Disturbing: Obama bows to Saudi King

Obama bows to Saudi King

US President Barack Obama, center, back to camera, greets King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, center, before the official G20 leaders group photo with Britain's Queen Elizabeth II at London's Buckingham Palace, Wednesday, April 1, 2009.

 

American Thinker adds this:

See Miss Manners on the protocol.   Americans do not bow to foreign monarchs because that act signified the monarch’s power over his subjects.

Here’s the video. Obama’s bow is at :53 seconds in:

President Death Goes to Notre Dame

The University of Notre Dame announced in a press release dated March 20, 2009:

President Barack Obama will be the principal speaker and the recipient of an honorary doctor of laws degree at the University of Notre Dame’s 164th University Commencement Ceremony at 2 p.m. May 17 (Sunday) in the Joyce Center on campus.

Notre Dame is a Catholic institution of higher learning and as such is committed to the worldview of the Catholic Church which includes the protection of life at every stage from conception to natural death.

President Barack Obama is the most radically pro-abortion president in the history of the United States. Through legislation he has either sponsored or supported he has advanced the radical agenda of Planned Parenthood and other so-called “pro-choice” organizations to end the lives of unborn children.

A website has been set up, www.notredamescandal.com, to gather signatures on a petition to Father Jenkins, the president of Notre Dame, asking him to rescind his invitation to Obama. To date more than 51,000 individuals have added their names. The website has a detailed account of Obama’s radical actions on abortion, including his decision to rescind the Mexico City Policy, working to overturn the “conscience clause” which would require medical professionals to assist in or perform abortions against their wills, and lifting the ban on the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research while expanding the program to include the creation of embryos for the specific purpose of killing them for research purposes.

UPDATE: Catholic theologian George Weigel has weighed in on the Notre Dame scandal

Dems begin effort to silence talk radio

In a spirit of “bipartisanship” (defined as, “The Democrats get what they want”), President Obama invited GOP leaders to the White House last week to tell them, “You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done.”

The media has widely reported that Rush Limbaugh wants President Obama to fail. Of course the media had no problem at all with forwarding their own agenda for the last eight years in their hopes that President Bush would fail. But that isn’t the point. The point is they took Rush’s words out of context as he knew they would when he went the extra mile to explain them.

Now the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee is promoting an online petition which urges Americans to “express your outrage about Rush’s comments.” They include an EDITED audio clip from Rush’s monologue which takes his words completely  out of context.

Here is what Rush said IN CONTEXT:

If I wanted Obama to succeed, I’d be happy the Republicans have laid down.  And I would be encouraging Republicans to lay down and support him.  Look, what he’s talking about is the absorption of as much of the private sector by the US government as possible, from the banking business, to the mortgage industry, the automobile business, to health care.  I do not want the government in charge of all of these things. I don’t want this to work.  So I’m thinking of replying to the guy, “Okay, I’ll send you a response, but I don’t need 400 words, I need four: I hope he fails.” (interruption) What are you laughing at?  See, here’s the point.  Everybody thinks it’s outrageous to say.  Look, even my staff, “Oh, you can’t do that.”  Why not?  Why is it any different, what’s new, what is unfair about my saying I hope liberalism fails?  Liberalism is our problem.  Liberalism is what’s gotten us dangerously close to the precipice here.  Why do I want more of it?  I don’t care what the Drive-By story is.  I would be honored if the Drive-By Media headlined me all day long: “Limbaugh: I Hope Obama Fails.”  Somebody’s gotta say it.  

Limbaugh’s comments came in the context of a lengthy monologue detailing the radical socialist agenda which Obama and Congressional Democrats are foisting on the American people under the guise of a “stimulus package.” The Congressional Democrats are now twisting his words in a FUNDRAISING effort. Typical.

But this is merely the first volley in a war to silence talk radio. Look for serious efforts by Congressional Democrats to revive the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” to take away your right to hear conservative opinion.

The Democrats’ online petition includes a place to leave comments. I signed the petition IN SUPPORT of Rush Limbaugh and hope you will do the same. Let’s ensure that this thing backfires and remind the liberals that there are 50 million voters in this country who DID NOT vote for them.

Sign the petition and leave your comments here: http://www.dccc.org/page/petition/rush

Obama and the Arabs: Diplomacy or Homogeneity?

Consider these facts: Barack Obama is the first president in history to directly address the Muslim world in an Inaugural Address. His first phone call to a foreign head of state was to the Palestinian Authority’s Ahmoud Abbas. And now comes word that the honor of his first sit down interview as president goes to Al-Arabiya, self-described as “the leading news channel in the Arab world.”

With all of the issues vying for action by the President, both foreign and domestic, why has Obama made a priority of communicating with the Muslim world this early and this often in his first week as President? Certainly the Middle East conflict requires the attention of the United States, but why has this president chosen to enter that process by speaking first with the party the United States has historically viewed as the instigator of the conflict?

The media would answer the question by suggesting that the ‘cowboy diplomacy’ of George W. Bush has tarnished America’s image in the Arab world, therefore Obama can waste no time reaching out to them in an effort to restore our credibility. Never mind that the ‘Bush Doctrine’ actually liberated 50 million people in the Muslim world. Pay no attention to the fact that young girls and women are now being educated in Afghanistan because President Bush took decisive action to root out the oppressive Taliban regime there.

Rather than use his interview with Arab television to point the Arab world to the positive results America has achieved for them, President Obama used this opportunity to throw America under the bus. If you actually heard his interview with Al-Arabiya, it would be difficult to conclude that President Obama did anything other than point to America as the source of the problem in the Arab world rather than a collaborator with them in finding a solution.

The interview wasn’t into its first two minutes before Obama tells the Arab interviewer that when it comes to the on-going Arab-Israeli conflict in Gaza, the United States acts more like a dictator who doesn’t listen and is ignorant of the issues.

“…what I told (Special Envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell) is start by listening, because all too often the 
United States starts by dictating — in the past on some of these issues –and we don’t always know all the factors that are involved.”

It’s all down hill from there, with President Obama later implying that the United States hasn’t been respectful in its treatment of the Muslim world:

“Now, my job is to communicate the fact that the United States has a stake in the well-being of the Muslim world that the language we use has to be a language of respect.”

He also implied that the American people have a prejudiced view of Muslims, owing to the attacks of September 11, and therefore do not understand the Muslim world.

“…my job is to communicate to the American people that the Muslim world is filled with extraordinary people who simply want to live their lives and see their children live better lives.”

But what should be of utmost concern to Americans is the way Obama redefined the priorities of the President:

“And I think that what you will see over the next several years is that I’m not going to agree with everything that some Muslim leader may say, or what’s on a television station in the Arab world — but I think that what you’ll see is somebody who is listening, who is respectful, and who is trying to promote the interests not just of the United States, but also ordinary people who right now are suffering from poverty and a lack of opportunity. I want to make sure that I’m speaking to them, as well.”

Obama believes that equal to the interests of the United States, the president must also promote the interests of “ordinary people” in the Muslim world. This is a radical departure from the president’s oath to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.” The President isn’t the president of the world, or even limited constituencies within the world. He is President of the United States and nothing is equal to his constitutional responsibilities to the people of this country.

President Obama seems to think himself uniquely qualified to address the Muslim world because he has lived among them:

“I have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries…the largest one, Indonesia.”

Some have even questioned whether or not he is one of them. When his Muslim father enrolled him in school in Indonesia he recorded Barack’s religion as “Islam.” In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos during the campaign Obama referred to “my Muslim faith.” The media wrote it off as “a slip of the tongue.”

Throughout his campaign for president Obama insisted that he was a Christian, and the American people took him at his word. But so what if President Obama really is a Muslim? America is a pluralistic society that guarantees the freedom of religion as a fundamental right. The “so what” may have just been answered in this interview.

After hearing the American president speak in negative tones about his country to the largest Arab television audience in the world, it is fair to ask whether or not this president sees protecting the interests of his country as his first priority or those of his homogeneity.

Is it possible that Obama’s haste to speak with the Muslim world has more to do with his affinity with them than it does America’s supposed marred image among them? The Al-Arabiya interview leaves one wondering if Obama’s foreign policy isn’t influenced by his view that it is he and Muslims against the United States.

Pete Wehner on the ‘Obama Phenomenon’

Every conservative in the United States is scratching their head trying to figure out what exactly it is that makes Barack Obama so appealing. Obama is responsible for no significant legislation, no heroic actions, no tough decisions, and yet school districts are naming schools for him!

In a well executed essay, Pete Wehner at Commentary Magazine has  deftly quantified several attributes possessed by President Obama that make even some conservatives wish they had voted for him even though they disagree with his ideology. Wehner reorients us to the fact that while Obama is popular, his popularity is based not on anything he has accomplished, but rather aesthetics and the cult of personality which has been fueled by a star-struck media:

Still, there is something else which explains, I think, Obama’s appeal. For one thing, he is an extraordinary political talent, something some of us recognized back in 2007. He comes across as self-possessed, unflappable, hip, stylish. He also has an appealing cast of mind, seemingly reasonable, intelligent, detached, and serious.

These things are not unimportant. But Obama’s appeal, while widespread, is largely aesthetic and personality-based. This explains why a somewhat unsettling cult of personality has arisen around Obama. His appeal is not rooted in ideas or political philosophy or governing achievements; indeed, it is not grounded in any acts of governance. Yet some people already speak of him as a Lincolnian and Messiah-like figure.

But precisely because this appeal is largely aesthetic rather than substantive, because it is not grounded in things deep or permanent, its durability is limited. Reality will intrude. A million watt smile, fashionable sunglasses, and a nice jump shot are fine – I wish I possessed each of them – but one can confidently assume that Kim Jong Il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Hassan Nasrallah, and Hugo Chavez are immune to their charms. Inflation, deflation, and unemployment will not be determined by the eloquence of Obama’s rhetoric, the dinners he attends, or the columnists and reporters he seduces.