† Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?: New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof (you know, the Armenian who speaks "not as an Armenian" when it comes to genocide) takes President Barack Hussein Obama to task for breaking his campaign promise to “apply more pressure on Sudan so as to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur and elsewhere”:

 

[A]s president, Mr. Obama and his aides have caved, leaving Sudan gloating at American weakness. Western monitors, Sudanese journalists and local civil society groups have all found this month’s Sudanese elections to be deeply flawed - yet Mr. Obama’s special envoy for Sudan, Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, pre-emptively defended the elections, saying they would be “as free and as fair as possible.” The White House showed only a hint more backbone with a hurried reference this week to “an essential step” with “serious irregularities.”

 

President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan - the man wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity in Darfur - has been celebrating. His regime calls itself the National Congress Party, or N.C.P., and he was quoted in Sudan as telling a rally in the Blue Nile region: “Even America is becoming an N.C.P. member. No one is against our will.”

 

Memo to Mr. Obama: When a man who has been charged with crimes against humanity tells the world that America is in his pocket, it’s time to review your policy.

 

Editorial Note: This video from reader AZWillow, “You Picked A Fine Time To Lead Us, Barack,” will now be the official theme song of the “Is Obama Already A Lame Duck?” series: 
 

 

† Is Armenian Genocide Denial Good For The Jews?: Speaking at an international symposium, “Armenia-Turkey: How to Normalize Relations,” held in Paris on April 14^th, Israeli historian and professor Yair Auron - who is adamantly opposed to his government’s denial of the Armenian Genocide – opened his remarks by reminding his audience that the founders of Israel believed that “a free and happy Armenia, a free and happy Arabia, and a free and happy Jewish Palestine are the three pillars on which will rest the future peace and welfare of the Middle East.” Here is a summary of his remarks from Armenian affairs Web site Keghart.com:

 

The State of Israel continues to struggle against Holocaust denial on one hand, but participates in the denial of another genocide on the other. This most likely will damage the struggle against Holocaust denial in the future. One might view this attitude as a moral failure. We have to remember that moral claims can have influence only if they are consistent. … Everyone would agree that Israel has no right to bargain with the memory of the Holocaust. But, even more, it has no right - by no means, in any circumstance, and much less so than any other country - to bargain with the memory f another victim group. And yet Israel did just that with the Armenian Genocide. Israel is contributing to the process of genocide denial and by doing so, it also betrays the memory and the legacy of the Holocaust.

 

Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that Armenia has suspended ratification of peace accords with Turkey, “setting back to square one U.S.-backed efforts to bury a century of hostility” between the two countries:

 

Neither parliament has approved the deal, which would bring huge economic gains for poor, landlocked Armenia, burnish Turkey's credentials as an EU candidate and boost its clout in the strategic South Caucasus.

 

Analysts said the Armenian decision, two days before the 95th anniversary of the killings, was not the end of the road, but an attempt to increase pressure on Turkey.

 

Armenia was angered by Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan saying that ratification would depend on Armenia reaching terms with Azerbaijan, Turkey's close ally and energy trading partner, over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh.

 

"We have decided ... not to exit the process for the time being, but rather, to suspend the procedure of ratifying the protocols. We believe this to be in the best interests of our nation," Armenian President Serzh Sarksyan said.

 

Both governments face opposition at home, and in Armenia's case from its huge diaspora, many of whom trace their roots to the World War One killings and deportations.

 

Armenian opponents say the accords betray Armenian efforts to have the massacres internationally recognised as genocide.

President Barack Hussein Obama has used the excuse of not wanting to complicate the negotiations between Armenia and Turkey to duck his campaign pledge to the Armenian community that he would explicitly label the campaign of extermination by Ottoman Turkey a genocide. Now that the talks have been suspended, he can’t hide behind that fig leaf anymore.

Editorial Note: Syndicated talk show host Bill Handel (KFI AM-640) - who once used the Armenian Genocide as a punch line to a joke about runaway healthcare costs - describes Christian Armenian dhimmitude as citizens of the Ottoman Empire, gives his listeners a history lesson on the Genocide and slams Obama for reneging on his campaign promises to his Armenian-American constituents. 

Update: In his Armenian Remembrance Day remarks on the 95^th consecutive year since the Ottoman Turks literally committed Genocide and modern Turkey committed figurative Genocide by continuing to deny the crime against humanity even occurred, Obama spoke of "a devastating chapter in the history of the Armenian people” and “one of the worst atrocities of the 20th century began." He again failed to appease Armenian-Americans by using an archaic Armenian euphemism for Genocide. Perhaps he will be moved to characterize the [fill in the weasel word] as Genocide in April 2012, six months before this voting bloc - which overwhelmingly supported him in 2008, and tipped the balance in his favor in the swing state of MI – go to the polls. If not, MA – the state that gave the Repubs their 41^st vote in the Senate – could conceivably become a swing state, too.   

† Updates To Previous Posts (second item, What Freedom Of Speech Means To Muslims (The U.S. Edition): Comedy Central had no problem with “South Park” satirizing Buddhists, Christians, Mormons and Scientologists, but after radical Muslim Web site RevolutionMuslim.com posted veiled threats against the show’s creators – and included the address to the show’s production office - over an episode that depicted the Prophet Muhammad dressed in a bear costume, the network censored the cartoon and treated the prophet’s name like an expletive by bleeping it out.

As the Los Angeles Times explains, “many Muslims consider visual representations of Muhammad offensive.” So does this mean that Muhammad does actually look like a roly-poly brown bear? If not, then Trey Parker and Matt Stone were not depicting Muhammad. The bear costume was something like a burqa, covering him from head to toe.

Parker and Stone said that the episode had been altered without their approval and posted this statement:

In the 14 years we've been doing South Park we have never done a show that we couldn't stand behind. We delivered our version of the show to Comedy Central and they made a determination to alter the episode. It wasn't some meta-joke on our part. Comedy Central added the bleeps. In fact, Kyle's customary final speech was about intimidation and fear. It didn't mention Muhammad at all but it got bleeped too. We'll be back next week with a whole new show about something completely different and we'll see what happens to it. 

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, Only The Little People Pay Taxes): Taking her cue from her boss, Treasury Secretary Tiny Tim Geithner, IRS agent Andrea Fabiana Orellana gave herself a tax break, reports Bloomberg: 

[She] failed to report $41,842 in income in 2004 and 2005 from sales of designer clothing, shoes and other items, according to a Tax Court summary opinion. Orellana is liable for $12,428 in unpaid taxes and $2,486 in penalties. …

 

The IRS asked for proof of costs and expenses. Orellana, who worked as an IRS revenue officer and resided in California at the time of the IRS examination, testified that she never kept receipts, according to the court. “That would be ridiculous, unheard of. Unless there was some really bizarre reason why I kept a receipt, there were no receipts,” she said according to the court documents. …

 

Orellana claimed her EBay sales were not a business, and characterized it as an online garage sale, according to the court document. She said she liked to shop for designer clothes and that this was a way to clean out her closets.

 

The U.S. Tax Court found Orellana’s “attitude toward the preparation of her tax returns appeared to be cavalier,” and found her liable for back taxes and penalties for not reporting income on nearly 2,000 EBay transactions.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (seventh item, How ACORN Got Buried By “Squirrelly Right-Wingers”): ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis has been spewing strange sound-bites lately [emphasis, The Stiletto]. During a speech at the Winter Conference of the Young Democratic Socialists on March 25^th she likened the "so called" Tea Party movement to a "bowel movement." And just the other day, castigating Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn co-founder David Goldstein - who took a $3 million buyout so the controversial Atlantic Yards development can go forward - in a vitriolic E-mail to reporters she said: “[T]he building that he squatted in these past years should be razed to ground immediately, and salt poured into the soil, so that never again can the likes of one of the biggest shakedown artists in Brooklyn return.” 
 

She must be projecting her Angst over conservative activists - who finally pushed back against the untrammeled power ACORN has enjoyed for decades - sh*tting upon her group and burying it in barren (of federal funding) ground.

[Hat Tip: New York]

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (sixth item, Not Giving Credit Where Credit’s Due): For his part in a plot to blow up crowded subway trains, NYC taxi driver and Najibullah Zazi co-conspirator Zarein Ahmedzay pleaded guilty to conspiracy to use a weapon of mass of destruction against people in the United States; conspiracy to commit murder; and providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization reports CNN:  

 

After entering his plea delivered a message: "I strongly urge the American people to stop supporting the war against Islam," he said, adding, "I am thankful for myself that I did not do anything to harm anyone but fear someone else will do the same thing." …

 

He faces a sentence of up to life in prison. He is scheduled to be sentenced at the end of July.

 

The attorney for a third co-conspirator in the terror plot, Adis Medunjanin, says his client plans to proceed to trial.

 

In an interesting twist, prosecutors revealed the names of the two al Qaeda leaders who are believed to have ordered the subway bombing: Saleh al-Somali and Rashid Rauf, both of whom were reportedly killed in drone in separate attacks in Waziristan, the tribal region along the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (eighth item, “Person Of Interest” Steven Hatfill To Earn Lots Of Interest Income From Huge DOJ Payout): When the FBI closed the books on the 2001 anthrax letter attacks, critics of the agency’s lengthy and shoddy investigation feared they fingered the wrong man a second time (second item). Now, a former Army microbiologist who worked with Bruce Ivins has testified before a National Academy of Sciences panel that it was impossible to have produced the lethal spores in Ivins’ laboratory without anyone catching wind of what he was up to. The New York Times reports:

 

Asked by reporters after his testimony whether he believed that there was any chance that Dr. Ivins, who committed suicide in 2008, had carried out the attacks, the microbiologist, Henry S. Heine, replied, “Absolutely not.” At the Army’s biodefense laboratory in Maryland, where Dr. Ivins and Dr. Heine worked, he said, “among the senior scientists, no one believes it.”

 

Dr. Heine told the 16-member panel, which is reviewing the F.B.I.’s scientific work on the investigation that producing the quantity of spores in the letters would have taken at least a year of intensive work using the equipment at the army lab. Such an effort would not have escaped colleagues’ notice, he added later, and lab technicians who worked closely with Dr. Ivins have told him they saw no such work.

 

He told the panel that biological containment measures where Dr. Ivins worked were inadequate to prevent the spores from floating out of the laboratory into animal cages and offices. “You’d have had dead animals or dead people,” he said.

 

The public remarks from Dr. Heine, two months after the Justice Department officially closed the case, represent a major public challenge to its conclusion in one of the largest, most politically delicate and scientifically complex cases in F.B.I. history. …

 

Asked why he was speaking out now, Dr. Heine noted that Army officials had prohibited comment on the case, silencing him until he left the government laboratory in late February. He now works for Ordway Research Institute in Albany.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (eighth item, NJ Taxpayers Must Choose Between Dollars And Dolphins): NJ residents went to the polls in record numbers to vote down 316 of the 541 school-budgets on the ballot. The result: Gov. Chris Christie (R) won, the teachers’ union lost, reports The New York Times:  

 

They were angered by higher property taxes that were sought to make up for unusually large state aid reductions proposed by [the governor], along with resentment toward teachers’ unions for not agreeing to wage freezes or concessions.

 

The message of “enough is enough” resounded across the state, from urban to rural districts, and even in well-to-do suburban communities like Ridgewood, where residents are particularly proud of their schools. It was a drastic change from a year ago, when voters approved nearly three-quarters of the school budgets during the height of the economic downturn.

 

The election results sent school officials hurrying to prepare contingency plans to present to their town councils, or local municipal boards, which now must review the budgets and decide by May 19 whether to demand more cuts. …

 

Tuesday’s elections capped weeks of political drama between Governor Christie and the state’s largest teachers’ union, the New Jersey Education Association, over his efforts to pressure teachers to renegotiate their contracts. Mr. Christie, who is trying to close an $11 billion deficit, has proposed to cut direct state aid to districts by up to 5 percent of their operating budgets.

 

Mr. Christie exhorted New Jerseyans to use the budget votes to take a stand against school spending, particularly in districts where unions refused to freeze wages. The results suggest that people listened: Statewide, voter turnout rose to 26.7 percent from 15 percent last year.

 

Editorial Note: On a related topic, an analysis of 126 state and local pension plans by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College finds that “by 2013, the amount of retirement money promised to employees of these public entities will exceed cash on hand by more than a trillion dollars …  mean[ing] taxpayers will be left picking up the tab,” notes The Washington Times, because “[e]ver-expanding public-sector unions have flexed their political muscle and larded up with lavish benefits to be be [sic] paid out decades from now.”

 

In the most recent example of strong-arming taxpayers, this Boston Globe op-ed decries a 19 percent pay raise over four years the city’s firefighters were awarded in arbitration:

 

It’s not fair for the firefighters to get this kind of raise. The city can ill-afford this kind of raise. And taxpayers shouldn’t have to foot the bill for this kind of raise. …

 

The City Council needs to reject this raise and send the two sides back to the table. That’s exactly what the Worcester City Council did in 2004, when an arbitrator came in with an award for the firefighters that their city couldn’t afford.

 

Further, while Boston-area private-sector pay has increased an average of 3.4 percent a year for the last four years, the firefighters’ raise would average out to 4.75 percent a year.

 

Should the council fund this award, unions will no longer go to the bargaining table with the intention of negotiating in good faith. Instead, they’ll stubbornly dig in, with the aim of ending up in arbitration.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (eighth item, Madoff’s Victims: Gullible Or Greedy?): Several investors are suing the Securities and Exchange Commission for failing to detect Bernard Madoff's long-running $50 billion Ponzi scheme. One such case has been thrown out of court by U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson of the Central District of California on the grounds that "[p]laintiffs in this case largely fail to identify any mandatory 'policies' or 'practices' that were violated in this case," reports The National Law Journal:

 

"Their Complaint and their moving papers do not contain any attempt to rebut the government's preliminary showing that the SEC retained discretion to decide when to investigate, how to investigate, and whether or not to take enforcement actions."

 

The investors sued in December under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), alleging that the SEC "owes a duty of reasonable care to all members of the general public including all investors in U.S. financial markets who are foreseeably endangered by its conduct." The suit cited the SEC Office of Inspector General's report last year detailing how the agency failed to uncover Madoff's scheme. …

 

The Department of Justice moved to dismiss, arguing that the court lacked jurisdiction to hear FTCA claims under the statute's "discretionary function exemption," which bars tort actions against federal officers who commit discretionary acts in the course of their jobs.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, 10 Reasons Michelle Obama Should Be Proud – Really Proud – Of America): In a status update last year, Carlos Sanchez, a 44-year-old father whose diabetic kidneys were failing, informed his Facebook friends that none of his friends and relatives were suitable donors and at his doctor’s suggestion, he put out an ask for the precious organ. This latest installment in The Stiletto Blog’s ongoing series meant to help instill the necessary pride of country in Michelle Obama’s consciousness to enable her to serve as an unofficial ambassador focuses on what happened when East Haven, CT, Mayor April Capone Almon, 35, who had “friended” Sanchez but knew him only casually read about his predicament. The Associated Press reports:

 

"I sent him a private message and just said, 'Hey, I'll try. I'll get tested,'" Capone Almon said Wednesday. "I really felt from the very beginning that I was going to be a match and a donor. I don't know why, but I just knew it." …

 

"I wasn't putting too much faith in it," he said. "I didn't want to get my hopes high. But at a point she made me feel so comfortable that I started feeling maybe this was meant to be."

 

Capone Almon, a Democrat, was running for a second term as mayor at the time but kept the details of her medical plans a secret. She won the election as they awaited word on when she could donate the kidney, saying they grew as close as family during the lull. …

 

Their tenuous connection was cemented into a lasting bond April 8, when doctors at Yale-New Haven Hospital removed Capone Almon's left kidney and transplanted it into Sanchez.

 

They were released from the hospital in less than a week and are expected to make full recoveries.