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A magazine in Tokyo is reporting that President Obama's summit with Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama was a frosty disaster, precipitated by incompetence on both sides and an entirely avoidable diplomatic slight to the Japanese side by Obama. The visit was abruptly re-scheduled, seriously inconveniencing the Emperor of Japan, as well as the Prime Minister, whose intricate schedules require meticulous planning and coordination. Japanese weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun cites an unnamed insider at the Foreign Ministry, who delivers a devastating account of not merely a failure to agree, but figurative slaps in the face of the rude president, delivered in retaliation....

This is the third article to appear on these pages from an IBD subscriber who lived in the Soviet Union until 1980. Click here to read the previous two articles. Whenever I speak about my experiences living in the USSR, my American friends respond that such things can never happen in a democracy like the United States. They don't understand why I am repulsed when I hear the president talk about "sacrificing for the collective good," which sounds so compassionate, as opposed to greedy capitalism. "Sacrifice for the collective good" is one of the founding principles of socialism, where the...

In direct contradiction to accusations that it is “dithering” or “wishy-washy,” the Obama Administration has acted forcefully to counter what it calls “the most serious and credible threat we face at this time.” It turns out that it is the rising popularity of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, as evidenced in record-breaking sales of her autobiographical book and the massive crowds that have attended her book-signing appearances, that has spurred a concerted effort at countermeasures from the Obama Administration. While Ms. Palin will still be permitted to go through with an appearance at the Army’s Fort Bragg in North Carolina,...

<snip>2.4 Diagnosis #4: The Attraction of Magnificent Academic Trusels. A "trusel" is an idea or a finding that is widely perceived to be true, but which is largely useless (or even of negative value). (The idea that a truth may lack value may be disturbing, but it is true, although it is not a trusel and probably will not be thought to be magnificent.) A "Magnificent Academic Trusel" (MAT) is a trusel that has been widely acknowledged for its intellectual content (explicitly or implicitly), but without a corresponding amount of attention being given to its utility or even to its...

In case you missed it, here is video of Part two of Sarah Palin's interview with Bill O'Reilly. Tonight, they focus on policy issues. Below is the first segment of tonight's Part 2 Interview. In the second part, not yet posted, Palin says bluntly that Obama's foreign policy is weak, citing the fact that Obama is "bowing to other world leaders." We'll post the rest of it once it is available . . . (VIDEO)

Beauty and the beast.....

Pure evil. As if the parents of special needs children don’t suffer enough. Dems will increase taxes on the parents of special needs children in their nationalized health care bill. LifeSite News reported: The statistics are scary when it comes to the percentage of unborn children born with special needs who become victims of abortion. One fiscal conservative group says the task for parents raising such children is made more difficult by extra taxes found in Harry Reid’s new Senate health care bill. The measure has already been condemned by pro-life groups and the Catholic bishops for its abortion funding...

However, despite the public appearance of a committed relationship most Europeans countries today, and some Jewish sects do not support the state of Israel and the European government is somewhat puzzled by the Americans protectionist attitude toward Israel. The common views outside the United States towards Israel is that they are an oppressor state — some go as far as declaring Israel a "terrorist" state, while others give Israel the benefit of the doubt by declaring "well, both sides are guilty, but Israel is stronger and should know better"

The Senate is set to vote Saturday night, right before the holiday, on a motion to proceed on its latest health care government take-over bill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is pushing for yet another weekend vote (commonplace now for the party of “transparency”) because he knows that the American people will be none too happy about the Democrats’ proposal the longer they have to look it over. A vote against the Democrats’ motion will help stop Obamacare before it gets any closer to becoming a reality. While this Saturday night vote might seem like a procedural matter, at the...

Small Business Tax & Toil By: Larry Walker, Jr. I have been contemplating all the blood, sweat, and tears shed by Small Business owners like me. Having been in business for the past 9 years, I have come to the realization that: I am paying a hell of a lot in Taxes (and government mandated fees), and I am feeling mighty under appreciated. The Federal Government, under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, chose to give a Social Security tax cut, the Making Work Pay Credit, to workers making under $75,000 per year. That's all well and...

Republican activist and free market think-tanker Grant Bosse formally declared his candidacy today in New Hampshire’s 00th Congressional District after news that the Obama administration has attributed a majority of the state’s stimulus jobs to that non-existent district. Bosse is in New Hampshire has only two congressional districts, neither of which are numbered “00.” “Even a fake district needs real leadership,” said Bosse while appearing on WGIR’s Charlie Sherman show on Friday morning. “The people overseeing the stimulus actually found more fake congressional districts than there are real congressional districts. So if we run in all 440 phantom congressional seats...

DISGUSTING: Despite legislation passed by Congress to make it possible to sue foreign governments that sponsor terrorism, in a filing in federal court, the Justice Department is arguing that giving the money to the victims "can have significant, detrimental impact on our foreign relations, as well as the reciprocal treatment of the United States and its extensive overseas property holdings."

“There’s no such thing as monsters.” We tell our kids that. The truth is that monsters are real. A real live monster might live next door to you, or across the street from your child’s school, even around the corner from your church. These monsters are called “Sex Offenders”, a label that is far too innocuous to convey the evil of those who have earned it. Somer Renee Thompson...Only one thing is known for certain: on the way home from school that fateful day, Somer met a monster face-to-face.

Surprisingly little attention has been paid to the crucial years Barack Obama spent growing up in Jakarta, Indonesia, from 1967 to 1971, ages 6 to 10 in his life. These formative years, when a child first spends significant time in the wider world beyond his family environment, must have taught him many lessons about America, some of them very unpleasant, given the particular situation of his family. It would have been brutally difficult for any child, including young Barry Soetoro as he was then known, to have been uprooted from Honolulu, where his mother raised him as a single mom...

National Academy of Title IX Malcolm A. Kline, November 20, 2009 As we’ve reported over and over again, no matter how unscientific their data, elites continue to insist that women are underrepresented in the sciences. Now, the national Academy of Sciences is publishing a whole reading list sure to tilt the playing field even further towards regulators idea of a Title IX utopia. NAS is even throwing in finger puppets of Marie Curie and George Washington Carver, two scientists who managed to achieve all that they did without the aid of the divisive rules. Among the titles that NAS is...

Title IX Expansions Bethany Stotts, November 20, 2009 During a November 10 press call on “Women Scientists and American Competitiveness,” speakers suggested that Title IX should be used to focus on “educational equity” and not just athletic equity. One speaker stressed, in particular, the importance of reaching out to federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National Institutes for Health (NIH), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the Department of Energy (DOE) for additional grant money. (Predoctoral women received 63% of the NIH’s awards in 2007, but only 25% of “competitive faculty grants” that same year, reports...

From Drudge: CABLE NEWS RACE NOV. 18, 2009 FOXNEWS HANNITY/PALIN 4,200,000 FOXNEWS O'REILLY 3,868,000 FOXNEWS BECK 2,512,000 FOXNEWS GRETA 2,383,000 FOXNEWS BAIER 2,235,000 FOXNEWS SHEP 1,980,000 MSNBC OLBERMANN 1,041,000 CNNHN GRACE 1,036,000 MSNBC MADDOW 957,000 CNN KING 835,000 MSNBC HARDBALL 625,000 CNN COOPER 611,000

Fat Studies On Display Bethany Stotts, November 19, 2009 Political correctness has run amok in the ivory tower. If some academics have their way, college students soon will be forced to vet themselves for not only subconscious racist, sexist and classist thoughts, but fatist ones as well. “In the tradition of critical race studies, queer studies, and women’s studies, fat studies is an interdisciplinary field of scholarship marked by an aggressive, consistent, rigorous critique of the negative assumptions, stereotypes, and stigmas placed on fat and the fat body,” write Sondra Solovay and Esther Rothblum in their most recent Chronicle Review...

Abstaining from Accuracy Malcolm A. Kline, November 19, 2009 In a classic case of missing the point, public health officials and their stenographers in the media are blaming the spread of sexually transmitted diseases on sex education that promotes abstinence. “American squeamishness about talking about sex has helped keep common sexually transmitted infections far too common, especially among vulnerable teens, U.S. researchers reported Monday,” Maggie Fox wrote in an article that Reuters distributed on November 16, 2009. “Latest statistics on chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis show the three highly treatable infections continue to spread in the United States.” Outside of activities...

Unions standing in the way of progress? I’m shocked, shocked I tell you! The Boston Herald reports that a plan that rewards teachers whose students receive passing grades on Advanced Placement tests — and offers incentives for the students, too — is, predictably, being opposed by the Boston Teachers Union.

The Washington Times is reporting that The Obama administration on Tuesday had Obama's National Security Council (NSC) take control of congressional briefings on the Fort Hood killings and asked Democratic leaders to delay a probe, as top Republicans said intelligence shortcomings blamed for failing to prevent the 9/11 attacks are re-emerging. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said that the NSC had taken over the briefings "due to the high visibility of the issues surrounding the tragic event at Fort Hood," and that Democratic leaders agreed to postpone any congressional action on the shootings. "This...

Sarah Palin supporters need to make sure every nursing home, hospital, and private school in Iowa gets a free copy of Going Rogue Today, we bought our copies of Going Rogue here in Chicago. Not knowing we were buying them, several friends bought extra copies when they bought theirs, and so we’re going to have extra books later tonight. Tomorrow, we are taking three of those to the assisted living centers/nursing homes here in Boystown to donate them to the little libraries they have there. Old people are the most dependable, regular voters out there…and they typically default vote Democrat....

WASILLA — Piper Palin missed most of her classes last week, but it’s OK. She brought notes. The 8-year-old daughter of Sarah Palin, along with 15-year-old sister Willow, joined the former Alaska governor in taping some interviews leading up to today’s release of Palin’s book, “Going Rogue: An American Life.” Perhaps the third-grader wanted more pull than just a note from a former governor and vice presidential candidate. So, after sitting in the front row while her mother was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey in Chicago on Wednesday, Piper asked the talk show host for a note excusing her from class,...

Lawmaker decries U.S. demand to halt Jewish construction - JERUSALEM – A member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party today slammed as "racist" President Obama's longstanding demand for a halt to Jewish construction in the strategic West Bank and eastern sections of Jerusalem. "President Obama should not interfere with the rights of the Jewish people to live in Jerusalem," said Likud Knesset Member Danny Danon. "This ... is a racist demand, saying that Jews cannot live in Jerusalem, only Arabs." Danon continued: "Our duty is to the nation that chose to deepen the settlement across Judea and Samaria, and...

Do you plan to buy Sarah Palin's book? Yes. 42% (2,145 votes) No. 10% (540 votes) Not sure. 2% (100 votes) Other: 46% (2,383 votes) Total Votes: 5,168 http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/shepard-smith/index.html

I’ve read some misguided partisan ranting before, but the piece, “Gone Rogue” (how original) by Newsweek’s Evan Thomas is in a class by itself. That it passes for a news story is telling of how detached the elitists in media really are. Nothing exceptionally newsworthy is going on (a book tour!), yet we are witnessing a foaming hysteria from all fronts of the liberal establishment. And, we must ask: Why? Sarah Palin is merely promoting her book. The degree to which the left fears Palin is astonishing. The former governor isn’t even talking about running for office and yet Newsweek...

Have you ever seen so much hatred for, and vitriolic criticism of, someone who had only a brief stint on the national political stage? More than a year after the presidential election in which Sarah Palin, as the GOP nominee for Vice-President, campaigned for about three months, she is still being pilloried by the left-wing loons as though she had been elected and were actively engaged in dismantling the liberal establishment. Not a day goes by in which we don't hear or read vicious attacks on a woman who represents the wholesome conservative values of Middle America -- values that...

Obama File 90 Alice Palmer Re-examined-Was Obama's First Political Boss a Soviet "Agent of Influence"? Obama file 89 here Alice Palmer is a Chicago based academic, activist and former friend, employer and political ally of Barack Obama. In the mid 1990s Alice Palmer, then an Illinois State Senator, employed Obama has her chief of staff, when she attempted an ill-fated run for the US Congress. Obama was part of Friends of Alice Palmer, alongside controversial property developer Tony Rezko and Democratic Socialists of America members Danny Davis, Betty Wilhoitte and Timuel Black-also a member of Committees of Correspondence). Later Palmer...

Just in time for the Christmas season! Leave it to the UK papers to compare Christmas haters to Hitler.Even if they didn't mean to!

Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) issued the following statement regarding the postponement of a full Committee briefing on information related to the Fort Hood shooting: Here's the full text: "Due to the high visibility of the issues surrounding the tragic event at Fort Hood, the President has instructed the National Security Council to assume control of all informational briefings.

Steve Hayward Discusses Reagan (Video) Bethany Stotts, November 17, 2009 Our video of Steven Hayward’s Author’s Night presentation on Ronald Reagan is now up on YouTube. Visit our channel or sit back and enjoy the embedded videos of his speech....

Left-wing media matters Cliff Kincaid, November 17, 2009 A professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Robert W. McChesney has said that “media reform” should be part of the march toward socialism in America and that capitalism has to be dismantled “brick by brick.” Van Jones, the ousted communist “Green Jobs Czar” of the Obama Administration, served with McChesney on the board of Free Press, a George Soros-funded organization, in 2007 and 2008. Despite its socialist orientation, Free Press is financially supported by extremely wealthy individuals such as George Soros, the leftist billionaire, and Marcy Carsey, one of the creators...

Encyclopedia of Race and Racism Published by Macmillan Reference USA The Encyclopedia of Race and Racism is the first such work examining the anthropological, sociological, historical, economic, and scientific theories of race and racism in the modern era. The set delves into the historic origins of ideas of race and racism and explores their social and scientific consequences. Some of the nearly 400 articles address broad theoretical topics that have helped to shape modern ideas about race and racism; others address more specific subjects in the larger fields. Political Correctness does not apply to all groups, especially in the academic...

Anita Mellott's column, Homeschool Encouragment looks at "Blessings" as we approach Thanksgiving.

Not that surprising really. Fair and Unbalanced? Libertas

A pretty strong article from the UK Guardian. Loved the clear and strong headline "Sarah Palin Sets Sights on New Push for White House." Here's the article:UKGuardian

This is the final installment my three part report on the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s one day conference on The Roots of American Order. So here is part two of mine titled Lift a Glass to the Past: America Rooted in Tradition or a New Covenant? (Click for parts one and two) After a break for lunch, Mark C. Henrie took up America's Britishness. Henrie wrote the ISI's A Student's Guide to the Core Curriculum that explains the value of a traditional core of studies in Western civilization and his session reflected that study. Capitalizing on Birzer's citation of Edmund Burke...

James Galyean wrote a post on Friday afternoon that I think we probably ought to focus on a bit more. The left is celebrating Barack Obama’s decision to send Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to New York City for a criminal trial in a civilian court. In fact, since Friday I have gotten a lot of hate mail from leftists saying I must not trust our due process system. The problem, however, is just the opposite. I very much trust our due process system to be exceedingly fair to a terrorist who will put great value in his opening statement. But, that...

The government dumped tens of billions of dollars into General Motors, and then dictated a “political bankruptcy” that trampled the rights of senior creditors in order to cut a sweetheart deal for the Obama administration’s union pals. Americans expected to see that pay off in broader investment and job creation, and that’s precisely what GM has in mind … for Europe. ABC News reports that GM plans to spend billions restructuring its Opel subsidiary rather than its core American businesses, and that has some lawmakers seeing red: Specifically, at a time when the nation’s unemployment rate has soared to levels...

That’s certainly the conclusion one can draw from two stories over the last couple of days. Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA), who pushed Barack Obama to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to the US for criminal trials, says that criticism of the decision is “un-American”: Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) has strong words for the Republicans opposing Attorney General Eric Holder’s plan to bring five 9/11 suspects to New York City to face trial. “They see this as an opportunity to demagogue,” he said. “They will seize on any opportunity to do that, and that means they’ll even take a stand that’s un-American.”...

Days after announcing another huge layoff, Al Gore's Current TV referred to former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as a "Gun-Ho" and a "TWILF." These disgraceful, sexually-charged epithets were part of an attack on prominent conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, and came in the form of a cartoon ironically titled "The Stupid Virus":

Stanford Alumni Critique Jarrett Bethany Stotts, November 16, 2009 Stanford University alumni are voicing their objection to their Alumni Magazine’s September/October softball treatment of the leftist White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett. Here’s some of Accuracy in Media’s reporting on Jarrett and the Van Jones scandal. These alumni aren’t too pleased. From Ward S. De Witt ’62: When I saw the cover photograph of Valerie Jarrett, I was reminded of the school fight song referring to “Stanford Red.” I am quite dismayed that this radical leftist is featured (”I Want Her Inside the White House,” September/October). She is, as you...

Florida’s Global Warming University Malcolm A. Kline, November 16, 2009 Not content to push global warming theories on students even when temperatures don’t support them, Florida Gulf Coast University is trying to censor skepticism off of its campus. When Brandon Wasicsko of the FGCU Eagles 4 Liberty club attempted to advertise a showing of the documentary Not Evil, Just Wrong, Patrick J. Greene, an associate professor of Educational Technology, went berserk. “This email is a violation of the FGCU policy to not use our email system for Political propaganda,” Greene wrote in an electronic missive to Wasicsko on October 19,...

Maine Remembered, Sense Forgot Malcolm A. Kline, November 16, 2009 When most voters don’t win at the ballot box, they usually get over it the next day but make mental notes for the next election. Left-wing voters, particularly the academic variety that now may make up most of the breed, seem to need therapy, at least in print. “Waking up Wednesday morning this week I had to face the disappointment and the noise,” Wesleyan University president Michael Roth wrote on The Huffington Post web site on November 6, 2009, three days after the recent spate of elections. “The disappointment was...

This is a new short Finnish documentary about the climate change scam. It is worth watching, every minute of it. The movie is exposing the intricate web of deception based on political, material and power grab interests which created the greatest scam in the entire history of the humankind. See how global warming scientists are behaving like con-men and distort, misinterpret and fake temperature records in order to keep their government research grants and their nice six figures incomes coming. See how these scientist-scam artists are refusing to provide the raw data they used to create the famous "hockey stick"...

Fact-Checking the "Fact-Checkers" By the Editors File this one under "Quit Making Stuff Up." It took us all day, but we assembled the definitive debunking of the 11 Associated Press "fact-checkers." Might we suggest a new profession for these folks? As the always brilliant Mark Steyn pointed out: That's 11 writers for a 695-word report. What on? Obamacare? The Iranian nuke program? The upcoming trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? No, the Associated Press assigned 11 writers to "fact-check" Sarah Palin's new book... Hey, don't be too hard on the AP. CNN is also into fact-checking... SNL skits that are "mean"...

Here is a report on Robert Spencer’s recent work Stealth Jihad: How Radical Islam is Subverting America without Guns or Bombs. After the awful terrorist attack at Fort Hood this book should be required reading by our military and officials in government. Robert Spencer’s “Stealth Jihad” examines how radical Islam is slowly threatening the foundations of Western society without the use of arms. Spencer’s research shows the intent of the radical Islamist to push Islamic Law into our culture and customs. For most Americans this may seem far fetched but we are seeing evidence of this all of the time-...

In the wake of the horrific attack at the Fort Hood military base in Texas earlier this month, and the mounting evidence that the shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, was motivated by Islamist beliefs, the media has turned to Middle East studies "experts" for enlightenment. Instead, what the media, and, by extension, the American public, has received is the moral relativism and obfuscation that too often meets any effort to address Islamism or jihadism in an intellectually honest manner. Writing for the Washington Post's "On Faith" blog, John Esposito, professor and founding director of the Saudi-funded Prince Alwaleed bin Talal...

"Don't for a second think Obama wants what is best for U.S. He is flying the U.S. plane right into the ground at full speed. Let's roll." @Sen_Schultheis A Colorado legislator has been blasted by local and national news outlets for sending an online Twitter message, or tweet, that criticized President Obama with language some say is a reference to United Flight 93, which was hijacked and crashed during the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Earlier this week, state Sen. David Schultheis, R-Colorado Springs, posted the words, "Don't for a second think Obama wants what is best for U.S. He is flying...

Originally, President Obama promised the $787 billion Stimulus Act would save or create 3.5 million jobs. As of today, recovery.gov has posted that 640,329 jobs were saved or created. However, yesterday, President Obama referenced a much larger number: