Between Obama's Ego Explosion and Americans Wanting to Drill--69 percent!--John McCain suddenly looks more like a winner (despite himself).

The Washington Post reports: In his closed door meeting with House Democrats this evening, presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama... concluded, "this is the moment, as Nancy [Pelosi] noted, that the world is waiting for."

The 200,000 souls who thronged to his speech in Berlin came not just for him, he told the enthralled audience of congressional representatives.

"I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions," he said.

Air sickness bag, anyone?

Is this the end of Obama? I'm serious. An ego this OUT OF CONTROL just isn't electable.

...the top ten "public intellectuals" in the world are Muslims?

That's what Foreign Policy magazine determined, having turned its decision over to an Internet poll in which over 500,000 voters participated in just four weeks.

FP explains:

For example, a number of intellectuals—including Aitzaz Ahsan, Noam Chomsky, Michael Ignatieff, and Amr Khaled—mounted voting drives by promoting the list on their Web sites. Others issued press releases or gave interviews to local newspapers. Press coverage profiling these intellectuals appeared around the world, with stories running in Canada, India, Indonesia, Qatar, Spain, and elsewhere. No one spread the word as effectively as the man who tops the list. In early May, the Top 100 list was mentioned on the front page of Zaman, a Turkish daily newspaper closely aligned with Islamic scholar Fethullah Gülen....

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All in a day's work: The indefatigable Robert Spencer, far from shrinking from, or even just ignoring the personal attack--"Spencer hates Muslims"--transforms it into an inspirational object lesson on distractingly deceptive smear tactics.

From the ultimate point of Spencer's post:

3. In saying "Spencer hates Muslims," [Grover] Norquist does what he has done for years. [Frank] Gaffney says in his article that Norquist "made repeated ad hominem attacks on Fox TV and elsewhere against me and anyone else (including noted experts like Daniel Pipes and Steve Emerson) who dared to warn about the dangers of Islamism. More often than not, he portrayed such warnings as bigoted, racist denunciations of all Muslims."

The bottom line on that, however, is that even if Pipes and Emerson and Gaffney and I really did hate Muslims, that wouldn't establish a thing about the Islamic supremacist agenda, or about how Grover Norquist has helped to push that agenda forward. If we really did hate Muslims, would that mean that Grover Norquist has not enabled Islamic supremacists to gain access to the highest levels of the U.S. government? As common as this "hate" charge is, it is just a red herring, a diversion from the genuine issues.

...

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When is the world gonna wise up and see the crocodile in the Arab tears for the "Palestinian people"? It's all just another way to bleed the West.

From the Washington Post report on the 19 out of 22 Arab nations who have not made good on their pledges to the Palestian Authority (even as the US and the Eu strap themselves to pour money over the PA):

Out of 22 Arab nations that made pledges, only three -- Algeria, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates -- have contributed funds this year, while oil-rich countries such as Libya, Kuwait and Qatar have sent nothing and still owe the Palestinian government more than $700 million in past-due pledges.

The...

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Last month, I highlighted the confusion of our government, which, in its effort to stop the insidious cultivation of Afghan opium, has, for example, been issuing sharia-compliant micro-loans to Afghan farmers NOT to grow opium poppies, even as it has been ordering the military to turn a blind eye to such poppy cultivation. Meanwhile, the poisonous harvest continues to expand across the country, thus enriching and funding the Taliban (not to mention elements of the Afghan government)--who, of course, our military is supposed to be defeating.

Yesterday's New York Times Magazine carries a lucid and sobering explanation of how and why our policy is such a shambles. It is by Thomas Schweich, a former Bush administration counternarcotics official, and it offers further proof of how...

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From The New York Times:

  

Dear Parents: Please Relax, It’s Just Camp

By TINA KELLEY



HONESDALE, Pa. — A dozen 9-year-old girls in jelly-bean-colored bathing suits were learning the crawl at Lake Bryn Mawr Camp one recent morning as older girls in yellow and green camp uniforms practiced soccer, fused glass in the art studio or tried out the climbing wall.

Their parents, meanwhile, were bombarding the camp with calls: one wanted help arranging private guitar lessons for her daughter, another did not like the sound of her child’s voice during a recent conversation, and a third needed to know — preferably today — which of her daughter’s four varieties of vitamins had run out. All before lunch.

...

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Obama in Berlin sure looked like a rock concert, although most of the media didn't mention why: It was a rock concert. That is, before Obama took the stage, two popular German acts performed free for the incredible (shrinking?) crowd.

This week's column.

A screen classic of political satire is The Great McGinty, the first movie American jewel Preston Sturgess both wrote and directed (famously selling the screenplay to Paramount for $10 even as he was the highest-paid Hollywood writer on the condition that he be allowed to direct).  Brian Donlevy  (left) plays the improbable political sensation and Akim Tamiroff (right) plays his string-pulling political boss. Take a look at it and see if maybe, just maybe, it reminds you of somebody's bombastically cynical political journey to world citizenship in Berlin... minus the laughs.

Two perceptive pieces that probe where the rest of the media skim by:

One is by Andy McCarthy, who takes a closer look at the nature of the Iraqi people--and the ally-potential of Iraq--if it is considered good politics in Iraq for Iraqi Prime  Minister Nouri al-Maliki to rail, quietly enough, against a continued US presence in Iraq, while seeking prosecution privileges against US servicemen for "crimes committed by U.S. soldiers against our population," as he told Der Spiegel. I have felt similar  unease for some time.

...

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Michelle Malkin instantly saw (above) what was happening during  Oba-messiah's pre-dawn photo-op at Jerusalem's Western Wall: The ultimate in campaign flim flam. Will American Jews--a key to Florida, for example--fall for this?  

This is the poster officially commemorating the 43rd anniversary of  Mahmoud Abbas' Fatah party--the same party Barack Obama, taking a page, of course, from the Bush administration, yesterday rewarded with a visit for its "secular" moderation.

The symbolism in the poster is none too subtle: Israel and the territories known as the Palestinian Authority are draped in their entirety in a Palestinian keffiyeh scarf--to the obvious satisfaction of arch-terrorist Arafat depicted in the middle. Just in case there was any doubt about the nature of the struggle, a Kalishnikov stands at the ready. As the Jerusalem Post reported, the entire emblem "is in violation of Fatah's declared policy, which envisions an independent...

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Jeffrey Imm brings us up to date on Rep. Pete Hoekstra's attempts to carve out a PC-free Intelligence Zone; namely, his legislative efforts to shield our intelligence agencies from the "suggested" "terror lexicon" promoted--incredibly, suicidally--by the Department of Homeland Security, the National Counter Terrorism Center, and the State Department. This is the same lexicon I have written about (among other places, here) that bars any and all mention of Islam, jihad, caliphate, Islamic, Islamist, Islamofascist, Islamojihadofascistcaliphate....etc., from discussions of same.  

After going down to defeat in May, Congressman Hoekstra's "amendement  to bar the use of intelligence funding for such "terror lexicon" measures"  passed last week by the margin...

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Today's syndicated column is drawn from my recent interview with Oskar Freysinger, a local leader of the Swiss People's Party-- much in the news now for its proposal to ban minarets in Switzerland. I'll have more to say on the subject and the man, but for now, "A Swiss `Extremist' Against Islamic Law":

In the Alps, Switzerland--

“Explain the minaret ban,” I asked.

I was sitting in the side room of a house, overlooking a flat plot somewhat larger than the trampoline outside. Beyond that trampoline, still visible in the evening light, rose the Swiss Alps. Across the table, Oskar Freysinger sat poised to address my query over some cups of espresso, speaking as a  local leader of the Swiss People’s Party.     Or perhaps I should say—a local leader of the “extremist,” “bigoted” and “xenophobic” Swiss People’s Party. That’s how this largest political party...

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Love the fatuous imperiousness (below), typical of the comfy totalitarian tendencies of EU bureacrats who live to speak and think for us masses. From John Bruton, who is supposed to be EU ambassador to the US—but has any one of us he’s speaking for ever met the guy? Americans I have met on both sides of the political aisle and in business and academic life are all baffled by the decision that the Irish electorate took-- Clearly, the ambassador should get out more. --to reject the Lisbon Treaty, which was signed by the Irish Government on their behalf. Well, gee, isn't that just magnanimous of the Irish government to sign a treaty on the electorate's behalf--without consulting them, even though a referendum on such treaties is required by Ireland's constitution (hence the pesky No vote). […] The entire mainstream of political, strategic and economic thinking - both in the Republican Party and in the Democratic Party - is strongly favourable to a strong European Union....

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Reuters this week salutes the one man, the only man, who, against all odds, perservered and stood tall and brought down the Berlin Wall.

Than man is...Bruce Springsteen.

Understandably enough, such rockin' twaddle reduced Media Busters to indignant sputtering. But this child's version of history is nothing new. Back in 2003, then-Hungarian ambassador to the US Andres Simonyi delivered a speech at the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame praising rock as "a decisive factor" in the Cold War--namely, the US triumph over the USSR in the Cold War. More recently, Tom Stoppard has dramatized this theme of rock liberation in a new play. Now, Reuters is comemmorating the 20th anniversary...

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From Press TV, via Islam in Europe, comes the following headline--and it's not one you read every day (or ever):

"ITALY: MOSQUES MUST RECOGNIZE ISRAEL"

Indeed, it's an apt headline, describing a bona fide and boffo story from the Italian news agency Il Tempo reporting that European Affairs Minister Andrea Rochi has actually called for action requiring that "mosque supervisors [in Italy] recognize Israel. Not only that, Rochi said, We must force those who do not recognize Israel to leave the mosques.

Not sure how he'll put that one over, but bravissimo,  Minister Rochi, for the call to action.

But look at the Press TV lead:

Italy may take its discriminatory practices to a new level, calling for measures to make mosque leaders quit unless they recognize Israel.

Italy's discriminatory" practices? Mosque leaders who fail to recognize Israel clearly recognize something else: the absence--the eradication--of...

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This week's column about Barack Obama, the "Riefenstahl Strategy," channeling JFK, and signifying nothing at the Brandenburg Gate. 

Behold the poisonous and misleading headline in this London Timesonline article about democracy in action in Switzerland, where a petition calling for a ban on minarets launched by the anti-Islamization Swiss People's Party (SVP) has garnered roughly 115,000 signatures, thus triggering a national referendum.

"Racism row in Switzerland over minaret ban referendum"

Let me tell you something: This "row" has nothing to do with "racism"--an  ideology society understands as a hard-eyed bigotry of an unfounded and particularly nasty nature based on superfluous variations in the human race. Perceived in this way, the minaret ban referendum referred to in the headline is a demonstration of a pointless prejudice against another race for no reason--in this instance, for no reason other than the...

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Look at them: On the left is Abdalla Salem El-Badri, the OPEC secretary general, or pirate-in-chief. On the right is Iran's thug-in-chief  Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (Dunno who the guy in the middle is.) This is a picture from a meeting in April, and you can be sure they are up to no good.  Need proof? Read the story from the International Herald Tribune below.

The headline is: "OPEC warns against military conflict with Iran." And if your first reaction is who the hell do they think they are, you are a red-blooded American who should write, call and collar your congressman and ask them the $64 MIllion Dollars a Gallon Question: When are we gonna drill?

By James Kanter Thursday, July 10, 2008 VIENNA: The head of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries warned Thursday that oil prices would see an "unlimited" increase...

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Foreign territory.

Headlines from Holland:

Dutch Govt Defends Jordan

Poll: [Dutch] Govt Should Complain to Jordan on Wilders Prosecution

                                           Happy Fourth of July  

The most senior judge in England--Lord Chief Justice Lord Phillips (oh, please)--tonight gave his most Lordly, Chief and Just blessing to the use of   sharia law to resolve disputes among Muslims.

Another reason to be glad we declared independence.

Kathryn Lopez' Q&A with me this week at NRO probes places in The Death of the Grown-Up (the second, culminating half of the book) that the majority of reviewers ignored--from John Leo in the Wall Street Journal on pub date last August to Midge Decter in The Claremont Review this winter, with many in between. Whatever the reason (didn't read, didn't want to read), the debate  over political correctness, infantilization and how they relate both to each other and to our woeful responses to Islam and Islamization was never joined.  Here  are Kathryn's excellent questions  on the subject and my response.

Lopez: What is the real culture war? West: “The real culture war” is the reason I wrote this book. We are in the middle of it, whether we know it or not. Recall the academic “culture wars” of the 1980s and 1990s — a struggle that was, in large part, a war over cultural identity. Were we going to remain heirs...

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This Fourth of July, light a firecracker for Geert Wilders--a true son of liberty.

From today's column:

THE HAGUE, The Netherlands -- Having run the polite-but-grim gauntlet of Dutch government security to gain access to Geert Wilders, I finally understood what the 24-hour security requirements of the man's continued existence really mean: To make the survival of Western-style liberty in the Netherlands his political cause, this Dutch parliamentarian has to live under high-tech lock and key. This stunning paradox, with no end in sight, illustrates how far political freedom in the West has already eroded. Think of it: For writing about the repressive ideology of Islam, for arguing against the inequities...

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Jordan, trying to extend the reach of sharia (Islamic law)  from the umma to  the West, is actually bringing criminal "FItna"-related charges against Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders (whom I interviewed on my travels  for this week's column to come). Alas, the Dutch government isn't reacting with the kind of "How dare you?" statecraft to stop this overreaching outrage in its tracks. So far, instead of setting off a loudly public round of righteous indignation and contempt, the Dutch government is promising a  "diplomatic" response, and hasn't even summoned the Jordanian ambassador.

First, let's stop and consider  what "justice" in Jordan means:

"Criminal" charges for freedom of...

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...Kathryn Lopez at National Review Online.

From the London Telegraph:



 

A police force has apologised to Islamic leaders for the "offensive" postcard advertising a new non-emergency telephone number, which shows a six-month-old trainee police dog named Rebel.

The German shepherd puppy has proved hugely popular with the public, hundreds of who have logged on to the force's website to read his online training diary.

But some Muslims in the Dundee area have reportedly been upset by the image because they consider dogs to be "ritually unclean", while shopkeepers have refused to display the advert.

Tayside Police have admitted they should have consulted their 'diversity' officers before issuing the cards, but critics argued their apology was unnecessary.

...

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One question I was asked in Europe recently was why the US doesn't appear to suffer from the same Islam-related friction currently threatening social cohesion in European cities. We don't see car-be-ques blazing in American cities; nor  we seem to battle over burqas with quite the same intensity. As for the threat of Islamic terrorism, the perception, despite 9/11, is a low-profile one. Do we have a better integrated Islamic population? Is there less strife due to a possibly higher, on average, rate of education among American Muslims vs. their European co-religionists?  Clearly, the consensus is that  Islam in America is something quite different from Islam in Europe.

To be sure, some Europeans have become far more acutely aware of the stark differences between Islamic and Western law and culture than most Americans. And they even have politicians bold enough to discuss these differences--something...

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