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Tuesday, July 8, 2014
Pamela Geller, WND Column: ‘Obama is on the side of jihadists every time’
Pamela Geller / Atlas ShrugsStay on top of what’s really happening. Follow me on Twitter here. Like me on Facebook here.
DEFENDING THE WEST
3 dead Jewish schoolboys and an impending war
Exclusive: Pamela Geller declares, ‘Obama is on the side of jihadists every time’
The post-American world under the post-American president continues to descend into chaos and savagery. Palestinian Islamic jihadists in Gaza kidnapped and murdered three Jewish schoolboys in cold blood, and the predictable reaction came from the White House: Barack Obama told the Israelis not to do anything that would “destabilize the situation.”
Do not destabilize, says the Hamas supporter.
Obama destabilized the situation when his administration said it would work with the terrorist group Hamas. Days later, the three Jewish schoolboys were kidnapped and murdered in cold blood. And Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said that Hamas will pay for these murders.
Obama destabilized the situation when he supported the terrorist Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt.
Obama destabilized the situation when he supported al-Qaida’s takeover in Libya.
Obama destabilized the situation when he supported al-Qaida groups like ISIS in Syria.
Obama destabilized the situation when he supported a Taliban takeover in Afghanistan.
Obama destabilized the situation when he supported a complete pullout of U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
Obama destabilized the situation when his administration said that Boko Haram had legitimate...
Iran: “We will never allow Netanyahu’s dreams about the disintegration of Iraq and the region to come true”
That
anyone, even the Iranian regime, could believe that Netanyahu and the
Israelis want to see Iraq engulfed in civil war, with Sunni jihadists
trying to reestablish the caliphate, only shows the strength and
persistence of anti-Semitic conspiracy paranoia. But as far as Islamic
supremacists are concerned, if something is going wrong, it must be the
Jews’ fault. It remains to be seen whether these are just empty words or
if the Iranians will actually back the weak Shi’ite regime in Iraq with
military force.
“Iran backs Maliki as Iraq PM but open to change,” AFP, July 6, 2014 (thanks to Reza):
Iran said Sunday it supports Nuri al-Maliki’s bid to stay on as Iraq’s premier but that it is ready to back any other candidate chosen by parliament in Baghdad.
Maliki’s “State of Law coalition won first place in the last legislative elections… (and) any decision that is taken in Iraq and has the support of parliament has Iran’s backing,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.
“If Mr Maliki is chosen as prime minister, we will work hard together. If another person is chosen by parliament, the Islamic Republic of Iran will also support them. It’s an internal affair for Iraq,” he said.
The Iraqi parliament is to convene on Tuesday to elect a speaker, president and prime minister.
Maliki, a Shiite, has been prime minister since 2006 and last week vowed to “never give up on” his quest for a third term, despite critics blaming him for steering the Shiite-majority country towards all-out sectarian war.
Shiite-dominated Iran has said it is willing to provide Iraq advice and military assistance in the fight with Sunni insurgents who overran large chunks of Iraqi territory last month and have now declared an Islamic caliphate.
However, Iran’s involvement in Iraq appears to be deepening, with the official IRNA news agency reporting on Saturday that an Iranian pilot had been killed while fighting to defend a Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra, north of Baghdad.
The report did not say whether the pilot was killed while flying sorties or fighting on the ground, but his death is thought to be Tehran’s first such military casualty since the fightback against the militants began.
The Islamic State (IS) offensive, which led Iraqi troops to abandon their posts, has emboldened Kurdish leaders to press for independence of their autonomous northern region.
Tehran opposes a break up of Iraq, denouncing it as an Israeli plot.
“We will never allow (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu’s dreams about the disintegration of Iraq and the region to come true,” Amir-Abdollahian said on Sunday.
He added that Iran had warned Iraq’s Kurdish leaders against separatism, saying it was “in nobody’s interest”.
Amir-Abdollahian also criticised the United States for doing “nothing concrete to fight against terrorism”.
“At best, the behaviour of the United States over the past three weeks regarding Iraq has been suspect. We see no need to cooperate or have talks with the United States about Iraq,” he said.
Turning to Tehran’s regional rival Riyadh, he said the “role of Saudi Arabia in the events of the region, including Syria and Iraq, is not positive.”
That
anyone, even the Iranian regime, could believe that Netanyahu and the
Israelis want to see Iraq engulfed in civil war, with Sunni jihadists
trying to reestablish the caliphate, only shows the strength and
persistence of anti-Semitic conspiracy paranoia. But as far as Islamic
supremacists are concerned, if something is going wrong, it must be the
Jews’ fault. It remains to be seen whether these are just empty words or
if the Iranians will actually back the weak Shi’ite regime in Iraq with
military force.“Iran backs Maliki as Iraq PM but open to change,” AFP, July 6, 2014 (thanks to Reza):
Iran said Sunday it supports Nuri al-Maliki’s bid to stay on as Iraq’s premier but that it is ready to back any other candidate chosen by parliament in Baghdad.
Maliki’s “State of Law coalition won first place in the last legislative elections… (and) any decision that is taken in Iraq and has the support of parliament has Iran’s backing,” said Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.
“If Mr Maliki is chosen as prime minister, we will work hard together. If another person is chosen by parliament, the Islamic Republic of Iran will also support them. It’s an internal affair for Iraq,” he said.
The Iraqi parliament is to convene on Tuesday to elect a speaker, president and prime minister.
Maliki, a Shiite, has been prime minister since 2006 and last week vowed to “never give up on” his quest for a third term, despite critics blaming him for steering the Shiite-majority country towards all-out sectarian war.
Shiite-dominated Iran has said it is willing to provide Iraq advice and military assistance in the fight with Sunni insurgents who overran large chunks of Iraqi territory last month and have now declared an Islamic caliphate.
However, Iran’s involvement in Iraq appears to be deepening, with the official IRNA news agency reporting on Saturday that an Iranian pilot had been killed while fighting to defend a Shiite shrine in the city of Samarra, north of Baghdad.
The report did not say whether the pilot was killed while flying sorties or fighting on the ground, but his death is thought to be Tehran’s first such military casualty since the fightback against the militants began.
The Islamic State (IS) offensive, which led Iraqi troops to abandon their posts, has emboldened Kurdish leaders to press for independence of their autonomous northern region.
Tehran opposes a break up of Iraq, denouncing it as an Israeli plot.
“We will never allow (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu’s dreams about the disintegration of Iraq and the region to come true,” Amir-Abdollahian said on Sunday.
He added that Iran had warned Iraq’s Kurdish leaders against separatism, saying it was “in nobody’s interest”.
Amir-Abdollahian also criticised the United States for doing “nothing concrete to fight against terrorism”.
“At best, the behaviour of the United States over the past three weeks regarding Iraq has been suspect. We see no need to cooperate or have talks with the United States about Iraq,” he said.
Turning to Tehran’s regional rival Riyadh, he said the “role of Saudi Arabia in the events of the region, including Syria and Iraq, is not positive.”
Obama’s Underhanded Immigration Overhaul In Full Swing As American Frustration Grows
THINKSTOCK
A recent Rasmussen poll discovered that 52 percent of Americans want the children shipped back to their home countries. Thirty-eight percent of respondents said that illegal immigrants who are allowed to stay should be thoroughly processed and vetted.
Among Americans polled, 53 percent said that countries like Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, where the most illegal immigrants are coming from, should reimburse U.S. taxpayers for “the cost of handling this situation.”
The July 6 poll also found that a strong majority of Americans throughout the country, 76 percent, are closely following reports of the immigration crises. Forty-six percent of those staying informed about the situation believe that the Obama Administration is to blame for the border crisis for having “encouraged this wave of illegal immigration.” The same percentage classifies Obama’s handling of the situation as “poor.” A paltry 28 percent said that the Obama Administration is doing a good job handling the immigration crisis.
The White House has worked in recent weeks to dispel rumors that the President is to blame for the border crisis.
But even if Obama is keen on attempting to quell the flood of illegal immigration now that the situation is poised to spiral out of control, his Democratic colleagues aren’t likely to help. Obama has denied that his policies have anything to do with the influx of illegal immigrants, blaming a 2008 law that has made it more difficult for the Department of Homeland Security to send some of the children back to their home countries.
Last week, the President asked Congress to reverse the legislation.
But Democrats are not likely to budge on even narrow changes to the Nation’s immigration policy. In particular, many on the left object to reversing the 2008 law, which was intended to inhibit human trafficking south of the border and which guarantees asylum to children who claim to be the victims of crime or abuse.
Obama’s tactic of blaming a George W. Bush-era law and his halfhearted attempt to reverse it, however, should be overshadowed by overall deportation statistics.
As the Los Angeles Times points out:
The number of immigrants under 18 who were deported or turned away at ports of entry fell from 8,143 in 2008, the last year of the George W. Bush administration, to 1,669 last year, according to Immigration and Customs Enforcement data released under a Freedom of Information Act request.
Similarly, about 600 minors were ordered deported each year from nonborder states a decade ago. Ninety-five were deported last year, records show, even as a flood of unaccompanied minors from Central America — five times more than two years earlier — began pouring across the Southwest border.
On June 2, the Palestinians
announced a new unity government, which included Hamas, an organization
designated by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist group.
In recent years it has averaged $500 million per year.
The report notes three major U.S. objectives of these funds: preventing terrorism against Israel from Hamas; fostering “stability, prosperity, and self-governance on the West Bank”; humanitarian aid.
When Hamas joined the Palestinian government on June 2, the United States recognized the new government and there was no indication that the substantial funding Palestinians get from American taxpayers would be impacted. Business as usual would continue.
It shouldn’t surprise that U.S. acceptance was seen as a green light for terror. Shortly thereafter, missiles started flying again from the Hamas-governed Gaza strip into Israel, and shortly after that, three teenage Israeli boys, one with dual American-Israeli citizenship, were kidnapped and murdered.
The response from America’s president to the kidnapping/murders was to convey American neutrality to an act of terror and to “urge all parties to refrain from steps that would further destabilize the situation.”
It should be clear to all that the world is spinning out of control and becoming an increasingly dangerous place because where there is supposed to be leadership from the leader of the free world there is now a vacuum.
Even independent of the inclusion of a designated terrorist organization in the Palestinian government, the neutral posture of the current American government toward the Palestinian Authority vis-a-vis Israel is quite incredible.
Freedom House is a non-partisan organization in Washington that rates nations around the world regarding freedom. Nations are rated either “free, partially free, or not free.”
Israel is rated “free” and on a scale of 1 – 7, where “1” is the highest rating, Israel is graded 1 on “political rights” and 2 on “civil liberties.”
The Palestinian government on the West Bank is rated “not free” and graded 6 on “political rights” and 5 on “civil liberties.”
If America insists on inserting itself in this dispute, then why does it convey neutrality between a nation that is indisputably free and a government that is not?
Among Israel’s population of 8 million live 1.6 million free Arab citizens. The current Palestinian regime, categorized as “non-free” by Freedom House, makes no pretense to aspiring to be free. Their condition for peace with Israel is purging any Jewish presence from areas they claim.
Christian Arabs are also under siege. The website of the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem notes “Under siege and without protection, the Christian population under Palestinian rule has dwindled with each passing year...Some 50 years ago the Palestinian Christian population stood at 15 percent but today it has dropped to 1.5 percent.”
A world in which America stands for nothing is a world that becomes exactly what it is becoming today – chaotic and dangerous.
Consider, in contrast, the words of President Reagan in his famous speech to the National Association of Evangelicals in 1983, where he called the Soviet Union an “evil empire”:
“There is sin and evil in the world, and we’re enjoined by Scripture and the Lord Jesus to oppose it with all our might…I urge you to beware the sin of pride …declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire…”
Sen. Rand Paul has introduced a bill to stop funding the Palestinian government.
Recall the words of 18th century British parliamentarian Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Congress, in contrast to the White House, should support Rand Paul and show there still are Americans that can identify evil and act.
Yet, another case could put the entire health care law back in the crosshairs. It’s still yet to be decided by the D.C. Court Of Appeals, but Halbig v. Burwell (formerly Sebelius) could place Obamacare’s constitutional fate back in the hands of the Supreme Court.
The issue deals with federal subsidies being given to individuals to help them buy insurance on an exchange (via Jonathan Turley):
The Halbig case challenges the massive federal subsidies in the form of tax credits made available to people with financial need who enroll in the program. In crafting the act, Congress created incentives for states to set up health insurance exchanges and disincentives for them to opt out. The law, for example, made the subsidies available only to those enrolled in insurance plans through exchanges "established by the state."
But despite that carrot — and to the great surprise of the administration — some 34 states opted not to establish their own exchanges, leaving it to the federal government to do so. This left the White House with a dilemma: If only those enrollees in states that created exchanges were eligible for subsidies, a huge pool of people would be unable to afford coverage, and the entire program would be in danger of collapse.
Indeed, the Halbig plaintiffs — individuals and small businesses in six states that didn't establish state exchanges — objected that, without the tax credits, they could have claimed exemption from the individual mandate penalty because they would be deemed unable to pay for the coverage. If the courts agree with them, the costs would go up in all 34 states that didn't establish state exchanges, and the resulting exemptions could lead to a mass exodus from Obamacare.Philip Klein at the Washington Examiner, who was present for oral arguments on the three-judge panel last March, noted that two judges’ decisions rested on partisan lines. Judge Harry Edwards, a Carter appointee, thought the challenge was disingenuous and a way to “gut” the law. Whereas Judge Raymond Randolph, an appointee of George H.W. Bush, said the Obama administration’s argument that Congress meant “established by the state” to mean the federal government was a “leap.”
Moreover, Judge Randolph shot down the “isolated phrase” angle the administration tried to take, noting that the phrase “established by the state” was used several times in the section in question.
The swing vote is Judge Thomas Griffith, a George W. Bush appointee that Obama voted to confirm in 2005. Klein said he asked questions that were critical of both sides arguing the case.
Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University professor, wrote in his op-ed for the Los Angeles Times cited above said that the D.C. Court of Appeals could view this case differently given the string of cases where the courts have checked Obama’s power. NLRB v. Canning is a notable example where the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the president’s recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board were unconstitutional in 2012.
So, what’s are the consequences if this decision ends up being another blow to the Obama administration? Klein wrote on June 24:
If the court rules against the Obama administration and the ruling stands, it would mean that individuals in states that defaulted to a federal exchange would no longer be eligible for subsidies. And in total, exchanges in 36 states were created at least in part through the federal government.
So, states opposed to Obamacare could simply refuse to set up a state exchange or to expand Medicaid. In those states, employers wouldn't be penalized for failing to offer qualifying insurance (which is triggered by workers seeking federal subsidies), meaning that anti-Obamacare states could become more attractive to businesses trying to get around the employer mandate.Conservatives and liberals might be heading for round two in the Supreme Court over Obamacare.
One could hope.
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