At least that's the interesting idea Dr. Richard Landes at The Augean Stables came up with.
Instead of merely focusing on freezing construction in Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria, how about concentrating on getting the Palestinians out of those squalid refugee camps and building settlements for them in the Fatah occupied areas of the West bank?
I’d like to propose something that can test Palestinian intentions in concrete terms that will not only reassure Israelis profoundly, but benefit the Palestinian refugees. To my mind, the greatest sign that the Palestinian Authority had no intention of pursuing Oslo as a way to achieve peace, but as a Trojan Horse, is the fact that, once they had control of significant tracts of land in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, they never made the slightest move to get Palestinian refugees out of the camps and into real housing. The scandal of how the Arab and Palestinian leadership have treated their refugees is the most revealing story in the long and allegedly complex conflict between the Arabs and the Israelis.
I suggest that President Obama demand, publicly, and in the same strong terms with which he addresses the Israelis, that the PA begin immediately building settlements for Palestinian refugees on the lands available to them in the West Bank, so that they can begin living decent lives. This would be an enormous boon to the Palestinian economy, it would mobilize the significant talents the Palestinians have in the building industry, and would signal to the Israelis that the “right of return” — i.e., the demand that Israel commit demographic suicide — is not lurking in the background of the “Arab Peace Plan.”
For reasons I've pointed out before, that's never going to happen especially not with this president. But it's an intruiging idea nevertheless, and I'd love to see how the Fatah mafia would justify not comply.
Actually, they probably would agree to it. And than steal the funding provided for it, just like they've stolen all the rest.
Your thoughts?
UPDATE:Soccer Dad, one of the ever vigilant members of Joshua's Army points out to me that the Israelis actually tried to build homes for refugees and get them out of the camps. And they got a whole UN Resolution condemning Israel for doing it.
Charles Krauthammer also devoted a column to the UN's efforts to keep the Palestinians safely locked up in the camps...not that anyone's going to mention that.
PoliticalMath crunched the numbers on Obama's claim that the stimulus 'saved 150,000 jobs using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
I love the 'saving jobs' bit. leave it to Obama's team to come up with a 'statistic' that can't be verified and makes a nifty media soundbite. But the real numbers tell a different story.
Back in February, Obama claimed that if his stimulus bill wasn't passed,(you know, the one nobody in Congress was given a chance to read) we'd lose 13,492,000 jobs and have an unemployment rate of 8.7%. According to the Prevaricator-in-chief said back in February, the stimulus was supposed to save over a million jobs with a loss of only 12,251,000 jobs and a 7.9% unemployment rate.
The real numbers? The latest figures on unemployment puts the total at 14,511,000 jobs lost with the stimulus, and an unemployment rate of 9.4%.And that's likely conservative.
To put it another way as Politicalmath points out in graphic form above, the US actually lost over a million more jobs more with the stimulus than if we had done nothing!
What the president is doing is ignoring the fact that his predictions in the past were horribly inaccurate and simply moving ahead with new predictions. The big difference is that his new predictions can’t be judged against any set of objective reality. He is pitting the actual universe in which the stimulus bill passed against the imaginary universe in which it did not pass. Not surprisingly, the imaginary universe is worse that the real universe and the result is that the President is a hero for saving us from that imaginary universe.
Their predictions were not just kinda wrong. They were horrifically, disastrously wrong. If President Obama is going to use statistics and charts to push nearly $800 billion in spending, I think we should be able to expect his numbers to at least kinda match the reality that comes out of his policies.
At the very least, I’d like to know how his team got those numbers. More importantly, I’d like to know how they have changed their method of prediction.
I think the answer is that the so-called stimulus was never intended to save jobs or fix the economy, but to plunder the nation's wealth for the benefit of his political allies and to bring the American people to a point of desperation so that they will continue to give up more and more of their liberty in exchange for increasingly more meagre government handouts. Thanks to having what amounts to almost a government controlled media, he's gotten away with it so far.
Barack Obama is talking about another stimulus as I write this to pay for his bogus health care scam, and talking about taxing company provided health benefits as income, a European style Value Added national sales tax, a general Federal tax increase or a combination of all three to pay for it all.
We haven't even begun to see the worst of this yet.
British PM Gordon Brown is so unpopular that his ministers are jumping off Labour's sinking ship so rapidly it's hard to keep track. Almost everyone concedes that if an election were held today, the Conservatives would win easily and Labour might actually fall to being Britain's third party. The British National Party, well to the right of center did extremely well in Britain's local elections...much better than anyone dreamed.
The parties of Germany's Angela Merkel and France's Sarkozy cleaned up at the polls , and in the Netherlands Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party ended up as the second strongest party in the country behind the ruling Christian Democrats.
After decades of socialist rule, what's behind Europe's right turn?
Aside from simple frustration with the existing order and its encouragement of multiculturalism and unlimited immigration from the Muslim world, the reason can be summed up in one word: Obama.
For years, Europeans had the privilege of living in a bubble. Those primitive, childish Americans spent billions of dollars to protect Europe from the Soviets, allowing Europe the luxury of not having to spend money to provide for its own defense. And the booming American free enterprise economy and favorable trade agreements allowed Europe to build its own economy by selling exports to America, and to fund an outrageous socialist welfare state built on the ponzi scheme of high taxation and the expectation that this pleasant status quo would continue.
Then along came Barack Hussein Obama.
Europeans might have originally loved the idea of someone like Obama to replace that despised cowboy George W. Bush, because just like American voters, they simply didn't know much about Obama. But after six months, they've seen him working hard on wrecking the American economy, tripling our deficit and doubling down with massive spending . Even worse, he wanted the Europeans to embrace the same madness, calling for the EU to initiate 'stimulus packages' with borrowed money, just like the US. They turned him down flat, and a collective shudder ran through Europe when they realized how badly Obama was managing the US economy and what that meant for Europe's prosperity.
Obama's economic policies have shown the Europeans the ugly side of the end result of the socialist nirvana their politicians on the left have been bamboozling them with for decades, and the realization has set in that without the US economy as the driving engine, it's a recipe for ruin.
Obama then increased that angst by sharply cutting America's defense budget, reneging on planned missile defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic provided for in treaties signed by the Bush Administration, promising a 'reset' with an increasingly aggressive Russia, and talking openly about cutbacks in American forces stationed in Europe.
He then sent things into overdrive with his non-policy on Iran's nuclear weapons ( at precisely the time when Europe was gearing itself up to get a little tougher with the mullahs) , by publicly calling for Turkey's admission into the EU and by his Islamist and pro-sharia rhetoric in places like Cairo.
What Obama's antics have done, along with the financial crisis, is to bring Europeans back to reality as they understand that Obama's America is not going to be there to bail them out of trouble. And that the US is likely to have a huge task just repairing the damage occurring on Obama's watch after he's gone.
It's a strange paradox that the man so many Europeans hailed as a fresh beginning when he got elected has turned into exactly that...in a way many of them never anticipated. And it's equally odd that th eman who campaigned on improving relations with our European allies has ended up doing exactly the opposite.
Rush Limbaugh did an amazing interview on Sean Hannity last night that's a must see, and I'll try to post the rest later.But this nugget popped out and I think it merits some clarification, especially in view of the recent Lap Dance of the Seven Veils in Cairo.
I think Limbaugh's entirely correct. Obama does indeed have something against Israel and possibly against Jews as well, and I think it stems from his background and history.
Barack Hussein Obama was the product of a marriage between a third world Muslim diplomat and an anthropologist whom her friends described as fairly left wing. She had likely swallowed the line common in those circles at that time about the evils of American society, western colonialism and imperialism, of which Israel was considered an outpost.
He then spent his formative years as a Muslim, something he was caught lying about during his campaign until the evidence came to light. And it's uncertain exactly how long he remained a Muslim, if a sporadic one. As he recently revealed to Jake Tapper, he took a trip to Pakistan during his college days when there was a travel advisory in effect and very few people traveled to the country unless they had official government business or were Muslims.
The Muslim connection is important, because of the wide spread Jew hatred throughout the Qu'ran and Hadiths, the account of the life, times and deeds of Islam's prophet Mohammed. It's not impossible for a practitioner of Islam to avoid the virus, but anyone who looks at the Muslim world today knows that it's quite common to catch it.
During the period in college when, by his own admission Barry Soetoro was changing himself into Barack Hussein Obama, his hero and role model was the arch anti-semite Malcolm X. It's largely forgotten today, but while Malcolm X eventually eased up on his hatred for the White Devils provided they embraced Islam after he returned from making the hadj to Mecca, he remained a Jew hater until he died.
We also know that Barack Obama had extensive and documented links with Israel basher, terrorism apologist and academic fraud Edward Said when he was at Columbia, as well as major connections with the Saudis and the Nation of Islam through Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal and his advisor, Khalid al-Mansour AKA Don Warden, a well known American Islamist with ties to both the Black Panther Party and the Nation of Islam.
Al-Waleed, some of you might remember, is one of the prime movers behind the Wahabi takeover of America's mosques and madrassahs through his funding of the Islamic Society Of North America(ISNA), was a major funder of the Al Qaeda charity al-Haramain and was the Saudi prince who's $10 million dollar donation to New York City after 9/11 was spurned by then mayor Rudy Giuliani after after the prince made a public comment suggesting that the U.S. relationship with Israel were responsible for the attack.
He also has donated millions to establishing Saudi controlled Middle East Studies departments - including at Harvard, Obama's alma mater, where he ponied up a mere $20million.
After college, Obama helped organize and attended Louis Farrakhan's foul anti-Semitic orgy in Washington DC, the Million Man March.
And as we all know, as part of establishing himself in Chicago Barack Hussein Obama spent two decades sitting in Trinity United Church with the anti-semitic Jeremiah Wright ( an ex-member of the Nation of Islam and a close friend of Louis Farrakhan's) as his pastor and spiritual mentor.
In the world view of the major figures Barack Hussein Obama chose to associate himself with and many of his foreign policy cabinet appointments, Israel is a white colonialist state oppressing 'people of color' and stealing land that rightfully belongs to Muslims. Israel itself is an illegitimate state that was created and imposed by Europeans on the Muslim world out of guilt over the Holocaust - which of course, the peaceful Arab world had nothing whatsoever to do with. So it's time to force the Israelis into a political settlement to the Arab's liking, for peace and justice.
That's the mindset exactly. So is it any wonder during his speech in Cairo that Obama equated the Palestinian nakba with the Holocaust and compared the Israelis with slavemasters in the old South and the apartheid of South Africa?
Barack Obama does indeed have something against Israel, and it stems from his deepest beliefs. And now that he's in the White House, it's obvious he's prepared to act on it.
For your enjoyment Governor Sarah Palin's speech at the Vanderburgh County Right to Life banquet in Evansville, Indiana. It starts a little slow, but do yourself a favor and stay with it.
Now that she has a little bit of experience on the front lines, she's even better than she was during the campaign...polished, personal, positive, able to poke fun at the horrendous treatment she received at the hands of the media and above all, able to connect with this audience in a startlingly intimate way.As my wife remarked, she comes across like someone who's been to the supermarket before trying to figure oput if her budget would stretch to buy a little something extra for dinner.
Although in her case, she's probably just go out and shoot it herself if she wanted it that bad...
We are witnessing the making of a master communicator and political figure in the making. As peopl get to know her and realize that she's nothing like the cartoon character the media portrayed, she's going to present a strong alternative to people fed up with Obamanomics. She could be tough to beat if she decides to go for the White House in 2012.
The US backed anti-Syria March 14th movement led by Lebanese billionaire Saad Hariri (pictured above) won 71 seats for a majority in the 128 seat Lebanese parliamentary elections yesterday over Hezbollah. They will attempt to form a government based on that 7 seat majority.
This being Lebanon, the election could basically be said to be a victory of Sunni Muslim, Druse, and Christian factions over the Shiite Muslim factions of Hezbollah and Amal. Hezbollah's main Christian ally, Syrian tool Michel Aoun failed to tear crucial votes away from Christian allies of Hariri like the right-wing Phalangists.
Hariri is the son of ex-Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, who was assassinated in a car-bomb attack in 2005. According to the UN tribunal established to investigate, top level Syrian officials with close ties to Syrian dictator Basher Assad pulled the trigger, aided by Hezbollah.
While this has been trumpeted as a triumph for democracy,it's important to remember that this is Lebanon.
While Hezbollah says that it will respect the results of the election, Sheik Nasrallah said they plan to retain their arms as 'the prime army of the resistance.'
Hezbollah and its allies won enough seats so that a coalition government will have to be negotiated, and they still have Hezbollah ally Michel Suleiman in the presidency.
You might also recall what happened to March 14th's parliamentary majority the last time, as it was whittled down to a mere two seats by the simple expedient of killing off its members of parliament. Rest assured this kind of electoral politics Hezbollah-style is very much in the minds of the members of the new majority in parliament.
US Secretary of State Hillary confirmed something that's become all too obvious. While the Obama Administration is insisting that the current Israeli government keep its prior committments,even committments the Israeli cabinet never signed on to, it has no intention whatsoever of honoring its own to Israel.
When Israel first accepted the US Roadmap during the Bush Administration in 2003, Ariel Sharon and the Israeli Knesset accepted it conditionally, appending it with a letter to President Bush that outlined 14 additional reservations and conditions.
President Bush later acknowledged those reservations by promising in a letter written to Sharon on April 14th, 2004 that the US would recognize existing demographic realities and understood that Israel would retain the large blocs of Jewish communities near Jerusalem and in the Jordan Valley as part of any final settlement.This was supposed to be a quid pro quo to Sharon in exchange for pushing the Jews of Gaza out of their homes.
Even more telling, President Bush assured Sharon that the US would only support the Road Map and no other plan, since it was in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, not the Saudi 'peace' ultimatum Obama is so thrilled about. The US also guaranteed Sharon that they would see to it that Gaza did not become a security risk for Israel.
Clinton, of course, is just passing on a message from her new boss.She has no power at State and has been reduced to being a messenger girl.
Based on this blatant dishonesty, the Israelis would be justified in pulling out of the Roadmap entirely, but they're apparently keeping their powder dry for now.
However, this should put them on notice that any agreements they make with Obama are subject to hope n' change without notice.And not worth a damn.
As you might remember, I had a theory on Carlos Bledsoe AKA Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the man shot and killed one US soldier an dseverely wounded another in a drive by in Little Rock.
I was certain that it would read something like this: ...criminal record, converted to Islam in prison by a wahabi Imam, and associated with a radical mosque since his release.
We found out he was a Muslim convert shortly afterwards.
As for the radical mosque associations, Blue Collar Republican in Memphis, Muhammed's home town, has some great background:
Bledsoe was born and raised in Memphis, Tennessee which raises the issue of when and where he was introduced to radical Islam. On June 2, 2009, I attempted to follow-up on what little was known of Bledsoe and visited his family’s business, home and the mosque he was rumored to have visited locally. Unfortunately, his family had gone into hiding and after a meeting with his local Imam on June 3, 2009, I was able to learn very little in the way of background. This led me to doing additional research to see if I could learn more about the Masjid As-Salam mosque, its Imam, Maleck Sarr and any connections between the mosque’s members and Jihad. I believe I have found another example of an American Muslim connected with the Masjid As-Salam mosque and radical Islam in addition to the Little Rock terrorist suspect.
One side note: BCR makes reference to the Sufi sect of Islam, which I'm familiar with, and in my experience their entire orientation is towards moderation, mysticism and peace.
I would guess that either the Imam is not a Sufi, or someone else inside the mosque is coopting it. Sufis are not normally associated with violent jihad.
Today is the 65th anniversary of the Normandy Invasion, which began the process of freeing Europe from Fascism. Given the times we live in, it has particular relevance today, as the members of the WWII generation fade into the sunset.
My uncle was one of the brave men who landed on Omaha beach that day. He never spoke about it much. I can only imagine what it was like to see the gates on that LST drop and have to run through the choppy waves to the beach, straight into the face of enemy fire every inch of the way.
About a dozen or so years ago, a few days after another June 6th, I ran into a grizzled but still erect old man and his friend at the bar of a local country club, where I was waiting for a lunch companion to show up. We got to chatting, the way people do in bars, and I found out from his friend that he had been one of the army rangers who performed a feat that seems superhuman to me every time I think of it..scaling the sheer cliffs of the Pointe Du Hoc, under intense enemy fire and taking out the artillery, machine guns and pill boxes at the top of the cliffs. These incredibly brave men performed this task..at a cost of a casualty rate of about 60%.
Fortunately, my lunch date was late, so I had time to hear a first hand account from him of what that had been like. I've never forgotten it...or the matter-of-fact way in which he related it.
In 1984, President Reagan traveled to Point Du Hoc, which is now a military cemetery dedicated to those who fell at Normandy. He spoke to a group of veterans and others who had traveled to be there on the 40th anniversary of the battle, and he had a few things to say to them:
".... This place, Pointe du Hoc, in itself was moving and majestic. I stood there on that windswept point with the ocean behind me. Before me were the boys who forty years before had fought their way up from the ocean. Some rested under the white crosses and Stars of David that stretched out across the landscape. Others sat right in front of me. They looked like elderly businessmen, yet these were the kids who climbed the cliffs.
We're here to mark that day in history when the Allied armies joined in battle to reclaim this continent to liberty. For four long years, much of Europe had been under a terrible shadow. Free nations had fallen, Jews cried out in the camps, millions cried out for liberation. Europe was enslaved and the world prayed for its rescue. Here, in Normandy, the rescue began. Here, the Allies stood and fought against tyranny, in a giant undertaking unparalleled in human history.
We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but forty years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of cannon. At dawn, on the morning of the 6th of June, 1944, two hundred and twenty-five Rangers jumped off the British landing craft and ran to the bottom of these cliffs.
Their mission was one of the most difficult and daring of the invasion: to climb these sheer and desolate cliffs and take out the enemy guns. The Allies had been told that some of the mightiest of these guns were here, and they would be trained on the beaches to stop the Allied advance.
The Rangers looked up and saw the enemy soldiers at the edge of the cliffs, shooting down at them with machine guns and throwing grenades. And the American Rangers began to climb. They shot rope ladders over the face of these cliffs and began to pull themselves up. When one Ranger fell, another would take his place. When one rope was cut, a Ranger would grab another and begin his climb again. They climbed, shot back, and held their footing. Soon, one by one, the Rangers pulled themselves over the top, and in seizing the firm land at the top of these cliffs, they began to seize back the continent of Europe. Two hundred and twenty-five came here. After two days of fighting, only ninety could still bear arms.
And behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there. These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. And these are the heroes who helped end a war. Gentlemen, I look at you and I think of the words of Stephen Spender's poem. You are men who in your "lives fought for life and left the vivid air signed with your honor." {...}
Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet you risked everything here. Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief. It was loyalty and love.
The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead, or on the next. It was the deep knowledge -- and pray God we have not lost it -- that there is a profound moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt.
You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of your countries were behind you.
The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought -- or felt in their hearts, though they couldn't know in fact, that in Georgia they were filling the churches at 4:00 am. In Kansas they were kneeling on their porches and praying. And in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.
Something else helped the men of D-day; their rock-hard belief that Providence would have a great hand in the events that would unfold here; that God was an ally in this great cause. And so, the night before the invasion, when Colonel Wolverton asked his parachute troops to kneel with him in prayer, he told them: "Do not bow your heads, but look up so you can see God and ask His blessing in what we're about to do." Also, that night, General Matthew Ridgway on his cot, listening in the darkness for the promise God made to Joshua: "I will not fail thee nor forsake thee."
These are the things that impelled them; these are the things that shaped the unity of the Allies. {...}
We in America have learned bitter lessons from two world wars. It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We've learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent. {...}
We will pray forever that someday that changing will come. But for now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that protects it.
We're bound today by what bound us 40 years ago, the same loyalties, traditions, and beliefs. We're bound by reality. The strength of America's allies is vital to the United States, and the American security guarantee is essential to the continued freedom of Europe's democracies. We were with you then; we're with you now. Your hopes are our hopes, and your destiny is our destiny.
Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for. Let our actions say to them the words for which Matthew Ridgway listened: "I will not fail thee nor forsake thee."
Strengthened by their courage and heartened by their value [valor] and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.
Thank you very much, and God bless you all."
To me, it was one of President Reagan's finest speeches, and his words are as true today as they were in 1984.
We have another president now, one who speaks the language of appeasement and nuance, who pointedly refuses to confront evil when it approaches. Not only has he divided the country by attacking America's core values, but he has deliberately done exactly the opposite he promised to do during his campaign, alienating our allies in Europe and elsewhere and emboldening our enemies. In spite of the soothing rheoric pulsing through his stereo teleprompters, he is a man who's values are ultimately opposed to the heroism and values symbolized by the Pont Du Hoc, an accident of history that may cost America dearly.
There is this, however. When I look at the faces of the men in our military today, I see the same qualities I noticed in the faces in the photographs from 60 years ago, the faces of the men who saved us from Hitler. I see the same determination, the same courage and faith, and the same loyalty and love.
It is living proof etched in their faces that, deep down at the core, we are the same country we were then.
If you look at our country's history, you see that we have never failed to find leadership in the darkest of times, or to prevail. We have done so in the past and we will do so again in the future.
And knowing that, I am more convinced than ever that the West will indeed stand, and freedom will triumph, just as it did 65 years ago.
One thing about Obama's speech in Cairo that sort of slipped through the cracks was his reference to zakat, Islamic charity:
For instance, in the United States, rules on charitable giving have made it harder for Muslims to fulfill their religious obligation. That is why I am committed to working with American Muslims to ensure that they can fulfill zakat.
That leads to some interesting questions.
Zakat, as I understand it, is charity given to a mosque to be used for the poor as a general fund the way the mosque sees fit. What possible rules is Obama talking about that stop it from being a tax deduction?
Is he just making things up? oR MAYBE IT'S the the section of 18USC that makes it a crime to give money to known terrorist organizations?
All jokes aside, what Islam's American Defender of the Faith may be talking about are the IRS rules that say that contributions to foreign governments, foreign charities, and certain private foundations are not deductible.
Considering how many Islamic 'charities' have been shut down for raising funds for terrorism like the Holy Land Foundation, this could be exactly what he had in mind. Perhaps he's going to change the rules so that American Muslims can now simply write a check to Hamas directly, instead of having to go through intermediaries like the Holy Land Foundation.
But that of course,leads to another question. What in hell is the president of the United States doing concerning himself with the religious duties of a minority? And is it just Muslims who are going to get special rules passed for their benefit?
I guarantee you not one reporter is going to ask Elmer-Gantry-With -A -Tan this question.
President Obama gave his long anticipated speech today in Cairo. The video is above, should you feel the need to watch almost an hour's worth of the president's head swiveling back and forth to catch his stereo teleprompters like a man at a tennis match while he delivers some of the most embarrassing and inane nonsense imaginable.
If this doesn't appeal to you,I've already subjected myself to it so you don't have to. Here's the gist of it.
Obama is so used to abasing himself in front of Muslims that by now it's second nature. The President endorses the typical view of Left wing academia that all of Islam's problems have to do with Western colonialism, and maybe a handful of extremists.
President Obama was more than willing to massage his audience by rhapsodizing on the glories of Islamic civilization. Aside from giving it credit for a number of innovations that Islam either absorbed by conquest or that it simply didn't originate, Obama embraced the myth of Islam's tolerance for other religions and what he termed its `centuries of co-existence and cooperation' with the West. In his remarks, President Obama may have claimed that he was a student of history, but I'm beginning to see why his college transcripts and papers are locked away where no one can see them.
He apparently never learned about the ethnic cleansing of the Arabian Peninsula of all other religions, the jihad and genocide against India, the massive Arab control of the slave trade, Islam's bloody record in Europe or the Ommayad caliphs who codified and enforced the sharia laws regulating non-Muslims to dhimmi status, an existence that made the old Jim Crow South look positively benign.Many of those laws persist to this day in Muslim countries.
Nor did he address except obliquely the 'tolerance' with which Muslims treat non-Muslims in Pakistan, Nigeria, Aceh, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and just about everywhere else where they're a significant percentage of the population.
In case anyone had any doubts, Obama let his audience know that he sees Islam as a major and integral part of American culture, and that he considers "it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear."
Somehow, I don't recall him mentioning that in his oath of office, but I'm sure CAIR, the Organization of Islamic Conference and the Muslim Brotherhood just loved it.
To Barack Hussein Obama, traditional American values and Muslim values are one and the same:
I have come here to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world; one based upon mutual interest and mutual respect; and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive, and need not be in competition. Instead, they overlap, and share common principles - principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.
I don't know what planet President Obama lives on, but it's apparently a different one than most of us inhabit. Sharia law and most of what's in the Qu'ran are simply incompatible with our Constitution, but not in ObamaWorld. Credit where credit is due, however - the President did mention equality for women in his remarks,although how he squares a culture where honor killings, female genital mutilation and wife beatings have a religious basis with his fantasy view of an Islam of peace and tolerance compatible with American society is beyond me.
And curiously, for all his blather about equality, his reference to a woman's right to wear the hijab in America made no mention of what can happen in Muslim society to a woman who views it as a mark of subjection and decides not to go along with it. Is the president of the United States tacitly endorsing for America what happens in certain Muslim controlled areas of Europe, where even non-Muslim women wear the hijab in order not to set themselves up for being harassed and raped?
It's also interesting that Obama chose to accept CAIR's vastly inflated figures on Muslims in America of 'almost seven million' rather than almost any other reputable survey. This is worth noting considering his previous remarks about America being one of the world's largest Muslim countries after telling another Muslim audience in Turkey that America was not a Christian nation.
After thoroughly fellating his audience on how wonderful he thought Islamic civilization and culture was and how he was going to be Islam's Defender of the Faith in America, our president moved on to what he referred to as issues between Islam and America.
He apologized for Gitmo and our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, providing another gratuitous slap at his predecessor. Nothing new there, and he let his audience know that we were on our way out as soon as possible.He again sounded the mantra of a peaceful, tolerant Islam spoiled by a mere handful of extremists:
Make no mistake: we do not want to keep our troops in Afghanistan. We seek no military bases there. It is agonizing for America to lose our young men and women. It is costly and politically difficult to continue this conflict. We would gladly bring every single one of our troops home if we could be confident that there were not violent extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly can. But that is not yet the case.{...}
The Holy Koran teaches that whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind; and whoever saves a person, it is as if he has saved all mankind. The enduring faith of over a billion people is so much bigger than the narrow hatred of a few. Islam is not part of the problem in combating violent extremism - it is an important part of promoting peace.
What Obama chooses to ignore here is the simple truth that al-Qaeda, the Taliban, Pakistan's Deobandis, the Mullahs of Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Wahhabi's in Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood may have a few differences in doctrine and methods of operation, but they are a mainstream in Islam rather than just a few 'extremists.' They all endorse Islamist triumphalism and conduct jihad against the West in their own ways, and they all have a solid basis in Islamic religious doctrine. Ironically, the very verse Obama quoted, 5:32 is follwed in the Qu'ran with a violent exhortation to jihad in 5:33:
"The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land, is: execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from opposite sides, or exile from the land: That is their disgrace in this world, and a heavy punishment is theirs in the hereafter."
I wonder...does that constitute torture?
The Prevaricator-in-Chief then moved on to the two issues the Islamic world was really waiting for, the Arab-Israeli conflict and Iran's nuclear power.
Obama made the usual noises about America's bond with Israel and the suffering and persecution of the Jewish people throughout the centuries, and then gratuitously insulted that suffering by equating it with the suffering of the Palestinians, thus adding the weight of his endorsement to the lies told by people like Yasir Arafat and his ilk for years and endorsing the modern anti-Semitic meme that modern Israel consists of Nazis colonizing Arab Land. Obama actually referred to 'Palestine' in his speech, called for an end to Jewish settlements and implied that Jerusalem, Israel's capital, would be divided with the Palestinians. He explicitly compared the Palestinians to blacks in the Jim Crow South and the Israelis to apartheid South Africa, another common epithet thrown by Arabs and the Left at the only state in the Middle East where Jews and Arabs have equal rights under the law and actually live together in relative equality. And he did it without a trace of shame.
He also opened the way for the legitimization of Hamas,provided they agreed to put an end to violence, recognize past agreements, and recognize Israel's right to exist. This is exactly how the PLO was legitimized in the past, and how well that worked out for Israel is a matter of record.
Obama also uttered some boilerplate kumbayah rhetoric about phasing out violence and terrorism and how the Arab world should begin to normalize its ties with Israel,but the clear emphasis was on Israeli concessions and Arab rights.Throughout the speech he made specific and unreasonable demands of Israel while addressing only vague platitudes towards the Arab world.
Several sources in Israel reported that the content of this speech was not discussed with Israel's leadership beforehand, which is normally how allies operate with each other. From what I've been able to gather from my sources, the Israelis are under no illusions about what that meant, or what the speech represents, given as it was in one of the few Arab countries that has diplomatic relations with Israel.
On Iran, the president endorsed an extremely dangerous course, saying once again that in his view, Iran is fully entitled to nuclear power, provided Iran complies with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty it signed. Anyone who's been listening to what Iran's leaders have been saying for months knows that once again, our president is living in fantasy land.
What Obama is actually telling the mullahs is that they are perfectly free to develop nuclear weapons without US interference and that America is prepared to live with a nuclear armed Iran.The consequences are going to be enormous if this is allowed to continue.
The president ended with the facile, glib remarks on women's equality I mentioned above, some more kumbayah rhetoric on democracy and a laundry list on how the US is going to fund social programs in the Islamic world.
There's a great deal more I could mention, but what we basically had here was abasement, flattery and jirzya ( monetary tribute) from the Infidel the Arabs haven't seen since the grand old days of the 8th century. I certainly hope Obama's hosts provided towel service afterwards.
I never saw it personally, but I had been told as a child that it was once common for small travelling carnivals to feature 'geek shows', where men bit the heads off of chickens and otherwise abased themselves in front of audiences for a few coins, applause and maybe a bottle of Night Train.
When I watched President Obama's speech, it occurred to me that maybe I was getting a chance to witness that spectacle after all.
The Watcher's Council is a group of some of the most incisive blogs in the`sphere. Every week, the members nominate two posts each, one of their own and one from outside the group for consideration by the whole Council.
Joshuapundit - Race Carding Sotomayor - Is the prospective SCOTUS Justice a racist? If she is, does it matter? And given that she's likely to be confirmed anyway, why is this a rare opportunity for conservatives to take advantage of?
Rhymes With Right - Sonia Sotomayor: Free Speech Douchebag - Greg unearths an interesting decision that may highlight how the prospective justice views the first amendment.
Right Truth - Know The Enemy and Destroy Him - Proof that great minds think alike, Debbie has a take on the Tiller murder similar to my own, focusing on how the media and the Federal government treated this as compared with a jihad murder of a US soldier here on American soil the same day...well done, Deb!
Soccer Dad - Where hugo’s huge - Soccer Dad clues us in - it's not just in Latin America.
Wolf Howling - A Bit Of Honesty From Speaker Pelosi - Be still my beating heart! GW caught Granny Botox in a moment of honesty on climate change and cap and trade....
Barack Hussein Obama is already gearing up for his apologia to the Muslim world tomorrow in Cairo, and he decided to let us know in advance what to expect.
In an interview with France's Canal Plus that was just released on Tuesday evening, he said, "Now, the flip side is I think that the United States and the West generally, we have to educate ourselves more effectively on Islam.
And one of the points I want to make is, is that if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we'd be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world. And so there's got to be a better dialogue and a better understanding between the two peoples."
Just a little while ago, Obama was telling the world in front of his friends in the Islamist government of Turkey that the US wasn't a Christian nation.
After this, it's pretty obvious what kind of nation he perceives us to be, even if it reveals the Prevaricator-in-chief as severely math challenged.
The numbers for American Muslims vary wildly, because Islamist pressure groups groups like CAIR and ISNA have a vested interest in bumping the numbers, because the US census doesn't account for religion and because some surveys count the Nation of Islam as Muslims and some don't. But the non-partisan Pew Trust in its 2008 Pew Center survey estimates that there are only about 1.8 million Muslims in America, around .6%, most reliable estimates put it at around 2 million and I'd be surprised if the actual total was anything over 3 million even counting the Nation of Islam...less than 1%. Compare that with the Pew Survey's figures on self-identified Christians at 78.4% of the US population, around 245 million.
Obviously, as Melanie Phillips says, this isn't so much a statement of fact by the president so much as an aspiration and a goal.
It was taboo during the campaign, but as he gets more secure and sure of himself, President Obama is less and less afraid of letting his inner Muslim blossom, as ABC's Jake Tapper reveals:
The other day we heard a comment from a White House aide that never would have been uttered during the primaries or general election campaign.
During a conference call in preparation for President Obama's trip to Cairo, Egypt, where he will address the Muslim world, deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Denis McDonough said "the President himself experienced Islam on three continents before he was able to -- or before he's been able to visit, really, the heart of the Islamic world -- you know, growing up in Indonesia, having a Muslim father -- obviously Muslim Americans (are) a key part of Illinois and Chicago."
The Muslim Brotherhood, also known as the Ikhwan is the parent group of the Iranian proxy Hamas in Gaza, and like Hamas, they are Islamist and endorse the killing of all Jews not just in Israel but worldwide. They're a radical element not only in Egypt but in Jordan, and I'm sure President Mubarak, not to mention the Israelis are just delighted that Obama is de facto endorsing them as legitimate players.
Obama is also apparently anxious to chum up with one of Iran's other proxies in the Arab world, Hezbollah
What's left of Lebanon's democracy is scheduled for apparent termination on June 7th, when an `election' is being held that will likely toss what's left of the March 14th anti-Syria movement out of office. As you can imagine, the actual election is a sham with the Syrians, their collaborators in government and Hezbollah using the usual tactics to make sure the vote comes out right.
Since there's absolutely no difference between the technology used to produce peaceful energy and the technology used to produce nuclear weapons except how it's applied , Barack Hussein Obama just officially signed on to the concept of a nuclear armed Iran.
This is an amazing display of appeasement that would put even Neville Chamberlain to shame, and it proves that everything Obama ever said about trying to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons was an out and out lie. Obama's Cairo speech ought to be interesting, and I can only hope people are beginning to pay attention to this charlatan as time goes on.
A U.S. Court of Appeals panel voted today to upheld Chicago's gun laws in a ruling today against an NRA court challenge.
Chicago's law is one of the strictest in the country, banning handguns, concealed weapons and automatic and semi-automatic weapons in the hands of private citizens.
The unanimous three-judge panel ruled today that a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year, which recognized an individual right to bear arms under the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, didn’t apply to states and municipalities.
“The Supreme Court has rebuffed requests to apply the second amendment to the states,” U.S. Circuit Judge Frank Easterbrook wrote, upholding lower court decisions last year to throw out suits against Chicago and its suburb of Oak Park, Illinois.
The Fairfax, Virginia-based NRA sued the municipalities in June 2008, one day after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller struck down a hand-gun ban in the U.S. capital district encompassing Washington.
“We clearly disagree with the court’s conclusion,” NRA attorney William N. Howard, a partner in Chicago’s Freeborn & Peters LLP, said in a telephone interview. “The next step will be an appeal to the Supreme Court.”
In Heller, the high court struck down Washington’s 32-year- old gun law, which barred most residents of the city from owning handguns and required that all legal firearms be kept unloaded and either disassembled or under trigger lock. Six residents had challenged the law, saying they wanted firearms available in their homes for self-defense.
“Heller dealt with a law enacted under the authority of the national government,” Easterbrook wrote, “while Chicago and Oak Park are subordinate bodies of a state.”
This seems to be specious legal reasoning to me. The Constitution specifically states that any matters not covered by it were to be left to the states. That obviously does not include the Second Amendment. If the Constitution is indeed the law of the land, it would seem to me that it would supersede state and municipal laws. Based on the judge's way of thinking, Los Angeles or Detroit could legalize slavery or coin their own money without running afoul of the feds.
It took some time,but the Obama Administration and the Angry Left finally have their Rightwing nutcase poster boy to flesh out that ridiculous Department of Homeland security report by Janet Napolitano.
He's Scott Roeder, who murdered famed abortionist Dr. George Tiller over the weekend. Judging by the responses from the Obama Administration and their lackeys in the dinosaur media, you'd think that Roeder was Osama bin-Laden personified and that Dr. Tiller was Albert Schweitzer.
Attorney General Holder immediately announced that he was sending federal marshalls to protect abortion clinics throughout the country, as though Roeder was part of an ongoing , organized jihad instead of an isolated nut case. Much has been made of Roeder's connection's to the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue. After all, he posted on their message board...and he actually had the publicly available office phone number of Cheryl Sullenger, the senior policy adviser for Operation Rescue who was *! gasp!* convicted of conspiring to bomb an abortion clinic over twenty years ago.
I guess conspiring to bomb something is less acceptable than actually doing it if you have a wealthy family to get you off and are a good pal of the current occupant of the White House.
I use that word jihad advisedly, by the way. On the same day the story about Tiller being murdered broke, there was another story about a home grown jihadi, a convert to Islam being arrested after firing on a recruiting station, killing one soldier and seriously wounding another. The White House has yet to issue a statement on that one, and I don't see US marshalls fanning out to protect the nation's recruiting centers.
Can you imagine how that one would play out in Berkeley?
As for the media, they're ignoring the recruiting center sniper story for the most part, just as they've always mostly ignored numerous other violence and attempted terrorism by home grown jihadis.
But Dr. George Tiller? To hear the press talk, the late Dr. Tiller was a saintly, heroic character rather than an unapologetic, brutal man who bragged about specializing in late term abortions. He made millions penetrating healthy, near full term babies' heads with a surgical knife, vacuuming their brains out, collapsing their skulls and pulling them out of the womb.
And while the dinosaur media would never infer that shooting a couple of soldiers, sniping at infidels in DC or plotting to attack Fort Dix, Brooklyn synagogues or a Jewish community center has anything to do with radical Islam here at home, Scott Roeder is, of course, a direct symbol of all the right wing crazies out there that need to be suppressed.
Am I excusing what Scott Roeder did? Nah. It was murder, plain and simple, and he deserves to swing for it if he's found guilty.
But I can't help noticing the discrepancy here. By his own admission, the late Dr. Tiller was responsible for killing almost 30,000 babies. And while that carnage wasn't illegal , the idea that the perpetrator was somehow a heroic and decent man makes my flesh crawl.
Funny thing...whenever violent jihad rears its head in our society, we're constantly assured by the very same sort of folks who are lionizing George Tiller today that while the terrorism is to be condemned, we have to look at the underlying causes. After all, these people have grievances, and you have to understand their rage.
But you could say exactly the same thing back at them about Scott Roeder.
As for me,I'm not a fan of murder - no matter who commits it.
To listen to Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, and a huge chunk of the conservative punditry, you would have to assume that Barack Obama's first Supreme Court nominee fits that description.The chief evidence that Judge Sotomayor might have some interesting ideas in this regard are a speech she made at Berkeley in 2002 in which stated that a wise Latina woman would come up with better decisions than a white male and her presumptuous ruling on Ricci vs DeStefano, an egregious reverse discrimination case now before the Supreme Court where her decision will likely be reversed.
It’s worth noting that Judge Sotomayor's remarks at Berkeley were not an offhand comment or a response to a question but part of a prepared speech, and thus something she obviously thought about beforehand. It's also worth noting that it is the Obama Administration that has defended the judge's remarks as 'poorly phrased' and attempted to spin them, not Judge Sotomayor herself.
One can only imagine how long a white male Supreme Court nominee would last if he had a statement on the record that as a white male, he had better judgment and reasoning than some idiot Latina female 'because she hasn't lived that life.'
What Judge Sotomayor is doing merely mirrors her background. She's a creature of academia, like our president.
In the academic world, identity politics, quotas and groupthink in the name of diversity are acceptable as mainstream thought to the point where this kind of thinking is hardly even questioned anymore, and Judge Sotomayor is likely bewildered at what all the fuss is about.
There’s absolutely no question these ideas will color her judgments, with her ruling on Ricci Vs. DeStefano being a good example.
Does her acceptance of identity politics and group grievance make her a racist? Probably, even if an unconscious one. But it's pointless to attack her on the grounds that she is actually is one . Assaults based on attacking this sort of covert racism are sheer emotion and ultimately a failure. We have no means to monitor what’s in someone’s heart nor is it likely to play in the media if presented from the right side of the spectrum. That’s the sort of assault the Left is better able to get away with, and we saw examples of it in the confirmation hearings of Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Robert Bork.
Instead, it makes much more sense to actually explore her judicial philosophy with the right questions. How does she view the Second Amendment? How about First Amendment freedoms, or precedence of international law over US courts? What is her inherent view of the judicial branch of government and its role? Can she explain her statements about the inherent differences between groups, and what advantages her superior wisdom as a Latina grant her over a white male judge, and how that affects her judicial philosophy? What role does she feel that 'empathy' has in judicial proceedings, in view of the fact that the oath Sotomayor will swear if she becomes a Supreme Court justice says: "I do solemnly swear that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich . . . . So help me God”?
Barring a major scandal, Sonia Sotomayor is going to be confirmed. But it is vital that her ideology be exposed, so that if the Democrats vote to confirm her, the nation at large understands that the Democrats and the Obama Administration now own that ideology and are endorsing it.
Buy the ticket, take the ride.
This is a rare moment for conservatives to publicly take the warped mirror of identity politics and judicial activism and hold it up plainly for the American people to see in all its inherent ugliness. Let them decide for themselves if that bigoted view really feels right for our beloved Republic.
We have here an opportunity that shouldn’t be squandered. As I seem to recall somebody saying, you never want to waste a good crisis.
(This fell through the cracks over at American Thinker, but I'd like to thank Larrey Anderson for his considerable help with it. He improved whatever merits it has immensely.)
General Motors, an American Institution went bust today,filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this morning.
As with Chrysler, the UAW made out like a bandit while the bondholders, including a number of retirees, took a total hosing.The entire bankruptcy and the GM restructuring plan are the product of a secretive, unaccountable Obama Administration task force.
The government now owns 60% of GM in exchange for an additional $30 billion in addition to the $20 billion GM was already given, essentially to keep the UAW afloat. The Canadian government kicked in for an additional 12.5% while the UAW will walk away with 17.5%. The remaining 10% will be owned by existing bondholders.
This is not going to be painless. Just closing of hundreds of GM and Chrysler dealerships (run by GOP donors, no doubt) is expected to cost more than 100,000 jobs.
The biggest hosing, of course, will be taken by the American tax payer and consumer. We'll be footing the bill in more ways than one.
We will see small, boxy little go-karts produced out of GM and Chrysler, stuff Americans would never normally buy but will be forced to..because there's no going to be any choice. That's what Obama's 39 MPG CAFE standards are all about.They'll do it not by making existing cars more fuel efficient but by simply eliminating SUVs and larger, more comfortable vehicles. With $5.00 per gallon gas thanks to cap and trade, no one's going to be able to afford to run a decent size vehicle anyway except the wealthy elites.
Obama will run GM based on politics, and that means the UAW and the various environmentalist groups.
GM will never be profitable again, simply because no executive is going to risk taking on the Unions and risking his job.
Once GM runs through this additional $30 billion ( and believe me, they will)they'll simply come to the taxpayers for more. And Obama and the Democrats in Congress will give it to them, because it's about votes and power, not economic recovery.
Don't like it? Sorry, folks. Those Obama Tickets you bought in November are good until at least 2010..and maybe even longer.
Police in Arkansas say a military recruiter has been killed in a shooting at an Army-Navy recruiting office in Little Rock and a second recruiter has been wounded.
Little Rock police Lt. Terry Hastings said one recruiter was fatally wounded when a man inside a black SUV fired shots at the office in West Little Rock at about 10:30 a.m.
The SUV was stopped on a highway a short time later and a suspect was taken into custody.
The name of the arrestee has now been released. He's Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad — a 24-year-old Little Rock resident formerly known as Carlos Bledsoe who was charged with degree murder and 15 counts of engaging in a terrorist act. The terrorist charges were added because th eshots were fired at an occupied building.
Not much else is known, but I bet I can tell you this man's story...criminal record, converted to Islam in prison by a wahabi Imam, and associated with a radical mosque since his release.
The enemy is definitely inside the gates.It is astonishing how many times this scenario gets repeated without any attempt to end the cycle.
UPDATE: Well, whaddya know..the first part of my guess is proven correct. Now, let's wait and see if he converted in prison.
Funny, this murder isn't getting anything near the play in the dinosaur media that the murder of the abortionist Dr. Tiller is.
You'd think the press had an agenda or something...
So says Prince Turki al-Faisal, former ambassador to Washington and a key member of the Saudi royal family:
"You can't get rid of oil. You can't get rid of fossil fuels — gas and coal — unless you want to price yourself out of existence," Prince Turki al-Faisal, former ambassador to Washington, told editors and reporters at The Washington Times.
"I'd hope that the general public in the United States would be wiser than to be deceived into thinking that the U.S. can ever be energy independent," he said.
"The U.S. has rising energy needs despite the economic downturn," Prince Turki said. "If you are going to be paying for wind, electric and solar energy equivalents that cost five or 10 times more than it costs to use oil, you are going to price yourself out of the market. You are going to lose whatever competitiveness you have in your products."
"Politicians, when they do that,{promise energy independence} I think they are misleading their publics," he said.
During his election campaign last year, President Obama said, "I will set a clear goal as president. In 10 years, we will finally end our dependence on oil in the Middle East."
In one sense what Prince Turki is saying is the simple truth - abandoning fossil fuels, especially combined with Obama's cap and trade nonsense is a road to bankruptcy.
But it's also worth remembering that the US is the Saudi Arabia of coal, with an estimated 400-600 years worth of supply.and that we can gasify coal at about fifty bucks a barrel or less. It's a proven technology that's been around since WWII (Hitler used it to keep his war machine running) and has been vastly improved since. And that doesn't include our resources of shale oil or America's own oil sources, which we're barely utilizing at the moment.
There's also nuclear power, something the Europeans and the Japanese embraced after the Arabs turned off the spigot in the 1970's.
And we could also try building a few refineries, which is where the real bottleneck in gasoline occurs.
Add all this to ramping up our domestic production and some basic conservation measures and and the US could achieve energy independence in a remarkably short space of time..certainly within one four-year presidential term. That would buy us the time we need and then some to develop the new energy technologies for the future. Not to mention a slew of high paid US jobs, a boost for our economy, more oil to sell to other countries and strategic leverage in certain areas where we need it.
Of course, if we did that two things would happen. First, government figures would no longer have the same access to what I like to call the Arab Oil Producers Government Pension Augmentation Plan, where Presidential libraries, honorariums, consulting fees,retainers, investments in certain financial instruments and foundations get paid for by certain cash flush oil producing nations.
Second, government would take a major tax hit,because higher gas prices mean higher tax revenues. In my native state that means the county, the state and the feds garner about 80 cents plus per gallon in taxes - the higher the price, the more they make. On power, it's a whopping ten percent of the bill locally.
In case you wondered, that's why the US isn't energy self-sufficient yet.
