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WASHINGTON -- The Palestinians had hoped they would see a new day coming after the Bush administration’s eight-year capitulation to all that Israel wanted. But they were wrong. The Obama administration is moving down the same Bush road -- perhaps a little slower -- but nonetheless still enabling the Israelis to continue to violate international law and the U.N. Charter by annexing occupied Arab land. First, the new administration made it clear that U.S. policy opposed new Jewish settlements on the West Bank. This declaration was met with a thumping rejection from the Israeli government led by Benjamin Netanyahu. Then,...

RUSH: It is apparent, ladies and gentlemen, that General John "Swifty" Kerry has taken over Obama foreign policy. You people who thought you were voting for Obama to change foreign policy were wrong. You know, I still can't get over that last sound bite. President Obama, there aren't Bush troops, and there aren't Obama troops. Those are American soldiers, and you've abandoned them, while claiming to these naval people in Jacksonville yesterday you never -- he's embarrassing. Worse than that, it's dangerous. We got John "Swifty" Kerry, who served in Vietnam, by the way, yesterday afternoon at the Council on...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama has no plans to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. After eight years of war there, withdrawal is not among the options the administration is considering as it designs a new strategy. Also not being considered is any exploration of possible peace talks with the Taliban, the indigenous Islamic group that once controlled large swaths of Afghanistan. When asked whether the U.S. could withdraw from Afghanistan -- a country known as the "graveyard of empires" -- White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said: "That’s not something that has ever been entertained." "I don’t think we have...

Obama's liberal buddies are blocking a surge. This is from the blog at TheHill.com, the Briefing Room. "Nearly two dozen House liberals have signed onto a bill introduced this past week that would prohibit an increase of troops in Afghanistan. A bill introduced by Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) Thursday would bar funding to increase troop level in Afghanistan beyond its current level. Lee and 21 lawmakers, largely from the liberal Congressional Progressive Caucus..." Do they really need a separate liberal caucus in the House? Aren't they all liberal socialist jerks? They need their own separate caucus? They introduced the bill,...

Here is video of Helen Thomas pressing White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs yesterday over whether President Obama still supports a "Public Option" for Health Care, and whether he will "fight for it." Gibbs customarily dodged the question, and Thomas called him on it, saying she continues to ask about it because "I want your conscience to bother you." . . . (VIDEO)

"Hear our cry, Obama." "Deliver us, Obama." Video at link.

RUSH: Yesterday at about this same time in this program we shared with you the details of a story in the National Post in Canada (the only place I have found such details) about how irritated with Obama the French president, Sarkozy, was in the way he's dealing with the Iranian situation and their nuclear ramp-up. And it was clear that -- we read the quotes from Sarkozy and things that he had said (that, again, were not reported here in the State-Controlled Media in the United States) he clear thinks Obama is an idiot. He thinks he's naive and...

WASHINGTON -- Have you noticed a climate of hate and mean spiritedness in the land? Whether inspired by racism or not, it certainly exists. This isn’t a unique psychological phenomenon. Remember the brutal anti-unionism of the 1930s, the McCarthy-era anti-communist scare of the 1950s and the Vietnam War protests of the 1960s and early 1970s? President Barack Obama -- the first black U.S. president -- tries diligently to reject claims that racism underlies the public rancor against his health care reform plan and other administration aspirations. He acknowledged recently that there are "some people out there who don’t like me...

(CNN) -- Former President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday that racial politics played a role in South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst during President Obama's speech to Congress last week and in some of the opposition the president has faced since taking office. Former President Carter tells "NBC Nightly News" that racism has surfaced in opposition to President Obama. "I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he's African-American," Carter told "NBC Nightly News." "I live in the South, and I've seen the...

WASHINGTON -- Do presidents and other public officials lie? Do birds fly? That age-old question was recently evoked when Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., shouted "You lie" after President Barack Obama told a joint session of Congress that his national health care proposal would not cover illegal immigrants. Wilson’s verbal attack was reminiscent of the back benchers in London’s House of Commons where rhetorical bombast is more frequent than in the halls of Congress. Wilson apologized for his blast but that didn’t stop the House from voting 240-179 to rebuke him for a breach of decorum "to the discredit of the...

RUSH: And you enjoyed it for all the reasons that you've mentioned. But we've gotta be really, really careful here, Dana, about this left versus right government thing. You mentioned third party, and we've been through this with Perot. CALLER: I know that. I know that. And I think Perot helped Clinton get in, I don't doubt that. I do believe there has to be a huge movement before people can vote that way. RUSH: But a third party is not going to do anything other but ensure the reelection of Obama and every other Democrat running for office because...

Conservatives Claim Obama Pushing Socialist Agenda WASHINGTON -- What have we come to when conservative politicians and parents tell their children not to listen to President Barack Obama? It turned out that his message in his back-to-school address to students was good old-fashioned advice: Stay in school and study hard. The right wingers had claimed the president wanted to promote his "socialist agenda" and involve the federal government in educating their children because of his speech, timed to coincide with the start of the school year. Would they really eliminate Uncle Sam’s financial support of public schools? Of course not....

WASHINGTON -- To win concessions from the hardliners on Capitol Hill, President Barack Obama appeared as though he was ready to give up a jewel in the crown of health reform -- the government-run public option. But after liberal Democrats put up a squawk, the White House scaled back, insisting the president’s commitment to the public option hasn’t changed. Will the real President Obama please stand up? Why doesn’t the president come out and say exactly where he stands, where he draws the line? The problem is that for President Obama, there is no "line" on health care. It appears...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: These guys have threatened me again. This was last Friday at the White House, Jake Tapper -- this the presidential daily brief. Jake Tapper says, "Rush Limbaugh went on a very long speech which he compared Democrats to Nazis, the president to Hitler, and I'm wondering if the president's seen any of this. Obviously the Nazi imagery has been condemned by Jewish groups, and I'm wondering if he feels anything about the language being used this way." GIBBS: Any time you make references to what happened in Germany in the Thirties and Forties, I think you're talking...

WASHINGTON -- Secrecy is endemic in all governments. It goes with the turf, especially if their leaders hope to hide illegal or immoral behavior, such as torture of foreign prisoners. Many Americans heaved a sigh of relief last January when President Barack Obama banned the torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Image-wise, it made the administration look more humane than the Bush-Cheney team. But that is not the whole story. Obama left unaddressed the possibility of torture in secret foreign prisons under our control as in Abu Ghraib in Iraq or Bagram in Afghanistan, not to mention the "black...

WASHINGTON -- I had an historical flashback recently when I read a Washington Post news story about how the U.S. commander in Afghanistan thinks he may need many thousands more troops to win the war. Shades of Vietnam. Do we ever learn? It brought back memories of the late Gen. William C. Westmoreland, the U.S. commander in Southeast Asia, who kept escalating the troop numbers after the 1967 Tet offensive in Vietnam. His strategy produced a debacle for us. When the besieged Westmoreland requested 240,000 more troops, President Lyndon B. Johnson was shocked. The command in Vietnam had been giving...

WASHINGTON -- It’s not news when the White House tries to manage the news. That has always been the case. But it is news when Obama administration officials -- the folks who proclaimed that they would bring unprecedented openness and transparency to government -- fall all over themselves trying to manipulate news briefings and attempting amateurish stagecraft at public meetings. The president relies on a list of handpicked reporters to call on at his formal news conferences -- and the fortunate few are not necessarily accredited reporters but include new age self-appointed journalists or anyone with a laptop. The White...

You Obama supporters, be honest now. Read the following and tell me how you would have reacted: If George W. Bush had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved? If George W. Bush had given Gordon Brown a set of inexpensive and incorrectly formatted DVDs, when Gordon Brown had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved? If George W. Bush had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have thought this embarrassingly narcissistic and tacky? If George W. Bush had bowed...

WASHINGTON -- The withdrawal of U.S. military forces from Baghdad and other key cities in Iraq marks the beginning of the end of the tragic war there. While it’s not over yet, the Iraqis are celebrating and happy -- free at last from American control. Well, almost. We have had six-and-one-half years of the on-going conflict, with American war dead totaling 4,320 and more than 31,000 wounded. More than 100,000 Iraqis also were killed and thousands more wounded. Add some 4 million refugees to those formidable numbers of human cost. Then there is the small matter of an estimated $682...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama had been playing his cards cautiously on the political turmoil in Iran -- until conservatives goaded him to escalate his rhetorical condemnation of the uprising. Obama had tried to steer clear of any public comment about the disputed reelection of Prime Minister Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the massive protests by supporters of the opposition candidate and the government crackdown on the protesters. At a news conference Tuesday, Obama caved in to those right-wing columnists and political hawks who wanted him to hit the Iranian mullahs harder. These are the same critics who pushed the American people into...

WASHINGTON -- A universal health-care system based on the single-payer model appears to be a bridge too far for politically attuned President Barack Obama. A single-payer system -- such as Medicare for everyone -- would solve the problem of out-of-control costs and would provide health care for all. President Lyndon B. Johnson had the courage to weigh in with all his political clout to win passage of Medicare and Medicaid, star accomplishments of the Great Society. President Franklin D. Roosevelt put all his chips on the table to win passage of the Social Security Act that makes the elderly more...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama scored big with his eloquent speech to the Muslim world last week. Now he has to put up or shut up. That’s the price of raising hopes that solutions can be found to tough issues, including the long festering Israeli-Palestinian crisis. His task there is complicated by the new hard-line Israeli leadership personified by Benjamin Netanyahu. Of course, Obama also has several critical foreign policy problems bequeathed by his predecessor. Among them are the deteriorating Pakistani-Afghanistan turmoil and nuclear ambitions in Iran and North Korea. Obama’s uplifting rhetoric has raised expectations that he is a...

WASHINGTON -- Is Supreme Court justice-designate Sonia Sotomayor going to have to eat her words and forget her past to win a seat on the high bench? That would apparently appease some of her right-wing critics, who are grasping at straws in their campaign to try to derail the Hispanic woman’s nomination -- or, at least, try to rough her up a bit. Does she have to be a narrow constructionist and interpret the law their way? Let’s hope not -- conservative jurists have had their way for too long on the high court. If she wins Senate confirmation, Sotomayor...

WASHINGTON -- Former Vice President Dick Cheney is tossing verbal grenades at his successors. Maybe he just can’t stand the loss of power. Pitiful. He is acting like a man who is one step ahead of the sheriff. Actually, that could be the case. The true story of Cheney’s manipulations and deceptions during his eight years in the White House is yet to be told. Right now he sees that his best defense is offense. He has accused President Barack Obama of "recklessness" and weakening national security. Cheney should be grateful to Obama for not throwing the book at him...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got together officially this week for the first time, but their talks failed to win agreement on how to solve perennial Middle East problems. They managed to agree on a common concern that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons. In meeting with the hawkish Netanyahu, Obama agreed that a nuclear-armed Iran was unacceptable. He warned that the diplomatic talks he was initiating to halt Iran’s program would not continue forever, and he roughly set a one-year deadline for the dialogue. The president also said he wouldn’t foreclose "a range...

(Washington, D.C., May 20, 2009) -- Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has just finished his visit to Washington. Full analysis on my weblog, including a link to the YouTube clip of me on Glenn Beck's show with a former CIA analyst who says he wouldn't care if Israel ceased to exist. That said, there's more troubling news this morning. I'm horrified by credible reports that in his June 4th speech in Cairo, President Obama will say it is time to divide Jerusalem and make the holy city the capital of a Palestinian state. No, Mr. President, it is not. Jerusalem is...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama should appoint a woman to the U.S. Supreme Court to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Justice David Souter. And she should be a liberal. The high court is top heavy with conservative justices. And there is only one woman, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, on the high bench. Obama’s choice will say a lot because Supreme Court’s decisions are the ultimate in our national life. Republicans are itching for a fight over the nominee, despite the fact that they had their way for too many years and worked to tip the court to the...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama’s 100 days in office have not shaken the world, but he has been compelled to focus on the legacy bequeathed by former President George W. Bush: the worst economic slump since the Great Depression and two wars. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, avoiding any credibility-destroying urge to praise his boss with ridiculous extravagance, gives the president a "B-plus" on his report card. "What the president has achieved is something we’re proud of," Gibbs said, adding: "There is room for improvement." Probably the biggest change Obama has brought about is the country’s new hopeful spirit,...

WASHINGTON -- White House spokesman Robert Gibbs and President Barack Obama share the same trait: They both are very cautious when speaking with reporters. Gibbs measures his words hesitantly between some "ums" and "ahs," before voicing carefully selected words in response to a reporter’s question. As White House press secretary he is in the bull’s eye every day at televised news briefings, which may explain why he appears most comfortable with the reporters for wire services and TV networks he schmoozed with on the campaign trail. In a position where many predecessors have blown their tops out of frustration or...

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama seems to be more interested in propping up Wall Street than saving the car companies and the auto workers in Detroit. He displayed his "get tough" side when he laid down the law to General Motors and Chrysler, whose restructuring plans had displeased the White House auto task force. The president gave the car makers a choice of coming up with tougher plans or face bankruptcy. GM was given 60 days to produce a plan for Obama, who has never ran a company, and Chrysler was given 30 days, with a threat to end its...

It takes a lot to motivate the American people but they are hopping mad over the bonus payments to Wall Streeters from their tax money. I haven’t seen this much "people power" since the grass-roots protests against the Vietnam War riled the nation. This anger is highly justified, but it hasn’t slowed the Obama administration’s peculiar drive to bailout Wall Street by buying banks’ toxic assets (bad loans and mortgage-related securities) to the tune of possibly up to $2 trillion dollars to stabilize the banks and to jump-start the credit industry. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner Monday unveiled the plan amid...

RUSH: I got an e-mail. This is from Susan in Virginia Beach. "Dear Rush: You are my professor. I am indebted to you for the knowledge that you have given me. You've always told us that you would tell us when it was time to panic. I'm starting to wonder how we are going to get our country back from these revolutionaries. Is it time to panic?" No. 'Cause panic doesn't accomplish anything. But when we come back from the break, I'm going to tell you how to get the country back. I'm going to tell you how it will...

“Nobody is perfect” was the not-so-profound observation of White House press secretary Robert Gibbs over the past several days as he tried to fend off criticism of the tax troubles of three top appointees. One of the three -- Timothy Geithner -- survived congressional and public scrutiny and was confirmed as secretary of treasury. But former South Dakota Sen. Tom Daschle -- who made a bundle in speaking fees and giving advice to health-care companies after he was defeated for re-election -- felt compelled to bow out from his nomination as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services...

The nation's first serious black candidate for president should be outraged that al-Qaida would try to exploit African-Americans for the terror cause. Oddly, he's not. Osama bin Laden's deputy last week made a sinister pitch to blacks in the U.S., and Barack Obama shrugged.Al-Qaida's Ayman al-Zawahri earlier this month courted blacks by frequently invoking Malcolm X, aka Al-Hajj Malik al-Shabazz, a past leader of the Nation of Islam.Shamelessly, al-Zawahri encouraged blacks to join al-Qaida's holy war against the American "oppressor," and sacrifice their blood against "injustice" like the "struggler and martyr" Malcolm X.He noted that the Muslim civil-rights leader condoned...

WASHINGTON -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has awesome self-confidence. Chosen by fellow Republicans to be Sen. John McCain’s running mate, she told an interviewer: “I’m ready.” That confidence reflects her naïveté about her role that puts her one heartbeat away from the presidency. In accepting the Republican nomination as vice-president, she invoked the greatness of President Truman, based on their small-town origins. But anyone who was around during Truman’s era knows there is a world of difference between Palin and Truman. Take, for example, humility. Truman was vice president for only a short time when on April 12, 1945, he...

Joe Biden will deliver a high-profile first attack in a sustained anti-McCain offensive in a speech called "Bush 44" Monday in the key battleground state of Michigan. While the lines of attack have long been drawn, Biden will assert — as the title indicates — that a McCain presidency would amount to a third Bush term and will focus, in a detailed, comprehensive and aggressive way, on John McCain's domestic policies and harsh campaign tactics, a campaign aide told Politico. Biden will deliver the speech in St. Clair Shores, Mich., in Macomb County, the area whose voters inspired Democratic pollster...

Last week raised important questions about whether Barack Obama is strong enough to be president. On the domestic political front, he showed incredible weakness in dealing with the Clintons, while on foreign and defense questions, he betrayed a lack of strength and resolve in standing up to Russia’s invasion of Georgia. This two-dimensional portrait of weakness underscores fears that Obama might, indeed, be a latter-day Jimmy Carter. Consider first the domestic and political. Bill and Hillary Clinton have no leverage over Obama. Hillary can’t win the nomination. She doesn’t control any committees. If she or her supporters tried to disrupt...

"Everybody is starting to whisper that if Obama has any prayer of winning, he has to choose Hillary. And if he chooses Hillary, he's going to have to have somebody taste his food and start his car for him every day."

LAKE FOREST, Calif. — When John McCain and Barack Obama appear on the same stage today, they will vividly demonstrate the reach that has made the Rev. Rick Warren among the most significant evangelists of his generation. He's a megastar who leads the nation's fourth-largest church and reaches thousands of ministers through the Internet and crusades against poverty and AIDS. That globe-trotting work and his successful book — "The Purpose-Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?" — puts him at the vanguard of a movement that inspires young, socially conscious Christians. But his willingness to soft-pedal political issues...

Academy award winning actor George Clooney is set to host a fundraiser for Barack Obama in Switzerland next month. The event, taking place on the evening of September 2 in Geneva, Switzerland will be split into two parts: a reception and a dinner. According to Obama’s National Finance Committee, tickets for the reception where Clooney will speak are going for $1,000, followed by a dinner at the home of NFC member Charles Adams for $10,000 a plate. Space for the dinner is limited to 75 guests.

Asked Thursday if Obama was referring to race, Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said, "No." "What Barack Obama was talking about was that he didn't get here after spending decades in Washington," Gibbs said.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but does it not seem as if Obama just said McCain and his campaign -- presumably the "they" in this construct -- are saying that Obama shouldn't be elected because he's a risk because he's black and has a foreign-sounding name? (snip) Then in Union, Mo., this evening, Obama seemed to specifically accuse McCain and the GOP of peddling racism and xenophobia. (snip) "But, since they don’t have any new ideas the only strategy they’ve got in this election is to try to scare you about me. They’re going to try to say that I’m...

Presidential nominee Barack Obama joins the list of several other high-profile Democratic Party members who received highly favorable home loans. Obama, D-Ill., reportedly purchased a $1.65 million mansion in Chicago through a “super, super jumbo” loan he received from Northern Trust Bank in Illinois, the Washington Post reports. The portion of the money financed through the lender ($1.32 million) was offered to the Obamas at an unusually low discount interest rate locked in at 5.625 percent over the life of the 30-year fixed-rate loan, which was below the average of what a typical Chicagoan pursuing a similar low loan rate...

OUTLOOK The state of morale in the Republican Party is such that the expected bump by Sen. Barack Obama in the polls after he clinched the Democratic presidential nomination has collapsed all GOP optimism. Talking to Republicans outside Sen. John McCain's organization, the presidential campaign looks like "mission impossible." The mood is: How can we possibly win the presidency for a third straight election considering the state of the party? This is unrealistically pessimistic, considering the true state of the election, which we still consider close. But it contributes to the negative feeling about McCain from elements of the conservative...

It’s been a rough two weeks for Barack Obama, but his poll numbers remain strong and unchanged. Is he a Teflon candidate? Consider what’s happened since he clinched the Democratic nomination and Hillary “suspended” her campaign: Obama flip-flopped on his pledge to spurn private contributions and finance his campaign publicly, as long as his opponent did likewise. McCain said he’s willing and Obama flipped and said he’s not. The Democratic candidate was caught flat footed by the sudden spike in oil prices and even defended their high level, lamenting only that we had not been given a period of time...

TOKYO (AFP) - Former US presidential contender Mike Huckabee urged his fellow Republicans on Wednesday not to denigrate Democrat Barack Obama, saying they should celebrate the historic moment of a black candidate. "Republicans will make a fundamental if not fatal mistake if they seek to win the election by demonising Barack Obama," Huckabee told a news conference on a visit to Tokyo. The former Arkansas governor said that, having grown up in the segregated South, he never thought he would see an African-American win the nomination of a major party for the US presidency. "I do not want to have...

Outlook We cannot find anyone in Democratic ranks who honestly feels there is any chance that Sen. Hillary Clinton will become Sen. Barack Obama’s running mate. There are Democrats who feel for that reason that it would be a good idea if Obama makes a choice for Vice President as quickly as possible to get the unhappy reaction from Clinton’s female voters over as quickly as possible. The eight-point bump in the polls for Obama after clinching the nomination is just about what would be expected and is unlikely to be permanent. A much more serious problem for McCain is...

Bill Clinton's selection of Al Gore changed forever the calculus presidential candidates need to use in choosing their running mates. Previously, presidential candidates usually used their VP pick to help them to carry a pivotal state or region, as JFK did in choosing Lyndon Johnson in 1960. But the single state theory doesn't work anymore. Voters can tell the difference between the first and second place on the ticket and don't let the tail wag the dog in determining their votes. After all, John Kerry couldn't carry North Carolina even after putting John Edwards on his 2004 ticket. Instead, presidential...