Obama courts 'West-haters'

Plans to attend conference 'seeking Islamic interests'

March 31, 2009
By Aaron Klein
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

JERUSALEM – Concern has been mounting over President Obama's scheduled participation in the U.N.'s Alliance of Civilizations summit in Turkey next month, with some critics painting the organization as anti-Western and advocating Iranian interests.

"The Alliance might more appropriately be called a U.N.-approved Slush Fund for Advancing Iranian and Other Islamic Interests," wrote Claudia Rosett, a Forbes contributor and journalist-in-residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

A separate report by the Heritage Foundation labeled the Alliance forum "well-intentioned" but with little prospect for success due to "bias and objectionable proposals to freedom of expression." The report was titled "Why President Obama should not attend the Alliance of Civilizations forum."

Obama is reportedly due at the Alliance April 7. The organization was formed in 2005 as an offshoot of the Dialogue of Civilizations, an earlier U.N. project founded by former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, who is still a member of the Alliance.

Other Alliance member states or participating organizations include China; the Organization of the Islamic Conference; the Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization; the Arab League; Turkey; and the Arab League Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization. Not on the list is Israel.

In 2006, the Alliance released a 63-page official report largely laying blame on the West for negative perceptions of Muslims and Islam. The report only mentioned Islamic terrorism once – in its recommendations section where it suggested the Western media should not use the term terrorism.

The Western media should refrain from using certain terms in reporting on Muslims and Islam, the report recommended, "including the use of terms such as 'Islamic terrorism' and 'Islamic fascism' – [which] have contributed to an alarming increase in Islamophobia which further exacerbates Muslim fears of the West."
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Yes, Mr. Self-Righteous. You inherited a deficit. But, hey, it doesn't mean you have to go and quadruple it!

Obama can pontificate all he wants, but the graph doesn't lie. It reflects not only his own numbers, but those of the CBO.
Rees

Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures
from The Heritage Foundation
March 25, 2009

President Barack Obama has repeatedly claimed that his budget would cut the deficit by half by the end of his term. But as Heritage analyst Brian Riedl has pointed out, given that Obama has already helped quadruple the deficit with his stimulus package, pledging to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. The Washington Post has a great graphic which helps put President Obama’s budget deficits in context of President Bush’s.

What’s driving Obama’s unprecedented massive deficits? Spending. Riedl details:

• President Bush expanded the federal budget by a historic $700 billion through 2008. President Obama would add another $1 trillion.
• President Bush began a string of expensive finan­cial bailouts. President Obama is accelerating that course.
• President Bush created a Medicare drug entitle­ment that will cost an estimated $800 billion in its first decade. President Obama has proposed a $634 billion down payment on a new govern­ment health care fund.
• President Bush increased federal education spending 58 percent faster than inflation. Presi­dent Obama would double it.
• President Bush became the first President to spend 3 percent of GDP on federal antipoverty programs. President Obama has already in­creased this spending by 20 percent.
• President Bush tilted the income tax burden more toward upper-income taxpayers. President Obama would continue that trend.

President Bush presided over a $2.5 trillion increase in the public debt through 2008. Setting aside 2009 (for which Presidents Bush and Obama share responsibility for an additional $2.6 trillion in public debt), President Obama’s budget would add $4.9 trillion in public debt from the beginning of 2010 through 2016.

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