Sharp Knife

COMMUNISTAS NO!

"Zelaya...was forced into exile in a June 28 military coup..."

That's how all the wire services put it--and it's exactly wrong on three counts.

1.) Zelaya wasn't forced to leave. He was given a choice: stay and face charges of treason for plotting a Presidente-for-Life dictatorship or flee like a drowning rat. He chose to flee.

2.) It wasn't the "military". It was members of all political parties including Zelaya's. It was Honduras' Congress, their Attorney General, their Supreme Court and yes, their military.

3.) It wasn't a "coup", either, by the usual definition as a violent and illegitimate seizure of power. In fact, it was the PREVENTION of a coup by Zelaya and his Communist pals Chavez, Castro and Ortega.

For years and years, we hectored and lectured the countries of Latin America to abandon their habit of the strongman, the caudillo, the man on the horse, the Peron on the balcony. To their great credit, the people of Honduras adopted a Constitutional provision banning even the attempt to return to the bad old days...and our own El Jefe Hussein administration sides with would-be dictator-on-the-balcony!

Don't listen to the moral flatulence emanating from Washington, D.C., mi amigos. Instead, listen to George Washington himself.

Ronald Reagan is still right: communism is still a "bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages are even now being written."

It's true in Tegucigulpa and it's even true in Georgetown.

THEY WON'T FIGHT TERRORISTS

but they'll fight those who do:

"Had [President Bush's Warrantless Surveillance Program] been in place before the [9/11] attacks, hijackers Khalid Almidhar and Nawaf Alhazmi almost certainly would have been identified and located."--Gen. Michael Hayden, former CIA Director and NSA Director

BEFORE GE WENT ROGUE

"Let us explore ways to ward off socialism, not by increasing government’s coercive power, but by increasing participation by the people in the ownership of our industrial machine."--Ronald Reagan

SURE DODGED A BULLET WITH THAT PALIN CHICK, EH?

America's Crazy Uncle has been spewing mores gaffes recently than any time since his "recovered memories" of growing up with Neil Kinnock in the grimy coal towns of Wales.

Joe Biden back when he was running against Barack Obama:

"[China has a] mortgage on our house because Bush mortgaged us to a $1 trillion to them. He is responsible for this. This is outrageous!"

Lileks captures Biden now that he works for Obama:

Speaking before the AARP, Biden aarped up a peculiar formulation to explain the need to borrow 3.2 bejillion dollars in order to transform the American health care system, preferably by next week. He said people ask him "What are you talking about, you're telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt? The answer is yes, 'I'm telling you.'" ...

Truer words have never been babbled.

Speaking of horselaughs, read Agent Steyn of the Feral Burro of Insemination.

And for real horsepower, P.J. O'Rourke's got it floored.

NOT PALIN!

As Mike noted, the Usual Deranged Suspects have compared Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska to Pres. Mahmood, the Hipster of Iran.

Personally, I think Palin has more in common with Obama;

Palin can see Russia from her house and Obama can see Russia in Bill Ayer's eyes. With Love.

But the real comparison is between O and A:

1.) Both men had Muslim fathers.
2.) Both men think they are presidents of a "large Muslim country".
3.) Both men have "experienced Islam on three continents".
4.) Both men head governments that have interfered in Iraq.
5.) Both men have experience in rigging elections.
6.) Both men think Iran has the right to build nuclear reactors.
7.) Both men believe that 'America alone' has no right to forbid Iran from having nuclear weapons.
8.) Both men believe that Jimmy Carter is just alright.
9.) Both men think Iranian terrorists have Miranda Rights.
10.) Both men went to Columbia University under murky circumstances.

UPDATE: New Bonus Reasons!

11.) Both men think "America has failed to live up to its ideals".
12.) Both men demand the closure of Gitmo and want those terrorists in the US.
13.) Both men view the UK with contempt.
14.) Both men hope for $10 per gallon gasoline.
15.) Both men are afraid to admit their secret support of gay marriage.

and 16.) Both men want America's missile defense budget slashed.

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-GIVER!

Before the glory curdles completely, a few impressions from the President's Mecca hajj-speech.

First, there is no need to restate this since Thiessen nailed it the first time:

"He failed to mention that from Iraq and Afghanistan, to Bosnia, Kosovo, and Kuwait, over the past two decades our military has done more to free Muslims from oppression than any power in history. In fact, there was not one word of praise for our troops and what they have done for the people of the Middle East in the entire address.

To the contrary, he threw the men and women of our military and our intelligence community under the bus when he declared, in front of a Muslim audience, that the attacks of 9/11 “led us to act contrary to our ideals.” On foreign soil, he accused our intelligence professionals who stopped the next 9/11 of committing torture — validating years of al-Qaeda propaganda. He talked about closing GTMO without any defense of the good men and women who run it — even though his own attorney general, Eric Holder, has admitted it was a model prison. If he was going to discuss these topics in the Middle East, he at least owed it to our troops and intelligence professionals to say what dozens of investigations have proven: that there was no systematic abuse of detainees at GTMO or anywhere else. Instead, Obama echoed al-Qaeda’s calumnies against them — and did so in a foreign land. This is unprecedented. It is shameful. And they deserve better."

Second, Bill Ayers and the rest of Obama's communist terror pals are still obsessed with how we helped the Shah of Iran overthrow a communist demagogue in 1953. That's what Pres. Odinga was talking about when he complained about the Cold War interference in "Muslim countries".

Evidently, when Ayers and Obama were sitting at adjoining desks for all those years at the Annenberg Foundation, writing autobiographies and laughing about wasting millions of Republican dollars on communist education reform, this was still a hot topic.

Move on, people! Get a life! Besides, I thought everything that happened before He was born was irrelevent. But, hey, if we're going to play Golden Oldies, then let me say this for the record: when Bill Ayers and wifey blew up those cops in San Francisco in 1970, it was not an attempt to spring Sirhan Sirhan from prison.

probably.

Thirdly, why is the president apologizing for European colonialism? Doesn't he know America was once a European colony? It was in all the papers. And there are different kinds of colonialism. For example, Egypt was once a Christian nation...until Mohammed colonized it at the point of a sword. Some Saudis are funding the Wahabbist colonization of Africa. What exactly does He think Darfur is?

Mark Steyn's take:

Rich [Lowry] thought that the president succeeded in his principal task: "Fundamentally, Obama's goal was to tell the Muslim world, 'We respect and value you, your religion and your civilization, and only ask that you don't hate us and murder us in return.'" But those terms are too narrow.

You don't have to murder a guy if he preemptively surrenders. And you don't even have to hate him if you're too busy despising him. The savvier Muslim potentates have no desire to be sitting in a smelly cave in the Hindu Kush, sharing a latrine with a dozen half-witted goatherds while plotting how to blow up the Empire State Building. Nevertheless, they share key goals with the cave dwellers – including the wish to expand the boundaries of "the Muslim world" and (as in the anti-blasphemy push at the U.N.) to place Islam, globally, beyond criticism. The nonterrorist advance of Islam is a significant challenge to Western notions of liberty and pluralism.

Once Obama moved on from the more generalized Islamoschmoozing to the details, the subtext – the absence of American will – became explicit. He used the cover of multilateralism and moral equivalence to communicate, consistently, American weakness: "No single nation should pick and choose which nations hold nuclear weapons."

Even when Obama says something good, it is undermined by his other policies. He says that his first job is to protect Americans. But what if there is a nuclear threat to America, but no other nations will stand with us because they have been co-opted or coerced? If he says we can't "pick and choose" for ourselves, then his first job is no longer to protect America, but to get France's permission. That's why I say "Impeach Now!" and avoid the Christmas/Winter Solstice/Kwanzaa/Eid rush.

Speaking of "preemptively surrendering", I hope you read this post on Preemptive Self-Stockholming. It shows what happens to a nation of Human Shields.

Before he left America on his trip, President Otto Biography said:

If I had a Muslim summit, I think that I can speak credibly to them about the fact that I respect their culture, that I understand their religion, that I have lived in a Muslim country, and as a consequence I know it is possible to reconcile Islam with modernity and respect for human rights and a rejection of violence. And I think I can speak with added credibility.

The "I"'s have it; that's 53 uses of the first-person in one paragraph. I-man thinks he can throw Bush, the CIA, the military, the USA and Western Civ under the bus while catering to every Muslim pathology of the last thousand years--including equating the Holocaust with the Palestinian's self-poisoning. And somehow, Obama will hover above it all, as lesser mortals below struggle to fulfill His vision. It would be merely assinine if it wasn't so dangerous.

Steyn closes:

A great power can survive a lot of things, but not "a mediocrity of spirit." A wealthy nation living on the accumulated cultural capital of a glorious past can dodge its rendezvous with fate, but only for a while. That sound you heard in Cairo is the tingy ping of a hollow superpower.

But only when it is led by a Hollow Superman.