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Mark Steyn pokes fun at the government’s and the media’s assertions about American society and Islam.
…As for the idea that America has become fanatically “Islamophobic” since 9/11, au contraire: Were America even mildly “Islamophobic,” it would have curtailed Muslim immigration, or at least subjected immigrants from Pakistan, Yemen and a handful of other hotbeds to an additional level of screening. Instead, Muslim immigration to the West has accelerated in the past nine years, and, as the case of Faisal Shahzad demonstrates, being investigated by terrorism task forces is no obstacle to breezing through your U.S. citizenship application. An “Islamophobic” America might have pondered whether the more extreme elements of self-segregation were compatible with participation in a pluralist society: Instead, President Barack Obama makes fawning speeches boasting that he supports the rights of women to be “covered” – rather than the rights of the ever-lengthening numbers of European and North American Muslim women beaten, brutalized and murdered for not wanting to be covered. …
…And, whenever the marshmallow illusions are momentarily discombobulated, the entire political-media class rushes forward to tell us that the thwarted killer was a “lone wolf,” an “isolated extremist.” According to Mayor Bloomberg, a day or two before Shahzad’s arrest, the most likely culprit was “someone who doesn’t like the health care bill” (that would be me, if your SWAT team’s at a loose end this weekend). Even after Shahzad’s arrest, the Associated Press, CNN and The Washington Post attached huge significance to the problems the young jihadist had had keeping up his mortgage payments. Just as, after Maj. Hasan, the “experts” effortlessly redefined “post-traumatic stress disorder” to apply to a psychiatrist who’d never been anywhere near a war zone, so now the housing market is the root cause of terrorism: Subprime terrorism is a far greater threat to America than anything to do with certain words beginning with I- and ending in –slam.
Incidentally, one way of falling behind with your house payments is to take half a year off to go to Pakistan and train in a terrorist camp. Perhaps Congress could pass some sort of jihadist housing credit? …
Pickings first took note of Obama’s nastiness on February 3, 2010 when a Corner post noted the proposed budget eliminated a one million dollar scholarship program named in memory of Bart Stupak’s son. This was when Stupak was one of the holdouts on Obamacare. We have the summary from that day. Following that a number of our favorites note Obama’s talk about ”civility” and then contrasts that to his actual behavior.
February 3, 2010;
Robert Costa blogs in the Corner about one of the few budget cuts that the White House has proposed. It is in education, no less. It is not much, only one million dollars. But, what it does show is what a nasty piece of work Barack Obama is. The program to be cut is a scholarship program named after the deceased son of Rep. Bart Stupak (D., Mich). Rep Stupak did not toe the ObamaCare line.
With tax hikes dominating today’s budget debate, you will not hear much about the smaller federal grants that President Obama is hoping to slash. One proposed cut sticks out: Obama’s budget eliminates a $1 million scholarship program for aspiring Olympic athletes at Northern Michigan University. Here’s why it matters: In 1998, the program was renamed to honor B. J. Stupak, the late son of Rep. Bart Stupak (D., Mich.), who committed suicide in 2000. Is the cut related to Stupak’s playing hardball on health care last year?
Stupak won’t speculate on the politics of the decision, but he does tell National Review Online that he is “disappointed” to hear about the cut. He says he found out about it through the media, not the president or the Democratic leadership. He notes, however, “that in the 18 years I’ve been in Congress, never has a presidential staff called me to tell they are cutting something. Usually everyone around here scrambles after a budget is released.”
Stupak pledges to fight for the grant to be reinstated into the budget. “I’ll do my appropriations request and put in testimony. I want it to be funded on its own merit. President Bush did the same thing, and we always restored it. We need to do a better job explaining the program.” Stupak adds that with the Winter Olympics approaching, it is “time to remind Congress why it is important to provide educational assistance to aspiring young Olympic athletes. We’ll all be cheering our athletes next month, but we should remember that programs like this give a major boost to those training for the games. Shani Davis, the first black speed skater to make the U.S. Olympic team, credits the scholarship with keeping in him school. There are hundreds of stories like that. This program has become a small farm team for Olympic education.”
John Fund gives an example of incivility from the president.
…In his new book on President Obama’s first year in office, Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter reports on the president’s frustration with united GOP opposition to many of his programs. Mr. Alter quotes Mr. Obama as saying the unanimous House Republican vote against his stimulus bill “helped to create the tea-baggers and empowered that whole wing of the Republican Party to where it now controls the agenda for the Republicans.”
“Tea bagger,” the term used by Mr. Obama, is an extremely crude sexual term that has been used by many liberals as a derogatory description of Tea Party protestors. Anderson Cooper of CNN was compelled to apologize for using it on-air back in April 2009. “It shows contempt for middle America, expressed knowingly, contemptuously, on purpose, and with a smirk,” says Grover Norquist, head of Americans for Tax Reform. “It is indefensible to use this word. The president knows what it means, and his people know what it means.”
A decade or so ago, Democrats and many others were outraged when Indiana Rep. Dan Burton referred to President Clinton as a “scumbag” for his behavior in the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Perhaps President Obama would do well to more carefully follow his own calls for civility.
Karl Rove suggests that the president take his own advice.
…For example, last week Mr. Obama suggested that Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell was “cynical and deceptive” in arguing that the administration’s financial regulation bill would allow more bailouts “when he knows that it would do just the opposite.” Does implying the Senate GOP leader is a hypocrite and a liar make reaching compromise easier?
Mr. Obama even draws on the Bible for political attacks. In a teleconference with religious groups supporting health-care reform, he accused opponents of the legislation of “bearing false witness.” Or take last September when, in a health-care speech to Congress, the president—in a single paragraph—accused his critics of spreading “bogus claims” and “lies” and of being “cynical” and “irresponsible.” …
…If Mr. Obama wants his Ann Arbor words to be taken seriously, then he needs to rein in his party, his staff and himself. Presidential leadership matters as much as presidential words, perhaps more. Mr. Obama should back up his inspiring call to civility with action.
In the Washington Examiner, Noemie Emery writes Obama an open letter.
…You say insufficient regulation of banks caused the crash, but you ought to say also it was bad government policy, if well-intended, and that when the president asked for more government oversight, you were one of those voting against. If you want to be civil, you might try telling the truth, and the whole truth, not what makes you look better. Only a thought.
You say “listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship,” and we agree. But we wonder what you had in mind last year when you tried to attack, marginalize and possibly silence a number of commentators, along with the network Fox News. …
…Wasn’t it just weeks ago that you sneered at the rallies on Tax Day, and dared the people who want health care repealed to “Go for it!” to a howling, partisan crowd? …
The Streetwise Professor thinks we are seeing the president’s true temperament.
…FDR was a SOB in private, but a charmer in public. Obama is an SOB in public. And people are noticing.
But Obama doesn’t. Jennifer Rubin hits the nail square and true:
“Frankly, this gets back to a lack of self-awareness. This is a president who derides political opponents, fails to engage them on the merits, and has perfected the straw-man and ad hominem attacks. It was his White House that declared war on Fox News. So it is the height of hypocrisy for him to now tell the rest of us to up the tolerance and intellectual diversity quotient in our lives. It’s sort of like Tom Friedman telling us to consume less and reduce our carbon footprint.” [A Twofer! Slamming Obama and Tom Tool Time Friedman in the same paragraph. Way to go, Jennifer.] …
In Roll Call, Morton Kondracke thinks that Obama is merely a misguided ignorant liberal.
…But blasting business is not confined to insurance. Last weekend, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar twice said the administration intended to keep its “boot on the neck” of BP over the Gulf oil spill.
But then what do we make of Obama at the University of Michigan last week, saying that “vilification and over-the-top rhetoric closes the door to the possibility of compromise”?
My own hunch is that Obama, at heart, is not a socialist but a liberal without the slightest idea of how private enterprises create wealth — and deeply suspicious of their practitioners. …
Michael Barone continues his series on the DemocRats Leaving the Sinking Ship. This time it is David Obey.
The Associated Press is reporting that Congressman David Obey, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, will not run for reelection.
This is pretty shocking news.
Obey is one of the most senior members of the House; he was first elected in a special election in 1969 to replace Republican Mel Laird, who had been appointed Press (Defense) Secretary by Richard Nixon. Obey had served in the Wisconsin legislature before that. He is known for his angry temper, particularly at House colleagues or members of the public he considers ill-informed. I see him as something of a “happy warrior” in the tradition of Hubert Humphrey, a true believer in expanding government to serve the little guy, rough hewn perhaps but also a hard worker and a master of detail.
In the WSJ, William McGurn looks at some interesting First Amendment issues.
…Because Mr. Chen reported on the new iPhone for his website, Gizmodo.com, the seizure of his computers has renewed a heated debate about whether bloggers are real journalists. Traditionally, many in the mainstream press have disparaged bloggers, though in this case at least some press organizations—including the parent company that runs Mr. Chen’s blog—argue that he is a full-time journalist whose home is his newsroom. The irony is how few connect Mr. Chen’s First Amendment freedoms to those for corporations that were recently upheld in a landmark Supreme Court ruling. …
…The classic view of the First Amendment holds all Americans are entitled to its rights by virtue of citizenship. These days, alas, too many journalists and politicians assume that a free press should mean special privileges for a designated class. The further we travel in this direction, the more the government will end up deciding which Americans qualify and which do not. …
Peter Schiff says that the problems facing Greece and the US are more similar than we would like.
…Of course, the negative effects on the economy of run-a-way inflation and skyrocketing interest rates are worse than what otherwise might result from an honest restructuring or even out right default. It is just amazing how few economists understand this simple fact.
Just because we can inflate does not mean we can escape the consequences of our actions. One way or another the piper must be paid. Either benefits will be cut or the real value of those benefits will be reduced. In fact, it is precisely because we can inflate our problems away that they now loom so large. With no one forcing us to make the hard choices, we constantly take the easy way out.
When creditors ultimately decide to curtail loans to America, U.S. interest rates will finally spike, and we will be confronted with even more difficult choices than those now facing Greece. Given the short maturity of our national debt, a jump in short-term rates would either result in default or massive austerity. If we choose neither, and opt to print money instead, the run-a-way inflation that will ensue will produce an even greater austerity than the one our leaders lacked the courage to impose. Those who believe rates will never rise as long as the Fed remains accommodative, or that inflation will not flare up as long as unemployment remains high, are just as foolish as those who assured us that the mortgage market was sound because national real estate prices could never fall.
Illinois legislators vote against the kids and for the unions. Then they tried to hide the record. But the ChiTrib found them out. The New Editor has the story.
The Illinois House Wednesday voted down a measure to allow as many as 30,000 kids in Chicago’s worst public schools get tuition vouchers. …
…From a Chicago Tribune editorial:
“Twenty-two Democrats and 26 Republicans in the Illinois House voted Wednesday to let up to 30,000 children escape Chicago’s worst schools. But 44 Democrats and 22 Republicans voted against tuition vouchers for those kids. One opponent, Rep. Monique Davis, D-Chicago, said she was standing with teachers unions and principals. Sponsor Kevin Joyce, D-Chicago, told The Capitol Fax Blog: “It’s job protection for the union leadership.” He’s right. …”