as their capital. He said of Obama: “He has closed all doors to peace.”

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zhuri took back its previous endorsement of Obama’s candidacy, saying,

“Obama’s comments have confirmed that there will be no change in the U.S. administration’s foreign policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict.

“The Democratic and Republican parties support totally the Israeli occupation at the expense of the interests and rights of Arabs and Palestinians,” he said. “Hamas does not differentiate between the two presidential candidates, Obama and McCain, because their policies regarding the Arab-Israel conflict are the same and are hostile to us, therefore we do have no preference and are not wishing for either of them to win.”

(Actually, Zhuri is wrong. The current administration’s foreign policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict demands that Jerusalem be divided as a shared capital for both states. Obama’s statement puts him to the right of George W. Bush.)

Ooops! Time for another ‘do-over’. Yesterday, he had already begun to back-pedal, as he did when he first pledged to meet any dictator, from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Kim Jong il, ‘without preconditions.’ Later, when he realized how stupid that sounded, he said that he wouldn’t demand ‘preconditions’ but instead would require a lot of advance preparation that sounds suspiciously like preconditions.

Now, Obama is similarly ‘clarifiying‘ his comments over Jerusalem. Obama now believes:

“Jerusalem is a final status issue, which means it has to be negotiated between the two parties” as part of “an agreement that they both can live with.”

“Two principles should apply to any outcome,” which the adviser gave as: “Jerusalem remains Israel’s capital and it’s not going to be divided by barbed wire and checkpoints as it was in 1948-1967.”

THAT’S what I like about Barack Obama. If you disagree with his positions, you don’t have to get mad. You don’t even have to get even. You just have to wait until he changes to one you can be more comfortable with.

Sixteen countries — one third of the total membership of the UN Human Rights Council are members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, following elections to the UNHRC for it’s new term.

The civilized world was able to block Sri Lanka from another term, but both Pakistan and Bahrain were elected to the council. So were two African serial-rights violators, Gabon and Zambia.

All 192 U.N. member states voted by secret ballot for candidates in each of the five regional groups recognized by the world body.

The election saw no contest to fill four vacant seats in Africa and three in Latin America, and they were taken respectively by Burkina Faso, Gabon, Ghana and Zambia, and Argentina, Brazil and Chile. Read the rest of this entry »

To mark the sixtieth anniversary of Israel’s birth, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert paid homage to the 22,437 Israeli soldiers, police and civilians who paid for Israel’s continued independence with their lives by drawing a contrast between his nation and her sworn enemies.

We sanctify life, not death,” Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Wednesday during a Mount Herzl ceremony for victims of terror attacks before making this philosophical observation:

“I cannot help but think of how deep the moral gap is between us and our enemies,” he said.

“We make every possible effort to limit and focus our attacks on the terrorists and we never intentionally harm the innocent. We don’t have jihadists, shahidim or mothers who joyfully send their children with bomb belts to blow themselves up in packed buses or in busy malls.” Read the rest of this entry »