Israeli Prime Minister Makes Case on Iran to U.S. Voters
by The Associated Press
September 16, 2012
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a direct appeal to American voters on Sunday to elect a president willing to draw a "red line" with Iran, comparing Tehran's nuclear program to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and reminding Americans of the devastating repercussions of failed intelligence.
His remarks were an impassioned election-season plea from a world leader who insists he doesn't want to insert himself into U.S. politics and hasn't endorsed either candidate. But visibly frustrated by U.S. policy under President Barack Obama, the hawkish Israeli leader took advantage of the week's focus on unrest across the Muslim world and America's time-honored tradition of the Sunday television talk shows to appeal to Americans headed to the polls in less than two months.
Tehran claims its nuclear program is peaceful. Netanyahu said the U.S. would be foolish to believe that, using football metaphors and citing example of past terrorist attacks on U.S. soil to appeal to his American audience.
"It's like Timothy McVeigh walking into a shop in Oklahoma City and saying, 'I'd like to tend my garden. I'd like to buy some fertilizer ... Come on. We know that they're working on a weapon,'" Netanyahu said.
The past week, Netanyahu has called on Obama and other world leaders to state clearly at what point Iran would face a military attack. But Obama and his top aides, who repeatedly say all options remain on the table, have pointed to shared U.S.-Israeli intelligence that suggests Iran hasn't decided yet whether to build a bomb despite pursing the technology and that there would be time for action beyond toughened sanctions already in place.
Netanyahu disagrees, estimating that Iran is about six months away from having most of the enriched uranium it needs and warning that letting them reach the "goal line" would have disastrous consequences.
Read more: http://goo.gl/2aYR3
TOWNHALL
The Liberal National Media Admittedly "Culture of Like Minds"
by Lamar Smith
September 16, 2012
The New York Times Public Editor Arthur Brisbane gave us insight into the Times’ liberal slant in his final column after two years with the newspaper. He criticizes the Times for being “powerfully shaped by a culture of like minds.” The members of the liberal national media are surrounded by others who share their beliefs and political prejudices. This one-sided worldview leads to biased reporting that favors their views.
Which way do the newspapers and many news outlets lean politically? Many Americans already know the answer to this. Brisbane continues that “across the paper’s many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism…that this worldview virtually bleeds though the fabric of the Times.” He then uses issues such as gay marriage and the Occupy Wall Street movement as examples of this, which he states “seem to almost erupt in the Times, overloved and undermanaged, more like causes than news subjects.”
This is not breaking news. Eight years ago, the very first public editor of the Times, Daniel Okrent, wrote a column about the political leaning of the newspaper. Okrent agreed that a tone of “implicit advocacy” was apparent in the newspaper on social issues such as “gay rights, gun control, abortion and environmental regulation, among others.”
Politico’s Executive Editor Jim VandeHei also admitted to the media’s bias. In his analysis of the recent media coverage of the political arena he stated, “the mainstream media tends to be quite smitten with the Obamas.” The liberal media’s bias is becoming so apparent that prominent members of the media can no longer defend the media’s impartiality. Even those who are notoriously seen as unapologetically biased like CNN’s Soledad O’Brien don’t deny the fact that bias in the national liberal media is out of control. She recently cited the administration for its tactics against Republican ideas for Medicare reform by pointing out their strategy amounts to a scare tactic aimed at seniors.
If the media were to be truly impartial, it would have reported more widely how the deficit just surpassed a historic $16 trillion. It would have reported that President Obama’s budget was voted down by every single member of the Senate on both sides of the aisle. It would have reported that the auto bailout of GM and Chrysler cost taxpayers $25 billion, and that much of that money went to pay off auto unions.
Read more: http://goo.gl/npkIu
A Failed Presidency of Global Proportions
by Peter Heck
September 17, 2012
"These are the times that try men's souls." So wrote Thomas Paine in the midst of the darkest days of the American Revolution, when the fate of what would become the grandest experiment in human liberty hung in the balance. In recent weeks, those words have found renewed relevance as it becomes clear to this generation that the fate of our nation hangs in the balance again.
This much is now clear: on every count, domestic and foreign, the presidency of Barack Obama has failed.
Though pride or egotism may prevent many from acknowledging it, there is simply no rational argument left to plausibly deny this unfortunate reality. Whether it is the crumbling value of the dollar, the demise of an economy once in recovery into one now slouching towards another recession, the crushing debt that is spinning us dangerously close to the point of no return, a persistent unemployment crisis that has not been remotely remedied by the continued spending or quantitative easing of all our brilliant government central planners, or the skyrocketing energy costs that break the collective banks of American family budgets both at the gas tank and with the monthly heating bill, President Obama has been a domestic policy disaster. One of the worst ever.
On the foreign front, a similar conclusion was perhaps more difficult to discern until last week. To any informed observer, there was certainly always reason for concern as the terror obsessed Muslim Brotherhood stretched its influence and consolidated its power throughout the Middle East under the protective cloak of the Obama-approved label "Arab Spring." Prudent minds questioned how such a development could possibly end well for those who desire peace, and why despite being reassured by their president that "[t]he day I'm inaugurated, Muslim hostility will ease," America's approval rating in the Muslim world continued to plummet to new lows.
Moreover, watching the Obama team perform on the world stage, one couldn't help but come to the uncomfortable conclusion that we appeared to be running three or four different foreign policies concurrently. The only unifying element to President Obama's handling of foreign affairs was his stubborn insistence on apologizing profusely for America's role in the world. Only in prostrating himself and his nation before others did Obama's foreign policy find clarity and purpose. The self-proclaimed "citizen of the world" viewed this as the penitent way his United States could exorcise its imperialistic demons and assume a co-equal role among the brotherhood of all nations.
But beginning last week, the final verdict on that Obama Doctrine was rendered. The president's appeasement of radical Islam has only made the aggressor more aggressive. His weakness has not made us safer; it has imperiled us. Its fruits can be found in every bomb-shattered embassy, every fist-pumping mob dragging murdered American diplomats through the streets, every black al-Qaeda flag raised in triumph over the ashen remains of the stars and stripes.
And while his administration pitifully tries to pin responsibility for the anti-American violence on an insignificant and trivial homemade movie, how ironic that the very president who once campaigned against the saber-rattling swagger of George Bush that supposedly incited Muslim animosity has most likely brought on this current terror because of his own braggadocio. Not that radical Muslims have ever needed a good reason to attack the West, but if Barack Obama's strutting around like a peacock for 12 months boasting about how he ordered the raid to shoot Osama bin Laden in the skull doesn't provide it, I don't know what would.
Read more: http://goo.gl/i6EsC
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