The egregious Robert Gibbs, the most inarticulate spokesman that ever spoke, manages never to answer a question, which is probably what makes him valuable to Obama. In a way one has to admire him for his power of evasion, his sheer slipperiness. He’s almost made an art of it. 

Here’s a good example from Power Line:

On Fox News Sunday this morning, Robert Gibbs was asked whether President Obama had prepared to be asked about the Henry Gates controversy at his press conference last week. The colloquy is interesting:

BAIER: Presidents, before prime time news conferences, usually have detailed preparation sessions. And President Obama has already had four time prime time news conferences.

Before Wednesday’s news conference, did you prepare him for a question about Henry Gates’s arrest in Cambridge?

GIBBS: Well, look, let’s just say, it’s safe to say we went over a whole lot of topics that we thought might come up, and certainly, this was a topic that was and has been in the news.

I think the president, on Friday, spoke about the fact that he hadn’t calibrated his words well probably unnecessarily added to the media frenzy around what was going on in Cambridge, so much so that even the police officer, Sergeant Crowley, that he talked to, from Cambridge, asked him for advice on how to get the press off of his — off of his lawn, and the president said, “I’m trying to figure out how to get the press off my lawn, too.”

BAIER: You know, you — so you prepared him for the question, or at least made him aware that it could come up. Did he read the police report beforehand?

GIBBS: I don’t know if the president read the police report. I think the president was clear in discussing the fact that he did not know all the details of what had transpired in Cambridge.

My guess is that only a very few people know exactly what happened in every instance in that. Again, I know the president…

BAIER: I guess my question is, early on, did he determine that he was going to take sides to back his friend to the extent that he did Wednesday?

GIBBS: Well, again, I think the president discussed the notion that saying beforehand that he knew Professor Gates, that he didn’t have all the details, and in hindsight understands that his words were not calibrated as they should have been.

Of course, what got Obama into trouble was not saying that he knew Gates, but claiming that the Cambridge Police “acted stupidly” in arresting him. Although Gibbs doesn’t come out and say it, it appears that Obama’s “acted stupidly” line was not a spur of the moment blunder, but rather scripted commentary that he worked out in advance with his aides. Gibbs went on:

And, look, Bret, it’s our hope that, as the president said, there can be — this can be part of a teachable moment, that we can create a better communication and a dialogue between communities and police and help everyone do their job a little bit better.

Like the President, Gibbs doesn’t seem to understand that the person in need of “teaching” is Obama. And who is supposed to “do their job a little bit better”? The police, I guess; but some would say the incident suggests that the President needs to do his job a little bit better. The dialogue continues:

BAIER: In fact, accepting that invitation for the beer, Mr. Gates wrote this. He said that he hopes it helps. Quote, “my unfortunate experience will only have a larger meaning if we can all use this to diminish racial profiling.”

So does the president believe, as Mr. Gates clearly still does, that this was an instance of racial profiling?

GIBBS: Well, I think that’s an issue that the president has worked on and been concerned about. I don’t think the president has come down on one side of that or the other. Again, I think he would tell you he doesn’t know all the details of this.

But, if what we can do is bring Professor Gates and Sergeant Crowley together to discuss some of the issues and the events that surrounded that day in Cambridge, and if that helps communities and law enforcement work together as they did in Illinois on this important issue with then-state senator Barack Obama; if communities and law enforcement throughout the country can do that, I think we’ll all be a little bit better off.

And that’s what this is really all about.

It’s hard to tell, sometimes, whether Gibbs’s incoherence is deliberate. Often, I think it is; perhaps that’s the case here. The “issue” that President Obama “has been concerned about” and that “communities and law enforcement work together” on is apparently racial profiling. The conversation that Obama intends to have with Gates and Crowley over a beer could get a little tense if Gates (and Obama?) think they are working on the issue of racial profiling, while Crowley thinks they are working on the issue of privileged people with connections in high places acting abusively toward police officers who are trying to do their jobs.

Read all of the article by Robert Fulford in the National Post from which we quote this:

Lubna Ahmed al-Hussein, an angry Khartoum journalist who works for the UN in Sudan, has started a campaign against shariah law by elevating a local police matter into an international embarrassment: She’s invited the world to witness her judicial flogging, thus making her case part of the struggle between religious traditionalists and independent women … 

In Khartoum, the General Discipline Police Authority patrols the streets, charged with maintaining shariah standards of public decency. Recently it raided a restaurant and arrested 13 women, including al-Hussein, for the crime of … wearing trousers.

Since 1991, that’s been a violation of the Sudanese criminal code. More precisely, it is classified as a violation of public morality. While erratically enforced, the rule is serious enough to carry a penalty of 40 lashes. Ten of the women arrested with al-Hussein pleaded guilty and received a reduced sentence of 10 lashes. But al-Hussein and two others demanded their day in court and al-Hussein decided to provoke a scandal by distributing 500 personal invitations to her trial. She expects to be found guilty (she won’t be allowed a lawyer or a chance to speak), so she informed her guests that they’ll also be expected at her flogging.

The French government has condemned the law, and in Cairo the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information (ANHRI) has launched a campaign to defend al-Hussein and the others. ANHRI also protested a suit brought by the police against another journalist, Amal Habbani, for an article praising al-Hussein ( “A Case of-Subduing a Woman’s Body”). The police claim that the mere act of defending female pants-wearing also violates General Discipline.

When stories such as al-Hussein’s flash around the world, there’s usually a missing element: The feminist movement rarely [never – JB] becomes part of the narrative. The rise of shariah law constitutes the major global change in women’s status during this era, yet Western feminists remain pathetically silent.

Feminist journalists like to speculate about the future of activism among women today, but you can leaf through a fat sheaf of their articles without encountering a mention of Muslim women. Feminist professors, for their part, show even less interest. Trolling through the 40-page program of the European Conference on Politics and Gender, held in Belfast last winter, I found feminist scholars (from Europe, the United States and Canada) dealing with women’s political opportunities, the implications for women of new medical technology, the politics of fashion and even women’s response to climate change. What I couldn’t find was even one lecture or discussion devoted to so-called “honour killing.” Nor was there any mention of the thousands upon thousands of women routinely flogged, raped, imprisoned or stoned to death, often with the tacit or explicit agreement of Islamic governments.

Notes on the ‘global warming’ scam.

Christopher Booker writes in the Telegraph: 

It was delightfully appropriate that, as large parts of Argentina were swept by severe blizzards last week, on a scale never experienced before, the city of Nashville, Tennessee, should have enjoyed the coolest July 21 in its history, breaking a record established in 1877. Appropriate, because Nashville is the home of Al Gore, the man who for 20 years has been predicting that we should all by now be in the grip of runaway global warming.

His predictions have proved so wildly wrong – along with those of the Met Office’s £33 million computer model which forecast that we should now be enjoying a “barbecue summer” and that 2009 would be one of “the five warmest years ever” – that the propaganda machine has had to work overtime to maintain what is threatening to become the most expensive fiction* in history.

* According to the Science and Public Policy Institute, ‘the US government has spent over $79 billion since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technologu research, administration, education campaigns, foreign aid, and tax breaks.’

Check out the full report at scienceandpublicpolicy.org

Investor’s Business Daily suggests that the only place that’s really getting hotter is Al Gore’s head –

Because he must be getting flustered now, what with his efforts to save the benighted world from global warming continually being exposed as a fraud.

The true believers will not be moved by the peer-reviewed findings of Chris de Freitas, John McLean and Bob Carter, scientists at universities in Australia and New Zealand.

Warming advocates have too much invested in perpetuating the myth. (And are probably having too much fun calling those who don’t agree with them “deniers” and likening skeptics to fascists.)

But these scientists have made an important contribution to the debate that Gore says doesn’t exist.

Their research, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, indicates that nature, not man, has been the dominant force in climate change in the late 20th century.

“The surge in global temperatures since 1977 can be attributed to a 1976 climate shift in the Pacific Ocean that made warming El Nino conditions more likely than they were over the previous 30 years and cooling La Nina conditions less likely” says co-author de Freitas.

“We have shown that internal global climate-system variability accounts for at least 80% of the observed global climate variation over the past half-century. It may even be more if the period of influence of major volcanoes can be more clearly identified and the corresponding data excluded from the analysis.”

These findings are largely being ignored by the mainstream media. They simply don’t fit the worn narrative that man is dangerously warming the Earth through his carbon dioxide emissions and a radical alteration of Western lifestyles mandated by government policy is desperately needed.

They will be ignored, as well, by the Democratic machine that is trying to ram an economy-smothering carbon cap-and-trade regime through Congress.

Despite efforts to keep the global warming scare alive, the growing evidence that humans aren’t heating the planet is piercing the public consciousness and alarmists are becoming marginalized.

Sharp Americans are starting to understand H.L. Mencken’s observation that “The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it.” That pretty much sums up the modern environmentalist movement.

Mark Steyn, interviewed by Hugh Hewitt, says of Obama’s comment on the arrest of Professor Gates:

I think the President of the United States has absolutely no business intervening in a matter for the Cambridge Police Department, and should it happen to come to that, whatever court in the city of Cambridge it comes down to. This was disgraceful by him, and he should be ashamed of himself in intervening in that in a national press conference. It’s unbecoming to the President, and it was a disgusting moment.

We urge you to read Mark Steyn’s column in OCregister on this same subject, above all for the pleasure of its humor:

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/gates-professor-black-2506786-racism-sgt

Gary Aldrich, a former law enforcement officer, writes at Townhall about the arrest of Professor Gates of Harvard, and how he and President Obama chose to make a racist incident out of it:  

Obama and his administration have already maligned the military by suggesting that returning veterans may be closet terrorists. Now the president himself makes numerous unfortunate statements that suggest behind every police badge may hide the evil soul of a racist. He says and I quote, “you know, race remains a factor in this society.”

I assure you, sir, the race factor may remain in your heart – but not in mine. And, not in the hearts of the thousands of police officers who protect all citizens regardless of race, gender, or any other difference, even if you and your college professor friend choose to believe otherwise.

Frankly I find your position on race matters to be disappointing, repugnant, and threatening to the health of our culture which is, by its very nature, both generous and diverse. I think the millions of black families who have their homes and persons protected by the police every night and day of the week would disagree with your ugly characterization of all police officers.

What we are witness to here is the amazing spectacle of a black man elected to the highest office in our land, continuing the claim that America is a nation plagued with racism. Surely only the most gullible would continue to believe race baiting claptrap like that. The fact is, the professor’s hatred for “Whitey” overwhelmed his judgment and he lost his temper – and that is all that has happened here.

That is, until the president decided to weigh in. When he did, he revealed his heart on the matter of race and it’s sad to find out where he really stands on race relations. It appears that he will not be an agent of change, and that is a real shame.

Are Jews who foolishly voted for Obama beginning to wake up? 

Ronald Kessler writes at Newsmax.com:    Ever since President Barack Obama took office, Jewish leaders have been asking for a meeting with him. The White House, apparently thinking Jewish support for Obama was in the pocket, put them off. But a major Jewish leader says that after Newsmax.com reported on deep concerns in the Jewish community about Obama’s Middle East initiatives and statements, the White House responded quickly by asking 14 top Jewish leaders to meet with the president on July 13. Yet an important Jewish leader, Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, says he was barred from attending the meeting because of criticism he aimed at Obama. In June, Newsmax reported that Klein and Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, believed Obama’s Jewish support was eroding as a result of his recent Middle East activities. “The Hoenlein and Klein interviews [with Newsmax] got the ball really rolling,” Klein tells Newsmax. “This meeting was called because they were getting very worried that more and more Jewish people are expressing concern about Obama’s policies on Israel. The White House wanted to stop the bleeding, as expressed in Newsmax interviews and picked up elsewhere.” Klein says that “Newsmax was a significant factor in this meeting happening.” At 3 p.m. on July 13, Obama met for 45 minutes with Hoenlein, whose organization represents 50 major Jewish groups, and 13 other Jewish leaders. Klein, whose organization of 30,000 members is the oldest pro-Israel group in the country, was not invited. According to press reports, only Jewish leaders known to be sympathetic to Obama were invited to the meeting. Klein’s White House contacts told him flat out that he was shunned because of his strong criticism of Obama. In his June interview with Newsmax, Klein said that Obama may be the “most hostile president to Israel” ever. “They said to me, ‘How do you expect us to invite you to a meeting with the president when you keep criticizing the president?’” Klein says. Klein found the White House response to him surprising, and “remarkable that the president has said he wants to be bipartisan and reach out to people who don’t agree with him and that he wants to hear all good ideas, even if they’re different from his.” Klein also found it ironic that he was chastised for criticizing the president, and banned from a meeting with top Jewish leaders, at the same time Obama has argued for sitting down and negotiating with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Klein said he told White House aides, “You won’t allow me in the meeting to discuss issues. And you want to negotiate with these evil haters of America, but I can’t be at a meeting where I would express my concerns very respectfully and responsibly?” Klein says he has talked to several people who attended the off-the-record meeting. He was told that though the meeting was amicable, Obama was asked why he is pressuring Israel and not the Arabs on contentious issues. Obama, Klein says, responded that he is dealing firmly and forthrightly with the Arabs but the media are not emphasizing that. Klein says the Jewish leaders did not bring up important matters about some of Obama’s statements, including his use of mistaken statistics and analogies in his Cairo speech in June. As a child of survivors of the Holocaust, Klein says he was particularly offended by Obama’s comparison of the suffering of Palestinians with the Nazis’ murder of more than 6 million Jews during the Holocaust. This issue was not raised, nor was Obama’s claim that America has an astonishing 7 million Muslims. Klein said Obama’s claim showed a willingness by him to use phony figures to support a tilt toward Muslims. “Every major survey shows there’s between 1.5 million and 2.5 million Muslims in America,” Klein says. “Where does he get the number 7 million? This is the number that the Arab propagandists promote. There’s no legitimate survey that shows a number of that nature.” Liberal groups at the meeting were pleased with Obama’s responses, Klein says. Others, like the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, expressed concerns. Since his Newsmax interview in June, Klein doubts Obama’s meeting with a select group of Jewish leaders will help him. Klein thinks Jewish support for Obama has dwindled even more in the past month. “In my own experience of speaking to many different people and speaking to synagogues around the country in the last few weeks, I’m seeing an acceleration of concern about Obama’s position on Israel,” Klein says. “Even supporters of Obama who voted for him are telling me that they’re beginning to have concerns about him.”

The Community Organizer who has  been elected President of the United States was closely associated as a lawyer and as a trainer with ACORN,  a corrupt and criminal organization. He now wants to give it the power to manipulate the Census.   

From Investor’s Business Daily:

Did Democrats come to their present dominance of both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington thanks in large part to a “syndicate of tax-exempt organizations” that “has coordinated and implemented a nationwide strategy of tax fraud, racketeering, money-laundering and manipulating the American electorate”?

The reams of evidence provided by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee ranking Republican Darrell Issa of California and his GOP colleagues on the panel strongly suggest so.

Their more-than-80-page report charges that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn) uses “a complex structure designed to conceal illegal activities” — 361 different entities in 120 cities, 43 states and the District of Columbia, amounting to a “shell game” that “diverts taxpayer and tax-exempt monies into partisan political activities.”

The group has over the last 15 years received in excess of $53 million in federal funds. Moreover, as the report warns, “under the Obama administration, Acorn stands to receive a whopping $8.5 billion in available stimulus funds.”…

The article gives examples of crimes proved against ACORN. It continues: 

This corrupt outfit has actually been signed up as a national partner with the U.S. Census Bureau to help recruit the nearly 1.5 million workers who will count and classify our 306 million population for 2010. It’s like getting a car thief to manage a parking garage.

As the Capital Research Center’s Matthew Vadum has documented, $3 billion from the stimulus package, another billion dollars from HUD, and $4.5 billion in Community Development Block Grants look set to come Acorn’s way for a total of $8.5 billion.

The Issa report further charges Acorn with submitting false filings to the IRS and the Labor Department, and violating the Fair Labor Standards Act and the ERISA law.

Amidst all this apparent illegality, the campaigns of President Obama, disgraced ex-Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, and Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, are among the beneficiaries of financial contributions from Acorn and its affiliates.

“These actions are a clear violation of numerous tax and election laws,” the Issa report charges.

Issa called it “outrageous that Acorn will be rewarded for its criminal acts by taxpayer money in the stimulus and is being asked to help with the U.S. census.” He says the organization “cannot and should not be trusted with taxpayer dollars.”

Don’t hold your breath for justice. No doubt Attorney General Eric Holder will soon be too busy hounding former Vice President Dick Cheney — for his forceful effort in waging the global war on terror — to probe the shady outfit that helped elect his boss president.

She’s coming out fighting! Let’s cheer her on!

This is by Chelsea Schilling at WorldNetDaily (read it all here):

Gov. Sarah Palin has signed a joint resolution declaring Alaska’s sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution – and now 36 other states have introduced similar resolutions as part of a growing resistance to the federal government.

Just weeks before she plans to step down from her position as Alaska governor, Palin signed House Joint Resolution 27, sponsored by state Rep. Mike Kelly on July 10, according to a Tenth Amendment Center report. The resolution “claims sovereignty for the state under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States.”

Alaska’s House passed HJR 27 by a vote of 37-0, and the Senate passed it by a vote of 40-0.

According to the report, the joint resolution does not carry with it the force of law, but supporters say it is a significant move toward getting their message out to other lawmakers, the media and grassroots movements.

Alaska’s resolution states:

Be it resolved that the Alaska State Legislature hereby claims sovereignty for the state under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States.

Be it further resolved that this resolution serves as Notice and Demand to the federal government to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.

While seven states – Tennessee, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Alaska and Louisiana – have had both houses of their legislatures pass similar decrees, Alaska Gov. Palin and Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen are currently the only governors to have signed their states’ sovereignty resolutions.

The resolutions all address the Tenth Amendment that says: “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Gov. Sarah Palin has signed a joint resolution declaring Alaska’s sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution – and now 36 other states have introduced similar resolutions as part of a growing resistance to the federal government.

The resolutions all address the Tenth Amendment that says: “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Just weeks before she plans to step down from her position as Alaska governor, Palin signed House Joint Resolution 27, sponsored by state Rep. Mike Kelly on July 10, according to a Tenth Amendment Center report. The resolution “claims sovereignty for the state under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States.”

Be it further resolved that this resolution serves as Notice and Demand to the federal government to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.

Alaska’s House passed HJR 27 by a vote of 37-0, and the Senate passed it by a vote of 40-0.

Be it resolved that the Alaska State Legislature hereby claims sovereignty for the state under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States.

According to the report, the joint resolution does not carry with it the force of law, but supporters say it is a significant move toward getting their message out to other lawmakers, the media and grassroots movements.

Alaska’s resolution states:

While seven states – Tennessee, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Alaska and Louisiana – have had both houses of their legislatures pass similar decrees, Alaska Gov. Palin and Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen are currently the only governors to have signed their states’ sovereignty resolutions.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has appointed Arif Alikhan, a terrorist apologist with connections to terrorist supporting agencies, to a key position in her department. 

She is the lady who declared that returning veterans posed a terrorism risk. 

Read all about it here.