ABC News

Obama has pushed us to 16.5% unemployment

Some quotes of the day…a good read before you head out of the office for the 4th…

“There are now 14.7 million people unemployed. Since the start of the recession, the unemployment rate has risen 4.6 percentage points. If you account for those who have given up looking for a job but want to work or those working only part-time but want full time employment, the unemployment rate rises to 16.5%.” – The ABC News Business Unit, assessing the dismal numbers in this morning’s Jobs Report

“The fact of the matter is that the unemployment rate is much worse than the administration contemplated or that most people expected,” Economist Paul Krugman, to ABC’s Jennifer Parker

“My rear end is on the line, just like yours. I’m the guy in charge of this deal. So if it doesn’t work, it’s me.” – Vice President Joe Biden, quoted in Time Magazine, on the success or failure of the stimulus package

The LA Times

Well, here we go again on the Barack Obama birth certificate controversy that just won’t die because it’s one of those zombie issues like who really killed JFK.

No less an authority on politics, history and government archives than the Pat Boone is now raising serious questions about the legitimacy of the entire Obama administration and everything it has done since those 21 guns went off shortly after noon on Jan. 20.

This is because a lot of people, including firebrand conservative Alan Keyes (as The Ticket described here in February) and now Boone, insist or suggest or imply that Obama cannot be president of these United States because they insist, suggest or imply he wasn’t really born in Hawaii but was actually born in Kenya, his father’s homeland.

Now, none of this should actually matter because Obama’s mother was an American, if you consider Kansas America. So she could have been on Mars when wee Barry emerged and he’d still be American. All the courts have consistently thrown out challenges to the first African American president’s legality

by Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, ISrael National News

The only way Iran will not have nukes is if Israel takes action

U.S. President Barack Obama’s policies have left an Israeli attack on Iran the only option in preventing the Muslim country from obtaining a nuclear weapon, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton wrote in The Washington Post Thursday.

In an article headlined “Time for an Israeli Strike?” Bolton answered his own question by stating, “Israel’s decision of whether to use military force against Tehran’s nuclear weapons program is more urgent than ever… Those who oppose Iran acquiring nuclear weapons are left in the near term with only the option of targeted military force against its weapons facilities.”

Iran’s Nuclear Threat “Never in Doubt”

A long-time supporter of Israel and a harsh critic of the U.N., Bolton claimed that the Iranian nuclear threat “was never in doubt“ during the American presidential campaign, but is even more certain following the apparent failure of the resistance movement in Iran.

By Spengler, Asia Times

Obama is empowering our enemies

There’s a joke about a man who tells a psychiatrist, “Everybody hates me,” to which the psychiatrist responds, “That’s ridiculous – everyone doesn’t know you, yet.” Which brings me to Barack Obama: one of the best-informed people in the American security establishment told me the other day that the president is a “Manchurian Candidate”.

That can’t be true – Manchuria isn’t in the business of brainwashing prospective presidential candidates any more. There’s no one left to betray America to. Obama is creating astrategic void in which no major power will dominate, and every minor power must fend for itself. The outcome is incalculably hard to analyze and terrifying to consider.

Obama doesn’t want to betray the United States; he only wants to empower America’s enemies. Forcing Israel to abandon its strategic buffer (the so-called settlements) was supposed to placate Iran, so that Iran would help America stabilize Iraq, where its influence looms large over the Shi’ite majority.

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, Associated Press

Sotomayor worked for a far left group

The top Republican on the Senate committee that will consider Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination says a Puerto Rican civil rights group’s papers could shed light on her judicial approach, particularly her view of racial preferences in hiring.

White House Counsel Greg Craig, however, told Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., in a letter that board meeting minutes and other papers detailing the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund’s activities while Sotomayor was an outside adviser shouldn’t impact her nomination because she had no role in writing or approving them.

“During her time there, the organization took extreme positions on legal issues ranging from the death penalty to abortion to racial quotas,” Sessions said in a statement. He said it was “absurd” for the White House to call the documents irrelevant.

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