Lord Obama

US Dept. of Labor via Flickr
US Dept. of Labor via Flickr

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia

If we were living in normal times, the following scandals and failures — without going into foreign policy — would have ruined a presidency to the point of reducing it to Nixon, Bush, or Truman poll ratings.

Think of the following: the Fast and Furious scandal, the VA mess, the tapping of the communications of the Associated Press reporters, the NSA monitoring, Benghazi in all of its manifestations, the serial lies about Obamacare, the failed stimuli, the chronic zero interest/print money policies, the serial high unemployment, the borrowing of $7 trillion to no stimulatory effect, the spiraling national debt, the customary violations of the Hatch Act by Obama cabinet officials, the alter ego/fake identity of EPA head Lisa Jackson, the sudden departure of Hilda Solis after receiving union freebies, the mendacity of Kathleen Sebelius, the strange atmospherics surrounding the Petraeus resignation, the customary presidential neglect of enforcing the laws from immigration statutes to his own health care rules, the presidential divisiveness (“punish our enemies,” “you didn’t build that,” Trayvon as the son that Obama never had, etc.), and on and on.

So why is there not much public reaction or media investigatory outrage?

Continue reading “Lord Obama”

Strategika Issue 14 is now here!

CURRENT ISSE

Are 20th-century-style conventional military assets and strategies still relevant, or are they being replaced by drones, cyber-warfare, counterinsurgency, and satellite technologies?

The Obama Administration’s Ethics Problem 

The executive branch continues to be plagued by scandal after scandal.   

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online 

Photo via Wiki Commons
Photo via Wiki Commons

Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki cannot get a handle on the recent scandalous treatment of veterans in VA hospitals, where more than 40 sick men were allowed to die without proper follow-up treatment. A cover-up allegedly followed. When the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal broke under the George W. Bush administration, heads rolled. So far, Shinseki seems immune from similar accountability.

Almost nothing that former secretary of health and human services Kathleen Sebelius promised before, during, or after the implementation of the ill-starred Affordable Care Act came true. She was also cited by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel for violating the Hatch Act, as she improperly campaigned for Obama’s reelection while serving as a cabinet secretary.

Former IRS official Lois Lerner used the federal tax-collection agency to go after groups deemed too conservative. She invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid telling Congress the whole truth.

Continue reading “The Obama Administration’s Ethics Problem “

Islam: ‘Appalling and Abhorrent’ in the Eyes of a Blind World?

by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com

A few days ago in Sudan, an eight-month pregnant wife and mother was sentenced to death by hanging for refusing to renounce Christ and embrace Islam.  According to the LA Times:
Photo via RaymondIbrahim.com

Meriam Yehya Ibrahim, who has a young son and is married to a Christian from South Sudan, violated Islamic sharia law, the court said. She insists she was raised Christian, not Muslim.

The court also ordered Ibrahim to be flogged for having sexual relations with her husband, since her marriage is not recognized by officials.

Ibrahim refused a court order Sunday giving her several days to renounce her Christian faith, which resulted in the sentencing Thursday….

Ibrahim, currently jailed with her son, will be allowed to give birth and raise her second child until the age of 2 years but then faces execution. Sudanese authorities refuse to allow Ibrahim’s son to reside with her husband because the husband is Christian.

Continue reading “Islam: ‘Appalling and Abhorrent’ in the Eyes of a Blind World?”

Benghazi Constructs 

Much is still murky, but the Obama team was at the least guilty of negligence and deception. 

By Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online
Photo via Wikicommons
Photo via Wikicommons

Almost everything the administration has alleged about Benghazi has proven false. Yet also, in Machiavellian fashion, the Obama group successfully peddled useful fictions, effectively deluded the country, adroitly ensured President Obama’s reelection, and cast aspersions on those who sought the truth.

In that sense, so far, the lies about Benghazi have won, the truth has failed.

So what really happened?

The Obama administration felt that it was behind the curve concerning the 2011 unrest in Libya. The so-called Arab Spring revolutions had toppled other governments in North Africa, and it seemed that protesters would do the same in Syria and Libya.

Continue reading “Benghazi Constructs “

The Unforgiving Moment

Photo of Genuino Ferreira Madruga via JPP Photography

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia

Life is turned upside down in a nanosecond.

This weekend I missed my first posting at PJ Media since beginning in 2006.

Why? Let me briefly explain the lapse — if I can be forgiven for comparing a bike accident with what I have seen on the farm the last 50 years (sliced off fingers, crushed legs, herbicide poisonings, manifold burns, etc.).

I was going on a usual morning bike ride — safe stuff with like-minded older folks. I’m 60; so is my biking partner and fellow Hoover Institution associate Bruce Thornton. We are hardly reckless. (Not like sulfuring at midnight recklessly in one’s 20s in the old days without goggles or mask.)

We usually go deliberately during off-traffic hours when cars are rare, on little-traveled roads and bike paths. We always follow the same direction over the same 32-mile route. After nine years we have memorized every bump, cracked bit of pavement, bad stop light, etc. We bike slowly, about 14-15 mph, always in single file.  We are, after all, 60 and hear daily horrific stories of injured and dead bikers.

Continue reading “The Unforgiving Moment”

Egypt: Christian Arrested for Using Home as Church

by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com

dresden-frauenkirche-10095811
Photo via dreamstime.com

A Coptic Christian man in Egypt has been arrested on complaints from local Muslims that, without a permit, he has converted his home into a church and is supposedly even holding religious rituals.

The 55-year-old man, known only by his initial, “BH,” is a laborer in the al-Minya district in Upper Egypt, where Christians are especially targeted.  It was back in 2011 that the Copt first turned his home into a church, prompting angry, local Muslims to report him.   He was arrested by police but later released after agreeing that he would never again try to use his home as a church.

Apparently not one to be deterred, “after a while, Muslims in the village were shocked to see the Christian worker do it again [use his home as a church]—only openly this time.”

So police have arrested him once again, pending investigation.

In Egypt, as well as most other Muslim countries, Christians need special permits, often from the presidency itself, to build churches—permits which are next to impossible to acquire—shedding some light on this Copt’s actions.

Tweets Won’t Stop Modern Barbarians 

Boko Haram and the Sultan of Brunei couldn’t care less about Western outrage.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online 

Photo by: inquisitr.com
Photo by: inquisitr.com

Nigeria’s homegrown, al-Qaeda linked militant group, Boko Haram, brags openly that it recently kidnapped about 300 young Nigerian girls. It boasts that it will sell them into sexual slavery.

Those terrorists have a long and unapologetic history of murdering kids who dare to enroll in school, and Christians in general. For years, Western aid groups have pleaded with the State Department to at least put Boko Haram on the official list of terrorist groups. But former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s team was reluctant to come down so harshly, in apparent worry that some might interpret such condemnation as potentially offensive to Islamic sensitivities.

Instead, Western elites now flood Facebook and Twitter with angry postings about Boko Haram — either in vain hopes that public outrage might deter the terrorists, or simply to feel better by loudly condemning the perpetrators.

Nigerian ‘Sex-Slaves’ Disrupt Obama Narrative on Islam

by Raymond Ibrahim // RaymondIbrahim.com

Photo via RaymondIbrahim.com

That said, Islamic sanctioned sex-slavery does not perturb the Western world simply because the powers-that-be—specifically academia, media, and government—ignore it, and all other unsavory phenomena associated with Islam, out of existence.

Interesting, therefore, are the responses from the authorities—comical one might even say—when one of these everyday anecdotes actually does surface to the general public.

Continue reading “Nigerian ‘Sex-Slaves’ Disrupt Obama Narrative on Islam”

Victor Davis Hanson on the Bill Martinez Show (VDH interview begins at 27:10)

Click Here to Listen to the Interview now! 

VDH interview begins at 27:10 (Begins again after the break at 41:30)

VDH discusses his article What Drives Vladimir Putin?

He also discusses his latest article Tweets Won’t Stop Modern Barbarians 

billmartinez