U.S. Promises Long Campaign in #Syria

At the Wall Street Journal, "Syria Strikes: U.S. Reports Significant Damage in Attacks on Islamic State, Khorasan; American, Arab Warplanes Hit Targets Around Iraq-Syria Border":

WASHINGTON—The first U.S.-led airstrikes on extremist groups in Syria hit militant leaders, training camps and control centers, U.S. officials said, promising this was only the start of a long campaign.

The attacks were conducted with the aid of Arab allies, but the U.S. carried out the bulk of the raids. After the first wave of strikes, the U.S. said it conducted follow-on attacks during the day Tuesday that hit two Islamic State armored vehicles in Syria.

The U.S. and its allies unleashed more than 160 missiles and bombs on targets inside Syria, disrupting infrastructure used by the extremist groups Islamic State and al Qaeda-linked Khorasan, Pentagon officials said in the first assessments of the impact of the strikes.

While it will be days before a definitive conclusion can be drawn, U.S. officials said they believe some leaders of both Islamic State and Khorasan were likely killed in the strikes on training camps and headquarters buildings.

The expansion of the military campaign against Islamic State from Iraq to Syria carries significant risks for President Barack Obama's administration.

Mr. Obama has spent his presidency extricating the U.S. from two long and costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Now there is the prospect of getting mired again in a protracted Middle East war.

Western-backed rebels fear U.S.-led airstrikes on Islamic State and other extremist groups inside Syria will ultimately tip the balance in the multi-sided civil war in favor of the Syrian regime that Washington opposes.

Also, Islamic State made a new threat against a Western hostage. The family of British captive Alan Henning, an aid-convoy volunteer being held by the group, said on Tuesday that they had received an audio recording of the prisoner pleading for his life.

Islamic State has released videos showing the beheadings of three Western hostages—two of them Americans—since the U.S. began airstrikes on Islamic State targets in Iraq in early August.

U.S. officials didn't provide estimates of casualties, though local residents said many were killed, including civilians. American officials said there were no indications of civilian casualties and promised to review any such claims.

The U.S.-led strikes will continue over coming days, U.S. officials said, though they cautioned that future waves are likely to be smaller than the opening round as the campaign quickly settles into a lower, but persistent beat.

"I can tell you that last night's strikes were only the beginning," said Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary...

More.

And don't miss Walter Russell Mead, "THE PARALLELS BETWEEN BARACK OBAMA AND GEORGE W. BUSH" (via Instapundit).

Still more at Memeorandum.

Bwahaha! People's Cube Just Destroys Idiot Collectivists on Obama's Disgraceful Latte Salute

This is fabulous!

Liberals are equating these pics. If you know anybody with a pet Styrofoam cup. Let me know. #tcot @michellemalkin pic.twitter.com/utPuu03IfI

— The People's Cube (@ThePeoplesCube) September 23, 2014

Progs are such losers.

There's a reason President Bush got standing ovations at West Point, and Obama not so much. And that reason goes to the core of who our current loser president is, not least of which is an America-hating coward and appeaser who earns no respect for our uniformed personnel.

PREVIOUSLY: "Barack Obama's Latte Salute."

'They're just people looking to the east...'

From the Sound L.A., yesterday morning.

The Doobie Brothers, "China Grove." What a rockin' song.

Lady
Styx
8:50 AM

Whole Lotta Love
Led Zeppelin
8:45 AM

Lay It On the Line
Triumph
8:39 AM

China Grove
The Doobie Brothers
8:35 AM

Wrapped Around Your Finger
The Police
8:22 AM

More Than A Feeling
Boston
8:18 AM

Brown Eyed Girl
Van Morrison
8:15 AM

Everybody Wants You
Billy Squier
8:11 AM

Sara
Fleetwood Mac
8:05 AM

Bad Company
Bad Company
8:01 AM

Huge Majority Supports Airstrikes Against #ISIS in Syria

A classic rally-'round-the-flag effect, at Gallup, "Slightly Fewer Back ISIS Military Action vs. Past Actions."

It may be that current public support is "slightly fewer" than previous military efforts, but remember, the U.S. has been at war continuously since October of 2001. Obama's got public support for his actions against ISIS. The trick now is not to blow it. Knocking out a few windows and demolishing a few buildings won't defeat the terrorists. The president is boxed in by his antiwar rhetoric, and if that rhetoric doesn't change, Americans will continue to be in danger.

Slightly Fewer Back #ISIS Military Action vs. Past Actions... http://t.co/7HhLopCl2Q pic.twitter.com/B0rXZzZfvB

— GallupNews (@GallupNews) September 23, 2014

Angels' Wade LeBlanc Makes Pitch for Playoff Spot in 2-0 Win Over A's

It was a great game. And a relief too. I'm worried about the Angels' pitching going into the post-season.

At LAT:

The tangled web of an injury-plagued and struggling Angels rotation grew even more convoluted Tuesday night, but for a good reason. Veteran left-hander Wade LeBlanc has thrust himself into the playoff picture.

LeBlanc, filling in for the injured Matt Shoemaker, allowed five hits over 5 1/3 scoreless innings in a 2-0 victory over Oakland that pushed the Athletics into a tie with the Kansas City Royals for the American League wild-card lead.

Combined with his 5 1/3-inning scoreless effort last Thursday against Seattle, LeBlanc, who was designated for assignment three times this season — twice by the Angels — has thrown 10 2/3 scoreless innings in two starts, allowing eight hits, striking out four and walking one.

With Shoemaker questionable for the division series because of a rib-cage strain and Hector Santiago getting shelled in his last two starts, LeBlanc has positioned himself to be considered for the playoff rotation. At the very least, he should earn a long-relief spot...

More.

Cory Rasmus, who's pitched a few games this last couple of weeks, is looking good too. Mike Scioscia needs to let him play longer.

I would have blogged more about the Angels since they clinched a playoff berth, but it's been depressing. Who knows if they'll clear 100 wins for the season, which is almost over?

The Wages of Discrimination

From Sarah Kendzior, at Al Jazeera, "As income inequality now rivals that of the gilded age, scrounging for survival has become a mainstream way of life."

"For anyone who came of age after the millennium, war and economic decline are all we have known." http://t.co/N38aSTsoKn

— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) September 23, 2014

Freedom to Blog Update September 24, 2014: AmSpec Caves to Vexatious Asshat Brett Kimberlin

Sometimes the bad guys win. Or, sadly, sometimes the good guys cave to the bad guys.

See Popehat, "American Spectator Surrenders to Vexatious Litigant and Domestic Terrorist Brett Kimberlin."

Left-Wing Activists Hold White House 'Die In' to Support #ISIS Genocide

I'm just shaking my head as I post this. But then, these are brain-dead leftists we're talking about.

From Daniel Greenfield, at FrontPage Magazine.

Dead LAPD Officer Found Inside Thousand Oaks Home

A suicide, apparently.

At KABC-TV Los Angeles, "DEAD LAPD OFFICER FOUND IN THOUSAND OAKS RESIDENCE AFTER DISTURBANCE REPORT."

Prime Minister David Cameron Speaks to NBC's Brian Williams

I really like him, except for his Achilles heel of political correctness. Nobody's perfect, I guess.

Here, "Britain's David Cameron on ISIS: 'These People Want to Kill Us'."

USS Arleigh Burke Launches Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles

Via the U.S. Navy, on YouTube.

Europe's Anti-Semitism Rises — From the Precincts of the Islamo-Fascist Left

Something I've written about quite a bit, sadly.

At the New York Times, "Europe’s Anti-Semitism Comes Out of the Shadows":

SARCELLES, France — From the immigrant enclaves of the Parisian suburbs to the drizzly bureaucratic city of Brussels to the industrial heartland of Germany, Europe’s old demon returned this summer. “Death to the Jews!” shouted protesters at pro-Palestinian rallies in Belgium and France. “Gas the Jews!” yelled marchers at a similar protest in Germany.

The ugly threats were surpassed by uglier violence. Four people were fatally shot in May at the Jewish Museum in Brussels. A Jewish-owned pharmacy in this Paris suburb was destroyed in July by youths protesting Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. A synagogue in Wuppertal, Germany, was attacked with firebombs. A Swedish Jew was beaten with iron pipes. The list goes on.

The scattered attacks have raised alarm about how Europe is changing and whether it remains a safe place for Jews. An increasing number of Jews, if still relatively modest in total, are now migrating to Israel. Others describe “no go” zones in Muslim districts of many European cities where Jews dare not travel...

Keep reading, but note: Once again, the mainstream press whitewashes Islamic anti-Semitism, raising the specter of "right-wing" parties, blah blah.

No. It's leftist Islamo-fascism that's the threat to Jews in Europe today. The media's only making things worse. And that's even more sad.

The Utter Failure of Obama

A great piece, from Bruce Walker, at American Thinker:

Barack Obama is destined to be the greatest flop in American presidential history.  He is, in every sense of the word, an utter failure.

Consider first his signature achievement, Obamacare.  Not only has Obama had to delay implementation, creating a perfect precedent for his Republican successor to do the same, but the law is more unpopular today than it has ever been according to all polling data.

Pew Research reports that 55% of Americans disapprove of Obamacare.  A clear plurality of Americans believe that they will be worse off because of Obamacare.  CBS News lists the “strongly approve” of Obamacare at 16%, while “strongly disapprove” is a whopping 47%.  Every polling organization, no matter how the question is worded, shows the same public disdain for this law.

The fear conservatives had that a new entitlement will create a permanent constituency may not happen this time, because Obamacare, unlike Social Security or Medicare, helps almost no one and hurts a lot of people.  Moreover, by foolishly rejecting a bipartisan reform, Obama and his party cannot claim broad support for his law.

This political hack, who had the power to do anything during his first two years, could think of nothing more imaginative than (1) spending federal dollars like water based upon the ancient and failed “stimulus” idea and (2) implementing an even greater failure – ask any Briton or Canadian – of nationalized health insurance simply, one suspects, because Barry had no keener mind or greater imagination than to pick up tired ideas of British Socialism eighty years old.

Obama, who “won” the Nobel Peace Prize almost as soon as he took office, is now officially a warmonger president – but one who leads from behind and rejects every attempt to form a national consensus policy, and whose utter haplessness in guiding national security is stunning.  Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Iraq – everywhere in the world, really – Obama’s foreign policy has been almost comic opera.

Obama's White House staff seems almost as incompetent as he is, as anyone who has listened to Ms. Harf for more than a minute quickly grasps.  Everyone around Obama simply reads talking points and denies, without any support at all, anything that challenges those talking points.

Has anyone around Obama, for example, confessed that the attack in Benghazi was not caused by an anti-Islamic film, and that any explanations to the contrary were simple invention?  Has Barry or his “Not Ready for Prime Time Players” ever acknowledged any failure beyond the ubiquitous and meaningless mantra “I accept full responsibility”?  Who truly trusts Obama anymore on national security issues, and who abroad relies on anything he says or any promises he makes?

Some presidencies that are successes in policy areas, like the Nixon presidency, are unwound by corruption and cover-ups.  Has any administration been as marinated in lies about important facts in investigations as this administration?  The IRS e-mail scandal surpasses anything Nixon did in Watergate.  The destruction of documents by a Hillary State Department to hide information from Congress relating to Benghazi, if true – who, really, doubts that now? – would surpass any misconduct in presidential history.

Now Barry is on the verge of doing what no president has done: leading his political party into two consecutive midterm election debacles.  Eisenhower and Nixon suffered heavy losses in their second midterms, but not their fist.  Clinton did just the opposite.  Reagan actually gained Senate seats in his first midterm, but he lost the Senate in his second midterm.

Even our worst presidents like their bright spots.  Grant was a truly noble character and a war hero whose memoirs of the Civil War remain great history.  Harding’s low-tax and pro-growth policies led to the Roaring Twenties, and Harding was a fierce champion of black rights.  Truman, a courageous combat veteran in 1918, helped birth Israel and preserve South Korea.  Nixon was brilliant, and his opening the door to China transformed the geopolitical world.  Carter was an honorable man, a graduate of the Naval Academy who served on a nuclear submarine, however dreadful the Carter presidency was.  

But Barry – has he really done anything at all?  Does Obama have the slightest ennobling quality?  Has he taken a single courageous stand on anything?  Does our president do anything at all, really, except savor the perks of office and read his notorious teleprompter?

Soon, very soon, the utter failure of Obama will be a truth known by all his countrymen.

No, no ennobling qualities. He's a disaster from the get go. Yes, it's going to be a crushing November election, but then, we'll still have two more years of this f-king Democrat Party misery.

FLASHBACK: April 27, 2009, "Worst. President. Ever."

The Incoherence of Liberal Feminism

At the Other McCain.

"Another clever young girl trying to get rich selling books to slightly-less-clever girls" http://t.co/QjzvB1KVBy pic.twitter.com/VPwhxPzyke

— Robert Stacy McCain (@rsmccain) September 23, 2014

The Unfree Speech Movement

From Sol Stern, at the Wall Street Journal:

This fall the University of California at Berkeley is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Free Speech Movement, a student-led protest against campus restrictions on political activities that made headlines and inspired imitators around the country. I played a small part in the Free Speech Movement, and some of those returning for the reunion were once my friends, but I won't be joining them.

Though the movement promised greater intellectual and political freedom on campus, the result has been the opposite. The great irony is that while Berkeley now honors the memory of the Free Speech Movement, it exercises more thought control over students than the hated institution that we rose up against half a century ago.

We early-1960s radicals believed ourselves anointed as a new "tell it like it is" generation. We promised to transcend the "smelly old orthodoxies" (in George Orwell's phrase) of Cold War liberalism and class-based, authoritarian leftism. Leading students into the university administration building for the first mass protest, Mario Savio, the Free Speech Movement's brilliant leader from Queens, New York, famously said: "There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious—makes you so sick at heart—that you can't take part. . . . . And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all."

The Berkeley "machine" now promotes Free Speech Movement kitsch. The steps in front of Sproul Hall, the central administration building where more than 700 students were arrested on Dec. 2, 1964, have been renamed the Mario Savio Steps. One of the campus dining halls is called the Free Speech Movement Café, its walls covered with photographs and mementos of the glorious semester of struggle. The university requires freshmen to read an admiring biography of Savio, who died in 1996, written by New York University professor and Berkeley graduate Robert Cohen.

Yet intellectual diversity is hardly embraced. Every undergraduate undergoes a form of indoctrination with a required course on the "theoretical or analytical issues relevant to understanding race, culture, and ethnicity in American society," administered by the university's Division of Equity and Inclusion.

How did this Orwellian inversion occur? It happened in part because the Free Speech Movement's fight for free speech was always a charade. The struggle was really about using the campus as a base for radical politics.

I was a 27-year-old New Left graduate student at the time. Savio was a 22-year-old sophomore. He liked to compare the Free Speech Movement to the civil-rights struggle—conflating the essentially liberal Berkeley administration with the Bull Connors of the racist South.

During one demonstration Savio suggested that the campus cops who had arrested a protesting student were "poor policemen" who only "have a job to do." Another student then shouted out: "Just like Eichmann."

"Yeah. Very good. It's very, you know, like Adolf Eichmann, " Savio replied. "He had a job to do. He fit into the machinery."

I realized years later that this moment may have been the beginning of the 1960s radicals' perversion of ordinary political language, like the spelling "Amerika" or seeing hope and progress in Third World dictatorships.

Before that 1964-65 academic year, most of us radical students could not have imagined a campus rebellion. Why revolt against an institution that until then offered such a pleasant sanctuary? But then Berkeley administrators made an incredibly stupid decision to establish new rules regarding political activities on campus. Student clubs were no longer allowed to set up tables in front of the Bancroft Avenue campus entrance to solicit funds and recruit new members.

The clubs had used this 40-foot strip of sidewalk for years on the assumption that it was the property of the City of Berkeley and thus constitutionally protected against speech restrictions. But the university claimed ownership to justify the new rules. When some students refused to comply, the administration compounded its blunder by resorting to the campus police. Not surprisingly, the students pushed back, using civil-disobedience tactics learned fighting for civil rights in the South.

The Free Speech Movement was born on Oct. 1, 1964, when police tried to arrest a recent Berkeley graduate, Jack Weinberg, who was back on campus after a summer as a civil-rights worker in Mississippi. He had set up a table on the Bancroft strip for the Berkeley chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Dozens of students spontaneously sat down around the police car, preventing it from leaving the campus. A 32-hour standoff ensued, with hundreds of students camped around the car.

Mario Savio, also back from Mississippi, took off his shoes, climbed onto the roof of the police car, and launched into an impromptu speech explaining why the students had to resist the immoral new rules. Thus began months of sporadic protests, the occupation of Sproul Hall on Dec. 2 (ended by mass arrests), national media attention and Berkeley's eventual capitulation.

That should have ended the matter. Savio soon left the political arena, saying that he had no interest in becoming a permanent student leader. But others had mastered the new world of political theater, understood the weakness of American liberalism, and soon turned their ire on the Vietnam War.

The radical movement that the Free Speech Movement spawned eventually descended into violence and mindless anti-Americanism. The movement waned in the 1970s as the war wound down—but by then protesters had begun their infiltration of university faculties and administrations they had once decried.

"Tenured radicals," in New Criterion editor Roger Kimball's phrase, now dominate most professional organizations in the humanities and social studies. Unlike our old liberal professors, who dealt respectfully with the ideas advanced by my generation of New Left students, today's radical professors insist on ideological conformity and don't take kindly to dissent by conservative students. Visits by speakers who might not toe the liberal line—recently including former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Islamism critic Aayan Hirsi Ali —spark protests and letter-writing campaigns by students in tandem with their professors until the speaker withdraws or the invitation is canceled...

Still more.

Everything the left touches it destroys. So it is with so called "free speech." America's campuses today are the least free places in the United States. Always resist these people. Always stand against the left, whatever you do. You'll be on the right side of decency. The leftists, not so much.

'Maybe Democratic leaders aren't finding success in expanding their liberal base because fair-minded Americans don't easily gravitate to a political party led by people whose default election tactic is to demonize its opponents..'

Well, of course, the Democrats are the party of hate.

From Tom Bevan: The End of Civil Rhetoric (via Instapundit):

It’s also true that Democrats are under pressure to rev up what appears to be a lethargic electorate or face defeat at the polls in November. It’s unfortunate that we’ve come to accept the idea that voters can only be motivated by fear and anger toward their political opponents.

Yep, that's all they've got.

Barack Obama's Latte Salute

So disrespectful, god.

Watch here.

And at Breitbart, "Obama's Disrespectful 'Latte Salute' Shocks and Offends."

The #ISIS Threat to the U.S. Homeland

Andrea Mitchell reports for NBC News, and she's taking the ISIS threat quite seriously:

Charles Krauthammer: Syria Airstrikes 'Not Significant' Militarily

Once again, the inimitable Dr. Krauthammer:

Michelle Fields Calls Out Celebrity Warming Hypocrites at New York People's Climate March (VIDEO)

Hey, classy babe Michelle Fields was batting 1.000 at the communist people's march on Sunday. She just hammered the celebrity hypocrites, Leo DeCaprio most deliciously.

Outstanding.

At Pajamas, "PJTV’s Michelle Fields: Are Climate Change Hypocrites Leonardo DiCaprio and Senator Bernie Sanders Out of Touch with Reality? (Video)."

Talking to Leonardo Dicaprio about climate change. Don't think he was happy about me bringing up his yachts & jets pic.twitter.com/3TAkP6rbjD

— Michelle Fields (@MichelleFields) September 21, 2014

Leonardo Dicaprio suddenly loses his hearing when I ask him about his yachts http://t.co/aAUv0RMzF2 #ClimateChangeMarch

— Michelle Fields (@MichelleFields) September 22, 2014

VIDEO: RFK Jr. refuses to give up cellphone to save planet... http://t.co/81EjlTGDlJ

— DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) September 22, 2014