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Commentary Magazine - Contentions
Sanity Prevails
11.18.08 | Permalink | Comments Off

The netroots will love this:
Barack Obama’s incoming administration is unlikely to bring criminal charges against government workers who authorized or used harsh interrogation techniques during the George W. Bush presidency. Obama, who has criticized the use of torture, is being urged by some constitutional scholars and humans rights groups to investigate possible war crimes by [...]
Commentary Magazine - Contentions
Barack Delano Roosevelt?
11.18.08 | Permalink | Comments Off

Richard Cohen counsels Barack Obama to abandon Lincoln and embrace FDR. Forget about embracing your rivals, he says, and grab FDR’s “willingness to try almost anything.” But, then again, Cohen concedes that “The New Deal did not end the Depression. WWII did.” (Actually, the Depression got worse under FDR, before war preparation jump-started the economy.) [...]
Commentary Magazine - Contentions
Flotsam and Jetsam
11.18.08 | Permalink | Comments Off

A Mike Huckabee book, lashing out at conservative activists and his former opponents, appears aimed at those who have concluded the real problem in the GOP is not enough negativity and sniping. Providing more fodder for the MSM won’t exactly endear Huckabee to the base.
Many of Marty Peretz’ criticisms of Hillary Clinton seem equally applicable to [...]
Marginal Revolution
The Obama transition: science and the arts
11.18.08 | Permalink | Comments Off

President-elect Barack Obama continues to name members of his transition team. Among the latest announcements are that the National Science Foundation agency review will be led by Jim Kohlenberger — who was senior domestic policy adviser to Vice President Al…
LGF
In the Think Tank for Obama
11.17.08 | Permalink | Comments Off

The Wall Street Journal has a report on the think tank from which Barack Obama seems to be drawing his top advisers.

WASHINGTON — The Center for a New American Security, a small think tank here with generally middle-of-the-road policy views, is rapidly emerging as a top farm team for the incoming Obama administration. …

The think tank’s central role in the transition effort suggests that its positions — which include rejecting a fixed timeline for a withdrawal from Iraq — will get a warm reception within the new administration.

Michele Flournoy, who co-founded the center with Kurt Campbell, a former Clinton National Security Council and Pentagon official, now serves as its president. She is one of two top members of Mr. Obama’s defense transition team and is likely to be offered a high-ranking position at the Pentagon. Some Obama advisers say she could eventually be tapped as the nation’s first female defense secretary.

Wendy Sherman, co-head of the Obama State Department transition team, also serves on the center’s board of advisers and is expected to land a high-ranking post. Richard Danzig, a front-runner for defense secretary, is on the think tank’s board of directors. Susan Rice and James Steinberg, both of whom are on Mr. Obama’s short list for national security adviser, serve on its board of advisers.
LGF
Happy Ex-Terrorists Now Loquacious
11.16.08 | Permalink | Comments Off

Now that Barack Obama’s elected, William Ayers just won’t stop talking. In this clip from the far-left Democracy Now show, Bernardine Dohrn says Obama’s election represents “a rejection of the politics of fear.”

[Video]

(Hat tip: Allahpundit, via Breitbart.)
LGF
Obama Going Back to the Future of Middle East Peace
11.16.08 | Permalink | Comments Off

According to the Times of London, Barack Obama is going to back the Mideast peace plan originally proposed by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. This plan gives all the land Israel captured in the 1967 war to the Palestinians (whoever that’s supposed to be; Hamas or Fatah?), gives back the Golan Heights to Syria, and gives East Jerusalem to the Palestinians as their state capital: Barack Obama links Israel peace plan to 1967 borders deal.

Does Israel get anything out of this? Well, yes; they won’t have to accept the so-called “right of return,” otherwise known as the demographic destruction of Israel.

Barack Obama is to pursue an ambitious peace plan in the Middle East involving the recognition of Israel by the Arab world in exchange for its withdrawal to pre-1967 borders, according to sources close to America’s president-elect.

Obama intends to throw his support behind a 2002 Saudi peace initiative endorsed by the Arab League and backed by Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister and leader of the ruling Kadima party. The proposal gives Israel an effective veto on the return of Arab refugees expelled in 1948 while requiring it to restore the Golan Heights to Syria and allow the Palestinians to establish a state capital in east Jerusalem.

On a visit to the Middle East last July, the president-elect said privately it would be “crazy” for Israel to refuse a deal that could “give them peace with the Muslim world”, according to a senior Obama adviser.

Obama apparently has been convinced by his gaggle of mildly to extremely anti-Israel advisers that the best hope for change is to give a one-sided deal concocted by a rabidly anti-Israel, totalitarian religious monarchy another chance.

Putting aside the issue of whether any of the Arab players in this eternally-recycling “land for peace” shell game can be trusted to keep their side of any bargain, there’s always the possibility that the Palestinian side (whoever that is; Fatah? Hamas?) will manage to screw it up, either by making the “right of return” a deal-breaker or by committing some heinous act of mass murder.

UPDATE at 11/16/08 9:27:31 am:

It should be noted that one of the Times’ writers on this piece, Uzi Mahnaimi, has a rather checkered past: Uzi Mahnaimi and his lies about Israel.
LGF
Threats Against Obama Set Disturbing Records
11.15.08 | Permalink | Comments Off

With the extreme polarization of this last election, this comes as no surprise: Obama has more threats than other presidents-elect.

WASHINGTON – Threats against a new president historically spike right after an election, but from Maine to Idaho law enforcement officials are seeing more against Barack Obama than ever before. The Secret Service would not comment or provide the number of cases they are investigating. But since the Nov. 4 election, law enforcement officials have seen more potentially threatening writings, Internet postings and other activity directed at Obama than has been seen with any past president-elect, said officials aware of the situation who spoke on condition of anonymity because the issue of a president’s security is so sensitive.
Uncategorized
Zombie: Stop Thinking Like an American!
11.12.08 | Permalink | Comments Off

Did you think the election of Barack Obama would finally shut up the anti-war moonbats?

Silly you! Stop the World Can’t Wait — I want to get off.
Uncategorized
Did the Obama Campaign Hold Secret Talks with Hamas?
11.12.08 | Permalink | Comments Off

P. David Hornik has a piece at Pajamas Media on the reports in Arab media that the Obama campaign held secret talks with Hamas and asked them not to reveal it: Reported Obama-Hamas Contacts Bode Ill.

In an interview published Tuesday in the London-based Al-Hayat, Dr. Ahmad Yousef, political adviser to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, said senior Hamas figures had held a secret meeting with advisers to Barack Obama in Gaza before the U.S. elections.

Throughout his campaign Obama’s official line was that he would “only talk with Hamas if it renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel’s right to exist, and agrees to abide by past agreements.”

Yet Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal responded to Obama’s win on an optimistic note, telling Australia’s Sky News on Saturday that his organization was “ready for dialogue with President Obama and with the new American administration with an open mind.”

On Saturday night, though, Obama’s senior foreign policy coordinator Denis McDonough seemed to hold the fort, deflecting Mashaal’s amiability by reiterating Obama’s three-part formula for making Hamas acceptable.

For those who don’t want America to have dealings with an Islamist terror organization like Hamas, that may have sounded reassuring. But now it seems it may be too soon to feel reassured.

According to Yousef in the Al-Hayat interview, the Obama-Hamas talks were already ongoing during the U.S. election campaign: “We were in contact with a number of Obama’s aides through the Internet, and later met with some of them in Gaza, but they advised us not to reveal this information as it may influence the elections or become manipulated by McCain’s campaign.”

Given Obama’s associations with many anti-Israel extremists, we can’t dismiss this out of hand. But it might be wise to remember that terrorists have been known to lie occasionally.
Uncategorized
Kooks and Creeps Giving Advice
11.11.08 | Permalink | Comments Off

Lunatics and antisemites are coming out of the woodwork, and demanding that Barack Obama appoint an anti-war Secretary of Defense.

Arms control advocates and anti-war activists are ratcheting up pressure on President-elect Barack Obama to dump Defense Secretary Robert Gates and replace him with a more strident anti-war voice.

Nominating Gates to stay, “would be a violation of the mandate for change that Obama says he represents,” said Medea Benjamin, cofounder of the anti-war group CodePink.

A better bipartisan fit for Obama, they say, is Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who brings out what they like about Gates – his ability to deal with Russia, Iran and Syria – without the direct link to Bush’s policies.

“That would be an unmistakable sign from the Obama camp that they really are nonpartisan,” said Justin Raimondo, editorial director of Antiwar.com. “He would be great.”
Uncategorized
Kooks and Creeps Demand an Anti-War Defense Secretary
11.11.08 | Permalink | Comments Off

Lunatics and antisemites are coming out of the woodwork, and demanding that Barack Obama appoint an anti-war Secretary of Defense.

Arms control advocates and anti-war activists are ratcheting up pressure on President-elect Barack Obama to dump Defense Secretary Robert Gates and replace him with a more strident anti-war voice.

Nominating Gates to stay, “would be a violation of the mandate for change that Obama says he represents,” said Medea Benjamin, cofounder of the anti-war group CodePink.

A better bipartisan fit for Obama, they say, is Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who brings out what they like about Gates – his ability to deal with Russia, Iran and Syria – without the direct link to Bush’s policies.

“That would be an unmistakable sign from the Obama camp that they really are nonpartisan,” said Justin Raimondo, editorial director of Antiwar.com. “He would be great.”