Carl M. Cannon Writes about President Reagan and the Challenger

Carl M. Cannon wrote the following article in Politics Daily,portraying the instincts displayed by President Reagan at a time of sudden disaster.   He was from another era……an era to which I still belong yet an era so far out of touch with the America of our day..  President Reagan, himself, was not a man of his time…..he was older and had an ‘older’ more realistic experience of American life, of human life, in contrast to the masses of spoiled young druggies  in the streets of America pissing, screwing, bombing, shouting, rioting, burning during those garbage years of the American Cultural Revolution  of 4 decades ago.

I can’t think of a politician today who possesses such American instincts as President Reagan.  Mr. Obama perhaps would like to but a frog cannnot be made a swan.

Mr. Cannon writes:    “On Jan. 28, 1986, Ronald Reagan was scheduled to give his State of the Union address. In a meeting with a bi-partisan delegation of congressional leaders, he and House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr. tangled over the issue of unemployment.

After they left, Reagan prepared to have the traditional State of the Union lunch with the network anchors while receiving a last-minute briefing from acting press secretary Larry Speakes when several members of the White House staff rushed in with news that the Space Shuttle Challenger had exploded after takeoff.

The State of the Union speech was postponed, and in what he would later describe as “one of the hardest days I ever spent in the Oval Office,” his speechwriting staff began drafting a very different kind of address. It was delivered at 5 p.m., and although only 648 words in length, it is still remembered as perhaps the most inspiring of his presidency.

“The future doesn’t belong to the faint-hearted, it belongs to the brave,” Reagan said that evening. “The Challenger crew was pulling us into the future, and we’ll continue to follow them.” He ended his homily by borrowing a passage from a World War II era sonnet: “We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.”

On that day, Ronald Reagan at once connected with presidents of the past while setting the standard for what would be expected of future presidents: Give voice to Americans’ shared grief at a moment of national tragedy, while showing the way forward out of that grief — and, thus, giving some meaning to the calamity.

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• How the Challenger Tragedy Gripped the Nation: A ‘Perfect Storm’ of Events

Tip O’Neill, who had been angered in the Oval Office by what he saw as Reagan’s cavalier attitude toward those without jobs, later wrote that he had seen the worst of Reagan, and the best, in the same day. “It was a trying day for all Americans,” O’Neill wrote in his autobiography, “and Ronald Reagan spoke to our highest ideals.”

This is not an entirely new task: It is what Lincoln did at Gettysburg, and why Franklin Roosevelt personally led the nation in prayer on D-Day. But television has gradually changed our expectations, and it was a movie actor-turned “citizen politician” who demonstrated how effectively a chief executive can use the camera to unite a grieving nation.

The presence aboard the Challenger of New Hampshire teacher Christa McAuliffe had drawn many schoolchildren to the broadcast of the space shuttle’s liftoff, which Reagan alluded to in his speech. “With television now making us part of such events, we need someone to express our grief and feelings of tragedy,” says Martha Joynt Kumar, a Towson University professor and expert on presidential communications. “The president is that person. President Reagan did that for us and he is forever remembered for it.”

Others have followed suit, and the resulting speeches, simultaneously somber and soaring, are remembered by the litany of place names and proper nouns that form a mosaic of tragedy – and national resolve: Oklahoma City, Columbine, Ground Zero, National Cathedral, the Space Shuttle Columbia, Virginia Tech, Tucson.

“A president is the only national leader, the only singular, transcendent leader we have,” notes Jeff Shesol, a speechwriter during Bill Clinton’s presidency. “There’s no Church of England here, and at moments like these he’s not the leader of a political party, not the leader of an ideological movement. He’s the president of all the people. And we want him to speak to our collective sense of loss.”

Despite the Lincoln and FDR examples, it wasn’t necessarily always this way. On Jan. 27, 1967, almost 19 years to the day before the Challenger broke up after takeoff, a fire broke out in the capsule of Apollo 1 and all three astronauts on board, Virgil I. “Gus” Grissom, Edward H. White II, and Roger Chaffee, were killed.

In the White House that night, Lyndon Johnson was thinking of space exploration. In fact, LBJ was celebrating what he considered one of his greatest achievements of his presidency – the successful negotiation of a treaty with the Soviet Union and Great Britain barring nuclear weapons from outer space. Signing ceremonies were held in Moscow, London, and Washington. Earlier that evening, at the East Room ceremony, Johnson had said, “This is an inspiring moment in the history of the human race. We are taking the first firm step toward keeping outer space free forever from the implements of war . . .This treaty means that the moon and our sister planets will serve only the purposes of peace and not of war (and) that astronaut and cosmonaut will meet someday on the surface of the moon as brothers and not as warriors for competing nationalities or ideologies.”

A little more than two hours later, while in the family quarters of the White House listening to a toast from the Commerce secretary, LBJ was handed a note: “The first Apollo crew was under test at Cape Kennedy and a fire broke out in the capsule and all three were killed . . . Grissom, White, and Chaffee.”

Although stricken — “The shock,” LBJ would say years later, “hit me like a physical blow” – the only statement from the White House was a 24-word press release. Johnson did not speak to the nation, either on television or at Arlington National Cemetery, even though he attended Grissom’s and Chaffee’s funeral there and sat beside their widows.

Perhaps the exigencies of the Cold War made a presidential speech problematic. Or maybe Lyndon Johnson simply didn’t know what to say. Two years later, while the Apollo mission to the moon was taking place, White House speechwriter William Safire wrote a precautionary speech for Richard Nixon. Fortunately, it never had to be delivered.

To a U.S. president, the loss of astronauts is a personal loss, felt in a way that probably only other presidents can understand. In Ronald Reagan’s case, he had taken a special interest in the crew of the Challenger, calling them periodically, and personally making the announcement that the first civilian in space would be a schoolteacher. Since Thomas Jefferson’s time, there has been a bond between the president and explorers sent out to unchartered territory, a connection only heightened by the inherent dangers of space travel. John F. Kennedy, who committed his nation to exploring the heavens, warned that there would be days like Jan. 27, 1967 — and Jan. 28, 1986.

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard,” Kennedy said in his famous 1962 speech at Rice University. “Therefore, as we set sail, we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.”

And on Feb. 1, 2003, in the midst of a presidency already rocked by a deadly attack on this nation, the peril that JFK warned about became apparent again. “The Columbia is lost,” a grim-faced George W. Bush told the nation. “There are no survivors.”

Bush had already rallied and consoled this nation in the aftermath of 9/11: His stirring speech at National Cathedral the Friday after the attacks may have been the high-water rhetorical mark of his presidency. Now he had to do it again, with the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia, and its entire crew. Bush ended his address that day with an Old Testament passage, from the Book of Isaiah, in which the prophet assures us that the Lord knows all the stars in the heavens and calls them by name. “The same Creator who names the stars also knows the names of the seven souls we mourn today,” he said. “The crew of the shuttle Columbia did not return safely to Earth, yet we can pray that all are safely home.”

Michael Gerson, chief speechwriter in Bush’s administration, is still grateful to longtime Bush adviser Karen Hughes for finding that biblical passage. A committed Christian, Gerson recalled that when Bush spoke at National Cathedral, family members of those missing at the Pentagon or the World Trade Center were still carrying around photographs of their loved ones, in hopes that they were still alive.

“The media now broadcast tragedy immediately and universally, and the president has taken the role of providing comfort and spiritual context, even when the wounds are very fresh,” Gerson said Thursday. “The Columbia speech had a nice ending – that they are all safely home – and it demonstrated to me, again, the unavoidability of religious hope in times of tragedy.”

Such events – providing the president strikes the right chords — also can benefit a president. Until 9/11, George Bush was a divisive figure, mostly because of the contentious way his election had transpired. Michael Waldman, Bill Clinton’s chief speechwriter, wrote in his memoir, “POTUS Speaks,” that Clinton’s surefooted rhetorical response to the Oklahoma City bombing “was the nation’s first exposure to Clinton as mourner in chief, a role at which Ronald Reagan had excelled.”

“In fact,” Waldman added, “it was the first time Clinton had been a reassuring figure rather than an unsettling one. For many people, during those days, for the very first time, he truly became a president.”

And so, the mourner in chief role is a two-way street. It is also of unimaginable benefit to a third constituency: Those who are grieving a personal loss. Jeff Shesol, who joined the Clinton speechwriting team long after the Oklahoma City crisis, was with the president when he went to Colorado in 1999 to comfort the parents of the students massacred at Columbine High School. “It’s fascinating how much it mattered to them to be met in this way by – to be embraced — by the president of the United States and to be told, in essence, that the nation recognized their loss,” Shesol said.

“These are not people wanting to meet a president and have their picture taken,” Shesol added. “These are families experiencing a horrific grief, gathered together in this instance in a gymnasium to hear a president express the nation’s collective grief and to begin the process of transcending it. It’s an important part of the presidency.”

This is what Barack Obama was doing two weeks ago in Tucson, Ariz. There, he too, began the process of transcending the tragedy, this time by invoking the senseless death of 9-year-old Christina Taylor Green, there in the line of fire because of her faith in American government. Obama’s take-away was not a meditation on violence, guns, mental illness, or uncivil discourse – it was about how we could give meaning to her death by living up to her faith in American self-government.

Similarly, when George W. Bush eulogized the crew of the Space Shuttle Columbia, at a Feb. 4, 2003 memorial service three days after the disaster, he recalled something that Columbia crew member David Brown told his brother before the ill-fated mission: That if disaster struck the crew, the space program would still live on. “Captain Brown was correct,” Bush said. “America’s space program will go on.”

Ronald Reagan traveled the same path in 1986, flying on Air Force One from Andrews Air Force Base to Houston for a memorial service at the Johnson Space Center. The president and first lady Nancy Reagan sat between two new widows, the wives of Challenger commander Francis Scobee and crew member Michael Smith. “I found it difficult to say anything,” Reagan recalled in his autobiography. “All we could do was hug the families and try to hold back tears.”

But Reagan was mistaken. It was not all he could do. When it was his time to speak, the president arose, walked to the lectern and eulogized each of the seven members of the crew by name. “America itself was built by men and women such as our seven star voyagers,” he said.

“Sometimes when we reach for the stars, we fall short,” Reagan added. “But we must pick ourselves up again and press on despite the pain. Our nation is indeed fortunate that we can still draw on immense reservoirs of courage, character, and fortitude; that we’re still blessed with heroes like those of the space shuttle Challenger.”

Peggy Noonan Critiques President’s Union Speech….(Shhh…He’s a Marxist, Peggy!)

An Unserious Speech Misses the Mark

The audience found it tiresome. Here’s why it was irksome as well.

The Wall Street Journal: January 27, 2011

It is a strange and confounding thing about this White House that the moment you finally think they have their act together—the moment they get in the groove and start to demonstrate that they do have some understanding of our country—they take the very next opportunity to prove anew that they do not have their act together, and are not in the groove. It’s almost magical.

The State of the Union speech was not centrist, as it should have been, but merely mushy, and barely relevant. It wasted a perfectly good analogy—America is in a Sputnik moment—by following it with narrow, redundant and essentially meaningless initiatives. Rhetorically the speech lay there like a lox, as if the document itself knew it was dishonest, felt embarrassed, and wanted to curl up quietly in a corner of the podium and hide. But the president insisted on reading it.

Response in the chamber was so muted as to be almost Xanax-like. Did you see how bored and unengaged they looked? The applause was merely courteous. A senator called the mood on the floor “flat.” This is the first time the press embargo on the speech was broken, by National Journal, which printed the text more than an hour before the president delivered it. Maybe members had already read it and knew what they were about to face.

The president will get a bump from the speech. Presidents always do. It will be called a success. But it will be evanescent. A real moment was missed. If the speech is remembered, it will be as the moment when the president actually slowed—or blocked—his own comeback.

The central elements of the missed opportunity:

• An inability to focus on what is important now. The speech was more than half over before the president got around to the spending crisis. He signaled no interest in making cuts, which suggested that he continues not to comprehend America’s central anxiety about government spending: that it will crush our children, constrict the economy in which they operate, make America poorer, lower its standing in the world, and do in the American dream. Americans are alarmed about this not because they’re cheap and selfish but because they care about the country they will leave behind when they are gone.

President Obama’s answer is to “freeze” a small portion of government spending at current levels for five years. This is a reasonable part of a package, but it’s not a package and it’s not a cut. Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who called it “sad,” told a local radio station the savings offered “won’t even pay the interest on the debt we’re about to accumulate” in the next two years. The president was trying to “hoodwink” the American people, Mr. Coburn said: “The federal government is twice the size it was 10 years ago. It’s 27% bigger than it was two years ago.” Cuts, not a freeze, are needed—it’s a matter of “urgency.”

• Unresponsiveness to the political moment. Democrats hold the White House and Senate, Republicans the House, the crisis is real, and the next election is two years away. This is the time for the president to go on the line and demand Republicans do so, too. Instead, nothing. A freeze.

• An attitude that was small bore and off point. America is in a Sputnik moment, the world seems to be jumping ahead of us, our challenge is to make up the distance and emerge victorious. So we’ll change our tax code to make citizens feel less burdened and beset, we’ll rethink what government can and should give, can and should take, we’ll get our fiscal life in order, we’ll save our country. Right?

Nah. We’ll focus on “greater Internet access,” “renewable energy,” “one million electric vehicles on the road by 2015,” “wind and solar,” “information technology.” “Within 25 years, our goal is to give 80% of Americans access to high-speed rail.” None of this is terrible, but none of it is an answer. The administration continues to struggle with the concept of priorities. They cannot see where the immediate emergency is. They are like people who’d say, “Martha, the house is on fire and flames are licking down the stairs—let’s discuss what color to repaint the living room after we rebuild!” A better priority might be, “Get the kids out and call the fire department.”

• Unbelievability. The president will limit the cost of government by whipping it into shape and removing redundant agencies. Really? He hasn’t shown much interest in that before. He has shown no general ideological sympathy for the idea of shrinking and streamlining government. He’s going to rationalize government? He wants to “get rid of the loopholes” in our tax code. Really? That’s good, but it was a throwaway line, not a serious argument. And he was talking to 535 representatives and senators who live in the loopholes, who live by campaign contributions from industries and interest groups that pay protection money to not get dinged in the next tax bill.

On education, the president announced we’re lagging behind in our public schools. Who knew? In this age of “Waiting for Superman” and “The Lottery,” every adult in America admits that union rules are the biggest impediment to progress. “Race to the Top” isn’t the answer. We all know this.

As for small things and grace notes, there is often about the president an air of delivering a sincere lecture in which he informs us of things that seem new to him but are old to everyone else. He has a tendency to present banalities as if they were discoveries. “American innovation” is important. As many as “a quarter of our students aren’t even finishing high school.” We’re falling behind in math and science: “Think about it.”

“I’ve seen it in the shuttered windows of once booming factories. . . . I’ve heard it in the frustrations of Americans.” But our deterioration isn’t new information, it’s a shared predicate of at least 20 years’ standing, it’s what we all know. When you talk this way, as if the audience is uninformed, they think you are uninformed. Leaders must know what’s in the national information bank.

He too often in making a case puts the focus on himself. George H.W. Bush, always afraid of sounding egotistical, took the I’s out of his speeches. We called his edits “I-ectomies.” Mr. Obama always seems to put the I in. He does “I implants.”

Humor, that leavening, subtle uniter, was insufficiently present. Humor is denigrated by serious people, but serious people often miss the obvious. The president made one humorous reference, to smoked salmon. It emerged as the biggest word in the NPR word cloud of responses. That’s because it was the most memorable thing in the speech. The president made a semi-humorous reference to TSA pat-downs, but his government is in charge of and insists on the invasive new procedures, to which the president has never been and will never be subjected. So it’s not funny coming from him. The audience sort of chuckled, but only because many are brutes who don’t understand that it is an unacceptable violation to have your genital areas patted against your will by strangers.

I actually hate writing this. I wanted to write “A Serious Man Seizes the Center.” But he was not serious and he didn’t seize the center, he went straight for the mush. Maybe at the end of the day he thinks that’s what centrism is.”

Comment:   Bill O’Reilly exposed his lack of  understanding of Socialism the other day.  He insisted that if some citizens were allowed to own their own homes, that was evidence that the leader of the nation was not a Socialist….or Marxist.

Many Venezuelans own their own homes.   Does that mean the Hugo Chaves is not a Marxist?   or Socialist?

The Austrian Left’s Assault on Free Speech: How Did Elisabeth Sabaditsch Wolff Insult Islam?

 

Interview with Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff  …

“I  Am  Against Dialogue”

EuropeNews 6. December 2009

Interview with Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff
By S.M. Steinitz

I Am Against Dialogue

A criminal complaint is being filed against Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff for “hate speech” under Austrian law, essentially the same thing that Susanne Winter was convicted of early this year.

Elisabeth gave a presentation about Islam at an FPÖ-organized seminar, and said some of the usual things that anti-jihad advocates say when they talk about Islam. A left-wing magazine, which had planted someone in the audience, caused charges to be brought against her at the same time as they publicized it in their magazine.

Elisabeth held the controversial Islam Seminar at the FPÖ-political academy. Charges of defamation of a religious group have been filed against the daughter of a diplomat. This is her only interview in which she explains her views.

Mrs. Sabaditsch-Wolff, are you afraid of Muslims?

No, I am afraid of political Islam, which is massively gaining influence in Europe. That is what I am against.

What is your goal?

I want to preserve Europe and its democratic and secular values.

What bothers you about the Islamic way of life?

Islamic doctrine discriminates against women and non-Muslims. Islamic law, or shariah, cannot be reconciled with democratic principles and universal human rights.

Do you see the need for that?

There are powerful groups who are working towards the Islamization of Europe. That is a fact. What can we gain from closing our eyes and ignoring this? Even Libyan leader Muammar Ghadafi says: “There are signs that Allah will grant victory to Islam in Europe without swords, without guns, without conquest. We don’t need terrorists, we don’t need homicide bombers. The 50+ million Muslims [in Europe] will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.” A head of state confirms what our politicians deny. What else has to happen until we finally get it?

There are people who see the growth of Islam in Europe as an opportunity for a completely re-engineered pluralistic society.

The vision of a pluralistic society does not withstand a reality check. Show me one example where this has been a success. Wherever Muslims have been given the opportunity for self-organization they have established parallel societies. See Berlin-Kreuzberg, see Lyon. See also Great Britain, where parts of shariah have been implemented.

Do you really think that Austrian culture is endangered?

I see signs of an erosion of our way of life. In large cities massive changes are evident in the streets. There are discussions about a ban on teaching the Turkish sieges of Vienna; St. Nicholas is banned from visiting children in [public] kindergartens.

And you want to change that.

Yes, very much. But why is that so bad? In Bhutan, the king is applauded because he allows only a certain number of foreigners into the country. He prescribes a certain dress code and mandatory cultural events. Bhutan is a small country that wants to retain its cultural identity in a globalized world. Austria is also a small country with similar challenges. Why is the one country commended and the other berated?

According to NEWS, you defamed Islam. That is why NEWS has filed charges citing defamation of religion. Your reply.

One can report anyone to the authorities. I am not guilty of defamation. And even if some consider my words harsh, I definitely did not make them in a public forum since the seminars were held before a group of people who registered beforehand.

You are accused of making the following statements, among others: “Muslims rape children because of their religion”, or “Mohammed enjoyed contact with children.” Why the polemics?

This is a clever strategy. You and all the others who are now crying wolf are locked in a choice of words. As a result you are able to maneuver yourselves away from the main point. It is a fact that Mohammed married a six-year-old at the age of 56. To this day men in Islamic countries view this as legitimizing marriage to a minor, thereby causing rape and life-long trauma. This is the problem we need to address, and not how circumscribe this bitter reality.

Are you afraid that these customs will become part of Europe?

There are groups who have this goal. In every Islamic system you find that human rights of young girls are in grave danger. Look at Saudi Arabia. Look at the former socialist South Yemen. When Khomeini came to power he lowered the minimum age for girls to get married to nine years.

You are being accused of Islamophobia. Does this bother you?

A phobia is an irrational fear. My worries are not irrational, but justified. One of these days our politicians will have to recognize this fact. People like me are not right-wing xenophobes.

But what are you.

We are people defending the principles of freedom and equality in a secular society. I criticize political Islam and its political manifestations. No democratic country can take this right away from anyone.

Why do critics of Islam nearly always use polemics?

And what [if not polemics] did the article in NEWS use? There are comments about my body, there is ridicule about how I eat. Sexist attacks below the belt against women making unpopular statements are a manifestation of a male-dominated system. There are many critics of Islam. However, it’s always women like Brigitte Bardot or Oriana Fallaci who are attacked below the belt.

Leading politicians have sharply criticized your seminars. Are they all members of a male-dominated system?

These politicians do not know the contents of my seminars. All they know are out-of-context quotes from an article in a glossy magazine. I also find the reaction of these politicians strange. They get away with much worse.

For instance.

SPÖ secretary general Laura Rudas, who calls for a public ban of the headscarf. I would not do something like that.

On the other hand, you are being compared to Susanne Winter (FPÖ). She was convicted of defamation because she accused the prophet Mohammed of pedophilia.

I do not want to be compared to Susanne Winter. There are no similarities between us. She is an active politician, she acts in a public forum. I do not.

You hold your seminars for the FPÖ-Political Academy.

But I am not politically active. I am also not a member of FPÖ. What I do is offer seminars on the topic of Islam and I can be booked. The FPÖ academy did just that. I do not want to comment on Susanne Winter’s statements. But in my opinion she does not know much about Islam.

In what way are you qualified to hold these seminars?

I have an M.A. in Diplomatic and Strategic Studies. I spent part of my childhood in Islamic countries, worked and lived there. I have personally experienced life in Islamic societies and I see evidence of a trend towards the Islamization of Europe.

How do you view yourself?

I am a mother and a feminist. I want my daughter and my niece to grow up in freedom and dignity. I want the same for all Austrian citizens, and that includes Austrian Muslims.

In your seminar you do not distinguish between Muslims and Islamists.

Oh yes, I do. I do that because I know how much Muslims worldwide are suffering under the Islamic yoke. I say that in all my seminars, only NEWS did not bother to quote that. Why do think so many Muslims try to escape from Islamic countries like Iran and Afghanistan? Because life there is unbearable.

So you want to liberate Muslims from Islam.

Muslims have to liberate themselves; from this static and tenacious Islam that is hellbent on following norms from the seventh century. The result is that wherever there are Islamic societies there is no progress, but steps backwards, especially in the realm of human rights and democracy.

But isn’t the referendum on the minaret ban in Switzerland also a step backwards?

The result of the referendum is the best proof that politicians should finally take the Islamization of Europe seriously.

What do you think about the reaction from the Islamic world regarding the referendum?

The Islamic world leads in discrimination against religious minorities. Christians are persecuted and discriminated against in all Islamic countries. You have to remember that the Christian culture is not one that immigrated or is foreign; it is indigenous. There is a complete ban on building churches in Turkey. And now Erdogan speaks of discrimination against Muslims in Switzerland? Where are Muslims being discriminated against in Switzerland? The European elite allows the Islamic countries to walk all over themselves while bowing down to them.

Are you in favor of a ban on minarets in Austria?

I will not answer that. Instead, I will quote the now so agitated Turkish prime minister who once said, “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.”

Do you feel misunderstood?

Above all, I believe that my rights are being curtailed. Currently I do not notice that I have freedom of speech or opinion.

Haven’t you yourself strained this right?

No, I don’t believe I did. Above all, I did not speak publicly. What is all the commotion about?

But now it has become public.

I only say out loud what others are thinking. But these concerns are not taken seriously.

Are you against a dialogue with the Islamic world?

I am against a dialogue with political Islam. I am, however, in favor of a broad discussion about human rights and personal freedoms.

You criticize Islam as discriminating. What do mean by that?

Just one example: In Islam non-Muslims are called kuffar, non-believers. These infidels are all defamed and not considered equal. This is offensive. Where are the protests?

What are your negative experiences in Islamic countries?
People in these countries are continuously restricted. This leads to aggressions and reporting people to the authorities and other absurd situations. For example, a (Coptic) member of the Austrian embassy in Kuwait was verbally abused at the post office because he was mailing Christmas letters. It was Ramadan and he must not eat or drink publicly. He said, surprised, “But I am not eating!” “Oh yes, you are. You are licking off the adhesive part of the stamp.” This is daily routine in an Islamic society.

Can you really use a single occurrence as an example?

I can tell you hundreds of similar single occurrences. This story is not a single case, but a social program.

Will you continue with your seminars?

Yes. There are requests coming in from all over Austria. I will continue to defend my right to freedom of speech. I will not be gagged.

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff, 38, is the daughter of a retired diplomat. She spent parts of her childhood during the Khomeini Revolution in Iran. She later spent time in Iraq and Kuwait. In 1990, she and other Austrians were held hostage during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. She was employed at the Austrian embassies in Kuwait and Libya. From 1995-7 she was a member of the then-vice-chancellor, Wolfgang Schüssel. Sabaditsch-Wolff represents the Citizens’ Movement Pax Europa on an international level.

Comment:   What could it be the president Barack Hussein  Obama, Eric Holder, and all of the Leftwing voters who support multicultrualism have in mind as the future for democratic societies when confronted with political Islam?

My guess is these Leftists, being broadly and deeply feminized, don’t want to think that far ahead of the moment…..for it will upset them and make them feel bad.

Young Men of Egypt Rebel…..Fire in the Streets…..There Will Be Another Change in the Weather

John Hinderaker at Powerline offered this writing regarding the ‘street festivities’ presently taking place in many of the cities of Egypt.   I am guessing that Mubarek will be retired and his son retired with him.  Beyond that I expect more trouble for Israel stemming from the penchant in the Near East for Islamists to hate somebody.

I believe what I have learned….that the power in Egypt rests with the military.  Hosni Mubarek has by military authority been the leader of Egypt since 1981 following the assassination of Anwar Sadat.  It is likely Mr. Mubarek will move on, but  the military will stay.

Unfortunately, the United States is almost always caught siding with stability in the world, which usually is provided by dictators of one kind or another (except the Marxist ones……with some exceptions).  The reason  arises from the reality that there  is so little in “peaceful Islam” that resembles tolerance to say nothing about democratic institutions.

The Jerusalem Post and the Associated Press are reporting that “[a]s protests continued into the night, Egyptian authorities were holding talks to establish a ‘transitional government.'” Huge news if true. The same sources say that the headquarters of Mubarak’s ruling party in Cairo are on fire.

The administration continues to try to keep up with events; Secretary of State Clinton made public remarks about Egypt today:

As President Obama said yesterday, reform is absolutely critical to the well being of Egypt. Egypt has long been an important partner of the United States on a range of regional issues. As a partner, we strongly believe that the Egyptian Government needs to engage immediately with the Egyptian people in implementing needed economic, political, and social reforms. We continue to raise with the Egyptian Government, as we do with other governments in the region, the imperative for reform and greater openness and participation to provide a better future for all. We want to partner with the Egyptian people and their government to realize their aspirations to live in a democratic society that respects basic human rights.

This has, I think, the tone of trying to join the winning team after the fact. In reality, we are pretty much irrelevant to the events that are unfolding.

UPDATE: Pajamas Media reports:

Egyptian Parliament Speaker Ahmad Fathi Sorour appeared on state TV and said: “An important matter will be announced shortly.” No further details.

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Environmentalist Fanatacism Cause for Food Inflation

Food Inflation Knocking at the Door

The global economy is getting back on its feet, but so too is an old enemy: food inflation.  The United Nations benchmark index hit a record high last month, raising fears of shortages and higher prices that will hit poor countries hardest.  So why is the United States, one of the world’s biggest agricultural exporters, devoting more and more of its corn crop to ethanol?

• In 2001, only 7 percent of U.S. corn went for ethanol, or about 707 million bushels.
• By 2010, the ethanol share was 39.4 percent, or nearly five billion bushels out of total U.S. production of 12.45 billion bushels.
• Four of every 10 rows of corn now go to produce fuel for American cars or trucks, not food or feed.
• This trend is the deliberate result of policies designed to subsidize ethanol.

This is increasing even as global food supply is struggling to meet rising demand.  U.S. farmers account for about 39 percent of global corn production and about 16 percent of that crop is exported, so U.S. corn stocks can influence the world price.  Chicago Board of Trade corn futures recently hit 30-month highs of $6.67 a bushel, up from $4 a bushel a year ago, says the Wall Street Journal.

Source: “Amber Waves of Ethanol,” Wall Street Journal, January 22, 2011.

For text:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703396604576088010481315914.html

For more on Energy Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=22       

(The above article iwas from the National Center for Policy Analysis.)

Comment:   Even to this day earmarks to the Leftwing environmentalists, the crooks and romanticists alike, permit millions of American tax dollars to support the Ethanol bloc in Congress.  

Experts warned from the very start of this environmentalist excapade into government handouts for ethanol, would cause  food prices sky-rocket and eventually starvation.   The American environmentalists and speculators paid no attention.   There were government subsidies up for grabs.

Obama’s Marxism:…….Obama Declares Who Are More Equal Than Others

Prager fan, Mark Waldeland sent in the following:

“George Orwell, pick up the courtesy phone at Democrat national headquarters.  

“All employers are equal in ObamaCare’s purview, but some Democrat-favored employers (especially unions) are more equal than others.”

The Hill reports, “A week after Republicans announced plans to investigate waivers granted to organizations for healthcare reform provisions, President Obama’s health department made public new waivers for more than 500 groups.” The waivers exempt recipients from some of the more onerous requirements of the law, such as minimum coverage. Prior to this week, there were already 222 waivers granted to companies, unions or other organizations covering 1.5 million individuals. Now, that list is 729, including four states — Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio and Tennessee.

Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) has promised to investigate, saying, “If there are exemptions, what was the process by which those exemptions were sought and given? I think those are fair questions to ask.”

Forty percent of ObamaCare waivers have gone, mirabile dictu, to unions.  

Mark Steyn mentioned that the ObamaCare waivers symbolize what’s wrong with liberalism generally.  If we were seeking equality before the law, our laws would be about two pages long.  Once we start building privilege for the favored few into our laws, they become —  like ObamaCare —  3,000 pages long.”   

Krauthammer: Obama Ignores the American People

The following article appeared at the Daily News, titled:  “Deaf on Debt:  Obama Ignores the American People”.

“The November election sent a clear message to Washington: less government, less debt, less spending. President Obama certainly heard it, but judging from his State of the Union address, he doesn’t believe a word of it.

The people say they want cuts? Sure they do – in the abstract. But any party that actually dares carry them out will be punished severely. On that, Obama stakes his re-election.

No other conclusion can be drawn from a speech that didn’t even address the debt issue until 35 minutes in. And then what did he offer? A freeze on domestic discretionary spending that he himself admitted would affect a mere one-eighth of the budget.

Obama seemed impressed, however, that it would produce $400 billion in savings over 10 years. That’s an average of $40 billion a year. The deficit for last year alone was more than 30 times as much. And total federal spending was more than 85 times that amount. A $40 billion annual savings for a government that just racked up $3 trillion in new debt over the last two years is deeply unserious. It’s spillage, a rounding error.

As for entitlements, which are where the real money is, Obama said practically nothing. He is happy to discuss, but if Republicans dare take anything from granny, he shall be Horatius at the bridge.

This entire pantomime about debt reduction came after the first half of a speech devoted to, yes, new spending. One almost has to admire Obama’s defiance. His 2009 stimulus and budget-busting health care reform are precisely what stirred the popular revolt that delivered his November shellacking. And yet he’s back for more.

It’s as if Obama is daring the voters – and the Republicans – to prove they really want smaller government. He’s manning the barricades for Obamacare and he’s here with yet another spending – excuse me, investment – spree. To face down those overachieving Asians, Obama wants to sink yet more money into yet more road and bridge repair, more federally subsidized teachers – with a bit of high-speed rail tossed in for style. That will show the Chinese.

And of course, once again, there is the magic lure of a green economy created by the brilliance of Washington experts and politicians. This is to be our “Sputnik moment,” when the fear of the foreigner spurs us to innovation and greatness of the kind that yielded NASA and the moon landing.

Apart from the irony of this appeal being made by the very President who has just killed NASA’s manned space program, there is the fact that for three decades, since Jimmy Carter‘s synfuel fantasy, Washington has poured billions of taxpayer dollars down a rat hole in vain pursuit of economically competitive renewable energy.

This is nothing but a retread of what used to be called industrial policy, government picking winners and losers. Except that in a field that is not nearly technologically ready to match fossil fuels, we pick one loser after another – from ethanol, a $6 billion boondoggle that even Al Gore admits was a mistake, to the $41,000 Chevy Volt that only the rich can afford (with their extended Bush tax cuts, of course).

Perhaps this is all to be expected from Democrats – the party of government – and from a President who from his very first address to Congress has boldly displayed his zeal to fundamentally transform the American social contract and place it on a “New Foundation” (an Obama slogan that never took). He’s been chastened enough by the election of 2010 to make gestures toward the center. But the State of the Union address revealed a man ideologically unbowed and undeterred. He served up an insignificant spending cut, yet another (if more modest) stimulus and a promise to fight any Republican attempt to significantly shrink the size of government.

Indeed, he went beyond this. He tried to cast this more-of-the-same into a call to national greatness, citing two Michigan brothers who produce solar shingles as a stirring example of rising to the Sputnik moment.

“We do big things,” Obama declared at the end of an address that was, on the contrary, the finest example of small-ball Clintonian minimalism since the days of school uniforms and midnight basketball.

From the moon landing to solar shingles. Is there a better example of American decline?”

Charles Krauthammer‘s column, which appears on Fridays, is syndicated by the Washington Post Writers Group. Formerly a resident and then chief resident in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, he joined The New Republic as a writer and editor in 1981. He is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and The New Republic. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Magazine Award for essays and criticism in 1984, the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in 1987 and the Bradley Prize in 2004.

Documentary Film, “Iranium” Can Be Seen Here!

View the film, Iranium, here: http://www.hulu.com/watch/213052/iranium

 

 IRANIUM TO PREMIERE IN MINNEAPOLIS THEATER ON FEBRUARY 8

Nazie Eftekhari, Director of the Iran Democratic Union, to Speak at Premiere

 Iranium, a new documentary film exposing the dangers posed to the United States and the international community by a nuclear Iran, will premiere at Arbor Lakes AMC Theater in Maple Grove (a Northwest suburb of Minneapolis) on February 8, at 6:00pm and again at 8:00pm, as part of the film’s nationwide launch event.

 Nazie Eftekhari, Director of the Iran Democratic Union (IDU) is set to speak at the event. The IDU works for a free and secular Iran that honors the individual rights of all its citizens.

 Iranium will launch at select AMC Theaters and community centers on February 8, 2011, in over 20 cities nationwide including Washington, D.C., New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, Miami, Atlanta, Boston, San Antonio, and Tucson. 

 

Tickets are available for purchase exclusively online at http://www.minnesotansagainstterrorism.org/IraniumScreenings.html and will NOT be available at the box-office.

 

“Iranium underlines just how important it is that we act now to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons,” said Ilan Sharon, Executive Director of Minnesotans Against Terrorism, the non-profit activist group sponsoring the Minneapolis premiere. “The Iranian regime is a real threat to world security and this documentary shows the urgency of acting to halt its nuclear program.”

 “We encourage all concerned Americans to watch the film online or attend a screening in their area, to learn about the nature of the Iranian regime and their stated intentions for America and the international community,” said Raphael Shore, Executive Producer of Iranium.

 “We are focused on educating Americans about the dangers the free world may face if Iran acquires nuclear weapons. Americans must be properly informed if we expect policymakers to enact appropriate policies,” added Shore.

Pat Condell Explains the “Inferiority” of Islam and Leftwing Multiculturalism

Fellow Americans:   If there are any folks in the western world or the entire world for that matter, who can explain the virtues of Jihadi Islam and Leftwing Multiculturalism as well as Pat Condell, they must be hiding or in some Islamic or Eric Holder prison.

Mr. Condell does not analyze ‘the why’ of  the alliance between the world’s left and Islamic Jihad……my suspicions is the bond is secured at the United Nations as a combined effort to destroy western free enterprise.

Pat Condell is stirred over the persecution by the MARXIST Left in Europe of those who dare to speak critically of the horrors of Islamic culture which is invading the West.    Trials is Austria, the Netherlands, and Denmark have been concocted by the LEFT to silence  free speech.    The charge against the defendants….”The defendants have insulted Islam”. 

The American press, with the exception of the internet, is SILENT about these assaults on Free Speech.  The American Press supports Marxism and its religious devotion toward  multiculturalism.

Do we in America need to be reminded that at the core of the Modern Democrat Party and its Marxists is the devotion to MULTICULTURALISM,  a tenet  against a pillar of  American philosophy for over 200 years, E Pluribus Unum.

Barack Hussein Obama’s own Marxism leads him to this devotion that  the world must  be made equal.

Pat Condell dares to express this Truth:   NOT ALL CULTURES ARE EQUAL!!     Please click below to learn the truth about the most recent threat to world freedom, Islam and its alliance with the Western Leftwingers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IEkelAsmcf4

Obama Pretends Civility and Friendship…..His Devotion To Marxism Has Other Goals

“Civility’ just a ruse to neuter Republicans”

 by The Right Scoop

“The civility narrative that grew legs after the shooting in Arizona is really just a ruse to keep Republicans from calling Democrats what America knows they are – Socialists. After all, it’s that kind of ‘hateful rhetoric’ that gets people killed right? Yeah, right.

The Democrats lost power in the House after Americans got too big a taste of their left-wing socialist agenda over the last two years. Now that they’ve lost power they need to stem what could amount to even bigger losses in 2012. Since they can’t really legislate to cover their tracks, they need to prevent Republicans from continuing to remind Americans about their socialist agenda – and what better way to do that than to decide that America needs a dose of civility. Of course they cloak it in the ludicrous notion that it’s contributing to an atmosphere of hate that might set off a crazy person on another shooting spree. But to any able minded person that’s just nonsense.

What is really at work here is the Left trying to control the speech of a small group of impressionable people – Republicans. They could care less about how civil the nation is but if they can keep the Republicans from name calling, they end up looking better than they would if Republicans constantly reminded America of their socialist agenda.

Think about the mixed seating arrangement for the SOTU Tuesday night that everyone was talking about. I’ve heard people like Rush Limbaugh say that Democrats wanted to hide just how large the House Republican majority really is, and there may be some truth to that. But I think it had much more to do with civility. If Republicans and Democrats sit together in a show of civility and unity, it creates an atmosphere that will make it tougher for some weaker Republicans to continue with the ‘name calling’. In fact some Republicans will even buy into it and chastise other Republicans for using such tactics which could create tension within the Party as well as the electorate.

Yeah, I know that sounds small, even petty, perhaps. But it’s just a cog in a much bigger wheel that is turning and trying to run over Republicans.

Even Obama’s rhetorical move to the center also plays into this civility narrative. With the entire MSM and political world gushing over Obama’s new and improved centrist talk, it increases the chances that Republicans will feel more uncomfortable pointing out his socialist agenda, or even calling him a socialist, and it will serve to neuter Republicans and make them less effective.

The bottom line here is that Republicans simply need to stop mincing words and continue to remind Americans just how destructive these radicals are to this great country. If they do that, along with some great legislating, I assure you that Americans will respond in 2012 just as they did in 2010.

Cross-posted at www.therightscoop.com.

Comment:   To the deeply religious Marxists, civility, honesty, and decent thoughts  or actions are merely tools to gain State Marxism…..so very similar to Jihadist Islam.  Tools to be used only for advantage no for moral value.   Marxists have extracted their century of blood before arriving onto the American political stage.

More humans have been extinguished by Marxism than all of the  other religions combined.

I do not believe Barack Obama is plotting a military-Marxist coup or revolt for our America.   He is a devoted Marxist, certain that Marxist equality is the best religion for mankind.    

He uses his tongue and style, not the  cannon or bomb.   He may not be the liar, but his tongue is…..and it lies regularly, counting on the American citizenry to be too dumb and too impatient to listen or observe  carefully.