Batebi Redux

clipped from gatewaypundit.blogspot.com Here is what Ahmad Batebi told me about Obama's response to the Iranian crisis: "His (Obama) lack of response will not be regarded lightly. We will watch for how much his response will help the people or the regime. We will know more this week... Obama can hold talks with the regime in Iran if he wants. Is it morally correct for Obama to support the regime? Does he actually believe the people of Iran will appreciate that? The social movement requires support. If the world really wants the advent of terrorism to disappear in the Middle East, if they want peace with the Palestinians and Israel, if they want nuclear techhology to be developed for peaceful things and not nuclear weapons... They only need to support the people of Iran right now. This regime has the most dangerous of ideologies. They're killing the opposition."

OStonewall

clipped from pajamasmedia.com BYRON YORK: AmeriCorps stonewalls questions of White House involvement in IG firing. “A top official of the Corporation for National and Community Service, the government agency that oversees AmeriCorps, has refused to answer questions from congressional investigators about the White House’s role in events surrounding the abrupt firing of inspector general Gerald Walpin.” And I love this: Investigators asked Trinity whether he was claiming executive privilege, something that could only be authorized by the president. Trinity answered again that it was a White House “prerogative.” When the investigators pointed out that, in the words of one aide, “there is no legal basis whatsoever” for such a claim, Trinity still declined to answer. Remember the fierce moral urgency of replacing Bush with Obama so we’d see an end to this sort of thing? I do . . . .

But Then

clipped from pajamasmedia.com But then, like Napoleon in Moscow before him, Obama began suddenly retreating for no apparent reason. In predictable fashion, echoing the scatterbrained Jimmy Carter, he was not able to carry the whole thing off coherently. Obama was interviewed on Russian TV on the preceding Thursday, and it turned out when the program aired over the weekend that he had declined to repeat the attack on Putin that he had made to the Associated Press. Speaking with Novaya Gazeta, he refused to comment on the abusive retrial of opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was railroaded into prison several years ago just as he began making noises about running for president as a challenger to Putin. On Tuesday, things got worse. Obama breakfasted with Putin and, while not even able to remember whether Putin was “prime minister” or “president” for the second time during his visit (Obama once said he thought Austrians spoke Austrian)

Darkness

clipped from pajamasmedia.com If you want some detail about the horrors inside Iranian hospitals, have a look at Le Figaro’s account. Over the objections of medical staff, bodies from the demonstrations were quickly moved elsewhere. “We believe they were transferred to the Baqiatollah military hospital or some other undisclosed location”, notes the doctor. Then, under the pretext of “organ donation”, all traces of bullets were removed from the bodies. “The parents were force to accept this if they wanted to retrieve the body for burial”. And yet, the protest goes on.  For the past three days, a general strike has been in effect, with significant results.  Indeed, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei preemptively admitted defeat when government offices and factories were shut down in the name of a religious observance.  But the strikers only expanded the range of their actions, notably by shutting down electrical grids in several cities, including parts of Tehran.  Great swathes of the nation were plunged into darkness.

Already Marked "YES"

clipped from witnessinghope.wordpress.com President Zelaya was elected democratically in 2006. Then he started hanging out with his new buddy Hugo and – surprise, surprise – his ideology started to morph into something akin to socialism, disguised, of course, as democracy: as he defines it, “the rule of the people.” Zelaya then decided – obviously at Chavez’ urging – that he needed to stay in power longer than his 4-year term allowed in order to bring his plans to completion. He decided to hold a vote for the “Cuarta Urna” (in essence, an illegal referendum, set to take place this past Sunday) in order to give the people the option of re-electing him next year – something strictly forbidden by the Honduran constitution. The tide of public opinion had already begun to turn against Zelaya when boxes of already-marked “YES” votes were found just days before the vote was scheduled to take place. Then the whole country seemed to turn against him… The whole country, that is, except the poor whose votes he’d bought.

"Debating" Sarah

clipped from www.davidwarrenonline.com Moreover, I don't think anyone has a clearer view than Palin herself of her need for more breadth and national experience. Nor of the needs of her family, for that matter, given the taste she has received of what the media are eager to do to them (compared to the halo of protection they extend around, say, Obama's young and impressionable children). Her course cannot be easy: she knows the enemy, and she knows that the enemy "debates" by demonizing people, not by rational argument. From her view, she has received a significant personal insight into just how degrading her political enemies can be, and the whole "progressive" culture that supports them.

Who Knew?

clipped from pajamasmedia.com BLOOMBERG: Democrats Split on Stimulus as Job Losses Mount, Deficit Soars. Well, the whole deficit-soaring thing is no surprise. But who knew that shoveling out cash to cronies wouldn’t prevent unemployment from mushrooming? Plus this: “The Treasury is increasing debt sales to pay for the spending. After more than doubling note and bond offerings to $963 billion in the first half, another $1.1 trillion may be sold by year-end, according to Barclays Plc. The second-half sales would be more than the total amount of debt sold in all of 2008.”

He Looked Putin In The Eye

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There Is Justice In This World

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True Tragedy

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Wrong Way OCorrigan

clipped from www.rove.com Overall, the Obama Administration is now 3.4 million jobs below where they should be to create 3.675 million jobs by the end of 2010.  The only sector to create jobs in June was the Education/Health sector, even though it still was 18,174 jobs short of the Obama Administration's monthly target.

OPEC Is Laughing

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Bubblenomics

clipped from www.minyanville.com Friday's Financial Times article by Mohamed El-Erian, "American Jobs Data Are Worse Than We Think," demonstrates that more and more people are starting to understand the nature of the economic crisis. In it, El-Erian notes that, "there are rare occasions, such as today, when we should think of the unemployment rate as much more than a lagging indicator; it has the potential to influence future economic behaviors and outlooks." Naturally, the reason why we have such a problem creating jobs is because the country spent 10-12 years engulfed in bubbles. Folks will only realize that we have a real hole to dig out of when they grasp the fact that the Federal Reserve's money printing, aided and abetted by greed on both Wall Street and Main Street, created the bubbles. These, combined with the authorities' abdication of responsibility, caused us to experience more than a decade of "bubblenomics."

Our Useful OIdiot

clipped from www.powerlineblog.com When Ronald Reagan set out to bring down the Soviet Union, he built up America's nuclear arsenal while deploying short-range nuclear warheads in Europe and undertaking a widely derided missile defense program. Reagan's build-up took place over the massive worldwide opposition of the left, much of it orchestrated by the Soviet Union under the auspices of one or another of its "peace initiatives." The Times article reports on Obama's 1983 article "Breaking the war mentality." The Times notes that in the article Obama railed against discussions of "first-versus second-strike capabilities" that "suit the military-industrial interests" with their "billion-dollar erector sets," and agitated for the elimination of global arsenals holding tens of thousands of deadly warheads. While others may hope that Obama has outgrown his youthful radicalism, the Times suggests that he is fulfilling it.

Back In Iran

clipped from www.reuters.com LOS ANGELES, July 5 /PRNewswire/ -- Roozbeh Farahanipour, one of the leaders of the 1999 student uprising in Iran and other members and leaders of the Marze-Por-Gohar (MPG) Party are back in Iran in preparation of demonstrations for the July 9th anniversary; they have joined with thousands of other Iranian democracy activists and are already planning for rallies and demonstrations in spite of the ongoing crackdown of IRI forces and the statements of some IRI factions who are trying to confine the present movement within the tight Islamic and Constitutional limits, preventing cries for free elections and a democratic Iran being heard. The MPG has called upon the students and the people of Iran to participate in demonstrations at Universities and other locations on July 9th 2009 all across Iran to commemorate the July 1999 student uprising in Iran in a continuation of the present historic movement.

Updates On Iran

clipped from pajamasmedia.com On the one hand, it seems that Obama will be going to the upcoming G8 conference with a request that there be no new sanctions on Iran.  This comes at a time when the Europeans, for the first time, seem inclined to get at least a little bit tougher on the mullahs, and it effectively demolishes the myth that this administration intends to do anything to support the Iranian people in their life and death struggle for freedom (perhaps this should not surprise us;  after all, Obama’s 4th of July message did not contain the word “freedom,” but it did talk a lot about his own legislative proposals).  At the same time, Vice President Joe Biden three times said the United States would do nothing to prevent an Israeli attack against Iranian nuclear targets. So apparently we’re prepared to let the Israelis do our dirty work.  A real standup sort of policy. the regime was so worried about the strike that they shut down most factories, businesses and offices.  This is another sign of regime insecurity

Our Manchurian Candidate Is On The Other Side

clipped from www.telegraph.co.uk In the US, Republican congressman Mark Kirk has claimed there is growing support for a bill he is sponsoring which would strip American support for foreign companies supplying refined petroleum to Iran. Iran is a large oil producer but decades of financial isolation means it must import petrol and other end products from abroad. Reliance, the Indian operator, provides one-third of Iran's daily needs while also enjoying a massive trade loan from the US. Another bill that would exclude companies involved in the trade from doing business in the US was put on hold earlier this year as a gesture from President Barack Obama to improve relations.

Our OChavez In Chief, Part 78395

clipped from gatewaypundit.blogspot.com Barack Obama explained why he is backing the ousted thug in Honduras during his speech today in Russia. ABC News reported: “America supports now the restoration of the democratically-elected President of Honduras, even though he has strongly opposed American policies,” Of course, Obama forgot to mention this part: The military, judiciary and Honduran congress removed the country’s president because he was attempting to illegally extend his tenure in office. – attempting a bloodless coup – in usurpation of that country’s constitution. The people of Honduras – in the form of that country’s military, judiciary and congress – stood up to tyranny by exorcising the Marxist cancer that threatened that nation’s sovereignty. Yet, the leader of the free world – and his secretary of state – sided with the tyrannical, calling for the reinstatement of ousted despot who tried to destroy their democracy.

Obamageddon

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Why Are You Still Listening To A Word He Says?

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Waiting For 14

clipped from www.realclearmarkets.com The June "Jobs" report issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on July 2 caused shock and dismay. Payrolls declined by 467,000 jobs, more than the 345,000 lost in May, and much more than the 363,000 that economists had predicted. The only reason that the reported unemployment rate rose by only 0.1 percentage points (to 9.5%) in June was that many jobless people became discouraged and stopped looking for work. The BEA numbers (which were revised slightly on June 25) show an accelerating decline in "real nonresidential fixed investment". This measure decreased 37.3 percent in the first quarter of 2009, compared with a fall of 21.7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008. The 37.9% investment decline reported by the BEA can be expected to eventually produce a reduction in total employment of about 8.5%. Accordingly, we can expect unemployment to rise to about 14% within a year unless the downward slide of PBI is reversed.

Only At The Chrome Post

clipped from iowahawk.typepad.com Katherine Weymouth This week for five nights only: come meet World Famous Obama Policy Team. You've seen them perform on adult cable stations from C-SPAN2 to CNN, and now you can talk to them live and in the flesh... only at the Chrome Post. Sexy Reverb Voice ...the Washington Chrome Post. Katherine Weymouth All of your favorites will be there -- Tiffany Geithner, Destinee Axlerod, Savannah Ratner. Ready to discuss all the ways they can stimulate you and your clients.They'll open doors you never imagined possible! Don't miss the grand finale on the Woodward and Bernstein main stage, where Rahm Emanuela will perform his forbidden pirouette too hot for the Joffrey! Sexy Reverb Voice oooh...federal stimulus.

OIncoherence

clipped from www.firstthings.com “…what excuse is there for Obama’s ludicrous worldview? Unlike student Obama, President Obama knows how the Cold War ended. And it wasn’t by disarming America.” I suspect that post-student Obama, hanging with the far-left and academics as he did, has never broadened his perspective because he lived in a very insulated place where no one ever expressed a different view-point and he never heard the words, “no” or “that’s muddled thinking,” because everyone else thought as he did. Our “sophisticated” and “world-traveled” president is, in fact, coming from a very provincial, self-satisfied and narrow place. The depths of his introspection leads Obama to conclude about himself that he doesn’t like his golf game. This small uncovering by the largely-still-besotted Obama-press will be quickly buried under the continuing excesses of Michael Jackson coverage, and the monolithic-left snarking over Sarah Palin who seems, with her resignation last Friday, to have roiled them.

Times Have Changed

clipped from pajamasmedia.com ERIC SCHEIE: “Times have changed. It now seems that supporting the war, not believing 9/11 was an inside job, and opposing the belief that Bush is a Nazi are no longer conservative positions. Even foot dragging on Gitmo has become suspiciously liberal.”

Cracked

clipped from www.nytimes.com CAIRO — An important group of religious leaders in Iran called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday, an act of defiance against the country’s supreme leader and the most public sign of a major split in the country’s clerical establishment. A statement by the group, the Association of Researchers and Teachers of Qum, represents a significant, if so far symbolic, setback for the government and especially the authority of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose word is supposed to be final. The government has tried to paint the opposition and its top presidential candidate, Mir Hussein Moussavi, as criminals and traitors, a strategy that now becomes more difficult. “This crack in the clerical establishment, and the fact they are siding with the people and Moussavi, in my view is the most historic crack in the 30 years of the Islamic republic,” said Abbas Milani, director of the Iranian Studies Program

Ignoring The Wise Latina Woman

clipped from pajamasmedia.com HONDURAS: Bizarrely, President Obama has sided with the OAS and the scofflaw ex-president. A Bloomberg report from last week quotes a Honduran Supreme Court justice, Rosalinda Cruz, explaining the situation: “The only thing the armed forces did was carry out an arrest order,” Cruz, 55, said in a telephone interview from the capital, Tegucigalpa. “There’s no doubt he was preparing his own coup by conspiring to shut down the congress and courts.” Why won’t Obama listen? Does he have something against wise Latina women? Heh.

China Looking For External Discipline For The Dollar

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Your eyes will get very big starting at 4:45

Peter points out that they can solve this problem themselves of course.

McCain Gets It Right

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It's pretty standard stuff until the 3:00 mark, then you need to watch for sure.

I have a long list of grievances with McCain. But he definitely did good here.

COTD: Not A Peep

clipped from pajamasmedia.com All of this money, and one of the primary causes of the debacle is still in place and thriving. And not a peep out of the American people. Insanity. The media should be put in jail. Yeehaaww!! let the good times roll. We are going to end up busting the dollar over this nonsense (and stuff like it). Straight out of Chavez’s playbook.

COTD: Political Considerations

clipped from pajamasmedia.com Obama learned from FDR that a President can, with the help of the state run media, cynically run the economy into the ground for purposes of political power. It keeps those who have jobs afraid, and makes the beggars dependent on the gummint. Punish your enemies and reward your campaign contributors, and call it economic recovery (aka TARP). We’re getting fascism folks, which is a variant of socialism. There will still be (nominal) capitalism, but the government will get to make all the important decisions, based on political considerations.

The Return

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Peter Schiff is back on CNBC. About time.

COTD: How To Get Your Climate Bill Passed

clipped from wattsupwiththat.com Here’s how to get your climate bill passed. Buy a congressman: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/01/sweetener-helped-sway-vote-on-house-climate-bill/ “They finally secured the vote of one Ohioan, veteran Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Toledo, the old-fashioned way. They gave her what she wanted – a new federal power authority, similar to Washington state’s Bonneville Power Administration, stocked with up to $3.5 billion in taxpayer money available for lending to renewable energy and economic development projects in Ohio and other Midwestern states. ” This is all about taxes, power and money. Climate seems to be only a cover story, and because of this, I doubt that any appeal to politicians about lack of global warming will make a difference. Ethics =/= politics

AGW Under Fire From Giant Proton Synchrotron

clipped from wattsupwiththat.com You’ve probably all heard of Svensmark and the Galactic Cosmic Ray (GCR) to cloud cover modulation theory by now. Lot’s of warmists say it is “discredited”. However, CERN in Switzerland isn’t following that thinking, and after getting some encouraging results in the CLOUD06 experiment, they have funded a much larger and more comprehensive CLOUD09 experiment. I figure if it is “discredited”, a bunch of smart guys and gals like CERN wouldn’t be ramping up the investigation. There’s also word now of a new correlation: Correlation recently reported between solar/GCR variability and temperature in Siberia from glacial ice core, 30 yr lag (ie. ocean currents may be part of response) Download Kirkby’s Slide show (Large 7.8 MB PDF, be patient) http://indico.cern.ch/getFile.py/access?resId=0&materialId=slides&confId=52576 Backup Copy on WUWT server: Kirkby_CERN_slideshow09

Heh. Follow the links and download Jasper Kirkby's full slide set. It's absolutely devastating and only includes the 2006 trial data so far. This and the next few years should prove VERY interesting at CERN's PS complex.

Antarctic Sea Ice: The Video

clipped from noconsensus.wordpress.com Its difficult to imagine after watching this video that this ice shelf hasn’t collapsed (or whatever it’s called) and re-formed in the last several hundred years, more than once. Remember the ice from the shelf forms on land and flows out to sea. Either way, considering the natural variation of Antarctic sea ice, can we really say the current Antarctic ice trend or the change of an ice shelf in such a tiny area has a powerful meaning for the future of Earth?

The Economy Killing Farce

clipped from www.qando.net However for the traitorous “deniers”, aka skeptics, who believe the whole climate change hysteria to be an economy killing farce, things are looking better. For instance India has announced it will not participate in the Western world’s attempts to kill their own economies: India said it will reject any new treaty to limit global warming that makes the country reduce greenhouse-gas emissions because that will undermine its energy consumption, transportation and food security. Cutting back on climate-warming gases is a measure that instead must be taken by industrialized countries, and India is mobilizing developing nations to push that case, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh told the media today in New Delhi. “India will not accept any emission-reduction target — period,” Ramesh said. “This is a non-negotiable stand.” Heh … fairly blunt and straight foward wouldn’t you say? Of course, China took the same stand a couple of weeks ago.

Only China Can Save Capitalism

clipped from gatewaypundit.blogspot.com There is a joke that has quietly circulated its way around--In 1949 it was only socialism that could save China, in 1989 only China could save socialism and in 2009 only China can save capitalism. the U.S. wants to transform the Federal Reserve into what would be a "super regulator," comprehensively strengthening regulation towards the financial institutions. It is also planning to establish a new financial consumer safeguard endowed with authority that far supersedes that of the current regulatory system. This way of doing things is in conformity with the Marxist doctrine of the Communist Manifesto in which Marx foretold a capitalist financial crisis. The American Foreign Policy magazine offered a very Marxist "prescription" suggesting that the "whole financial sector be turned into a public utility" -- perhaps one could say, "centralization of credit in the hands of the State by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly." (Communist Manifesto)...

Subjugation

clipped from www.nydailynews.com Last week French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced his support for legislation to ban the burka, the dark, heavy and not-too-comfortable garment worn by many Muslim women. The question arises: Is this forcible French secularism run amok, or a prohibition that Americans, who often believe we have struck a better balance between church and state, might entertain? I would say the latter. But that observation - if you will excuse the expression - brings us to another and even more powerful objection to this mode of dress. It is quite plainly designed by men for the subjugation of women. One cannot be absolutely sure that no woman has ever donned it voluntarily, but one can certainly say that, in countries where women can choose not to wear it, then not wearing it is the choice they generally make.

Chavez's Way

clipped from www.realclearpolitics.com The deep truth is a lot more dramatic: Zelaya, obstinate and rash, intent on being reelected at any cost, heedless of all the warnings of the judiciary and the legislature, intended to drag the nation in the direction of Chávez, something that in Honduras would have been the beginning of a huge economic and social Via Crucis. We are witnessing a conflict between two ways of understanding the function of the state and the role of the political leaders. Chávez's way -- an incipient ruling concept that Zelaya irresponsibly assumed in Honduras -- is a variant of state-run collectivism, a political stream that does away with the separation of powers that is part and parcel of republics. It exalts the personalist style, eliminates replacement of the leader, and adopts anti-Western positions that are expressed in dangerous alliances with countries like Iran and North Korea.

OHonduras

clipped from www.qando.net Just so you know what happened in one line: Our Ex President was trying to repeat what Hugo Chavez has achieved in four other countries by controlling the national media, bribing top officials and threatening citizens. He wanted to illegally change our constitution so that he could create a one and only Party, do away with national media, change the way referendums are carried and be reelected indefinitely by these false referendums. If you ask why we voted for him as President in the first place? Well, he presented himself as a normal candidate in opposition to corruption. We basically voted (me included) for him, because we were against the other guy. Little did we know that he would start insulting the USA (country where most of us have family and friends) and befriending all its enemies. He took a hard, hard left. With Hugo Chavez’s money, he bought three TV channels and a News Paper His own Party ousted him a few months after being elected President.

The Real Question

clipped from pajamasmedia.com The real question is, how are we doing in the broad war (the one that stretches from Afghanistan into Europe, with active battlefields in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Palestine and Lebanon)? The answer, then is:  we are doing very badly.  Indeed, we’re not doing at all.  Au contraire, we and our feckless Western allies are, for the most part, actively appeasing those whom we should be confronting.  We famously dithered as Iran crushed the incipient revolution (a revolution that would have enormously mitigated the threat Iran represents).  It’s obvious that Obama et. al. were annoyed and embarrassed by the outpouring of passion for freedom all over Iran, because it interrupted their efforts at lovemaking with the regime’s leaders.  Meanwhile, Obama announced he is sending an ambassador to Damascus, where Bashar Assad is Iran’s most faithful friend in the region.  And nothing at all is being done to restrain the Saudis’

Katrina's Invitation

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Woo Hoo! Go Katrina!