In another in a long series of swift kicks to Israel and American Jews, the Obama Administration has announced that it is slashing the guest list and budget for its 2009 Hanukkah celebration.

According to the Jerusalem Post the guest list is being cut in half causing some American Jews to wonder if Obama is giving them the cold shoulder… again.

In case no one has been paying attention, President Obama has been slighting Israel and American Jews since before he became president. His pick of Samantha Power, the Palestinian apologist, for his Mid East policy team was a fine example of his obvious disdain for Jews. And she isn’t his only pro-Palestinian adviser.

Of course, were I president I’d cancel Hanukkah entirely. Just as I’d immediately stop any recognition of any other holidays except the officially recognized, Christian holidays of American history and culture. No slight meant to those religious celebrations at all. They just aren’t American unlike Christmas, Easter, and the like are.

In fact, this willy nilly waste of the American taxpayer’s money on these idiotic grand celebrations where 400 guests are pampered at the taxpayer’s expense is entirely obscene. They should all be canceled. This isn’t the gilded age anymore.

Still, it’s disheartening to see Obama constantly jabbing his thumb in the eyes of Jews everywhere. Even though I’d cancel the Hanukkah celebration, I am one of Israel’s best friends. After all, I wouldn’t pick policy advisers that want Israel wiped off the face of the Earth like Obama has!

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Ojigi (bowing) is an essential part of Japanese daily life. People bow when saying hello, thanking someone, apologizing, saying good-bye and introducing themselves. Although shaking hands (akushu) has become accepted as a form of greeting, many Japanese still are not used to it.

The deeper you bow, the more respect you are showing. There is an old haiku poem; “Minoru hodo atama no tareru inaho kana.” It means “Young rice stalks stand upright, the mature grains bow low,” implying that one grows to understand the meaning of humility. When somebody’s position is higher than the other, the person in the lower position bows his or her head a little lower than the person in the higher position. Generally speaking, older women bow very politely. There are many who bow deeply while shaking hands at the same time, and there are others who bow many, many times. However, greetings between friends are fairly informal. They would casually raise their hands or lightly lower their head (eshaku).

Let’s check a bit more

Basic bows are performed with the back straight and the hands at the sides (boys and men) or clasped in the lap (girls and women), and with the eyes down. Bows originate at the waist. Generally, the longer and deeper the bow, the stronger the emotion and the respect expressed.

Generally speaking, an inferior bows longer, more deeply and more frequently than a superior. A superior addressing an inferior will generally only nod the head slightly, while some superiors may not bow at all and an inferior will bend forward slightly from the waist.

When dealing with non-Japanese people, many Japanese will shake hands. Since many non-Japanese are familiar with the custom of bowing, this often leads to a combined bow and handshake which can be quite complicated to execute. Bows may be combined with handshakes or performed before or after shaking hands. Generally when bowing in close proximity, as necessitated when combining bowing and shaking hands, people turn slightly to one side (usually the left) to avoid bumping heads.

After all that, let’s watch this video sent to Hot Air by an anonymous source

So, Obama not only bowed, but he kinda did it wrong, back wasn’t straight, hands not at his sides, he did the shaking hands thing. Notice that Emperor Akihito neither bowed nor shake his head. Afterwards, Obama did the head shaking thing. So, the question is, is he an idiot for attempting to practice a Japanese custom with no real knowledge of how these things work, especially in terms of POTUS meeting the Japanese Emperor, or, is he a complete boob who was trying to place himself, and the USA, in an inferior position? The Emperor knew the protocol, namely, shake hands, no bows. Doesn’t Obama have people to freakin’ tell him these things?

Meanwhile, the continuation of his Asian vacation is not going so well

……On Sunday, leaders of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum dropped efforts to reach a binding international climate change agreement in Copenhagen next month, settling instead for what they called a political framework for future negotiations.

Obama became the first president to meet with the entire Association of Southeast Asian Nations, including the military junta of Myanmar, and White House officials say he personally demanded the country’s leaders release political prisoners, including opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. But Obama failed to secure any mention of political prisoners in an ASEAN communique.

The U.S. and Russia now appear unlikely to complete a nuclear arms reduction accord by Dec. 5, when the current Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expires…….

Halfway through his Asian tour, Obama is confronting the limits of engagement and personal charm.

It’s kinda tough to get others to do, or at least agree to do, things when one places oneself (and ones country) in a position of subservience.

BTW, I wonder what other world leaders have done when meeting Emperor Akihito?

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove

Conservatives aren’t the only ones scratching their heads on this.

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Q What exactly has the President taken away from all these meetings that he’s had? This is the seventh one he’s had, today. If you could shed some light on what he’s — how he’s processing this, how he’s keeping this — what does he talk with his other advisors about after he comes out of these meetings? And ultimately, have you decided — and how will you have him explain this to the American people?

MR. GIBBS: Let me take the second one. We have not, in all honestly, had extensive conversations about that yet. I do believe, without getting into specifics, I think the President strongly believes that it’s important for the American people and for the international community to know his reasoning behind whatever decision he makes, and to clearly explain our goals and objectives in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, and the region as a whole.

So I anticipate that whatever form it ultimately takes, the President will use the occasion to explain some of that to the American people so that they understand his decision-making and his thought process.

In terms –

Q. A TV address or something, to the nation?

MR. GIBBS: Again, we haven’t gotten into broad specifics on that yet.

On the first part, Jeff, you know, look, I think — I don’t — I used to have it calculated, I should just go back and do it, the number of hours that he has spent in these meetings is probably now — well, at the end of today will probably be getting close to 20 direct hours of his time. The group — the principals that meet with the President additionally take time to get the material ready, and are prepared to answer questions for the President, probably at least twice as much of that of the President’s time the principals have spent.

He’s been president since January. Over 6,700 hours. And, as of October 20th, not even 20 hours spent discussing Afghanistan? Someone should ask Gibbs how many hours Obama has spent campaigning since his Coronation.

Crossed at Pirate’s Cove

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They didn’t flat-out refuse Obama’s deal, but they might as well have. Could it be because Ahmadinejad has no respect for Obama?

Iran’s response Thursday to a proposed deal to transform its controversial nuclear material into fuel for a medical reactor is “inadequate,” a senior Western diplomat said, adding that it failed to address key United States and European concerns about Iran’s nuclear intentions.

Iran answered the proposal to temporarily move most of its enriched uranium to Russia and France to be further refined and shaped for use in a medical reactor after a delay of nearly a week and a flurry of contradictory signals.

The proposal would have depleted Iran’s stockpile of nuclear fuel below the threshold necessary for making a single nuclear bomb, possibly creating diplomatic breathing room for a broader agreement between Tehran and those worried about its atomic research program.

But according to the diplomat, Iran wants to send its uranium abroad in smaller batches over an undetermined stretch of time rather than the lump transfer by year’s end outlined under the proposal offered by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei.

Such a change would allow Iran to quickly replenish its stock.

Gee, I wonder why Iran wants to send its uranium in smaller batches then. Could it be because they have absolutely no intention of abandoning their nuclear program? While Ahmadinejad is shouting his cooperation from the rooftops for anyone to hear, it’s just an empty statement. His actions say something completely different, and it’s clear that he has no respect at all for Obama or the UN.

Of course, we were promised that the world would love us once again if we elected Obama. Obama would usher in “smart diplomacy” and he would be able to negotiate with terrorists other world leaders and everyone would be happy again. And this is our newer, smarter diplomacy? Iran and North Korea are both getting bolder and bolder, launching more and more test missiles, and getting further and further into nuclear weapons programs. Obama’s response is to launch a plan to remove our missile defense shields in eastern Europe and do nothing except ask Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Il to please stop. He talks a big game, but doing absolutely nothing to back up what he says. Why should Iran respect or fear him?

Theodore Roosevelt believed in speaking softly and carrying a big stick. With Obama, it’s speak loudly and carry a limp stick.

Hat Tip: Hot Air

Cross-posted from Cassy’s blog. Stop by for more original commentary or follow her on Twitter!

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Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty delivered a red meat assessment of Obamacare and it appears he doesn’t like it much. Pawlenty slammed Obamacare as a “bait-and-switch” and said the president is “corrosive to freedom and liberty.”

In a NewsMax interview, Pawlenty really went after Obama serving a hearty dish of red meat to conservative voters across the country. Gov. Pawlenty is widely considered a prime candidate for president in 2012.

Pawlenty calls President Obama a “movement liberal” and says he’s “projecting potential weakness” to the world with his foreign policies.

“His solutions are federalization of policy, spending way beyond anything we’ve seen in terms of deficit or debt levels, spending the country into bankruptcy,” Pawlenty says. “And what’s behind it is a philosophy that government knows best, a nanny-state mentality on domestic issues that will ultimately be corrosive to the other pillars of our country — to markets, private enterprise, individual responsibility, freedom and liberty.”

As to Obamacare, Pawlenty calls it a bait-and-switch.

Obama sold his healthcare proposal as a way to reduce costs and help the economy. But, Pawlenty says, “I think it’s going to go down as one of the biggest bait-and-switch acts in history, in the sense that the diagnosis of the problem for the healthcare delivery system in the country was supposed to be cost-containment. In other words, we need to make it more affordable for individuals and families, businesses, and governmental entities. But instead they are now focused substantially on expanding access.”

Pawlenty really went on a tear with his thoughts on Obama. If you want a frank rebuttal of Obama this is the interview you want.

(Cross posted at HealthcareHorseRace.com.)

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The Bush administration has done so much damage to American foreign relations that the president take a more active role in diplomacy than might have been true 20 or 30 years ago. If we think that meeting with the president is a privilege that has to be earned, that reinforces the sense that we stand above the rest of the world at this point in time. It’s important for us in undoing the damage that has been done over the last seven years, for the president to be willing to take that extra step. (Source: 2008 Democratic debate at University of Texas in Austin Feb 21, 2008)

Yeah, about that rebuilding of alliances

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, initially dubbed Sarko the American for his pro-U.S. stance, is finding it much tougher to deal with Washington than he had anticipated and is recalibrating his policies accordingly.

Stung by perceived snubs from U.S. President Barack Obama and encouraged by the growing importance of the G20, Sarkozy is increasingly reaching out to non-aligned states in an effort to extend France’s international influence.

He has forged especially close ties with Brazil, is seeking alliances in central Asia and is intensifying his activities in the Middle East, using multi-billion dollar military and civilian nuclear trade deals as his calling card.

These initiatives are being played out against a discordant tone in Franco-American relations. This lack of harmony does not constitute a crisis, but is nonetheless raising eyebrows.

Sarkozy is making friends and alliances all over the world. Too bad none of them are with America anymore. I mean, seriously, when you’ve lost France, you’ve truly lost your strength. I wonder if we can buy some of France’s old speed bumps from their border with Germany?

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Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told CNSNews.com Wednesday that one in 10 doses of the swine-flu vaccine purchased by the U.S. will be donated to other nations before U.S. demand is filled.

Sebelius also told a Senate committee that vaccine production is well behind demand.

“What we said is once we have 40 million doses (of the vaccine), the donation can start,” Sebelius told CNSNews.com. “There’s an agreement (of) 10 percent donation that 11 nations have made,” she said.

Sen. John Tester (D-Mont.) expressed concern about the administration’s plan to give away vaccine stocks to other countries, asking Sebelius: “So, why should we be entitled, the U.S. be more entitled, to that vaccine than some other country in the world?”

Sebelius responded: “The president has clearly made it clear that his priority is the safety and security of the American people, but he has also asked that we are a global partner. We have joined now 11 nations” to donate the vaccine to other countries.

I doubt whether many of us, or any of us, have an issue with helping out other countries (depending on which ones,) but, perhaps we should make sure that every American who wants one should get one first, then ship them out.

I wonder if those 1 in 10 will include a card proclaiming that the shot comes courtesy of President Obama, as well as asking for a campaign donation and the email addresses of Congress critters, telling them to write them and tell them to pass ObamaCare?

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President Barack Obama is putting the finishing touches on making a mockery out of the unsupportable claim that Democrats care about women’s rights by his signal to the Afghan Taliban, warlords, strongmen, militias, and tribal leaders that he’s ready to negotiate with anyone there in order to smooth his efforts in that troubled region.

President Obama is letting it be known that he’s prepared to cut deals with the Taliban in order for Afghan warlords to cut ties with al Qaeda. Obama thinks he can work with the supposedly “moderate” Taliban groups in Afghanistan in a bid to oust al Qaeda. A Taliban moderate. What sort of mythical creature is this?

One thing is sure, however, if Obama turns Afghanistan back over to the Taliban and other Islamic warlords in an effort to make it appear as if he’s had success there, women will be the hardest hit. The possibility that Obama will abandon Afghanistan’s women frightens Wazhma Frogh, an Afghan women’s advocate who received the U.S. State Department’s 2009 International Woman of Courage Award.

As an Afghan woman who for many years lived a life deprived of the most basic human rights, I find unbearable the thought of what will happen to the women of my country if it once again falls under the control of the insurgents and militants who now threaten it.

Since the American efforts in Afghanistan began women have been most favorably affected. Human rights for women have advanced immeasurably there since 2001 but much, much more needs to be done. After all, centuries of abuse and entrenched attitudes that women are barely even human have to be overcome. That doesn’t happen in so short a time unless support for change is upheld and if the U.S. leaves Afghanistan, all support for change will go with it.

The world community has focused on women’s rights in Afghanistan since 2001, but that focus will dim and disappear if the west is no longer heavily engaged there. As Frogh said in the Washington Post, if the west disengages in Afghanistan and allows militant, extremist groups like the Taliban to take over once again, it will “raise questions about the commitment of Western democracies to such rights and to democratic values.”

It won’t take long for women to be negatively affected by a return to the Taliban’s control.

Bearing in mind how fragile the Afghan government is at this moment, it will not take long for the country’s women to come under attack again. The consequences will be even more bitter this time because no matter how limited our success, we have at least managed to act in the forefront of public life in Afghanistan. We have had a taste of what it’s like to have rights.

This is what Obama is sentencing Afghani women to. Second class (or worse) status, beatings, forced use of the burka, continued genital mutilation, rape, and abuse is what the future once again holds for Afghan women if Obama has his way.

And what will Obama get out of it? An easier political situation with his own extremist political supporters in the U.S. and little else. Obama is willing to throw away the progress that women have made in Afghanistan and any possibility that such progress will continue to grow for a little political success in America. What could be more disgusting? And what could better prove the lie to Obama’s pretense that he and his party much care about women’s rights?

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I am not a Mark Kirk fan. For me he is, and always has been, far too “moderate” on social issues and his now (maybe) retracted Cap and Tax vote sticks in my craw pretty badly. But Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly blog Political Animal, unfairly and illicitly slammed Kirk on something he said in an interview with The News Gazette of Danville, Illinois.

Benen was ticked at Kirk’s answer about the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy of the U.S. Military. In an effort to show [support for] his LGBT, or BLGT, or BLT fans… whatever they call themselves this week… Benen jumped on Kirk’s claim that DADT works well and that “keeping that all out of the workplace makes common sense.”

But, Benen’s pandering to the fringe, militant gay lobby isn’t my concern here. Benen’s other jab at Kirk was as follows:

By the way, in the same interview, Kirk endorsed sending tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan because Illinois is home to “the tallest building in North America.”

This verges on a lie from Benen. The way Benen phrases Kirk’s reply, it is as if Kirk linked the war in Afghanistan to Illinois having a tall building as if that was the whole of the point Kirk was making. But Kirk’s point was obviously not as quixotic and simple-minded as Benen portrays it.

Here is what Kirk actually said:

He supports Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who has recommended increasing U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan.

“We have no failure option in Afghanistan,” he said. “I think we have a unique concern representing Illinois, because we have the tallest building in North America. Our job is to make sure that everyone working in the Sears, Willis Tower comes home safely every night.”

In the long term, he said, the United States must support Afghan police and army units until they are well-established, a process he said would take “three to four years.”

Only an idiot (perhaps one like Benen) could miss the point Kirk was trying to make. I agree that he did not make it well, but it is painfully obvious that Kirk was saying that keeping the pressure up in Afghanistan will help prevent the Sears Tower (Now the Willis Tower) from coming down in a World-Trade-Tower-like heap at the hands of the terrorists, terrorists that would be made busy over there and not here.

Benen’s ignorant spin against Kirk is a political hatchet job plain and simple.

But, this is the sort of left-wing crap we should expect by a card carrying member of the Old Media.

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President Obama recently shifted authority for approving sales to China of missile and space technology from the White House to the Commerce Department — a move critics say will loosen export controls and potentially benefit Chinese missile development.

The president issued a little-noticed “presidential determination” Sept. 29 that delegated authority for determining whether missile and space exports should be approved for China to Commerce Secretary Gary Locke. …

The presidential notice alters a key provision of the 1999 Defense Authorization Act that required that the president notify Congress whether a transfer of missile and space technology to China would harm the U.S. space-launch industry or help China’s missile programs. …

Section 1512 of the 1999 law requires the president to certify to Congress in advance of any missile equipment or technology exports to China that the export will not harm the U.S. space-launch industry and that “missile equipment or technology, including any indirect technical benefit that could be derived from such export, will not measurably improve the missile or space launch capabilities of the People’s Republic of China.”

Why was this law necessary? Because Bill Clinton was so far in bed with the Chicoms, he probably snores in Chinese. As a result, technology was passed along to them that may be used to vaporize American cities. But laws don’t apply to The Anointed One, who rules by fiat while his media enablers look the other way.

Henry Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, said restoring Commerce Department control over the sensitive exports is a “step backward.”

“It’s as though Commerce’s mishandling of missile-tech transfers to China in the 1990s never happened,” said Mr. Sokolski, a former Pentagon proliferation specialist. “But it did. As a result, we are now facing much more accurate, reliable missiles from China.”

Mr. Sokolski said he expects the U.S. government under the new policy to again boost Chinese military modernization through “whatever renewed ‘benign’ missile technology” is approved.

“It was foolish for us to do this in the 1990s and is even more dangerous for us to do now,” he said.

The director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, Gary Milhollin, isn’t happy either:

It is shocking that it would be delegated to the secretary of commerce, whose job it is to promote trade, rather than to the secretary of state or the secretary of defense, who have far more knowledge and responsibility within their organizations for missile technology. … In fact, the delegation turns the present law upside down because Congress passed it after finding that the Commerce Department had improperly helped China import U.S. missile technology in the 1990s.

They needn’t worry. Comrade Obama believes in nuclear disarmament — at least for the USA, which liberals inform us is the source of all evil in the world.

On a tip from Conan. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

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