More Reasons Not to Vote for Obama
Is he going to renegotiate NAFTA or not? As two articles from
American Thinker show, not even Obama knows for sure. They do show, however, that he is a foreign and economic policy dolt. For example, in the
first article by Thomas Lifson,
After suggesting that he would invade our ally Pakistan and talk to our enemy Iran, Barack Obama has moved on to potentially damage our relations with Canada, our friendly neighbor and number one foreign oil supplier.
Under the terms of NAFTA, Canada is prohibited from cutting off oil exports to the US if there is a worldwide shortage or supply disruption unless supplies are also rationed to Canadian consumers by the same amount.
After the Hillary/Obama debate, Canada's trade minister pointed out that if NAFTA is re-opened, Canada might want to opt out of this clause, which would then leave Canada free to sell its oil to any other country for whatever price it could get.
Both Clinton and Obama have made a big issue out President Bush's alleged insensitivies to other countries. And now these two geniuses are blithely talking about canceling a trade agreement with our two neighbors on which both their economies now depend.
But, as
Rick Moran reports, he may have only been kidding,
This is all the more incredible because it has now been confirmed.
At Tuesday night's debate, both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama traded charges that the other was not serious about reforming NAFTA - the North American Free Trade Agreement. Unions have been up in arms about the treaty for years because it rewards the mostly non union labor in Mexico while taking union jobs away from Americans - at least in theory. There have been no definitive studies showing NAFTA is a negative for the American worker.
Regardless, both candidates trashed the agreement and said they would reopen it to renegotiation. But Obama went a step further; according to Canadian TV he actually had one of his primary aides get in touch with the Canadian government and assure them that Obama was just demagoguing the issue and that he would not press for any major changes.
The Obama camp denied this story and called it a smear. Evidently CTV doesn't like being referred to as a liar because they have released the information that the Obama camp couldn't afford to have out there - the name of the Obama aide who spoke to the Canadian government:
Or maybe he's just too busy perfecting his planned invasion of
Pakistan to give much thought to NAFTA.
Equally as troubling, is Obama's relationship to his mentor, the anti-Semitic,
Pastor Jeremiah Wright, Jr, also covered at American Thinker.
Labels: American Thinker, Obama
Things That May or May Not be Happening Under the Radar
I began at
American Digest. I took the link to
House of Eratosthenes. This teaser was intriguing enough to plunge through the next link to
American Thinker.
NBC News reports that a large operation is ongoing at the Tora Bora fortress in the mountains along the Afghani-Paki border and we may have just missed Usama bin Laden. I must admit that this caught me off guard. The US media has not been talking about a fight there at all, much less a large scale battle with al Qaeda leadership. So I perused one of my favorite anti-terror blogs The Jawa Report. Jawa has a link to another blog called the Internet Anthropologist which has been tracking what is going on in Tora Bora.
The whole article is worth reading, as are some of the links to Internet Anthropologist.
In addition,
Smooth Stone reports,
Hizbullah is rehearsing for something big. A few days ago, between 4,000 and 5,000 Hizbullah gunmen deployed to the Christian areas of Beirut in an unsettling "show of force," positioning themselves at road intersections and other key points throughout the city. The operation served as a probing action to determine local reaction, and as an exercise to gauge the time required (speed, synchronization, etc.) to achieve control of key points. Amazingly, there was no response from the police or the army. Hizbullah is jamming cell-phone signals almost daily. Their lookouts are everywhere, and they are watching the people I'm with and me. Hizbullah is far better armed, equipped, and tactically proficient than most Americans might realize. They are terrorists to be sure, but they are also a very strong Iranian-trained guerrilla force and they seem to be getting a pass from far too many people in high places.
and Smooth Stone also reports from
Israel,
U.S. and Israeli defense officials are hammering out details of a potential $1.2 billion arms sale to the Israel Air Force, whose inventory of front-line missiles, munitions and other expendables was depleted in the summer 2006 Lebanon War. The series of U.S. administration-proposed Foreign Military Sales (FMS), presented to Congress in four packages, breezed through the customary 50-day legislative review process that ended in late September.
So big things may be about to happen and may be happening now. There is no doubt in my mind that the United States and Israel can destroy Al-Queda, Hezbollah, etc militarily. But what's the point when we're
allowing Islamic culture to trump our own superior (yes, that's right, it is superior) Judeo-Christian culture?
Labels: Afghanistan, American Digest, American Thinker, House of Eratosthenes, Israel, Smoothstone
Notes from the Islamic Ministry of Truth
The Detroit News, seems to have become home to any Muslim voice that wants to subvert the truth in order to further its agenda of destroying Israel and the West.
First off, we have the Detroit area's Islamic Minister of Truth, Imam Mohammed Ali Elahi,
weighing in on the currrent cartoon controversy. His column is in regular rotation with other local religious leaders. Among other typical pronouncements in his truth-free zone, he lets us know that
Muslims, who believe in the virgin birth of Jesus and the revelation to Moses, never ridicule other people's faith symbols and would appreciate the same respect in return. We wouldn't mind if the terrorists were ridiculed: Those who hijack the name of Islam and kidnap the innocents like Jill Carroll and sometimes behead them and even bomb peaceful religious observances -- but to dishonor a prophet is inexcusable.
and
It's so sad to see how Prophet Muhammad is misunderstood and poorly appreciated in the West. Mohammad's life was filled with concern for his fellow human beings. He was a sincere servant and messenger of God.
Muhammad never attempted to forcibly convert anybody to his faith. It was his wisdom, patience, forgiveness and the humility of his teachings that attracted people. The prophet was asked to curse his enemies who tortured his followers in brutal and barbaric ways. Instead, he asked God to forgive them and save them from ignorance.
and of course
The animosity between Europe and the Muslim world hurts both sides, but it gives power to those who don't like to see the Western world cooperating with Muslims, who ignore humanity's basic needs and who love to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to launch more wars under the banner of "Christian crusade" or "democracy."
Imam Elahi must not have read
this article at The American Thinker.
(1) Before Muhammad’s Hijrah, he used to sit in the assembly and invite the Meccans to Allah, citing the Quran and warning them of God’s punishment for mocking his prophets. A Meccan named Al-Nadr bin al-Harith would then follow him and speak about heroes and kings of Persia, saying, “By God, Muhammad cannot tell a better story than I, and his talk is only of old fables which he has copied as I have.” On other days al-Nadr would interrupt Muhammad until the prophet silenced him.
It was al-Nadir’s bad fortune to join Mecca’s army, riding north to protect their caravan, which Muhammad attacked at the Battle of Badr. The story-telling polytheist was captured, and on Muhammad’s return journey back to Medina, Ali, Muhammad’s cousin and son-in-law, at Muhammad’s order, beheaded him instead of getting some possible ransom money. He was one of two prisoners who were executed and not allowed to be ransomed by their clans—all because he wrote poems and told stories critiquing Muhammad.
[Source: Ibn Ishaq, The Life of Muhammad, trans. A. Guillaume, (Oxford UP, 1955, 2004), pp. 136 (Arabic pages 191-92); 163 / 236; 181 / 262; 308 / 458. Reputable historians today consider Ibn Ishaq to be a good source of early Islam, though they may disagree on his chronology and miraculous elements.]
That's only one. There are other examples of wonton cruelty of course, including the beheading of the male Jews of the Qurayzah tribe, whose families were then enslaved, except for th beautiful Jewess who was forced to become one of his wives.
The News also printed
this appalling piece of reality inversion in defense of Hamas by M. Kay Siblani, executive editor of Arab American News in Dearborn Michigan. She informs us that
T he political party in power in Israel is the direct descendant of a terrorist organization that bombed and killed Palestinians and Westerners alike while trying to establish a Jewish state on someone else's land.
and
For one thing, Hamas is not part of an effort to take someone else's land away. Its struggle is defensive, not offensive.
Neither does Hamas want to create a state wherein one religion reigns supreme. In Israel, Jews have automatic citizenship and other rights not afforded to people of other faiths. The double standard applied to Hamas -- and Arabs and Muslims -- is fueling support for more extremist groups.
It's OK to have a Jewish state, but not an Islamic one, even though the Jewish state is undemocratic, consistently violates international law, commits state-sponsored terrorism, has no constitution and no defined, internationally recognized borders.
The double standard is glaring on peace negotiations. The Palestinians are portrayed as an equal partner required to make all sorts of concessions before anyone will talk to them. But they have no land, no money, no arms and a compromised leadership.
and of course
If there's any doubt about who is the aggressor and who is the victim in this struggle, take a look at the statistics. Six times as many Palestinians have been killed by the Israelis as Israelis by the Palestinians. For children, the ratio is seven to one.
It's important to realize that standing against what Israel does -- or even whether it should exist -- is not anti-Semitic. Israel is a political aspiration of a particular group of people, some of whom are Jewish and some of whom are not. There are Jews who don't believe a state where Jews have rights above others should exist.
and the kicker
Those who know that the time has come for justice for Palestinians and believe that it will somehow detract from Israel's well-being have descended into name-calling and demonizing. People like this are irresponsible and should not have a public podium.
Short version: It's all the fault of Israel. Isn't everything?
Obviously Ms. Siblani hasn't paid much attention to recent history or read the
Hamas charter, you know, the one that quite explicitly calls for the destruction of Israel.
Attempting to be fair to the Detroit News, I have to point out that Siblani's "blame the Jews" rant and the following example of a Muslim "moderate's" undisguised anti-semitism was in response to
this column by Detroit News Editor, Nolan Finley. The headline is: "Palestinians failed democracy, not the other way around."
Democracy didn't fail when the Palestinians used their first truly free vote to install terrorist leaders. The Palestinians failed. Again.
Those who see the Hamas victory as evidence that democracy is not the answer for all people in all places ignore the unique nature of the Palestinians. They lack a key ingredient for sustaining freedom - self-interest.
The Palestinians' lust for Jewish blood is stronger than their desire to lead peaceful, secure lives, to rule an independent state, to lift themselves out of their misery.
That, given the opportunity, they would give their votes to terrorists should not be a shock. This is the same people who deified Yasser Arafat, the father of modern-day terrorism.
Terror defines Palestinians
Under Arafat, terrorism became an inseparable part of the Palestinian identity. He perfected the use of terror as a means of gaining a political wedge, proving that those willing to shed blood without relenting, without remorse and without regard to external pressure will be rewarded with a seat at the table.
Their suicide bombers should have made the Palestinians international pariahs. Instead, apologists depicted the violence as the natural response of a persecuted people. The excuses invited more terror, from more sources and in more places.
It's obvious why the usual cast of terror-supporters, "human rights activists", and Muslim spokesliars were upset.
This letter, "presenting another point of view", is reprinted in its entirety:
Following the revolting experience of reading Nolan Finley's extremely racist piece of garbage, several thoughts came to mind. First, I wondered how many Israeli shekels it took to purchase The News. The News has become an ambassador of hate by regurgitating the lies bigots have historically used to dehumanize and terrorize the Palestinian people.
It was none other than your employer, Ariel Sharon, and his Zionist predecessors who defined terrorism in the region and unleashed countless campaigns of brutality and unrelenting terror upon the innocent.
I'm sure the News sees itself as brave and selfless for printing this letter. They probably congratulate themselves on being even-handed and presenting both sides of a difficult issue. What they miss, or don't care to notice is the anti-semitic libel of "The Jewish control of the media." When discussing Israel, lies and anti-semitic slurs are not seen as the bigoted statements of hatred that have caused the deaths of millions over the past millenia. Now they are just another point of view. But they won't insult those delicate Muslim sensibilities by printing those "offensive" cartoons.
And that scares me.
Labels: American Thinker, anti-semitism, Arab American News, Detroit News, Hamas, Imam Elahi, Israel, M. Kay Siblani, Mohammed, Nolan Finley, Palestinians
CHALLAH AKBAR
