SEND IN THE CLOWNS...DON’T BOTHER, THEY’RE HERE!

"Isn’t it rich?  Isn’t it queer?...Losing their timing this late, in an election year…"

When a rodeo rider's thrown off the back of the bull he was trying to master, they send in the clowns to protect the fallen by providing colorful alternative targets for the bull to attack. Under siege and about to be thrown off their high horses and off the backs of the American people by a stirred up electorate, the democrats and their liberal allies are sending in their clowns with lots of pre-election "October surprises."

I picture the assortment of political clowns, jokesters, politicians, media allies and other colorful operatives, (I'm seeing Gloria Allred's all red suits here), running into the dust of the political arena, full of flash and thunder, busting through a banner that reads "The Audacity of Dopes," all to save their darlings who are struggling to stay alive on the floor of the political ring.

I can even hear the barker's announcement of attractions:

"Step right up, folks. You don't need to worry about the economy or jobs: You just need a good laugh! And might we suggest as a tonic for your economic blues some yuks at the expense of certain conservative women, who, quite frankly, are always good for a chuckle or two, especially the religious ones. Why, mocking them might even make you feel as superior as Bill Maher truly is."

Yes, let's not let the bad economy, impending tax hikes, the 15 million unemployed, the southern border under attack, the government takeover of private business, the out of control spending, the failing Mideast peace talks, and a defiant Iran's nuclear bomb progress get in the way of a good diversion or two.

I mean, think about it. Wouldn't you rather listen to the Distracter-in-Chief talk about how Fox News is destroying the nation, (See Obama calls Fox News Destructive to the Country), than dwell on the fact that the democrat-controlled Congress failed to pass a budget or deal with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts? So what if it costs us plenty? The material's too dry!

And does anyone really want to think about why the democrats running for election are all running away from Obama, Obamacare, bailouts, TARP spending, stimulus bills and the rest of their legislative agenda? Sure, health insurance premiums are already skyrocketing, some insurers are canceling all coverage for kids rather than deal with coverage to age 26, and some employers are withdrawing coverage in the wake of added costs. But isn't it more fun to watch Bill Maher make mincemeat out of Christine O'Donnell, a GOP senatorial hopeful, who recently beat out a liberal-voting RINO in the Delaware primary?

As a guest on Maher's show Politically Incorrect in the '90's, O'Donnell admitted "dabbling" in witchcraft as a teenager. That apparently unforgiveable sin was compounded by O'Donnell's becoming a staunch conservative Catholic as an adult, which fact has inflamed the notorious religion-hating Maher into publically threatening to hold O'Donnell "hostage" by repeatedly playing her early statements on his show until she agrees to a appear on said show and face the inevitable new rounds of mockery.

One would look in vain for Maher to mock or otherwise hammer O'Donnell's democrat opponent, Chris Coons, who holds the not-so-lofty position of New Castle County Executive, and whom Senate Leader Harry Reid has called "my pet," and who, as a 22-year-old Amherst-student in 1985, wrote a work entitled "Chris Coons: The Making of a Bearded Marxist." Obviously, "Bearded Marxists" and "Harry Reid pets," good; Catholic girls, bad.

Clown Maher was AWOL when Hillary Clinton, during her time as First Lady when she was a mature woman well into her 40's, had séances from the solarium atop the White House to call up the spirit and engage in imaginary conversations with the deceased Eleanor Roosevelt, a widely known fact that most likely the current Secretary of State would not like to see mocked. But, of course, Hillary is not a conservative woman, and so her dabbling in exotic psychic experiences is a nothing to the Bill Mahers of the world, or if anything, a mere peccadillo warranting tolerance if not endearment.

(BTW, I cannot be alone in thinking that Maher has become so hostile and mean of late that he could use an intervention from a 12-step Anti-Nastiness Treatment (ANT) program to control his addiction to self-indulgent vitriol. Maher family members, you have been advised.)

Do we really need to quell the violence on the southern border and deal with illegal immigration? How about instead hearing a comedy routine from comedian Stephen Colbert delivered at a House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration? Colbert is another outspoken funny-man advocate for liberal causes who was brought to the House committee last week at the request of Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat representative from San Diego, in furtherance of Lofgren's bill to legalize undocumented field workers.

In case you missed it, check out Colbert's "testimony" at Colbert "Corn Packer" Testimony, and find how refreshing and light it is to hear, not of the horrors of border violence and illegals being abused by human traffickers, but to giggle about "corn packers," and admire the deft way Colbert had of dissing both Iowans and gays with just one phrase. Such genius!

Judge for yourself if you agree with Republicans and several ranking democrats, like Steny Hoyer and John Conyers, that Colbert's shtick was "an embarrassment," or with Nancy Pelosi who delighted in the performance and thought it not only appropriate, but "It was great." Thanks, Nancy. Or you might want to take a look at what Althea Rae Shaw, the aunt of Los Angeles High School football star, Jamiel Shaw, a 17 year old who was shot in the head by an illegal alien, had to say about Colbert's treatment of the immigration issue at Althea Shaw Blasts Colbert "Testimony."

As for my view, while I'd never deny the intrinsic hilarity of colonoscopy and "corn packer" jokes, or Colbert's comedic talent, (the tomato segment of his spiel is quite funny), one has to question the venue for the gig. The choice of the House of Representatives, as opposed to Saturday Night Live or a comedy club, was not only wrongheaded, it was offensive. That House is, after all, the American people's house for doing the people's business.

Unfortunately, not all of the clowning around comes from the professional comedians, with some notable not-so-funny results. And, speaking of the Clintons, Bill "I Did Not Have Sex With That Woman" Clinton has been pointing that long finger of his again, this time at conservative women, the aforementioned Ms. O'Donnell, "the witchcraft woman" per Clinton, and GOP nominee for senate in Connecticut, the former World Wrestling Federation executive, Linda McMahon, "that wrestler woman." (As a jokester, Clinton is in dire need of new writers.)

Then there are those who would have you believe that Californians don't need to look at how our state is on the verge of going bankrupt from out of control spending, government pensions, the costs of illegal immigration, and our dysfunctional assembly. No, they say. We need to have a Gloria Allred-Illegal Alien Cry-A-Thon in which the Never-Can-Get-Enough-Cameras-On-My-Face Attorney rats out her client's illegal status to the world to gain an advantage for that ultra-lib, second time around-Jerry Brown. (If you think I'm being hard on old Gloria, take a look at what the usually mild-mannered Greta Van Susteren did to her, lawyer-to-lawyer, in Greta Skewers Gloria Allred.)

Then we have the combo pack: a comedian turned politician who really hasn't been that good at either profession: Al Franken, the former Saturday Night Live stooge who managed to get himself elected senator from Minnesota by a few stolen votes, now advocates imposing a death tax of 65%, a little graveyard humor that anyone who owns anything at all and who will eventually die will not find funny in the least.

Are your cheeks hurting from all the laughter and hilarity these folks are throwing your way? Are you ready to toss cares and real problems to the wind to laugh along with them? My guess is not. My bet is that you and the most of the American people aren't fooled by hijinks and clowns. You won't forget who's been riding our backs, those who think they know what's good for us better than we do ourselves. These jokers aim to distract us from their bad policies that have made things worse, and to throw the opposition off its game. Sorry, Charlie. We're not taking the bait.

In life, as in comedy, timing is everything. Americans instinctively know when it's time to get rid of things that aren't working, when it's time to pull back and reassess. When the kids, the credit cards, or the waistline get out of control, we know it's time to rein things in.

Therefore this election, we don't need to keep in office those who champion the view that you can spend your way out of financial difficulty, that you can create bipartisanship through demonization of your opponents; that you can do good for all by feathering the nests of your friends; that you can enact responsible legislation when you don't read the bills.

Unless you want more clowns in Washington, you need to vote against the status quo and against arrogant elitists of any party (right now that's the democrats) who want to shove things down the throats of the American people.

The president has recently scolded his party's faithful to "buck up" for this November's election. But I predict the response from the electorate will be more like "buck off."

OBAMISM: WHEN “NO EXECUTIVE EXPERIENCE” MARRIES “RADICAL IDEOLOGY”

It's getting crowded under the bus.

First, it was the grandma who raised him that the President threw there (for her closet racism), followed soon by some odd political bedfellows, including (in no particular order, and only a partial list):

• Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose racist, anti-American rants Obama never heard in the 20 years he spent in the Reverend's pews, (reminding me of Clinton's claim he never inhaled the dope he smoked);
  
• Chicago buddy and former Illinois Governor, Rod Blagoevich; (stay tuned for Blago's revenge in his current corruption trial);
  
• The bust of Churchill, a gift from Britain, that Obama returned;
  
• American exceptionalism;
  
• Justice Alito and the First Amendment, (pretty much the whole Constitution, actually);
  
• Tea Partiers, Republicans; and recalcitrant Democrats;
  
• Fox News, radio talk show hosts and alternative media;
  
• The car companies, the banks, and the private student loan industry;
  
• Seniors, doctors, private health insurers, and anyone who may get sick;
  
• Prime Minister Netanyahu and the State of Israel;
  
• Rep. Joe Sestak (D), (for not taking the job the White House offered to stay out of Arlen Specter's way and not keeping his mouth shut about it);
  
• The Iranian pro-democracy protesters;
  
• Governor Brewer, Senators Kyl and McCain, and the State of Arizona;
  
• The oil companies, especially the evil BP and its shareholders (Bet they'd like to get back the $1,000,000 they gave Obama '08);
  
• The Gulf States' economy, pristine shores and wildlife;
  
• The US economy and jobs;
  
• The Business Roundtable and the AMA (betrayed by the President after cutting deals with him supporting ObamaCare); and,
  
• The latest, General Stanley McChrystal.

Now that's "kicking some a**"!!

And who's riding up top with the President on his magical mystery tour bus? (I picture it as an oversized, psychedelic '60's VW bus powered by a put-put electric engine and a couple of windmills on top.) We see the usual suspects:

• In the front rows are the SEIU's Andy Stern (who Obama put on the Deficit Commission!) and the other union chiefs that got him elected;
  
• Big left-wing money-men and activist groups like George Soros, Move-On Dot Org, and ACORN in its reconstituted forms;
  
• Just behind them are the Main Stream Media, (outfitted with teething bibs to catch their drool)
  
• Obama's golf and basketball buddies;
  
• Banking and corporate fat-cats "too big to fail";
  
• Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, (the giant mortgage buyers who led the US financial meltdown and who, once again, escaped reform under new financial regulations);
  
• The pro-choice crowd (who will vote on one issue and one issue alone-who cares if the world comes to an end, as long as it's a pro-choice world ending);
  
• The entertainment elite, represented this month by the fawning, aging hippie, Sir Paul McCartney, who couldn't resist the recent opportunity to bash Bush at the White House in front of Obama. (BTW, Sir Paul, "Michelle Ma Belle" was my song, not Mrs. O's. She wasn't even born when you penned it. But for being so rude you can just have it back.) (If you have a strong stomach, see the President croon along with the "Michelle" tune while staring at Mrs. O at Obama Bebop-Rocks "Michelle".)
  
• Pelosi and Reid, with Nancy providing spiritual guidance: (Catch this "must-see": Pelosi and "The Word");
  
• The White House Czars;
  
• African-Americans (though many now openly express doubts about their guy);
  
• General Petraeus, at least temporarily;
  
• Illegal immigrants, currently sitting in the back of the bus, who Obama believes will get him re-elected in 2012 after he finds a way to grant them amnesty. (Though they might want to worry about where he'll drop them off along the road after receiving their votes. Cf. the AMA, and the Business Roundtable, and the other roadkill above.)
  
• And, the ghost of radical mentor, Saul Alinksy.

And hanging half-in, half-out of the bus, unsure if they'll survive the next turn in the road, and pulling daisy petals (he loves me, he loves me not) are:

•  Off-shore oil drilling;
  
• Environmentalists;
  
• Gay rights advocates;
  
• Anti-war activists;
  
• Our troops and the Afghan War.
  

Sacrificed to Obamism

All of the above face sacrifice at the altars of Obama's inexperience, incompetence, and radical ideology. I don't have to make the case that his inexperience and incompetence are on full display: His own actions and inactions speak louder than my (or anyone else's) words. When John Stewart makes fun of him, and the likes of Rachel Maddow, the NY Times and the LA Times criticize the President on those grounds, far be it from me to pile on.

As for his radical ideology, you just have to look at the fact that everything he does seems to be geared toward redistributing the wealth, attacking and undermining business and our capitalist system, and transforming the United States into some other form of government than what our founders intended.

If he seems insensitive and uncaring about the people, it's because he thinks of us primarily in terms of Alinsky's "classes": the "Haves," the "Have-Nots," and the "Have-a-Little, Want Mores," and the need to "use power for a more equitable distribution of the means of life." (Rules for Radicals, by Saul Alinsky, 1971, pp. 10, 18-19.)

The Alinsky ideology is not one that most of us studied in world history or philosophy classes, but Obama did study it as a community organizer. As Alinsky suggested in his book, "radicals" and "community organizers" will need to flesh out the ideology as they go. And that's what's happening: Obama is winging-it, without a road map, a seat-of the-pants visionary firm in his belief that government cannot be too big and there's no problem too big or too small for it to handle, all the while we see government messing up everything it touches.

Jobs and the Economy:

Even the socialist democracies of Europe are giving pushback to Obama on the subject of spending. This weekend Obama is at the G-20 meeting trying to convince those countries to follow his lead and spend, spend, spend to revive their economies, despite the failure of our own Stimulus spending and the recent example of Greece, who spent itself to ruin. Even some Democrats in Congress are revolting against Obama's "Stimulus III" which failed again in the Senate late this week.

Wonder why Obama won't finalize free trade agreements or waive the Jones Act so that foreign flag ships can help us with the Gulf clean-up? That's because he's politically and ideologically tied to the unions.

And then there's the matter of jobs. Business leaders have begun roundly criticizing the administration for a list of grievances. The Business Roundtable, composed of the nation's biggest corporations, recently slammed Obama's "hostile" policies on jobs in a report detailing "hundreds of separate actions and decisions" that stifle manufacturing, innovation and job growth." (See "Business Group Slams 'Hostile' Policies on Jobs" in the WSJ, June 23, 2010, p.A4.)

This buyer's remorse criticism is all the more damning because it comes from the very business organization that worked closely with the White House, and, which, like the AMA, even supported ObamaCare. (See "roadkill" above.)

And, all those who thought they could trust Obama on his "no middle class taxes" pledge, this week House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said that Democrats might have to consider scaling back plans to permanently extend the Bush-tax cuts for the middle class, due to the growing deficit. Obama can't redistribute money from the "Haves" and the "Have-a-Little, Want Mores" to the "Have-Nots" without more and more sources of revenue.

The Afghan War and the Generals

Despite the fawning and relief shown by the media over their guy's finally not dithering over a decision, the McChrystal firing flap shows not that Obama is on top of the war effort and fully in charge, but quite the opposite. When Obama's hand-picked general (a liberal who voted for Obama) and his staff show disrespect for the administration's war cabinet ("clowns" and "bite-me's") and disagreement over rules of engagement, this means the Commander-in-Chief can't get his team to work together to win. How is that a victory for the President?

The fallback of installing General Petraeus, can hardly be seen as inserting a new star into the war effort. Petraeus is Bush's general and was roundly criticized not that long ago by the left (remember the NY Times' "General Betray-us" ad), including condemnation from then Senators Obama, Biden (the surge is "flat out wrong"), and Clinton, (remember her "willing suspension of disbelief" comment, essentially calling Petraeus a liar).

Obama said that he was relying on constitutional principles in firing McChrystal. If that was in fact the reason, it appears to be the only time he's paid attention to those principles in setting policy. If he had, we would not have unelected czars, private sector takeovers, threats to the first and second amendments, executive branch overreaching and other policies that go outside his constitutional authority.

The Oil Spill

There's no place where incompetence, executive overreaching and valuing ideology over people are more evident than in the recent gulf oil spill disaster. Obama was quick to focus like a laser not on cleaning up the mess, but on demonizing BP and on promoting his cap and trade policy, in which Obama will take over another huge chunk of the private sector.

Then there was the "perp walk" BP was made to do during the recent congressional grandstanding, which amounted to a tar-and-feathering of the oil company, an interrogation seeking confessions of guilt after Obama threatened criminal action and sent Attorney General Holder down to the gulf for that purpose.

Fair-minded liberals would never dream of dragging KSM, the mastermind of 9/11, through any such perp-walk or brow-beating before Congress. No, that would be unfair and not in concert with our highest principles. But because it was a corporation, BP could be run out of town on a rail and forced to pony up, not only the $20 billion for righteous claims, but also $100 million to cover the damages from the administration's own bad decision to shut down all off-shore drilling.

Where was the Constitutional principle in that decision? Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty, and no taking of private property without due process of law?

Americans are typically loyal to their presidents, but that has to be a two-way street. This President appears to be loyal only to his own notions of a radical, progressive path for America, the exact nature of which he's feeling out as he goes.

Obama's hell-bent to charge down that road, even if a majority of the America people end up as roadkill along the way. Maybe it's time for all those thrown "under the bus" to derail it, by just standing up.

Derision, Division, Demonization: Obama’s Immigration Tactics Threaten America

"A nation divided against itself cannot stand." Those words, based on the Scriptures, (Matthew 12:25), and made famous by Abraham Lincoln in a 1858 speech, keep coming to mind as I watch our President, once again, fan the flames of racial divisiveness in America rather than trying to bring the country together. Obama likes to think of himself as a modern day Lincoln, but since Lincoln strove to unite the country, and Obama seems hell bent on dividing it, I fail to find any similarity.
 
The President's latest excuse to pit one group of Americans against another is the recently enacted SB 1070, Arizona's immigration enforcement law. Obama, to his great shame and the country's detriment, is using the discord brought on by the law's enactment and the underlying illegal immigration chaos, to further divide our people, by misrepresenting the law and its intent, by leveling the charge of racism, and by profiling Arizonans as hate-filled anti-immigrant bigots.
 
Obama once again is using the tactics of radical mentor, Saul Alinsky, whose philosophy Obama taught and employed in his community organizing days. The goal of the Alinsky tactics is the amassment of sufficient political power to push through an agenda of "leveling the playing field" and redistributing wealth. ("Rules for Radicals," by Saul Alinsky, 1971.)
 
In previous posts I have described how Obama has used the Alinskyite tactic of polarizing and demonizing enemies, against "enemies" like the Tea Partiers, health-care opponents, and "obstructionist" Republicans. Unfortunately, we are now seeing Obama use the tactic in the immigration arena, and with relish.
 
Immigrant rights groups, the administration and others are right to examine and question the Arizona law. But they have no right to misrepresent what the law is, and the motives behind its enactment. Yet that is just what the President and administration officials are doing, inspiring many others in America to do the same, and more.
 
Angry voices have been raised accusing Arizonans of racism, Nazism, Gestapo tactics. Cities and states are leading boycotts of Arizona. All of this discord and venomous rhetoric threaten our nation, yet we hear not one calming word from our President who has yet to pour oil on any troubled waters. Instead, he stirs up racial animosity and fears, again bashing America and Americans.
 
How do I know that the President and others in his administration have misrepresented the law in their public statements? Because, unlike Attorney General Holder, and DHS Secretary Napolitano, the State Department's Michael Posner and P.J. Crowley, (and perhaps even President Obama himself though no one has directly asked him yet), I actually took the time to read its few pages. (You must see this "puppet" video: See Who in the Administration Has Not Read the Bill.)
 
Ironically, the Arizona law is much weaker than the existing federal law (which requires immigrants to carry identification at all times) in that the AZ law requires that there first be a lawful "stop, detention or arrest in the enforcement of any other law" before any immigration inquiry could be made. And that immigration inquiry can only be made when in addition to the lawful stop, detention or arrest, there is "reasonable suspicion that the person is an alien and is unlawfully present."  (SB 1070, Section 2.)
 
The AZ law prohibits racial profiling by stipulating that "a law enforcement official or agency cannot consider race, color or national origin when implementing these provisions." Of course, any law is subject to being enforced in a discriminatory way by officers willing to discriminate, but there is no reason to profile police officers in Arizona as rogue cops. (See the full text of the Arizona law, at SB 1070 as amended 4-30-10.)
 
We can all debate whether this law is a good law, or misguided, or will be struck down as unconstitutional. (On that last point, it's worth noting that since the law merely follows the federal scheme and attempts to enforce in Arizona the federal plan, its chances of surviving constitutional challenge could be very good. Check out "How-Obama-could-lose-Arizona-immigration-battle"-by Byron York.)
 
But the real message of the AZ law is that Arizona is desperate for relief from the troubles brought on by decades of federal government failure to secure the border and come up with a viable immigration policy; it is not that Arizona has suddenly become populated with racist bigots.
 
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and other Arizonans claim that the situation in their state is intolerable. They point out that:

• Thousands of illegal immigrants cross the border into Arizona every day, many of them with long criminal records;
  
• AZ police officers have been killed and wounded by illegals;
  
• Phoenix is the kidnapping capital of the western hemisphere;
  
• Home invasions and other crimes by illegals are rampant;
  
• Criminal drug and arms smuggling operations cross over into Arizona at will;
  
• The "coyotes" operating human smuggling operations commit horrible human rights abuses in Arizona against those they ferry across the border;
  
• Arizona ranchers who live near the border have been harassed and even murdered by illegals; and
  
• Billions of dollars are being spent by Arizona on law enforcement, incarceration, courts, health-care, and education because the feds have not secured the border. (See these points discussed at Governor Jan Brewer talks to Greta on plight of AZ.)

 With the border immigration situation being so out of control, why hasn't the federal government acted? Reagan granted amnesty to millions back in the 80's but that was supposed to be accompanied by closing the border, which never happened. George W. Bush put forth a guest-worker plan, but it failed to pass, meeting opposition from both sides of the aisle and from immigrant rights groups which demanded amnesty instead.
 
As for President Obama, he campaigned on making immigration and secure borders a top priority of his administration. Instead, we have had laser like focus on the health care bill, and cap and tax looks like the next darling to be the center of attention.
 
And now that Arizona has sent out a cry for help, what has been the President's response? He started off by laughing at Arizona at a recent White House Correspondent's Dinner.

"We all know what happens in Arizona when you don't have ID. Adios, Amigos," he said as a joke to a laughing audience of journalists.
 
But as Arizona Governor Jan Brewer counters in a video ad decrying the President's joke: Arizonans are not laughing. (See the video Obama laughs at Arizona at WH Dinner.)
 
Obama's next response to the Arizona law took the form of the now famous "ice cream" lie in which the President, apparently not having read the law, proclaimed that it would mean anyone going out for ice cream could be asked for their "papers."
 
Obama said:

"...but now suddenly if you don't have your papers, and you took your kid out to get ice cream, you're gonna be harassed..."
 
Either Obama is not as smart as people say he is, or he's simply trying to mislead. As discussed above, the Arizona law would prohibit such harassment. So, unless someone is robbing an ice cream shop, or acting like Francis Hernandez, an illegal immigrant from Guatemala, who in 2008 rammed his Chevy into a Baskin-Robbins in suburban Denver killing three people, including a 3-year-old boy, it is safe to say that people of all flavors can enjoy their ice cream in peace under SB 1070.
 
After laughing about the law, and then misrepresenting it, Obama's next move has been to ignore repeated requests for assistance by Arizona officials. Governor Brewer and Senators McCain and Kyl have been trying to get an audience, or at least a response to their many letters, from the President for months, and have broadcast Arizona's appeals for help on cable TV shows. All to no avail. To date, none of them has received any response from the President, the administration, or DHS, and the two senators' 10-step plan to secure the border, like SB 1070 itself, has probably not even been read.
 
Why does the President ignore them? Why does he have to lie about the law? Why does he stir up, rather than tone down, racial tensions over immigration, while doing nothing?
 
Most democrat politicians are opposed to closing the border, giving rise to the conclusion that they want large numbers of illegals to enter the US, and want to grant them amnesty, in the belief that the new immigrants will favor their democrat "protectors" with their newly granted votes.
 
But the mood of the country is overwhelmingly with Arizona and against amnesty, and polls show between 65-85% support for SB 1070, and similar support for requiring people to show papers to prove immigration status if there is reasonable cause to suspect illegality. In fact, 17 states are considering enacting laws similar to SB 1070.
 
That's why Rahm Emanuel, Obama's top aide, has called immigration the "third rail of American politics:" too hot to touch in an election year. He has argued that pressing ahead with an immigration bill could jeopardize the chances of moderate and conservative Democratic candidates in the run-up to the midterms. (See LA Times article on Emanuel's advice against reform now.) This is why we see no action, only distraction.
 
As if the trashing, laughing, distracting and refusing to take action on immigration were not bad enough, Obama made it worse by allowing the President of Mexico, a guest in this country, to criticize the Arizona law at both a White House reception and a joint session of Congress. At the latter, democrats gave Mr. Calderon a standing O when he criticized Arizona.
 
Yes, the President of Mexico, a country infested with drug dealers, arms smugglers, rampant poverty and unemployment had the audacity to bash one of our states on the White House lawn and in the halls of Congress, and chastise us for failing to secure the border.
 
Even more outrageous, President Obama looked on approvingly at the bashing, never having heard a criticism of the United States that he didn't like, and never willing to avoid an opportunity to apologize, even by his silence, for our country.
 
More America bashing from another country over the immigration issue was inspired by our own State Department representatives, Michael Posner and P.J. Crowley, who entertained lectures from Communist China about our "human rights violations" in the Arizona law. Posner bragged that the US "brought up early and often" America's own human rights abuses, apparently to warm up the Chinese to spill about theirs.
 
Has our State Department forgotten that the Chinese Communists routinely incarcerate and even kill political prisoners, censor the press and the internet, and order forced sterilizations, to name just a few abuses. Did they forget Tibet and Tiananmen Square? That our own State Department compared China's history of human rights abuses with the Arizona law is just an outrage.
 
The President and his administration are on the opposite side of the American people, just like they were in the health care debacle. Not willing to take action to fix the problem for political reasons, they try to distract from their inaction by polarizing and demonizing Americans through race-baiting tactics designed to gain political favor of a selected group.
 
This is an attempt to divide the nation against itself, and, as the Scriptures and Lincoln have warned us, such division paves the way toward a great fall.

ED KOCH A RACIST?? WHO’S NEXT!!

We've been hearing endlessly from our Main Stream Media pundits and from former democrat presidents that the Tea Party folks include violence-prone extremists, fueled by racism and masquerading as ordinary-looking Americans. You know, the kind you'd see at a mall, or at a park, or in the mirror.
 
I had been having a hard time trying to follow the threads of logic that led these politicians and others to what at first blush looked to me like tortured conclusions. It seemed to me that denouncing the Tea Parties was just another Saul Alinsky tactic of demonizing the opposition, and instilling fear in people of color so that they vote for their supposed protectors on the left. 
 
But if that many people said the Tea Partiers were racists and violence-prone, then surely the subject merited another look. Perhaps detecting racism and hateful violence was not as easy as I had thought.
 
After all, the Tea Party Denouncers include presidents Carter and Clinton, both reputed to be of superior intelligence, and people like NY Times and Washington Post editorial writers, people of high standing who are actually paid for expressing their views, as opposed to Yours Truly who doesn't even have a tip jar.
 
What I learned from examining the matter more closely is that, unlike the Detractors, I had been taking a viewpoint constrained by the evidence, looking at the facts without resort to speculation, and that had surely limited my "understanding." I always believed that a racist was someone who was hateful toward and prejudiced against another person simply because of his race and the color of his skin. I also believed that we can identify a racist by the person's words and deeds, since one does not have the advantage of being able to read another's mind.
 
(The grand exception to that last point applies to certain clairvoyants on the left, like the NY Times' Frank Rich who compares Tea Parties to the Nazi's Kristallnacht, or the Washington Post's Colbert King, who compares the Tea Partiers to George Wallace, or Bill Maher who likened the Tea Parties to Ku Klux Klan rallies, all of whom are apparently able to intuit these conclusions without any evidence, based simply on their natural knowing.) 
 
If you just look at the Tea Partiers' words, their slogans, signs and speeches, you find that their words don't deal with anything racial or target people of color, but rather beat the drum against big spending, big taxing, and big government. Obama is opposed, but only in the context of his policies, not as a black man. And as for their deeds, dressing up in patriot costumes, carrying signs sporting pro-capitalist and anti-socialist messages, and giving and listening to speeches, all appear to have nothing to do with race.
 
As far as violence goes, the Tea Party Detractors don't have much to work with. If there were really lots of hateful rhetoric, people advocating violence, threatening and committing violent acts, they would be shown non-stop on cable news and gleefully parodied by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs.
 
The boring truth is that Tea Parties I've attended, or seen on TV, or read about, or heard about from friends, are about as violent as a bunch of Iowans getting ready to sit down to a Memorial Day picnic.
 
So how on earth do the Tea Party Detractors go from "A" to "WHITE SUPREMACIST?"
 
In short, the Detractors look beyond the physical world, beyond the actual words and deeds of the Tea Party protesters to form their conclusions. In conducting my review, I had to put myself in their shoes, to learn to look not only at what the Tea Partiers said and did, but what they might harbor in their minds, knowingly or unknowingly, as they said and did those things. I learned to look past the surface, to divine what lies beneath those placid Apple Pie-4^th of July exteriors.
 
From what I've read so far, the Detractors' analysis of Tea Party racism involves a two-step test: The first goes something like this: Barack Obama is black. If you oppose policies that Barack Obama advocates, you are not motivated by the content of those policies, but by your fear and loathing of the color of his skin, even if you are not aware of being so racially motivated. This is true even if you once voted for him.
 
The gist of this view was set forth recently by President Clinton in commenting on the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. Clinton not only tied in Tea Party protesters to the same type of "right wing extremism" that Clinton says led Timothy McVeigh to bomb the federal building, but he also indicated that there was a racial undercurrent to the Tea Partiers' protests.
 
In responding to a pointed question from CNN's Wolf Blitzer on any tie between the protests and the fact that we have the first African-American president, Clinton said:
 
"President Obama…symbolizes the increasing diversity of America. He symbolizes the loss of control, of predictability, of certainty, of clarity that a lot of people need for their psychic well-being." (See the whole clip at Clinton Psychoanalysis of Tea Partiers.)
 
Sounds a little like the '08 Obama analysis of Pennsylvanians as "clinging to their guns and religion," doesn't it? Could our former president be preparing for a new career as a shrink or perhaps as the host of "Psychoanalyzing the Stars?" Clearly, he thinks he knows what lies in the hearts and minds of Americans, and it ain't pretty.
 
(But wasn't Bill Clinton declared to be a racist during the '08 election by some of the same commentators now decrying the Tea Partiers? Remember how Clinton belittled Obama, saying that "a few years ago this guy would have been getting us coffee." If Clinton was a racist then, isn't he still a racist underneath his placid exterior, and therefore not to be trusted? Isn't Bill Clinton calling the Tea Partiers "racist" a little like the pot calling the kettle black? BTW, am I allowed to use the word "black" when discussing race?…
 
And then I do have another problem with Clinton re-writing the cause of the Oklahoma bombing and therefore an important page of his elusive legacy. McVeigh himself said it was Clinton's attack on the compound at Waco that set him off on his violent course, and not any ramblings of right wing extremists.)
 
So the first prong of the two-step Tea Party racist test doesn't make a lot of sense to me. What else do the Detractors have to go on?
 
Their second explanation goes something like this: Obama's policies themselves are designed to take taxpayer money from all the people, primarily to improve the lot of people of color. Therefore, if you oppose the policies which are designed to lift up the people of color, you must be opposed to people of color.
 
That's it, folks. That's all they've got. Which leads to the question: Is it possible to challenge a Barack Obama policy without being assumed to be a racist? I would say not.
 
And that brings us to the sad case of Ed Koch. I know it's hard to believe that former New York City Mayor, Ed Koch, might be a racist. After all, didn't he support Obama in the '08 election? And he's a democrat, so he is not a member of a suspect political party. But he has been very outspoken in his criticism of President Obama, who is black.
 
Earlier this month Mr. Koch spoke out in interviews and in articles decrying the president's "shameful" treatment of Israel and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In one interview, Koch said:

"I have been a supporter of President Obama and went to Florida for him, urged Jews all over the country to vote for him saying that he would be just as good as John McCain on the security of Israel. I don't think it's true anymore." (See video of interview at Ed Koch Criticizes Obama.)
 
As if that wasn't bad enough, Koch then recklessly went on to say that he believes Obama "orchestrated" what happened in Israel regarding the Administration's condemnation of Israel for the recent building of new apartments in East Jerusalem.
 

"What they did is they wanted to make Israel into a pariah…It's outrageous in my judgement…I believe that the Obama administration is willing to throw Israel under the bus in order to please Muslim nations," Koch said.

   
Koch's statements are surely fighting words, and more inflammatory than any I heard at the DC Tea Party April 15. Obviously, Koch is in serious trouble here of being considered a racist, not only for opposing an Obama policy, but especially for calling out Obama as a Muslim-pleaser. We all know that many blacks are Muslims, and therefore those words have racial overtones. You can do the syllogism from there.
 
I conclude from my investigation that there are only two ways to look at the Tea Parties:

• Either they are full of knowing or unknowing racists who oppose a president because of psychic needs and fears;
  
• or the Tea Party People are actually the progressive ones, the ones who have moved on to the level that Martin Luther King, Jr. aspired for Americans: to judge a man by the content of his character and not by the color of his skin.

What if that day has come, but those who make political profit from race-baiting refuse to see it.

Amnesty Declared for Obama Voters!!

No, I'm not talking about course No. 2 on the Obama prix levant menu that will be the next thing shoved down Americans' throats: the amnesty for illegals so that they can vote for Obama in 2012.
 
The Amnesty Grant I have in mind is something apart: In line with all the democrat power-grabbing going on now, and in the spirit of "deem and pass," I have taken upon myself, without a majority's (or anyone's for that matter) request or consent, the obligation of granting full, blanket amnesty to all Obama voters for casting those fateful votes.
 
Of course, excluded from the Amnesty Grant are the 25% or so of all Americans who are an enthusiastic part of the Very Far Left and who would cheer on the Obama-Pelosi-Reid juggernaut even if it careened into a full-blown Marxist-socialist conclusion. Those people are far beyond the reach of my powers.
 
But for all the others out there who punched the chad for Obama-Biden, who are now either filled with regret, or too embarrassed to contemplate fully the extent to which they were duped, or who can't even bring themselves to think about what they have done, help is here.
 
This Amnesty Grant goes out to the merely liberal or moderate Democrats (as opposed to the Far Lefties), the Independents, and, especially, those red-faced GOP'ers who thought they were making a good choice in Obama. This Amnesty is warranted because their bad choice wasn't entirely unreasonable at the time.
 
There were lots of things about Obama that were appealing:

• his promises of post-partisanship;
• his promises of transparency;
  
• the promise arising from the "historic" choice of a black man for US president;
  
• the promise of healed racial tensions;
  
• the promise of soaring eloquence to quench the thirst of so many years in the "W" rhetorical desert;
  
• the promise of restoring fiscal sanity;
  
• the promise of improving our image in the world.

And then there were the warts on the other guys: a white-haired veteran who might be too hot-headed and too old, teamed with a young female upstart whose experience and credentials, though better than Obama's, were still on the thin side, and whose Alaskan patois and folksiness made her appear to many to be insufficiently erudite for a tour in DC, and, whose attractive face and figure might have caused some to prejudge, even in this supposedly post-feminist 21^st century, her intelligence as inversely proportional to her good looks.


These were some of the things that made some people gravitate to the Obama ticket. (After all, had those other guys got in, we might have a VP who isn't up to snuff and might prove to be an embarrassment to the country. Oh, wait! We got Biden.)
 
Obama voters thought he would ride in on a white horse. He was on a horse, all right, a Trojan Horse, manned with Big-Government far-left '60's style, Saul Alinsky-ite radicals who want to replace the private sector with government, redistribute the wealth, and negate the supposed arrogance of American exceptionalism.
 
We've got Chairman Mao admirers in the White House (Anita Dunn, Communications Czarina; John Holdren, Science Adviser; and Ron Bloom, Manufacturing Czar); and terrorist advocates in the Department of Justice, to name a few of the President's radical advisers and associates. We've got the government owning or in control of banks, auto companies, student loans, and now the big one, health care, and next stop for them will be controlling energy through cap and tax.
 
If you think I may be over-stating the Big-Government, socialist angle, check out what prominent administration supporter, Al Sharpton, has to say about the subject: In commenting on the Health Care Bill passage, Sharpton said that Obama is setting about the "transforming of America," and that "the American public overwhelmingly voted for socialism when they voted for Obama." (See you tube video Sharpton Claims Voting for Obama Was Voting for Socialism)
 
And if that doesn't move you, consider the comments of Cuba's Fidel Castro who praised Obamacare saying that it was too bad it took so long for the US to do what Cuba had done decades ago. Does that give you pause: that a brutal Communist dictator thinks we just did the same thing that he did? (See the story at Castro Praises Obamacare.)
 
The President, and many in his administration and in Congress, appear to truly believe that they and their plans for the rest of us are the only exceptional things about America. (Remember Michelle Obama saying that her husband's nomination gave her cause-for the first time in her adult life-to be proud of America.) They want to transform, not reform, and rebuild the country into some to-be-determined image of their own liking.
 
They don't really like Americans for who we are and have always been; they don't like the way we were founded, our system of modified capitalism.

• So instead of post-partisanship, we have the most partisan President and Congress ever, people who can't stop demonizing the opposition (We're all racists; tea partiers are domestic terrorists.);
• Instead of transparency, we have closed door dealings, bullying, bribing, threatening, and manipulating the rules to get their way, apparently because the Democrats' ends justify their means;
  
• (In that regard, check out Democrat Alcee Hastings, Chair of the House Rules Committee, and a former federal judge who was impeached and convicted by the Senate for bribery and perjury, who summed it up this way: "All this talk about rules; we make 'em up as we go along." (See the full quote here Alcee Hastings: We Make the Rules.);
  
• Instead of reduced racial tension, we have the administration and congressional Democrats constantly playing the race card whenever their policies are opposed;
  
• Instead of eloquent speeches designed to uplift all the people during this serious economic downturn, we have either the dragging monotone of the President's teleprompter recitings, or the heated (the only time he gets worked up) finger-pointing and scolding of Americans for not agreeing with him;
  
• Instead of an improving economy, we have a growing deficit, outrageous spending on social programs we can't afford, and millions of Americans unemployed;
  
• Instead of improving our standing in the world, we have kowtowing, bowing to emperors and kings, high-fiving leftist dictator thugs, dissing our allies (Israel), and going soft on our enemies (Iran).

In discussing the health care bill and its passage which was cinched with just a few bought votes, Obama said: "This is what change looks like." Au contraire, mon frère: This is what Tyranny looks like. This is what it looks like when the 25% gets to dictate against our wishes what the rest of us will do and have.
 
To anyone interested in accepting this grant of Amnesty, be assured there's no penalty to pay: you don't have to go to a tea party, and you won't be subjected to any threats, arm-twisting, or bullying. 

The only "catch" to this Amnesty Grant is that you have to open your mind to vote in the November elections for a return to the balance of power in Washington, which means to vote for Republicans. This is what must happen to drag the government away from the left sliding course it is now on and back to the center.
 
Your vote is crucial. It matters. The only "buying" of your vote is the purchase already made by the sacrifice and determination of our founders, and the blood of those who followed them and fought to preserve the union they created.

Obama Disses World Leaders: No Bows at the Health Summit

In previous posts I have pointed out that President Obama shows more respect and deference for left-wing dictator thugs, Arabian kings, Japanese emperors, and Iranian "supreme leaders" than he does for the American people. His unreciprocated, abject deference to those rulers has been as patent as it is embarrassing. The pictures of our President bowing deeply at the waist say it all.  (Check out the Bow Wow shots at the sidebar, right, including the latest one in which Obama bows to the Mayor of Tampa!!)
 
So with all this kowtowing going on, would it be too much to ask of the man whom this country honored with its highest office, that when he meets with the leaders of this greatest country on the planet, leaders who in turn represent We the People, that he show some respect? Apparently so, because most of what we got from the President at this past week's Health Summit was dissive, derisive, and dismissive treatment of the People's representatives.
 
He started off reminding everyone (on the one fact of which no one needs reminding) that "I am the President," said in the context of justifying his taking all the time he wants to speak. Judging by his subsequent behavior, he must also think his status justifies:

• his attitude of putting everyone else in their place;
  
• his allotting himself the right to cut people off;
  
• his giving himself the latitude to state what is and is not a legitimate concern;
  
• his refusing to answer questions he promised "to get back to;" and
  
• his dividing up speaking time-slots: 20 parts Obama, 5 parts Dems & 1 part GOP.

In a piece I wrote last year, I dubbed Obama IMPOTUS, an acronym I coined for "I am the President of the United States," because he so often likes to use the grand phrase to refer to himself. Since he's back to using it again, I'll pick up on his lead and use the acronym here, with one difference. I will no longer put the acronym in bold and caps, as above, but will write it as "impotus," a manner more in keeping with the small stature he has shown. 
 
At the Summit, Senator Lamar Alexander spoke first for the Republicans, and asked impotus to renounce the use of reconciliation in pursuing health care, a procedure involving just a simple majority vote of 51 rather than the 60 votes ordinarily required. Reconciliation is technically supposed to be used only on budget measures, and has never been used in the past for something as far-reaching as a massive entitlement bill that will affect one-sixth of the country's economy, a bill that the vast majority of We the People oppose. 
 

Though Majority Leader Harry Reid now says that Republicans should "stop crying about reconciliation," in fact, democrats complained loudly about attempts to use it in the past, as when Bush tried to use reconciliation to get some judges confirmed.

Just last April, Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), the Appropriation Committee chairman, sent a strongly worded letter to his colleagues stating his opposition to using reconciliation to pass health care or climate change bills, pointing out that reconciliation insulates bills from amendments and debate. Byrd stated, in part:

"I oppose using the budget reconciliation process to pass health care reform and climate change legislation.... As one of the authors of the reconciliation process, I can tell you that the ironclad parliamentary procedures it authorizes were never intended for this purpose."

But impotus brushed off Senator Alexander's call to abandon reconciliation on health care, saying that the American people aren't too interested in the Senate's technical rules, a sly avoidance of the question. It was as if to say, "Papa Doc Barack knows what's best for all Americans, so they needn't trouble their puny little heads about it." 
 
As I watched other parts of the Summit, many adjectives came to mind to describe impotus's behavior: rude, boorish, arrogant, bullying, domineering, patronizing, hostile, impatient, and irritable, to name a few. Teams of body language experts could find enough material for an entire conference in:

• his pained grimaces;
  
• his condescending ennui;
  
• his disapproving scowls;
  
• his kneading a furrowed, supercilious brow;
  
• his deliberate talking when the GOP's Eric Cantor was making his comments, impotus turning around and chatting up some of his aides behind him while his microphone was not fully turned down, so that you could hear his voice coming through over Cantor's.

 Perhaps the worst display of bad manners though, was his treatment of John McCain. McCain tried to speak about his concerns, which are essentially the same ones that the 75% of the American people who want to stop Obamacare have. They include:

• The size of the bill;
  
• The cost of the bill-(Even New York Times columnist David Brooks now says it's a "fiscal time bomb." See Brooks Article 2-22-10.);
  
• The mandates in the bill;
  
• The too great role of government in the bill;
  
• The special carve outs (for unions, for big Pharma, for certain Medicare Advantage seniors in Florida over other states' seniors, for some states over others (Nebraska and Louisiana) to buy votes;
  
• The fact that we HAVE NO MONEY TO PAY FOR THIS BILL AND ARE FOISTING OFF THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR IT TO FUTURE GENERATIONS.

And how did impotus respond to McCain's points? He cut him off, and was once again dismissive, scolding McCain in what can only be described as a "na, na, na, na, na" kind of way, that the "campaign is over, John," as if McCain had no serious points to make and was just trying to re-hash the election.

For all who remember how McCain was gracious, even to a fault, in accepting his defeat and Obama's win, it was especially galling to hear impotus chide him unfairly, and call him by first name, not in a friendly way, but in a patronizing, "I won and you lost so just shut up, John" kind of way.

Fortunately for the country, McCain is a bigger man than impotus will ever be, and had the grace to deflect his rude behavior with an attempt at humor rather than responding in kind.

And I got all the above and more from watching just a fraction of the total 7 hours worth of presidential grandstanding.

Unfortunately, this tactic, of dismissing out of hand opposing views and the people who have them, is not new behavior from impotus and the far left. True to his Saul Alinsky "Rules for Radicals" training, impotus demonizes the opposition, either directly or through others in his administration:

• branding the Republicans "the party of "no;"
  
• calling the Tea Party Movement a bunch of "tea baggers;"
  
• labeling Americans with conservative views as potential homeland "terrorists" or "racists" and "right-wing extremists."

Why, impotus is even kinder and gentler when speaking of known terrorists who have committed attacks on our soil than he is to We the People.

But I guess it's hard to love those whom you believe are too far beneath you: That's impotus's problem. Someone forgot to tell him that he's not king, nor emperor, nor supreme leader. He's just the head of 1 of 3 equal branches of government, and all those branches ultimately must answer to the American people.

We've heard all along how intelligent, even how brilliant impotus is, though so far he has not shown much competence in anything other than getting elected. However intelligent he may be, he's apparently not smart enough to figure out that we're not that stupid.

Nearly half of the American people who voted in the 2008 election voted for the other guy, and I dare say that if the election were held today, impotus would lose. And, recently democrats have lost big races in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts. It doesn't seem he's smart enough to listen to the people behind those votes.

The Summit's lesson from our scolder-in-chief is that the majority party will ignore the wishes of the majority of the American public, dismiss their concerns, and push whatever form of Obamacare they can get away with through Congress. 

Oh, there might be some token, tepid gesture toward a GOP "idea" thrown into the mix to disguise the partisan nature of the move, but it will be as close to their original government takeover as they can get it. Time will tell if sufficient numbers of democrats in Congress will want to play Thelma to impotus's Louise and go over the political cliff together.

Should that happen, impotus need not fear. There will always be a place where he can showcase the talents he displayed last week. I can picture it now: Somewhere, in (hopefully) the not too distant future, say 2012, there will be a university classroom or two waiting to welcome him, full of tabula rasa intellects eager to bask in the reflected glory of "I am the President," and soak up teachable moments from our lecturer-in-chief.

Reagan Wins Big in Massachusetts!!

Well, not the man, of course. But the spirit and the philosophy of conservatism, championed by Ronald Reagan, won big time yesterday in the very Blue Bay State of Massachusetts. And, because of that, (to paraphrase a statement made by the First Lady during the '08 campaign,) I can say that for the first time in my recent memory, I have been proud of Blue State America.

Conservatism? Reaganism? You may think my analysis as off-base as Martha Coakley's comments on the Red Sox and the Yankees. But, contrary to much of the commentary floating about, especially the deranged sore-loserism on the far-left, Scott Brown's win is a victory for conservative principles.

How so? Brown ran his campaign on substance, on principles, promising the people of his state:

• That he would be the 41^st vote against Obamacare;
  
• That he was for cutting taxes and cutting spending to improve the economy and jobs;
  
• That he was for smaller, fiscally responsible government;
  
• That he was opposed to government takeover of the private sector;
  
• That he was opposed to the administration's weakening of our military defenses, including the giving of constitutional rights to terrorists.
  

Those in a nutshell are the key principles of conservatism. And, though last night's election may seem to be a wonder because of the history of democrat voting in Massachusetts, it's not that surprising that Brown's message caught on with voters there.

After all, Independents make up a large portion of the population of Massachusetts, as is the case across the country. Overall, Americans who describe themselves as liberals (not to be confused with all democrats) continue to make up only about 20-25% of the American public, while the remainder of Americans describe themselves as either moderates or conservatives.

But Obama and his supporters continue to say that yesterday's election has nothing to do with Obamacare and the rest of the big spending, big taxing Obama-Pelosi-Reid agenda. The excuses and fingerpointing and the throwing of Coakley under the bus, (which began even before the election results were in), can be summed up as follows:

• Coakley lost the personality contest: She's a plain Jane and he's hot. (True but irrelevant.)
  
• The Massachusetts voters were mad about bank bailouts. (Really? No one campaigned on that.)
  
• People are still reeling from the Bush years, and the Massachusetts voters were just expressing opposition to all incumbents. (When in doubt, blame Bush! Oh, by the way, Coakley was not an incumbent.)
  
• Coakley didn't campaign hard enough. (She denies this, and with all the other odds in her favor, she still should have won.)
  
• Massachusetts doesn't like to vote for female candidates. (Didn't they go for Hillary in the primary?)
  
• And, (my favorite), Massachusetts voters were just responding to their inner racist, subliminally appealed to by Brown with coded messages sent through images of his pickup truck.
  

I'll have to explain that last one as you are probably as clueless as I was when I first heard it.

Last night, just for fun, I tuned in to MSNBC, whose over-the-top ultra-liberal bias can always be counted on for some amusement. Usually I can't stand to listen to the likes of Chris Matthews or Keith Doberman-Pinscher for very long, but I assumed, rightly so, that they would be in full-blown whining, blaming, retreat mode. I was not disappointed.

Take a look at Keith Olbermann in this clip from his show, Olbermann's Rants, where he shared his deepest thoughts, chief among which is the conclusion that Scott Brown is a "homophobic racist" and that "Tea Baggers" are racists in disguise, just as decades ago, anti-civil rights southerners were racists who hid under the states' rights banner.

Funny, but I didn't know that there were hundreds of thousands of racists up there in Massachusetts ready to vote for one of their own kind. It's especially odd when you think that those racists who voted for Brown must have been among those who voted for Ted Kennedy for many years, since Kennedy routinely got about 70% of the vote.

I guess those former Kennedy voters just didn't realize they were racists until they picked up the "code" from seeing Scott Brown in his pickup truck. I'll let Mr. Olbermann and his talking head guest, Howard Fineman of Newsweek, explain.

On Olbermann's show last night, as Coakley was losing, Olbermann suggested to Fineman, who thought Keith posed a "good question," that perhaps Brown voters were really racists who didn't like the Obama agenda because Obama is black. (See the video at
Racists in Every Truck.)

It was a shame, but not unexpected since it was Fineman speaking, that someone from Newsweek would not slam this ridiculous comment at the outset. Instead, Fineman ran with the argument, rambling on about how "there are codes, there are images, there are pickup trucks…" and "you can say there's a racial aspect to it." (You can? Was that why Obama made fun of Brown's truck six different times during his Sunday rally for Coakley?)

Olbermann then chimed in with remembering how many times Brown had been photographed in that truck of his, and Fineman capped it off, recalling Fred Thompson in his pickup truck in Tennessee (I guess that made Thompson a racist, too), before concluding that racism probably wasn't the case in Massachusetts.

Somehow the fact that Obama carried Massachusetts by 26 points (at a time when he was still black) didn't prevent Olbermann or Fineman from speculating that these same people who voted for Obama might be racists when they voted for Brown! And, folks, these people think they're the smart ones.

Fortunately, there are some democrats who are starting to "get" the real message from Brown's win. One is Lanny Davis, former special counsel to President Clinton and a lifelong democrat.

In a piece in the Wall Street Journal today, entitled "Blame the Left for Massachusetts," Davis states that: "This was a defeat not of the messenger, but of the message-and the sooner progressive Democrats face up to that fact, the better. It's the substance, stupid!"

Davis went on to state that the Democratic Party needs to "stop listening to the strident, purist base of our party" and adopt positions that are more centrist and bipartisan, to form:

"a party that is willing to meet half-way with conservatives and Republicans even if that means only step-by-step reforms on health care and other issues that do not necessarily involve big government solutions." (Wall Street Journal, January 20, 2010, p. A15.)

It may be a vain hope for President Obama to start following that line of thinking, unfortunately, as the only time he seems to turn to the right is when he switches between teleprompter screens. Everything Obama has done since taking office has led away from the center and farther down the path to the far left, but he may find himself forced by the people to change his tack.

For this election was clearly a message of opposition to the Obama agenda of big government, private sector takeovers, higher taxes and higher spending, legislation obtained through closed door backroom deals and the buying of votes (Louisiana purchases and Nebraska buy-offs), all of which has been poised to be shoved down the collective throat of an unwilling public.

If this election is a defeat for Obama and the far left, it is yet not a victory for the Republican Party itself, except to the extent that it can return to conservative principles, the ones Scott Brown campaigned on, and the ones voted for by the people of Massachusetts.

To paraphrase Brown, this was "the people's win." But it was also a win for Reagan-style conservatism. In fact, you could say it was one for the Gipper!