Read the devastatingly revealing bio of Valerie Jarrett – Obama’s closest adviser and the person who got Van Jones into the White House – by Ben Johnson at Front Page Magazine. It concludes:

An international, rootless wanderer abandoned by his father, and occasionally his mother, in search of authenticity, he [Obama] never felt at home until he found his roots, and himself, in the milieu of Hyde Park – a neighborhood big enough to encompass everyone from Marilyn Katz [see below] to Bill Ayers, from Tony Rezko’s vacant adjoining property to Louis Farrakhan’s wandering “security” force. And Valerie Jarrett. Is this what Jarrett reminds the Obamas of: the neighborhood that has been the president’s only true home and shaped or reinforced their values and identity? An elitist sanctuary of pampered radicals, racists, and terrorists, liberated of working class stiffs who bitterly cling to their guns and religion? Increasingly, it seems as though this is what “makes them who they are,” and is becoming the atmosphere Obama, with Jarrett’s help, is recreating in his administration.

Who is Marilyn Katz?

Who is this person to whom Jarrett is so indebted – and whom, we shall see, she calls a personal friend? Marilyn Katz provided “security” for Students for a Democratic Society at the 1968 Democratic Convention. Undercover Chicago policeman William Frapolly told prosecutors that during the Days of Rage, Katz showed protesters a new weapon to use against the police: “a cluster of nails that were sharpened at both ends, and they were fastened in the center.” Police later reported being hit by golf balls with nails through them, as well as excrement. Years later, Katz would insist her “guerrilla nails” were merely “a defensive weapon” to prevent “possible bad behavior by the police.”

From American Thinker:

It must be recognized and acknowledged by Americans that all governments of Islamic countries, secular and sectarian, cannot divorce themselves from the religious Jihadist aspect ever-present in their societies. The yearly surveys showing large majorities in these countries favoring strict Shariah is but one piece of the evidentiary puzzle. Almost without exception, to a greater or lesser extent, the governments of Islamic nations, irrespective of their official ties to Islam, find themselves in a confrontation with a discontented Jihadist element in their respective populations. In order to preserve their iron grip on the national treasury and the security forces, these governments (examples: our “allies” Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia), either directly or through surrogates in the royal or landed aristocracy, direct and support the Jihadist hostility toward kafirs, unbelievers in Islam, that are most often represented as Israel and the US; although Britain and India are also frequent Islamic terrorist targets. Even Turkey, founded 86-years-ago as a secular state to free the Turks from their repressive Ottoman Muslim past, has recently come under increasing Shariah-Islamic influence. The unavoidable conclusion is that radical Islam (understood as Shariah-Islam), often manifesting itself in Islamic Jihad, is a fact of life in all of our dealings and endeavors in the Islamic world. This omnipresent jihad aspect of Islam is the element that must be added to the debate over our Afghan strategy to supply the much needed clarity.

So how does this reality factor into the military strategic equation? Primarily it means that no Islamic government can ever be truly counted on to affirmatively eradicate Jihadist violence against US interests. This in and of itself suggests at the very least that the objective of nation-building in Afghanistan is a fool’s errand simply or so remote as to make it foolish. It also … would mean that, while it may be to our tactical advantage to temporarily ally with Islamic governments, it would be blood and money wasted to invest in trying to change an Islamic society. Consequently and most importantly, it would mean that, while denying Afghanistan to al Qaeda as an operational base and assisting the Pak government in defeating the Taliban and al Qaeda within Pakistan are vital national priorities, the delusion that these Islamic societies can be “Westernized” must be re-thought…

The American illusion that we can ever fight “a war to end all wars” is just that, an illusion. Shariah-driven Islam has been waging Jihad against the West for 1300+ years, why would we expect it to stop because we manage to facilitate democratic elections that empower corrupt Islamic leaders like Nouri al-Maliki or Hamid Karzai? We are just going to have to “shoot the closest bear” one at a time and reconcile our thinking that Jihad will reappear periodically like Haley’s Comet.

We think it probable that one great shock, such as a devastating attack on Iran’s nuclear installations, could send a message that would keep the jihadists still and trembling for years to come.

We do not think it remotely likely that Obama will order such a strike.

The world must look to Israel to save it from a nuclear-armed Iran.

From the Telegraph:

Creation, [a film] starring Paul Bettany, details Darwin’s “struggle between faith and reason” as he wrote On The Origin of Species. It depicts him as a man who loses faith in God following the death of his beloved 10-year-old daughter, Annie.

The film was chosen to open the Toronto Film Festival and has its British premiere on Sunday. It has been sold in almost every territory around the world, from Australia to Scandinavia.

However, US distributors have resolutely passed on a film which will prove hugely divisive in a country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February, only 39 per cent of Americans [according to whom?] believe in the theory of evolution…

The film has sparked fierce debate on US Christian websites, with a typical comment [by whom? when? where?] dismissing evolution as “a silly theory with a serious lack of evidence to support it despite over a century of trying”.

Jeremy Thomas, the Oscar-winning producer of Creation, said he was astonished that such attitudes exist 150 years after On The Origin of Species was published.

“That’s what we’re up against. In 2009. It’s amazing,” he said. “The film has no distributor in America. It has got a deal everywhere else in the world but in the US, and it’s because of what the film is about. People have been saying this is the best film they’ve seen all year, yet nobody in the US has picked it up. It is unbelievable to us that this is still a really hot potato in America. There’s still a great belief that He made the world in six days. It’s quite difficult for we [sic] in the UK to imagine religion in America. We live in a country which is no longer so religious. But in the US, outside of New York and LA, religion rules.”

Does it? It’s hard for us in the US to believe that only 39% believe in evolution. And they almost entirely confined to New York and LA? What rare birds we country-bumpkin atheists are, if that is so!

But the writer of the article, Anita Singh, seems rather too vague, lacking attribution, to inspire much trust in her report. And it has the ring of a typical piece of European anti-Americanism.

Anyway, someone should seize this entrepeneurial opportunity and screen the movie. We suspect that millions will want to see it as much as we do, whatever they believe about evolution.

Obama is hellbent on shifting America permanently to the political left. The name of  the change he promised is Socialism. He wants ‘health care reform’ not because he wants to reform health care but because  he wants to reform the land of the free into the land of the organized. As Mark Steyn says:

For most of the previous presidency, the Left accused George W. Bush of using 9/11 as a pretext to attack Iraq. Since January, his successor has used the economic slump as a pretext to “reform” health care. Most voters don’t buy it: They see it as Obama’s “war of choice,” and the more frantically he talks about it as a matter of urgency the weirder it seems. If he’s having difficulty selling it, that’s because it’s not about “health.” … The appeal of this issue to him and to Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank et al is that governmentalization of health care is the fastest way to a permanent left-of-center political culture …

Three stories bubbled up in the past week, although if you read The New York Times and the administration’s other airbrushers you’ll be blissfully unaware of them: The resignation of Van Jones, former (?) communist and current 9/11 “truther,” from his post as Obama’s “Green Jobs Czar.” The reassignment” of Yosi Sergant at the National Endowment for the Arts after he was found to be urging government-funded arts groups to produce “art” in support of Obama policy positions. And, finally, the extraordinary undercover tape from Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government Web site in which officials from ACORN … offer advice on how pimps can get government housing loans for brothels employing underage girls from El Salvador…

What all these individuals share is a supersized view of the state, from a make-work gig coordinating the invention of phony-baloney “green jobs” to Soviet-style government-licensed art in support of heroic government programs to government-funded “community organizers” organizing government funding for jailbait bordellos… Van Jones, Yosi Sergant and ACORN are where Barack Obama’s chosen to live all his adult life…

My sense from Wednesday’s speech is that the president’s gonna shove this through in some form or other. It may cause a little temporary pain in Blue Dog districts in 2010, but the long-term gains will be transformative and irreversible.

Bitterly, and justly, Ralph Peters writes in the New York Post:

We resolved that we, the People, would never forget. Then we forgot…

Instead of cracking down on Islamist extremism, we’ve excused it.

Instead of killing terrorists, we free them.

Instead of relentlessly hunting Islamist madmen, we seek to appease them.

Instead of acknowledging that radical Islam is the problem, we elected a president who blames America, whose idea of freedom is the right for women to suffer in silence behind a veil — and who counts among his mentors and friends those who damn our country or believe that our own government staged the tragedy of September 11, 2001.

Instead of insisting that freedom will not be infringed by terrorist threats, we censor works that might offend mass murderers. Radical Muslims around the world can indulge in viral lies about us, but we dare not even publish cartoons mocking them.

Instead of protecting law-abiding Americans, we reject profiling to avoid offending terrorists…

Instead of insisting that Islamist hatred and religious apartheid have no place in our country, we permit the Saudis to continue funding mosques and madrassahs where hating Jews and Christians is preached as essential to Islam.

Instead of confronting Saudi hate-mongers, our president bows down to the Saudi king.

Instead of recognizing the Saudi-sponsored Wahhabi cult as the core of the problem, our president blames Israel.

Instead of asking why Middle Eastern civilization has failed so abjectly, our president suggests that we’re the failures.

Instead of taking every effective measure to cull information from terrorists, the current administration threatens CIA agents with prosecution for keeping us safe.

Instead of proudly and promptly rebuilding on the site of the Twin Towers, we’ve committed ourselves to the hopeless, useless task of rebuilding Afghanistan…

Instead of taking a firm stand against Islamist fanaticism, we’ve made a cult of negotiations — as our enemies pursue nuclear weapons; sponsor terrorism; torture, imprison, rape and murder their own citizens — and laugh at us.

Instead of insisting that Islam must become a religion of responsibility, our leaders in both parties continue to bleat that “Islam’s a religion of peace”  …

Instead of requiring new immigrants to integrate into our society and conform to its public values, we encourage and subsidize anti-American, woman-hating, freedom-denying bigotry in the name of toleration.

Instead of pursuing our enemies to the ends of the earth, we help them sue us.

We’ve dishonored our dead and whitewashed our enemies. A distinctly unholy alliance between fanatical Islamists abroad and a politically correct “elite” in the US has reduced 9/11 to the status of a non-event, a day for politicians to preen about how little they’ve done.

We’ve forgotten the shock and the patriotic fury Americans felt on that bright September morning eight years ago. We’ve forgotten our identification with fellow citizens leaping from doomed skyscrapers. We’ve forgotten the courage of airline passengers who would not surrender to terror.

We’ve forgotten the men and women who burned to death or suffocated in the Pentagon. We’ve forgotten our promises, our vows, our commitments.

We’ve forgotten what we owe our dead and what we owe our children. We’ve even forgotten who attacked us.

We have betrayed the memory of our dead. In doing so, we betrayed ourselves and our country. Our troops continue to fight — when they’re allowed to do so — but our politicians have surrendered.

On this day when we should remember, we recall that 9/11 was a profoundly religious act.

A good discussion of Obama’s health-care speech delivered last night to Congress is to be found on Power Line.

It is well worth reading in full. Here are some samples from it:

[Obama said] Instead of honest debate, we have seen scare tactics.

Then, a few minutes later:

Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it most. And more will die as a result.

By far the biggest scaremonger on this issue has been Obama himself.

Well the time for bickering is over. The time for games has passed.

I’m not sure whether Obama and his handlers understand how this sort of talk grates on those of us who are not liberal Democrats (a large majority of the country). Debating public policy issues is not “bickering.” Disagreeing with a proposal to radically change one of the largest sectors of our economy is not a “game.” This kind of gratuitous insult–something we never heard from President Bush, for example–is one of the reasons why many consider Obama to be mean-spirited…

Insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies – because there’s no reason we shouldn’t be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse.

How does that work? Better coverage for more people at less cost. Does anyone actually believe that is possible? I don’t think so.

Obama described his plan for an insurance exchange where those who are not part of a larger plan will be able to buy coverage. He then added:

This exchange will take effect in four years, which will give us time to do it right.

But wait! Aren’t people dying? The Democrats tried to ram their bill through Congress before the August recess, with essentially no debate and with virtually no one having read it. Their theory was that we are facing such a dire emergency that there is not a moment to lose. If, in fact, we have four years to spare, could we maybe stop trying to cram the bill down Americans’ throats?…

Unless everybody does their part, many of the insurance reforms we seek – especially requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions – just can’t be achieved.

This is a key point that many will overlook. One of the central purposes of nearly all health care “reform” proposals is to force young people into the system to help pay older peoples’ bills. Why is it that you can’t force insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions–i.e., “insure” against something that has already happened, a logical impossibility–unless you force young people to “do their part”? Insurance companies, and, eventually, the government as single payer, need young people to pay premiums that far exceed any actual risk to subsidize the known losses that will come from being forced to “insure” people whose medical conditions are not risks but certainties…

Some of people’s concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Such a charge would be laughable if it weren’t so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple.

No, it isn’t. The Democrats’ bill doesn’t call the agencies it sets up “death panels,” it says they will decide on “best practices.” But any socialized medicine scheme saves money by rationing care. Who gets shorted, the politically powerful? No, of course not; the elderly and those who are otherwise helpless…

There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false – the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.

This is an outright lie, as Congressman Joe Wilson couldn’t resist blurting out during Obama’s speech. The Democrats defeated Republican-sponsored amendments that would have attempted, at least, to prevent illegals from being treated under the House version of Obama’s plan. I think everyone expects that if Obamacare becomes law, illegals will receive benefits on an equal basis with citizens.

And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up – under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.

More oily language from the master of the half-truth. Under Obama’s plan, it won’t be necessary for federal dollars to fund abortions, at least not until socialized medicine actually arrives. Insurance dollars will fund abortions. The House bill sets up a nameless, unaccountable committee that will decide what coverages must be included in any approved private insurance policy. Those required coverages, you can be 100 percent certain, will include the costs of abortions. But Obama will take no responsibility; those are just “best practices.”

This seems to me to be the most critical moment in Obama’s speech:

My guiding principle is, and always has been, that consumers do better when there is choice and competition. Unfortunately, in 34 states, 75% of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. In Alabama, almost 90% is controlled by just one company. Without competition, the price of insurance goes up and the quality goes down.

In fact, Obama and Congressional Democrats have zero interest in increasing choice and competition. If they did, there is an easy solution. There are over 1,000 health insurance companies in the United States; why do you think it is that in Alabama, one company has 90 percent of the business? It is because there are major legal obstacles to insurance companies operating across state lines. State legislatures, and lots of the companies, like it this way. Competition is hard. But if Obama really wanted to expand “choice and competition” in health care, all he would have to do is go along with the Republican proposal to allow health insurance companies to sell on a national basis… The Democrats’ refusal to allow existing health insurance companies to compete against each other nationwide, more than anything else, puts the lie to their nonsense about “choice and competition.”

President Obama talked about the “public option” and assured listeners that it would not be subsidized by the government:

I have insisted that like any private insurance company, the public insurance option would have to be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects. But by avoiding some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits, excessive administrative costs and executive salaries, it could provide a good deal for consumers.

Is it churlish to point out that profits are not overhead? It might be if this were just a slip of the tongue on the stump. But this was a speech that was carefully crafted by Obama and his top advisers. They really do not know the first thing about business or economics. So why should we put them in charge of our economy?…

It concludes:

This was not, to put it kindly, a speech that was directed at thinking people.

That could be said of everything Obama utters publicly. Could it be because he is not a thinking person himself?

Ralph Peters writes (read the whole article here):

In June, the elected legislators and the Honduran Supreme Court had enough. As Zelaya aligned with Chavez, the Castro regime, Nicaraguan caudillo Daniel Ortega and other extreme leftists, the Honduran government gave the would-be dictator the boot. Acting under legal orders, the army peacefully arrested Zelaya and shipped him out of the country. No murders, no Chavez-style imprisonments. It was not a military coup. An elected congress and interim president, not a general, run the country today.

But the Obama administration has decided that this “violation” is so dreadful that we won’t even recognize future free elections in Honduras.

Well, President Obama’s taste in elections is finicky:

* He’ll recognize the utterly bogus results of Afghanistan’s corrupt election.

* He initially blessed the results of Iran’s rigged election. (He was for it before he was against it.)

* He hasn’t spoken one word of criticism as Chavez continues to strangle Venezuelan democracy.

* He hasn’t questioned the divisive, racist politics of Presidente Evo Morales in Bolivia.

* He hasn’t demanded free elections in Cuba — instead, he’s easing up on the Castro regime.

But we’re going to show those wicked Hondurans, by George! They can’t boot out a crazy leftwing president just because he’s trying to subvert their Constitution.

Honduras is a small country. But the principle and precedent loom hugely. Have we abandoned democracy entirely? In favor of backing anti-American dictators?

When it is writ so large what Obama’s ideology is (Marxist), and where his sympathies lie (with collectivist regimes, Islam, the Greens), why is anyone surprised by each successive manifestation of his political convictions?  (Though to be fair to clear-sighted Ralph Peters, I don’t think he’s really surprised at all.)

And by the way, what’s happened to Hillary Clinton? Wasn’t she made Secretary of State by Obama? Is she still in that position? Is she still alive? If so, has she been gagged?

Phyllis Schlafly writes in Townhall:

Obama’s nearly trillion-dollar stimulus law designates $128 billion for education, so it’s no surprise that tight strings are attached.Buried in the fine print is an ominous requirement to build a national electronic database of all children. Any state that receives federal education funds must “establish a longitudinal data system that includes the elements described in … the America COMPETES Act.”

That law, passed a couple of years ago, sets out the goal of longitudinal databasing of “student-level enrollment, demographic, and program participation information” for all students from preschool through postsecondary education…

Database collection on each student continues through college and into the workforce. States are required to enter “information regarding the extent to which students transition successfully from secondary school to postsecondary education.”

Creation of a database of this magnitude is the sort of thing that totalitarian governments do but should not be allowed by those who value freedom. It’s scary to think of Obama’s czars and political operatives such as Rahm Emanuel having access to all that personal information on American citizens.

Iran was given until this month to respond to Obama’s appeal to negotiate over its nuclear threat. Do we expect Ahmadinejad any moment now to say, ‘Okay, world, I was only kidding about wiping Israel off the map – we’re don’t really want to threaten anybody, least of all with nuclear weapons, so come and inspect us to your entire satisfaction’?  No, not many of us, we’d guess. Maybe the folk at Foggy Bottom who see, hear, and speak no evil.

Jennifer Rubin writes:

At some point, even the Obama team may recognize that diplomacy, however “smart,” isn’t paying off. What then? Well they might have to do something. They might need to take a breather from hollering at Israel over East Jerusalem apartments and begin to rally international opinion to take some meaningful action in an attempt to dissuade Iran from going down this path [to nuclear war capability].

Now, you may think that’s not likely — because the Obama team lacks the ability or the will to get tough with any power (well, other than Honduras and Israel), or because it’s getting to be too late for economic sanctions. And then we arrive at the real choice: military action or a nuclear-armed Iran. You can see why so many would rather not take “no” for an answer.

We think it necessary to explain our opinion of Glenn Beck (see post below).

We are not fans. Unlike us, he is sentimental and religious. And we don’t find him in the least bit intellectually impressive.

But we want to give him his due. Largely thanks to him, Van Jones has been forced to resign. Glen Beck has actually become a leading voice for the growing and genuinely grass-roots movement that is resisting Obama’s attempts to turn America socialist. We’d be mighty glad if he gets some more of the Commissars chucked out of the White House. (Although, to look on the bright side, their presence there can do Obama a lot of harm!)

Also, he is bleeding audiences away from lefty TV shows. Three cheers  for that.