Obama says “jump,” MSM says “how high?”

Via Daily Caller:

Several media outlets have again pulled or edited already-published articles about the activities of President Barack Obama’s daughter, even though the stories appeared to pose no active security risk to the first family.

On Thursday, 14-year-old Malia Obama attended a concert by the British boy band One Direction at the Patriot Center in Fairfax, Va., flanked by Secret Service agents who attempted unsuccessfully to blend in with the crowd of mostly pre-teen girls.

At one point during the concert, the boy bands’ teen heartthrobs sang, “You’re insecure, Dunno what for, You’re turning heads when you walk through the door” — words that managed to take on some meaning for Malia, who looked less than enthused by the presence of multiple middle-aged federal agents at her side.

On Friday, the story was picked up by the liberal website The Huffington Post, which ran the headline, “Malia Obama, One Direction Fan: First Daughter Attends Boy Band Concert with Secret Service in Tow.”

Still can’t believe I voted for this guy.

(TPM) — Sen. John McCain said that the past several years have been a “shameful episode in American history” because the U.S. has not become more involved on behalf of rebel forces in several countries across the Middle East since 2009 in response to a question about the United States’ involvement in Syria on Fox News Sunday. McCain also suggested that President Obama was trying to hold off action until after the election.

“Horrible things are happening in Syria,” McCain said. “This administration has a feckless foreign policy which abandons American leadership.”

McCain also dismissed a New York Times story reporting that President Obama may enlist the Russians to try to remove Syrian President Bashar al-Assad diplomatically as unrealistic.

“The only conclusion you can draw,” McCain said, “is that this president wants to kick the can down the road on all these issues until after the election.” McCain referenced Obama’s ‘hot mic’ moment earlier this year when he told Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev he would be more flexible after the election. “It’s really an abdication of everything that America stands for and believes in,” he said.

Specialist Samuel Watts, RIP. Note: Picture taken yesterday at a forward operating base in Kandahar.

Soldiers of the U.S. Army 82nd Airborne Division knee during a memorial ceremony for Specialist Samuel Watts at Forward Operating Base (FOB) Pasab in Kandahar province, southern Afghanistan May 26, 2012. Watts was wounded by the blast of Improvised Explosive Device (IED) on April 25 and died of wounds at a hospital on May 19. (REUTERS/Shamil Zhumatov)

Down payment on November.

(Willie’s World — Willie Brown) — The president’s trip to the Bay Area last week made it painfully clear that the Barack Obama re-election campaign has lost its mojo.

There was no life, no personality, no memorable line or moment and no real enthusiasm in the entire fundraising foray. In short, there was no buzz.

It was like a summer rerun of a show that wasn’t very interesting to begin with.

Worse yet, Obama sounded like he was playing catch-up to Mitt Romney. I can’t think of anything that should have him in that role, but he’s acting like the underdog.

Obama was more than a candidate last time out. He was a popular and cultural phenomenon. A rock star. But the trouble with rock stars is that they drop like a rock once fans conclude they are “over.”

The trick in politics is not to be a one-hit wonder, but to be more like the Grateful Dead. Jerry and the boys were never what you’d call stars, but their Deadheads were legion and good days or bad, they always turned out in record numbers.

You know a group is about as far to the left as it gets when even the SPLC denounces them.

(Chicago Sun-Times) — A horde of masked figures stormed the restaurant in a single-file line, wielding bats, claw hammers and metal batons — their presence announced when one shouted, “‘Hey, bitches, the ARA is going to f— up this place.’ ”

With that, the shrouded thugs went on a rampage, clubbing diners at The Ashford House restaurant on May 19 in Tinley Park. They did not discriminate as to the targets of their violence, even pushing an 80-year-old woman to the ground, according to an eyewitness who’s a former Chicago police officer.

“Although the terrorist assault lasted only about a minute, it was the longest minute of my life,” the eyewitness said.

Authorities have said the attackers were targeting a group that believes in white supremacy and calls itself the Illinois European Heritage Association. At least 10 people were hurt during the attack, with three taken to a hospital for treatment.

Five Indiana men who prosecutors say are linked to the Anti-Racist Action Group remain in the Cook County Jail, charged with felony mob action, aggravated battery and criminal damage to property. They are John Tucker, 26, of Martinsville, Ind.; Cody Sutherlin, 23, and Alex Stuck, 22, both of Bloomington, Ind.; and Dylan Sutherlin, 20, and Jason Sutherlin, 33, both of Gosport, Ind. Two victims also were arrested on charges unrelated to the attack.

The Anti-Racist Action Group (ARA) is a “radical left-wing group” that often resorts to violent acts, said Mark Potok, a senior fellow at The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights organization based in Montgomery, Ala. The attack, he said, “did more harm to the cause of fighting racism than almost anyone can imagine.”

Obama’s goal of a giant welfare state now within reach.

Via WSJ:

49.1%: Percent of the population that lives in a household where at least one member received some type of government benefit in the first quarter of 2011.

Cutting government spending is no easy task, and it’s made more complicated by recent Census Bureau data showing that nearly half of the people in the U.S. live in a household that receives at least one government benefit, and many likely received more than one.

The 49.1% of the population in a household that gets benefits is up from 30% in the early 1980s and 44.4% as recently as the third quarter of 2008.

The increase in recent years is likely due in large part to the lingering effects of the recession. As of early 2011, 15% of people lived in a household that received food stamps, 26% had someone enrolled in Medicaid and 2% had a member receiving unemployment benefits. Families doubling up to save money or pool expenses also is likely leading to more multigenerational households. But even without the effects of the recession, there would be a larger reliance on government.

The Census data show that 16% of the population lives in a household where at least one member receives Social Security and 15% receive or live with someone who gets Medicare. There is likely a lot of overlap, since Social Security and Medicare tend to go hand in hand, but those percentages also are likely to increase as the Baby Boom generation ages.

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) – Lady Gaga has canceled her sold-out show in Indonesia over security concerns after Muslim hard-liners threatened violence if the pop diva went ahead with her “Born This Way Ball,” promoters said Sunday.

The Islamic Defenders Front said Lady Gaga’s sexy clothes and provocative dance moves would corrupt youth in the world’s most populous Muslim country.

The group said supporters had bought tickets to the concert and planned to enter and force it to be stopped. It also threatened that thousands of protesters would confront the singer on her way from the airport.

Police had said they would only issue the required permits for the concert if Lady Gaga agreed to tone things down. Instead, she pulled the plug on the show, which had sold out with more than 50,000 tickets.

Insert goat joke here.

(Ynet) — Osama bin Laden managed to dodge American security forces by moving undetected between safe houses around Pakistan in a large box hidden in a brightly colored truck filled with chickens, the Sunday Times reported, citing Taliban sources.

According to the British newspaper’s report, the box was designed by Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, bin Laden’s trusted aide, who also set up the house in Abbottabad where the al-Qaeda leader lived for five years until he was killed last May by US Navy Seals.

Kuwaiti moved bin Laden by fitting the box to the floor of one of the elaborately decorated trucks that are a common sight on Pakistan’s roads, the report said. The box would be hidden under cargoes of cement, flour or rice — or even beneath livestock such as goats, sheep or chickens.

According to Newsweek magazine, the scam was disclosed at a meeting held near Miranshah, the Taliban heart of Pakistan’s North Waziristan region, in the autumn. During the meeting, al-Qaeda and Taliban terrorists discussed ways to protect Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s successor.

Despite Kuwaiti’s ingenious method of transport, they blamed his carelessness for bin Laden’s death, the Sunday Times said. According to the report, an Al-Qaeda investigation concluded that Kuwaiti made basic security mistakes which led the CIA to Bin Laden: he drove the same car every time he visited the Abbottabad compound and used a mobile phone that could be monitored.

To protect Zawahiri from a similar fate, the terrorists suggested, his handlers had advised him to “move to a new place” and stop using any electronic devices.

“We are hoping he can avoid being captured by the US for at least 10 more years,” a Taliban source was quoted by Newsweek as saying. One of the terrorists at the meeting asked a member of the Afghan Taliban if they would consider harboring Zawahiri. The answer was noncommittal.

Sweetness.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) — An American drone fired two missiles at a bakery in northwest Pakistan Saturday, killing four suspected militants, officials said, as the U.S. pushed ahead with its drone campaign despite Pakistani demands to stop. This was the third such strike in the country in less than a week.

Drone attacks in Pakistani tribal areas where Afghan and other militants have found refuge are considered a key tactic by U.S. officials in the war against al-Qaida and its Taliban supporters. But many Pakistanis resent the strikes, which they consider an affront to their sovereignty.

Two Pakistani intelligence officials said the latest attack took place in Miran Shah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal region.

The officials said the victims were buying goods from a bakery when the missiles hit. Residents were still removing the debris, officials said. All of the dead were foreigners, but the officials did not have any information on their identities or nationalities.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. The U.S. rarely talks publicly about the covert CIA-run drone program in Pakistan.

Eat cake.

A source tells ABC News that the First Lady and her daughters are in Atlantic City, NJ, on a private trip to see the Beyonce concert.

— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) May 26, 2012

Got it. Just like Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Dachau.

It seems like they [Republicans] act as though some wiping out of people, some of the right wing, is all right. It’s not all right to do to any innocent people. If you had war and people, that’s one thing. But to wipe out innocent people just because of who they are, like what was done in Hitler’s Germany or what was done to Native Americans, is not justified.

Via Radio Equalizer

Back in another WP drought, here’s an oldie but a goodie to hold us over.

He’ll stiff ’em. That’s what community organizers do.

NEWPORT BEACH — The city spent $35,043 on police officers when President Obama stopped in Corona del Mar in February for a campaign breakfast, and revenue officials have sent his campaign an invoice to recoup the costs.

City Manager Dave Kiff said the invoice was his idea.

“I think it is appropriate to treat it like a private event — if another private event that large and which required that much police presence occurred, we would bill the event sponsor,” he said in an email. “If the president was here on presidential business, we likely would not have billed for that.”

The invoice is dated May 10 and is due June 9.

The expenses include costs for a police lieutenant, sergeant, two officers, a reserve officer, a senior dispatch officer, a community service officer plus overtime. The breakdown of costs ranged from $12,203 for the police officer to $307 for the community service officer’s overtime, according to the document.

The memo was sent from the city’s Revenue Department to the Obama For America office in Chicago. As of late Thursday, there had been no response or payment, said Tara Finnigan, a Newport Beach spokeswoman.

The Feb. 16 breakfast was held at the Shore Cliffs home of Jeff and Nancy Stack. Entrance to the breakfast cost $2,500 per person, with a $10,000 photo reception and breakfast option and a $35,800 “greet + breakfast” option, according to the invitation.

Published reports stated that Obama raised $45 million in February and at least $8 million in six fundraisers in Los Angeles, San Francisco and at the Stack home.

An email and a telephone message sent to campaign workers seeking comment for this story were not immediately returned.

Invoices of this kind have been sent by other municipalities to political campaigns, but they are rarely paid, experts said.

I hope they do it. Obama would be breaking U.S. law if he continued to fund the Palestinians with Hamas (a designated terrorist organization) as a member of the government.

(Times of Israel) — Hamas Politburo Chief Khaled Mashaal will meet with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to announce the formation of a new Palestinian unity government, Israel Radio reported on Saturday.

The two will commence consultations for establishing a joint government on Sunday, and within ten days they will announce its foundation.

Hamas leader Osama Hamdan said Fatah and Hamas representatives will meet in Cairo this week to discuss the composition of the government and the date Mashaal and Abu Mazen will meet.

In an interview with a Kuwaiti newspaper, Mashaal said that the events in Syria have affected relations between Iran and Hamas and Hezbollah but did not specify how.

He confirmed that the Hamas leadership left Damascus and is now dispersed between several countries.

Mashaal called on the US earlier on Saturday to stop hindering reconciliation between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.

Choom time!

Via GretaWire:

The president has conquered the Andrews course and returned to the White House. Or so we are told. In a breach of long-standing policy, the motorcade departed without hooking up with the press vans even though the vans had been loaded and waiting for more than half an hour.

The pool does not know first hand when the president left the base, what route he took, or when he arrived at the White House. We were told that he arrived at 5:58 and went to the residence.

The press vans departed the base at 5:45 and we were informed the motorcade had left about ten minutes earlier. The pool vans arrived back at 6:13.

For what it is worth, your pooler, no doubt invigorated by his inability to tell you anything for certain, registered a protest at this breach and would assume there would be a more formal follow-up discussion.

Via Daily Caller:

Bishop Harry Jackson, senior pastor at Hope Christian Church, is leading a coalition of 176 religious leaders against President Barack Obama’s declared support for gay marriage and the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act.

“We want to know whether he is going to use the bully pulpit of the presidential office to absolutely erase the image of biblical marriage from the face of the earth,” said Jackson at the Capitol on May 24.

“Voters need to know whether they have a friend or an assent, an enemy to an institution that God has ordained,” he added. “Some of us have taken his statements as a declaration of political war against the venerable institution of marriage.”

“In the African-American community, many people are saying they made him do that, we don’t understand why he did that,” said Jackson. “We don’t believe that really was the president’s intent. Others have given high fives in the backroom saying, ‘he got paid.’ We don’t really know what the intent of the president is except that we know that is not just an isolated incident. Some further action will follow.”

Keep reading…

And you know Obama agrees.

Beijing, China (CNN) — China criticized a “woeful” human rights record in the United States on Friday, a day after a U.S. report said Beijing’s own record is getting worse, with harsh crackdowns on dissidents.

“The United States’ tarnished human rights record has left it in no state — whether on a moral, political or legal basis — to act as the world’s ‘human rights justice,’” China said in an annual report on U.S. human rights.

The report cited the arrests of protesters participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement in the United States. Many protesters, it said, accused police of brutality.

It also said the United States has “fairly strict restrictions” on the Internet, saying the U.S. Patriot Act and Homeland Security Act both have clauses about monitoring the Internet, giving the government or law enforcement organizations power to monitor and block any Internet content “harmful to national security.”

Chinese dissident Chen’ new life “The facts contained in the report are a small yet illustrative fraction of the United States’ dismal record on its own human rights situation,” China’s report said.

Thursday, the U.S. State Department criticized a number of countries, including China, in its annual report on human rights around the world. The human rights situation in China, it said, “deteriorated, particularly the freedoms of expression, assembly, and association,” with Chinese forces reportedly committing “arbitrary or unlawful killings.”

The report said Chinese authorities have held activists in unknown circumstances and placed their family members under house arrest. Abuses “peaked around high-profile events,” including visits of foreign officials, milestone anniversaries and calls for street gatherings inspired by the Arab Spring.

Via DRUDGE

Classy donors you have there, Barack.

Via BreitbartTV

Via White House Dossier:

He’s at his usual place, the Andrews Air Force Base course with one of his usual companions, White House trip director Marvin Nicholson. Also along are Marvin’s brother Walter and Pete Selfridge of the White House advance office.

Keith Koffler has this round as Obama’s 98th trip to the course, but my count has Obama at 96. You can check the archive here, if you’re inclined to count.

Fitting that this is in the birthplace of the Arab Spring.

TUNIS — Hundreds of Salafi Islamists attacked bars and shops and clashed with security forces in a Tunisian town on Saturday in the latest incident to raise religious tensions in the home of the Arab Spring uprisings.

Police and witnesses in the northwestern town of Jendouba said hundreds of Salafis — followers of a puritanical interpretation of Islam – began rioting to protest the arrest of four men in connection with previous attacks on alcohol vendors.

Police responded with tear gas, breaking up the crowd, but clashes had yet to die down, witnesses and police said.

“This morning, four men were arrested in connection with attacks on alcohol vendors in recent days,” Interior Ministry official Lutfi al-Haydari told Reuters.

“So hundreds of Salafis attacked the security base, pelting it with rocks and petrol bombs before they were dispersed by tear gas. They also set fire to a police station and attacked three shops in the town. . . they are now in the center of town and are being dealt with.”

The clashes come a week after Salafis fought with alcohol vendors in the central town of Sidi Bouzid, prompting the justice minister to promise they would be punished.

Many Salafi Islamists were in jail or underground before the 2011 uprising that ousted secular strongman Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali. But they have since become more assertive.

Ellison is a rare breed — half-moonbat, half-Islamist — so bashing Christians comes naturally to him.

Via BreitbartTV:

Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) wanted to be sure to let everyone at the Minnesota film festival it was only those “folk who believe Jesus is coming back” that show what “Anti-Muslim” movies at Capitol Hill screenings.

Rep. Ellison named Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) by name as someone who shows these “ugly” films.

(Jakarta Post) — A controversy is brewing over the proposal for the construction of a Buddhist building here after the PAS-led state government ruled that new buildings should include Islamic designs to reflect the state capital’s status as an Islamic city.

State Local Government, Culture, Arts and Tourism committee chairman Takiyuddin Hassan said developers must incorporate some Islamic elements in their plans or the proposals would be rejected.

“We will ensure development will be based on Islamic principles and features,” he told a press conference here.

He claimed the ruling was well-accepted by the majority of developers, including non-Muslim developers.

Hopefully the Supreme Court will do it for us.

Via The Hill:

The House will keep voting on piecemeal bills to repeal parts of President Obama’s healthcare law before the Supreme Court decides whether the law is unconstitutional.

Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said in a planning memo that the House will vote on two partial repeal bills as early as June 4. One would repeal the health law’s tax on medical devices, and the other would relax the law’s restrictions on the use of tax-preferred health savings accounts (HSAs).

The medical-device industry has long opposed the new excise tax imposed under the Affordable Care Act, and Republicans have recently trained their focus on the HSAs policy. The law bans the use of HSAs to pay for nonprescription drugs unless a doctor writes a prescription anyway.

Via WaPo:

Iran is expanding the capacity of its controversial underground nuclear facility, a U.N. report said Friday, as its leaders move to increase production of a more purified form of enriched uranium in defiance of Western demands for a freeze.

U.N. inspectors who visited the plant near the city of Qom earlier this month saw hundreds of newly installed centrifuges amid steady progress in boosting the capability of the facility, which has come to symbolize international concerns about Iran’s possible pursuit of nuclear weapons.

They also discovered traces of a form of uranium that is closer to the kind needed to make weapons-grade fuel than the Iranians have previously acknowledged making. The particles were believed to have resulted from a technical glitch, but officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency were continuing to investigate the matter.

Evidence of the plant’s expansion is likely to add to worries about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, while enhancing the country’s bargaining position going into a new round of nuclear talks scheduled for June, weapons experts said.

Keep reading…

Not exactly the best way to win hearts and minds.

MALI — Islamic forces controlling north of Mali announced on Wednesday the beginning of Sharia in the region and asked all citizens to strictly and publicly observe the law, which entails the prohibition of football.

Malians living in the city of Tombouctou will wake up on Friday and say goodbye to their lovely sport. Football pitches are now out of bounds and offenders will be severely dealt with, the warlords said.

Worse, football fans can no longer watch the game on television because it is also forbidden by the Islamic law.

Besides football, chatting with somebody of the opposite sex is also considered a crime. Women have been asked to only step outside their homes with faces and legs completely covered while the men must keep their beards.

Mali was plunged into an unprecedented political and military crisis after the separatist National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) split the country into north and south in April.

The group controls the arid north but it has been infiltrated by Islamic forces from the al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, who now govern part of the vast region.

Via Byron York:

Two years ago today, May 26, 2010, President Obama traveled to Fremont, California to showcase a “brighter and more prosperous future” promised by the green-energy company Solyndra.

The solar panel maker went bankrupt last year, taking with it $535 million in taxpayer-funded loan guarantees. More than 1,000 people lost their jobs. The Obama administration had cut corners to rush money to Solyndra, with some of the beneficiaries being top Obama fundraisers. Even as Solyndra failed, the administration considered giving it another $469 million.

But on this day in 2010, with Solyndra already facing serious obstacles, President Obama was filled with optimism. “The true engine of economic growth will always be companies like Solyndra,” the president said. “Less than a year ago, we were standing on what was an empty lot. But through the Recovery Act, this company received a loan to expand its operations. This new factory is the result of those loans.”

“We’ve placed a big emphasis on clean energy,” Obama continued. “It’s the right thing to do for our environment, it’s the right thing to do for our national security, but it’s also the right thing to do for our economy. . .When it’s completed in a few months, Solyndra expects to hire a thousand workers to manufacture solar panels and sell them across America and around the world.”

“It’s happening right now. The future is here,” Obama said. “It’s here that companies like Solyndra are leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future.”

Fifteen months later, Solyndra was bankrupt, and that taxpayers’ money was lost.

Keep reading…