The pre-modern Middle East and the postmodern west don’t mix, Mr. President.
He has delusions on many subjects.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
An Open Letter To Barack Obama And Hillary Clinton
“I demand that you arrest me.”
My film is likely to be inspired by a fascinating lecture I heard by the very Rushdie during which the novelist, who read Islamic history at Cambridge, explained the origins of that faith. He said it began with Mohammed’s ruthless and violent battle with the mother cults that then controlled Medina over local trade routes. It was about money then, but, as I will show in my movie, that war evolved into a kind of perpetual “War on Women” that has been waged by Islam since.
Interesting, huh? Good cinema. Action, adventure, sex (matriarchy vs. ultra-patriarchy), even a little meaty conversation like Lawrence of Arabia.
Don’t let me do it. There’s only one “War on Women” and you know it — the one your fellow Democrats ascribe to Mitt Romney and company. I wouldn’t want to undermine that.
So stop me, Hillary, before I write. The Bill of Rights is a fusty old document anyway, obviously subject to revision by an UN-approved committee of trans-global multi-culturalists.
Censor me all you want. I’m ready. I don’t want to cause any international incidents. I have enough sleepless nights as is.
But you will excuse me if, in the process, I think of you as the deepest of reactionaries. I knew you were a big time liar when you blamed the “right-wing conspiracy” for your husband’s obvious serial adultery. That was nothing compared to this, however. By blaming filmmakers, even the most amateurish ones, for the murderous actions of fanatical Islamists, you have placed yourself in complete opposition to everything our country ever stood for and to the essence of the U.S. Constitution.
They have no idea how they’re simply encouraging the enemy.
The Apollo Program
The forgotten opposition. Most people don’t realize how close it came to not happening, which is why they foolishly insist on trying to do it again. Not also the implicit but false assumption that Apollo (and human spaceflight in general) was about science. It wasn’t then, and it isn’t now.
Behold The Power Of Mitt Romney
He singlehandedly prevented the media from properly covering Barack Obama’s pooch screwing.
Just amazing. With that kind of influence over the press, he should be a shoe in for election.
The First Amendment
It seems to have created a huge speed bump when Obama threw it under the bus.
Not that this is anything new, of course.
[Saturday morning update]
Kirsten Powers: “Mr. President, stop blaming the victim.”
Less than two months for our opportunity to make this constitution contempting, lawless administration history.
Space And The Election
Andrew Moseman (my editor at Popular Mechanics) interviews Jonathan Card of the Space Frontier Foundation.
President Strawman
I’m listening to Paul Ryan take it to him at the Heritage Foundation. I’d like to see him debate Obama instead of Biden. The Biden debate will probably have to be called for a mercy rule.
[Update early afternoon]
Katrina Trinko has some of the transcript:
Say things like this, and our opponents will quickly accuse you of being, quote, “anti-government.” President Obama frames the debate this way because, here again, it’s the only kind of debate he can win – against straw-man arguments.
No politician is more skilled at striking heroic poses against imaginary adversaries. Nobody is better at rebuking nonexistent opinions. Barack Obama does this all the time, and in this campaign we are calling him on it.
The President is given to lectures on all that we owe to government, as if anyone who opposes his reckless expansion of federal power is guilty of ingratitude and rank individualism.
More at the link.
[Bumped]
The Arab Street And The Mainstream Media
They are both shameful and shameless.
Libya Is Not Just A Tragedy
It’s just part of the larger war:
What are the Libyan government’s options? It can try to appease the opposition by more Islam. But that won’t work really. It can try to appease the opposition by distancing itself from the United States, but given its weakness that won’t work. And it can try to repress the rebels, but since it cannot depend on its own military forces — which are riddled with jihadists — that won’t work either.
That is the real lesson in Libya. For once, Obama took sides against the revolutionary Islamists. We are seeing in Egypt and the Gaza Strip that appeasement doesn’t work; we are seeing in Libya that engaging in conflict has its high costs, too. Obama claims to have “liberated” Libya, but to many Libyans he has enslaved it to infidels.
So what next? American military aid to the Libyan government and U.S. military advisors? An endless war against the jihadists? And what if the government in Libya, which is pretty fragile and cannot fully depend on its own military, starts to fall? In Somalia, the local al-Qaeda branch didn’t win only because Ethiopia and other African nations sent in thousands of troops. In Bahrain — a complicated situation in which there is a mistreated Shia population whose opposition has both moderates and radicals — the government was only saved by Saudi troops and against the will of the White House.
Treating what has happened in Libya as an isolated tragedy misses the point. Viewing it as generalized proof of Obama’s terrible policy doesn’t get us to the solution. There is a battle going on in the Middle East that will continue for decades. Obama has largely helped the enemy side. In Libya, while he gave some help to the Islamists, his basic policy supported the moderates for once. Now the price must be paid or one more country will fall to revolutionary Islamist rule and U.S. influence and credibility will decline even further.
This is a war, not a misunderstanding. It is a battle of ideologies and a struggle for control of state power, not hurt feelings over some obscure video.
And it’s a war that the administration pretends doesn’t exist, and (like all foreign wars) certainly doesn’t want to win.
Read all, it also has a well-justified criticism of our anti-Israel foreign service.
[Update a while later]
Mark Steyn: An act of war, not a movie protest.
The JournoList
…lives on.
I know it’s old news now, but I was busy earlier in the week. I’d like to know the name of every reporter Obama campaign surrogate involved.