2016 – Obama’s America: THE FILM

Few people can argue that the country has worked well during the four years that Obama has been president. Nor can they argue that, relative to all of those who have served in that office since George Washington, Obama has been the most radical in terms of where mainstream America is – which would make his reelection inexplicable.

When he persuaded a majority of Americans to vote for him in 2008, Obama did so promising that he would remake America. Whatever “remake” meant in his mind – and I’ve never been convinced that American society, including his supporters, fully understood it – his policies aren’t working. The country is divided. Unemployment has risen under his watch. Debt has skyrocketed. Economic growth is glacial.

Why? Is the man incompetent? Or is the chaos he has caused his real intent? When you think about it, doesn’t the answer have to be one or the other?

Dinesh D’Souza’s new film, 2016: Obama’s America, explores those questions and asks what America will look like in four more years – in 2016 – if Obama is reelected.

The film is being promoted by conservative talk show hosts – Hugh Hewitt and Michael Medved, for example – who are thoughtful and balanced, not bombasts like Rush Limbaugh. In contrast, the film’s opponents on the left have condemned it with a vengeance (I’ve read as many of their reviews as I could find.) With that much smoke, there’s fire somewhere, so several weeks ago I went to see 2016.

When the unknown 33-year old Barack Obama wrote his autobiography, Dreams from My Father, he revealed a young man in search of his identity. D’Souza employs this book to take the film’s viewers on a similar search to understand Obama. D’Souza contends that Obama was greatly influenced by the anti-colonial views of his Kenyan father and to prove that contention, viewers are taken to Hawaii and Indonesia, where the young Obama was raised and influenced, and then the camera travels to Kenya – to the grave of his father – where Obama’s alleged self-discovery occurred.

The film was adapted from D’Souza’s most recent books, The Roots of Obama's Rage and Obama's America: Unmaking the American Dream, and it was produced by Gerald Molen, who won an Oscar for Schindler’s List and produced Jurassic Park and Hook. D’Souza co-wrote, co-directed, and narrated the film as the viewers’ host.

Since there’s no “the butler did it” in this film, I don’t have to give a “Spoiler Warning” to the readers of this blog, but notwithstanding my comments, I recommend that everyone see the film and reach their own conclusion on its merit.

As most people know, Obama is the offspring of a white mother and black father. Both were dysfunctional and both were ideological radicals. Obama's mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, despised America. D’Souza points out that Obama’s maternal grandfather held left-leaning political views.

His father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was a senior level economist in the Kenyan government who, according to those who knew him, carried an anti-colonial grudge against the rich western countries which, he believed, had pillaged the natural wealth of third world countries. The fact that the parents met in a Russian class in 1960 suggests where both were politically during the apogee of the Cold War.

Obama Sr. and Dunham married in 1961 and Obama Jr. was born six months later. Obama Sr. revealed to Dunham after their marriage that he had been married and divorced in Kenya, which was a lie, Dunham discovered. He was still married.

The couple separated within the year. Obama Sr. graduated from the University of Hawaii with an economics degree and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa after which he left Hawaii for the mainland to attend graduate school at Harvard before returning to Kenya. There he fathered several more children by different women whom he physically abused. As he slipped into alcoholism and poverty, Obama Sr. had two serious car crashes, the second of which claimed both legs, and then in 1982 he was killed in a third car crash.

Dunham divorced Obama Sr. several years after they separated and shortly after she married an Indonesian, Lolo Soetoro, who was living in Hawaii while he attended college. When his visa expired the couple moved to Indonesia, but after several years, D’Souza notes, Dunham sent Obama Jr. back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents in order to remove him from the influence of Soetoto whose pro-American views (he worked for American oil companies and fought communists while in the Indonesian army) ran counter to her political views.

With young Obama’s return, Dunham instructed her father to engage his friend, Frank Davis, to mentor her son. Davis was a card-carrying communist and a black nationalist. Vladimir Lenin said, "Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted." So it may have been with little Obama. The film leaves one wondering how much of Frank Davis’ influence has become a part of Obama’s worldview.

In time Obama’s grandparents enrolled him in Punahou, an elite college prep school founded in 1841, which put him in close association with children of privilege, mostly white and mostly from politically liberal families. Not surprisingly, given the influence of Davis and Punahou, Obama was drawn more to the left in college, which he reveals in his autobiographical Dreams from My Father:

To avoid being mistaken for a sell-out, I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structured feminists and punk-rock performance poets[.] ... We were alienated.

The influence of Frank Davis continued into Obama’s adulthood as he associated in varying degrees with people whom D’Souza calls Obama’s “Founding Fathers” – Bill Ayers, co-founder of the Weather Underground communist revolutionary group that bombed public buildings; Edward Said, a bright and well-educated anti-Israel leftist of Palestinian descent; Jeremiah Wright, the hate-spewing preacher of “God damn America” fame whose church Obama attended for 23 years and who performed the marriage ceremony for the Obamas; and Roberto Unger, one of Obama’s Harvard law professors and a 2008 campaign advisor. Unger is now advocating against Obama’s reelection because he has not been leftist enough as president. Wright became the most public of Obama’s radical associations, and perhaps the most embarrassing during the 2008 campaign, but in Dreams from My Father, Obama was moved to tears by a Wright sermon in which his minister proclaimed "white folks' greed runs a world in need."

Pointing out that Obama’s autobiography is entitled Dreams from My Father rather than “of my father,” D’Souza theorizes that Obama was influenced by the anti-west politics of his father and travels to Kenya to corroborate his claims. There he interviews the family and friend of the late Obama Sr., among them one of the many sons he sired, George, who was born only a few months before the fatal accident that took his father. George obviously doesn’t hold his father’s anti-colonial views because he opines that Kenya might be better off today if the white man had stayed. Asked by D’Souza if he feels abandoned by another son of his father who has become President of the United States, George is nonplussed and mumbles something about his half-brother having a country to run.

D’Souza is less successful in getting Granny Obama on camera. Even though he bought three goats as her speaking fee, she changed her mind or was persuaded to change it and declined the interview. But he did get Philip Ochieng, the lifelong friend of Obama Sr., to agree to an interview. Ochieng characterized Obama Sr. as "totally anti-colonial" and tossed in a few negative assessments of his own concerning American foreign policy.

Perhaps the most dramatic scene during the Kenyan visit was the reenactment of Obama as a young adult visiting the grave of his father. He relates the experience in Dreams:

“I learned long ago to distrust my childhood and the stories that shaped it. It was only many years later, after I sat at my father’s grave and spoken to him through Africa’s red soil, that I could circle back and evaluate these early stories for myself.”

D’Souza argues that Obama’s worldview is influenced by the politics of his father (and even more likely, his “Founding Father” mentors.) Critics say such an assertion is preposterous since the father abandoned the son at the age of two and visited him only once at age ten. Yet it is well established that children who lose a parent at a young age create a “larger than life” image of the departed parent resplendent with virtue and absent of warts. Only Obama knows if he has done this, but his autobiography indicates some kind of awakening occurred beside his father’s grave. And the fact that he would journey to Kenya and the grave of the father who abandoned him – with whom he had no personal relationship – speaks volumes of his desire to connect to his father’s world.

Whatever the father’s influence or his “Founding Fathers’” influence, D’Souza implicitly asks viewers to explain Obama returning the bust of Churchill to England almost immediately upon moving into the White House. Was this associated with Kenya’s former colonial status in the United Kingdom? How does one explain that, asked several months ago about Argentina’s claim to the Falkland Islands, Obama refused to support the British claim to them, despite the 3,000 British subjects living there? He even referred to the Falklands as Malvinas, the Argentine name for the Falklands.

If D’Souza’s argument is false that Obama is ideologically committed to end America’s dominance in the world, how does one explain his opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline that would produce possibly ten billion dollars in economic benefits and over 15,000 jobs at a time when 22 million are unemployed … yet he allows billions of taxpayer dollars to Brazil, Mexico, and Columbia?

Why is Obama patently anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian when Israel has been America’s only true ally in the Middle East for 65 years?

Why did he instruct NASA’s administrator, Charles Bolden, “to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering”?

D’Souza asks why did Obama intervene in Libya but not Syria? Why did he urge Hosni Mubarak, a longtime ally of this country, to step down in Egypt, creating a leadership vacuum that was filled by the militant Muslim Brotherhood during the “Arab Spring” uprising, but he gave no encouragement to the Iranians who launched and died in the “green revolution” against their corrupt mullahs? And just as Iran is about to “go nuclear” why is Obama signing a treaty that will reduce our nuclear warheads from 5,000 to 2,500?

How could a man who is as presumptively bright and well-educated as Obama spend a trillion dollars more than the US government takes in from taxes in each of four years, adding $5 trillion in new debt, D’Souza asks as he shows a graph? The national debt has doubled under Obama, and he and his predecessor have piled up more debt than the 42 previous presidents combined.

Perhaps the unnerving questions asked and evidence offered by D’Souza’s 2016 have contributed to the success of the film, which has become the highest grossing political documentary second only to Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. Since its release it has grossed over $26 million and is in 2,000 theaters until mid-October. After that DVD and home box office will make viewing possible up to the 2012 election on November 6.

The audience with whom I saw the film applauded at its conclusion. As I passed knots of theater-goers afterward on the way to my car, I could hear them talking about the film. None made fun of it as conspiracy theory propaganda. I suspect that most were wondering what America would look like in 2016 if we have four more years of Obama. I know I was.

That Obama has downsized our economy, our domestic production of energy, our nuclear arsenal, and our influence in the world is unimpeachable by the Left. His bowing to foreign leaders, his apologies to the world for past transgressions by the US, his lionizing the importance of the Muslim world and its alleged accomplishments are inexplicable … unless he is incompetent … or unless he has an agenda in which these are purposely a part. Which is it? “Love him or hate him: you don’t know him,” D’Souza claims.

Well, maybe so in 2008. Less so in 2012.

Bumps in the Road

When 9/11 rolls around next year, it will not only be the 12^th anniversary of the cowardly attacks by Islamic radicals on the sovereign soil of the US, but it will also be the first anniversary of an equally cowardly attack by Islamic radicals on the US embassy in Libya, which, like every other embassy in the world, rests on soil sovereign to the country it represents. The attack cost the lives of our ambassador, Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, and two ex-SEALs, Glen Doherty and Tyrone S. Woods, who were there to provide security.

Stevens was an improbable ambassador even in a country as unsettled as Libya. He hitched a ride to get there aboard a Greek freighter, arriving in country as the regime of Moammar Gadhafi was collapsing but before the dictator had been executed. Once in country, he directed the landing of supplies and vehicles needed to establish a diplomatic American presence representing the US to the rebels fighting Gadhafi forces.

Stevens, who was 52 years old, had served in Morocco as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English.  He was fluent in Arabic and well-traveled throughout the Middle East, which he made the focus of his 20-year State Department career after receiving his law degree. Stevens had served two other assignments in Libya prior to his final one and had diplomatic postings in Israel, Egypt, Syria, and Saudi Arabia. Yet he seemed particularly devoted to the Libyan people, among whom he had many personal friends and with whom he often socialized.

This past June while in Washington, he spoke with a reporter about the rising violence in Libya among Islamists – which included the June bombing of our consulate in Benghazi. Now that Gadhafi was gone, he said, people felt freer to express their opinions about the future of the country. Unfortunately the lack of a strong government to fill the vacuum left by the previous regime and a weak-willed police force were incapable of dealing with trouble-makers whose rhetoric was over the line and designed to incite violence, particularly against Americans.

It should trouble ordinary Americans who care for their country to know that their State Department – and therefore the Obama administration – had 48 hours’ notice that the Benghazi consulate and the Cairo embassy were targets for attacks by Islamic radicals. Nertheless, diplomats there were not warned. A local Libyan militia commander said, after the Benghazi attacks, that he had warned Stevens the security situation was deteriorating and that he was concerned for the 30 or so Americans and embassy staff. There was a nearby “safe house” but Stevens and some others, including the other three killed, stayed in the consulate. Although Stevens was “guarded” by his security detail consisting of two ex-SEALs and friendly local militia, none were armed and the local “security” left the scene when the fighting started. Most importantly: there was no US Marine detachment there – standard operating procedure for consular protection, especially in a country with roaming bands of well-armed militia and unknown agendas.

This tragedy was an intelligence breakdown that would have been excoriated in the press if a Republican administration were in power. Think the 9/11 Commission, Jamie Gorelick, and “connecting the dots” all in the same sentence.

Within 24 hours of the attack, which was known in Washington almost as it was launched, our intelligence experts knew that this was terrorist-motivated. Yet, after the attack – which was launched around 9:30 p.m. from three sides by well-armed militia replete with rocket-propelled grenades – Obama and Hillary Clinton cooked up a story that the attacks were a response to a 15-minute YouTube video that slurred the Prophet Mohammed. The “incendiary” video had been on the web for months with less than a dozen “hits” so anyone who believed what the White House was peddling must also believe that the moon is made of cheese. As Senator John McCain later said, “most people don’t bring rocket-propelled grenades and heavy weapons to a demonstration.”

The White House also tried to deflect criticism that these were hostile, well-planned and coordinated embassy attacks by saying that photos released by Libyans show that they were trying to take Ambassador Stevens to the hospital and that he was alive when they found him. The Libyans, however, had a funny way of transporting our diplomat because anyone can Google “Stevens dragged” and see his dead body being dragged through the streets partially clothed with onlookers taking cell phone photos of him before being dumped. The Obama administration has clamped shut any post-mortem findings, but rumors from the scene suggest that Stevens had been brutalized, including raped, when the attackers set upon him.

With an election six weeks away, there is little wonder why Obama and his handlers would lie to the American people about the treatment of our country’s diplomatic representative on the 11^th anniversary of a horrific attack by Islamic radicals of the same ilk. The last thing a politician up for reelection needs is any evidence that he can’t keep Americans safe from terrorists – both here and abroad. We will likely not learn the truth of what happened in the final days and hours to our embassy in Libya until this mendacious administration is out of office.

It also should trouble ordinary Americans that our sovereign, burned out consulate was left unsecured by the provisional Libyan government which America helped put into power. A strong American president, less concerned that the world like us, would have demanded that our consulate be secured, and if in doubt that his demand would be carried out immediately, would have put an armed force on the ground with air cover and FBI agents sufficient to protect the crime scene. Since that didn’t happen, curious onlookers were able to take what they wanted from the scene, including secrets that every embassy wants kept secret – like the names of locals who help feed intelligence to the ambassador.

The charred remains of Ambassador Stevens’ diary were found among the ruins by a CNN reporter who, in the absence of any CIA agents sent immediately upon news of the attack to prevent it, passed the diary on to CNN headquarters in Atlanta. Despite CNN’s agreement with Stevens’ family to return it to them unread, CNN superstar Anderson Cooper revealed some of its details on his TV program, which masquerades as news. Mr. Cooper’s “diary scoop” caused an eruption at the State Department. Little wonder. It revealed a government totally bumfuzzled with how it should respond to the situation in Libya. More damning, the seven remaining diary pages, written in Stevens’ handwriting, said that he was concerned about the relentless security threats associated with the rise of Islamic extremism in the area, specifically in Benghazi, the growing presence of al-Qaeda in Libya, and knowledge that he was on al-Qaeda’s hit list. As good a diplomat as he was, Stevens would have passed those concerns on to the State Department, whose incompetent Secretary Hillary might have had interest in it, except that she was too busy inviting the anti-American new President of Egypt, a card-carrying member of the Muslim Brotherhood, to come visit the White House and have a spot of tea with Obama – when he wasn’t on the golf course … of course.

Libya lost a friend with the death of Christopher Stevens.  He was the “Lawrence of Arabia” for Libyans, traveling among their ordinary people with minimal presence of personal security with him – and those guards who accompanied him were often out of sight. Stevens wanted to be viewed as if he were Libyan. He would be seen in local shops and coffee cafes where Libyans would come up to him to have their picture taken. On Wednesday, the Libyan president told NBC that the anti-Islam film had “nothing to do with” the attack on the US consulate that killed this popular diplomat.

Sean Smith, also killed in the attack, was an employee of the State Department who managed the IT functions for embassies and consulates. He was an avid online gamer who played under the online pseudonym “Vile Rat.” Many of the people who knew him had never met him except online. But those who knew him offline described him as a “first class nice guy.”

One of the online players who knew Smith personally had gamed with him as he moved from one diplomatic assignment to another. In Baghdad, he recalled, Smith would key stroke that the “incoming” sirens were going off, signaling a strike, and he would disappear for a long while. This would cause the other players to “freak out.” But then Smith would always return after a bit.

On the night before the attack, he messaged:

(12:54:09 PM) vile_rat: assuming we don’t die tonight. We saw one of our “police” that guard the compound taking pictures.

Then later, according to his friend, “this time he said ‘F - - K’ and ‘GUNFIRE’ and then disconnected and never returned.” Only later did the online community learn that he had been killed. Smith, Stevens, and a security guard had retreated to a safe room in the consulate. The attackers broke into the compound, poured diesel fuel around the building, and ignited it. It’s unknown if they were aware that anyone was inside. The security guard made his way out of the burning consulate. Smith and Stevens didn’t.

Sean Smith was married. His wife, Heather, was born and grew up in Roswell, GA before moving to Dulles VA where the two met. They have two small children, Samantha and Nathan, who will grow up without their dad, Vile Rat.

Also killed in the attack was ex-SEAL, Glen Doherty, who worked for a private security firm on contract with the State Department to protect the ambassador. Doherty was an adrenaline junkie who was fearless and, according to his sister, loved two things: being outdoors and being with friends. His closest friends were a group of misfits with whom he’d attended elementary school and he was the glue that kept them all together. He learned to fly after graduating from high school, rode fast motorcycles, guided white water rafting down the Colorado River, and was a Utah ski bum during the winters.

At age 25 he enlisted in SEAL training, and after graduating, became a registered nurse and paramedic as well as a trained sniper, writing a book, The 21st Century Sniper: A Complete Practical Guide. His nursing skills helped him attend to the wounded when his unit was sent to the scene of the suicide bombing of the USS Cole, which killed 17 and wounded 39 sailors. His sniper skills helped his Special Ops unit to find and rescue Pvt. Jessica Lynch, the wounded Quartermaster Corps trooper who was captured during the attack on Baghdad. Doherty did two tours in Iraq during the 2003 “Iraqi Freedom” Gulf War.

His marriage to his high school sweetheart couldn’t stand the strain of his risky assignments which took him to the corners of the world. His work with the private security firm would keep him on three-month projects after which he would return for one or two months to the states. He bored easily. One friend described him as a person who thought the only thing cooler than doing what he was doing was to leave it in order to do something else.

After the first attack on the consulate, Doherty shepherded 30 embassy staff to a second building and notified the State Department’s operations center in Tripoli to evacuate them.  Apparently some friendly militia arrived to protect the embassy compound. Around 2 a.m. a five minute attack on the second building was launched. First-hand accounts about the evacuation of the embassy staff to the Benghazi airport conflict at this point. More needs to be factually known. But the second attack included mortars launched into the compound. Doherty was killed just outside the compound gate by a mortar blast. He was 41 years old.

Tyrone Woods, known as Rone to friends, was the other ex-SEAL killed in the Benghazi attacks. He had enlisted in the Navy after graduating from high school and volunteered for SEAL training. His career with the SEALs spanned two decades, including tours in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Like Doherty, he was a registered nurse and paramedic.

Previously married, his former brother in law said Woods was the sort of person who was not able to adjust to civilian life. “He was always waiting for that phone to ring” before another high-stakes mission. During the SEAL infamous “Hell Week” – a grueling five and a half days of almost unending training during which a total of three or four hours of sleep is allowed, Woods was injured. His choice after recovery was drop out or repeat Hell Week. He went through it a second time, telling his mother, “I don't want to be just another barnacle scrapping Sailor".

In 2010 he retired from the SEALs and joined a firm providing consulate security services in Central America and the Middle East. He remarried, moved to Henderson NV, and bought a house. His wife gave birth to a son earlier this year, whom he was able to see before leaving for Libya. He and Doherty were probably killed in the same mortar blast.

In this past Sunday’s 60 Minutes interview of the 2012 presidential candidates, Steve Kroft asked Obama if recent events had given him any pause about his support for the “Arab Spring” uprisings. Obama’s response:

I think it was absolutely the right thing for us to do to align ourselves with democracy, universal rights a notion that people have to be able to participate in their own governance, but I was pretty certain and continue to be pretty certain that there are going to be bumps in the road because, you know, in a lot of these places, the one organizing principle has been Islam …

I guess that’s what the unpardonable attacks on our embassies in Libya and Cairo were … and the deaths of four Americans … Stevens, Smith, Doherty, and Woods … bumps in the road.

Voting God and Israel Out

God and Israel had a tough time of it at the Democrat National Convention a couple of weeks ago. Both were left out of the Democrat platform, which caused a furor requiring Obama’s intervention to get them back in. This launched a floor fight among delegates to the DNC to determine by voice vote if two-thirds of them agreed with their party’s leader – the President. The outcome wasn’t clear. It certainly wasn’t clear to the hapless Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, the convention chairman, who looked bewildered when the platform modification voice vote sounded overwhelmingly like a tie, if not a rejection. So the chairman called for the voice vote to be repeated, giving the ayes a second chance. Same results.

The clueless Villaraigosa had that “what do I do now?” look on his face when the convention “rules expert,” parliamentarian Helen McFadden, in essence told him to call for a third vote and then say the “ayes” won. In the third voice vote, ayes and nays were at least tied but to my ear it sounded like the nays won by a considerable margin. Nevertheless, Villaraigosa dutifully complied with McFadden’s instructions, except this time, unlike the previous two votes, he read from the teleprompter. “In the opinion of the chair, two-thirds having voted in the affirmative, the motion is adopted.” The fix was in. Villaraigosa was booed off of the convention stage for ramming through an affirmation of the platform change that its opponents were sure they’d won. The anti-Israel, anti-God sentiment among the Democrats in Charlotte was embarrassingly evident to a national television audience.

Did those DNC delegates represent the sentiments of the Democrat Party? God only knows. (Not a pun.).

But the Pew Research Center’s American Values Survey conducted this summer and the American National Election Studies show that a deep ideological divide between the political Right and the Left has been underway for 20 years. That polarization has changed what it means to be a Democrat or Republican, which helps understand why God and Israel probably lost the DNC vote, the convention chairman’s ruling notwithstanding.

When Ronald Reagan left office religious faith and its practice, according to these surveys, were essentially the same for Republicans and Democrats. Both believed in God and believed that a Day of Judgment would occur in the future when all people, living and dead, would be called to account for their sins. The traditional view of marriage was equally held by self-identified members of both parties. Only a tiny single digit minority of Democrats held non-traditional views in all of these beliefs. But since then, belief in the existence of God, Judgment, and the traditional view of marriage has declined among white Democrats, especially among white liberal Democrats, less than half of whom (44%) now believe in the traditional view of marriage. Among black Democrats, however, all but a single-digit minority still hold “old fashioned” traditional views about God, sin, prayer, and marriage. They were likely the impetus behind the DNC platform change.

In interviews after the convention Sen. Charles “Chuck” Schumer (D-NY) poo-pooed assertions that the Democrat Party clearly had an anti-Israel tilt, but facts lean in the opposite direction. I’ve previously blogged on the subject of the Obama administration’s support for Israel, particularly as Israel increasingly faces the Iran nuclear menace, but even more telling evidence of the Democrat’s anti-Israel stance is Obama’s reluctance to say that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. During a press conference this summer, a reporter asked Jay Carney, the President’s press secretary if Obama believed the capital of Israel was Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. Carney wouldn’t answer.

An hilarious exchange went on between a reporter and the State Department press secretary about the capital of Israel a couple of weeks ago. The reporter asked which city the US government recognizes – Jerusalem or Tel Aviv – as the capital and the press secretary answered:

Well, as you know, longstanding Administration policy, both in this Administration and in previous administrations across both parties, is that the status of Jerusalem is an issue that should be resolved in final status negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. So that’s longstanding Administration policy and continues to be so.

Not to be undone by a State Department head fake, the reporter tried again: “[Then] … no city is recognized as [Israel’s] capital?” to which the press secretary repeated, “Again, I just stated our position, and it’s one we’ve said here many times before.”

“That means Jerusalem is not a part of Israel?” the reporter tried again. “What it means is that the status of Jerusalem must be resolved in final status negotiations,” the State Department robot responded.

If you want more of this “Who’s on First” comedy routine, click on the link given above. The point is that Obama and his water carriers aren’t going to be pinned down on their belief that Jerusalem should be an open city – maybe the capital of both the Jews and Palestinians. Or maybe just the Palestinians.

My, my, my – how the Democrat Party has changed during the Obama era. In 2008, when Obama was peddling hope and change, the Party platform said:

Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel. The parties have agreed that Jerusalem is a matter for final status negotiations. It should remain an undivided city accessible to people of all faiths.

Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel.

Now we find that the 2012 Democrat platform didn’t even mention Jerusalem – until Obama intervened to put it back in. Oddly, the fact that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel has been law since 1995. Yet despite Section 2.14 of the law, the US has failed to move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

When the Republicans held their convention, their platform explicitly said:

We support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state with secure, defensible borders; and we envision two democratic states – Israel with Jerusalem as its capital and Palestine – living in peace and security. For that to happen, the Palestinian people must support leaders who reject terror, embrace the institutions and ethos of democracy, and respect the rule of law.

So, what’s the beef in the DNC dispute?

It’s a presidential election year. While Jews aren’t the voting bloc that racial minorities are – there are about 6.6 million American Jews (about 2% of the population) – they are significantly represented in battleground states. Historically, American Jews have been liberal Democrats for many and complex reasons, among them their legacy of persecution and their suspicion of conservatism. Obama probably could win reelection without them if he could hold the rest of his coalition together, but national elections aren’t about publicly alienating voting blocs. Besides, elections are like jury trials – despite the arguments presented to a jury the outcomes can be surprising.

And then there’s God.

The 2008 Democrat Hope and Change platform said:

We need a government that stands up for the hopes, values, and interests of working people, and gives everyone willing to work hard the chance to make the most of their God-given potential.

Hardly a ringing hopeful endorsement of God, but before Obama’s intervention the change in the Democrat platform read:  

We gather to reclaim the basic bargain that built the largest middle class and the most prosperous nation on Earth – the simple principle that in America, hard work should pay off, responsibility should be rewarded, and each one of us should be able to go as far as our talent and drive take us.

No reference to God.

Black Americans are about 12% of the population and Obama got 95% of their vote in 2008. About 90% of blacks hold traditional views about God, sin, and marriage, therefore, the omission of any mention of God was a faux pas that compelled Obama’s intervention.

Let’s admit that political party convention platforms are symbolic. They are not binding on the presidential candidate. And when it comes to platform wording, each party’s activists are the most interested and the most influential in what gets said. What platforms say is less important than what they said in the past but aren’t saying currently. Observers begin attaching meaning to the changes and omissions. The disaffection of the Democrats with Israel and the party’s growing secularization, especially among liberal activists, probably explain the omission of Jerusalem and God. But the departure from historic platforms drew enough attention to cause sputtering, expanding neck veins, red faces – and a presidential intervention.

I doubt that Mitt Romney fully supports the Republican platform notwithstanding its symbolic non-binding nature. But neither did he have to intervene to modify and call national attention to it.

Dick Durbin’s meltdown with Fox News anchor Bret Baier during the DNC bordered on hysteria. Durbin, the Democrat Whip in the senate and the senior senator from Obama’s home town, accused Baier of trying to make the Democrats appear “godless.” Baier simply asked why God and Jerusalem were left out of the platform. He wasn’t trying to make the Democrats godless or God-fearing. Watch the interview for yourself by clicking on the foregoing link. Paraphrasing Shakespeare’s Hamlet, "The senator doth protest too much, methinks."

When Republicans took note of the Jerusalem omission and called it to the attention of the press, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL), the co-chair of the DNC, was quoted by reporter Philip Klein of the Washington Examiner as having said, “We know, and I’ve heard no less than Ambassador Michael Oren say this, that what the Republicans are doing is dangerous for Israel.” Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the US protested Wasserman-Schultz’s published assertion, saying “I categorically deny that I ever characterized Republican policies as harmful to Israel. Bipartisan support is a paramount national interest for Israel, and we have great friends on both sides of the aisle.”

Asked to respond to Ambassador Oren’s refutation of her claim, Wasserman-Shultz said, “Unfortunately, that comment was reported by a conservative newspaper. It’s not surprising they would deliberately misquote me.”

Misquote? Hmmm. Unfortunately for Rep. DWS, reporter Klein had taped the interview. Oops.

In the run-up to the DNC, the “voice” of Jewish Democrats released a video to show that Obama is a really good friend of Israel. Entitled “What Do Israelis Think of Obama?” interviewees are extravagant in their praise for Obama. The National Democratic Jewish Council, which sponsored the video, slathered on the panegyrics:

President Barack Obama’s strong support for Israel has been recognized by Israeli leaders such as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, as well as many pro-Israel leaders here in the United States. … Today, we’re hearing what Israelis living on the front lines think.

My earlier-mentioned blogs on Obama’s relations with Israel should convince you that I wouldn’t put my bare feet in that statement. But fortunately, a neighbor of the interviewees in Israel saw the video and suspected a rat was in the woodpile (as we say in the south) so he interviewed the interviewees. Sho ‘nuf their anti-Obama comments had been edited to appear to be effusively pro-Obama. Oops again.

The Democrat pretentiousness about their support for the state of Israel is a Potemkin village to hide their true ideology. The DNC platform fumble puts the American Jewish constituency in play for the Republicans, and if that constituency would just examine the historic record, it would have to conclude that American Jews don’t have better friends than the Republicans. To that end, over 80% of the Americans living in Israel, including Democrats, are voting Republican this year.

The Republican Jewish Coalition in the US is running ads in swing state Jewish newspapers, noting that Israel is being abandoned by the Democrat Party:  

At the Democratic Party convention in Charlotte, NC, it's become painfully clear that this Party is no longer the Democratic Party of our parents' generation. This week [of the DNC] has witnessed a shocking series of events. These regrettable incidents reveal a Party that has wandered far from its origins. 

In the 2008 election Obama got 78% of the Jewish vote. The Republican Jewish Coalition is sending representatives and making large ad buys in battleground states to promote “buyer’s remorse” messages among the Jewish voters in those states. Notwithstanding the Democrat anti-Israel policies, the Democrats will probably get the majority of the 2012 Jewish vote. American Jews are not homogenous. There are at least two types – those whose liberalism is rooted in their Judaic religious belief in social justice and those who know Hebrew. Schumer and Wasserman-Schultz fall in the latter category.

But Michael Barone, a very savvy veteran of past election watching, believes that Obama will get a percentage of the Jewish vote in the 2012 election that is close to what he is polling now – about 65% -- significantly down from 78% in 2008. This will cost him about 84,000 votes in Florida, about 42,000 in Pennsylvania, and about 19,000 in Ohio. These aren’t huge numbers, but they could prove very costly to Obama’s reelection if Barone’s models are approximately correct. Keep in mind that George Bush won Florida in the 2000 by less than a thousand votes. Add to those states the loss of about 12,000 Virginia Jewish votes, about 12,000 Colorado votes, about 11,000 Michigan votes, and around 10,000 Nevada votes and Obama’s slam dunk reelection isn’t a slam dunk anymore.

Moreover, Dennis Ross, a Middle East expert, longtime friend and advisor to Bill Clinton, and a campaigner for Obama in the 2008 primaries despite his friendship with the Clintons, recently announced he is going to sit out the 2012 elections. That speaks volumes because Ross is a pro-Israel Democrat. The prestige loss to the Obama campaign is like Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Rush Limbaugh collectively announcing that they will not campaign for or visibly support Romney. Sure, Ross gave a cover story for sitting out 2012, but it’s so thin you could read a newspaper through it.

Finally, more than a minor uprising has occurred among black ministers who are telling their flock to stay home for the 2012 election because Obama came out in favor of same-sex marriage. Their congregations are asking them – the black pastors – how a Christian can vote for a presidential candidate who has taken a stand in opposition to Biblical teachings regarding homosexuals.

However, Romney probably won’t get their vote because blacks question the theology of Mormonism and its former ban on men of African descent for the Mormon ministry. Hopefully, they will learn that this restriction no longer applies. But at any rate, this turn of events could cost Obama important votes, since he got 95% of the black vote in 2008. As Thomas Sowell, a conservative black scholar has noted, if Republicans can woo just 10% of the black vote it would put the presidential campaign in jeopardy for the Democrats.

It’s been said that the two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. There wasn’t a lot of hydrogen present at this year’s DNC.