Summary Of History Of The World

The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.

Jon Feere, Center for Immigration Studies
August 2010

Mosque Mania: Muslims' Turn To Be Tolerant

The proposed mosque near where the World Trade Center was attacked and destroyed, along with thousands of American lives, would be a 15-story middle finger to America.  It takes a high IQ to evade the obvious, so it is not surprising that the intelligentsia are out in force, decrying those who criticize this calculated insult... The big talking point is that this is an issue about "religious freedom" and that Muslims have a "right" to build a mosque where they choose. But those who oppose this project are not claiming that there is no legal right to build a mosque near the site of the World Trade Center...

Hans von Spakovsky, The Heritage Foundation
August 31, 2010

The Average Voter

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874-1965)

Party Trend Has Yet To Kick In

Don’t confuse the dramatic swell of the Republican tide that is becoming increasingly evident to the pundits of the country with party trend. Right before Election Day, the numbers will get even better and presage an even larger Republican victory.  Party trend usually indicates itself in the ten days before an election when voters who do not typically follow politics closely tune in and decide for whom to vote. Until this window, they usually describe themselves to pollsters as “undecided.” There will be a huge Republican party trend this year, but it hasn’t happened yet.

The huge Republican poll numbers these days do not reflect the last minute switches typical of less involved voters but rather mirror the disappointment with Obama and with Congress among voters who do follow politics closely that has accumulated over the past year and a half. It is this reappraisal of their political opinions that is occasioning the big swing toward Republicans in the 2010 election.

The ranks of these disaffected voters who are now turning against Obama and the Democrats will soon be joined by the less involved voters who will come around in the week or ten days before the election.

From the perception of the pollster, party trend is a bit like a curveball thrown by a pitcher to a batter. The election statistics remain fairly static for weeks or even months with little change as the race unfolds through September and early through mid October. Like a fastball that comes in straight and true.  Then, suddenly, as the election nears, the vote swings wildly to one side or the other, akin to a curve ball that breaks as it approaches the batter – usually too late for him to make an adjustment. Suddenly, the tied races show up as decisive victories for the side that benefits from party trend. And the unwinnable races come into play.

2010 is a year like no other in the magnitude of the partisan shift going on. It dwarfs 1994 and even 1974 in its order of magnitude. But we haven’t yet seen the full impact of the last minute party shift that will take place. Plenty of voters who are now undecided are yet to be heard from and, when they are, they will impact the results decisively.  In which direction? Most likely they will transform a massive Republican win into an even more massive victory. The uninvolved voters who will decide late in the process are likely to break the same way the rest of the country is breaking – toward the Republicans. Surveys suggest that they share the disenchantment of the participating voters with the economy and Obama’s performance. They have just not focused on the coming election.

Democrats hope that the less involved voters are also less educated and more likely to be the young or minority voters on whom their party depends. But the lack of enthusiasm among Democrats for Obama indicates that these voters are likely to decide by staying home. In the most recent Fox News/Opinion Dynamics study, 54% of Republicans said they were “very enthusiastic” about voting in the 2010 elections while only 28% of Democrats felt the same way.  So the net result is that for those who anticipate a major Republican win in 2010, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

Dick Morris & Eilleen McGann, Nationally Syndicated Columnists August 25, 2010

GOP vs. Dems: Who's Best For The Economy

The choice for voters in this year's fierce fight for congressional control will come down to a single question: Which political party -- Democrats or Republicans -- will do a better job coping with crippling unemployment and a devastating deficit?... (T)hose who insist that continued Democratic congressional control will improve prospects for job creation and deficit reduction cling to a naive misinterpretation of the past. They ought to examine the actual record of the past two decades and begin to reconsider their assumptions.

Michael Medved, TownHall August 25, 2010

Redistricting Could Prolong The Democrats' Pain

Every 10 years, it's time for reapportionment and redistricting. The framers of the Constitution created the first regularly scheduled national census and required, for the first time that I am aware, that representation in a legislature be apportioned according to population.  Reapportionment is automatic: A statutory formula takes the Census figures and apportions the 435 House districts among the 50 states. Wyoming and six other states will each get one, California will probably get 53, and the rest some number in between.

Seven states, according to projections by Polidata Inc., will gain a House seat, and Texas will gain four -- nine states will lose a House seat, and Ohio will lose two. Overall, states carried by John McCain in 2008 will gain a net seven seats (and electoral votes), and states carried by Barack Obama will lose seven...

Democrats are threatened with losing many governorships and legislative chambers, and their chances of taking over many from the Republicans look dismal... This would be an even better redistricting cycle for Republicans than the one following the 2000 Census, which was their best in 50 years. It could move one to two dozen House seats into the Republican column...

In the end, the voters get a say. But in an otherwise close election, redistricting can determine control of the House. And that can make an enormous difference in legislative outcomes, as it has during the past decade.  The unpopularity of the Obama Democrats' policies seems sure to hurt the party this year. Redistricting seems likely to extend the pain for several more election cycles.

Michael Barone, Nationally Syndicated Columnist August 26, 2010 American "Islamophobia" -- The MSM/Left-Liberal Contribution

Both Time Magazine and the Washington Post have made much of a poll in which 25 percent of those surveyed said that most Muslim-Americans are not patriotic. Time and Post assume that this view is incorrect and consider the poll result evidence of America's Islamophobia. But what might cause 25 percent of Americans to believe that most Muslim-Americans aren't patriots? It seems unlikely that they base this conclusion on the acts of obvious outliers, such as the Fort Hood assassin. Moreover, many Americans don't know enough Muslims sufficiently well to form a conclusion regarding their level of patriotism based on personal observation. Nor, to my knowledge, is there is any publicly available empirical study of Muslim-American patriotism.

Under these conditions, perhaps the most reasonable way to assess the patriotism of Muslim-Americans, if asked to think about the issue, is through the statements of those who lead and/or purport to speak for Muslims in this country. Here, we must rely mainly on the mainstream media to identify Muslim leaders and spokesmen, and to help us locate them on the continuum of Muslim-American thought. Right now, the most prominent such leader is probably Faisal Abdul Rauf, the man behind the Ground Zero Mosque... The MSM has trotted out both Rauf and his wife to address hot button Muslim related issues over the years.

Rauf is no sane person's idea of an American patriot. Americans have known for some time now that he considers America an accomplice to 9/11. And recently, thanks to Pamela Geller, we learned that Rauf thinks America has more blood on its hands than al Qaeda. This is not ordinary, patriotic dissent; this is anti-Americanism at its worst. Rauf's prominence doesn't necessarily mean that most Muslim-Americans share his extreme views. Neither does the fact that our government sends him abroad. It's possible that the Bush and Obama administrations didn't vet him well. Alternatively, (though I hope this isn't the case) the State Department might have wanted to use a harsh critic of the U.S. to cultivate better relations with Muslim countries on the theory that he would be more credible than a Muslim-American patriot.

But if Rauf doesn't speak for most Muslim-Americans on questions of American goodness, or lack thereof, the MSM has provided no signal of this. Instead, from what I've seen, he is typically portrayed as a moderate Muslim. Now, it may be true that, by global Muslim standards, Rauf does occupy some sort of middle ground position - he holds America in contempt but does not want to kill Americans. But if Rauf is a moderate Muslim-American by American standards - i.e., someone in the mainstream of Muslim American thought - then it follows that most Muslim-Americans hold views similar to his. This would mean, in turn, that most Muslim-Americans are not patriotic.

Thus, if the mainstream media and other left-liberals want to strike a blow for interfaith faith understanding and against Islamophobia, they should take the position that Rauf is not a moderate Muslim. But that would undermine the case for building the Ground Zero Mosque. For many in the mainstream media and other left-liberals, this in-your-face objective trumps all other considerations. And for some, Rauf's view of America may be too close to their own for them to confess its immoderate nature.

Paul, PowerlineBlog August 25, 2010 The Emerging Wedge Between Democrats And Republicans Now even Democrats are admitting that they may lose the House entirely. Maybe this is why ... voters now trust Republicans more than Democrats on all 10 of the important issues regularly tracked by Rasmussen. Those issues would be education, Iraq, the economy, healthcare, social security, government ethics, national security, Afghanistan, taxes and immigration... (W)hat is becoming the "wedge issue" between Democrats and Republicans? The growing gap between government and private sector workers.  In case you missed John Boehner's speech the other day, he points out the illogic behind the growing number of government jobs (and their growing salaries) compared to the dwindling numbers of the private sector. He said, "We've seen not just more government jobs, but better-paying ones too .. It's just nonsense to think that taxpayers are subsidizing the fattened salaries and pensions of federal bureaucrats who are out there right now making it harder to create private sector jobs." Republican attempts to freeze federal salaries have all been rejected by the Democrats. There's a big shocker - the Democrats depend on these government hacks to keep them in office. So long as they have their paychecks and smoking breaks and outrageous pension plans, the Democrats have no reason but to keep these people fat and happy.

Stories like this don't help paint a pretty picture for government employees - In Norfolk, Virginia a Community Services Board employee collected a salary with benefits for 12 years and never showed up for work. How does this happen? If you work in the private sector, if you own your own business, can you imagine paying a salary for someone who didn't show up for work? For twelve years! The private marketplace has no room for this level of lunacy. Government clearly does.

Neal Boortz, Nealz Nuze August 27, 2010

Dorsal Fins Surround White House

You've got to wonder when White House political guru David Axelrod will look at the churning pools of poll data and, like Chief Brody in "Jaws," say: "We're gonna need a bigger boat."  The analogy isn't quite right, because in the movie, the shark ultimately loses. It's hard to imagine a scenario where Barack Obama and Axelrod victoriously paddle away on the flotsam of their own political wreckage. But in one sense, the analogy works just fine: This White House is rudderlessly lost at sea and inadequate to the challenges it faces.

At the beginning of the year, retiring seven-term Rep. Marion Berry, D-Ark., recounted a conversation he had with the president. Obama's unrelenting push for health-care reform in the face of public opposition reminded Berry of the Clinton-era missteps that led to the Republican rout of the Democrats in 1994. "I began to preach last January that we had already seen this movie and we didn't want to see it again because we know how it comes out," Berry told a newspaper.

Or, to quote Brody in "Jaws 2": "But I'm telling you, and I'm telling everybody at this table that that's a shark! And I know what a shark looks like, because I've seen one up close. And you'd better do something about this one, because I don't intend to go through that hell again!"   Convinced that his popularity was eternal, Obama responded by saying, yes, but there's a "big difference" between 1994 and 2010, and that big difference is "you've got me."  The funny thing is, Obama might have been right. Because things might be much worse for Democrats in 2010 than they were in 1994 -- and the big difference might well be Barack Obama...

What's clear right now is that the president who claimed to be the personification of a world-historical moment has clearly misread his mandate, the mood and the moment. He's lost at sea, and not even a bigger boat will save him.

Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online

August 27, 2010 Why Does Obama Tell Muslims America Is Nation Of 'Non-Believers'?

Why has President Barack Obama on at least two occasions told specifically Muslim audiences that America is a nation of -- among other things -- "non-believers"?  The Pledge of Allegiance says America is one nation under God, our national motto says in God we trust, the Declaration of Independence says we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights and since the time of George Washington our presidents have placed their left hands on the Bible as they raise their right hands and swear to defend our Constitution...

The Census Bureau's official Statistical Abstract of the United States says a miniscule 0.7 percent of American adults -- or 1,621,000 out of 228,182,000 -- are atheists.  If you accept the Pew Hispanic Center's March 2005 estimate that there were 11 million illegal aliens in the United States back then -- and assume for the sake of argument there are still roughly that many today after another half decade of unsecured borders -- then a person randomly passing you on an American street is about seven times more likely to be a foreign national illegally residing here than an atheist...

On Aug. 13, hosting an Iftar dinner for Muslim guests at the White House, Obama not only suggested that he approved the building of a mosque next door to Ground Zero in New York, but he also said this: "We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus -- and non-believers."  Is Obama's repeated declaration -- including to Muslim audiences -- that America is, among other things, a nation of "non-believers" truly accurate? Does it comport with Obama's professed strategy of reaching out to the Islamic world and improving America's standing there by increasing understanding of our true nature as a nation?  The answers are: No and no.

In America, we have no established religion, and the First Amendment guarantees its free exercise, but we are and always have been an expressly God-fearing nation.  Thomas Jefferson, who wrote of our God-given rights in the Declaration, later said in his "Notes on the State of Virginia": "And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?"...

Certainly, Obama is not purposefully seeking to diminish America's standing in the Muslim world. But his words -- on their face -- seek to diminish God's standing in America.

Terry Jeffrey, Nationally Syndicated Columnist August 25, 2010 Is This What Obama Intended?

"There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses…now is not that time. And that's a message that I intend to send directly to them…"   Those words were uttered by our President on January 29th of 2009. He was reacting to the news that some American corporations, even some that had received government “bailout” funds, had both posted profits, and had paid bonuses to their executives.  And those were extraordinary words. They implied that, so far as President Obama is concerned, there are times when it is appropriate for American companies to not earn a profit, and times when it is appropriate for workers to not be compensated for their labor.

And now, after twenty months of our government’s policies being driven by Barack Obama’s very counterintuitive economic thinking, and with the national unemployment average approaching ten percent, I’m left wondering: is this what our President intended?... Some twenty months in to his presidency, Barack Obama apparently feels it is necessary to reassure Americans that he still wants a robust U.S. economy, and that he actually wants America to be “first” (we still are “first,” by the way – but that’s beside the point). It’s not surprising that Americans have doubts about our President’s support of America, but again I’m left wondering: is this what President Obama intended?

For as long as Barack Obama has been a household name, he has devoted much of his time and energy to maligning American free enterprise. While campaigning for the presidency, Senator Obama traversed the country preaching, among other things, his economic doctrines. And the recurrent themes from these economic messages were quite clear: A) our nation’s greatest enemies were not terrorists or hostile nations, but American corporations; B) American oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, and businesses that “shipped jobs overseas,” were among the worst fenders; and C) victory over these enemies would not be achieved until he, himself, could control these various sectors of our economy.   Recall that in 2008, global oil prices spiked upward, creating a sharp rise in gasoline prices, and candidate Obama’s “solution” to the problem of four dollar-a-gallon gasoline was to raise taxes on oil companies.

Anyone with the most limited appreciation of free market economics knows that raising taxes on product producers doesn’t lead to a lower price on the product (producers pass along the cost of the tax to their consumers by adding it into the pricing of their product). But lowering the cost of gasoline wasn’t necessarily Senator Obama’s goal, given that the other part of his “plan” was to use the revenue taken from the oil companies in the form of a “tax increase” to give “working Americans” a “voucher” that they could use for oil and gasoline purchases... (T)here is nothing “incoherent” about Barack Obama. He is consistent with his quest for control. Our President has demonstrated that, for him, it’s not about being “for” or “against” “the banks,” or “Wall Street,” or “Main Street” – it’s about seizing power over private affairs, and he will achieve that power by what ever means necessary.

Slumping economy or not, the truth is abundantly clear: our President is achieving precisely what he intended.

Austin Hill, TownHall August 22, 2010

Scaring White People

With polls showing that about 70 percent of Americans believe building an Islamic cultural center containing a mosque just two blocks away from Ground Zero is inappropriate, the far left is once again on the run. Failing with the bogus "freedom of religion" argument, the crew that is offended by the manger scene at Christmas is now saying the mosque controversy is another attempt to "scare white people." Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson has put forth that loopy argument from his second home: MSNBC.

You may remember that the radical left designated the Shirley Sherrod story, the ACORN scandal, the New Black Panther Party-voting booth-Justice Department situation and the resignation of White House "green jobs" czar Van Jones as attempts to scare white Americans. I don't know about you, but I'm white and those stories did not frighten me. I hope I'm not out of the white loop.  But here's a key question: Why are Howard Dean and Sen. Harry Reid trying to scare white people? Those committed liberals both believe the mosque should be built somewhere else. Why are these guys trying to frighten Caucasians, and what can we do to stop them? It is simply unfair to have the Senate majority leader and the former governor of Vermont running around trying to instill fear into white guys and gals. This must stop.

What is somewhat scary is that the far-left media continue to peddle this stuff even in the face of economic disaster. CNN and MSNBC are in deep ratings trouble. Newsweek magazine recently sold for one dollar, and Time is having a tough go of it, as well. Air America is bankrupt. The New York Times and The Washington Post are not nearly as successful or influential as they used to be. Not all of those concerns are far left, but they do have an ideological kinship with the loons. It's just a matter of degree.  Meanwhile, the anti-liberal Fox News Channel and The Wall Street Journal, whose editorial page is conservative, are both doing very well. (Full disclosure: I work for Fox News, whose parent company, News Corporation, also owns The Wall Street Journal.)

It is because of situations like the Ground Zero mosque that the far left has lost credibility, as well as viability. Americans are not stupid. They understand that New York City has more than 100 mosques. One more located near the site where fanatical Muslims murdered thousands of innocent people is certainly not necessary -- especially considering the building would offend thousands of people who lost loved ones on 9/11. Why would anyone want to offend them? Paging President Obama.

Bill O'Reilly, Nationally Syndicated Columnist August 26, 2010 Where Are The New Jobs?

"Corporate profits are soaring. Companies are sitting on billions of dollars of cash. And still, they've yet to amp up hiring or make major investments."  So writes The Washington Post about the recession's stubborn refusal to go away. The statisticians at the National Bureau of Economic Research declared the Great Recession over -- but tell that to people who can't find jobs. Today, businesses replace equipment and inventory, but they are reluctant to hire new workers. Investment that does occur aims at replacing the use of labor by adopting advanced technology. In a growing economy, that's a sign of progress. Freed-up workers are then available for new projects. But lately, those new projects aren't being launched...

Why isn't the economy recovering? After previous recessions, unemployment didn't get stuck at close to 10 percent. If left alone, the economy can and does heal itself, as the mistakes of the previous inflationary boom are corrected.  The problem today is that the economy is not being left alone. Instead, it is haunted by uncertainty on a hundred fronts. When rules are unintelligible and unpredictable, when new workers are potential threats because of Labor Department regulations, businesses have little confidence to hire. President Obama's vaunted legislative record not only left entrepreneurs with the burden of bigger government, it also makes it impossible for them to accurately estimate the new burden.

In at least three big areas -- health insurance, financial regulation and taxes -- no one can know what will happen.   New intrusive rules for health insurance are yet to be written, and those rules will affect hiring, since most health insurance is provided by employers... Nothing more effectively freezes business in place than what economist and historian Robert Higgs calls "regime uncertainty."...

Uncertainty created by Obama's legislative "successes" are comparable to the Depression and World War II? This does not bode well for job growth.  Higgs says: "Unless the government acts soon to resolve the looming uncertainties about the half-dozen greatest threats of policy harm to business, investors will remain for the most part on the sideline ... consuming wealth that might otherwise have been invested."

John Stossel, TownHall

August 25, 2010 To receive 'There is a Difference' send an email to elephantpride@aol.com with 'Subscribe' and your 'First & Last Name' as the Subject.

It's All About Trust: Voters Trust Republicans **52 percent of U.S. voters trust Republicans to handle tax issues, 36 percent trust Democrats. **49 percent trust Republicans to handle national security, 37 percent trust Democrats. **48 percent trust Republicans to handle health care, 40 percent trust Democrats. **47 percent trust Republicans to handle the economy, 39 percent trust Democrats.   **44 percent trust Republicans to handle immigration, 35 percent trust Democrats. Source: A Rasmussen Reports survey of 1,000 likely voters conducted Aug. 19,20, 23 and 24.   Jennifer Harper, Inside the Beltway August 26, 2010

Why Is Obama Letting Non-Citizens Get Away With Voting?

As Matt Mayer vividly describes in a new Heritage Web Memo, the Obama administration is implementing a de facto amnesty that will allow the vast majority of illegal aliens to remain in the United States without being disturbed by the Department of Homeland Security or any attempts to deport them. We can now add one more general amnesty that the administration is apparently extending – no prosecution of illegal voting by noncitizens and a green light to becoming a citizen even if you have violated federal law.

FOX News is reporting that DHS was informed by the county elections administration in Putnam County, Tennessee, about an immigrant in the U.S. on a work visa who registered and voted in the 2004 election. This immigrant has now applied to become a citizen. The only interest that DHS seemed to have in this information from Putnam County was asking the immigrant to submit evidence that he has been removed from the voter rolls. The letter also asks the immigrant, in an amazing example of bureaucratic incompetence, to explain when he “discovered” that he was “not a United States Citizen.” This would be funny if it did not illustrate such a profound lack of common sense. Continue reading...

Hans von Spakovsky, The Heritage Foundation August 27, 2010

The Most Fiscally Irresponsible Government In US History

There is an instinctive conclusion among the American public that President Obama's stimulus package has failed to create a sustained recovery. Unemployment has increased, not declined; consumers have retrenched; housing starts have crashed along with mortgage applications; and there is a fear that a double-dip recession may very well be in the pipeline. The public perception, reflected in Pew Research/National Journal polls, is that the measures to combat the Great Recession have mostly helped large banks and financial institutions, and that's a view common to Republicans (75 percent) and Democrats (73 percent). Only one third of either political leaning thinks government policies have done a great deal or a fair amount for the poor...

People see the stimulus, fashioned and passed by Congress in such a hurry, as a metaphor for wasted money. They are highly critical about the lack of discipline among our political leaders. The question that naturally arises is how to forestall a long-term economic decline...

(W)hile many think that the only way to revive the economy and to inject more money into it is through governmental spending, the general feeling is that we can't afford that right now. The government will be writing more IOUs on top of those we already can't afford. Why plan a second stimulus if the first stimulus couldn't prevent high unemployment?... Obama must know that if he doesn't address this, he will be the president who drove us toward a debt crisis. And so too must Congress, for both have now participated in the most fiscally irresponsible government in American history.

Mortimer B. Zuckerman, US News & World Report August 26, 2010

Debt's Dangers

Warnings about America's impending financial car wreck are being sounded, loud and clear. The only question is whether those driving the car will slam on the brakes before it's too late.  No doubt alarmed at the headlong plunge into fiscal irresponsibility by both the White House and the Democrat-dominated Congress, Wall Street is starting to fret that the recklessness could touch off another financial crisis.

On Thursday, Standard & Poor's said action is needed soon if the U.S. is to keep the much-coveted AAA bond rating that lets the government borrow in global markets at the lowest rates possible.  S&P's warning came just days after Morgan Stanley asserted that the U.S., along with a number of other developed nations, is likely to default on some debt. Such defaults are "inevitable," it said, given the growing number of retirees in developed nations who will have to be taken care of by a shrinking pool of workers.  The sovereign debt crisis "is not over," said the investment bank's Arnaud Mares, and that includes in the U.S.

What worries Wall Street is a public debt-to-GDP ratio of around 53%. That's high enough as it is, but it's about to go a lot higher. By 2020, recent data suggest, the ratio will top 100% — a red line that virtually all economists agree is dangerous.

In raw numbers, we owed roughly $7.5 trillion at the start of this year. By 2020 that explodes to $23.5 trillion, according to an analysis of Congressional Budget Office data by economist Brian Riedl.  What do these numbers mean? To begin with, we spend $187 billion a year, or 1.3% of GDP, to pay our debts now. Just 10 years from now, that will surge to $1.1 trillion, or 4.8% of estimated GDP. Fiscally speaking, we'll be gasping for air.

Debt can be a good thing, but in big doses it's poison. If, as some fear, the U.S. should simply say it can't pay its debts and default — or do a de facto default by printing money to retire our debt — the consequences would be dire.  No nation would want our bonds in their portfolios. To entice them to buy, we'd have to offer a much higher risk premium — that is, higher interest rates.  That means our debt service could go even higher, squeezing out even more of our economy's spending.

The dollar would implode, and prices for foreign goods — which now make up 15% of our economy — would soar. Private investment would shrink and, along with it, private-sector GDP.  Americans' standard of living, once the envy of the world, would recede into the pack of mediocre, government-run nations.

It doesn't have to be this way. All this is due to unrestrained spending. The federal government now spends about $29,000 per household. That will rise to $38,000 by 2020. If you think "the rich" will, or can, pay for it all, think again.  Unless we begin to control spending, we can kiss our American lifestyles goodbye. It's that simple.

Sadly, the White House is unwilling to see reality. Which may explain why, as our debts mount to ruinous heights, Vice President Joe Biden — President Obama's point man on the recovery — can burble, "This is a chance to do something big, man!"  Yeah, man, something big — like wreck a country.

Editorial, Investor's Business Daily August 26, 2010 Contact Sports

Midterm elections ain't what they used to be. 2010 is no mere "off-year" event, nor is it quiet, inconsequential or dull. Canny candidates are on message and ready to rumble, particularly conservative Marco Rubio, who already has signed on for seven aggressive, debates in his quest for the U.S. Senate seat in Florida. Match one is scheduled for NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sept. 5.  "I am the only candidate for Senate who has outlined specific ideas and proposals as a clear alternative to the wrong direction that Washington politicians are taking our country," Mr. Rubio says with a gladiator's relish. "I enthusiastically accept these opportunities to debate my opponents and present Floridians with the clear choice they have between a faithful loyalist of Washington's agenda, a say-and-do anything opportunist who only cares about winning, and the clear, idea-based alternative I am offering."  No word yet from his opponents Gov. Charlie Crist and Rep. Kendrick B. Meek, independent and Democrat, respectively.

Jennifer Harper, Inside the Beltway August 26, 2010 Government Alters Stimulus Sign Policy, Raising More Propaganda Questions In the 18 months following approval of President Obama’s stimulus package, the Department of Transportation required recipients of government funds to post placards touting the economic recovery. As a result, signs prominently featuring the recovery act logo appeared everywhere — by the side of the road, in public transportation stations, as bumper stickers on government vehicles.  Then, abruptly, on July 15, the Department of Transportation relaxed its requirements. No longer would government agencies require grant recipients to mount the by-then-familiar signs: They would simply encourage them to do so. The White House website was updated to reflect the change — and, seemingly, to give the impression that signs had never actually been required.

It might just have been a coincidence, but, shortly before the shift in policy, on June 24, Rep. Darrell Issa (D-Calif.), ranking member of the House Government Oversight Committee, asked the DOT inspector general to look into the administration’s use of the signs. That request was part of a larger investigation into White House propaganda use. Continue reading...

Tina Korbe, The Heritage Foundation August 27, 2010

Harry Reid: Praying That History Won't Repeat

It's axiomatic that the most dangerous place in Washington (perhaps in all America) is between Senator Chuck Schumer and a camera.  A barely safer location is being a Democratic leader of the United States Congress.  This year, Harry Reid is proving that. Despite having served in public office nearly continuously since 1964, leading the United States Senate majority since 2007, and now having the luxury of facing the controversial former Nevada Assembly member Sharron Angle this November, his chances for reelection remain decidedly dicey. Reid's situation, however, is hardly unique. Since 1950, an unusual number of top Democratic congressional leaders have faced the wrath of irate voters -- and not lived (politically) to tell about it. At least, not from Washington, anyway... Harry Reid may yet return to Washington. But if Reid fails to make that journey, he will not be the first, nor -- though the Beltway may not wish to believe it -- the last. David Pietrusza, American Thinker
August 27, 2010 Mosque's Saudi Patron New dots are emerging from the probe into who's behind the Ground Zero mosque, and the radical Muslim Brotherhood is coming into view.  While a couple of U.S. nonprofits — the Cordoba Initiative and its sister, the American Society for Muslim Advancement — are coordinating the New York project, they hardly give the full picture. A Saudi charity has sunk more than $300,000 into ASMA. It's called the Kingdom Foundation — headed by Alwaleed bin Talal, the Saudi prince whose 9/11 relief check was rejected after he blamed the attacks on U.S. foreign policy.

Bin Talal is a major financier of Muslim Brotherhood fronts in the U.S. His foundation is run by Saudi hijabi Muna Abu Sulayman, who appears on ASMA's Web site as one of its "Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow."  "Her work," according to her official bio, "focuses on increasing understanding between Islam and the West through establishment of academic centers and programs, both in the Middle East and the United States."

Sulayman, who spends much of her time in the U.S., happens to be the daughter of Dr. AbdulHamid Abu Sulayman, "one of the most important figures in the history of the global Muslim Brotherhood," according to the Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Report.  So? The Egypt-based Brotherhood is the parent of Hamas and al-Qaida and the source of most of the jihadi ideology and related terror throughout the world today. Citing its secret U.S. archives, prosecutors say the Brotherhood has a plan to "destroy" America "from within," and is using its agents and front groups in the U.S. to carry out that strategy. Like the mafia, it's highly organized, and uses shells and cutouts to launder money.

Dr. Sulayman's U.S. offices were raided by the feds after 9/11 on suspicion of providing material support to terror groups. An unsealed federal search warrant lists him as chairman and president of the International Institute of Islamic Thought, or IIIT, the Brotherhood's U.S. think tank.  In December 2008, IIIT hosted Ground Zero mosque imam Feisal Rauf to discuss his Shariah Index Project, which will be housed in the planned 15-story structure. The index will formally rate which governments best follow Islamic law, as practiced by Saudi.

Sulayman succeeded Rauf's late father, Muhammad, as rector of the International Islamic University in Malaysia. Rauf keeps an office in Malaysia, and he's held Shariah project meetings there.  Moreover, Rauf's 2004 book on Islam was published in Malaysia under the title, "A Call to Prayer from the World Trade Center Rubble: Islamic Dawa in the Heart of America Post-9/11." Dawa is Arabic for proselytizing.  In the book, the New York imam calls for a "subsidiary entity within the judiciary" in America that adjudicates on Shariah compliance.

Rauf's father was born in Egypt. Both he and Sulayman studied Islam in Cairo, Brotherhood headquarters. Sulayman is also listed by the feds as secretary of an Islamic school in Virginia called GSISS — at least that's what it used to be called, before it was raided. Now it goes by "Cordoba University."  Rauf insists he's a "healer" trying to build "bridges" between Islam and the West. But these radical Brotherhood connections raise new suspicions.

Editorial, Investor's Business Daily August 26, 2010 Why Does UNDP Continue To Aid Repressive Regimes?

A recent story by Fox News provides yet another example of the United Nations Development Program’s refusal to accede to an unfortunate reality: that the organization’s efforts to work with, and through, the world’s most despotic regimes are regularly twisted to serve the goals of the regime rather than the people suffering under their rule. According to the story: "An independent assessment of a $100 million United Nations Development Program aid effort in Burma calls it ‘disappointing,’ and ‘unsatisfactory,’ and suggests that major portions of the program be discontinued next year. Nonetheless, the director of UNDP intends to keep it alive with as-yet unspecified fixes." Continue reading...

Brett Schaefer, The Heritage Foundation August 27, 2010 President Obama's Compulsive Appeasement Disorder With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, the U.S. became the world's only superpower -- Uncle Sam would say, "Jump," and the response would be, "How high?" This has not continued; if anything, on today's world stage, Uncle Sam increasingly resembles Rodney "I don't get no respect" Dangerfield. We cannot even kill off a few ragtag third-world pirates, let alone impose our will on Iran or make Hugo Chávez nervous.
There's a simple explanation: we are no longer feared. Superpowers of yesteryear, going back to the Greeks and Romans, were feared for a reason -- they leveled a city to make an example. Today, by contrast, Uncle Sam relies on cajoling, bribery (think North Korea), entreating puny leaders of inchoate states (special envoys to the PLO's Mahmoud Abbas) and otherwise playing weak hands. We have gone from resolve to U.N. resolution. We've forgotten Machiavelli's sage advice: since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved... Saul Alinsky was a genius on intimidating American corporations or stealing elections, but these lessons are immaterial when confronting tyrants starving and beheading their enemies.
This wimp quality is most apparent when Obama travels abroad to "represent" the U.S. Make no mistake: foreign leaders scrutinize these events to size up the president. Perhaps his troubled childhood ingrained in him the habit of appeasing bullies. As one peruses his speeches, there is absolutely nothing in them suggesting woe to those who cross Uncle Sam. At bottom, he is asking the world to like America, please, pretty please, and if you do, I'll be your best friend. This solicitation might fly in Norway when Peace Prizes are awarded, but it will bomb in Iran... (H)is June 4, 2009 speech in Cairo would remove all doubt regarding Obama's toughness. It was an exercise in self-humiliation, as if the assembled Muslims, not the U.S., were the superpower.  The president asserted, "For over a thousand years, Al-Azhar has stood as a beacon of Islamic learning; and for over a century, Cairo University has been a source of Egypt's advancement. And together, you represent the harmony between tradition and progress." He then claimed some remarkable accomplishments for Islam: the order of algebra, the magnetic compass, a mastery of pens and printing, wondrous architecture, plus timeless poetry and cherished music. Islam was also hailed for its religious tolerance and racial equality. As for Muslims in America, they have stood for civil rights and excelled in sports. And just to make sure that his audience grasped America's military might, Obama explained how we plan to spend billions on schools and hospitals in Pakistan and Afghanistan while pulling our troops out of Iraq by 2012. These are hardly worlds to inspire fear, let alone respect... There is nothing to contradict this personal wimpiness. To exaggerate only slightly, if Obama really gets angry, he may dispatch his failed political rival Secretary of State (or worse, the fearsome Joe Biden) to warn the bad guys that unless they stop hurting Uncle Sam, they're going to get stockings of coal next season (Christmas or holidays obviously constitute impermissible offensiveness).  What would Teddy Roosevelt say?

Robert Weissberg, American Thinker
August 27, 2010 The Busy Border

"Statistics show that human smuggling continues to be a crisis on the nation's southern border. And the problem is only going to get worse as a result of the Obama administration's hostility to the strong enforcement of our nation's immigration laws, especially in Arizona," says Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, who has reason to fret.  His watchdog group has obtained documents from U.S. Customs and Border Protection detailing numbers from Arizona's "Tucson Sector" that covers 262 miles of the U.S. border with Mexico.

Last year, 70,328 persons were "smuggled and apprehended" in this area alone; 963 smugglers were identified, while 599 were deported. More than 17,000 immigration infractions were referred to the U.S. Attorney's Office for prosecution.  But the documents also revealed that the apprehended population known as "other than Mexicans" caught in the area is rising, with a fivefold increase in those from the People's Republic of China - from 15 in 2008 to 79 last year - plus "significant increases" in Romanians, as well.

Jennifer Harper, Inside the Beltway August 26, 2010 Crying Bigotry: Last Refuge Of The Liberal

Liberalism under siege is an ugly sight indeed. Just yesterday it was all hope and change and returning power to the people. But the people have proved so disappointing. Their recalcitrance has, in only 19 months, turned the 40-year liberal ascendancy that James Carville predicted into a full retreat.  Ah, the people, the little people, the small-town people, the "bitter" people, as Barack Obama in an unguarded moment once memorably called them, clinging "to guns or religion or" — this part is less remembered — "antipathy toward people who aren't like them."  That's a polite way of saying: clinging to bigotry. And promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.

Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the Tea Party? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.  Disgust and alarm with the federal government's unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism.  Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.  Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.  Now we know why the country has become "ungovernable," last year's excuse for the Democrats' failure of governance: Who can possibly govern a nation of racist, nativist, homophobic Islamophobes?

Note what connects these issues. In every one, liberals have lost the argument in the court of public opinion. Majorities — often lopsided majorities — oppose President Obama's social-democratic agenda (e.g., the stimulus, ObamaCare), support the Arizona law, oppose gay marriage and reject a Ground Zero mosque.

What's a liberal to do? Pull out the bigotry charge, the trump that pre-empts debate and gives no credit to the seriousness and substance of the contrary argument.  The most venerable of these trumps is, of course, the race card. When the Tea Party arose, a spontaneous, leaderless and perfectly natural (and traditionally American) reaction to the vast expansion of government intrinsic to the president's proudly proclaimed transformational agenda, the liberal commentariat cast it as a mob of angry white yahoos disguising their antipathy to a black president by cleverly speaking in economic terms.

Then came Arizona and SB 1070. It seems impossible for the left to believe that people of good will could hold that: (a) illegal immigration should be illegal, (b) the federal government should not hold border enforcement hostage to comprehensive reform, i.e., amnesty, (c) every country has the right to determine the composition of its immigrant population.

As for Proposition 8, is it so hard to see why people might believe that a single judge overturning the will of 7 million voters is an affront to democracy? And that seeing merit in retaining the structure of the most ancient and fundamental of all social institutions is something other than an alleged hatred of gays — particularly since the opposite-gender requirement has characterized virtually every society in all the millennia until just a few years ago?

And now the Ground Zero mosque. The intelligentsia are near unanimous that the only possible grounds for opposition is bigotry toward Muslims. This smug attribution of bigotry to two-thirds of the population hinges on the insistence on a complete lack of connection between Islam and radical Islam, a proposition that dovetails perfectly with the Obama administration's pretense that we are at war with nothing more than "violent extremists" of inscrutable motive and indiscernible belief.  Those who reject this as both ridiculous and politically correct (an admitted redundancy) are declared Islamophobes, the ad hominem du jour.

It is a measure of the corruption of liberal thought and the collapse of its self-confidence that, finding itself so widely repudiated, it resorts reflexively to the cheapest race-baiting (in a colorful variety of forms).  Indeed, how can one reason with a nation of pitchfork-wielding mobs brimming with "antipathy toward people who aren't like them" — blacks, Hispanics, gays and Muslims — a nation that is, as Michelle Obama once put it, "just downright mean"?

The Democrats are going to get beaten badly in November. Not just because the economy is ailing. And not just because Obama over-read his mandate in governing too far left. But because a comeuppance is due the arrogant elites whose undisguised contempt for the great unwashed prevents them from conceding a modicum of serious thought to those who dare oppose them.

Charles Krauthammer, Nationally Syndicated Columnist August 26, 2010 To receive 'There is a Difference' send an email to elephantpride@aol.com with 'Subscribe' and your 'First & Last Name' as the Subject.

Intoxicated With Power "Those who have been intoxicated with power... can never willingly abandon it."
Edmund Burke, (1729-1797) Irish-born British statesman, parliamentary orator, and political thinker Two Americas: The Working Class And The Serf Class

I have been reading Frederick A. Hayek's seminal work, "The Road to Serfdom".  Serfdom was the socioeconomic status of unfree peasants under feudalism. It was a condition of bondage or modified slavery. Serfdom was the enforced labor of serfs on the fields of landowners, in return for protection and the right to work on their leased fields.

I believe we have a new form of serfdom in America and government is the new feudalism.  Hayek's book helps explain how we got to this new feudalism and became a new breed of serfs. The main point of Hayek's book is that: "[t]he most important change which extensive government control produces is a psychological change, an alteration in the character of the people."

I fear that the "character" of the American people has changed. A majority of Americans have become the modern day serfs of our feudal government. Please let me explain. Remember when John Edwards, former Democrat Senator from North Carolina and Presidential candidate, talked about two Americas? Edwards and Democrats consistently talk about rich America and poor America.

I agree that there are two Americas but not in the way John Edwards and Democrats portray it.  May I respectfully suggest we actually have two Americas - those who produce wealth (the working class) and those who consume wealth (the serf class). This new "serf class" includes: government, those who work for government or "bureaucrats", those receiving monetary payment directly from government and those subsidized by government.

Today in America we have a growing population living off of "government largesse" - the new feudalism. Government is defined as a "system of ruling or controlling". Largesse is defined as, "the liberal giving (as of money) to or as if to an inferior (e.g. serf)." Please read: Government Largesse - The Opiate of the People.

Government largesse includes all local, state and federal social programs. Many of these social programs began in the 1930s under the New Deal, and greatly expanded during the 1960s with the Great Society. Government social programs have grown exponentially. Social programs include: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the bureaucrats at every level hired to oversee and manage them. Additionally, there are other feudal government programs, which includes regulating or subsidizing individuals or groups of individuals to achieve "social justice" a redistributive model of governing.

At some point in time the cost of government largesse exceeds the capabilities of those paying for it. I believe we may have have reached that "tipping point". I believe we now have two Americas - those who are in large part dependent on government largesse and those who are not. What are some of the key indicators that I believe show we have reached that tipping point?

1.  When the costs of social programs approach half of our gross domestic product.  2.  When government control of the gross national product approaches fifty percent.  3.  When the cost of operating government at all levels becomes so large as to restrict growth.  4.  When the working class is more concerned about government intrusion than it is about personal liberty.  5.  When government begins to bail itself out.  6. When a nation's national debt payments at all levels of government approach thirty percent of all revenues.

It is time for Americans to look at who they are dependent on and why. There are many indicators today that America has reached a tipping point with a new expanding serf class dependent on government paid for by an ever decreasing working class.  As Hayek states: "The important point is that the political ideas of a people and its attitude toward authority are as much the effect as the cause of the political institutions under which it lives. This means, among other things, that even a strong tradition of political liberty is no safeguard if the danger is precisely that new institutions and policies will gradually undermine and destroy that spirit."

Have we become a nation of government serfs? Have we become so dependent on government largesse that we will actively work against our own liberty in order to get that next bailout, subsidy or government benefit check?  Hayek gives us some hope that the road to serfdom is neither inevitable nor reversible. Hayek states, "The consequences can of course be averted if that spirit reasserts itself in time and the people not only throw out the party which has been leading them further and further in the dangerous direction but also recognize the nature of the danger and resolutely change their course."

Are you ready to change your course?

Dr. Richard Swier, Red County August 21, 2010 Fast Track To Government Health Care

While there is broad agreement there are problems in our health sector that must be solved, the American people consistently have said they oppose government control. Yet many of the decisions now being made in the bowels of the bureaucracy could lead to a government system that people fear.  The consequences of government involvement in health care have become more and more apparent as people have become informed about what the health overhaul law would do. No longer does the government seem to be a fairy godmother but rather a tough enforcer of an avalanche of new mandates, taxes and regulatory requirements... Many of the decisions being made by regulators could make it almost impossible for private insurance companies to comply, leading inevitably to a government-run health system.

Connecticut state insurance commissioner Thomas Sullivan warned, "What we've learned since March, is that if you like your health insurance you may not be able to keep it," he told the Seattle meeting, "and state regulators will have a role in implementing health care as long as that role supports the goals of HHS (the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services), which may not necessarily be what's in the best interest of consumers."  He later told reporters: "I'm concerned there's still a lot left to be done in interpretation ... I fear that some have an agenda to interpret ... with the express purpose of getting to a single-payer option."  Many other health actuaries and experts at the Seattle meeting said they believed the MLR was meant to be so disruptive to private insurance that it would eventually push us into a single-payer system...

So the politicization of health care begins, with even the president set to weigh in on a decision that would make most people's eyes glaze over in the minutia. The president will meet with the NAIC at the White House in September or so to discuss the issue.  It now is clear that decisions about what kind of health insurance we have, how much we must pay, what it covers or doesn't cover, will be made by politicians and bureaucrats...

The process has begun. Unless ObamaCare can be rolled back, the politicization of American medicine will reach into the smallest decisions affecting our medical care for decades to come.  And, just five months after the health overhaul law was enacted, we see how the regulatory bureaucracy may well push us into the single-payer, government-run health care system that even the very liberal 111th Congress couldn't enact.

Grace-Marie Turner, Investor's Business Daily August 20, 2010 Obama's Four Disasters: Heckuva Job, Mr. President Recovery summer, opposition to Arizona’s immigration law, negative campaigning, and intervention in the Ground Zero mosque dispute—call them Obama’s Four Disasters. As policy, they’re questionable. As political exercises, they’re losers. As clues about Obama, they’re evidence he’s lost his political knack. What was Obama thinking? These weren’t initiatives taken suddenly. They were carefully thought out and plotted, no doubt in expectation the president would gain politically and so would Democratic candidates. Whatever calculations the White House made, they were faulty.

Recovery summer. This was proclaimed in June, with fanfare, in a briefing by Vice President Biden and the issuance of a report titled “Summer of Recovery: Project Activity Increases in Summer 2010.” The report said “millions of Americans [are] on the job today thanks to the Recovery Act”—better known as the “stimulus package”—but its work is not done. “Summer 2010 is actually poised to be the most active Recovery Act season yet.”

Not quite. Obama, Biden, and company should have known better. It’s true there were indicators the economy would grow and hiring by private firms would increase. But anyone who traveled outside Washington would quickly discover that slow growth and minimal hiring were at least as likely to occur. And they have. The economy has hit the brakes, the stock market is stagnant, the jobs picture has -worsened, unemployment claims are up, and the notion of a summer of recovery has become an embarrassment. If there were even a glimmer of doubt about a summertime boom, you wouldn’t want to put a chronic exaggerator like Biden out front. He tends to gush uncontrollably... Sounds nice. Too bad it hasn’t happened.

Opposition to the Arizona immigration law. This is what’s known as a 70-30 issue. Obama has taken the 30 percent position, which puts him athwart the vast majority of Americans. The White House said the decision to file suit against the Arizona law was made by Attorney General Eric Holder. But Holder works for Obama, who could have told him to back off...

Negative campaigning. Obama’s great gift as a politician is the ability to rise above the normal pushing, shoving, and name-calling of politics and appear statesmanlike... Now he’s abandoned it. In his current stump speech, he does two things. He talks about “a lot of things I’m very proud of that we’ve done over the last two years,” including health care reform. And he attacks Republicans for “constant, nonstop opposition on everything.” Guess which one the media devours. His criticism of Republicans is not limited to political appearances. He’s begun attacking them in his Saturday radio address from the White House. This is both unappealing and unpresidential...

The Ground Zero mosque. This is another 70-30 issue, and Obama is again in the minority. We know his decision to defend the plan of Muslims to build a mosque near Ground Zero wasn’t a spur of the moment thing. He put out a prepared text of his speech on this subject before it was delivered to a group of Muslims at a Ramadan event at the White House. He backtracked the next day...

The contrast between the political adroitness of Obama as a presidential candidate and Obama as president is striking. His campaign was nearly error-free. As president, he’s made a string of unforced errors. He’s lost his touch, and chances are it won’t come back.

Fred Barnes, Weekly Standard August 30-September 6, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 47 What Obamacare And The Death Star Have In Common

So far, 21 states have filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare.  As they move forward, it’s worth pondering what would happen to the health care overhaul if they succeed. Could one lawsuit be the proton torpedo that blows up the Obamacare Death Star?  Typically, courts can deem a legislative provision unconstitutional without it spelling doom for the entire piece of legislation.  But Obamacare isn’t typical legislation.  Ben Domenech explains: “Most laws of large size and scope have something called a “severability clause” attached to them. Essentially, this means that if one part of a piece of large legislation is ruled unconstitutional by a court, that unconstitutional portion is “severed” from the rest of the bill — the ruling doesn’t stop the rest of the law from being enforced.” Continue reading...

Kathryn Nix, The Heritage Foundation August 20, 2010 Iran Realities Democrats say bombing would only slow Tehran's nuclear program. The U.S. tells Israel that Iran is far from having a nuke. Are we lying to ourselves about the dangerous realities of Iran's nukes?Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash., a member of the House Armed Services and Intelligence committees, says the mighty U.S. arsenal can't destroy Iran's nuclear program.  "We can't stop it. We can slow it down," Smith told FoxNews.com last week.

The thinking is that there are too many targets, many of which are fortified and even built deep within mountains. Bushehr, Natanz, Qom, plus other facilities, known and unknown, spread out far and wide — we'd never destroy it all, we're told.  Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that the Obama administration has been telling Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government in Israel not to worry; Iran's nuclear activities are prone to glitches, and it will be a year or more before it can build a weapon, according to U.S. intelligence and U.N. inspector reports.

In fact, the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency has said it might take Tehran only three months. As Gary Milhollin, executive director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, wrote on the Atlantic magazine's Web site, President Obama's mantra that Iran's "nuclear clock has slowed" is false.

"The clock is still ticking, vigorously," according to Milhollin. "By the beginning of this year, Iran had produced enough low-enriched uranium to fuel two nuclear weapons if the uranium were further enriched to weapon-grade. By now, Iran has added almost enough low-enriched uranium to fuel a third weapon, and by the middle of next year (at current production rates) it will probably produce enough to fuel a fourth."... Are we really willing to bet our lives on a nuclear-armed Iran being only a far-off possibility?  Would we gamble that the ayatollahs do not secretly seek to arm terrorist operatives with some kind of portable weapon that could incinerate a U.S. or European city?

If we do fear such a scenario, are Americans content to accept that with sanctions not working a military solution is impossible?  As the Washington Times' Rowan Scarborough described it earlier this month, based on the analysis of military experts, the Pentagon has worked out an Iran attack plan, using B-2 Stealth bombers and cruise missiles launched from ships, subs and B-52 bombers.  "It will be primarily an air attack with covert work to start a velvet revolution so (the) Iranian people can take back their country," retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, a former fighter pilot, told Scarborough.

We should have been supporting Iranian freedom fighters — covertly and overtly — for the past five years at least.  It may now be too late for that, and with Iran's Islamofascist regime so close to nuclear weapons capability, those who insist "we can't stop it" or that it isn't an imminent threat may end up having to explain themselves to the dead.

Editorial, Investor's Business Daily August 20, 2010 Muslims, Not Americans, Are Religious Bigots Time magazine asked this week whether America has “a Muslim problem,” and suggested that “many” of those opposed to the Ground Zero mosque “are motivated by deep-seated Islamophobia.” The same article scowls disapprovingly that “46% of Americans believe Islam is more likely than other faiths to encourage violence against nonbelievers.” (What could have possibly given them that idea?)
But, as the article concedes, there has been no increase in violence against Muslims. In reality, Americans remain fastidiously tolerant of all religions, even one that inspired 19 fanatics to hijack four commercial airliners on 9/11 and kill more than 3,000 Americans in the bloodiest attack in our nation’s history. Time requires a peculiar sort of blindness to see so much imagined intolerance in America — especially based solely on “anecdotal evidence” — while nearly ignoring the religious intolerance in most Islamic countries. A group of triumphalist Muslims seeks to erect an Islamic center near Ground Zero in a city that already has 100 mosques, and they face, at worst, disapproval, stern looks and calls to relocate their project.

Contrast this with a news report by journalist Mindy Belz in the current issue of World magazine, concerning Afghanistan’s small community of Christian converts. Belz describes how an Afghan television station recently broadcast a video of a baptismal service, sparking riots in the streets of Kabul and leading to the arrest of 25 Christians. Nobody knows at this time the fate of those arrested. Because it is illegal for Muslims to convert in Afghanistan — as it is in most Islamic countries — people who choose any other faith face the death penalty. Adherents of other religions, meanwhile, are subject to official discrimination and persecution, despite guarantees to the contrary in Afghanistan’s constitution. Thus, the plight of Christians is shared in many Islamic countries by Buddhists, Baha’is, Hindus and Zoroastrians. As Time puts it, it is wrong to “conflate Islam with terrorism and savagery.” But the world must be dealt with as it is and not as we wish it were. That requires us to accept the reality that Muslim nations are the most religiously intolerant places on Earth, and that a startling number of Islamic clerics worldwide still refuse to condemn violence against nonbelievers. In contrast, Americans who oppose the mosque are not even demanding that its developers be arrested or harmed in any way for their beliefs. They ask only that the mosque developers voluntarily show common sense, decency and sensitivity for America’s loss on 9/11. Editorial, Washington Examiner
August 20, 2010 Censorship And Confrontation Will Not Solve Chavez's Mounting Problems

On August 13 El Nacional, a Venezuelan daily, published a disturbing photograph of corpses piled up in a Caracas morgue. The photograph drove home an indisputable fact: Caracas has become one of the most dangerous places in the Americas.   Reports the latest Economist: "Venezuela’s national murder rate is 75 per 100,000 people, up from 49 just four years ago, twice the rate in neighboring Colombia where guerrillas continue to wage war and an astonishing 220 per 100,000 people in Caracas, higher even than in Mexico’s drug-ridden Ciudad Juárez."  Continue reading...

Ray Walser, The Heritage Foundation August 20, 2010 Hard Hats: No Mosque! No Mosque! A grass-roots movement among construction workers and unions asks Cordoba mosque supporters: Who do you expect to build it? The same people who built the World Trade Center perhaps?  In real estate, it's said the price of a property is based on three things — location, location, location. The price in blood and treasure America has paid for the gaping hole where the Twin Towers once stood is incalculable.

The wounds are still fresh and the anger is still real, and it's something that supporters of the Cordoba mosque, named after a great Islamic victory over the West, simply don't get.  Two blocks from the proposed mosque, construction workers at the WTC site are trying get across their point, and ours.  The towers of the World Trade Center instantly became symbols of America, its strength, its embrace of freedom and free markets. It was the pride of the workers who built it, destroyed in just hours by madmen who turned passenger jets into flaming cruise missiles...

Despite tought times, L.V. Spina, a Manhattan construction worker who created the stickers adorning an increasing number of hard hats, says he'd "rather pick cans and bottles out of trash cans" than build the mosque two blocks from Ground Zero... Americans are not bigots. From Bosnia to Iraq to Afghanistan, young American men and women have put their lives on the line, many paying the ultimate price, for Muslim freedom.  We freed a nation, particularly its women, from the intolerance of the Taliban. It was America in the forefront of aid to Indonesian earthquake and tsunami victims, and now flood victims in Pakistan.

The construction workers of Ground Zero seem to be saying, if you want outreach, grab a shovel and help us rebuild as we have helped you. Help us build a proper memorial to our dead, murdered in the opening salvo of the war on terror.  As for your mosque, we'll build it for you, just not in this sacred place and not now.

Editorial, Investor's Business Daily August 20, 2010 President Still Thinking Like Local Agitator

The president of the United States has it hard enough without needlessly wading into, and fanning, local controversies. The economy is battered by sluggish growth, high unemployment, record annual deficits and near unsustainable national debt. Over 50% of the people now disapprove of Barack Obama's handling of these problems.  So why weigh in on hot-button issues that can only polarize people without solving anything?...

Arizona recently passed a bill designed to enforce existing immigration law and stop the enormous influx of illegal aliens into the state. Various groups, including the federal government, quickly made plans to sue the state. Yet various polls indicated that 70% of Americans agreed with the Arizona law, and dozens of states were planning similar legislation.  Nonetheless, the president also jumped into that acrimony — well before the law went into effect. Obama and his attorney general alleged that Arizonans were promoting stereotyping, even though police were forbidden to question the immigration status of those who had not come into prior contact with law enforcement.

Most recently, Obama pontificated about the proposed mosque next to Ground Zero in lower Manhattan, in what his supporters might call a "teachable moment." The issue is not a legal one. Both sides recognize the legal right of Muslims to build mosques anywhere that local zoning ordinances permit them. Instead, the controversy pertains to common decency, and the nature of the funding and proponents of the project.  No matter: The president instead lectured his mostly Muslim audience that America respects the rights of all religions — again, not the issue in question. A day later, in embarrassment, he backtracked a bit.

Where to start with all these teachable moments?  All these controversies involve issues addressed at the state and local level, with presidential action unnecessary. In such contentious matters, why intervene when Obama cannot do much other than polarize millions?  We have learned that President Obama has a bad habit of impugning the motives of those with whom he disagrees...  Arizonans were not to be seen as desperate citizens trying to enforce federal law, but instead derided as bigots who harass minorities when they go out to get ice cream. And in the mosque case, the president disingenuously implied that opponents of a Ground Zero mosque wanted to deny the legal right of Muslims to build religious centers... Again, why does Obama go off message to sermonize about these seemingly minor things that so energize his opposition and make life difficult for his fellow Democrats?

First, off-the-cuff pontificating on extraneous issues is a lot easier than dealing with a bad economy, two wars and heightening tensions abroad. Sermonizing is a lot different than rounding up votes in Congress, fending off reporters at press conferences or dealing with aggressors overseas — and it can also turn our attention away from near-10% unemployment and a heavily indebted government.

Second, Obama has spent most of his life around academics, lawyers, journalists and organizers. That insular culture tends to pontificate and lecture others far more than do action-oriented businesspeople, soldiers, doctors and farmers — the doers who are few and far between in this administration.

Third, as an Ivy League-trained lawyer and former Chicago community organizer, Obama embraces an overarching race/class/gender critique of the U.S.; the story of America is not so much about an exceptionally independent and prosperous people, a unique Constitution or a vibrant national past in promoting global freedom, but about how the majority oppressed various groups.

Clearly, these local instances of purported grievances have excited the president — and almost automatically prompt his customary but unproven declarations that the majority or establishment in each case is biased or unfair.  Obama should remember that successful presidents build bridges to solve national and international problems. They leave polarizing local controversies to divisive community organizers and partisan activists.

Victor Davis Hanson, Nationally Syndicated Columnist August 20, 2010 To receive 'There is a Difference' send an email to elephantpride@aol.com with 'Subscribe' and your 'First & Last Name' as the Subject.