Michael van der Galien
Michael van der Galien was born in the Dutch city of Leeuwarden in 1984. For as long as he can remember, he has been obsessed with the United States. When he was 17 years old, he started blogging - of course about America. His articles have been published at Big Hollywood, Pajamas Media, Hot Air (the GreenRoom) and Right Across The Atlantic. He's also an editor for the Dutch conservative blog, De Dagelijkse Standaard.
Osama bin Laden’s word choice in the latest audio message attributed to him is seen as a “possible indicator” of an upcoming attack by his Al-Qaeda network, a US monitoring group warned Sunday.
IntelCenter, a US group that monitors Islamist websites, also said that manner of the release and the content of the message showed it was “credible” that it was a new release from the Saudi extremist.
President Obama uses two teleprompters while speaking to students at a school in Falls Church, Virginia.
Full video and more about the event is available at the White House website.
Watch the video at RealClearPolitics.
by Peter Orvetti
Any small but passionate cause runs the risk of creating an echo chamber. The libertarian movement is experiencing remarkable growth online — a happy by-product of the simultaneous rise of Ron Paul and social networking — which means activists can communicate and organize across great distances with ease. But it also means the members of the small group can come to interact entirely with others in that same small group, creating the misimpression that all the world shares its views.
The American far left has long used the echo chamber effect as a salve against its own irrelevance, with members of scads of indistinguishably didactic communist parties fighting one another for domination of the red hearts and minds of a few hundred adherents. Though the libertarian movement is much broader, the echo chamber is there. Many libertarians would sooner be accused of doing lewd things with their own mothers than be called “statists” — yet most people do not even know what that word means, let alone know why it is supposedly so awful. The echo chamber produces cult-like reverence for names obscure to the masses, like Mises and Rothbard and Browne: all great men indeed, but of little interest to folks outside the movement looking for solutions to the nation’s ever-worsening woes.
It seems that there are some astroturfers out there to defend President Obama. Whenever something happens that reflects badly on the president, one Ellie Light pops up defending the good man against his detractors. Some conservative bloggers tried to figure out who Light is and traced his IP address back to... Saudi Arabia.
The smart blogger Patterico comments: “I assume this is some sort of masking or spoofing device and not the actual location of “Ellie Light.” Which makes you wonder: why does a grandma writing letters on behalf of Obama use an IP spoofer?” It’s a good question. read more…
by Roger L. Simon
The last time I fired a gun I almost killed somebody. Well, not really. But it sure generated a lot of guffaws from my hosts, a group of Russian filmmakers. I was up in Siberia, of all places, about seven years ago, as a juror at a film festival and was taken rifle shooting on a frozen biathlon course. I missed the target by about twenty yards, knocking several branches off a nearby tree.
So naturally I had a moment’s trepidation when invited to go shooting with Governor Rick Perry of Texas as part of an event he was staging for bloggers in his home territory of Austin. On the other hand I had never been to the Texas capital and the charismatic governor interested me. So I accepted his invitation with pleasure. But just to be careful – I figured Perry had to be a good shot and didn’t want to embarrass myself – I went over to the LAX Los Angeles Firing Range to take a half hour lesson with a retired Marine.
by Steven L. Taylor
On the money front, the commission noted the need for almost half of the $120 million needed for the elections to come via international donations. The UN apparently has the funds, but wants reforms before they are handed over. In any event, not a good sign for state-building (let alone democracy-building) if the state in question cannot afford to pay for elections. The ongoing inability to follow basic constitutional provisions (i.e., election dates) is more troubling than that, of course.
by Mark Steyn
So what went wrong? According to Barack Obama, the problem is he overestimated you dumb rubes’ ability to appreciate what he’s been doing for you. “That I do think is a mistake of mine,” the president told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos. “I think the assumption was if I just focus on policy, if I just focus on this provision or that law or if we’re making a good rational decision here, then people will get it.”
But you schlubs aren’t that smart. You didn’t get it. And Barack Obama is determined to see that you do. So the president has decided that he needs to start “speaking directly to the American people.”
by Ben Shapiro
Friday, Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League did what he’s most fond of doing: he focused his ire on a friend of Israel rather than an enemy in order to protect his allies in the Democratic Party. This time, he’s attacked staunch philo-Semite and pro-Israel bulwark Rush Limbaugh. Here’s Rush’s statement:
To some people, banker is a code word for Jewish; and guess who Obama is assaulting? He’s assaulting bankers. He’s assaulting money people. And a lot of those people on Wall Street are Jewish. So I wonder if there’s – if there’s starting to be some buyer’s remorse there.
More than anything else, it was the foolishness of the far left that harpooned Martha Coakley in Massachusetts. Independents broke big for Scott Brown and his own internal polling showed that national security issues like civilian trials for al-Qaeda thugs and the president’s perceived soft approach on terrorism in general helped Brown to a smashing victory.
President Obama, of course, is a big loser along with Ms. Coakley. His trip to Massachusetts last Sunday was gutsy, but foolish in hindsight. Voters in a very liberal state simply rejected his request to elect another liberal. The president lost face and power and has to know it.
by The Daily Caller
In a new minute-long audio tape that aired on Arabic-language news outlet Al-Jazeera earlier today, al Qaeda leader Osama bin Liden appears to claim responsibility for the failed bombing attempt on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day and threatens President Obama directly with more attacks.
“The message I want to convey to you through the plane of the hero Umar Farouk [Abdulmutallab], reaffirms a previous message that the heroes of 9/11 conveyed to you,” a voice, purportedly bin Laden’s, tells Obama.
Mindy Finn and Patrick Ruffini
Scott Brown’s supporters became fans of the candidate on Facebook, where they commented on his status updates and uploaded their own photos. The Republican Senate hopeful took to Twitter, using the #masen hashtag to let his followers know how the race was going. His campaign powered its field operation through targeted online ads and Web-based spreadsheets, and raised $12 million from 157,000 individual donations in the last two weeks of the race. After he won last week, his team live-streamed the election-night party in Boston online.
Democratic candidates don’t have a monopoly on online organizing anymore. Brown and his campaign staffers deserve the credit for proving this, but it’s a reason to celebrate for us and our new-media colleagues, too — we’ve been working to get the GOP into the Web era for the past decade. We’ve been laughed out of high-level campaign meetings, told that online budgets are the first thing to go and informed that having a Facebook page is “unpresidential.” And it wasn’t until recently that people stopped asking us to fix their computers.
by Ed Morrissey
Allahpundit noted the likelihood of J.D. Hayworth’s primary challenge to John McCain last night, and today the AP makes it official … or officially non-official. While emphasizing that he didn’t want to officially declare his candidacy — which would create a set of legal obligations that he’s not quite ready to assume — Hayworth quit his radio show on air and later stated his intention to challenge McCain:
Former Arizona Congressman J.D. Hayworth says he is planning to run against John McCain for his U.S. Senate seat.
