Charlie Hebdo Magazine Will Continue To Go Out Of Its Way To Offend Muslims and All Religions In General

NBCNews.com:

Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine that was attacked by Islamic militants last week, will publish a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad on the cover of its next issue, according to Liberation, a newspaper that is helping the magazine continue operations. 

The picture, drawn by the staff cartoonist known as Luz, and published online Monday by Liberation, of course risks further enraging fundamentalist Muslims. 

It depicts a bug-eyed Muhammad holding a sign that says "Je Suis Charlie," the now-popular phrase that connotes solidarity with the magazine, and with the principles of free speech that its brand of humor represents. 

Under the figure of Mohammed are the words, "All is forgiven." The normal run for Charlie Hebdo magazine was previously about 50,000 copies, only in French — but the new issue will have a 3 million-copy run, in 16 languages. 

There's a big difference between "brave" and sheer stupidity.

RELATED: A German Paper That Reprinted Charlie Hebdo Cartoons Was Firebombed

Financial Times Calls Charlie Hebdo ‘Stupid’ for ‘Provoking Muslims’

Mediaite.com:

Hours after 12 editors and cartoonists at the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were executed by Islamic extremists, the Financial Times‘s editorial board published a strongly-worded editorial criticizing the magazine for their “editorial foolishness.”

“If the magazine stops just short of outright insults, it is nevertheless not the most convincing champion of the principle of freedom of speech,” the London paper wrote (subscription only), noting Charlie Hebdo‘s long history of needling Muslims, Catholics, Jews, and pretty much everyone in existence. But they added: “France is the land of Voltaire, but too often editorial foolishness has prevailed at Charlie Hebdo.”

They continued:

This is not in the slightest to condone the murderers, who must be caught and punished, or to suggest that freedom of expression should not extend to satirical portrayals of religion. It is merely to say that some common sense would be useful at publications such as Charlie Hebdo, and Denmark’s Jyllands-Posten, which purport to strike a blow for freedom when they provoke Muslims, but are actually just being stupid.

The Financial Times added that their actions, and the resulting terrorist attack, would only serve to stoke anti-Islamic sentiment in France. “Anti-Islamism forms part of the electoral appeal of a party that topped the polls in May in France’s European Parliament elections,” they noted.

Charlie Hebdo‘s offices were firebombed in 2011 for publishing an image of the Prophet Muhammad as its “guest editor” on its cover, right around the time that Innocence of Muslims sparked mass protests for its offensive portrayal of Muslims.

I agree. As a black man, sure I have the right to walk back-n-forth around a town loaded with Klu Klux Klanmen in the middle of the day, but is that a good idea? No it isn't. These radical fundamentalists have recently shown that they no problem killing children in the name of whatever deity they claim to serve. You think risking your life to go out of your way to continually make fun of Allah is ever a good idea? You're stupid enough to think there won't be any repercussions esp. after they already warned you not to do it again. Not to condone this atrocity in any, way shape or form...but common f-cking sense people.

RELATED: French police identify gunmen in attack on Paris magazine that killed 12

Barack Obama Hasn't Come Up With One Original Idea Yet

NYPost.com:

Just before Labor Day, controversy erupted over President Obama’s garb at a presidential press conference — should he or should he not have worn a light tan summer suit when talking about ISIS? That was beside the point.

The issue isn’t the weight or color of his suit. The issue is that the suit is empty.

With almost six years of the Obama administration under our collective belts, the time has come to acknowledge a painful truth: This is an astoundingly idea-free presidency.

At that press conference, Obama stunned the world by saying, out loud and openly, that “we don’t have a strategy yet” on how to deal with ISIS. No president before him had ever said such a thing out loud, and for good reason: Having a strategy is the president’s job.

In the parlance of the universities where Obama spent so much of his time before 2004, when it came to a terror army running rampant through Iraq and beheading Americans, Obama was admitting he hadn’t done the reading, needed an extension on the paper, had to take an “incomplete.”

Well, there was no one there to grant him his incomplete — which is why, two weeks later, he found it necessary to give a nationally televised address to inform the American people and the world that, hey, guess what, he’d come up with a strategy at last. It involved sending arms to the very same Syrian rebels, which just happened to be a policy he had derided only a month earlier as “a fantasy.”

This maddening directionlessness was also on display in the American response to Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza in July — which would involve statements of support for Israel, followed by statements of anger about Israel’s conduct, which would be followed by more statements of support for Israel, and then word that the administration had delayed a standard-issue arms replenishment for Israel as punishment for its bad behavior.

This kind of policy and public-relations whiplash also characterizes the White House’s behavior when it comes to the failures of the Secret Service, with Obama press secretary one day saying the USSS’s director had the president’s full confidence and the next day announcing her resignation as though it had been what the president wished for all along.

And, of course, there’s the handling of the Ebola patient in Dallas, with the administration so desirous of not causing a panic that it spent several days misinforming Americans about whom the patient had come in contact with, how many people there had been, how many plane flights he’d been on, and so forth.

This inconstancy is the result of the administration’s elevation of cool and calm above all other qualities — leadership qualities like urgency, firmness, focus and determination.

The hard truth is that the Harvard Law Review editor and University of Chicago professor with two bestselling books to his name can’t formulate a policy to save his life, can’t oversee the implementation of the policies his administration has put in place and can’t adapt or rejigger them in a convincing way to take account of changing conditions.

RELATED:  Panetta: Obama vacillated on Syria

Charles Krauthammer: Barack Obama Is a Narcissist ‘Surrounded by Sycophants’

Mediaite.com:

Columnist Charles Krauthammer joined radio host Hugh Hewitt today to diagnose what he believes the problem is with President Obama: he’s a narcissist who surrounds himself with yes-men. He said, “Obama is clearly a narcissist in the non-scientific use of the word. He is so self-involved, you see it from his rise.”

Krauthammer argued that Obama views himself “in very world historical terms” which makes him amateurish. He also picked up on the repeated usage of first-person pronouns in the president’s announcement of Osama bin Laden‘s death, “as if he’d pulled the trigger.”

Hewitt asked whether outside pressure from people like David Petraeus is moving Obama at all. Krauthammer doubted it, because, he said, Obama “lives in a cocoon surrounded by sycophants”:

There’s not anyone of independent stature around him. There was in the first term, because he needed them to prop him up. But now that he entered a second term, he’s the master of the universe, so there’s nobody around him. He is impervious to outside advice, real advice that he takes.

RELATED:  Obama knows he can't really 'defeat' ISIS. Americans need to wake up to that reality, too.

Chuck Todd: Barack Obama about to do Carter-like Damage to Democrats on Foreign Policy

HotAir.com:

There’s plenty of evidence to support Chuck Todd’s conclusion, and not just on foreign policy, either. The new host of Meet the Press told the Morning Joe panel today that the new NBC/WSJ polling on issues shows that Obama really may be the second coming of Jimmy Carter … and that’s bad news for the Democrats:

Earlier, I wrote about the latest in the series of cratering poll numbers for Barack Obama and how it would impact his ability to restore confidence in his leadership. The NBC/WSJ poll numbers have more interesting data on domestic issues, especially in the context of the upcoming midterms. Obama’s leadership and popularity have become a boat anchor on Democrats’ hopes to avoid a GOP wave this November, but those aren’t the only problems facing the President’s allies in the midterms.

First, the generic ballot question looks better for the GOP than it has since the last election, but only marginally. Republicans have a 45/43 lead, about the same as last month’s 44/43, and the numbers for both parties are within the narrow range we have seen in this series all year. That doesn’t take into account likely voters, though, only registered voters. This poll doesn’t have any explicit enthusiasm tests, and for some reason NBC/WSJ isn’t testing for voting likelihood on these questions, even though the midterms are less than two months away.

The big problem for Democrats is on the issues. Democrats have wide lead on their traditional issues, including environmentalism (+27, but the lowest since 1992), abortion (+15), and health care — which is only at +8, when it was a +36 in January 2008. Republicans lead on their traditional issues too, such as national defense (+38) and the federal deficit (+18), both highs for this series — but those issues are more relevant in polling. Even more relevant than those are the economy, for which Republicans have a +10 advantage. In the 2006 midterms, Democrats had a +13 advantage. On taxes, Republicans have a narrow edge at +4. On the issues that matter most to voters in this cycle — the economy, taxes, national security — Republicans are peaking while Democrats are fading.

RELATED: NBC’s Richard Engel Slams President Obama’s ISIS Speech: ‘Wildly Off-Base’

New York Daily News Blasts Barack Obama For Vacation Return After James Foley Murder

HotAir.com:

There’s tough media coverage, there’s harsh media coverage, and then there’s … brutal media coverage. The New York Daily News, not exactly a bastion of conservative voices, provides the latter on Barack Obama’s “now watch this drive” moment yesterday:

Their article didn’t pull any punches, either:

President Obama put his own spin on the oft-quoted advice of predecessor Teddy Roosevelt: speak strongly and carry a nine iron.

The vacationing commander-in-chief returned to the golf course Wednesday after calling for justice in the brutal killing of an American journalist by ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) terrorists. …

The president zipped quickly from a local school to a Martha’s Vineyard golf course after his 12:45 p.m. media session. Obama delivered a short statement and took no questions from the assembled media.

And it doesn’t get any better for Obama at the Daily Mail. The British newspaper ran pictures of a laughing, jovial Obama on the links immediately following his five-minute statement about the beheading of an American citizen:

President Barack Obama reacted to the on-camera slaying of photojournalist James Foley for five minutes on Wednesday, telling a global audience that ‘when people harm Americans, anywhere, we do what’s necessary to see that justice is done.’

Less than 10 minutes after leaving the podium Obama teed-off and was seen laughing with friends and fist-bumping them during a five-hour game Farm Neck Golf Course on Martha’s Vineyard  – his seventh round in ten days. …

ABC News political director Rick Klein told Fox host Greta van Susteren that the White House is ‘well past the point of caring about the so-called “optics” of things like this. And the president himself clearly doesn’t … care about the way it looks.’

Klein said he found it ‘jarring to see him on the golf course just minutes after giving an address like this.’

What puzzles the NYDN’s Larry McShane is why Obama came back to work earlier in the week, but didn’t after the Foley beheading by ISIS and the subsequent revelation of the failed hostage rescue. Most of Washington’s been wondering about that too, and Investors Business Daily’s Michael Ramirez had some thoughts about that as well. If the videotaped butchering of an American journalist by the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization can’t encourage Obama back to the Oval Office, what did? 

Maybe Obama should start puttering around the office a little more, eh? Allahpundit called this Obama’s “Now watch this drive” moment in an update to my post yesterday, and it seems that this is rapidly becoming the consensus.

RELATED:  Irate Chris Matthews Taken Aback by Obama Reax to Foley Beheading; Says of ISIS 'If They Want to Die, Help Them Out'

Thank God John Kerry Was Never President

DailyCaller.com:

Addressing the cool kids at Rolling Stone during his ill-fated presidential campaign, John Kerry attempted to explain his vote for the Iraq War.

“I mean, when I voted for the war, I voted for what I thought was best for the country,” Kerry said. Then after taking a swipe at a Democratic presidential candidate who disrupted his coronation by actually opposing the war, he added, “Did I expect George Bush to f–k it up as badly as he did? I don’t think anybody did.”

Fast forward more than a decade. John Kerry is now secretary of state. And things are certainly f–ked up, perhaps more than anybody expected.

Kerry’s attempts at Middle East diplomacy have been almost universally panned, even by left-wing Israeli newspapers like Haaretz. “Kerry isn’t anti-Israeli; on the contrary, he’s a true friend to Israel,” states one of the more charitable Israeli accounts of Kerry’s Gaza maneuvers. “But his conduct in recent days over the Gaza cease-fire raises serious doubts over his judgment and perception of regional events.”

There are less charitable takes on Kerry’s peacemaking abilities. The Times of Israel’s Avi Issacharof  described “an extraordinary phone call taking place between a senior Palestinian Authority official and an Israeli counterpart, during which the two mocked the senior diplomat’s naivete and his failure to understand the regional reality.”

Ari Shavit, the author of the Haaretz piece, concluded, “The man of peace from Massachusetts intercepted with his own hands the reasonable cease-fire that was within reach, and pushed both the Palestinians and Israelis toward an escalation that most of them did not want.”

An Associated Press diplomatic correspondent tweeted, “Looks like phase one of new US Mideast peace strategy to piss everyone off so much they stop fighting each other & turn on Kerry is working.”

Kerry has finally beaten Bush: he has proved that he is a uniter, not a divider.

The conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians certainly isn’t Kerry’s fault; greater diplomatic minds than he have tried to bring peace to the Holy Land to no avail. Not even Metternich would be able to untangle this Gordian Knot.

Israel itself faces no good options. It can either permit a virulently anti-Israel terrorist organization to keep flinging rockets and building tunnels or continue to inflict civilian casualties that will inevitably deepen the anti-Israel sentiment on which Hamas relies.

But if a physician’s first obligation is to do no harm, Dr. Kerry should stop making house calls. The secretary of state is widely viewed as undermining a deal favored by Egypt, Israel, Fatah, Jordan and Saudi Arabia in favor of one preferred by Qatar and Turkey.

“Officials from Egypt, the Palestinian Authority, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, to name a few interested parties, watched with astonishment over the weekend as Kerry engaged in Paris with Khalid al-Attiyah and Ahmet Davutoglu, the foreign ministers of Qatar and Turkey,” Newsweek reported. “Some European foreign ministers also attended the Paris summit, but the guest list noticeably didn’t include any other Middle Eastern representatives.”

The proposal by Qatar and Turkey, not surprisingly, was perceived to embolden Hamas rather than empower other Palestinian political forces. According to the Jerusalem Post, Fatah fumed, “Those who want Qatar or Turkey to represent them should leave and go live there.”

You can make the case that at least some of the anti-Kerry pile-on is motivated by, perhaps even cover for, the intractable differences at the heart of the dispute. (Hamas wasn’t going to rush to accept the Egypt deal.)

And while Kerry’s heckuva job Bibi hot mic moment may have been dumb and counterproductive, Ronald Reagan had a more embarrassing gaffe before major diplomatic breakthroughs with the Soviet Union en route to winning the Cold War.

Somehow it is difficult to muster the same optimism about Kerry, however. He is a man in love with the sound of his own voice in an administration filled with such people, even by Washington standards. The results so far can only bring to mind Woody Allen’s quip that masturbation is sex with someone you love.

Neither Barack Obama nor George W. Bush will ever have their faces etched upon Mount Rushmore.

Kerry’s singular accomplishment to this point has been to make it conceivable that their elections were not the most disastrous possible outcomes.

If we survive his tenure as secretary of state, future generations may conclude: Thank God John Kerry was never president.

RELATED: Did Israel Snoop On Kerry?

Liberal Media Now Officially Referring To Ex-Army Traitor Bradley Manning As "Chelsea"

Despite the heinous crimes he committed and thus, all the lives he put in danger by salaciously releasing classified information to an anti-secrecy group, the liberal media bows down this criminal's request to now be referred to as "Chelsea" because he chooses to dress like a woman (i.e. "transgender rights"). Control the words and you control the debate:

Chelsea Manning, currently serving a thirty-five year sentence for leaking a heap of classified military materials to Wikileaks, penned an op-ed for the New York Times Sunday morning in which she called for greater press access to U.S. military operations, arguing that more transparency would produce a better informed populace and restore confidence in political and military officials. 

“I believe that the current limits on press freedom and excessive government secrecy make it impossible for Americans to grasp fully what is happening in the wars we finance,” she wrote.

Manning, a former intelligence analyst, said she saw in Iraq the wide gulf in the understanding of U.S. military operations enjoyed by intelligence analysts versus that attainable by the public or even lawmakers, both of whom made poor decisions based on incomplete information:

“The more I made these daily comparisons between the news back in the States and the military and diplomatic reports available to me as an analyst, the more aware I became of the disparity. In contrast to the solid, nuanced briefings we created on the ground, the news available to the public was flooded with foggy speculation and simplifications.”

Manning especially critiqued the embedded reporter procedures, which she said all but demanded favorable coverage from the few members of the press who achieved access to it in the first place — not, Manning argued, a coincidence:

“The embedded reporter program, which continues in Afghanistan and wherever the United States sends troops, is deeply informed by the military’s experience of how media coverage shifted public opinion during the Vietnam War. The gatekeepers in public affairs have too much power: Reporters naturally fear having their access terminated, so they tend to avoid controversial reporting that could raise red flags.”

RELATED: VA Fast-Tracks Sex Change for Manning While Vets Die on Waiting Lists

Mitt Romney Bashes Hillary Clinton, Calls Foreign Policy A 'Monumental Bust'

Mediaite.com:

Former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney harped on Hillary Clinton on Friday, further criticizing the foreign policy she and the Obama administration pursued during her time as secretary of state.

"The Obama-Biden-Hillary Clinton foreign policy is a monumental bust," Romney told about 300 of his top donors, according to The Washington Post's Philip Rucker.

The donors were gathered, along with potential presidential candidates, at Romney's "ideas summit" in Park City, Utah.

Romney took a number of punches at Clinton during his speech on foreign policy and domestic issues, saying the United States is worse off after her tenure as secretary of state leading the U.S. diplomatic corps.

"Secretary Clinton actually presented Russia's foreign minister with a large plastic button labeled reset," he said, according to Rucker. Romney added that she was "gushing with smiles" as she did so.

On Thursday, Romney told Fox News, "There’s almost not a place in the world that’s better off because of her leadership in the State Department."

Romney also responded to Clinton's remarks in regard to the exchange of five Taliban detainees for Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl's release.

In an interview on NBC News this week, Clinton said, "These five guys are not a threat to the United States. They are a threat to the safety and security of Afghanistan and Pakistan."

Romney told Fox News, "Well, that may be one of the most clueless responses I have heard in a long time because of course you don’t throw our allies under the bus."

RELATED:  Limbaugh: Clinton Remark on Gitmo Shows She’s ‘Neither Smart Nor Competent’

5 High Crimes And Misdemeanors For Which Barack Obama Deserves To Be Impeached

Townhall.com:

Barack Obama's tenure in the White House has been one of the low points in the history of our republic. It may seem melodramatic to compare the damage Barack Obama is doing to 9/11, Pearl Harbor, and the White House being burned during the war of 1812, but in a sense he's worse than any of those calamities because he's a purely self-inflicted wound. It's not a sneak attack from the Japanese laying us low this time; it's the man our nation willingly chose to lead us not once, but twice. 

It's bad enough that Barack Obama is not qualified or competent to handle a job like the presidency, as his performance has proven again and again. Not only has he ridden the economy so deep into the ground that the percentage of Americans not working is at a 36 year high, he's piled on so much debt in such a short period that the destruction of our economy via bankruptcy and/or runaway inflation may be inevitable at this point. 

Worse yet, Barack Obama has taken the position that he can rewrite any law he chooses, any way he chooses, for any reason he chooses. In other words, although Obama is not a dictator, he IS CLAIMING THE RIGHT TO EXERCISE DICTATORIAL POWERS for himself. This is extraordinarily dangerous to our republic. As Congressman Trey Gowdy has pointed out, if Obama claims he has the power to change Obamacare or illegal immigration law at his whim, why couldn't he do the same with election law? In other words, Obama has no more right to give illegal aliens work permits or delay congressionally mandated parts of Obamacare than he does to ban handguns by decree or reduce the number of electoral votes in Republican leaning states. That's why it's so incredibly dangerous to allow Obama to be "above the law." It's because the abuses committed tomorrow by Obama or even future Presidents are likely to build upon the ones that we're allowing to go unchallenged today. 

The best way to check Barack Obama's power would be to impeach him. Despite the fact that Obama is much more deserving of impeachment than Clinton (perjury) or Andrew Johnson (who violated the Tenure of Office Act), it's unlikely that Obama will be impeached. Unfortunately, even if Republicans take back the Senate in 2014, there won't be enough votes in the upper chamber to get rid of Barack Obama. That's tragic, because for the good of the country, Barack Obama deserves to be driven from office in disgrace. 

1) For Illegally Changing Obamacare: It doesn't matter if the Affordable Care Act is called "Obamacare;" Barack Obama doesn't have the authority to unilaterally change the law. Changes to the law have to be made by Congress and then signed into law by the President. Barack Obama has broken the law repeatedly by making at least 23 unilateral changes to the law. Saying, "The Republicans won't work with us," or more disturbingly, "It's politically convenient," is not an excuse for overriding the Constitution of the United States. 

2) Engaging In An Illegal War In Libya: While the President is the Commander-in-Chief, the Constitution gives Congress the ability to declare war. In the modern era, that has just meant an authorization of force from Congress, which Obama did not pursue. Additionally, we've tended to give Presidents the benefit of the doubt when American lives are at stake. However, in Libya, Obama didn't seek the permission of Congress and we had no national security interest in Libya. In other words, Obama's real justification for bombing that country and overthrowing its government was that HE FELT LIKE IT. Using the exact same precedent, the next President could bomb Mexico or Cuba without Congressional authorization. Incidentally, bombing either of those nations would probably make more sense than bombing Libya, although that's not saying much since our intervention there has been a complete disaster. 

3) Lying To Sell Obamacare To The American People: When Barack Obama told the public if they liked their plan, they could keep their plan, he was lying. When he told Americans if they liked their doctor, they could keep their doctor, he knew it wasn't so. When he told Americans Obamacare would cut costs by $2,500 for the average family, he was deliberately misleading the public. For a President of the United States to PERSONALLY spend months telling deliberate falsehoods to the American people in order to convince them to support something as massive as a government takeover of the health care system is beyond the pale. If the willful lies Barack Obama told to sell Obamacare don't merit impeachment, then there are no lies that a President could tell to the American people big enough to merit impeachment. 

4) Violating Immigration Law And Illegally Implementing The DREAM ACT: Simply put, Barack Obama has ceased to enforce most immigration law. As Senator Jeff Sessions has noted, “at least 99.92% of illegal immigrants and visa overstays without known crimes on their records did not face removal.” In other words, we've already stopped deporting anyone other than SOME hardcore criminals and gang members. Additionally, when the DREAM ACT didn't make it through Congress, Obama simply implemented it ANYWAY. Not only is he explicitly telling illegal aliens they can stay in the United States, he's illegally giving them work permits that he has zero right to offer. Even if Congress is too split on the issue to unify and put a stop to what Obama's doing, that doesn't change the fact that it’s flatly illegal. If this is allowed to stand, tell me ANY LAW on the books that the President is obligated to enforce? 

5) Releasing 5 Taliban Terrorists In Exchange For Deserter Bowe Bergdahl: Barack Obama was legally required to alert Congress 30 days before he released terrorists from Gitmo. Not only did he fail to do so, but more seriously he released five high level terrorists who he knew were likely to help kill Americans in the future. One of the terrorists has ALREADY SAID he intends to go back to Afghanistan to fight America. Barack Obama spent a lot of time bragging about getting Bin Laden, but he just released five Bin Ladens back into the world and a lot of Americans who didn't desert their country are likely to die because of it. 

RELATED: Limbaugh: Despite Obama’s ‘Lawlessness,’ ‘You Can’t Impeach the First Black President’

Barack Obama Admits To Releasing 5 Taliban Terrorists Who Could Come Back And Kill Us

Mediaite.com:

The New York Daily News, in a scathing editorial published on Wednesday, chastised President Barack Obama and his administration for agreeing to the prisoner swap in which five Taliban prisoners were released from Guantanamo Bay in exchange for captive Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. President Obama “betrayed the highest obligation of his office,” The Daily News editorial read, “safeguarding national security.”


The Daily News accused the president of knowing that the dangerous prisoners he released are free now to move about as they please in Qatar and will likely return to terror. The editorial went on to say that the Rose Garden address in which Obama stood by the Bergdahl family to announce the captive soldier’s release was “a cynical act of theater.”

Worse, Obama ran roughshod over the law requiring 30 days’ notice to Congress of a Gitmo release — and, reported Time, “dismissed long-standing Pentagon and intelligence community concerns based on top secret intelligence about the dangers of releasing the five men.”

The Daily News concluded by scolding the president for claiming that these forms of prisoner swaps are common as conflicts are wound down. 

“In other words, he wants out so badly that he accepted the Taliban’s terms, regardless of the threat to American security,” the editorial concluded. “He is surrendering without honor.”

RELATED:  Why Team Obama Was Blindsided by the Bergdahl Backlash