There are few realists who will argue that the MSM isn’t functioning as a propaganda bureau for Obama. There are a few operatives for the Left who complain with righteous indignation that media is in the “tank” for the GOP, but no one in touch with reality takes this outlandish diversion seriously. Most people are intuitive enough to recognize blatant dishonesty, especially when the subject matter requires the reader/viewer to ignore common sense to accept the premise of the deception.

Vogue is the medium, Asma al-Assad (wife of the Syria’s hereditary dictator for life) is the subject, and deception is the game, but deception for the sake of deception is little more than the musings of a pathological liar. No indeed, our propagandists are not pathological liars, they have definitive purposes to justify their lies and deceit.

To understand the nuances, we must travel back in time to the period leading up to the Islamic Spring of 2011. When Americans were asking why our president only backed certain Islamic Fundamentalists in their bids for freedom and seemed to ignore secular struggles, like those by students in Iran and Syria. It was as if he had a secret playbook and would only use the considerable leverage of America when we could help those closely aligned with our enemies, like the Muslim Brotherhood.

It is times like this that fluff rags like Vogue can gin up support for the president’s peculiar partisan support of radical Islamic Fundamentalists by portraying a murderous dictator’s wife as a beautiful reformer and as a positive influence on the bloody henchman that is her husband. Unfortunately, propaganda can often be exposed, even in innocuous articles like “A Rose In The Desert.”

“Asma al-Assad is glamorous, young, and very chic – the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies,” writes Joan Juliet Buck, of Syria’s first lady, for her introduction of Asma in the fluff article of the type for which Vogue is well known and respected. She describes her “energetic grace” and stylish shoes. Ms Buck tends to get carried away with her flowery penmanship:

“The 35-year-old first lady’s central mission is to change the mind-set of six million Syrians under eighteen, encourage them to engage in what she calls ‘active citizenship.’ ”

While writing the glowing and meaningless report, Buck never thought to do independent research. Journalism is not part of her mission, her mission is to provide covering for Obama and his exposed ass in the wind. If she must write believable prose that dresses tyranny up as a fashion statement, she will do it; otherwise, her role in the propaganda industry becomes vulnerable.

Unfortunately, Buck’s propaganda appeared on news stands as Syrians took to the streets to demonstrate against the tyranny that Buck tried so desperately to mask for her president. Unfortunately, the blood splatter from 9,000 victims of Assad’s stained the pages of Vogue and the face of Ms Buck.

First Lady Asma made no attempts to mask her priorities or her contempt for young people seeking “active citizenship,” for while her young people were being slaughtered in the streets by her husband’s goons, Asma continued to shop online, according to leaked emails, for designer shoes and jewelry from boutiques in Paris and London, but Ms Buck did mention Asma’s keen sense of fashion and when you are married to Syria’s hereditary president for life, you must look your best, especially when the blood of martyrs is flowing in the streets.

Oh the article caused many people, who, like the author, peruse magazine covers in grocery checkout lanes, to gasp in disbelief when the March 2011 Vogue magazine featured Asma. However, Vogue had the presence of mind to make the glowing propaganda that had turned sour disappear. Oh, the printed page is history, but the cyber ink is no longer in existence. There were 3,200 words of cyber ink, and now there are none. The article and its CTPA (covering the president’s ass) motive has been scrubbed from Vogue’s website. Obviously, the article will be around a long time despite the hypocrisy and deception of Vogue.

Propaganda seems to be a benign enterprise; especially, when you are promoting and supporting your “Gift from God” (Nancy Pelosi quote), but there are often unintended consequences for writing lies and deception. Ms Buck and Conde Nash, the author and owner of Vogue, have just experienced what it is like to be humiliated when your lies and deceptions are exposed.

Ms Buck is now saying it was “horrifying” to be near the Assads and her biggest regret is that Vogue asked her to cover the story. Is her regret a result of being exposed as a fraud or an honest appraisal. Since honesty and integrity are compromised from the onset of this debacle, we may safely assume Ms Buck is horrified at the thought of being exposed as a liar.

Still the world is left to ponder why President Obama allows the wholesale slaughter of secular dissidents with western style philosophies of freedom, but not dissidents who are Islamic Fundamentalists. Sadly, propaganda never uses the truth, unless it benefits the purpose of the promotion; consequently, it is hard to judge the truth from the lies. Therefore, by applying simple logic, none of the product of the MSM media can be judged as being factual or legitimate.

Epilogue: Apparently the Assads liked the article, they are the ones who have chosen to preserve it for prosperity, oh the irony of failed propaganda.

By now everyone has heard of poor lil’ Sandra Fluke. A 30 year old feminist activist posing as some lowly coed who can’t afford contraception and is saddened to see the looks of woman frazzled with sunken eyes, and long faces, tortured by the very thoughts that they may not be able to get laid 2.7 times that day due to lack of funds for contraceptives.

Sorry, I do not feel your pain Ms. Fluke. Yes I am a guy. So I know in your mind that should prevent me from having any opinion on the matter. To that I say Fluke You and the concocted little controversy you road in on. I am a married man with a daughter. So I do have some skin in the game. Our daughter finally arrived after four long hard invitro cycles, something the Catholic Church does not believe in. We did not hold it against the church, nor would we demand they should pay and execute the procedure. It’s called tolerance for ones views and not imposing your needs against another’s ideals. Maybe a little reflection is in order, if you can somehow manage to find the time.

See Sandra, back in the day, when apparently men and woman were more resourceful we didn’t rely on anyone to pay for our contraceptives. Woman tried to hide the fact that they needed it. Every male over the age of 14 had a well-worn circular ring on the back of their leather wallet. It was a sign of perpetual optimism. That can-do spirit and the Boy Scout willingness to always be prepared. If the stars aligned, you got to use that condom before it became unusable due to going past its expiration date. If we needed another one, 4 quarters in the nearest gas station bathroom got you resupplied and French Tickler for you and your buddies to marvel at. Here you are claiming to need a thousand dollars yearly of other people’s money so that you can get your groove on. How about this, why don’t you charge admission of one condom per visit. Any young man with a reasonable sex drive of a male aged 18-50 should be more than willing to pay the freight. Easy Peezy Lemon Squeezy right?

No its not is it? Your little crusade at Georgetown University has nothing to do with your worries for your fellow female comrades. It’s all about a selfish little cause. You came to the college strutting your liberal stuff looking for a party. The whorish thing about this all is not that you’re a slut, I wouldn’t know, I really don’t care, you’re a political whore for shopping yourself out to the Democrat Party to be used as a pawn in a presidential election. Bought and paid for, money left on the night stand, no cigarette needed. Your activist credentials are coming to light, your little moment in the sun is about to end. You are now going to be the butt end of all matters of tasteless adult jokes. Welcome to Monica Lewinski’s world darling. Unlike her, you earned it.

P.S.

Note to President Obama:

Since you seemed to find the time to call Ms. Fluke to tell her how brave you thought she was and how proud her parents must they must be, maybe you should consider doing the same for every U.S. Service member who lost their lives protecting Ms. Fluke from the hordes of religious fanatics who would stone the woman to death for committing the sin of being raped. Somehow I don’t believe they would ask Ms. Fluke if she had adequate contraception before their endeavors nor would they care about who would pay for it.

Eh-Yup!

Anwar al-Awlaki, a militant cleric who was an American citizen, was killed in Yemen.

While I don’t disagree with the Administration over this policy, I find the whole situation ironic. It was just a few years ago liberals were crying and protesting all over the fact that the United States waterboarded a few high level terrorists.

But I guess it’s ok to just a put a bullet in their head rather than making them a widdle bit scared with water eh?

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. asserted on Monday that it is lawful for the government to kill American citizens if officials deem them to be operational leaders of Al Qaeda who are planning attacks on the United States and if capturing them alive is not feasible.

“Given the nature of how terrorists act and where they tend to hide, it may not always be feasible to capture a United States citizen terrorist who presents an imminent threat of violent attack,” Mr. Holder said in a speech at Northwestern University’s law school. “In that case, our government has the clear authority to defend the United States with lethal force.”

…While Mr. Holder is not the first administration official to address the targeted killing of citizens — the Pentagon’s general counsel, Jeh Johnson, did so last month at Yale Law School, for example — it was notable for the nation’s top law enforcement official to declare that it is constitutional for the government to kill citizens without any judicial review under certain circumstances. Mr. Holder’s remarks about the targeted killing of United States citizens were a centerpiece of a speech describing legal principles behind the Obama administration’s counterterrorism policies.

“Some have argued that the president is required to get permission from a federal court before taking action against a United States citizen who is a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or associated forces,” Mr. Holder said. “This is simply not accurate. ‘Due process’ and ‘judicial process’ are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.”

Like I noted, I agree with the Administration.

But the hypocrisy is just mind boggling. If Bush has been suggesting these things heads would be exploding across both coasts.

Oh, one more note from the above article:

Still, the speech contained no footnotes or specific legal citations, and it fell far short of the level of detail contained in the Office of Legal Counsel memo — or in an account of its contents published in October by The New York Times based on descriptions by people who had read it.

Hmmmm, Obama and pals were all fired up to release some earlier memo’s…..oh right, that’s because they were written under Bushitler’s watch.

The Korans burned in Afghanistan were destroyed not out of malice, but out of concern. They were “mishandled” but not intentionally. Detainees had written in them, sending messages to one another. Writing in a Koran is itself considered blasphemous.

Not that anyone cares.

Riots ensued. This led to two Americans being killed soon after.

More riots.

Barack Obama apologizes, then apologizes “severely.”

Doesn’t do a lick of good.

Two more NATO officers are murdered.

Barack Obama is negotiating with our new friends the Taliban. And how did Obama’s new pals react?

Not well.

KABUL, Afghanistan — The Taliban urged Afghans Thursday to target foreign military bases and kill Westerners in retaliation for burnings of copies of the Quran at NATO’s main base in the country as a third day of violent protests began.

Thousands of demonstrators gathered across the country, some chanting “Death to America!”, Reuters witnesses and officials said. In eastern Kabul, hundreds of youths threw rocks at police, who fired shots into the air to try disperse the crowds.

“Our brave people must target the military bases of invader forces, their military convoys and their invader bases,” read an emailed Taliban statement released by the insurgency’s spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid. “They have to kill them (Westerners), beat them and capture them to give them a lesson to never dare desecrate the holy Quran again.”

And President Hamid Karzai? Does he try to explain to his people that this was a error?

Nope. He wants those who made the mistake put on trial.

KABUL — Afghanistan wants NATO to put on public trial those who burned copies of the Quran at a NATO base, President Hamid Karzai’s office said Thursday, after a third day of bloody protests over the incident.

It said NATO had agreed to a trial, but that could not be immediately confirmed.

Karzai had earlier accused a U.S. officer of “ignorantly” burning copies of the Quran, in an incident that has deepened anti-Western sentiment in a country NATO is trying to stabilize before foreign combat troops leave by the end of 2014.

Demonstrations have drawn thousands of angry Afghans to the streets, chanting “Death to America!” amid violence that has killed 11 people including two U.S. service personnel.

President Obama was gratified by that response.

And Karzai just might get it. Obama told Karzai:

“The error was inadvertent; I assure you that we will take the appropriate steps to avoid any recurrence, to include holding accountable those responsible,” the letter said.

Now hold on a second. Firstly, how many errors are advertent? Secondly, if this was an error and malicious, why are we not educating as opposed to “holding accountable those responsible”? Obama should be standing up for his men in uniform, not abandoning them. If it was a mistake, it was a mistake. Afghans can get over it. Where’s that peace, tolerance and understanding from Islam I am always hearing about here?

This is pathetic. Obama is getting his butt kicked. When it comes to Islam, the is no end to his obsequiousness. Yet he just runs over Catholicism.

Maybe there’s a lesson in here for Catholics. Riot, scream, kill- and you can push around President Barack Obama of the United States.

Or maybe it really is Islam that he favors over all.

Update: An Iranian military commander had this to say:

“Nothing but burning the White House can relieve the wound of us, the Muslims, caused by the Burning of Quran in the US,” he underscored.

“Their apology can be accepted only by hanging their commanders; hanging their commanders means an apology,” he reiterated.

And you might remember this as well:

Iranian authorities began to systematically seize and destroy Bibles after a Shiite cleric issued an urgent warning about the spread of Christianity.

Authorities in northwestern Iran seized 6,500 Bibles, according to the Iranian Christian news organization Mohabat News, which quotes an official as saying of the seizure that “all religions are strengthening their power to confront Islam; otherwise, what does this huge number of Bibles mean?” The agency has reported several other recent incidents of Bibles and other Christian literature being seized and sometimes publicly burned.

Mohabat reports that the government-connected cleric, Ayatollah Hadi Jahangosha, warned of “the spread of Christianity among our youth,” pointing to burgeoning satellite programming, literature, and religious articles promoting the Western tradition.

Eugene Robinson is an scribe for the Washington Post who specializes in embarrassing himself with ad hominem attacks on right wing personalities. Lately he’s made some scathing and offensive remarks about Rick Santorum.

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson set off alarm bells last month when he denigrated Rick Santorum as “very weird” for the manner in which Santorum and his wife mourned the loss of their newborn son Gabriel, who died within hours of his birth in 1996. The Santorums brought their deceased baby home and grieved with their other children in a private vigil before a funeral was held.

Jack Coleman wryly notes that the Kennedy family did the same weird thing with Teddie:

Consider, for example, how the Kennedys responded after the death of Ted Kennedy in Hyannisport three years ago. Kennedy’s body remained at the compound and a vigil for family and close friends was held there, followed by a public wake and invitation-only funeral, and Kennedy’s burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

In other words, the Kennedys reacted much the same as the Santorums to the death of a loved one — with a private vigil at their home followed by a funeral. Difference being, Ted Kennedy had been a fully formed human being — all too human, you might say — while Gabriel Santorum clearly wasn’t, not at conception and not even after he was born, at least to Eugene Robinson.

Then Robinson launches a new pogrom on Catholics

MADDOW: What about this issue seems to be a winning argument to Republicans? Why, why do they like it if the polls aren’t with them?

ROBINSON: Well, the polls are not with them, the voters are not with them, so, so clearly it’s not a winning issue. I mean, they can’t believe this is, this is a good idea politically. So, I mean, the only thing I can figure out, Rachel, is that’s based on a wrong and frankly insane belief that a fertilized egg is a fully formed person and has personhood and that, you know, preventing the implantation of that egg is some-, is murder. I don’t, you know, it baffles me as to what other explanation there could be. They can be sincerely mad on this, on this subject, I think, and maybe they are.

So it appears that we have a standard of sorts for life- a “fully formed person.” What we don’t have is a definition of what a “fully formed person” is. Coleman thinks that Robinson’s “fully formed person” would exclude the Santorums’ preemie Gabriel from the ranks of being alive.

Robinson doesn’t limit himself to his belief that a fertilized egg is not fully human. He also believes this of babies born prematurely who die shortly after birth — as shown by his dismissive criticism of the Santorums’ response to the death of their son. Why all the fuss, Robinson wondered aloud. It’s not as if this child had been a fully formed person.

One thing Robinson owes us is an explanation- a definition of a “fully formed person.” I cast the question into a pool of personalities on another forum just to see what would result. The most common response was that a fetus develops into a “fully formed person” somewhere around late second and early third trimesters.

But one could argue that this is too limiting.

A “fully formed person” should be capable of reproduction.

If a being is still growing, then it is not fully formed.

Thus one could argue that a fully formed person is one beyond puberty and has stopped growing. Then all others are not “fully formed” and do not qualify for “personhood” in Robinsonworld. And non-persons do not enjoy the rights and protections of fully formed persons, do they?

Coo, coo, ca-choo, Mr. Robinson
Jesus loves you more than you will know
God bless you please, Mr. Robinson
Heaven holds a place for those who pray
(Hey, hey, hey…hey, hey, hey)

President Obama’s recent decision to force the Catholic Church to violate their religious beliefs and provide contraceptives and morning after pills in their health care packages surprised me. No, I was not surprised to see this as a logical progression of Obamacare – I was more surprised by the timing. I am among those who believe that Obama will get re-elected in 2012 no matter what happens in the next few months – that will be a separate post in it itself. Without going too much in depth into what I plan to write a big part of my theory comes down to two observations: What is Barack Obama’s greatest love and passion in his life? Barack Obama. And what is his greatest talent, the one thing that sets him above the rest? Convincing other people that they should love Barack Obama almost as much as he does. In other words, he has the perfect skill set for getting elected to public office, regardless of experience or his record. Given how Catholics came out in support of Obama in 2008, why would he spit in the church’s eye right now and risk alienating this voter base with just a few months to election?

It makes absolutely no sense, unless you look at the bigger picture. Obama’s re-election campaign unofficially kicked off with the Occupy Wall Street movement. It got the unionistas and professional leftists out to energize his "young and stupid" demographic that had lost a lot of its enthusiasm for Obama, and also to help set his 2012 campaign theme of envy and resentment toward your neighbor. Does that sound like an over the top statement? The president can’t run on his record – sustained high unemployment, soaring deficits, high fuel prices thanks to an anti-energy policy, not to mention a foreign policy where the good guys don’t trust us and the bad guys think we’re a joke. How many leaders have you seen who after three years in their position continue to whine about the job they inherited? Hence, the "Obama in 2012 – It’s someone else’s fault" campaign theme.

The president is very good at getting himself elected to office – whether getting opponents thrown off the ballot, sealed divorce records released, accepting illegal campaign contributions from foreign donors, or having a fawning press ignore his every flaw while shining a glaring light on every weakness of his opponents, no matter how small or petty. When Mitt Romney shaped up as the most obvious opponent for him to face in November, the OWS campaign makes perfect sense to start building resentment and envy toward Americans who are actually competent enough to lead successful careers. But then a funny thing happened.

As the Not-Romneys fell by the wayside one by one, somebody that nobody saw as a viable threat was still standing and going strong. No, I’m not talking about Gingrich. I’m talking about the recent rise of Rick Santorum. Aside from running against Ron Paul (which will never happen), no remaining candidate is as desirable an opponent for Obama as Rick Santorum. He is by far the most social conservative among the candidates, and he has made enough statements regarding women and gays that he would make the perfect target to whip up enthusiasm in a very unenthusiastic left wing base, not to mention the 24/7 news cycle will allow the Palace Guards in the press to ignore real issues and President Obama’s performance while painting Santorum as enough of an extremist to turn off any moderates.

As for abandoning the Catholic vote, Obama has already issued his faux-compromise. My guess is that he’s got enough tricks up his sleeve to throw out between now and November to convince Catholics that he doesn’t really believe that the right to free contraceptives trumps religious freedom. On one of the Sunday new shows George Will chided the Catholic bishops for getting behind Obamacare without thinking through where it would logically progress. I would argue the same about the American people making the decision to elect Obama in 2008. For that matter, I sincerely hope that you are not among the economically illiterate who were led to believe the claims of, "If you like your insurance you can keep it" or that "your premiums will not go up."

Back to the Catholic Church insurance decision – why now? Obama could have easily waited until after the November elections to show his views on religious liberty in this country. If you’re reading this you already know about Santorum’s surge in the polls and recent victories in the primaries. The timing of this announcement was perfect to push religious conservatives toward not the Mormon, but the outspoken Christian in the bunch who is suddenly riding a wave of momentum. We’ve seen how quickly political fortunes come and go, and with enough momentum Santorum could ride this wave to the nomination, helping Obama not only get re-elected, but fire up enough turnout from his base to take back the losses from the 2010 elections.

Any of my regular readers (thank you, both of you!) probably notice something missing from this post. I’m big on citing my sources and embedding links to support my assertions – there aren’t any here. Yes, I could put links backing my statements about the economy and foreign policy, etc, but that wasn’t the purpose of this post. The rest of what I’ve written here are nothing more than my own observations, personal analysis, and theories taking them to a logical conclusion. I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting that this is anything more than a conspiracy theory. I just see something happening that makes no sense and am looking for an explanation. If anyone has a better theory, please comment!

Cross posted at Brother Bob’s Blog

Libyan militia members man a checkpoint in the capital, Tripoli, in December

Guess no one saw this coming eh?

Armed militias in Libya are committing human rights abuses with impunity, threatening to destabilize the country and hindering its efforts to rebuild, Amnesty International said Thursday.

Militias have tortured detainees, targeted migrants and displaced entire communities in revenge attacks, according to a report the organization released a year after the start of popular uprisings that eventually ended Moammar Gadhafi’s 42-year rule.

“Hundreds of armed militias, widely hailed in Libya as heroes for their role in toppling the former regime, are largely out of control,” the report says.
Detainees at 10 facilities used by militia in central and western Libya told representatives from Amnesty International this year that they had been tortured or abused. Several detainees said they confessed to crimes they had not committed in order to stop the torture, Amnesty International said.

At least 12 detainees held by militias have died after being tortured since September, the human rights organization said, adding that authorities have not effectively investigated the torture allegations.

Well almost-no-one.

Thank you Arab Spring.

Meet the new boss…same as the old boss:

A terrified Libyan man is beaten and tortured with electric shocks by youths who appear to be former revolutionary fighters.

The images, taken from a video handed to The Mail on Sunday in a Tripoli refugee camp, will be seen as fresh evidence that those who deposed Colonel Gaddafi with the help of the West are adopting methods as brutal as the dead tyrant’s.

The film shows three men tying up the blood-spattered man before whipping him repeatedly with cables, touching him on his skin with electric wires and taunting him as he pleads for mercy.

The man being whipped with cables on the video was Saleh Barhoun Gersh, who had run a general store in Towerga – which was loyal to Gaddafi during the conflict until the town was ransacked by fighters from nearby Misrata. When the rebels arrived, Mr Gersh was so frightened he wore women’s clothes to disguise himself

The film shows three men tying up the blood-spattered man before whipping him repeatedly with cables, touching him on his skin with electric wires and taunting him as he pleads for mercy

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s a new chapter all right…a new chapter in Islamic fanaticism. A new chapter in torture and violence. A new chapter in crazy.

Reality is that everyone was happy that Gaddafi was gone, but not everyone had their head in the sand, ignoring the obvious. He was being replaced by thousands of Gaddafi’s.

Mata wrote last October:

But while westerners set aside their normal respect for rule of law and justice, gleefully rejoicing in a particularly bloody end, the arguments some of us have been making about this “new and improved” Libya looking suspiciously like (if not worse) than the old Libya, is gaining traction as more proof surfaces supporting the the Libyan rebels committed war atrocities.

This goes far beyond just Gaddafi, as mass graves with hundreds of bodes are excavated… the count approx 300 in one alone at this writing.. many with their hands bound behind their backs, executed.

Ali Tarhouni of the National Transitional Council excuses the rebels as young boys who had witnessed murders of family and friends, and praised their “self control”. Hey.. you can’t make this stuff up.

And in the end we helped bring down one dictator and helped prop up a radical Islamic regime.

Obama wants US taxpayers to cough it up for the Arab Spring:

The White House announced plans on Monday to help “Arab Spring” countries swept by revolutions with more than $800 million in economic aid, while maintaining U.S. military aid to Egypt.

In his annual budget message to Congress, President Barack Obama asked that military aid to Egypt be kept at the level of recent years — $1.3 billion — despite a crisis triggered by an Egyptian probe targeting American democracy activists.

The proposals are part of Obama’s budget request for fiscal year 2013, which begins October 1. His requests need the approval of Congress, where some lawmakers want to cut overseas spending to address U.S. budget shortfalls and are particularly angry at Egypt.

Obama proposed $51.6 billion in funding for the U.S. State Department and foreign aid overall, when $8.2 billion in assistance to war zones is included. The “core budget” for the category would increase by 1.6 percent, officials said.

Most of the economic aid for the Arab Spring countries — $770 million — would go to establish a new “Middle East and North Africa Incentive Fund,” the president said in his budget plan.

And what would that be nurturing? This is what they have in mind:

In a recent sermon, the General Guide of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Muhammad Badi’, set out his vision for his movement and for Egypt in the post-revolutionary era. Citing Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan Al-Bana, he stated that the movement has two goals. The immediate goal is to prepare the hearts and minds of its members, which involves “purifying the soul, amending behavior, and preparing the spirit, the mind and the body for a long struggle.” The second, long-term, goal is to affect “a total reform of all domains of life,” which will eventually result in establishment of an Islamic state governed according to Koranic law – first in Egypt and eventually in the entire world.

Badi’ stressed that this long-term goal can only be achieved by gradual stages: by “reforming the individual, then restructuring the family, then building society and the government, then [establishing] the rightly guided Caliphate, and [finally achieving] mastership of the world.” He also emphasized that this must be achieved through cooperation among all the forces and sectors in Egypt, and without any coercion: “All these purposes and goals… must be realized… through unity of ranks [not division], by persuasion, not coercion, and by love, not by force.” Badi’ warned against the “attempts to split up the united ranks [of the nation] and drive a wedge between young and old, men and women, Muslims and Christians, and [different religious] schools and groups,” saying that the Egyptian nation will need all of its human resources in order to meet the challenges that lie ahead. Finally, he advised his followers not to follow their emotions but to manipulate the circumstances rationally and realistically: “Do not fight the ways of the world because they are overpowering. [Instead], try to overcome them, use them, change their course, and pit some of them against others.”

Obama wants us to pay for that! And what has Obama gotten us thus far? Nothing but bad news.

Remember the bad old days of George W. Bush, when cowboy foreign policy turned the world against America?

Remember how the dulcet tones and apology tours of Mr. Hope & Change would remake the globe in our favor?

Ah, never mind. The parade of horribles is on the march, and some former allies are leading the way.

Egypt, where President Obama tossed Hosni Mubarak under the bus, is rapidly becoming an Islamist state. The arrest and pending trials of 19 Americans working for nongovernmental agencies puts an exclamation point on how far Egypt has moved away from our orbit.

The Palestinians, blowing off the warning that our aid dollars cannot be used to support a government that includes Hamas, are moving toward a unity government—one that includes Hamas.

Three years of begging with the thugs running Syria got us a slaughter of civilians we are powerless to stop.

Libya, where we helped overthrow Qaddafi, is splintering, with the militias we supported starting to fight one another for power.

Nothing has changed in Iran, except the mullahs are three years closer to a nuclear bomb.

Russia has accepted our “reset” concessions and responded by sticking its thumb in our eye from Iran to Syria.

Meanwhile, how many new allies have we made in the past three years? None.

This is big. Huge. Gigantic. A firestorm.

And Republicans would be idiots for not seizing upon it.

Barack Obama has made the biggest blunder of his political life.

The president’s health-care regulation expanding access to birth control, including abortion pills, impinges on churches that oppose abortion, especially Catholic ones, by narrowly defining their religious activity to teaching only. Government must be wary of determining where the works of faith end.

Reaction came quickly:

Obama administration faces backlash over rule ordering birth control coverage

President Obama’s decision to force employers, including religious institutions, to provide health insurance coverage for contraception is becoming a big problem for his reelection campaign.

GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney launched a petition on Monday against the mandate, arguing it was an attack by Obama on “religious liberty.”

Conservatives, including Catholics such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), are attacking the administration for the decision. And now, nine months before the presidential election, the backlash is growing even among Obama supporters, who say the move was politically tone-deaf.

White House defends contraception rules as criticisms mount

U.S. Catholic bishops have slammed the Obama administration for a regulation finalized on January 20 that would require health insurance to include birth control and other preventative health services for women. The leaders contend that the policy infringes on religious liberty because the Church does not condone birth control of any kind.

Over the weekend, Catholic clergy across the country called for congregations to protest the rule and pressure Obama to back down.

“To force American citizens to choose between violating their consciences and forgoing their healthcare is literally unconscionable,” said Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, in a statement last month.

Jim Towey, president of Ave Maria University in Florida, who also served in the administration of President George W. Bush, said Tuesday he would fight the provision using “all lawful means at our disposal.”

“Our non-Catholic employees and students understand fully that the University must adhere to Catholic teaching and they do not expect us to provide such services,” he said in a statement.

The White House sensed the rising storm:

Obama administration struggles to contain uproar over birth-control rule

The White House struggled Wednesday to contain the growing uproar over its birth-control mandate, with Democrats peeling off one by one in what has become an increasingly divisive election-year controversy.

Pressure to roll back the new contraception policy mounted quickly as the day wore on, driven by divisions among Democrats, mixed messages from President Obama’s advisers and a constant drumbeat from the GOP.

“It’s becoming a thorny problem for the White House and it appears to only be getting worse,” said one Democratic strategist. “The politically astute move would be to modify this thing, and quick.”

Asked if the administration should shift course, a former senior administration official said, “I don’t see how they couldn’t. It’s pretty bad.”

Leon Panetta was incredulous

“What are we doing here?” asked Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, stepping outside his wheelhouse to ask about a rising storm involving the Obama administration and the Catholic Church. “What’s the point?”

It was the Fall of 2011 and Panetta had read about a proposed Obama administration rule that would require employers – excluding houses of worship but including religious organizations such as charities, hospitals, and schools – to offer health insurance that fully covered contraception.

Panetta – a Catholic, former U.S. Representative, and White House chief of staff – didn’t quite understand why the Obama administration would be stepping into this conflict.

Panetta’s fears have to a degree been realized as White House officials now find themselves taking heat on a policy debate about conscience and religious liberty; the Obama administration is working to find a way to allow religious organizations to not pay for services they find morally objectionable, while also ensuring that, say, the women nurses and doctors who work at Catholic hospitals have full access to birth control. Some officials are discussing a way to introduce something like the law in Hawaii, where religious organizations don’t have to pay for employee insurance that covers contraception, but they do have to inform employees how they can get it on their own.

Obama then dug his heels in

President Obama “reinforced” his stance on the controversial contraception mandate while speaking at the Democrats’ annual retreat at Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. today, Senate Democrats said.

The retreat was closed to media.

Following President Obama’s speech at the retreat, a small group of Senate Democrats, mostly women, left the retreat early in order to hold a news conference on Capitol Hill to counter the Republicans’ news conference today at which they called for the mandate to be overturned.

Democrats said they will “fight strongly” to keep the mandate in place.

That may prove to be a precious gift for Republicans.

Obama is losing democrats

A handful of Senate Democrats have split with President Obama’s controversial birth-control mandate and slammed the administration’s requirement that church-affiliated employers cover contraceptives.

The five Democrats in the Senate expressing concern about some parts of the administration’s policy include, most recently, Sens. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Bill Nelson of Florida, who have spoken publicly about their unhappiness with the mandate.

“This was a bone-headed decision by HHS,” Sen. Ben Nelson said of the new Health and Human Services mandates, according to the Nebraska Radio Network.

Nelson agreed with state Attorney General Job Bruning’s decision to file a legal challenge to the mandate.

Florida’s Nelson has also raised concerns. “My position is that church-affiliated organizations should be exempt, not just churches,” Nelson told the Tampa Bay Times Buzz Blog, adding that he has called the White House to express his concerns.

“It’s a matter of religious freedom,” Nelson spokesman Dan McLaughlin told ABC News.

Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan says he was betrayed:

Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan says President Barack Obama hasn’t kept his promise, when it comes to the new White House policy on contraception.

Sources told CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer that Archbishop Dolan feels betrayed after his meeting with the president on the issue late last year.

A Catholic group in Alabama filed the first lawsuit against the Obama administration’s new birth control regulations as the controversy got even more heated Thursday.

The president ducked questions about the contraception controversy that is bedeviling his administration. The reason may be the latest attack from Dolan, who, sources told CBS 2, feels he was stabbed in the back by the president after the two met to discuss the issue.

“He was worried about being at odds with the Church, especially when it came to health care and education and charitable outreach,” Dolan told Kramer.

That’s called “willing suspension of disbelief.”

John Boehner cried:

“The federal government has drifted dangerously beyond its constitutional boundaries. This attack by the federal government on religious freedom in our country must not stand and will not stand.”

As usual, too tepid and lacking heart.

But Marco Rubio got it right

Click here to view the embedded video.

The heat was getting so great that David Axelrod jumped in

David Axelrod, a senior campaign adviser for the Obama reelection campaign, signaled Tuesday that the Obama administration may be open to a compromise on a new rule that requires many religious employers to provide contraception to their employees.

“I’m less concerned about the messaging of this than to find a resolution that makes sense,” said Axelrod on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

But the best news for Republicans? Joe Biden says he can fix it.

Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday that he is “determined” to find a solution to the controversial birth control issue and that the administration is making “a significant attempt to work this out.”

Biden, who is Catholic, broke his silence on the Obama administration’s new contraception rule and said he is “determined to see that this gets worked out and I believe we can work it out.”

Let us not err as to what transpired here. This is a classic redistributionist action- make someone else pay for something Obama wants.

But it is also makes very clear Obama’s contempt for the Catholic Church. While Obama bows endlessly to Islamic leaders he has no qualms about trashing Catholicism. A so-called compromise has been announced. Drudge called it “caving” but it’s not caving at all. Obama has simply re-framed the debate to make people think it is something other than what it is. Someone else will pay for what Obama wants to give away and it will not be acceptable to the Catholic Church.

The episode is very important from a symbolic perspective. It makes clear what a lame duck Barack Obama would do to the country. Obama is already running roughshod over the Constitution. A second term would be a horror show.

UPDATE: Obama has offered a what some call a “compromise” but in reality is anything but a compromise. What Obama is basically proposing is that religious organizations simply lie.

Under the new policy, religious employers that don’t want to offer contraception could exclude it from their policies. Insurance companies instead would be required to provide access to contraception for plan participants who wanted it, without explicitly charging either the religious employer or worker.

Obama’s plan allows those providing insurance to say that aren’t actually providing contraception but the insurers themselves are. See how easy that was?

This has not gone over well:

Catholic bishops said Friday night that they would not support the Obama administration’s proposed compromise on a controversial rule that requires most employers to fully cover contraception in their workers’ health plans.

Over at Think Progress they believe that contraception is a critical to the fight against global warming:

Any morally acceptable pathway to prevent catastrophic global warming includes broad access to affordable birth control for the world’s women.

Who knew?

An undated photo of Hamza Kashgari.

A columnist for the Jeddah-based Al Bilad newspaper, Hamza Kashgari, was detained Thursday by Malaysian police after fleeing to the country from Saudi Arabia to escape execution after he insulted the Prophet Muhammad:

Mr. Kashgari’s tweets incited outrage in the conservative Islamic country, where many regarded them as blasphemous, and reportedly prompted the king to call for his arrest. Blasphemy is a crime punishable by death in Saudi Arabia.

More than 13,000 people have joined a Facebook page titled “The Saudi People Demand the Execution of Hamza Kashgari.”

According to The Daily Beast, a friend of Mr. Kashgari, who asked not to be named, accompanied him to the airport and witnessed his detention.

“We were just watching him, waiting for him to pass the immigration checkpoint. Once he submitted his passport, they asked him to step away for a few minutes,” The Daily Beast quoted the friend as saying. “And suddenly these two people without uniforms just arrested him.”

An official from Malaysia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who refused to be identified, said Mr. Kashgari would likely be repatriated to Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Kashgari would be sent back “because he is on the watch list of Saudi Arabia,” the official said.

Some reports have suggested that Mr. Kashgari wanted to seek asylum abroad. But the foreign affairs official said Malaysia does not grant asylum out of respect for the laws of other countries. “It’s not our practice to grant political asylum,” the official said, adding that the ministry had contacted the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur.

The official said Malaysia, a Muslim-majority country, had good diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia.

What was it that was so horrible for him to earn the ire of puritanical Islamists and calls for execution? What was his crime? He twittered:

In one Twitter post, which has since been deleted but was published by Agence France-Presse, Mr. Kashgari wrote to the Prophet: “I have loved things about you and I have hated things about you and there is a lot I don’t understand about you. I will not pray for you.”

The Daily Beast:

Last week, just before the anniversary of the Prophet Muhammad’s birth, Hamza Kashgari, a 23-year-old Saudi writer in Jidda, took to his Twitter feed to reflect on the occasion.

“On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you’ve always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you,” he wrote in one tweet.

“On your birthday, I find you wherever I turn. I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more,” he wrote in a second.

“On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile at you as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more,” he concluded in a third.

Really?! Seriously?!? That’s it!?! This constitutes an outrageous insult and blasphemy against the Prophet?

Actually, not at all surprising for the thin-skinned fanatics of the religion of perpetual rage (to clarify this for new readers: I aim this at the Salafis, Islamists, Taliban, Qutbists, and likeminded puritanical Islamic fundamentalists).

Twitter quickly flooded with responses to Kashgari, registering more than 30,000 within a day. He was accused of blasphemy, and enraged Saudis called for his death. By the time he removed the tweets and issued a long apology, backtracking on his comments and begging for forgiveness, the danger had already expanded beyond the Web. Someone posted Kashgari’s home address in a YouTube video, and, his friends say, vigilantes came looking for him at his local mosque. The Saudi information minister banned Kashgari’s local newspaper column and barred outlets across the country from publishing his work. Nasser al-Omar, an influential cleric, called for him to be tried in a Sharia court for apostasy, which is punishable by death. Other leading clerics decried Kashgari on their own, and Saudi Arabia’s council of senior scholars issued a rare and harshly worded communiqué condemning him and his tweets and demanding that he be put on trial. Yesterday, Saudi Arabia’s leading news site, SABQ, reported that the king himself had issued a warrant for Kashgari’s arrest.

With the pressure mounting, Kashgari fled to Southeast Asia earlier today. Hours later, in his first interview with the press, he told The Daily Beast that he was stunned by the turn of events but resigned to the fact that he can never return home. “It’s impossible. No way,” he said. “I’m afraid, and I don’t know where to go.” Kashgari says he is now planning to apply for asylum abroad.

Though Saudi Arabia has seen uproars over controversial newspaper articles or scholarly works before, no great calls for Sharia trials have ever sounded in the kingdom on account of a few tweets—and the furor has gone viral, snowballing into a bigger scandal than anything the country has seen in the recent past.

When he caught wind of the tweets, Fouad al-Farhan, a respected liberal and Saudi Arabia’s most influential blogger, knew Kashgari was in trouble. He quickly got in touch with the young writer and urged him to issue the apology. “Don’t try to be a hero,” he told him. “You will lose big time.”

Well….I bet this is one of those times when he is not loving Muhammad but feeling the hate.

By tweeting about the prophet, al-Farhan says, Kashgari crossed a line that even Saudi liberals won’t dare to touch. Even so, al-Farhan was surprised by the level of rage that Kashgari inspired, and how quickly it spread. In a span of just days, the issue came to dominate social media—from the onslaught of tweets under the hashtag #HamzahKashghri to vitriolic YouTube videos and a Facebook group, currently boasting nearly 8,000 members, called “The Saudi People Demand the Execution of Hamza Kashgari”—and reached all the way to top clerics and the king. “There was an amazing anger. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,” al-Farhan says, noting that the outrage in Saudi Arabia has exceeded even the levels seen after a Danish newspaper infamously published a cartoon of Muhammad in 2005.

“I think it’s because this is an extremely unique case. We’ve never had our own Salman Rushdie before. We’ve never had a case as extreme as this one of someone crossing the line,” al-Farhan says.

Al-Farhan has been harshly critical of Kashgari’s tweets. Even Kashgari’s friends, all of whom requested anonymity, say they’re reluctant to come to his defense—and have even felt the need to attack him themselves. “Everyone who tried to objectively deal with this case was immediately stigmatized and labeled an enemy of the prophet, who therefore should suffer the same fate Hamza is awaiting,” says one.

Adds another: “Right now we’re not worried about freedom of speech. We’re worried about the safety of our friend. And right now we can only help his safety if we condemn him, and [from there] try to rationalize what he said.”

Kashgari says he never expected such an outcry—“not even 1 percent.” But he knows the mindset of his critics well. He was raised as a religious conservative in a traditional Salafi community, becoming more liberal and “humanist,” in the words of one friend, as he grew older and embraced the Web. His writing also grew more provocative, particularly on Twitter, where he had attracted the ire of conservatives who kept a close eye on everything he wrote. Ahmed Al Omran, who keeps the popular blog Saudi Jeans, says it’s common for conservative activists to keep watch over liberal-minded social-media feeds. “They wait for the moment when they say something controversial to use it against them. Hamza is apparently one of the people they’ve been monitoring,” he says. “Most people feel strongly about the situation. But at the same time, I feel that conservatives are trying to take advantage of the situation, make an example out of him, and show their strength.”

Kashgari has since deleted his Twitter account, and he says some like-minded friends have done the same. He declined to comment on his apology and retraction but insisted his battle was still not lost. “I view my actions as part of a process toward freedom. I was demanding my right to practice the most basic human rights—freedom of expression and thought—so nothing was done in vain,” he says. “I believe I’m just a scapegoat for a larger conflict. There are a lot of people like me in Saudi Arabia who are fighting for their rights.”

If Kashgari is to somehow survive this, it’s going to take a mass media international outcry and pressure.

Perhaps, like the “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” event, an “Everybody Tweet Muhammad Day” is in order to show support for Kashgari.