The CEO had every right to correct the record, though I’ve seen at least one person criticize him for doing so after the president left the event.  What was he to do?  Interrupt the president to correct him while he was still speaking?  That arguably would have been rude, and announcing his disagreement in a later press release would not have had nearly the same coverage.  I suppose he could have tried to make his statement with some kind of “all due respect” preface while the president was still there, but I think he did the only thing he could practically do to keep the record straight.

Dan Riehl wonders “Amateur Hour . . . or Just Lying?“  I doubt the president was just out-and-out lying, since the CEO was right there to correct things.

Now, for the title of this post . . .

Lefties protested long and loud against Caterpillar a few years ago, after Rachel Corrie was killed by an Israeli bulldozer while she tried to interfere with the destruction of a Palestinian home.  Has Caterpillar stopped selling to the IDF?  If not, it seems lefty stimulus supporters are arguing for an economic fix that could ensure more of this:

Which I personally have no problem with (that’s not Corrie, by the way, but another propaganda photo from the linked website), from what I know about it.  But either Caterpilar has stopped selling to the IDF, or lefty stimulus supporters have short memories.

The most sensible commentary on this comes from the always clear-eyed Melanie Philips, in a Guardian column entitled, “Is America Really Going to Do This?” Writes Phillips:

Personally, I don’t give any credence to the ‘support’ for one candidate over the other that has been expressed by the enemies of civilisation (Iran and Hamas ‘support’ Obama, while an al Qaeda blogger ‘supports’ McCain). Their agenda is simply to sow confusion and promote American recriminations and disarray.

That said, the endorsements, if taken at face value, make sense. Hamas endorsed Obama because they think he will “change” America and the see his pledge of security to Israel as mere election year posturing. The al Qaeda dude says he likes McCain because McCain will keep America in a drawn-out war that will wear the country down.

I think they’re both right, but only partially. Obama won’t abandon Israel outright, but he certainly sees it as little better than its neighbors (enough to disqualify him as president, in my opinion — someone with a moral sense that warped has no business in the white house). And McCain will not retreat, but that doesn’t mean the war will bankrupt the country.

The numbers for America, where we should know better, were especially depressing. 71% of those polled opposed taking sides. 21% favored support for Israel, and 3% favored support for the Palestinians. I suppose I can see not wanting to take sides for practical (as opposed to moral) reasons, and I sure hope that was the rationale of most of that 71%. If most opposed taking sides because they view the protagonists as morally equivalent, we are in worse trouble than I thought.

At least in the USA, I can console myself that Israel beat the Palestinians 7-to-1 among those who expressed a preference. In most of the European countries polled, they proved that their moral compasses remain severely out of whack, with France, the U.K., and Spain all registering hefty majoprtities for the Palestinians among those registering a preference. Russia and Ukraine’s preference-staters were evenly divided.

One of the subheads in the article reads, “Publics Support Even-Handed Approach to Conflict.” Sure. I’ve got to think that supporters of an “even-handed approach” would favor the same approach if we were able to bring Hitler and Mother Theresa back and have them go at it.

I have to wonder a little about the methodology. The numbers in some countries add up to far less than 100%.

Hat tip: Hot Air.