From Power Line, on the rescue of Captain Richard Phillips from the Somali pirates, for which Obama –  desperate for a success – is claiming credit:  

The Defense Department sought Obama’s permission to use force against the pirates, and Obama either declined or failed to respond. When the President finally agreed, it was under the most restrictive conditions possible: force could be used only if the captain’s life was "in imminent danger."

I should hope so! It is inconceivable that a President would order the commander on the scene to stand idly by if a hostage’s life was "in imminent danger." What is still unclear, based on early accounts, is whether that condition was actually satisfied. The commanding officer has said that one of the pirates was seen pointing a weapon at Phillips, which satisfied the "imminent danger" standard and caused him to order the snipers to fire.

Perhaps so; I’m happy to take him at his word. (But was Phillips in view? I thought he was tied up, out of sight at the bottom of the boat. No doubt this will be cleared up in time.) But it appears that what triggered the rescue was that all three pirates stuck their heads into view at once, and the commanding officer took advantage of the opportunity by ordering the snipers to fire.

Whether the "imminent danger" standard was satisfied or not, its real effect (and, I suspect, its real purpose) was to give cover to our fledgling President’s rear end. If the affair had turned out badly–as could easily have happened, had the snipers been less accurate–the White House could either have distanced itself from the commander by saying he exceeded his authority, or taken the position that there was no choice but to act because the captain was in "imminent danger."

In fact, the White House gave the most cautious authorization for the use of force that it possibly could have. Obama–like, more significantly, Captain Phillips [a true hero – JB] – was saved by the willingness of the on-scene commander to stick his neck out and the skill of the Navy’s snipers [and Captain Phillips’s own conduct- JB]. 

 The egotists and madmen who rule over us now have a cosmic scheme of destruction. 

This – at least accompanied by a beautiful picture – is from the Mail Online a few days ago: 

President Barack Obama is considering a radical plan to tackle global warming by firing  pollution particles into the stratosphere to deflect some of the sun’s heat.

The controversial experiment was touted yesterday as a possible last resort to help cool the Earth’s air by the president’s new science advisor John Holdren.

‘It’s got to be looked at. We don’t have the luxury of taking any approach off the table,’ said Mr Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology.

Sunscreen: Could its rays be deflected as a last resort to beat global warming?

Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology, outlined the idea of shooting either sulphur dioxide particles, aluminium oxide dust or specially designed aerosols into the stratosphere – the upper level of the atmosphere between ten and 30 miles above the Earth’s surface.

It is hoped that this would cool the planet by artificially reflecting sunlight back into space before it can be absorbed.

Naval guns, rockets, high-flying aircraft and even hot air balloons have been put forward as possible ways of firing the agent into the air.

 

 

But he said he had raised the idea with the Obama administration and added: ‘We might get desperate enough to want to use it.’

Mr Holdren insisted that dramatic action is needed to halt climate change which he compared to being ‘in a car with bad brakes driving towards a cliff in a fog’.

There has been widespread resistance in the scientific community to attempts to deliberately modify the environment on such a large scale.

Opponents fear that tampering with the atmosphere’s delicate balance could have consequences that would be even worse than global warming.

Here is an extract from an article by Dr Tim Bell explaining the dangers of such an attempt:

Obama’s European Progress – during which he bowed deeply to the paymaster of jihad, ‘King’ Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, and day after day, in speech after speech, denigrated the country he leads – was an historical landmark, the start in all likelihood of a global catastrophe.

Here’s what the columnist Diana West has written:

An American bow to Saudi Arabia … was calumny on a historic level. King Abdullah, after all, is the head of a state that is the very caricature of modern-day evil, a Sharia dictatorship that fosters religious repression, de facto slavery, subjugation of women, and, not least, the international export of jihad and Sharia through "charities," mosques, madrassas, textbooks, university endowments, Sharia finance and, of course, terrorists, some 15 of whom attacked the United States in 2001. Just last month, Abdullah elevated the delusionally hard-line interior minister Prince Nayef, who long promoted the crackpot theory that Saudis were not involved in 9/11 (it was the Jews, he said), to a direct line of succession to the Saudi throne. Abdullah himself has donated at least $1.35 million to Saudi telethons that raised $174 million for the families of Palestinian suicide bombers from Hamas and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades. In 2007, Abdullah explicitly denounced the U.S. presence in Iraq as "illegitimate," thus encouraging attacks on Americans in Iraq, where, not incidentally, Saudis are thought to have carried out more suicide bombings than any other nationality. That’s just for starters. In other words, this is not a personage an American president can ever, ever show deference to without besmirching the memories and lives of the American dead and maimed. But that’s just what President Obama did (despite lame claims from the White House that Obama was just shaking hands), making this incident more than a simple gaffe.

She adds:  ‘Obama is the first Muslim-born US president. Could that have something to do with the deepness of the bow?’

And this is how Charles Krauthammer expressed his wonder and offense at the opéra bouffe:

Our president came bearing a basketful of mea culpas. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own people for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness, for genocide, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantanamo and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world.… It is passing strange for a world leader to celebrate his own country’s decline.  

Nor was it only with gestures and words that the wrecking was done. As North Korea launched a long-range missile of a sort that could carry nuclear warheads all the way to the US, the prince of apologies not only abandoned Japan to its fears of a nuclear-armed enemy in its region, but took away any hope of support in the future by announcing cuts in America’s missile defense, including interceptors expressly designed to shoot North Korean missiles out of the sky. North Korea and Iran are implicitly licensed to continue co-operating on the development of nuclear warheads. The leader of the free world will do nothing to stop them. Worse than that – not only will he take no effective action to prevent the genocidal mullahs of Iran from becoming a nuclear power, he will do his utmost to prevent Israel from  taking such action even though its very existence is at stake.  

On bended knee – figuratively this time – he begged Russia to reduce its nuclear arsenal commensurately with his own proposed reductions, so restoring it – at least in its own self-esteem – to the status of a rival super-power. To what result? Regardless of the flattery, Russia demurred. America was humiliated, but Obama himself was morally elevated, at least in the eyes of his claques, the mobs both outside and inside the US who ecstatically praise his  abasement and weakening of  the only true superpower, of which Obama himself incredibly and tragically is the president.

On he went to Iraq. The comparative freedom won there by years of American effort and sacrifice was not of sufficient concern to him to elicit any commitment to preserve it when he made his stop-over call. What will Iraq do, where will it look for support, when Iran threatens it with nuclear weapons?     

Nations that have put their trust in America for their freedom or sheer survival have seen their erstwhile protector turn its back on them and smile encouragingly at their enemies: the tyrants, totalitarians, and jihadists. Japan, India, Israel, Iraq, Poland, Georgia, the Ukraine, the Czech Republic, the Baltic States, Taiwan need new alliances, new means of defense. The United Sates is deserting them. Oppressed minorities in Asia, Africa, and South America must cast aside any hope they had that the hitherto greatest defender of freedom might ever again lift a finger to save them.

Here’s what Caroline Glick, columnist for the Jerusalem Post, has to say, in perhaps an over-sanguine state of mind:

[Vice-president] Biden …  made clear that from the administration’s perspective, an Israeli strike that prevents Iran from becoming a nuclear power is less acceptable than a nuclear-armed Iran. That is, the Obama administration prefers to see Iran become a nuclear power than to see Israel secure its very existence. America’s betrayal of its democratic allies makes each of them more vulnerable to aggression at the hands of their enemies – enemies the Obama administration is now actively attempting to appease. And as the US strengthens their adversaries at their expense, these spurned democracies must consider their options for surviving as free societies in this new, threatening, post-American environment. For the most part, America’s scorned allies lack the ability to defeat their enemies on their own. India cannot easily defeat nuclear-armed Pakistan, which itself is fragmenting into disparate anti-Indian nuclear-wielding Islamist and Islamist-supporting factions. Japan today cannot face North Korea – which acts as a Chinese proxy – on its own without risking a confrontation with China. Russia’s invasion of Georgia last August showed clearly that its former republics and satellites have no way of escaping Moscow’s grip alone… And the Obama administration’s intense efforts to woo Iran coupled with its plan to slash the US’s missile defense programs – including those in which Israel participates – and reportedly pressure Israel to dismantle its own purported nuclear arsenal – make clear that Israel today stands alone against Iran. The risks that the newly inaugurated post-American world pose for America’s threatened friends are clear. But viable opportunities for survival do exist, and Israel can and must play a central role in developing them. Specifically, Israel must move swiftly to develop active strategic alliances with Japan, Iraq, Poland, and the Czech Republic and it must expand its alliance with India. With Israel’s technological capabilities, its intelligence and military expertise, it can play a vital role in shoring up these countries’ capacities to contain the rogue states that threaten them. And by containing the likes of Russia, North Korea and Pakistan, they will make it easier for Israel to contain Iran even in the face of US support for the mullahs. The possibilities for strategic cooperation between and among all of these states and Israel run the gamut from intelligence sharing to military training, to missile defense, naval development, satellite collaboration, to nuclear cooperation.

How would it have been if Obama had not deserted these countries? Cliff May suggests:  

A thought experiment: Suppose North Korea’s Taepo Dong-2 missile had been launched – and then been knocked out of the sky by an American, Japanese or South Korean missile defense system. Kim would have been hopping mad. The Russians, Chinese, Iranians, Syrians and others … might have given some hard thought to whether it makes sense to devote time and resources to developing nuclear weapons and missile systems that the U.S. and its allies will have the resolve and the ability to neutralize. In fact, the U.S. and Japan did have Aegis destroyers tracking the North Korean missile. Some of those ships carried missile interceptors that could have brought down the North Korean missile. A decision was made not to do so.

What moves Obama? Is it all just for his own personal aggrandizement? He seems to crave adulation, and he got plenty of it from worshippers in every country he visited; immense applause from happy-clappy fans, including the journalists who have unapologetically abandoned any pretense of objectivity or respect for the truth in the throes of their mindless crush.

But beneath the vanity, the posing, the holding-forth, the charm offensive, the performance, there is surely a deep-seated desire , planted in him from his earliest youth, reinforced by his education and his lefty buddies in Chicago, to see America demoted, the cruel Third World appeased, the rich made poor, the successful brought low, a socialist leveling, an all-controlling government, and an end to the impudence of liberty.    

America has elected its own willful destroyer. An astounding thing. 

An act of terrorism by Muslim university students, that would have killed and maimed many in the UK this Easter, has fortunately been prevented by timely detection and arrests.  

Michael Burleigh comments in the Mail (read the whole column here):  

The fact is that universities are one of the bastions of multiculturalism in Britain – and although the Government knows that this discredited policy has been disastrous for this country, it is still too nervous of the Left to abandon one of their holy grails.

Multiculturalism ostensibly celebrates individual ethnic ‘identities’ but it has been given such emphasis that each minority identity – ‘Black’, ‘Muslim’ or any other – is all too often encouraged to air a sense of grievance and victimhood, while the majority population are cast in the role of oppressors.

And for years now, terrorist recruiting sergeants – aided and abetted by a greedy liberal lawyers’ racket which encourages people to emphasise their rights rather than their duties and obligations as citizens – have exploited the multicultural havens of universities to persuade those who do feel victimised by society to try to get their own back with bombs and violence.

But if the universities are now one of the main breeding grounds of Islamist terrorism, the terrorists targets are not so rarefied… The 12 men arrested in the North-West on Wednesday … may have been plotting a mass casualty attack on nightclubs frequented by footballers this Easter weekend.

It is time now for us all to ask how long the Government is going to tolerate universities as breeding grounds for the terrorists who seek to kill innocent Britons during the most solemn holiday in the Christian calendar [or at any other time – JB].

There is only one way to tackle this deeply and dangerously ingrained problem: The Government should urgently and unequivocally abandon the multicultural creed that has allowed extremists to flourish in this country.

Sure it should. But it’s almost certainly too late. The ideology of Islam is wholly incompatible with the values of the West, but the immigrant Muslim population of Britain and Western Europe is growing while the indigenous populations are dying out.  It will not be long before Europe is an Islamic continent. 

One thing that could be done before it is too late (but will not be done of course) is – bring the European leftist ideologues, Arab-loving romantics, and Islam-besotted idiots (like Prince Charles) who actively or by sentimental encouragement opened the doors of Europe to the Muslims, to trial for treason. 

O, but – I nearly forgot – British judges are among the most guilty. 

 We receive this praise with pride:

Gov. Palin Gets Praise From Unusual Quarter

 

Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has earned some praise from an unlikely quarter – a blog called The Atheist Conservative.

In a post titled "Who will defend us?", Jillian Becker contrasts the governor’s recent statement stressing the need for the U.S. to have a robust missile defense with what we’ve been hearing from the Obama Administration through Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a message of weakness spoken softly without a big stick to back it up.

Ms. Becker’s conclusion:

Plainly, America and the world would be safer if Palin were president and not Obama.

Now there’s something that conservative atheists and conservatives of faith can agree on! How refreshing to hear such from a non-believer. Atheists of the Left, it seems, can only mock Gov. Palin for her religious beliefs, while those on the Right are more interested in such critical issues as the defense of our nation.

Hats off to The Atheist Conservative for recognizing that conservatives of all stripes share much more common ground than the narrow strips with fences which stand between us.

– JP

 Republican Senator Rick Santorum writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Watching President Obama apologize last week for America’s arrogance – before a French audience that owes its freedom to the sacrifices of Americans – helped convince me that he has a deep-seated antipathy toward American values and traditions. His nomination of former Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh to be the State Department’s top lawyer constitutes further evidence of his disdain for American values.

This seemingly obscure position in Foggy Bottom’s bureaucratic maze is one of the most important in any administration, shaping foreign policy in the courts and playing a critical role in international negotiations and treaties.

Let’s set aside Koh’s disputed comments about the possible application of Sharia law in American jurisprudence. The pick is alarming for more fundamental reasons having to do with national sovereignty and constitutional self-governance.

What is indisputable is that Koh calls himself a "transnationalist." He believes U.S. courts "must look beyond national interest to the mutual interests of all nations in a smoothly functioning international legal regime. …" He thinks the courts have "a central role to play in domesticating international law into U.S. law" and should "use their interpretive powers to promote the development of a global legal system."

Koh’s "transnationalism" stands in contrast to good, old-fashioned notions of national sovereignty, in which our Constitution is the highest law of the land. In the traditional view, controversial matters, whatever they may be, are subject to democratic debate here. They should be resolved by the American people and their representatives, not "internationalized." What Holland or Belgium or Kenya or any other nation or coalition of nations thinks has no bearing on our exercise of executive, legislative, or judicial power.

Koh disagrees. He would decide such matters based on the views of other countries or transnational organizations – or, rather, those entities’ elites.

Unsurprisingly, Koh is a strong supporter of the International Criminal Court, which could subject U.S. soldiers and officials to foreign criminal trials for their actions while fighting for our security. He has recommended that American lawyers work to "undermine" official American opposition to the court.

If only Koh’s transnationalism ended there. Our Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment? Koh believes it should be reinterpreted in light of foreign and international law to pay "decent respect to the opinions of humankind."

Old fogies like me believe we ought to pay more attention to the opinions of the Founders who wrote the Constitution and the people who have lived under it. If Americans want to end the death penalty, they can do so through their elected state representatives.

If foreign opinions trump those of Pennsylvanians on capital punishment, why not on other issues?… 

How would it work? Each judge could pick and choose which law of which country he would apply in any particular instance? Or would it be a matter of majorities: eg most other countries (all Arab countries, almost all African countries just to start with) use torture, make arbitrary arrests, imprison without trial, so the US should do it too? And Sharia punishments of limb-lopping, public floggings, hurling from heights, beheading, stoning – they should be applied in the US?

If this is Koh’s legal-political philosophy, and if he is to have his way, there is no point in national sovereignty; no point in Americans making their own laws, and they may as well tear up the Constitution.

From an article in Newsmax by Ken Timmerman (read it all here): 

When newly appointed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with President Barack Obama next month, don’t expect a public spat over peace process politics. Sources in the new government tell Newsmax that the Israeli prime minister is determined to focus all of his energy on convincing Obama that preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons dwarfs all other concerns either nation could have. Netanyahu sees the threat from a nuclear-armed Iran as a “hinge of history,” that could fundamentally alter the world if it goes unchallenged, sources told Newsmax in Jerusalem on Tuesday. 

If the world fails to meet the challenge of stopping the Iranian regime’s nuclear quest, Netanayhu believes “this could be a turning point that is irreversible.”

Should Iran succeed in acquiring nuclear weapons, it would be the first time that a radical Islamic regime dedicated to Israel’s destruction had ever acquired such massive destructive power. “We cannot assume that the normal rational calculations other actors have had for the last 50 or 60 years are going to hold true,” one source said.

But what if Obama desires that irreversible historical change? What if he desires Israel’s destruction? Every appointment he has made in connection with Middle East policy, every step he has taken since coming to power in relation to the Arabs and Islam, has demonstrated his sympathy with the Islamic powers – even to the point of inventing a ‘moderate Taliban’. His decision to base his Israel-Palestine policy on the Saudi plan, which is a formula for the destruction of Israel, confirms his lack of sympathy for the Jewish State. We suspect that Netanyahu is extremely unlikely to change Obama’s mind. There may or may not be a public spat specifically over the (misnamed) ‘peace process’, but there is very likely to be an irreconcilable clash over Iran. 

 The San Francisco Chronicle reports: 

Rep. Barbara Lee of Oakland, who led a historic trip of members of Congress to Cuba this week, met with Fidel Castro at his home and says the former Cuban president sees President Obama as "a good person and good for America."

Does it make all Americans feel proud?

 Robert Spencer, one of the West’s most reliable authorities on Islam, writes (read the whole article here):

“We will convey,” said Barack Obama to the Turkish Parliament Monday, “our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world — including in my own country.”

 Undeniably the Islamic faith has done a great deal to shape the world – a statement that makes no value judgment about exactly how it has shaped the world. It has formed the dominant culture in what is known as the Islamic world for centuries. But what on earth could Obama mean when he says that Islam has also “done so much” to shape his own country? 

Unless he considers himself an Indonesian, Obama’s statement was extraordinarily strange. After all, how has the Islamic faith shaped the United States?…

Surveying the whole tapestry of American history, one would be hard-pressed to find any significant way in which the Islamic faith has shaped the United States in terms of its governing principles and the nature of American society. Meanwhile, there are numerous ways in which, if there had been a significant Muslim presence in the country at the time, some of the most cherished and important principles of American society and law may have met fierce resistance, and may never have seen the light of day.

So in what way has the Islamic faith shaped Obama’s country? The most significant event connected to the Islamic faith that has shaped the character of the United States was the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.” … The Islamic faith has shaped the U.S. since 9/11 in leading to the spending of billions on anti-terror measures, and to the ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to Guantanamo, and to so many features of the modern political and social landscape that they cannot be enumerated within the space of a single article.

Of course, it is certain that Obama had none of that in mind. But what could he possibly have had in mind? His statement was either careless or ignorant, or both – not qualities we need in a Commander-in-Chief even in the best of times.

 From Canada Free Press: 

President Obama said in Turkey to the citizens of this majority Muslim country that the United States “would never be at war with Islam.” He went on to say that the relationship the U.S. has with Islam, and the bridge he would like to build between Islam and the West, cannot and will not be based on opposition to Al Qaeda.

He then drew on his personal ties to Islam – you know, the ties he denied he had during the campaign – Obama stated that many Americans have Muslims in their family, or have lived in a Muslim-majority country. He added, “I know, because I am one of them.”

Despite Obama’s ignorance, the radical Islamization of the West has nothing to do with a wonderful concept of multiculturalism and diversity. Europe is being overrun with radical Islam, and as the radical Islamization of that continent takes place, the crime is so rampant in the Muslim neighborhoods that the police don’t even dare enter the areas.

Radical Islam’s desire, whether or not the Left, President Obama, or the touchy-feely crowd are willing to admit it, is to conquer the world. Their goals are to eliminate Israel, kill every Jew walking the Earth, and to bring down the West, transforming the Great Satan into Islamic Nations operating under the thumb of Sharia Law. Radical Islam will not ever be at peace with non-Muslim nations not to mention Muslims who do not share a belief in Sharia Law.

Sure, there will be temporary treaties that they will abide by for a few months, or even a number of years, but in the end, understand that these agreements are temporary. Radical Islam will not completely rest until all non-Muslim civilizations are destroyed, and the inhabitants are slaves under the mighty fist of an Islamic Caliphate.

Giving special privileges to such a radical, political, judicial and threatening nightmare is a mistake. Calling countries like Iran, Syria, the Palestinian Authority, Hezbollah, Hamas, or other radicals “friends” and negotiating with their leaders without pre-conditions and a stance that comes from a position of strength is a mistake, and very dangerous.

The President can proclaim all he wants that the West, or that the United States is not at war with radical Islam, but like it or not, radical Islam is at war with America, Israel, Europe, and anyone else that is not under their control.