Blogs For Victory

In the grand scheme of things, its a few weeks before Kristallnacht. There are grave threats to the Jews, but their hour has not yet struck. It could have been prevented in the 1930’s, and it can be prevented now – if Obama will listen:

President Barack Obama’s visit to Capitol Hill for the Holocaust Day of Remembrance ceremony turned into more than just a solemn memorial event Thursday morning. As the president sat waiting for his turn at the podium, a series of speakers admonished him, in terms both veiled and direct, to confront Iran’s government as a threat to Jews and to Israel.

“Honoring the dead must not be the sole purpose of remembrance. It must help us shape a better future,” said Israeli Ambassador Sallai Meridor. “When a regime is again … terrorizing its neighbors, threatening to destroy the Jewish people, how will we meet this challenge before it’s too late?”

Meridor kept his message implicit, but the subtext was clear: The world must stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Joel Geiderman, the vice chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, was more blunt, drawing a comparison between the Nazis in Germany and the present-day government in Tehran.

“At least one whole nation has been targeted for destruction with the threat to wipe it off the map,” Geiderman said, alluding to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s belligerent remarks toward Israel. “History should have taught us that democracies that let such pledges stand do so at their own peril.”

Will Obama listen? Does he even realize what is at stake? Israel’s fate may turn on whether or not Obama understands the Iranian threat. More than half a century ago, as we opened up the Nazi death camps, we said “never again” – we pledged ourselves to never, ever allow a people to be targeted for destruction. Our promise made is now to be redeemed – or to be dishonorably ignored.

Per Rasmussen:

Fifty-eight percent (58%) believe the Obama administration’s recent release of CIA memos about the harsh interrogation methods used on terrorism suspects endangers the national security of the United States. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 28% believe the release of the memos helps America’s image abroad.

And, of course, that 28% are those who manage to be dumber than Obama

Iowahawk strikes again.

After some amateur hour moments by Janet Napolitano, a number of Republicans are calling for her to step down.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is under fire for what critics see as a string of gaffes, with a small but vocal group of conservatives calling for her to step down. 

The outrage continues to build over a report from her department that warned of the danger of right-wing “extremists,” and singled out returning war veterans as susceptible to recruitment. 

Napolitano expressed regret for the reference to veterans — but she raised eyebrows again this week when she suggested that the Sept. 11 hijackers entered the United States through Canada, even though the 9/11 Commission determined they came to the United States from overseas. 

“I don’t know that the secretary understands the depth of the disruption that she’s caused,” Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, told FOX News on Thursday, referring to the report on extremist threats. “I think the appropriate thing to do is for her to step down and let’s move on.” 

Conservatives made a stern call for her ouster Wednesday night on the House floor. 

“Mr. President, fire that woman,” said Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, complaining that Napolitano’s comments on the controversial report were half-hearted. “To go on television and say your apology to be, ‘I’m sorry you were offended by this report,’ that’s no apology.” 

Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., also said Napolitano’s resignation is in order, and she should be brought before Congress for a hearing. 

Such incompetence ought not be tolerated, and I agree, Napolitano has got to go. She’s making a ridiculous administration look even more ridiculous, and when we’re talking about the Homeland Security Secretary, her incompetence will make us less safe.

A bright spot in a darkening world:

The Dominican Republic has voted to approve language in its new constitution protecting the right to life from the moment of conception.

Article 11 of the new constitution, which was approved by a large majority of 167-32, states that “the right to life is inviolable from conception until death. The death penalty cannot be established, pronounced, nor applied, in any case.”

The approval of the article came in the wake of a series of massive campaigns by the Catholic bishops of the Dominican Republic, led by Cardinal Archbishop Nicolas de Jesus Lopez of Santo Domingo.

The Cardinal has organized marches, has given a speech on national television, and has staged large-scale protests outside of government buildings and in other places over the past two years.

On Easter Sunday, a little more than a week before the vote, the Cardinal and other priests gave sermons on the importance of protecting the right to life.

The nation’s Evangelical Protestant churches have also had a major influence on the outcome. Organized by such leaders as Dr. Gene Antonio, they have succeeded in playing video of abortions on national television and have distributed tens of thousands of flyers to Dominicans.

“We are thrilled that the protection of human life from the moment of conception is now established into the constitution in spite of fierce international pressure to legalize abortion,” stated Antonio. “This overwhelming victory serves as an example to the other Latin countries fighting to protect life, that we can win and we must win because the lives of little people are at stake.”

This makes the Dominican Republic into Enemy Number One for the pro-abortion zealots in the world. Basking in their victory in Obama’s turning over of US tax dollars to the international abortion industry, they won’t take this action by the Dominicans lying down. Immense pressure will be brought to bear to get Dominica to change its ways.

I believe they will with stand the storm – and also provide an example to us all to never give up and never give in. The cause of life is the cause of hope.

Andy McCarthy at NRO’s The Corner neatly turns Hillary’s comments about Vice President Cheney against her:

If the Secretary of State really doesn’t think Vice President Cheney is a reliable source, she is smart enough to know the obvious thing to do: declassify and disclose the intelligence reports he’s talking about so all the world can see exactly how unreliable he is. Here’s her big chance to put her money where her mouth is and truly embarrass the guy she so effortlessly trashed in a public hearing today.

McCarthy goes on to note that she probably won’t do it – because everyone who knows about these things is confirming Vice President Cheney. All Hillary was doing was following the Obama Administration game plan – keep running against the Bush Administration and hope that no one notices that Bush isn’t in office anymore (I didn’t say it was a smart plan – though it will be eaten up by leftists here in the United States who, also, want to keep going after President Bush).

I don’t recall from Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton or Bush II the level of condemnation of the previous Administration that we’re getting from Obama and his Administration. Certainly, each of these previous Presidents talked himself up and allude to the presumptively worse times under the other guy, but this relentless campaign of slander against people who hold no office is startling – and disturbing. The kindest face we can put on it is that Obama and Co are just floundering around and don’t know what to do so they are in default attack-mode. The more worrisome prospect is that they are attempting to demonize the Bush Administration in order to set them up for kangaroo courts preliminary to a general legal offensive against all right-of-center opinion.

When Bill Clinton left office, forgiveness from me was almost as automatic as breathing. I was glad to see him go, but I felt no continuing rancor towards him – even after the accounting scandal and 9/11 exposed the miserable incompetence of his Administration. There was no point in indulging in hatred or attempting to witch-hunt him or his subordinates. It was over – whatever he did, for good or ill, was in the history books and all we could do is the best we could with what we had day by day. To attempt to rehash the past helps no one (this is why I was opposed to the 9/11 Commission – I just wasn’t interested in a post-mortem except as much as we could learn from mistakes). Love Bush or hate Bush, there is nothing he can do – all he can do has been done. One might like or hate the results, but liked or hated, the results have to be dealt with as they are…putting him in the dock won’t change our predicament. In fact, it would make it worse as it would drive massive wedges of disunity into the American body politic.

You people on the left really need to let go – and get Obama and Co to let go, too. Your long, national nightmare (if that is how you choose to view it) is over. You can breath again. So, lay off. Unless, that is, you’re just consumed with hatred…then what you need is the grace and mercy of God.

This will get the kook left going bonkers for a bit, given that freedom is stirring in the Tea Party movement:

Everywhere that freedom stirs, let tyrants fear. – George W. Bush

Is there any shred of national honor Obama won’t toss over the side?

The Obama administration has asked a federal judge to throw out a lawsuit against Iran filed by Americans held hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran 30 years ago.

The request comes in a $6.6 billion class-action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Washington. Fifty-two American diplomats and military officials were held captive for more than a year at the end of Jimmy Carter’s presidency by a group of Islamist students who supported the Iranian revolution.

The hostages were released on Jan. 20, 1981, just minutes after Ronald Reagan was sworn in as the new president.

In court papers filed Tuesday night without any announcement, the Justice Department argued that the agreement to release the hostages, known as the Algiers Accords, precluded lawsuits against Iran.

A similar lawsuit brought by the Iranian hostages was dismissed in 2000 after the government successfully argued it was banned by the Algiers Accords. The hostages argue that legislation passed by Congress last year and signed into law by President George W. Bush gives them the right to bring private lawsuits.

But the Justice Department argued that the law does not mention the Algiers Accords, much less explicitly repeal them.

“The gratitude of the United States for the service and dedication of these brave individuals cannot be overstated, nor can the suffering and abuse they endured on behalf of this country be exaggerated; these matters are beyond dispute,” the Justice Department wrote in its filing.

The hostages argue that Iran supported their confinement and abuse, with visits from government officials, stays in government prisons and buildings and threats of trial in Iranian courts. The lawsuit says current Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was one of their interrogators.

The Algiers Accords were worked out on the last day of Jimmy Carter’s Presidency and were never ratified by the Senate nor otherwise enacted into US law, at least as far as I can determine. A Court case on the issue was resolved early on in that President Reagan agreed to void all legal actions pending against Iran in US courts as part of the Algiers Accords – such actions were transferred, per the Accords, to a arbitration tribunal. But from what I understand, this tribunal did not address itself to the issue of any personal claims the actual hostages had against their captors for physical and mental suffering. If your corporation was seized by the Iranian government, off to the tribunal you went…but if you were beaten nearly to death by terrorist goons, you had no place to go…except back to the US courts.

Be all that as it may, the fact that the Obama Administration would give this issue away shows how entirely clueless they are about the stakes involved here. The issue of compensation for the Americans held hostage is something which needs to be resolved – and it may very well be resolved through some general agreement between the United States and Iran…provided, that is, a dimwit of a President hasn’t already signed away the rights of Americans in order to curry favor with the miserable SOBs who govern Iran. Each President has an array of tools to use in dealing with foreign powers – no tool should be lightly cast aside. For everything we give up, we should gain something and/or get the other side to give or give up something. Obama doesn’t understand this rather basic aspect of the diplomacy he claims will make the world a better place.

A President also only gets a certain number of mistakes before he’s written off as a fool in the international community. Obama has already made a score or more such mistakes and the on thing he’s done right – sending that destroy to contest China’s claims in the South China Sea – isn’t as important as the bone headed mistakes he’s been making since day one. Our liberal friends were upset that under Bush Europeans disliked us. Well, I’d rather have Bush disliked but feared as opposed to Obama liked but held in contempt.

Proving she’s smarter than liberals:

Chancellor Angela Merkel stood firm in rejecting any new German economic stimulus program even as the International Monetary Fund said the recession is worse than previously thought and called for measures to spur demand.

Merkel shrugged off calls for more spending despite a report by Germany’s leading economic institutes which will show tomorrow that Europe’s biggest economy may shrink as much as 6 percent this year — almost three times the contraction of 2.25 percent forecast by the government in January.

The coalition won’t expand its 82 billion euro ($107 billion) stimulus agreed under two separate programs, Merkel told reporters in Berlin today after a meeting with business leaders and economists.

“We shouldn’t talk about a third stimulus package,” Merkel said. “Instead we’ll let current measures take effect.”

The chancellor’s comments echo statements today by her finance and economy ministers underlining unity in the coalition over not stretching the budget more to pay for new stimulus steps.

The news story goes on to note how additional government spending may merely allow failing business to slack off and wait for the taxpayer to bail them out. In order to recover, the companies which can’t make it will have to die; the companies which need massive restructuring will have to do it; the economic decks have to be cleared in order for new businesses to step into the vacuum of the dead companies. We can’t spend our way out of this, boys and girls: the whole world is awash in debt and only the creation of entirely new, never-had-it-before wealth will allow us to discharge this debt and start growing again.

Hopefully, someone will program Obama’s teleprompter with Merkelism so that we, too, can get off the spend, spend, spend treadmill to economic death.

I can remember a rather heated argument I had with a coworker the day after the election. I was expressing my fears for the future of this country, and I mentioned Obama’s lack of experience as one of many, many reasons why this country was in trouble.

My coworker, a rabid Obama fan, couldn’t argue on that point, but suggested that what he lacked in experience he would make up for by appointing knowledgeable, qualified, and competent people to be around him.

Well, without getting into the ridiculous number of ethically challenged nominees and withdrawn nominations, it is quite clear that Obama, who clearly lacks the experience to be president (his piss-poor performance proving such) also lacks the judgment to nominate knowledgeable, qualified, and competent people. Geithner, his tax issues aside, would do better for the economy in a coma. 

And then there’s Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who is apparently so unsuited for the job she was nominated for that she thinks veterans are a national security threat, and the 9/11 terrorists came into thins country via Canada.

Apparently Obama was determined to surround himself with the most incompetent bunch of fools. One Canadian publication questioned how Napolitano ever got the job. “She appears to be about as knowledgeable about border issues as a late-night radio call-in yahoo,” they wrote. Funny, I can say the same thing about Barack Obama with regards to national security, the economy, and pretty much all the issues of the day.

Actually, it is not funny at all. The Obama administration is full of yahoos who appear to have no idea what they are doing.