Monday, February 3, 2014

Monday, February 3, 2014

Bill O'Reilly's interview with Barack Obama last night showed Obama is changing. Instead of blaming Bush for his troubles, Obama zeroed in on Fox News as the culprit. 

Ten minutes to interview the president of the United States is a tough task. O'Reilly conducted a tougher interview than Obama usually experiences. Nonetheless, I thought O'Reilly could have done a lot more. 

For example, O'Reilly asked Obama, "Was it the biggest mistake of your presidency to tell the nation over and over, if you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance?"

"Mistake" was an overly-generous choice of words. A more accurate question could have been: "Mr. President, you said people could keep the policies they had and like. We have memos indicating you knew they couldn't. Why did you repeatedly lie to the American people?" 

If Mr. O'Reilly was too polite to confront the president that directly on national TV, he could have mentioned that Obama's statement was labeled PolitiFact's "Lie of the Year." But calling it a mere "mistake" allowed Obama to appear well-meaning, while millions of Americans are being forced to pay higher premiums to replace cancelled health insurance policies. 

So what can we learn from Obama's interview with Bill O'Reilly? If it's too late to blame Bush, just blame Fox News. At one point, Obama said, "These kinds of things keep on surfacing in part because you and your TV station will promote them." He made similarly dismissive comments on at least two other occasions, suggesting that the only reason Benghazi and the IRS matter is because Fox News keeps recycling conspiracy theories. 

In reality, Fox News is the only network that doesn't have a liberal bias leading it to cover-up for Obama's "mistakes." That may also explain why Fox is the most trusted name in the news for the fifth year in a row. 

Did Kerry Threaten Israel? 

Secretary of State John Kerry is under fire for public comments he made at the annual Munich Security Conference this weekend. When asked about the Middle East peace process, Kerry said:
 

  • "For Israel, the stakes are also enormously high. Do they want a failure that then begs whatever may come in the form of a response from disappointed Palestinians and the Arab community? … and you see for Israel there's an increasing de-legitimization campaign that has been building up. People are very sensitive to it. There are talks of boycotts and other kinds of things. Are we all going to be better with all of that?"

Kerry's public comments are a blank check for Israel bashers around the world. He practically invited violence and misguided, anti-Semitic attempts to de-legitimize Israel. And Israeli officials are furious, as they should be.

Yuval Steinitz, Israeli Minister of Intelligence, said, "The things Kerry said are hurtful … and they are intolerable. Israel cannot be expected to negotiate with a gun to its head…" 

Naftali Bennett, Minister of Industry, Trade and Labor, blasted Kerry as a mouthpiece for anti-Semitism, saying, "We expect of our friends in the world to stand by our side against the attempts to impose an anti-Semitic boycott on Israel, and not to be their mouthpiece."

Just think of what has happened in recent years. President Bush and, to some extent, Bill Clinton would regularly remind our adversary Iran that if it kept sponsoring terrorism, continued its march toward nuclear weapons and went on calling for a second Holocaust, the world community would boycott and put more sanctions on Iran. Obama has weakened those sanctions and his Secretary of State appears instead to be making threats to boycott and isolate Israel. 

I repeat what I have written previously: The president of the United States is now the chief lobbyist for the Islamic Republic of Iran. And Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, is now chief lobbyist for the values of the free world. 

Iranian General Threatens America 

While the Obama Administration is threatening Israel, Iranian military leaders continue threatening us. In a televised interview this weekend, Brigadier General Hossein Salami said, "The U.S. military option is of no care to us. They can use this option but should take the responsibility for its destructive consequences too." 

Salami said that if the United States attacked Iran's nuclear facilities, Iran would "recognize no boundary for its response." Translation: Iranian terror cells, led by Hezbollah, would strike U.S. interests all over the world, including inside U.S. borders. The general added, "We have … identified centers in America [for attack] that will create a shock. We will conduct such a blow in which they [America] will be destroyed from within."

If this is the way the Iranians are talking before they have a nuclear weapon, just imagine how they will act once they become a nuclear power. 

One Million Abortions A Year 

The abortion rate in America fell in 2011 to the lowest level since 1973. But before you applaud, that still means more than 1 million innocent unborn children were destroyed in the United States in 2011, down from 1.2 million in 2008.

These figures are unreliable because abortion clinics, unbelievably, are not required to report such statistics. The information is based on a survey of abortion clinics conducted by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute.

I hope this downward trend continues. I want all of our children to be welcomed into the world and protected by the law. If the abortion rate is dropping, it is due to the number of states with pro-life governors and pro-life state legislatures. Even though they cannot outlaw abortions, many are putting popular, commonsense restrictions in place to save innocent human life.