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Friday, September 25, 2009
Oppose Iran's Agression and President Obama's Appeasement By Supporting The Center for Security Policy
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 4:55 PM
The announcement today by President Obama, Prime Minister Brown and President Sarkozy marks a decisive moment for the West --but also another enormous failure of will by the three leaders.  Iran gets two months to do what?  Test a bomb?  Does anyone really believe that a nation that has systematically lied for decades about their nuclear ambitions will suddenly change course, come clean, and dismantle all of their installations?

And why didn't the presidents and the prime ministers use the podium of the U.N. to declare before the world that the outlaw nation that threatens the entire world's stability needed to be brought to heel?  Why indulge Ahmadinejad and his pal Chavez when the evidence was surely already in the possession of the president and our most important allies?  Why force Prime Minister Netanyahu to do the heavy lifting before the world?

The sad answer is that President Obama leads a coalition of new appeasers, a group that cannot summon enough collective will to do more than warn the most dangerous government on the planet that sanctions will be forthcoming if it doesn't stop doing that which it has refused to stop doing for a decade.

The only response for a rational citizen who wants very much for the U.S. to adopt the policies of strength that may yet deter Iran and to support our ally Israel in what looks increasingly like an inevitable air campaign against iran is to support voices and thinkers in America who have been right about the nature of the iranian regime for a long time and who have been urging decisive action for a long time, and that surely includes The Center for Security Policy.

You can donate to the Center online, and you can hear its founder and president, Frank Gaffney, at the the start of today's program.  Dig deep to help the voices of clarity which the Center supports stay in the center of the debate in the crucial months ahead.

UPDATEA joint, bipartisan statement from Sentors Bayh, Kyl and Lieberman.




Friday, September 25, 2009
The Amaze.fm Song of the Week: "Western Latitudes" by Titan Courageous
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 4:44 PM
An excellent tune in the top place at Amaze.fm this week.

If you are the band, the singer or the songwriter, post your work at Amaze.fm and once a week the "pick of the week" gets played across the USA on my show.




Friday, September 25, 2009
Barack Obama's Fingers-In-Ears Afghanistan Policy
Posted by: Duane R. Patterson at 2:16 PM

According to this report, taken from a Roll Call subscription story, House Armed Services Committee ranking member Buck McKeon alleges that Barack Obama has ordered Centcom commander, General David Petraeus, and Afghanistan commander, General Stanley McChrystal, to "scrub" their assessment for more troops, because the President "wasn't inclined to send troops over there."

Well, that certainly gives new meaning to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Here are the key parts of the Roll Call story by Jenifer Bendery and John Stanton.

House Armed Services ranking member Howard McKeon (R-Calif.) said Wednesday that Gates told him on a July trip to Afghanistan that Obama "wasn't inclined to send troops over there."

McKeon said Gates also told him that, in light of Gen. David Petraeus and McChrystal being asked to submit assessments to the president on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, respectively, Obama had "given instructions" to them to "scrub everything, to make sure they didn't ask for more than they needed."

That conversation prompted McKeon to ask McChrystal if the directive sent "a chilling message" that the U.S. and NATO commander should ask for less troops than he needed. "He said, ‘No, I'm honor-bound to ask for what I need,'" McKeon said."

Barack Obama has troops in harm's way, fighting the only war he campaigned for a year and a half as saying was the "Good War", and now that he's seeing wavering support in polling and his Democratic anti-war base, he wants to pretend the problem doesn't exist. He is ordering his generals not to inform him, and worse yet, don't even make the request public.

He's Vietnamizing Afghanistan. Take all the fecklessness of Jimmy Carter, the smarminess of Bill Clinton, and now sprinkle in the commander-in-chief ineffectiveness of LBJ, and you have a composite of Barack Obama.






Thursday, September 24, 2009
Netanyahu's Leadership and Clarity About Iran
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 10:01 PM
An e-mailer today remarked that listening to my replay of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's rebuke of the U.N. today was like listening to Churchill.  Of course most of us cannot actually know what it was like to listen to Churchill in wartime, and the world is not as yet in as desperate a situation as it faced on May 9, 1940 as the Blitzkrieg sliced through France and Neville Chamberlain's government fell.

But Netanyahu must feel at least a little as Churchill did when the greatest Englishman assumed the leadership of a Great Britain with its back to the wall.  Churchill later recorded his state of mind on being given the power to lead the West even as Hitler's strength was cresting and England faced its greatest peril:

Thus at the outset of this mighty battle, I acquired the chief power in the State....As I went to bed about 3 A.M., I was conscious of a profound sense of relief.  At last I had the authority to give directions over the whole scene.  I felt as if I were walking with Destiny, and that all my past life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.  Eleven years in the political wilderness had freed me from ordinary party antagonisms.  My warnings over the past six years had been so numerous, so detailed, and were now so terribly vindicated, that no one could gainsay me.  I could not be reproached either for making the war or with want of preparation for it...Therefore, although impatient for the morning, I slept soundly and had no need for cheering dreams. Facts are better than dreams.


Netanyahu used facts about the Holocaust today to chide the world about its indulgence of a Holocaust-denying fanatic with nuclear ambitions and naked intent to bring about genocide.  What a relief it must be to Netanyahu to be in charge as the decisive moment approaches with Iran.  He and most of Israel must be aware that our new president is a shadow of the old president when it comes to using American strength to deter or defeat radical Isamist evil, especially that flowing from its font in Tehran.  He and most of Israel must realize they are alone when it comes to dealing with Iran, and even worse than alone if appeasers like Zbigniew Brzezinski have influence with President Obama.

But it is our very good luck or Providence's provision that the West --which includes Israel-- has at least one leader willing to speak clearly and act decisively. 

Iran's own people may yet spare the whole world a confrontation with the radicals running the government and the revolutionary Guard, but if their massive courage cannot dislodge the fanatics and if the appeasement-oriented Obama Administration cannot rouse itself to any serious action, then the world will have to rely on Netanyahu and the IDF to stop a regime run by the worst sort of haters.

MyPJTV.com broadcast on the Netanyahu speech is hereTranscripts of conversations with Mark Steyn and Walter Russell Mead on President Obama's absurd rhetoric will be posted here later.  And in the third hour of Friday's program I will interview Norman Podhoretz about his new book, Why Are Jews Liberal, which is especially timely after President Obama's blast at strongest, most democratic ally in the Middle East.

But all the various interviews and all the relevant op-eds and books are just codas to the Netanyahu speech today.  President Bush's speeches after 9/11 to the Joint Session of Congress and in the 2002 State of the Union as well as his challenge to the U.N. about Iraq's dismissal of international law and U.N. direction were powerful because they were direct and specific.  Netanyahu provided the same sort of clarity today, and it ought to have helped the world recognize the peril of the times and the actions necessary to avoid catastrophe. 

Perhaps it even made an impression on our president and his advisors.  If not, then perhaps the fact that Hugo Chavez was complimentary of President Obama's Wednesday address will do the trick.  What a damning thing, to earn the praise of an irrational thug. 




Thursday, September 24, 2009
"Like Listening To Churchill"
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 7:53 PM
That's what one e-mailer wrote in response to my playing of Prime Minister Netanyahu's speech to the U.N. today.

Michael Goldfarb has the speech here.

Duane has posted a side-by-side of President Obama and the Israeli Prime Minister at theHughniverse's Duane's World Blog, where your comments are most welcome.




Thursday, September 24, 2009
A Response To Sam Tanenhuas
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 7:15 PM
The best response yet to Sam Tanenhaus' new book, "The Death of Conservatism," has arrived from one of my high tech captialist wizard friends.  It is long but deserves a close read and a wide audience:

Greetings,

I found your interview last week with Sam Tanenhaus fascinating. Especially fascinating to me were Mr. Tanenhaus' observations about the current state of the Conservative Movement. So, I thought I'd reply to them.

The American Left has been claiming, almost since the day Ronald Reagan left office that "American Conservatism was out of intellectual steam. There were no fresh or vital new ideas that would power Conservatism into the future."

Well, setting aside the fact, that as far as I can tell the Last New Idea the Left had was "maybe, just maybe, we went a little overboard during the French Revolution", I would like to reply to Mr. Tanenhaus and others who are saying the Conservatism is a Dead Letter.
Read More...








Thursday, September 24, 2009
"Mr. Obama made a classic mistake of politicians on a downward-bending arc. He jumps out in front of the cameras without having something fresh to offer."
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 10:01 AM
Karl Rove deconstructs the plummeting appeal of President Obama, and the inability of face time on TV to turn it around.   Conclusion:

Mr. Obama doesn't need more TV time. He needs a new health-care plan that comes from actual bipartisan negotiation and compromise—one that most Americans see as something that will actually improve their health care. He needs his facts to align with reality.







Thursday, September 24, 2009
The Murder of Bill Sparkman, and Its Aftermath
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 9:49 AM
When I reported on the brutal murder of a census worker in Kentucky on yesterday's show, I knew then it would lead not just to an urgent hunt for his killer(s), but also the sort of crazy talk that now regularly attends any crime of violence that provides the nutters at both extreme ends of the political spectrum an excuse to engage in their rants.

Read the comments at the Washington Post column on the murder.  The very first comment is typical of what will flow out of the far left today:

First shot fired in the Huckabee civil war incited by Limbaugh hate radio, Mormon Elder Beck and RNC Fox News. These get-rich-by-scaring-and-angering-the-weak-minded sneering shock jocks have the blood of this man on their hands.

Posted by: coloradodog | September 24, 2009 7:05 AM



There is no concern for Mr. Sparkman here, and zero facts on which to make the blood libel.  I am surprised the Post allows such ravings, but they do illustrate the derangement that runs through the virtual world.  Last week Speaker Pelosi used a very similar argument absent the case-specific venom instead of speaking into her own following as conservatives routinely do about the necessity of reasoned argument --sharp, pointed, and sustained-- not the need to silence the opposition.










Thursday, September 24, 2009
Is President Obama Leading Congressional Democrats Over A Political Cliff
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 9:07 AM
Yesterday's U.N. speech was an appalling exercise in appeasement and the most critical speech of Israel ever delivered by a sitting United States president to an international body.  Rich Lowry noted correctly that  "President Obama yesterday did his best impression of a high-school soph omore participating in his first Model UN meeting, retailing pious clich?s he learned from his pony-tailed social studies teacher."  It will long be remembered as perhaps the worst display of American weakness on the U.N. stage.
 
As that fiasco unfolded, Senate Democrats were struggling to disguise the all-out assault on seniors and the middle class that Obamacare has become.  The president's popularity has been falling again, and Democrats in Congress got stunning news on the generic ballot question.

Which all adds up to the conclusion in Michael Barone's Washington Examiner column this morning --the Democrats are asking America to kick them back into the minority.  Michael doesn't call that result "likely" at this point, just a growing possibility.  As the hard left character of the president's foreign and domestic policy initiatives unfolds and as the scandals continue to pile up --NEA and ACORN are just the early entries on that ledger-- the Obama Administration is looking more and more like a weaker, farther left version of the Carter years.

October will bring new reporting results from various campaign funds which will also tell us a lot.

Has Danny Tarkanian raised enough in small contributions to turn heads in his race against Harry Reid in Nevada.  (You can send "Ten for Tark" via this link.)

Has my friend Tom Lucero added a bunch of small donors to his effort to unseat Democrat Betsy Markey in Colorado's 4rth, and you can join them via this link.  Markey infamously warned seniors they'd just have to get used to Medicare cuts, but when I was in Colorado it seemed to me that seniors were getting used to the idea of dumping Betsy Markey and replacing her with Tom Lucero instead.

And, crucially, how are the National Republican Congressional Committee and the National Republican Senatorial Committee doing in their effort to raise the funds necessary to press the Obama Machine across the country?  You can conribute to the NRCC.org here and the NRSC.org here.

If you have $40 to invest in the future of politics in the country, I suggest you send $10 or more to each of those four campaigns today so that the dollars count in the month-end reporting.

If the president abandons his deeply unpopular attempt to "remake" American medicine and if he reverses course and begins to pu pressure on Iran and not on Israel, he could quickly limit the damage these past nine months have done to his "hope and change" halo.

But if doubles down, we have reason to hope that the change will be in the Speaker's chair in early 2011.




Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Meg Whitman: No New Taxes, and Water for the Central Valley
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 6:51 PM
Meg Whitman, the woman who would be governor of the Golden State, was my guest today.  She confirmed that she has signed the Americans for Tax Reform "no new taxes" pledge, and that she is adamantly opposed to the reduction or cut-off of water deliveries to the Central Valley because of the delta smelt.

The transcript will be posted here later, and the podcast will be here.




Wednesday, September 23, 2009
"Obama's U.N. Speech, Dissected"
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 6:38 PM
Pete Wehner slices and dices the president's deeply disturbing speech to the U.N.

The worst of many awful parts of the speech is that the president engages in Israel-bashing before a group that includes many of the worst sort of thugs and dictators.  President Obama missed the opportunity to remind the world that Israel has an absolute right to exist, and that no serious negotiation can begin until that right is recognized by all the powers in the Palestinian territories.  The president's slam on the legitimacy of Israeli settlements is a red herring, and everyone knows it.  The obstacle to peace is Hamas and every other extremist who wants Israel destroyed, not construction within previously established lines of construction.

The second worst part of the speech was the studied refusal bluntly to name Iran as an oppressor of its own people and an exporter of terror and breaker of international rules.  Part of the essence of appeasement is the refusal by free states to speak bluntly about their fascist counterparts.  The president's meaningless rhetoric about "certain truths which are self-evident" must be a very bitter pill for the dissidents of iran in prison, and their families and friends, who were looking for a statement of solidarity, not an invitation for the fanatics to continue their repression under the guise of each country pursuing "a path rooted in the culture of its people and its past traditions." 

What an embarrassment, but also how predictable given the president's long standing hostility to Israel and his reflexive desire to not offend our enemies.






Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Ma'am Votes To Keep California Farmers From Working
Posted by: Jude  at 4:57 PM
In another ESA spawned travesty, Dan Blatt has the story of Barbara Boxer and the Democrats choosing fish over people again, this time blocking a stop-gap, temporary compromise measure aimed at helping farmers - and their crops - survive the man-caused drought she supports.

There are 36 million people in the state of California.
We are represented by only two citizens in the United States Senate...
and one of those is Barbara Boxer.  

Come on, people.





Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Cribbing From National Review
Posted by: Jude  at 4:36 PM
Bolton reacts to Obama's what he calls "a post-American speech by our first post-American President" at the U.N. 
Victor Davis Hanson says we can understand Obama as a University president.  "The tragic burden of an academic is to help the oppressed, but blind, majority."  That would be us.  Another great read from the classics professor I wish I had met back in school.
And while I'm linking to NRO, has Rob Long stopped channeling Larry King, and if so, what can we do to revive that?  They were the best!  Here's Larry King interviewing Judas Iscariot




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