New Yorker Cartoonist Targeted for Jihad

Political epiphanies are not always instantaneous. Or if they are, there may be a drawn out period of gestation before it springs upon you, like Venus from the half shell. Such it was with me. I was reading Mark Steyn on the lame and execrable New Yorker cover:


...depicting seven apparently white Republican men (although two of the seven are in fact Hispanic), while poor Hillary has to stand outside the clubhouse door looking in. The glaring absence of three Republican minority candidates, a black, a woman and an Indian-American, along with the inaccurate depiction of the two Hispanic candidates, suggests that reality did not fit the cartoonist's meme of "white male privilege", or the fact that Hillary had let herself into her own clubhouse, built, owned and operated by the Clinton Foundation through a series of dummy corporations and cut outs.

Suddenly it hit me: I was offended by this cartoon. No, I mean: I WAS OFFENDED BY THIS CARTOON! I had seen it several times before. In fact, over the years I have seen a number of cartoons that were offensive: cartoons of Condoleeza Rice as a Negro slave comes to mind. But as offensive as some of these cartoons was, I was never "offended". Not officially anyway.

So I thought back to all the lessons I had learned from similar offenses in the news recently. Certainly, this fellow Mark Ulriksen of the New Yorker has the 1st. Amendment right to draw it, but that does not trump my right to be offended by it. He was clearly doing it intentionally to provoke a controversy. "Punching down" in the Doonesbury vernacular.

How do rational people respond to such provocation? Obviously, it is to declare a fatwa upon him, hunt him down and kill him*.

Which brings me to my problem. Two men recently set the example by driving 1000 miles to carry out a similar jihad**. I live in California. Assuming this Mark Ulriksen actually does live in new York, that's closer to 3,000 miles. President Obama has impressed upon us that Anthropomorphic Global Warming is a bigger threat to the nation than terrorism. So, in order to keep my carbon footprint manageable, do any of you know Mark, who could maybe convince him to meet me half way? Failing that, is anyone else out there OFFENDED who would be interested in car pooling? (Going halfsies on ammunition would be appreciated, too, but not mandatory.)

If there were any middle ground, any at all, acceptable to men of reason, and peace and goodwill, I would obviously be open to that, but, the predominant view, worldwide, is that this is the preferable and most frequently used recourse.

If only there were another way!




*If you cannot fathom the concepts of hyperbole or satire, please stop reading now.

**Well, attempt one anyway!

The Foreign-Policy Disaster Maker

by Andrew Roman

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So, while the American left obsessively spent most of the last thirty six hours or so trying to divert attention away from the continuing disaster that is Barack Obama in the White House, my thoughts were focused on matters that are actually relevant to the real world.

Islamic rage was all the rage late last week. It continued into the weekend and right on into this week at points all across the globe. From the assault on our embassy in Cairo to the murder of four Americans in Libya, from the fires set at our embassy in Tunisia to mobs burning our flag in London, there was no respite.  We were told that an obscure video negatively depicting the Prophet Mohammed was responsible for triggering this latest edition of Muslim fury. The shock waves of this insult even found its way onto American shores when two college campuses were shut down and evacuated last Friday due to threats from some entity identifying itself as Al Qaeda. The nuclear facility at the University of Texas was also evacuated.

On Monday, we heard of new waves of protests breaking out in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Yesterday, we heard about an Iranian submarine being deployed in the Persian Gulf.

And while we were reminded by the First Lady last week that the greatest threat to national security is, in fact, obesity, anyone who may have been holding their breath waiting for the President (or anyone in this administration) to use the words “terrorist” or “terrorism” - or heaven forbid it, an “act of war” – regarding the attacks on our consulate and embassies has long since keeled over. (Just imagine if the terrorists had stormed the consulate brandishing twinkies and Doritos). Equally, anyone who may have been hoping for a strong showing from the leader of the free world in the wake of terrorist acts against American interests on the eleventh anniversary of the worst single act of terrorism in this country’s history had better find a new place to channel that hope.

The lamestream media did not see the immediate need, nor recognize the immediate relevance, in asking this President of the United States why security was not beefed up at American embassies in hostile territories for the 9/11 anniversary, but have had no problem utilizing every nanosecond of air time over the past day and a half to turn its collective focus on Mitt Romney and comments he made about non-income-tax-paying Americans.   (Had Obama been a Republican is there any doubt he’d have been hammered with this obvious question?) They didn’t bother to inquire as to why he, as Commander-In-Chief, did not (and still does not) feel the need to attend the majority of his own intelligence briefings. They didn’t even ask how he and fellow Democrats can claim that Mitt Romney was playing politics with the events overseas when President Obama himself flew to a Las Vegas fundraiser that same day.

Fortunately for us, the White House on Friday assured the public that the anti-American violence was not directed at the United States.

Repeat: Not directed at the United States.

It must have been the storming of the American embassies, the torching of American flags and the burning of President Obama in effigy that confused me.

Jay Carney, White House Press Secretary, wasted no time espousing the administration’s view that the inane little anti-Mohammed YouTube video being “credited” for triggering all of this terroristic upheaval – the one unseen and unheard of by just about every living human being on earth – was officially judged to “be reprehensible and disgusting.”

Thank heaven that was cleared up.

So, in the wake of Americans being murdered and our interests remaining under assault overseas, while our embassies were being attacked, while American flags were being burned, while protests were spreading, and while the entire region teetered on the brink of full explosion, our President wanted to let the bad guys know that we think the film that supposedly made all of them mad is disgusting?

Leadership.

Meanwhile, those of us who recoil and wince at this ongoing projection of American weakness and appeasement do not give a rat’s earlobe how offended or insulted radical murderers become. The instant the decision was made  to trade insults for innocent lives, their feelings about anything became irrelevant. The fact that Americans were murdered because of an amateurish internet movie that no one saw, followed by an official stance of “I’m sorry” by our pathetic Clinton-run State Department was – and is – enough to make me sick. Meanwhile, I’m still waiting to hear which adjectives the White House will muster to describe the breeches of American sovereignty through these terrorist acts overseas. Surely, Obamacrats are aware that embassies actually do represent sovereign states - that an attack on an embassy is, by definition, an attack on the country itself.

Oh wait, these events transpired last week. It's old hat. It's immaterial today because that lout Mitt Romney had the nerve – the unmitigated gall – to talk about the 47% of Americans who do not pay income tax….their fair share, to quote a phrase.

To his credit, Carney did concede that the ever-escalating acts of protest and violence overseas were “fairly volatile.”

Fairly volatile.

Yet the movie was reprehensible.

I cannot help but ponder: How many dead Americans move that word from the “fairly volatile” column to the “reprehensible” column.

Indeed, there are times when it is impossible to determine whether or not this administration is actually as incompetent and clueless as they portray themselves, or whether they are commandeering a calculated effort to make sure that no one alive (save for Christians and Republicans) is ever offended again – as if to be loved is (or should be) the United States’ purpose on this globe. On a daily basis, I watch how this President handles himself, this country and world at large, and almost daily I am astounded at the absolute ineptitude I see.

How, for instance, can the President of the United States look so ridiculously indecisive – I mean embarrassingly bad - when asked if Egypt is an American ally? 

How can he possibly say that Mitt Romney “shoots before he aims” when the President himself jumped the gun (if not the entire arsenal) when declaring the Cambridge, Massachusetts police department stupid in what was a nonexistent case of racism in the matter of Professor Henry Gates? Or commenting on the Trayvon Martin killing before knowing any of the facts (wasting no time interjecting his race into the matter).

This is the man who has, time and time again, spoke ill of his own country on foreign soil and has bowed to foreign heads of state. He has adopted an apology-first approach in dealing with the world-at-large – his I’m- sorry-we’re- so-big-and-powerful motif - that has done nothing but alienate long-time friends and allies while emboldening America’s enemies. It quite literally sickens me.

He continues his hell-bent pursuit of reducing America’s relevance and influence in the world, while proffering a position of moral equivalence – the How-can-I-ask-Iran-To-Not-Pursue-Nukes-When-We-Have-So-Many approach.  He is almost obsessed with being as inoffensive as he can to those who would – and do – commit evil acts on innocents (the “t” word), but has absolutely no problem unleashing his wrath on American entrepreneurs and innovators with his “you didn’t build that” message.

The man who won the Nobel Peace Prize for doing absolutely nothing and for saying that he was uniquely qualified to bring stability to American-Muslim relations – the man who predicted that his living in a Muslim country as a boy would be a useful tool in promoting international Kumbaya, saying, “I truly believe that the day I’m inaugurated, not only does the country look at itself differently, but the world looks at America differently. If I’m reaching out to the Muslim world, they understand that I’ve lived in a Muslim country, and I may be a Christian, but I also understand their point of view” – must now be wondering what has gone wrong. Everything was in place for a complete transmutation of a pre-Obama world into a post-everything age of peace, stability and fuzzy bunnies. 

Surely, this unrest cannot be because of him - the leader of a fundamentally transforming United States - or his policies. It must be - has to be - that lousy filmmaker. After all, President Obama has a half-Indonesian sister.

This is the man who apologized in Cairo for his country employing interrogation techniques that saved countless innocent lives and ultimately contributed to the killing of Osama Bin Ladin. This is the man who has called his own country arrogant and dismissive. This is the man who condemned his own nation for “too often” making decisions “based on fear rather than foresight.” This is the man who publically announced military withdrawal dates from war zones, thus lightening the load for our enemies. This is the man who said nothing while Iran’s government killed innocents during uprisings there. This is the man determined to make dangerous and drastic cuts to our defense budget.

So, in a world where angry Muslims seem to be dictating the terms – a world where French fear is prompting the closure of twenty of its embassies worldwide because of a cartoon – the President of the United States continues to believe that peace through softness is the correct course. In a world where our collapsing exit strategy in Afghanistan is making things exponentially more unstable and chaotic, the President finds time for $40,000-a-plate fundraisers in New York and fun-loving sit-downs with David Letterman. In a world where video cameras just happened to be present as police found and took into custody the two-bit movie maker in the middle of the night (for other reasons, of course), President Obama parties with Jay-Z and Beyonce.

Meanwhile, the press continues its assault on Mitt Romney, that heartless bastard.

Welcome to the future, Mr. President.

You did build this.

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