Liberty's Watchdogs

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

2010-10-03T21:42:00.001-07:00

"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”

2010-06-27T14:44:00.001-07:00

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

2010-05-23T17:17:00.001-07:00

"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!!

2010-04-27T20:44:00.001-07:00

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!!

2010-03-26T17:20:00.001-07:00

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

2010-02-28T13:53:00.001-08:00

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!!

2010-01-20T15:47:00.001-08:00

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!

Help Our Neighbors in Haiti

2010-01-13T21:12:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, another tragedy struck the little island nation of Haiti. Over the last several centuries, tragedy has been a frequent, if unwelcome, visitor to that small country.

The US and other governments along with private agencies responded immediately to this last disaster, a 7.2 earthquake, with aid and military assistance, but so much remains to be done in a country which may have lost hundreds of thousands of its citizens in a sudden and cruel fate.

Haiti and its people have an interesting history. Haiti was the first independent nation in Latin America, the first post-colonial independent black-led nation in the world, and the only nation whose independence was gained through a successful slave rebellion. The population of Haiti is a mix of Amerindians, Africans and Europeans, known as Creoles.

The Caribbean island was originally inhabited by the Taino Indians, but was eventually taken over by European colonists from Spain and later France. Spain exploited the gold on the island, enslaving the natives who would not work in the mines. The Spaniards also began importing enslaved Africans for labor into Haiti, and the Tainos Indians eventually became nearly extinct save for those who fled capture into the mountains.

Later the French took over a part of Haiti, having come to an agreement with Spain to divide the country. French colonists established plantations and reaped great profits from sugar, coffee and indigo. But the spirit of the French revolution spread to the tiny nation and beginning in 1791 the slaves in Saint-Dominigue revolted and eventually both the French and the Spanish were driven out of the country.

Unfortunately, it was not smooth sailing for the new country after the revolution. A long succession of coups, military revolts and oppression from home grown dictators, such as Papa Doc Duvalier, terrorized the country for decades.

Nature has also not been kind to the country. It has lost thousands to flooding and mudslides in the last decade, and was pummeled by tropical storms in 2008 when hundreds died and hundreds of thousands more were in need of humanitarian aid.

Over the last 20 years, the United States and the United Nations have been working with the Haitians to shore up their fledgling democracy and make the needed improvements to their society. The blow yesterday need not forever stop their progress, but for now, money is needed to help the millions of people left without food, shelter, medical care and basic necessities.

Please consider giving generously to help this small republic survive its current round of disasters. Here are some links to aid organizations which you might consider:

http://www.worldvision.org/

http://hughhewitt.com/blog/

www.redcross.org or by calling 1-800-REDCROSS, or texting "HAITI" to "90999" to make a donation of $10 to the fund. The $10 will be added to your cell phone bill.

http://www.clintonfoundation.org/ or by texting "Haiti" to 20222 to make a donation of $10 to the fund. The $10 will be added to your cell phone bill.

On Square Pegs and Round Holes: A True-False Test for New Year’s Political Planning

2010-01-01T18:52:00.001-08:00

"Then you ask why I don't live here,

Honey, how come you don't move?"
(On the Road Again,
Bob Dylan, ©1965)

It's 2010, an important election year, and you will soon be asked to choose which side you are on: Will you vote to keep in Congress those who supported the kind of big spending- government-can-do-it-all state being created by the Obama-Pelosi-Reid machine, or will you mark your ballot for those who support a smaller, fiscally responsible Washington with a more limited role in our daily lives?

This is a crucial decision, particularly for those of you who consider yourselves "independents," or "moderates" of either political party. But this fall's election is even more of a watershed event for those of you "dyed in the wool" democrats who pretty much always vote along straight party lines: For you, it is not too soon to warm yourself up to the possibility of voting for a (gasp!!) republican candidate for Congress. For in 2010, with 1000's of democrats and independents swelling the ranks of the Tea Party movement, and others filled with "Obama remorse," and with the power grab currently underway by the democrat administration and Congress, this is not your typical "politics as usual," not your "well, they're all the same anyway" kind of moment. And this is not your father's or mother's democrat party.

I speak from experience here. Like my parents before me, and like much of my generation which came of age in the '60's, I voted straight democrat tickets through the late '90's. I was not all that politically aware and tended to vote based on myopic views of one or two issues, and a disparaging view of all things republican. Disaffection with the post-Lewinsky Bill Clinton initiated the slide in my allegiance; 9/11 solidified it; and Obama-Pelosi-Reid's march toward statism has turned it into fervent opposition.

"You don't dance like a republican," one new liberal acquaintance said to me at a recent dinner-dance event, reflecting the pervasive belief among the left that a person who votes republican must have the personality of a radish, the tolerance of a prig, and the natural rhythm of an Al Gore, (or a Tom De Lay.)

"How did this happen?" some liberal friends have asked me of my political defection, the question always delivered in the same hushed tones one might use to inquire delicately about the onset of some noxious disease or a death in the family. On those occasions I can practically see the mental wheels grinding, downgrading their earlier estimate of my IQ, certainly now in question for having the weakness of mind to vote republican. At such moments, I often recall the lines from Dylan's song quoted above and rephrase them: They ask why I don't abide with the dems, and I think, honey, how come you don't move?

But the answer I give to the "how did this happen" question, is that I woke up one day, exhausted from the strain of furiously trying to pound ideological square pegs into the round holes of reality, and, like a nearly-blind woman with a first pair of glasses, I saw the world that is, and not the world that some would like it to be.

It started with the Lewinsky scandal and the knots into which democrat women lawmakers of the time turned themselves, in order to stand by their (pro-choice) man over "that woman," the phrase delivered by Clinton as he lied to us (again) while finger-pointing angrily into the camera. I could not persuade myself then that a President of the United States, lying under oath, in a sexual harassment lawsuit in federal court was simply a lie about a private matter involving recreational sex in the oval office.

And once I gave myself permission to doubt one piece of liberal dogma, I found it impossible not to turn those same clearer eyes on a whole host of liberal doctrines. Freed from the shackles of having to fit everything into a strict (liberal) view of the world, from trying to jam square pegs into round holes, I could embrace different views. To borrow a phrase from the other Clinton, I could no longer employ the "willing suspension of disbelief" required to sustain the democrat mindset.

To see if, after the events of 2009, the first year of Barack Obama, you might find yourself in the same boat, (or clinging to its sides), I invite you to take the following True/False test to see if you still have (or ever had) the right stuff to vote for the left:

Janet Napolitano was right earlier this year when she said that the biggest terrorist threats that face America come from returning military veterans and tea partiers. (T/F?)
Obama's sending additional troops to Afghanistan does not mean that we are "at war" with Islamic terrorists. (T/F?)
If we don't call it a war, it is not a war. (T/F?)
Soldiers can be sent into battle, fight and die, yet they are not engaged in "war." (T/F?)
If we act "nice" to our enemies, they will be nice to us. (T/F?)
We must give civil trials, and not military commission hearings, to battlefield detainees like KSM because they are not wartime prisoners or enemy combatants, but if they are released by a jury or by the President, our soldiers can go ahead and shoot them or bomb them when they retake the battlefields. (T/F?)
When a person espousing fundamentalist Islamic beliefs, who calls himself a Soldier of Allahu, and who has recent ties to a radical imam in Yemen, who in turn has ties with Al Qaeda, and that same person kills and maims US soldiers, yelling as he does so, "Allahu Ahkbar," the jihadist war cry, this act is simply "an inexplicable act of violence," as the President said, and is not tied to Islamic jihad. (T/F?)
Intelligence gathering is all important to our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it makes sense not to interrogate people like the underpants bomber, but instead "lawyer" them up, because the world will see that we are a nation of principles. (T/F?)
A youth with radicalized Islamic views and jihadist fantasies who has ties to Al Qaeda in Yemen, who tries to blow up an airliner full of Americans on Christmas day is simply, as the President put it, "an isolated extremist." (T/F?)
Yemen is the new sanctuary for Al Qaeda, and extremists there have assisted in at least the last 2 terror plots against the US. Half of the current 215 GITMO detainees are Yemeni nationals. Despite a recidivism rate of 1 in 7, all detainees should be released because closing GITMO will send a message to the world that we live by our values. (T/F?)
You agree with Janet Napolitano, Head of DHS, that the "system worked," referring to the security system that failed to prevent the underpants bomber attack, despite adequate advance information received by the CIA. (T/F?)
President Obama was right when he contradicted Janet Napolitano saying it was a "systemic failure." (Note: this is a trick question.) (T/F?)
It is right to charge KSM (the mastermind of 9/11) and the underpants bomber (who tried to kill hundreds) in civil courts, even though our own Navy Seals will not get a civil trial on (denied) charges of a single punch to the stomach to one detainee. (T/F?)
We cannot tolerate any kind of profiling on the basis of ethnic looks and religion, even if the vast majority, (nearly 100%), of all terror attacks are committed by those sharing the same ethnic looks and religion. (T/F?)
If a would-be bomber uses a blanket and pillow, (or shoes, or box cutters) in his botched attempt, it makes sense to profile, even outlaw, the use of blankets and pillows and such, rather than profiling the characteristics of the would-be bomber himself. (T/F?)
In order to give the appearance of fairness to all, an 80 yr. old grandma from Iowa must be given the same type of airline screening that a disaffected radicalized youth whose own father turned him in to the CIA as being an Islamic extremist, should get. (T/F?)
A network of people with common ideological, extremist religious views, who openly express their commitment to killing infidels, particularly Americans, and who are armed by Islamic rogue nations, and who carry on battles with our forces, are not engaged in acts of war with us, but are mere common criminals. (T/F?)
Eric Holder was right when he said that waterboarding battlefield detainees was torture. (T/F?)
Eric Holder was right when he said that waterboarding our own troops to prepare them for interrogations (as we do), is not torture. (T/F?)
Eric Holder was right when he backtracked and said that if waterboarding our troops is not torture then waterboarding per se is not torture. (T/F?)
Eric Holder was right when he said that the purpose behind waterboarding makes it torture or not: if it's to get information, then it's torture; if it's to prepare someone about giving up information, it's not torture. (T/F?)
You do not find listening to Eric Holder to be torture. (T/F?)
President Obama, Al Gore, Bono, and other politicians and celebrities are within their rights to use up large amounts of carbon in their private jets to go to places like Copenhagen to chastise the rest of the world about not using carbon. (T/F?)
Climate science is settled even though serious scientists have serious doubts. (T/F?)
It is appropriate to quiet the voices of dissenting views in the scientific community through suppressing data and disallowing divergent opinions to be published, because the matter at stake, global warming (or cooling or climate change,) is a catastrophe waiting to happen. (T/F?)
Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) was right when, in the context of publicly funded health care coverage, she said that there was no real difference between a woman's right to abort a fetus and a man's right to use Viagra, in that both involve reproductive freedom. (T/F?)
A fetus dies during an abortion, and also when a man uses Viagra. (T/F?)
The health care crisis is so serious and grave, and so many people are dying without medical coverage that we must jam a partisan bill through Congress without showing it to the American people, even though medical relief will not be provided for at least 4 years but new taxes will start immediately. (T/F?)
You can cover health care for 25 million more people, cut Medicare by $500 billion, spend $1 trillion overall, and have better health care than ever and still save money! (T/F?)
Some law, even though it may prove ruinous to our health care system, and even though it is achieved through bought votes, and even though it has unknown consequences at a forbidding price tag that may put us in the poor house, is better than no law, as long as the goal is worthy. (T/F?)
In the pictures on the right sidebar, President Obama is not bowing at the waist, but is merely inclining his head to foreign leaders. (T/F?)
During the entire 20 years during which Barack and Michelle Obama regularly sat in Reverend Jeremiah Wright's pews, and during which the Reverend officiated over their marriage and their children's baptisms, and during which Wright served as a spiritual mentor to Obama, Barack Obama never heard any radical, racist, anti-American or other extremist views expressed by Reverend Wright. (T/F?)
When in doubt or left without an answer, it is best to blame George Bush. (T/F?)

If you answered True to most of these questions, it is probably too late for you and you should immediately stop reading this blog and go to the Daily Kos or Huffington Post post-haste. If, on the other hand, you, find the above hard to swallow, you owe it to yourself to stop wearing yourself out pounding those square pegs into round holes.

Do you really want to vote for a party that requires you to check your reason and common sense at the door?

Think about it. We could use more dancers on our side.

Happy 2010!!

SO MUCH OUTRAGE, SO LITTLE TIME

2009-12-16T13:33:00.001-08:00

A problem I have in writing this blog is that by the time I have settled on an idea, done my research, and begun setting thoughts into type, invariably, equally offensive outrages from the political left surface so as to eclipse the current project and steal my fury for the new offense.

Such is the case today. I had been researching the climate debate, Copenhagen, Al Gore and his hockey stick charts, Lord Moncton, polar bears, developing nations developing demands for money, Ed Begley, Jr., Chicken Littles in the Green movement, did I mention Al Gore and his predictions on the polar ice caps?, Darryl Hannah in her finest acting role as a CNN climate expert, carbon footprints, sycophantic frauds in the "climate media," CO2 and temperature, and medieval weather patterns (much warmer than today.)

More about all that later, but this moment requires that another topic take precedence, and I will try to type quickly enough, so that this latest violence need not take a back seat to some further atrocity before my final click and save.

This hour's outrage, (there are simply too many of them to have merely an outrage of the week, or even an outrage of the day) is Tuesday's arm-twisting of senate democrats at the White House, the political violation of Hadassah Lieberman, wife of Senator Joe Lieberman, (former running mate of Al Gore in 2000 and current Independent from CT), and threats to Senator Ben Nelson, D- Nebraska, and the Offutt Air Force base located in his state.

We start with today's Rasmussen poll which shows 56% of Americans, and 63% of seniors, do not want Obamacare. Reasons not to like the bill abound, including:

Even without a so-called "public option" the bill still sets up a government-run system;
It will slice $500 BILLION from Medicare;
It will increase taxes on everyone to at least $400 BILLION;
It will increase insurance premiums for everyone;
It will mean the government will intrude itself into your relationship with your doctor;
It will mean the government will be making your health care decisions;
It will mean rationing;
It provides no mechanism for lowering health care costs;
It will penalize you if you don't want to buy insurance;
It will dump the people that it adds to coverage into the current sub-par Medicaid system;
Medicare and Medicaid are already bankrupt, so there's no money to fund the extra coverage without going even more into debt;
It will restructure 1/6 of the US economy WITHOUT ALLOWING MORE THAN A FEW OF OUR ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES TO KNOW WHAT EXACTLY IS IN THE BILL;
It will allow for publicly funded abortions;
It will not be a bipartisan bill, even if passed with a token GOP vote; and
It has thoroughly violated Obama's promise of transparency, and, contrary to what he told us he would do, (place the bill on C-SPAN, let the American people know what's going on, allow both parties to participate in the making of the bill), it has been drafted (and redrafted) only by Harry Reid and a few insiders.

The outrage that has taken my attention today is the Chicago-style; (Al Capone would be proud) strong arming and threatening of any democrat who dares to consider voting against this monstrosity, even on grounds of conscience.

Joe Lieberman has become the hated point man for the far left now, which doesn't stop at merely criticizing him and his position. Now the gloves are off, and the desperate leftists are trying to get at Lieberman through his wife, Hadassah, who is now a target.

Mrs. Lieberman has been working for years as a global ambassador for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure breast cancer foundation. A liberal website, Firedoglake, has started lobbying celebrities attached to the organization, (such as Ellen DeGeneres and Neil Patrick Harris), to use their star power to force out Mrs. Lieberman. This came after Firedoglake founder, Jane Hamsher, was rebuffed by the Komen organization in her first attempt to get them to fire Lieberman.

In her letter to Komen founder Nancy Brinker, Hamsher said, in part:

"As Hadassah travels the globe under the banner of Susan G. Komen for the Cure, decrying the inadequacies of our health care system, and the desperate need to reform it, her husband is at home to kill the reform efforts we so desperately need." ("Blog Wants Celebs to Help Oust Lieberman's Wife," FoxNews.com, December 14, 2009, Emphasis added.)

If this health care bill is such a great thing, why do they have to threaten everyone to vote for it? While the tactic used against the Liebermans doesn't come directly from the White House, we see no one from the administration or the democrat party take these bloggers to task for the threats. The silence on their part leaves the threats still on the table.

Another arm-twisting outrage does come right from the White House, and that is the case of Senator Ben Nelson, D-Nebraska, who has had the nerve to insist that all publicly funded abortions be taken out of the bill before it gets his vote.

"My vote is not for sale-period," Nelson said Tuesday as rumors surfaced that he had been threatened at a one-on-one White House meeting with Obama to convince the democrat senator to vote for the bill. While both Nelson and the administration deny it, there are rumored to be threats by the White House to close Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska if Nelson doesn't vote for the bill.

Whether or not any threats were made to Nelson in his closed door session with Obama, I cannot say. But the administration has certainly created the scenario for Nelson to be wary of crossing swords with Obama/Reid through earlier threats to close Offutt Air Force base.

As pointed out in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece:

"Offutt's operations pump over $2 billion into Nebraska's economy and account for more than 10,000 jobs, but earlier this year the base was denied two new commands in an Air Force reorganization program, despite scoring well on graded Air Force evaluations. In June, Mr. Nelson called the process by which Offutt lost out "a charade" and no doubt would welcome assurances that Offutt will not be on the chopping block when the federal base-closing commission likely reconvenes in 2013." ("The Selling of Health Care Reform," by John Fund, WSJ.com, December 15, 2009.)

It is easy to see the White House setup in this: securing the vote of a potentially wayward senator by taking steps earlier this year to put his home state's livelihood and economic wellbeing in jeopardy.

And, all this is being done for the purely political aim of cramming this version of health reform down the throats of an unwilling public. If the administration were truly concerned about structuring a proper health care bill, they would approach it in the way that Candidate Obama said he would do while on the campaign trail.

The president says that there is too much at stake not to pass health reform by Christmas, but he's not stating the thing that's really at stake: his presidency, with new poll numbers out showing his job performance approval rate somewhere around 44%, with 54% disapproving.

I don't often agree with Howard Dean, the former DNC head, and though his reasons for saying so surely differ from mine, I agree with his statement that we should just "scrap" this health bill and start over. As Dean told "Good Morning America's" George Stephanopoulos today:

"We've gotten to this stage ... in Washington where passing any bill is a victory, and that's the problem," Dean said. "Decisions are being about the long-term future of this country for short-term political reasons, and that's never a good sign."

(See the full story at ABC.com "Howard Dean: Health Care Bill Bigger Bailout for the Insurance Industry than AIG-Top Democrat Urges Lawmakers to Kill the Bill and Start Over," by Huma Khan and Jonathan Karl, Washington, Dec. 16, 2009.)

Short-term political reasons are indeed driving the mad rush to get this bad law locked up by Christmas. Twisting arms, threats, squeezing out a barely there vote, restructuring 1/6 of the economy with only a small cadre of insiders: this is the way this administration works.

But is this the way Americans want their lawmakers to act? Is this the Hope and Change that Americans voted for? No. This is leftist ideology first, and the 56% opposed be damned.

LOOK WHAT OBAMA’S DISHING OUT THIS THANKSGIVING

2009-11-15T17:43:00.004-08:00

Barack Obama is serving sitting duck this Thanksgiving, featuring the raw meat of Bush and Cheney Administration officials and CIA officers, offered up on a platter to his far left base. Stewing in the same juices of this cold dish will be the citizens of New York, the police officers charged with their protection, and the safety of all the American people.

I am referring to the travesty announced Friday, November 13 by Attorney General Eric Holder: Obama’s decision, clothed in sanctimonious righteousness, to stop the Military Commission proceedings against 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and that of 4 of his co-conspirators, and to commence criminal action against them in a civil court in New York City.

KSM had wanted to plead guilty before the Commission, but now that process has been terminated in favor of a show trial that will be a circus unlike any we have witnessed, an unmitigated debacle with parades of lawyers, undoubtedly well financed by the same terror sponsoring states that brought us 9/11 in the first place, and media pundits hovering on their every move. We can expect repeated motions, trials, mistrials, and retrials over the years and decades to come.

This decision endangers everyone, but especially anyone involved in the court system in New York. The judge, jurors and witnesses in the KSM case may need protection for years, (“juror intimidation” takes on a whole new meaning here), and New York City is at even greater risk for terrorist attack.

The prosecution will be hampered by the fact that the procedural rules have now been changed in the middle of the game: Evidence gathering, including interrogations, was not done in anticipation of having to introduce it in this kind of trial. Military Commissions have less strict rules for introduction of evidence, and the prosecution will face a whole host of challenges (on Miranda rights, due process, coerced confessions, to name a few) that were never contemplated by those involved in building the case.

The trial will delight our enemies and provide an unexpected platform for the terrorists to play to the world with hateful messages about America.

On top of that, the terrorists’ lawyers will press to expose our intelligence gathering, interrogation techniques, security practices, and a whole host of other information that could end up harming America.

That happened in the 1993 WTC bombing case, where information was revealed that the US considered Osama bin Laden a terrorist co-conspirator, which in turn led to OBL changing his hiding place in Sudan to Afghanistan. (“KSM Hits Manhattan-Again,” The Wall Street Journal, November 14, 2009, p. A14.)

Consider these comments from Andrew McCarthy, the prosecutor in the Blind Sheikh trial in 1995 for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, on the dangers of trying KSM in civilian court:

“Nothing results in more disclosures of government intelligence than civilian trials. They are a banquet of information, not just at the discovery stage but in the trial process itself, where witness-intelligence sources must expose themselves and their secrets…

We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for the defendants who have no defense. And when defendants have no defense for their own actions, there is only one thing for their lawyers to do: put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury (and the media) spun up over government errors, abuses and incompetence. …It will be a soapbox for al-Qaeda’s case against America…” (“Holder’s Hidden Agenda, “the corner,” nationalreviewonline.)

And, last but not least, this opens up the real possibility that one or more of the terrorists will be set free. If that’s not a possibility, why have the trial? This is particularly galling in view of the fact that KSM can’t stop bragging about the WTC attack, and states that he wants to die, presumably ready to fall into the arms of the 27 virgins waiting for him in Islamic heaven.

Obama-era “change” now means that we go back to a September 10 mentality, back to the ‘90’s way of treating Islamic jihadists not as the enemy combatants they are but as your garden variety criminal, say a car thief or a burglar.

Our democrat leaders have apparently learned nothing from the experience of 9/11, refusing for purely ideological and political reasons to see Islamic terrorism for what it is: the waging of an ongoing war to kill all infidels by religiously motivated extremists who are more than willing to die in order to murder us. As Nidal Malik Hasan, the Ft. Hood killer explained: “We love death more than you love life.”

So how did we get from the awakening of 9/11 back to the naïveté of 9/10? I will try to explain my view in as reasoned and dispassionate a manner as the subject matter and my intense feelings about it allow. But, before I take to that task, first permit me to indulge in stating exactly what is on my mind:

That this decision by Obama is the single most recklessly dangerous, ill-intended, bone-headed, irresponsible, morally confused, politically motivated, ideologically conceived piece of demagoguery from the President that we have seen in almost a year’s worth of bad moves.

Now, back to how we returned to the ’90’s after all those years in the 21st century.

Denial and Wishful Thinking as Policy

With the ascension to power by this far left President and a democrat controlled Congress, the administration immediately imposed an Orwellian “doublespeak” terminology to describe our conflicts with radical Islam.
Doublespeak consists of words "deliberately constructed for political purposes: words, that is to say, which not only had in every case a political implication, but were intended to impose a desirable mental attitude upon the person using them." The underlying theory is that if something can't be said, then it can't be thought. (Wikipedia Encyclopedia.)

The Obama administration notified us that they would no longer use certain terms: They did not recognize a “war on terror” or “terrorists” or “enemy combatants,” but only “overseas contingency actions,” “man-caused disasters,” and “insurgents.”

Obama has often made a point of describing Islam categorically as a “religion of peace,” while failing to discuss its inspiring many followers to wage violent jihad against non-believers. In that same vein, Obama ignored the obvious jihadist nature of the terrorist attack on Ft. Hood by Nidal Malik Hasan.

Hasan, who cried “Allahu Ahkbar,” the jihadist war cry, before killing 13 and wounding 30 of our soldiers, had had numerous recent email contacts with a radical Yemeni imam with ties to Al Qaeda, and had openly defended Islamic suicide bombers (likening them to an American soldier falling on a bomb to save his comrades), and the beheading of infidels. The acronym, SOA, “Soldier of Allahu,” was on his business cards.

Most of us can instantly add up these facts and see that they spell “terror attack,” not just some guy going “postal.” Yet Obama, he who is “so smart,” did not even address these facts, instead referring to Hasan’s rampage as “an inexplicable act of violence.” What’s inexplicable is Obama’s characterization given the facts. (It is worth noting that Obama didn’t have any trouble jumping to conclusions that Cambridge police officers were guilty of “racial profiling” or assigning sinister motives to the killing of the abortion doctor, George Tiller.)

There’s a patently fallacious but commonly held belief on the part of many on the left, apparently including the President, that if we just change our behavior and how we look at people, that they will treat us right; that if we don’t treat the terrorists as terrorists they will cease to be terrorists.

And, so the theory goes, if other would-be terrorists in the rest of the world see how nice we’re being to the not-really-terrorists, then they won’t become not-really-terrorists either. This is farcical. This is fantasy. And this is dangerous. And anyone with common sense, and with no political agenda to drive, can see it.

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who as a judge presided over the trial stemming from the first World Trade Center attack in 1993, criticized Obama’s decision to transfer KSM to civilian court. Speaking at a legal convention on Friday, Mukasey described the proposed move as:

“…a decision I consider not only unwise, but based on a refusal to face the fact that what we are involved with here is a war with people who follow a religiously-based ideology that call on them to kill us, and to return instead to the mindset that prevailed before September 11…that such acts can and should be treated as conventional crimes and tried in conventional courts.”

Mukasey went on to comment on the pattern of decisions coming from the Obama administration after the decision to close Guantanamo, describing them as:

“…a system in which policy is fashioned to fit and proceed rhetoric rather than being thought out in advance with arguments then formulated in support of it.” (“Mukasey Blasts Pre-9/11 Mentality in KSM Decision,” by Philip Klein, The American Spectator.)

Appeasement as Policy

Obama takes pains often to apologize to the world at large and especially to worldwide Muslims, even some of our enemies, for what he calls America’s many “mistakes,” seemingly referring to “mistakes” made in the ‘70’s with the Shah of Iran and, of course, Bush’s alleged “mistakes” for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
To appeal to and appease the world’s Muslims, Obama has gone to the extent of bowing at the waist to the Saudi king, and kowtowing to the Iranian “Supreme Leader,” while refusing to speak up on behalf of the Iranian people protesting a violent, repressive regime.

And today, after months of being pressed by his hand-picked generals to provide more troops to the Afghan front, Obama is still waffling on what to do, even though this is the war he said was the “right” war to fight against the Muslim Taliban. Not surprisingly, the morale of our troops in Afghanistan is at an all time low, and close to 100 soldiers have fallen while Obama continues to ponder.

So a pattern of appeasement of Muslims and wishful thinking about terrorism appears to have jelled in the decision to try the 9/11 mastermind KSM and his cohorts in a civil courtroom. But that’s not the only, or even the main, reason for Obama’s decision to try the terrorists in civil court.

The Other Agenda

The trial in a public courtroom is Obama’s back-handed way of doing what the radical left has wanted him to do all along but he didn’t have the guts to do: investigate Bush and Cheney on the legality of CIA interrogations with the hope that war crimes indictments might result.

Obama hasn’t acceded to the left’s demands for congressional investigations on the CIA interrogations because that would prove too hot for him politically. But he can accomplish even more handily what the far left wants, the humiliation and possible prosecution of Bush-Cheney officials, through the back door of a civil trial of KSM et al.

It will be Bush and Cheney and their former lawyers, and some former DOJ, FBI and CIA officials who will really be on trial, with defense requests to detail every interrogation, waterboarding incident, and the like, along the way. The far left is salivating over this juicy meal being served up by Obama.

Military Commissions Are the “Rule of Law” for Terrorist Detainees

It is popular liberal myth that Military Commissions (MC) are a break with our legal tradition and were formulated by Bush-Cheney out of whole cloth in some secretive, backroom attempt to circumvent “the rule of law.”

“The rule of law” is a phrase repeatedly thrown out in the context of the detainee discussion, usually by non-lawyers who have not bothered to bog themselves down with actually studying the law or the history of the matters on which they pontificate.

Here’s an example of what some bloggers who support Obama’s decision are saying:

“By prosecuting KSM in a civilian court, we say to the world that we are not a nation of groupthinking workshops assembled by one administration’s attorneys to find a way to move our treatment of terrorists entirely outside the legal system. That’s what the Bush administration tried to do, and because we are a nation of checks and balances, they failed. With a new government that respects the legal system, it’s time that we manifest that respect.”

    Folks, if people you know start talking like that, take them aside and tell them their stupid is showing. This is simply not the state of the law or our history.

    Military Commissions stretch far back into American history. They have been used since 1847 to prosecute thousands in the US and abroad during the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Spanish-American War and World War II.

MC defendants have included:
•    a former Ohio Congressman accused of sympathizing with the Confederacy during the Civil War (ordered confined for the rest of the war),
•    eight accused conspirators in President Lincoln's assassination (four sentenced to hang, four given prison sentences),
•    and eight Germans accused of arriving in the U.S. by submarine to carry out sabotage attacks (six were electrocuted). (Wikipedia Encyclopedia.)

So even the two former Presidents on whom Obama likes to style himself, Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had no trouble using the Military Commission proceedings even against US citizens, in Lincoln’s case, and against those whose sabotage mission was not successful, in FDR’s.

Beyond all that history, we have a current law on the books, the 2006 Military Commissions Act, which was adopted with bipartisan support and followed a Supreme Court case that obliged the executive and legislative branches to come up with a detailed plan to prosecute illegal “enemy combatants” captured after 9/11.

That bipartisan support included then Senator Barack Obama who is shown in this video clip approving a military tribunal for the likes of KSM who, he said, would get all the "bells and whistles" that such a tribunal could provide. (See the video at http://tinyurl.com/ygrtzc5).

The fact that Obama is now turning away from his previously held view on the MCs underscores the political nature of this new decision.

Another Holder Decision Acknowledges the Integrity of MC Trials

MC trials had earned a reputation for fairness and independence, the 2006 Act having devised a careful process to try detainees. In fact, Holder’s recent decision to allow some MC trials to go forward against other terrorists (those accused of the 2000 bombing of the U.S.S. Cole) indicates that the administration must have confidence in the integrity of those proceedings.

In trying to justify why KSM was to be tried in civil court while the Cole detainees are to be tried in an MC, all Holder could offer was the fact that the Cole bombers struck a military target overseas while KSM struck targets in the US. He might as well have made the distinction based on the terrorists’ astrological signs or birth order, for his stated reasons were simply made up, nonsensical justifications for something that he can’t legally justify.

As the Wall Street Journal editorial points out:
“Mr. Holder’s justification betrays not a legal consistency but a fundamentally political judgment that he can make as he sees fit.” (The Wall Street Journal, supra.)

This decision of Obama’s has been made for purely political reasons and it puts us all at risk. An OJ trial on steroids and to the nth degree, in which defendants with no real defense will, through their legal defense team, instead attack America and the previous administration, is not the “change” we need.

Perhaps Obama’s thinking is that we’ll all be so glued to our TV sets watching the ultimate reality show that we won’t notice the rampant unemployment, unprecedented spending and deficits, and government takeover of the private sector.

The Obama administration says that this trial will send a message to the world. Indeed it will. But it’s not the one he’s telling us. The message is that America can be played, and be played the fool by politicians who prize their political agendas over the welfare of the American people.

We need to start calling a spade a spade. We need to distinguish between the acts of your average “nut case” and those of people whose ideology allows blowing up little children in suicide attacks, beheadings of “infidels,” flying planes into buildings, and killing our soldiers in the name of “Allahu Ahkbar.”

These are terrorist acts and are not “man-caused disasters.” Man-caused disasters are things like the Obama presidency.

TO LEAD OR NOT TO LEAD: OBAMA “FIDDLES” WHILE AFGHANISTAN BURNS

2009-10-15T14:30:00.001-07:00

"Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprises of great pith and moment

With this regard their currents turn away

And lose the name of action." (Hamlet, Act III, Scene I.)

In the famous "To be or not to be" soliloquy, Shakespeare shows Hamlet's indecision over whether to fight his enemies or just take refuge in a deathly sleep, "perchance to dream" his way out of difficulty. However intellectual his musings, however noble his thoughts, Hamlet simply cannot act until at last events spin out of control, and he ends up killing and being killed.

In President Obama's dragged out debate over his course for Afghanistan it is easy to see the danger of "resolution" being "sicklied over" with too much thought, too much dancing around the issue. As the days, weeks, and now months roll by without an answer to his hand-picked General's request for more troops, our current enterprise of such great pith and moment, the war Obama himself said was the "right war" to pursue, now appears to run risk of its currents turning away and the action being lost.

Obama is said to be rethinking the strategy that he decided on just a few months ago in March. The approach he adopted then was focused on combating the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan through a troop-intensive strategy of protecting the population from insurgent attacks. General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO-led forces in Afghanistan, has said he needs up to 40,000 more troops to do that job.

McChrystal sent his assessment to Washington in August, and it was leaked to the press in mid-September. In his report, McChrystal said failure to reverse "insurgent momentum" in the near term risked an outcome where "defeating the insurgency is no longer possible." (Reuters, "U.S. commander says Afghan war needs more troops," Monday, September 21, 2009.)

While our soldiers are in theater facing death every minute of the day, not knowing if McChrystal's request will be honored, or if the war will ultimately be "lost" as the General fears, Obama continues to hold meetings debating the issues.

He held the fifth in a series of White House Situation Room meetings on alternative strategies with advisers Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates yesterday, and plans another next week. The President, a former law instructor, is said to pose rigorous questions and encourage robust arguments at the sessions, according to senior adviser David Axelrod. (Bloomberg.com, "Obama Becomes Target on Afghan Troop Review as Pressure Rises," October 15, 2009.)

The White House has today announced through its spokesman, Robert Gibbs, that they are almost done with meetings on the issue, but that Obama won't make a decision on Afghanistan for a few more weeks.

Why on earth not make a decision? It seems to me there are only two possibilities, neither of which is very flattering to Obama as a leader and a Commander in Chief.

The first possibility, (and this is my personal view of what's going on), is there's a political reason for his lack of action: Obama has already made up his mind to send more troops but wants to wait as long as possible so as not to alienate his far-left base, (already unhappy that existing troops are not being brought home,) and jeopardize his beloved health care bill as it is being cobbled together in Congress.

The idea seems to be that if, through posturing, Obama looks ponderous enough, if he looks like he's painstakingly examined all the facets of the problem and, only reluctantly, decides to send troops, then the war-weary public will be more inclined to support his decision.

A recent statement made by Anita Dunn, the White House communications director, supports my belief. She said that an American public that has grown "exhausted from this war" will appreciate Obama's approach to the "significant decisions that need to be made."

"They will have a high degree of confidence that the process that led to those decisions was one that was deliberative, that wasn't in response to any political pressure, but was made on the merits," Dunn said in an interview. (Bloomberg, supra.)

As I see it, the only other possibility for the President's inaction, is that Obama really doesn't know what to do, but is arrogant enough to think that he, Hillary, Joe, Bob Gates and other back-room talking heads can figure it out by evaluating strategy better than the generals in the field can do.

While his study and evaluation are perfectly fine and desirable, does Obama really think that he and his buddies sitting around a table know more than those who are fighting the war in the trenches?

If the General that Obama himself hand-picked says the war will be lost without the additional troops, isn't Obama gambling with the lives of all those currently engaged in the war effort if he doesn't comply with the request? If the war will be lost without the additional support, doesn't Obama also run the risk of making the sacrifices of those who died and suffered injuries in the struggle be all in vain?

Key members of Congress are speaking out against the President's indecision. Representative Howard "Buck" McKeon of California, the House Armed Services Committee's top Republican, made this statement at a congressional hearing on October 14:

"Given the urgency of the situation, I have a number of concerns about how the debate in Washington will affect the war in Afghanistan. First, I'm concerned about the continued drift of our Afghanistan strategy. It is unfair to our forces in theater to fight a war while the strategy remains in limbo. Last week the President told members of Congress that his decision will be timely. My hope and expectation is that the President will make a decision on resources in the coming week and stick with it. We cannot win if we conduct quarterly strategy changes. To be sure, nips and tucks are appropriate, but wholesale reconstructive surgery is a recipe for disaster…

In my view, if the President departs from the March strategy he will be rejecting key assumptions about the threats we face and strategies we need to prevent another 9/11. A half measure in Afghanistan is tantamount to a doctrinal shift away from all the lessons learned since al-Qaeda attacked our homeland over eight years ago. This will endanger our homeland and put our forces at risk." (McKeon Opening Statement for Hearing on Afghanistan Strategy, Press Release October 14, 2009. Emphasis added.)

Other lawmakers, such as Arizona Senator John McCain, are also pushing for a decision to send the troops that General McChrystal has said he needs. McCain has been joined by Democrats such as Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who heads the Select Committee on Intelligence, and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri, who has been quoted as saying:

"Who knows the situation any better than the commander of the theater? He understands the people, knows the enemy, and knows what it will take to fulfill our mission." (National Review Online, "Skelton: Obama Should Listen to McChrystal," October 7, 2009.)

As the President continues torturing the country with his indecision, (though undoubtedly delighting the Norwegian Nobel givers), I keep thinking of the young men and women fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, and their families here at home, waiting for the Commander in Chief to lead.

How agonizing for our soldiers to shoulder their weapons and face down death on a minute-by-minute basis while the President ponders, and perhaps postures for political reasons, about providing them support.

What a stab in the heart of troop morale to have their field commander say the battle will be lost without additional troops, and yet to see the President unable or unwilling to make up his mind.

Our troops, the bravest of our country's young men and women, already face daunting odds of survival, of winning. And now they face another enemy: The Commander in Chief's indecision and failure to lead while our enterprise of great moment is at risk of being lost.

WHAT IF THEY GAVE A (RACE) WAR AND NO ONE CAME?

2009-09-23T18:14:00.001-07:00

Hell hath no fury like a democrat scorned. Indeed, no one does outrage, real or feigned, like a democrat. And so it is that we have come to see legions of democrat talking-heads, spearheaded by two former democrat presidents and left-wing media apologists, attacking those who challenge the President's agenda as "racists." I guess that must include me, too.

The left is perfectly comfortable, in fact righteous, in its own role of vocal, often virulent dissent:

Free speech is regarded as one of the foundations of western civilization when it's the Code Pink ladies or Earth First! people attacking Bush; but free speech is racism and the "thinly veiled" violence of reactionaries when it's people like the tea party crowd.
Speech that attacks presumed excesses of power is a virtue when it's Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid calling the CIA and Bush liars; free speech is racism when it's Joe Wilson blurting out the truth that Obama lied about providing illegals health care.
Speech attacking Republicans as from the party of "old, white men" is fair comment, with nary a thought about any racial or other stereotypes; but if one opposes Obama, one is a racist.

It's been 2 weeks since the President's speech to the joint session of Congress and almost that long since the Tea Party March in DC. But a quick scan of the cable news channels over this past weekend shows that the chattering class is still at it, trying to make a case that all opposition to Obama is based on a loathing of the color of his skin.

Jimmy Carter came out of mothballs to tell us that he knows the opposition to Obama is simply deep-seated racism that still lingers in the hearts of white people who just hate to see a black man in office. Carter's condemnation of the opposition gave the perfect cover to the faux journalists on most of cable and all the network channels to pound the "racist" theme to the exclusion of real news.

Always willing acolytes, the media trotted out speaker after speaker, (including President Clinton who managed to talk up both sides of the issue), to comment on Carter's ridiculous comment.

This is all a feint, intended to draw attention away from the substance of opponents' concerns and to dismiss all of us as knowing evil-doers and bigoted haters, or people who are just too simple-minded to know the racist motivations behind their own actions, people whose speech, in any event, should be ignored if not suppressed.

If any of the race war protagonists, or any of you, gentle readers, think that this has caused me to review my own thoughts or beliefs for signs of latent racist tendencies, think again. Rather, I chastise those who would make such spurious accusations against fellow Americans, many of whom voted for Obama, and many more of whom loyally supported him in the first months of his term.

(And, a special note to Mr. Carter: Go home and get busy doing something you know how to do, like building houses or wearing sweaters, and leave the rest of us alone.)

In its patent efforts to prop up this president they love, our pathetic news media jumped at the opportunity to attack his attackers, and to ignore embarrassing or potentially damaging news stories it should be investigating, such as:

The President's flirting with accepting failure in Afghanistan by not providing more troops as requested by the military, even though he said this was the "right" war to fight;
The President's single-minded (and I say simple-minded) solution to nuclear threats through unilateral disarmament;
The President's weakening the country's and our allies' defenses by failing to make good on the long range missile defenses that we promised to deploy in Eastern Europe, a foreign policy give-away to Russia at the expense of new democracies and our own safety;
The President's legitimizing Ahmadinajad as President of Iran despite the still contested election and the Iranian government crackdown on dissenters who reject the government-declared election results;
The President's continuing to bend over backward for the increasingly intransigent bullies and saber rattlers, Iran and North Korea, getting nothing in return for his diplomatic largess;
The President's allowing the criminal investigation into CIA interrogations to go forward, contrary to what he said initially, and further weakening our intelligence community;
The President's throwing Israel "under the bus," calling its settlements an "occupation" while continuing to reach out to its enemies, including Iran whose leader recently has again denied the Holocaust;
The President's support of Manuel Zelaya, the left wing would-be dictator in Honduras who tried to go against his country's constitution by overstaying his term in office, putting Obama on the same side of the issue as dictator-thugs Hugo Chavez and Brazil's Lula De Silva (remember the latter's tirade blaming the banking crisis on "blue-eyed white people");
The President's continued apologies for, but never praise of, the United States, once again decrying our past "sins" in his UN address today;
The President's evasions about his associations with ACORN, the corrupt community organizing group that was instrumental in his election, that has already received tens of millions of tax dollars, and was scheduled to receive up to billions of dollars in stimulus money;
The President's increasing the power of the executive branch by forming a legion of "czars" who have enormous authority and power and our tax money to spend, many of whom have dubious characters and credentials, such as admitted "communist" Van Jones;
The President's failure to explain how the country will pay for any of his proposed agenda without amassing a huge deficit and burdening generations to follow;
The President's changes and evasions on his health-care "plan" which is still not yet formulated as a specific plan;
The President's embarking on a series of trade protectionist measures to please his union constituencies;
The President's actions in orchestrating government takeovers of large sectors of the economy and further shrinking the private sector, the latest successful effort being the federal government takeover of all student loans to the exclusion of private carriers;
The President's designs to eliminate or marginalize talk radio (aka dissenting speech) by means of resurrecting the so-called Fairness Doctrine via a "diversity panel" at the FCC to replace current programming with "local content" and content that represents more "minorities and women" but which will act to stifle conservative speech.

This list is by no means exhaustive of the types of policies that many of us oppose. And for voicing these concerns we are branded "racists." One would think that the left, which applauds the freest of speech for itself (Remember how Bush was pilloried as a "Nazi?" The movies about assassinating him? Congress booing Bush at a joint session?) would stand up for all speech, even that of the opposition. Sadly, this is not the case.

Instead, the left is calling up the troops to fight a race war, thinking that the race card is an ace up their sleeve that will win the political game by stifling criticism of Obama and deflecting attention away from the real concerns of the day, such as:

the groups of terrorists determined to destroy us,
the nation states that support them and are determined to acquire nuclear arms,
and a Commander in Chief who thinks that the best defense is no defense.

In leveling charges of "racism," the left and their media lackeys attack what now has become a majority of people in this country who either oppose or question Obama's far-left radical agenda. But they will find the opposition is not suiting up to fight those phony charges.

I for one will not engage in any "racist" battle. I do not deem the attack worthy of defending. I stick a flower in the barrel of that charge, and challenge the left to turn around, and face our real enemies.

MORE OF THE SAME BLAME AND SHAME: ANOTHER SPEECH FROM OUR CZAR-IN-CHIEF

2009-09-10T23:09:00.001-07:00

For the past week I've been sidetracked by some nasty virus attacks on my computers (I can't help but suspect that "fishy" White House website of targeting me), and I am behind in my work, this blog included.

So I want to give credit where credit is due and acknowledge the one good thing that came out of President Obama's speech last night: It was so much a retread of the hundred other speeches he's made on health care that my work on this post has been made almost as effortless as the ease with which Obama dodges substance on the issues.

In fact, I could (and will) just refer readers back to my last posting which posed a litany of questions on health care that apparently Obama is never going to answer. (See "Obama Discusses 'Wee Wee,' But No Teachable Moments," linked at the sidebar on the right, posted 8-23-09.)

The only excitement during the speech came from Representative Joe Wilson who blurted out "You lie!" in a spontaneous retort to Obama's lie that the dems' plan does not cover illegal aliens (aka, "undocumented persons," as is now the politically correct designation, so I hear.)

Representative Wilson was right, of course, even if his venue was wrong. We all know that doctors and hospitals aren't going to start asking for citizenship papers upon admitting a sick or injured patient. And in fact, the current Bill requires all to be treated, regardless of background.

Given the refusal of the democrats in Congress to allow an amendment to the Bill clarifying that no illegals may be covered, and given the fact that there is no enforcement mechanism in the Bill, Obama simply cannot truthfully make that claim.

The only funny thing in the speech was a serious comment Obama made that "there remain some significant details to iron out." No kidding, Sherlock. Like about 1,018 pages of details. Understandably, this remark was received with a good deal of muted snickering by our representatives.

The lowlight of the speech came at the end with the President's shameless attempt to shame the country into going along with his plan. It made me think how much Obama treats us all like a bad parent might treat his little children: never explain your real reasons for doing something, lie to them when asked, call them names and threaten if they offer resistance, and, finally, if all else fails, shame them into submission.

I refer of course to the "do it for Teddy" ploy where we are urged to sign up for this plan out of respect for the memory of the late Ted Kennedy. Sorry, Mr. President, but I refused to be moralized to by the likes of Ted Kennedy when he was alive:

The Ted Kennedy who drove a girl off a bridge at Chappaquiddick and left her to drown while he rested at a hotel and called his family's lawyers to try to save his, and their, precious reputations and political fortunes;
The Ted Kennedy who followed up that infamy with a lifetime of notorious womanizing and bawdy behavior that rose to the level of local, if not national, legend.

No. In my book, Ted Kennedy didn't have the moral authority to lecture anybody about anything, and especially about doing the right thing. And I see no reason to subject myself to moralizing in his name now that he's dead.

As far as substance on the issues, sadly, but not unexpectedly, Obama gave us nothing new Wednesday night. It was striking how much this was just the same old speechifying, with the mainstream media straining to find gems to admire and failing utterly to hold him accountable on a host of things, such as:

his wiggling around the "public option" issue in an obvious attempt to clear the defense on both the left and the right before sprinting the health care bill to the end zone:
- He was for a single payer before he was for the public option,
- before the public option became only a "sliver" of his plan,
- before he resurrected it,
- before he abandoned it, and
- before he (finally?) rehabilitated it as desirable but negotiable;
his asserting half-truths, in which he flaunts the pretty side of the argument while keeping its ugly twin in the closet:
- He says the pretty things like, "You can keep your insurance if you like it," and "there is no coverage for illegal aliens,"
- but he hides the "ugly" sides of his half-truths: that people can easily lose private coverage and be dumped into the public plan, and there's no enforcement mechanism to prevent illegals from being covered;
his failing to address how his plan will effect rationing of health care:
- His own comments and those of his advisors on rationing of care for the elderly and the very ill, in large part spurred the controversy, but he won't address the issue seriously, preferring to ridicule the concerns.
- And he won't say how, if 30 million extra people are given coverage, you will not end up with a high level of rationing, way beyond that which is currently done by private insurers.
- (By the way, did you notice that Obama now says it's only 30 million without insurance, down from 47 million uninsured? Where did those 17 million people go? Maybe by his next speech there will be even fewer!)
his deprecating the import of the August townhall opposition:
- accusing Americans of being a bunch of "bickering" reactionaries using "partisan scare tactics,"
- accusing Republicans of making "wild, false claims,"
- castigating (again and forever) any opposition as being merely "anti-reform";
his bickering about others' bickering:
- especially that evil cabal of right-wing politicians (he as good as called Sarah Palin out by name),
- cable news (meaning Fox),
- talk radio, and
- presumably, the blue-haired ladies and veterans at townhall meetings);
his scolding that the rest of us should use a civil tone, while he accuses us of bad intent, essentially calling opponents liars;
his feeble offering on tort reform, to "look" at demonstration projects in various states.
- If you want to know the democrats' real intent on tort reform and the trial lawyers, one of their biggest contributors and constituent groups,
- watch Howard Dean at a townhall meeting and hear him admit that democrats are unwilling to take on the trial lawyers. (Check it out at http://tinyurl.com/ls74ye);
and, perhaps most important of all,
his avoiding explanation of how we can pay for his $900 billion plan that involves 53 new bureaucracies:
- (now downgraded from $1.3 trillion-Gee! Look how much he's saved us already!!)
- without hurting seniors' Medicare which will be cut by $500 billion,
- without adding one penny to the deficit, as he claims,
- and without raising even more taxes than the $600 billion already on the table.

And, for my liberal friends, you should note that it is not just us "partisan scare tactic Republican operatives," who have judged Obama as not addressing the real issues.

Consider this morning's editorial from, of all places, the very liberal Los Angeles Times, which had this to say on the subject of Obama's speech and payment for the Administration's plan:

"…The hard part, in terms of both policy and politics, is finding a way to pay for the expansion in coverage. And on that most contentious issue, unfortunately, Obama argued that Congress could cover most of the cost by attacking waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid-a pain-free path that's as unrealistic as it is alluring…

…the president's comments about the savings available in Medicare were disingenuous, as was his assertion that a new tax on insurers would lead them to 'provide greater value for the money,' instead of simply passing the cost on to policyholders. Obama will have to come up with a more complete approach to paying for reform as the legislation moves forward. He claimed the plan as his own with this speech, but he left some of the hardest questions unanswered." (The Los Angeles Times, Thursday, September 10, 2009, Editorial Page, A28, Column 1, Emphasis added.)

Speaking of shame, what I think shameful is the President and his Congressional allies continuing to give us half-truths, distortions and manipulations about their health plan. They are in denial about the voice of the people expressed in townhalls across the country this past month.

It's enraging for the people to ask the hard questions and never get an answer other than accusations of evil mongering. But I don't think the deception and stonewalling are going to work, at least not as they had planned it.

A "sleeping giant" (as one townhaller called it), a fed-up American public, has been awakened, and citizens are not looking at the President with the same level of trust that they bestowed upon him at the beginning of his term.

The polls show this conclusively, and the ranks of Americans with voters' remorse keep growing, including democrats as well as independents, and (you know who you are) those Republican Obama-voters.

Our Czar in Chief can bicker and lie, blame and shame, and dodge the tough questions. But his emperor's cloak has slipped away, and we all see what is there.

OBAMA DISCUSSES “WEE WEE,” BUT NO “TEACHABLE MOMENTS”

2009-08-23T12:33:00.001-07:00

If ever an opportunity presented itself for some great "teachable moments," as the President likes to say, it is the health care debate, with all the alleged "myths" being spread about the dems' Health Care Bill by us right wing fanatics who think that the Bill will lead to:

a government takeover of a huge segment of the economy;
rationed care, especially for the elderly and the very ill;
skyrocketing costs; and
a huge increase in the already gargantuan deficit.

But despite all his (choreographed) townhall appearances before (hand-picked adoring crowds of pro-Obama) American citizens, our President does not assail these supposed myths one by one, teaching us why people's fears are misplaced.

The President is a lawyer, and should know how to argue his case to the American people. But we hear no substantive discussion of the facts from him, just generalities and promises, and, as always, ridicule of those who dare to disagree.

As trial lawyers know, if the facts are with you, you argue the facts. If they're not, you argue the credibility of the opposition. The facts are not on Obama's side, and so he and his allies have set about attacking the character of the opposition.

So far we've been called:

rude and uncivil;
shills for insurance companies or radical groups;
Nazis;
racists who hate Obama because he's black (even though undoubtedly a goodly percentage of protesters voted for him and/or supported him after his election);
un-American;
mindless enough to believe patently untrue "myths";
laughable;
brainwashed by evil cable news channels; and, LAST BUT NOT LEAST,
"wee-wee'd up."

Yes, the President of the United States, in his latest blast at those opposed to Obamacare, fired a charge that in August people just get all "wee-wee'd up," a phrase incomprehensible to all but his spokesman, Robert Gibbs, who suggested that it had something to do with bed-wetting. (Check out videos of both IMPOTUS and Gibbs on "wee-wee" at http://tinyurl.com/nbvfle.)

What on earth was he thinking, this man who is claimed by many to be our most glorious presidential orator? (And one has to wonder if that kind of speechifying still gives MSNBC's Chris Matthews a thrill up his leg? Or maybe it would go down his leg…)

While Obama keeps attacking Americans with increasingly demeaning and ridiculous charges, and repeating that opposition is based on "myths," he does not attack the "myths" themselves:

There's no teachable moment where Obama shows us how his plan will not lead to a government takeover of health care and private insurers being forced out of the market.
- He doesn't explain how we can be sure the private market will survive a public "option."
- He doesn't explain how provisions in the Bill banning new private plans will affect your ability to change or add to your policy.
- He doesn't explain how you can "keep your private insurance if you like it," as he keeps repeating, if the insurers are no longer in the market.
- He doesn't explain how you can "keep your private insurance if you like it," if your employer drops your coverage, choosing to pay a fine instead.
- He doesn't explain how you can "keep your private insurance if you like it," if your premiums go sky high as the insurers' costs rise under the plan.
There's no teachable moment where Obama shows us how his plan will not end up covering illegal aliens.
- He doesn't explain how we can be assured of this when his plan contains no enforcement mechanism.
- He doesn't explain how Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, a negotiator in ongoing Senate Finance Committee talks, was wrong when he recently said:
"The bill passed by the House committees is so poorly cobbled together that it will have all kinds of unintended consequences, including making taxpayers fund health care subsidies for illegal immigrants."
- He doesn't explain how you can only get to his figure of 47 million uninsured if you count those illegal aliens.
There's no teachable moment where Obama shows us how his plan will not lead to publicly funded abortions as part of the standard coverage for women.
- He doesn't explain how we can be assured of this when abortion is so much a part of the DNA of the left who are demanding abortions be covered.
- He doesn't explain how we can be assured of this when the Bill does not specifically exclude that coverage.
- He doesn't explain how we can be assured of this when it's not clear the so-called Hyde Amendment, which generally bans public funding of abortions, would apply to the public option plan.
There's no teachable moment where Obama shows us how his plan will not end up rationing health care, particularly for the elderly and the very ill.
- He doesn't explain how a limited number of doctors, nurses, medical facilities and equipment are going to treat millions more patients without rationing care.
- He doesn't explain how we can be assured of this when Obama himself said that someone his grandmother's age maybe should just take a pain pill instead of getting a hip replacement surgery.
- He doesn't explain how we can be assured that rationing won't result in people dying prematurely if denied coverage of life saving prescriptions or surgeries.
- He doesn't explain why the charge of "death panels" is a laughing matter under those circumstances.
- He doesn't explain how we can save on medical costs without rationing when 80% of all medical costs come from the last years' of life, meaning seniors and the very ill account for most of the costs.
- He doesn't address how his plan's reliance on "QALY" standards will not result in rationing for the old and very ill.
Wikipedia defines the QALY as:
"The quality-adjusted life year (QALY) is a measure of disease burden, including both the quality and the quantity of life lived. It is used in assessing the value for money of a medical intervention. The QALY model requires utility independent, risk neutral, and constant proportional tradeoff behaviour.
The QALY is based on the number of years of life that would be added by the intervention. Each year in perfect health is assigned the value of 1.0 down to a value of 0.0 for death. If the extra years would not be lived in full health, for example if the patient would lose a limb, or be blind or be confined to a wheelchair, then the extra life-years are given a value between 0 and 1 to account for this." (Emphasis added.)

Want your life to be reduced to a formula implemented by some anonymous government board of bureaucrats? That's just what happened to this woman under Oregon's government health plan. (See the video at http://tinyurl.com/ngky3k).

The video shows the Oregon woman, who was denied life saving chemotherapy drugs by the government run health plan, which offered her doctor-assisted suicide instead.

One of the "evil" pharmaceutical companies, upon hearing of her plight, provided the drugs free of charge, and the woman has survived her cancer because of the prompt treatment.

The term "death panel" has been greeted with a lot of derision and even chuckles on the part of the president. But I bet that Oregon woman wouldn't think the phrase exaggerated in the least.

I actually think that the current plan of rationing care, which is:

to be based on QALY, cookie-cutter templates and protocols;
decided by a board of government employees who have never laid eyes on you;
who don't have to answer to you personally; and
whose decisions are not subject to appeal;

is arguably more insidious than "death panels" where at least you'd get the chance to confront your condemners and spit in their faces before being led away to take your pain pills and await death.

These are only some of the questions Obama and his allies are not addressing, choosing instead, once again, to demonize the opposition as a way to blast through their programs. Which leads to the question, why no teachable moments from the President?

Obama and his allies do not delve into the facts with us because:

single payer is where they've always wanted us to be. (See Obama say this at http://tinyurl.com/m3ze63
and Barney Frank say the same thing at http://tinyurl.com/n7qo2y)
they're OK with a government takeover, because they hate the private sector and think their form of government will know best what's good for us;
they're OK with individuals suffering rationing and losing private insurance if it means the "masses" are served.

"To me ethics is doing what is best for the most," said Saul Alinsky, the radical whose teachings became the guidebook for then community organizer and now President, Barack Obama. (Rules for Radicals, 1971, by Saul Alinsky, p. 33.)

That statement provides the main truth behind the government plan:

If some individuals (or many individuals) must get sacrificed for the "good of all," as they in their ultimate wisdom see it, well, that's just too bad.

This radical President and Congress value the "masses of humanity" over individual human beings. They value their vision of what America should be over Americans themselves.

This is the real teachable lesson from this debate.

IMPOTUS TO DISSENTERS: My Union Thugs Can Beat Your Old Ladies

2009-08-08T22:29:00.001-07:00

We don't really have a President of the United States anymore, despite the fact that the putative president, Barack Obama, is still living in the White House with all the trappings of the presidency.

IMPOTUS, an acronym I've coined for "I am the President of the United States," as Mr. Obama so often says of himself, (he did it again in a speech last Thursday) has ceased acting as president of the United States for some time now, his presidency done in by his own hand, by his own executive fiat.

He's no longer acting as a President of the United States, but as a political ideologue representing only the approximate 20% of the populace considered to be the radical left base of the democrat party.

We saw it first in a change in his demeanor. Gone are the honeyed words of post-partisanship, of post-racialism, of outstretched hands to unclenched fists. No, he now resembles a 3^rd world dictator, (maybe that's why he's so comfortable with Fidel, Hugo, & Manuel), jutting out his chin (always reminding me of Mussolini), and threatening to ram his policies down your throat if you don't willingly go along.

Now we see pouting and anger when things don't go his way, accusing others of wrongdoing, vilifying and demonizing the opposition.

As with all dictators, (remember Animal Farm's Napoleon and his attack dogs), IMPOTUS has his union thugs, his moveon.org zealots, his (federally funded, convicted for fraud) ACORN activists, to do his bidding, apparently at his beck and call.

For that's what happened just this week when IMPOTUS was displeased with the level of anger people showed toward his health care plan at town hall meetings across the country.

The people's anger was not only justified, it was foreseeable, brought on by the fear engendered by IMPOTUS's policies. As Peggy Noonan, known for her measured tones, said of the protesters in her weekly Saturday Wall Street Journal column:

"And all they ask in return (from their congressman) is that he see to their interests and not terrify them too much. Really, that's all people ask. Expectations are very low. What the protesters are saying is, 'You are terrifying us.'" (Wall Street Journal, August 8, 2009. Emphasis added.)

Consider the sources of the protesters' fears:

the 1,018 page health care bill that lawmakers have not read;
the report of the Congressional Budget Office that the plan will add billions to the deficit, and
undoubtedly result in millions of Americans losing their private coverage, and being dumped into the public plan;
the threat that the plan will take away or change our relationship with our doctors;
the plan's imposing health care rationing, especially for seniors and the very ill;
the plan's imposing an unprecedented level of bureaucratic meddling in our health care, one of our most private affairs;
automatic withdrawals from your bank accounts to pay for government health care;
on top of the other humongous, deficit-creating bailouts, the un-stimulating "stimulus," and the pork laden budget; and
a cornucopia of new taxes proposed to pay for all the spending, from cap & tax energy taxes which will hit everyone, to VAT's, to middle class income tax increases, to surtaxes on the "rich" (just wait- IMPOTUS will one day decide that you, too, are among the "rich).

A President of the United States would:

use his rhetorical skills to answer the people's reasonable questions;
use his intelligence to actually read the bill and become familiar with its provisions;
learn what provisions of the bill are troubling people so much and try to address them;
try to enact a bill that is the best bill to serve the people as a whole;
listen calmly and with deliberation to all the people; and
take his time to get it right.

A President of the United States would not:

vilify dissenters from his plan as Nazis, fronts for the insurance companies, and right-wing corporate lobbyist thugs storming town hall meetings, saying they are just trying to "hurt" the President";
ridicule over half of the population, (because it is now over 50% who oppose his heath care plan according to polls) including some of the very people who voted for him;
have his cronies disparagingly refer to protesters (incorrectly, by the way) as well-dressed Brooks Brothers types, the assertion being that they are just liars and paid operatives, and not genuinely concerned Americans;
cast the same aspersions on them as he did on "tea baggers" earlier this year; and
he would not allow his cronies, surrogates and others in his party to do and say these false, hateful things.

This is how the President of all the people would act and not act. But what did we get from IMPOTUS this week?

The President's People Calling Out Union Thugs:

On Thursday, August 6, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Jim Messina, sent the message out to democrat senators to "punch back twice as hard" at those contentious, but non-violent dissenters at recent town hall meetings. (Check out http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/25891.html)

Gee, how (un)surprising it was then, that the very same night, SEIU union thugs went to a town hall in St. Louis and beat up Kenneth Gladney, a black guy who had the nerve to sell buttons and flags to conservative attendees.

The attack on Gladney resulted in the arrest of SEIU union members for assault and disturbing the peace. (See video of the assault and pictures of Mr. Gladney, who had to be hospitalized for his injuries at http://tinyurl.com/l53nub)

(By the way, while you're looking at those pictures, try to identify the "Brooks Brothers" protesters. All I see is regular folks.

And if those veterans and seniors have "manufactured" and "faked" the anger we've seen them show at these town hall meetings, as IMPOTUS says they have, then the best actor Academy Awards this year must go to them.)

The President's Snitch Program

IMPOTUS, a former constitutional law professor who should know all about the First Amendment, is so upset about others expressing their opposition to his programs that he has now set up a snitch email campaign on the White House website.

He wants his many minions to email him information, including the identity of those saying "untrue" (untrue by what standard, please?) or "fishy" things about his health care proposal. (See this unprecedented and outrageous website spy campaign at http://tinyurl.com/kpl3qe)

Query: Since IMPOTUS has not read the bill, how would he know what's being said is untrue?)

Something's fishy all right: This program is un-American, and probably illegal. Many complaints about it, including some from people in his own party, have failed to get through the message how offensive and frankly terrifying this spy program is, or to get IMPOTUS to discontinue it.

To borrow and paraphrase from the Great Communicator, Ronald Reagan, let me say this loud and clear:

Mr. Obama: Tear Down This Site!!

The President as Hypocrite in Chief

We have a Community Organizer who is now angry with people for organizing simply because their ideas are opposed to his. What's a celebrated and worthy activity for him, is an evil sin for others.

It's OK for SEIU and ACORN (which gets your tax dollars to do its "organizing") and moveon.org to organize and "get in their faces" as IMPOTUS famously said on the campaign trail last year, but when others organize in contentious but non-violent ways, IMPOTUS says: "we will punch back twice as hard."

Another example of this hypocrisy came this past Thursday as IMPOTUS gave a speech at a campaign rally in Virginia for a local senator. (See clips of the speech at "The Two Faces of Obama" at http://tinyurl.com/nmjeey).

In that speech, IMPOTUS begins as a "uniter" but ended up as a "divider," accusing some Americans of making the current economic "mess," that others, like him, will have to clean up, stating that he didn't want the mess-making Americans "to do a lot of talking" but to just "get out of the way."

(I had always thought that there were multiple hands, spreading over multiple Administrations and Congresses–Barney Frank and the Freddie Mac "mess" for one–who contributed to our economic problems, but I guess it's just IMPOTUS's opponents who have made all the problems and who'd now better just SHUT UP!)

Mr. Obama, before your presidency becomes irretrievable, it's time to stop campaigning and start leading America, taken as a whole, and with all her people, not just your far left base.

As you forever keep reminding us, you are the President of the United States, representing all Americans of every stripe. Show honor to the honor bestowed upon you by the millions of trusting, hopeful Americans who have showered you with respect and goodwill. They deserve and expect you to return that in equal measure.

Time to Fight Back

2009-08-05T11:34:00.001-07:00

The Obama Administration is saying that people opposed to their Health Care Bill are just "Brooks Brothers"-wearing pawns being "orchestrated" by conservative groups and that their anger at town halls across the country is being "manufactured."

This is the same disrespect and dismissive treatment that The Tea Partiers got earlier this year from the Administration, and shows a real disconnect with the American people!

As another part of the Administration's trying to silence opposition, on the official White House web site, Big Brother is asking Americans to spy on each other by reporting "fishy" reporting on the internet about the Bill. I guess that means me and this blog, too! Take a look: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/Facts-Are-Stubborn-Things/

Obama voters, is this the kind of America you thought the President would bring? If not, I urge you not to sit back and just watch things unfold, but take action along with the rest of us who believe:

this Bill is not change we believe in;
we are being lied to about keeping private coverage and rationing, especially for seniors;
that Americans snitching to the White House on other Americans' exercise of free speech is un-American; and
we are ready to fight back!

Easy Way to Contact Your Representatives:

If you feel as I do that the current Health Care Bill HR 3200 should be stopped and that lawmakers should come up with a better plan to reform, not revolutionize, our health care system, you should check out the Townhall Online site below.

It's a very easy way to contact your senators and congressmen to voice your views.

There is an editable message pre-written for you, and the site will send your message either via email or letter to your representatives based on your zip code.

I just did it, and it took only a minute.

I frequently hear people complain about what is happening on health care. This is a quick way to do something and voice those concerns.

Here's the site: http://www.responsiblehealthreform.com/node/8?origin=thn.

Consider Donating for Ads against the Bill in Key States:

If you would like to contribute more to the effort, consider making even a small donation to the League of American Voters which is sponsoring ads against the Bill in key states. I heard about them through Dick Morris, author of the best seller "Catastrophe," political commentator, and former Clinton advisor.

I have made a donation, and hope you will, too.

You can see the proposed ad, check the organization out and make a donation
at: http://leagueofamericanvoters.com/

It's not enough to hope others will stop these outrages. We all must act.

Attention Seniors and Anyone Who Wants to Live to Be a Senior: The Dems' “Health” Care Plan Can Kill You.

2009-08-02T17:06:00.001-07:00

There's no nice way to say this: President Obama and the Democrat leaders in Congress are lying to you about your health care. Under the guise of "fixing" the economy and the cost of medical care, they have adopted the Orwellian role of "Big Brother," intent on substituting their collective judgment for that of individual Americans.

Make no mistake about it: they will not be satisfied until their brand of government has taken over as much of the private sector as possible, a goal they are well on their way to accomplishing.

In the intensely private, life-and-death area of health care, Big Brother has set about not to reform our health care problems but to create an entirely new government-run system.

This mirrors what Big Brother is trying to do with our system as a whole: tear down capitalism so that a socialist form of government can emerge. They are using the recession as an opportunity to revolutionize the very foundation of our government, rather than merely reform it.

Big Brother uses lies and fear tactics and overwhelming complexity coupled with an impetuous rush to act in order to accomplish their ends: redistributing wealth from the "haves" to the "have-nots," ends which in their view justify any means.

How do they lie to you? Let me count (at least some of) the ways.

Lie No. 1: Our Health Care System Is in Crisis and Must Be Replaced.

The truth is Big Brother wants to take over health care because it occupies about 1/5^th of the economy, and therefore would go a long way toward accomplishing the "ends" discussed above. Once they get hold of health care, we'll never get it back in private (your) hands.

As one of the President's political mentors, the 70's radical Saul Alinksy, wrote:

"A revolutionary organizer must shake up the prevailing patterns of (men's') lives-agitate, create disenchantment and discontent with the current values, to produce, if not a passion for change, at least a passive, affirmative, non-challenging climate." (Rules for Radicals, 1971, Saul D. Alinsky, Prologue, pp. xxi-xxii. Emphasis added.)

And so we see the President using his rhetorical skills to hammer away at how bad our health care is, which is not true, but necessary to convince people in order for "change" to take place. The truth is that our health care is the best in the world, with people deprived in other single payer (state run) health care systems coming to this country for treatment.

In fact, around 85% of Americans say they are satisfied with their health care coverage and their doctors. I always thought that 85% was a solid B, not the failing grade that the President and his cronies are alleging.

While we do need to do something for the remaining 15%, we don't need to tear down a system that is working for most, especially if it means replacing it with a gargantuan, incomprehensible, bureaucracy-expanding nightmare that is the proposed House Bill 3200, (the "Bill").

Lie No. 2: Their Health Care Plan Will Save Money.

This one is really a whopper. In the last month the independent Congressional Budget Office (CBO) in 3 separate reports has projected that the health plan's trillion dollar price tag will result in increasing costs and therefore the deficit, already swollen by the (failed) stimulus.

(Attention young people: you will be paying for the rest of your lives for Big Brother's power grabs, and the outsize growth of entitlement spending, and you, as much as anyone, should be fighting back.)

Common sense tells us that if you add millions of people to an already strained health care system, then costs will rise, taxes must rise to meet them, (just today Larry Summers said the Administration couldn't rule out a middle-class tax increase), and coverage will be reduced (rationing).

Lie No. 3: You Can Keep Your Health Plan If You Like It.

Last week, I detailed the dishonesty in this frequent mantra heard from the President. (Check out the piece entitled: When You're That Smart, Who Needs Facts? linked at the sidebar.)

It bears repeating here that Obama is disingenuous at best because any public option will eventually lead to a single payer. They want single payer, folks, because that's where the most power is. A public option plan leads to single payer by squeezing out the private sector over time.

Lie No. 4: We Aren't Advocating a Single Payer System.

Catch Obama describing himself in 2003 as a "proponent of single payer universal health care" and vowing that we'd have it when the Democrats take back the White House and the Congress. Watch how passionate he is in this video clip and convincing about his desire for single payer, and then compare it to how (unconvincing) he sounds today about protections for Americans in the Bill (the one he admits he hasn't read and isn't familiar with.) http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/june/barack_obama_on_sing.php.

This same single payer sentiment was recently repeated by Representative Barney Frank when confronted by proponents of single payer. He said that he's all in favor of single payer, but that getting a public option is the first step to getting there. (Check it out at http://atr.org/barney-frank-public-plan-best-route-a3616.)

Lie No. 5: Seniors Have Nothing to Fear.

As a lawyer, I'm used to reading unreadable pieces of legislation and regulations that state and federal governments produce in such vast quantities. (You would think they are being paid by the word.)

But even with my legal education and experience, a scroll through the 2,541 sections of the Bill (with its multiple sub-sections and sub-sub-sections) is enough to make your head swim. (The Democrat Rep. from Michigan, John Conyers, summed up why he wasn't going to read the bill by saying that he'd need 2 days and 2 lawyers just to get through it.)

It's also enough to make you angry, because a subject so intimate and important in each individual's life, should not be dealt with in such a convoluted, opaque (whatever happened to transparency?), incomprehensible, truth-obfuscating way. For a bill this important, every American should be able to go online and read it and understand it.

I've read in its entirety the section of the Bill on "Advance Care Planning Consultation" for seniors and the terminally ill. I think it is shocking that this is what is in store for Americans who make the mistake of growing old and/or sick.

The bottom line is that "orders for life sustaining treatment," (which will be made by some government board) will be explained to the individual who can state his or her preference, but does not have control over the order made.

Big Brother would like these individuals to quit being a drag on the economy and the health care system and to agree to "limit some or all specified interventions."
(The Bill, Section 1223, subsection (hhh)(1)-(5).

Translation: These mandatory consultations will have as a main purpose encouraging the very ill and seniors to agree when stating their "preference" to "limit" or forego such things as:

intense medical intervention;
transfer to a hospital;
use of antibiotics;
use of artificially administered nutrition and hydration. (See subsection (hhh) (5)(A)-(B), sub-subsections (B) (i) through (iv).

So let's get this straight:

In the first place, seniors and others deemed too old and/or ill to benefit from a treatment for a long enough period of time will have their health care rationed;
(Why give them a pacemaker or a hip replacement or dialysis or chemo treatments when a more able-bodied, younger person-perhaps even an illegal alien who is covered under the Bill-may get more years' benefit out of it);
We have enough taxpayer money to provide subsidized health care for 12 million illegal aliens;
We have enough taxpayer money to spend billions for clunker cars at $4,500 apiece, (which supports Big Brother's UAW voting bloc, and props up the industry Big Brother just bought (conflict of interest here?);
We have enough taxpayer money to pay for abortions, also covered in the Bill; (I guess "privacy" protects a woman's choice to end the life of a viable fetus, but there's no privacy protection for the elderly or ill to make a choice and prevent the government from prematurely ending their lives.)
We have enough taxpayer money to pay for the extremely expensive transgender sex-change operations;
But there's not enough money to pay for antibiotics and a little liquid nutrition for seniors and the terminally ill so they don't die of thirst or starvation;
And we put those seniors and the ill on the spot to agree to this treatment in advance so we can say we're not responsible for ending their lives.

I say that as Americans we can do better than this. We don't need to fix the 15% that is the problem by tearing down the 85% that works. We can reform, not revolutionize. And we don't need to do it on the backs of those least able to protect themselves, the old and the ill.

Our Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all men are entitled to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," not just the young, the able-bodied, or those in key Democrat constituent groups, like union workers and illegals.

Our Founding Fathers had it just right; Big Brother's got it wrong.

WHEN YOU’RE THAT SMART, WHO NEEDS FACTS?

2009-07-24T19:38:00.001-07:00

I've only just now begun to appreciate how truly smart IMPOTUS is. (I've tired of hearing and writing the word "Obama" and will refer to him here with this acronym for the phrase he so often uses to refer to himself: "I am the President of the United States.")

For each of the past 10 days IMPOTUS has been on a health (s)care road show with daily speeches, town hall meetings, hospital viewings, and Blue Dog beatings, culminating in that rouser of a press conference Wednesday night.

He and his voice are everywhere thanks to our subservient press providing endless broadcasts of his every move, to the point he is now more over-exposed than Britney Spears in her cobra costume.

For some of these past 10 days I had been blissfully news-free, enjoying a trip to the Tahitian islands: no papers, no TV, no cell phone, no computer, no missile threats, no IMPOTUS. (Well, almost no IMPOTUS. I did get a few tiring questions about him from a couple of French tourists; and our otherwise-charming Tahitian host on a remote atoll off Rangiroa liked to wear the infamous Hope T-Shirt with guess-who's face staring out at me.)

So my mind was fresh from this needed break in the news (re)cycle as I caught up with recent IMPOTUS events upon my return last week. And this past Wednesday night, (unaware that "So You Think You Can Dance?" was a viewing option), I tuned in to the IMPOTUS press conference (notably rescheduled from the 9:00 p.m. slot so IMPOTUS would not have to compete with Britain's Susan Boyle on America's Got Talent.)

Something happened at the end of that press conference which crystallized my view of the man. I don't know how I had missed "getting" it for so long. Despite the claims of his genius IQ from the media and other admirers, foolish me, I had resisted the notion.

But folks, his words in response to that last question have made it clear to me beyond cavil: IMPOTUS is so smart he does not need the facts to come up with answers.

It all came together for me with that softball question about the arrest in Cambridge, Mass. of his friend Henry Gates, an African-American Studies Professor from Harvard. Mr. Gates, a black man, was trying to force open the jammed front door of his home after returning from a trip with the help of his limo driver. An alert neighbor, knowing that there had been burglaries in the area, called the police.

According to the arriving police officer, Mr. Gates became irate, uncooperative and belligerent, screaming accusations of racism at the officer when asked to produce identification. Police claim Gates continued his tirade against officers outside the house, threatening them that they didn't "know who they were dealing with."

The result was Mr. Gates's arrest for disturbing the peace (a crowd of onlookers had gathered and witnessed Gates' bizarre behavior, according to officers.)

Gates undoubtedly has a different story, and I don't presume to suggest what actually happened that night, because I don't have all the facts. But a lack of facts didn't stop IMPOTUS from stating what happened!

In answering the question, IMPOTUS said that "he didn't know the facts" and "wasn't there" and that he was "a friend" of Mr. Gates so he "might be prejudiced." But he then proceeded to take Mr. Gates' s side in the matter, (which no doubt will help Gates in the civil suit he is threatening), pronouncing:

that the officers were guilty of "acting stupidly,"
that police officers were still using "racial profiling" in America, and
implying that the officer in question had acted from racial motives.

I had to ask myself: How could he so clearly pronounce judgment on a subject about which he admitted in his first breath he did not know the facts?

I had just been asking myself the same question earlier in the press conference when he repeated the now familiar mantra that "if you like your health care, then you can keep your health care" when he had admitted he hadn't read the bill and wasn't fully familiar with the provision on retaining private insurance.

This admission came up in IMPOTUS's taped conference call with left-wing bloggers (the health (s)care road show left no stone unturned) when a blogger said he ran into an Investor's Business Daily (IBD) article that claimed Section 102 of the House Bill would outlaw private insurance. The blogger asked: "Is this true? Will people be able to keep their insurance and will insurers be able to write new policies even though H.R. 3200 is passed?"

IMPOTUS replied: "You know, I have to say that I am not familiar with the provision you are talking about." (Truth is he is not familiar with most of the 1,018 page Bill-said to project costs of $1 Billion per page- which he has not read.) But that didn't keep IMPOTUS from again promising later in the call: "…if you have health insurance, and you like it, and you have a doctor that you like, then you can keep it. Period."

But, Houston, we have a problem here: as IBD editorials point out, on page 16 of the Bill is a provision prohibiting changes to existing coverage, and making new coverage illegal. It states:

"Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" (of the year the legislation becomes law.) (Investor's Business Daily, Wednesday, July 15, 2009.)

Translation:

No new policies for private individual coverage can be written after the public option becomes law,
which would not only prevent the previously uninsured from buying private insurance,
but also would prevent those who leave a company to work for themselves from buying individual plans
from private carriers, and
would prevent changes or additions to existing policies, such as adding new family members or areas of coverage.

Worse yet, if government gets into the business of offering subsidized health insurance, the private market will die: IMPOTUS can't force employers to keep providing private plans, and many employers will prefer the option of paying a fine, dumping their employees into the public plan.

The Lewin Group, in a July 17 report for a study commissioned by the Heritage Foundation, states that if the House bill becomes law 83.4 million people (nearly half of those currently covered by medical insurance) will lose private insurance because their employers will drop coverage. (Wall Street Journal Opinion "ObamaCare in Trouble" by Karl Rove.)

I got confused at first when comparing the words of IMPOTUS about keeping your coverage to the words of the Bill itself and to commentary by people who had actually studied it.

I know that IMPOTUS can't be outright lying. To believe that would be to believe his ego is so big, he thinks that there's no whopper too big for us to swallow.
And we know he's not stupid, so this isn't just a mistake.
Some say that IMPOTUS will do anything to push through his radical left-wing Marxist ideology:
- large government is the savior of the masses;
- amassing power in that government is the first priority, and
- is an end justifying any means.

The notion that any of these possibilities could be true would mean that those who placed their trust in The One to be a moderate, post-partisan, and post-racial leader were duped.

This is much too painful to contemplate. Therefore, I am forced to conclude that IMPOTUS must simply be so much smarter than the rest of us plebs that he and he alone can see the truth.

He's so smart that he can see into the soul of a man he's never met and divine racism.
He's so smart he doesn't need to read the health care Bill to know what it says.
He's so smart he doesn't have to bother reconciling his promises to the actual provisions of the Bill.
He's so smart that he knows what's good for us better than we do ourselves.
He's so smart that he can take on the banks, the insurance companies, car companies, the economy, health care, energy, nuclear threats, two wars, and still have time for destroying our existing system of government to replace it with a "better" socialist state, all with only the experience of a community organizer, a short-term state senator and 150 working days in the US Senate.

These things must be true, because if they're not, IMPOTUS is not that smart after all, and is just a dishonest, power-grabbing, ideologically-driven leftist politico who cares more about himself and his radical agenda than the welfare of the American people.

Like a Fly at a 4th of July Picnic

2009-06-21T17:16:00.001-07:00

Ten days from now I should be enjoying hot breezes and cool Lillikoi margaritas from a lounge chair overlooking the beautiful, blue waters of Hawaii. But thanks to a shot across the bow from Kim Jong Il (Kim), (and an assist from President Obama), our family has made other travel plans.

The past few months, with the US and the world watching like helpless onlookers at the scene of a disaster, North Korea (NK) continued its aggressive acts:

sentencing 2 US journalists to 12 years hard labor on unspecified charges;
test firing 5 short range missiles;
conducting a nuclear test; and
in April, launching a Taepodong-2 (T-2) rocket over Japan.

To this tyrannical saber-rattling, our President (and the feckless UN) chose the same-old worse-than-useless "please be nice" approach. As stated in an excellent piece by Heritage Foundation senior research fellow, Bruce Klingner:

"The administration chose consensus over confrontation at the U.N. And as a result, in deference to veto-wielding China and Russia, the U.N. Security Council was able to agree only on a nonbinding presidential statement reiterating demands for compliance with 3-year-old Resolutions…(See Heritage.org, "How should the U.S. handle North Korea?" by Bruce Klingner, May 4, 2009.)

In response, Kim Jong Il was so chastened that he:

Kicked out international inspectors;
Threatened to build more nuclear weapons;
Vowed never to return to the 6 Party Talks;
Rejected repeated Obama invitations to bilateral talks;
Conducted a second nuclear test on May 25;
Today rattles his sabers by planning to launch another T-2 missile toward the great state of Hawaii over the 4^th of July;
Launched the voyage of the vessel the Kang Nam last Wednesday, which officials suspect contains illicit weapons (NK has approximately 2,500 to 5,000 tons of chemical and biological weapons) that could violate UN resolutions; and
Said that he will defy any UN member states that request to inspect the ship.)

Joe Biden, early in this administration (along with many others), warned that President Obama would be tested in the area of foreign affairs. Unfortunately, many of those tests have already been given, and our leader's grades are abysmal.

On the international apology tours, we saw Obama bow at the waist to the Saudi king, and cozy up to Latin American dictators. We endured Obama's America-bashing, which produced nothing except embarrassment at home and scorn abroad.

This week, we witnessed Obama’s weak response to the Iranian people’s revolt with his tentative, timid-looking statements (and silences), afraid to appear to be "meddling.” Apparently, protecting his ability to “talk without preconditions” to Iranian leaders takes precedence over all other concerns, even if it means he’d be sitting down with those who steal elections and use deadly violence against their own people.

And Obama’s statement that that there wasn’t much difference between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi anyway, makes no sense and further showed that Obama discounted the significance of what’s been happening in the streets of Iran.)

On top of that:

Obama gave what amounts to a verbal bow at the waist to Iran’s “Supreme Leader,” as he directly and deferentially referred to the Iranian ayatollah, marking the first time a US President has formally called the Iranian ruler by that title; and

Obama further pandered to the Iranian leader, (continuing his relentless, US-effacing obsequiousness), when he stated that he believed the Supreme Leader “…understands the Iranian people have deep concerns." Funny how the ayatollah’s “concern and understanding” so quickly changed into militia attacks with tear gas and bullets.

And then, on the current NK threat, we hear:

that the US military is positioning more missile defenses around Hawaii as a precaution
- (though Obama has proposed billions of dollars of cuts to these defenses);
that defense shields (thanks to Ronald Reagan) in Alaska and California are thought to be adequate to protect Hawaii
- (though according to US General James Cartwright, testifying this week before the Senate Armed Services Committee, he was only about "90%" confident we could shoot down a NK missile; and
- Obama wants to reduce the number of these defense shields from 44 to 30 to pay for his domestic agenda (See last week's blog on "Time to Build a Fallout Shelter…for more on Obama's weakening missile defense.)
that Defense Sec'y Gates has deployed the powerful SBX Radar system in Hawaii
- (though the Administration did not deploy the SBX during the April missile shoot, which many observers attribute to the Administration's fear it might "inflame the situation by indicating it may shoot down the missile." (I'm sorry, but isn't that the point??)
And we hear not a word directly from the President or his spokesmen on Hawaii's safety and that of its tourists during NK's expected shoot date of July 4.

I find Obama's silence on this subject to be inexcusable, when Hawaiians are on edge from NK's threat and will be taking a hit to their tourist economy over this incident. I'm sure that Hawaiians(and all Americans) are not terribly reassured by the notion that "most" but not all experts think we can shoot down a NK missile, and will find little comfort in that niggling "90% confidence" of our generals.

It is incredibly galling that this tyrannical NK regime grabs our citizens and imprisons them, defies international rules and sanctions, and threatens to come anywhere near our territory with one of its missiles.

It is also outrageous that we have a leader who is showing such a weak profile to the rest of the world and thereby endangering us, all in the name of some foolish notion
that it was only the "evil Bush" in office that kept other countries from being our friends, and that Obama-talk alone can change the hearts of dictators and thugs.

Can someone please explain to President Obama that his main tenet of international diplomacy is in error? He really seems to believe that if we're just nice enough and we talk nice enough, then even tyrants will be nice back to us. (Any parent who's seen what school yard bullies do to the "nice" kids who try to "just be nice" to them, knows how ridiculous this is.)

And if this approach would not work in the school yard, why would it work with autocrats who will kill, maim, stone, threaten and punish their own people, and have done worse to their "enemies"?

The "3:00 a.m. phone calls" are coming in, and it appears Obama does not know the right thing to say when he picks up the phone. It is now obvious that Obama's foreign policy approach, at least as far as Iran and North Korea are concerned, gets a low grade:

Despite Obama's careful avoidance of "meddling" in Iran's problems, the "Supreme Leader" accused the US of "meddling" anyway; and
Obama's extended hand to North Korea has met a clenched fist and aggression directed toward our homeland.

The press recently made a fuss (again, yawn…) over Obama's quick reflexes and fearless attack on a buzzing fly during an interview. Obama studied the fly's movements carefully, sized it up, and with athletic skill snatched that sucker out of the air, and killed it in his bare hand, dropping it to the ground and kicking it aside.

That's the kind of reflexes, fearlessness and cold-minded intent I'd like to see our President show about some of our real enemies. Mr. President: Think of them not as "Supreme" anythings or bullies to be feared, but like flies at a 4th of July picnic.

Time to Build a Fallout Shelter & Stock Up on Chips, Sodas and Beer!

2009-06-14T15:53:00.001-07:00

Did you feel that? That sense of the ground shifting beneath your feet was the bedrock of American freedoms being bulldozed by Obama and his Congressional allies.

That's a strong statement, but I don't think it overstates the case. Freedom is defined as the ability to act and live as one chooses without undue restraints or restrictions. And just look at what the government has already taken from us and what restrictions they have in store, all in the name of "helping" America.

"Undue Restraints & Restrictions"

The first "help" we got was the unprecedented levels of spending-$10 trillion worth of deficit spending over the next decade. But everyone knows that this money will have to be paid back through higher taxes on everyone, (they're already busy dreaming up taxes that will hit all levels of earners), and what we can't pay back will be a burden on our kids.

More "help" arrived in government takeovers of private enterprise, with the Administration now controlling banks, car companies, hiring and firing CEO's, closing car dealerships, appointing more "czars" than old Russia ever had, and violating contract rights whenever they see fit (like the Indiana pension funds sacrificed to the Chrysler deal).

Team Obama designs the kind of cars we will drive (and they won't be happy until we're all in cars the size of a toilet stall with as much crash protection as a roll of saran wrap).

Even the colors of cars are at risk, with proposals to ban black cars because they trap too much heat and are eco-unfriendly. (Black cars bad, white cars good!) (Though that wouldn't necessarily be true for cold climate states –won't they have to carve out a black car exception for winter months?)

Other freedoms on the chopping block include:

what you eat
what you drink
the guns & ammunition you can own

the freedom to listen to your favorite radio talk show
your choice of doctor, and
whether you get health care at all (Don't get too old or too sick or you might end up like some Brits who are rationed out of treatment entirely as not destined to live long enough to be worth the expense.)

More Taxes & Power Grabs

Even when certain freedoms are not banned entirely, they will be taxed, including taxes on:

sodas and sugary drinks (Will they anoint a "Junk Food Czar" next?)
alcohol (An "Adult Beverage Czar" perhaps?)
salty foods (Attention Pam: Your "Kettle Chips" are not safe.) (I wonder if it would be considered tax evasion to buy unsalted snacks and just add your own salt-or maybe they'll be taxing salt anyway…)
company-provided cell phones (25% of the value of your usage charges taxed to you as a "fringe benefit")
a national sales tax or VAT (value-added tax) on consumer goods
more taxes on cigarettes, which are now to be regulated by the FDA (Big Brother will decide how much-or if-nicotine can be put in cigarettes). (Though that may be the only way Obama can lose his cigarette habit…)
company provided health care benefits
(Though "some animals are more equal than others":
current union contracts for high level health care coverage would be excluded from the tax, another special favor for Obama's key election block)
energy taxes, or "cap and trade" taxes
limits on tax deductions for the "wealthy" (Just wait. Even if you're not "wealthy" now, you will be soon…)
Internet poker winnings! (Internet blog postings will be next.)

"Saved or Created"

All this "helping" was supposed to create new jobs, but instead they created the gimmick of "jobs saved or created." You've got to hand it to Obama for keeping a straight face while he says he's "saved or created 150,000 jobs" when:

1.5 million jobs have been lost during the 3 months since Obama's "stimulus" package was rammed through Congress, and
the unemployment rate has now surged past 9% despite Obama's promise it would not go above 8%.

Even some Democrats point out the inherent fraud such as Senator Max Baucus (D-MT), who blasted Treasury Sec'y Geithner on the "saved or created" trick during Senate hearings:

"You've created a situation where you can't be wrong… because you can take any scenario and make yourself look correct." (The Heritage Foundation, Morning Bell, "The Obama Jobs Gap," June 9, 2009.)

Our Freedom to Live Free from Attack

But the greatest dangers to our basic freedom to live in peace and security free from enemy attack, come from Obama's downgrading our missile defenses.

Iran and North Korea have been "working together" for a number of years to develop ballistic missiles and "have made significant progress," according to the head of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency, Army Lieutenant General Patrick O'Reilly, speaking this past Thursday at a Capitol Hill forum. ("North Korea, Iran joined on missile work: U.S. General" by Jim Wolf, Reuters, June 11, 2009).

While General O'Reilly said it was a "horse race" as to which nation was ahead in missile development, other forum panelists claimed that Iran had demonstrated greater expertise with test-firing a solid-fuel rocket with a range of about 1,200 miles, enough to reach Israel, US bases in the Mideast, and southeastern Europe.

In a new report from intelligence experts in the U.S. Air Force National Air and Space Intelligence Center, it is stated that Iran is in a position to, with sufficient foreign assistance, develop and test an ICBM capable of reaching the United States by 2015, a mere 6 years from now. (Reuters, supra, June 11, 2009).

And, we've all heard the recent news reports that North Korea has conducted a nuclear test and test fired at least 5 short-range missiles. Despite new UN sanctions proposed, North Korea's defiance grows and it now promises to weaponize all of its plutonium and to take military action if there is a blockade.

These threats are growing and endanger the lives of millions of Americans. According to a recent documentary put out by the Heritage Foundation, it is estimated that an ICBM with a WMD nuclear warhead would take only about 33 minutes to get from North Korea to the US or from Iran to the US. (For more information on the documentary, "33 Minutes: Protecting America in the New Missile Age," go to http://www.heritage.org/33-minutes/).

And yet in the face of these very real threats President Obama:

talked about unilateral disarmament;
proposed cutting billions from US missile defense programs;
disparaged the missile defense shields (despite their proven success);
proposed reducing the number of missile defense shields in Alaska and California from 44 to 30; and
considered scrapping Bush Administration agreements with Poland the Czech Republic to build defense shields in those countries.

Obama appears to believe that his words alone can go far to change entrenched hatreds and totalitarian regimes. There is a disturbing narcissism about that, and about a man who seems to think everything is "all about him," (Joe Biden's recent joke about Obama), as, for example, when Obama tied the large election turnout in Iran to his Cairo speech!

In favoring words over real defenses Obama tinkers with our safety and that of our allies. And, sometimes his words may make things less safe, as many fear he did in criticizing Israel's settlements in his Cairo speech while remaining silent on Palestinians' denial of Israel's legitimacy, and continued incitement of hate.

Obama famously said during the campaign "I get it." But in the area of missile defense, Obama does not appear to "get it" at all. In this failure, he makes himself, and us, look weak, and endangers our freedom.

We've often been told that Obama is incredibly intelligent, "he's so smart," a real thinker. I don't know about Obama's IQ, but I do know that:

over-spending, over-taxing, and over-regulating take away our freedoms and do not appear to be "helping" at all; and
relying on rhetorical defenses against the axis of evil is foolish and dangerous.

If this is "smart," give me stupid.

Abracadabra! Presto! Chango! And Gone!! The America We Knew (and other Tricks from Alinsky’s Playbook)

2009-05-31T11:52:00.001-07:00

Last year at the Penn & Teller show in Vegas, I was chosen to be in the magicians' "grand finale" trick. Penn asked the audience to pass around a joke book, urging each person to look at it carefully, but never letting any one person hang on to the book for very long.

I had just been handed the book when Penn ordered me to bring it on stage. There I was asked to sit down, and pick out a joke which I was to read aloud to the audience. The trick was the magicians' promise to tell the audience the punch line of my randomly selected joke just before I read it.

I wanted to "beat" the trick, and so I tried to study the book. At first Penn said I could take my time, but he would interrupt me every couple of seconds to answer some silly question or to repeat some instruction, or to ask if I'd picked my joke yet, while Teller kept up a flurry of distracting activities behind my chair.

As they intended, I never got a good look at the insides of that book, and finally gave up and did what was expected of me. The trick ended without a hitch as the magicians displayed a banner behind me with my joke's punch line just before I said it.

I bring up this experience here because for me, living through the first months of the Obama presidency feels a lot like it did sitting on that Vegas stage:

The dizzying feeling that you can't get a grasp on what's going on because there's just too much coming at you from all sides;
Feeling overwhelmed watching Obama spend billions and trillions of dollars, more dazzling than even those bright stage lights;
The frustration of not being allowed to actually "read the book," (Remember the 1100 page stimulus bill that Obama gave no one time to read?)
The pressure put on you to hurry up, and let them move along with their program;
And the sinking realization that the power is all theirs, so that you really have no choice but to give in to the stage direction and go along for the ride.

A Master of Sleight of Hand

After 4 months of "Shock and Awe" policy making and power grabs, I've come to see Obama as a sleight of hand master, one skilled in the art of doing something while not letting on how it is done and in fact pretending to do something else.

I've learned to discount what he offers in his right hand, and look for the cards he's holding in his left. Here are just a few examples:

In his right hand: "I am not a socialist and don't want to run businesses." In his left hand: He runs the banks, owns car companies, hires and fires CEO's, strong-arms creditors to give up their contractual rights, sets executive compensation, and closes car dealerships.

In his right hand: The promise to look forward and not dwell on the past. In his left hand: His recent speech on terror criticizing Bush 27 times.

In his right hand: The promise to cut spending and cut the deficit "by half." In his left hand: His spending spree, which will triple the national debt in 10 years.

In his right hand: His decrying a "government-run health care" system as "extreme." In his left hand: His advocating a plan that will leave us with just that.

In his right hand: A debate about "empathy" as a criterion for a Supreme Court jurist. In his left hand: The real criteria are judicial activism and policy-making.

Who is this guy and what does he have up his sleeves?

Obama came to the presidency with little experience and as pretty much an unknown quantity. Even his many admirers in the media remarked to each other post-election that "We don't really know who Barack Obama is."

So we have a president whom we didn't know well to begin with, and who now is always saying one thing but doing another, who appears hell-bent on taking us tomorrow to some uncharted territory that is known to his mind alone.

Yogi Berra's famous advice comes to mind: "If you don't know where you're going, you just might end up someplace else." So I think a responsible citizen must ask the question: Who then is this guy, and what is he trying to do with our country?

With all his flip-flops, it's hard to detect any true core beliefs in this man. Everything seems to be negotiable and/or expendable, including many items on the far-left's agenda, which has made them understandably disappointed and angry over issues like gay rights, abortion and the wars.

In fact I can find only two principles of action (as opposed to core beliefs) on Obama's part:

Ensure reelection in 2012:
(To this end, he has been very busy rewarding those who elected him, especially the unions, and demonizing his opponents); and,
Seize as much power as possible to redistribute wealth before everyone catches on to what is being done to America. (Which is why he's moving with such great speed.)

In examining Obama and his actions, I always consider the writings of Obama's old mentor, Saul Alinsky, whose 1971 book, "Rules for Radicals" was Obama's guidebook through his years as a community organizer. (Alinsky referred to "radicals" interchangeably with "community organizers." See more on Obama and Alinsky in my previous posts of April 19 and May 3.)

Alinsky called his book "a revolutionary handbook" with the stated goal of advising radicals (organizers) who want to take wealth away from those he called the "Haves" and give it to the "Have-Nots" for a "more equitable distribution of the means of life." ("R4R," pp. 3- 10.)

His book advised a "pragmatic" approach to changing the world, one in which radicals would infiltrate "the system" and, from places of power within government, set about not to reform it, but to attack it:

"…we are concerned with how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people…a mass power organization which will change the world…This means revolution." ("R4R," pp. 3-5, Emphasis added.)

Alinsky's "revolution" was no violent overthrow, nor was it specifically communist. Rather it was to be a new form of government, the exact shape of which radicals (organizers) would have to figure out along their way.

For Alinsky, the only ideology was change itself, directed to the general welfare, and he urged disciples to avoid "dogma," (core beliefs), in favor of political relativism:

"An organizer… is in an ideological dilemma. To begin with, he does not have a fixed truth-truth to him is relative and changing…

…the organizer is loose, resilient, fluid, and on the move…To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of widely different situations…In the end he has one conviction-a belief that if people have the power to act, in the long run they will, most of the time, reach the right decisions."(R4R, pp. 10-11, Emphasis added.)

What Alinsky advises is what Obama appears to be doing: free from the shackles of core beliefs, he is focused on seizing power. Confident in his arrogance, and buoyed by his popularity, Obama doesn't have a plan so much as a belief that he will know the right way toward the general welfare when he sees it.

If I'm right, and Obama is still taking Alinsky's direction, then he is "winging it" to a far greater degree than most have feared.

Are we to believe that this inexperienced, arrogant, core-belief-free man has a better idea for our form of government than the one established more than 230 years ago on the combined wisdom of our founding fathers?

The stage is set for a grand finale trick to be played on America. We must not be fooled. In his right hand he holds out "hope" and "change," but in his left is "revolution."

She Was Not—I Repeat Not—Telling the Truth

2009-05-19T14:36:00.001-07:00

Just when you thought those eyes could stretch no wider, there is House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whites of the eyes to the cameras, and, like a little kid caught in a big one, throwing out more and bigger lies in a desperate move to try to save her political hide.

By now you have heard of the controversy, really a scandal, surrounding Pelosi's knowledge of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EITs), and her multiple contradictory versions of events put forward in increasingly embarrassing TV appearances.

Many on the left, including most prominently Pelosi herself, are asking why Pelosi's knowledge of the EITs' use is important in the first place when what is really important is to investigate Bush era officials about the use of "torture" and other "war crimes."

The answer is very simple: Pelosi's knowledge about the use of specific EITs and her failure to speak out against them for at least 6 long years after she was briefed by the CIA lead to one stark conclusion: that despite her current protestations, Pelosi, just like the other Congressional representatives briefed, bought in to the necessity of using the EITs.

And if Pelosi, through her silence and inaction, condoned the practices, how can she lead a charge against others for using or authorizing them? If EITs are now seen as crimes, she is guilty as an accomplice.

When you look at her actions, it is clear that the "truth" commission which Pelosi proposes does not stem from core beliefs or a principled stand. On the contrary, it is just a political move to follow through on the leftist mania to "get" Bush officials, a proposition recently made possible by Obama's election and the democrat takeover of Congress.

What are the facts about Pelosi's actions and inaction?

First, Pelosi said that "We were not—I repeat not" told (during 2002 CIA briefings of Congressional leaders) about the EITs, even though she was present and other members of Congress and the CIA say the EITs were explained in detail to all present.
Next, Pelosi said that she did learn about the EITs, but only in 2003 and then through an aide.
When the press asked why she did nothing about EITs for the 6 years since 2003, Pelosi tried to deflect the question, saying that the CIA lied to her and had been "misleading Congress," (which if true would mean that individual CIA officers would be guilty of a crime, and if untrue, that Pelosi is liable for slander and libel.)
In response to Pelosi's statements, Obama's CIA Director, Leon Panetta, asserted that the CIA had truthfully reported its briefings, essentially calling Pelosi a liar when she blamed the CIA for misleading her.
Pelosi then softened her attack on the CIA and employed the left's perennial fall-back position, that Bush and his administration lied.
And, finally, Pelosi charged that the current focus on her is a Republican-orchestrated distraction from the main charges against those who pursued the EITs "which all of us long opposed." Oh, really.

When evaluating Pelosi's inaction (until recently) on the issue of "torture," a few scenarios suggest themselves which are easily dispensed with and should be rejected out of hand, as being too fantastical, such as:

That Pelosi thought the CIA was just explaining EITs as an academic exercise:
(i.e., the stuffy old professors at the CIA never used or intended to use EITs; and, following the briefings, the EITs would end up as mere scrawls in some memo destined for a dusty home in the bowels of Langley), and
That Pelosi was singled out by the CIA to be "lied to": (Here's the riddle: A room full of people. All are given the same briefing. Only one is "lied to." Go figure…)

No, the real reasons that Pelosi did not raise the torture issue for at least 6 years must include one or more of the following:

Conclusion 1: Pelosi was present at the briefings, believed the EITs to be torture but did not know what to do and so she did nothing. This would make her either incredibly stupid, or feckless at best.

Even those who believe her to be not the brightest bulb would hesitate to conclude she was too stupid or uninformed to know what to do. Keep in mind that Pelosi, the daughter of a well-known Maryland political family, was at the briefings because she was a high ranking member of Congress where she had served for decades at the time of the first briefings in 2002.

That she would not know what her options were to contest the "torture" of detainees is simply too far-fetched to believe.

Conclusion 2: Pelosi was present at the briefings, believed the EITs to be torture and she knew how to contest the issue, but she chose to do nothing. This would show an absolute failure of leadership and of courage, which would make her a coward.

In fact, a statement Pelosi herself made seems to point in that direction. During her first public statement on the issue she said regarding the CIA: "They come in to notify…you can't change what they're doing unless you can act as a committee or as a class..." This is exactly what she should have tried to do, if she really believed the EITs were torture, but she did nothing.

Her statement also belies the fact that the CIA and the administration "notify" Congressional leaders on issues like this because they seek Congressional "buy in" and because they need Congressional funding for CIA activities.

Pelosi did nothing even when the democrats took over leadership of Congress in 2006 and she was made the Speaker of the House! One would think that she could have got up "a committee" or "a class" by that time.

Conclusion 3: Pelosi was present at the briefings, and did not think that the EITs were torture but rather agreed with the other Congressional leaders present who asked the CIA if more couldn't be done in the name of post 9-11 security.

This is by far the likeliest conclusion. As a shrewd politician, Pelosi would not have wanted at the time to seem soft on terror, and could likely have concluded that the EITs would not come back to haunt her should they be questioned in the future. Obviously, the press and others would blame Bush and Cheney, wouldn't they?

Examining Pelosi's actions and motives on the "torture" issue is not a distraction, but rather goes to the heart of the matter: If Pelosi and others in Congress "bought in" to the use of the EITs, then they have no cause and no right to call for "truth" commissions and investigations of others when, by their failure to oppose the techniques, and by their silence, they condoned them.

Pelosi may have assumed that Bush hatred and the mainstream media's bowing to all things liberal would protect her from scrutiny. Unfortunately for her, her problem with "misremembering" (as my little boy used to call "lying") has been so blatant that even the press has not been able to ignore it.

In fact, even some democrat lawmakers have called for Pelosi to be investigated, and President Obama, through his spokesman, has essentially washed his hands of her and her predicament.

But my bet is that the dems will come through for her and circle the wagons as they always do. Pelosi may yet preside over a "truth" commission, though one is hard pressed to figure out how she would know the truth if she sees it.

If Pelosi survives, we will be left with a person, second in line to the Presidency, who is stupid or feckless or cowardly, and definitely dishonest, and who is, for sure, driven not by principles, but by a political agenda.

They say a lawyer who represents herself has a fool for a client. I say that a people who keep someone like Pelosi to represent them, make of themselves the fool.

Some Have Become That Which They Fear: Bigotry & Hatred on the Left

2009-05-11T09:43:00.001-07:00

Being politically correct is apparently not enough anymore. It is no longer sufficient merely to speak and act in such a way as to try not to cause offense. We must now be politically identical, or at least appear to be so.

And if we don't go along with that program, we can expect to be viciously attacked with Hate Speech by the 2009 version of the Thought Police. That is the lesson I learned from witnessing two recent media events.

The first event is the plight of Miss California, Carrie Prejean, who is being savagely attacked for the crime of not believing what gay activist Perez Hilton believes about gay marriage. (Please take a look at the video clip of another gay activist, Michael Musto, and MSNBC host Keith Olbermann trashing Ms. Prejean at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZK_0vmoIPI.)

The fact that the President of the United States, Hillary and Bill Clinton, a majority of voters in Prejean's home state of California, and a majority of people across the country believe as Ms. Prejean does, will not save her from those who would pillory her with vile invective for having the "wrong" view.

Hilton, a pageant judge, asked Ms. Prejean during the Miss USA contest if she believed that every state should legalize gay marriage. Prejean answered in the politically correct way, to the effect that she intended no offense, and thought it was a good thing that there was diversity in this country, but that she personally did not believe in gay marriage because of how she was raised and because of her faith.

Hilton later posted a nasty piece on his celebrity blog, calling Prejean every name that every woman never wants to be called, and then some. The media then lived up to its low reputation, and sacrificed Prejean's privacy and dignity by further mucking about in the (faux) dispute in order to pander to certain groups and bolster sagging ratings.

It seems highly probable that Prejean was singled out for the gay marriage question by Hilton because she is a student at San Diego Christian College. Many, if not most, Christian churches oppose gay marriage, so what better foil for Hilton's gay marriage view and what better way to create a media maelstrom than through this Christian beauty pageant contestant.

Christianity has become religion's endangered species, taking regular hits from the secular media and pop culture, where Christians are seen as retrogrades "clinging to their bibles." While other religions, such as Islam, seem to be off limits from attack, Christianity is fair game. Even on issues where Christians agree with Muslims, as for example on gay marriage, the Christian will be called out, but not the Muslim, for the Muslim view must be respected even if wrong, according to this double standard.

And so we have Hilton's and others' vicious attacks on Prejean's intelligence, her body parts, even her female gender, suggesting that she started out as a "Harry" and not a "Carrie."

And as if that's not enough, some in the media have been researching her parents' divorce records for embarrassing tidbits to use against her. So the message is that while tolerance will be championed for some, there is zero tolerance for others.

Another media event demonstrating the zero tolerance for opposing views by the New Thought Police is the treatment given to the Tea Partiers by the media. As I pointed out in last week's piece, the Tea Partiers were dissed and dismissed by prominent news anchors and even by the President himself.

But in some cases, notably that of actress and self-styled "activist" Janeane Garofalo, and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, we see people who have traveled so far down the left-turn-only lane that they have now become what they profess to hate: haters, intolerants, bigots.

As you can see from the MSNBC video clip at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms45EzMR0f8, Garofalo rants to an agreeing Keith Olbermann about how the April 15 Tea Partiers are nothing more than "white power group racists." "Let's be very clear," she says, that "this is racism straight up" on the part of Tea Partiers who "hate that a black guy is in the White House."

This would be laughable if it were not so dangerous. For any major cable network, even a dying one like MSNBC, to put this kind of hate on the air is an outrageous attack not only on the peaceful citizens who participated in the April 15 protest, but on the First Amendment right to free speech itself.

To characterize all the protesters with the broad brush of "racism," and to say that the racism is directed against the President, is truly an outrage.

In addition to the charges of "racism," Garofalo further:

attacked the protesters' intelligence as being barely evolved;
expounded on some theory of hers about the protesters' organic brain deficiencies, something she calls a "limbic brain");
said that the African-American Tea Partiers must all be suffering from "Stockholm Syndrome" meaning they are simply brainwashed; and
went off on Fox News and anyone who would watch it as being of the lowest sort, and certainly not "cerebral" enough to watch the apparently enlightened coverage on MSNBC.

Unfortunately, this intolerant, all-knowing superiority is not limited to the Hiltons, Garofalos and Olbermanns of the world, but to varying degrees seems to affect a good number of people on the left. This is troublesome, not just because it's irritating and stupid, but primarily because it appears to be making of them the same type of intolerant, prejudiced people they profess to hate.

I've run into too many people on the left (sorry, but I just don't run into anyone like this on the right), who are so absolutely convinced of the righteousness of their beliefs that they think anyone who opposes their beliefs must be incredibly stupid, misguided by religion, a reactionary, a redneck racist, a homophobe, a bigot, or all of the above. Because they see their opponents this way, they view just about anything as being justified in marginalizing these opponents.

In other words, they're not troubled by some Hate Speech, as long as it's targeted at the "right" people, and even if those people are just private citizens.

The dictionary defines a bigot as an" intolerant person," one with "strong opinions, especially on politics, religion, or ethnicity, who refuses to accept different views." A "racist" is defined as someone "prejudiced against other races."

Haven't Mr. Hilton and Ms. Garofalo defined themselves by their own words and actions as bigots under this definition, and, in Garofalo's case, as a racist with her sweeping stereotyping of Tea Partiers as a "white power group." And haven't Olbermann and others, by looking on with approval of this intolerant behavior, cast themselves under the same light?

The goals fought for, and largely won, in the area of Civil Rights can be summed up, I believe, in one word: tolerance, which means not only accepting differences and differing views of other people, but also fairness toward the people who hold these different views.

It's not enough to say, "Well, my side's speech seems protected now, so the hell with others' speech." For when others' right to free speech has been silenced, who will be there to speak up to for yours? Tolerance that only travels down a one-way street is not tolerance at all: It is tyranny.

“Rules for Radicals” Lesson No. 2: On Polarizing the “Devils”

2009-05-03T12:50:00.001-07:00

I'm so much nicer than Daniel Ortega, Raul Castro, Hugo Chavez and the other dictators and thugs President Obama's set about meeting and greeting. I've never berated America, and I've never oppressed anyone that I can think of, other than some courtroom opponents, and perhaps some members of my immediate family. So why is President Obama so charming to all those guys, but downright mean to people like me?

As I wrote in last week's post, I had had at least a glimmer of "hope" when I heard Barack Obama promise in his inaugural address, to those like me who voted for the other guy, that "I will be your President, too."

That gave me some hope that maybe, every now and then, there'd be a little bit of room under the cool cat's umbrella for some shelter from the media storm of disapproval of all things Republican and on the "right;" that Obama would "extend a hand" to our "unclenched fists;" that he would use that calm voice and cool, collected demeanor to let people on my side know that he also understands our pains and fears.

President Obama is one popular guy. The media are, shall we say, "enchanted" with him and his "swagga." (See the video clip, linked above right, of CNN swooning over Obama's "Swagga.") And he and his handsome family grace more magazine covers than Angie, Jennifer and Octomom combined. In fact, he's got so much going for him in the popularity department, that for the life of me I could not understand why he didn't occasionally shine a little light and warmth toward the right side of the street.

It would be noblesse oblige on his part to be gracious. But no, we have had to sit back and watch him flash that smile at the rest of the world, especially the world of socialists, dictators and leftists. He has more warm fuzzies to share with illegal aliens, nuclear renegades and countries that openly threaten to destroy our allies than with Republicans, Libertarians, and Tea Partiers. For us there is only scorn and derision.

A strong clue that Obama would not be "my president, too" was when he wouldn't allow Congress enough time to even read the stimulus bill. The Republicans in Congress certainly had had no hand in writing or shaping the bill. Since the primary long-term effect of the "stimulus" will be to deepen the deficit to unprecedented levels which surely will mean more and higher taxes for years to come, not letting Congress read it before a vote is a slap-in-the-face to all taxpayers. In fact, it is taxation without (meaningful) representation.

Obama says he'll talk with anybody, including Akmadinajad and Kim Jong Il, (who by the way don't seem too anxious to talk with him) but he doesn't appear to be interested in really listening to my representatives, to people who share my views.

The next low blow was when his Head of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, issued a memo just before the April 15 Tea Parties which tied "right-wing extremists" and violent "racists" to returning veterans and legitimate conservative views on abortion, gun rights, immigration, and the economy. Branding non-violent Americans with conservative views as potential homeland "terrorists" was not the kind of outreach that I expected from a president who wants to be "my president, too."

But the unkindest cut came directly from the President himself. While waiting to watch the 100 Day Press Conference Love-In, (to prepare for which I had even taken some no-doze to make sure I'd last through the whole thing), I saw the video of Obama's earlier town hall appearance in St. Louis.

Using a derisive tone, and a level of sarcasm not ordinarily heard from sitting presidents in describing fellow Americans, Obama dissed the Tea Partiers, ignored their message, and maligned their motives. (To view the clip itself, go to http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/21870.html.)

Obama's comments need to be broken down, to get his drift and derision. In response to a question about fiscal discipline and entitlements, Obama hesitated, acting as if suppressing laughter, and then had this to say in reference to the Tea Parties:

"Those of you who are watching certain news channels on which I'm not very popular" (implying that the Tea Partiers did not represent a broad section of America and were just a creation of Fox News, and insinuating that the Tea Partiers and Fox were against the president personally);

"…you see folks wavin' tea bags around" (pausing for (nervous) laughter, the scorn just dripping from his lips as he waved an imaginary tea bag around);

"..let me just remind them, I'm happy to have a serious conversation" (the word "serious" leaned on, as if there was nothing serious about the Tea Parties and the protesters' concerns);

"about how we're going to cut our health care costs down…and stabilize Social Security" (totally dismissing the Tea Partiers' primary concerns about the growth of government and the exploding deficit);

"But, let's not play games and pretend that the reason (for the deficit) is because of the Recovery Act." (this said with voice raised, as if the Tea Partiers were naughty children playing games and pretending; and, as always, exculpating himself from responsibility with his "don't blame me" mantra), and ending with

"(decrying)…tax cuts for the wealthy…and I don't intend to go back to it." (This last part delivered in a loud, angry and defiant tone as in he'll "show us who's boss.")

So, you can see why I'm not feelin' it that Obama really wants to be my president, too. Why didn't the President have at least some words in support of Tea Partiers' First Amendment rights to free speech? Why did he not try to reassure them? Why did he make fun of our side?

Whenever perplexed about what Obama is doing, or why he's doing it, I look to the writings of Saul Alinsky for answers. Alinsky, a 1960's-styled proponent of "radical" politics, and his writings were a big influence from early on in Obama's career, both as community organizer and politician.

As discussed in my piece on the tactic of "Ridicule" (see the post published on April 19), Alinsky urged his disciples in his 1971 book "Rules for Radicals" to employ certain tactics to prevail in their quest to take from the "Haves" to give to the "Have-Nots." ("Rules for Radicals," p. 3.)

In his chapter on "Tactics," Alinsky describes the thirteenth "tactic" for radicals (also referred to as "community organizers") as follows:

"The thirteenth rule: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

In conflict tactics there are certain rules that the organizer should always regard as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and 'frozen.'…Obviously there is no point to tactics unless one has a target upon which to center the attacks…

The other important point in the choosing of a target is that it must be a personification, not something general and abstract (with examples given to attack people directly, not their companies and institutions)…Let nothing get you off your target.

With this focus comes a polarization. As we have indicated before, all issues must be polarized if action is to follow. The classic statement on polarization comes from Christ: 'He that is not with me is against me'…One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other." ("Rules for Radicals," pp. 130-134; parenthetical matter summarizes content, emphasis added.)

Whew! No wonder one feels demonized! To look to this president for manna from heaven, for oil poured on troubled waters, for salve to national wounds appears to be in vain.

And it's no matter that we wouldn't go so far as to ask for homeboy handshakes, apologies, groveling or bows at the waist, or that we wouldn't even ask for the patience and forbearance the president shows Joe Biden, for crying out loud.

For it looks like Obama's brand of leadership may boil down to partisan tactics of polarization and personalized attack against the "devils" on the right.

More “Torture” to Come: Show Trials, “Truth” Commissions, and Obama’s Failure to Lead

2009-04-26T18:59:00.001-07:00

Despite a cynical bent, I'm capable of believing almost anything for at least 15 seconds. So when President Obama, in his inaugural address, said to those Americans like me who had not supported his candidacy, "I will be your president, too," that trusting part of me wanted to believe it. At least for a brief moment, I, too, had "hope."

I hoped that President Obama would govern more from the center. I hoped he would resist the strident calls from the extreme left to destroy people on the right. I hoped that I could feel that, at least occasionally, he was acting as "my president, too."

Those hopes have been dashed in a myriad of ways during Obama's first 100 days, but in no way more dispiriting than in his failure to lead his party away from a path of retribution over the "torture" issue.

Investigating the Bush administration over the Iraq war and torture has topped the agenda of the far left for a long time. The anti-Bush rage has been boiling just under the surface and now is bubbling over the top. What brought it to this point was Obama's decision to release the classified "torture memos."

In the space of the last 10 days, Mr. Obama took the following steps:

Proclaiming that America had "lost its moral compass," Obama said we would no longer use enhanced interrogation practices, but would move forward and not look for retribution;
Going against the
advice of his own CIA Director, Leon Panetta, and of the 4 previous CIA Directors, Obama released only part of the classified CIA "torture memos," the part detailing the harsh interrogation techniques, while refusing to release the part dealing with results obtained from their use;
Obama sent Rahm Emanuel to the networks to explain that releasing the memos would make America safer because these interrogation techniques helped enlist more terrorists;
Obama then met with CIA employees to reassure that he wouldn't prosecute anyone;
But later Obama said that maybe there could be a congressional investigation or a truth commission;
Then Obama told legislators that such an inquiry would distract from his legislative agenda;
Then Obama said that Eric Holder, Attorney General, (remember his great judgment on the Marc Rich pardon, and clemency for 16 violent Puerto Rican militants while in Clinton's Justice Department) would be the one to decide if anyone needed to be prosecuted; and,
Obama might now release photos of the interrogation techniques and the identities of some of the CIA officials involved.

What are we to make of this flip-flopping? One might fairly conclude that Obama's initially-stated preference, of moving forward without retribution, has been eroded by a pandering to the George Soros-moveon.org crowd. If you look at the left-wing blogs on this subject, it is clear that they have blood-lust for this game, calling for special prosecutors, commissions and prosecutions.

Is Obama afraid not to dance with those that brought him to the White House, i.e. his far left constituencies? It reminds me of something McCain said repeatedly throughout the campaign, to the effect that Obama never once crossed the aisle or crossed swords with his own party on any issue. And if you can't do that, you can't lead.

What America needs on this issue is leadership, not waffling. Obama has said that he likes to "think things through" before speaking, but he clearly failed to do enough pondering prior to making the key decision to release the memos which has opened Pandora 's Box. It seems that he is publically thinking his way, back and forth, through the labyrinths of this issue, which, pardon the expression, is a torture in itself. It is especially so for those of us who credit Bush and his administration for keeping us safe for the last 8 years.

We don't need a Ponderer in Chief who can't take a position and stick with it. And we certainly don't need a Panderer in Chief, who will cater to the ill will of certain voting constituencies to the disadvantage of the country as a whole.

And has there been any advantage to the country from releasing the memos and threatening public investigations? Other than appeasing the far left, I see none. But the disadvantages are many:

a weakened, vilified CIA cannot keep us safe;
a polarized nation cannot address the serious economic and security issues we face;
our allies' cooperation on intelligence is threatened;
our enemies are energized by our foolish finger-pointing;
released memos and photos, especially, might incite violent acts; and
a terrible precedent is set for a country which has never before sought to criminalize policy-making.

A new regime putting the previous one on trial is something we only see in banana republics. Consider these questions:

Should Eisenhower have prosecuted the Truman administration for dropping the A-bomb on Japan?
Should Nixon have prosecuted the Johnson and Kennedy administrations for getting us into Vietnam?
Should Bush have prosecuted the Clinton administration for starting the policy of rendition (in which terror suspects are taken to other countries for "interrogations" that don't have to comport with any standards?)
Should Bush have prosecuted the Clinton administration for bombing a Sudanese civilian target, a pharmaceutical plant, thought to be a Clinton "wag the dog" distraction from his impeachment problems?

Criminalizing policy decisions is just plain wrong and foolish, and President Obama needs to say this loud and clear so as to end the matter. Instead he's still pussyfooting around the issue. Complaining that it might hurt his legislative agenda is just another way of saying prosecutions are really the right thing to do, but they might hurt his health care and energy plans.

If Obama chooses to go forward with investigations, there will be blood. For it is clear, that members of Congress of both parties, including and especially Nancy Pelosi, our current Speaker of the House, were fully briefed on these interrogation tactics, yet never spoke up to protest, making them accessories to any "crimes" who would also have to be investigated.

In late 2002, Pelosi was the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, so she was part of the "Gang of Four" briefings given to top members of Congress. In all, there were about 30 private briefings by the CIA, some of which included descriptions of waterboarding and the other "harsh interrogation" methods.

According to the then chair of that committee, Peter Goss, all the members of the House and Senate committees "understood what the CIA was doing," "gave the CIA our bipartisan support," and "funding to carry out its activities," without "a single objection from my colleagues." (Security before Politics by Peter J. Goss, The Washington Post, April 25, 2009.)

Goss, who was later made a CIA director under Bush from 2004-2006, wrote that he was "slack-jawed" to learn that members of Congress somehow had developed amnesia over what was in the briefings, and that they now claim to have not understood the techniques. He must have been referring to Pelosi's stumbling explanation that she thought waterboarding and the like "could" be used but didn't know that they "would" be used. Would this make sense to anyone with even half a brain? (Though therein might lie her defense...)

On the underlying "torture" issue itself, I think we need a little perspective. Maybe it's because I was schooled by the BVM nuns out of Chicago who could teach the CIA a thing or two about terror and humiliation tactics, but I confess that I don't "get" all the outrage considering the efforts made to interpret the law, to ensure the subjects were not injured, physically or mentally, and considering the threats that we faced and still face. If the methods had truly been perceived at the time to be inappropriate, surely the "Gang of Four" or others would have raised objection.

Remember those 3,000 people dying on 9/11? Remember their friends and family wandering around the streets of New York looking for loved ones? Remember Daniel Pearl and the other beheading victims? No mercy, no reason. Those victims and their families and the rest of us haunted George Bush and Dick Cheney and others in the administration and Congress, and they obtained intelligence from known terrorists in order to protect us all.

Can you or I say that if terrorists had our children, and "interrogation techniques" like waterboarding, might provide results that would free our children, that we wouldn't pursue the techniques? And if it's justified to save your child's life, then how much more compelling is it to save the lives of tens of thousands?

Obama decided to change the CIA policy, which is his prerogative. But to put others who disagree with him on trial, in what could only be a shameful display of posturing, pontificating, demonizing, and politicking, would be a great disservice to this country.

It's easy to Monday morning quarterback in the peace that comes from 8 years of freedom from homeland attacks. But, Mr. President, don't persecute the people who gave us that peace and kept us safe.

“Rules for Radicals” Lesson No. 1: On Naked Emperors, Flying Pizza Pans, and Ridiculous Fun!

2009-04-19T12:07:00.001-07:00

I recently sent the link to this blog to an old acquaintance, once a Republican but apparently now an Obama girl. She responded to my post "Report on BO's 1^st 60 Days" with a number of heated retorts, blamed all ills on "the last 8 years," and, in an effusion of liberal bipartisan outreach, called me a "neo-con," whom she hoped had not become an anti-abortion creationist homophobe.

She concluded her critique by saying it would be useless to try to change my mind since all I could do was "ridicule Obama."

I had been unaware up until then that it wasn't proper to ridicule a president and his policies. After witnessing the endless stream of invective and ridicule of Bush over the past 8 years, I had thought that ridiculing a president was perhaps considered a patriotic act, and certainly a national pastime. In fact, the phrase "the past 8 years" in itself has become a form of ridicule, routinely uttered by legions of Bush-haters, always in tones freighted with personal suffering and disdain.

And the ridicule hasn't been limited to Bush. Republicans, tea partiers and other "right-wing agitators" (this is how the new Homeland Security Department sees us), have been brutally sacrificed on the altar of ridicule by SNL and other liberal late night comedians, and, of course, by the liberal media. Despite all the great material that the Obama administration has been providing, they don't touch him, but never stop lampooning his political opponents.

Even major anchors for network and cable "news" shows can't resist ridiculing the right, like that usually serious-sounding Anderson Cooper on CNN who made sexually derisive comments to his giggling sidekick, David Gergen, about tea partiers having "a hard time finding their voice while tea bagging." (Though perhaps he just had some particular expertise about this to share…)

Of course I should have known when I wrote the "Report," that the rules of political etiquette for the left are far different from those for the right: While ridicule is a virtue for liberals and employed by them as a matter of entitlement, it is a dangerous, evil and undoubtedly racist, homophobic, and creationist sin when used by conservatives.

However, I submit to you, that pointing out when the emperor has no clothes is the right of any of the emperor's subjects, even when that nakedness reveals a chest rippling with muscle and sweat beaded up on his sun kissed skin so as to send tingles up the legs of certain leftist journalists...

But, rights aside, let's not forget that political ridicule is an enormous amount of fun that should not be denied to us in our pursuit of happiness!

The importance of ridicule as a radical tactic (and as source of fun) was pointed out by none other than Saul Alinsky, whose 1971 book, Rules for Radicals, became Obama's how-to manual for community (now world-community) organizing. Designed as a primer for young radicals, (interchangeably referred to by Alinsky as "organizers"), Rules for Radicals's purpose is stated in Chapter 1 as:

"What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be. The Prince was written by Machiavelli for the Haves on how to hold power. Rules for Radicals is written for the Have-Nots on how to take it away."

In his chapter on Tactics, which Alinsky described as "doing what you can with what you have," the radical guru advocated these important rules:

"The fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity…You can club them to death with their 'book' of rules and regulations.

The fourth rule carries within it the fifth rule: Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage.

The sixth rule is: A good tactic is one that your people enjoy. If your people are not having a ball doing it, there is something very wrong with the tactic." (Rules for Radicals, "Tactics," pp. 126-128, 152.)

I say that there's a lot to like and to learn from these rules for radicals. Ridicule is an incredibly effective arrow in the quiver of the leftist, so why should it not also be a powerful weapon for the conservative in the fight to turn back the policies of this oppressive, power-grabbing government?

Rather than always being the nice guys who cross the aisle, and turn the other cheek and never stoop to their level, instead let's Hoist Them with Their Own Petard! Club them with Their Own Book of Rules! And Have a Ball Doing It!!

Why not poke fun at a president who campaigned as the savior of the Have-Nots but who didn't take long to look and act like the King of the greedy Haves: flying in his favorite pizza chef from St. Louis with all the pans and equipment to make pies for a White House party.
- How much hubris
  does it take to burn all that fuel into the environment to fly in pizza pans from 1,500 miles away, just a week before imposing heavy new EPA regulations on greenhouse gases on the rest of us! Pity those too blind to see how arrogant this guy is!
- What was the carbon footprint for those flying pizza pans, Mr. President? And what's wrong with supporting your local pizza joints like the rest of us plebs? At least you could have flown in Chicago pizza, Mr. President, or, isn't Chicago pizza good enough for the man from the land of Lincoln?
Why not poke fun at a president who attacks CEOs for lavish parties while he entertains his friends with weekly parties on taxpayers' dollars?
- Is it just me, or do lavish weekly White House parties in the middle of the "worst catastrophic economic crisis of all time" come across as just a bit de trop?
- And how does the president's serving $150.00/lb. kobe beef to guests at another party strike you? Does that say "I'm tightening my belt with the rest of the country? Or doesn't it rather say on the one hand, "Take that, you wealthy taxpayers, you greedy Haves!" And on the other, "let them eat cake," you unemployed suckers, hunkering down for the lean times!")
Why not beat them up with their own book of rules, the Alinsky rules, which repeatedly decry "opulent materialism," and "materialistic decadence" and "arrogant opulence."
Why not poke fun at Michelle Obama, also an Alinsky disciple:
- who is now sporting celebrity-like false eyelashes
- and who has made history as the first FLOTUS ever to hire a full-time traveling makeup artist.
- (Well, she can't be expected to put those full-fan, lush, Diana Ross-diva falsies on herself, can she? Think of the gluey mess!)
Why not poke fun at a first lady who on the campaign trail decried America as a "downright mean place" where the Haves have so much and the Have-Nots have not enough, but who now:
- is on a spending spree for designer clothes, haute couture, stylists, makeup artists and the world's approval of her fashion style.
- (Just think of how many unemployed women could be clothed in job-hunting attire for the cost of her lavish wardrobe.)

So you get the idea. With the BO administration providing so much material for ridicule, why let the left have all the fun? Get in touch with your inner radical! Have some fun at the expense of these hypocrites who do not practice what they preach, and who are living the extravagant good life, while threatening your and my ability to pursue ours.

Club Them with Their Own Book of Rules! Hoist Them on Their Own Petards!

Not ridicule this president? How ridiculous!!

SNL Finally Digs Obama

2009-04-07T14:45:00.000-07:00

Take a look at this video for some well-placed barbs.

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/04/05/snl-obama-picks-winners/

That Giant Sucking Sound: The Arrogance & Appeasement Tour

2009-04-06T19:54:00.000-07:00

He just can't help himself. Barack Obama doesn't know any other way than to dis America. He can't seem to say anything nice about us-even while on foreign soil, while to the rest of the world he attributes qualities that surely they never possessed:

Speaking of France and Germany, he faulted Americans for not recognizing that those two countries are the leaders of the free world (Is he smoking something? Did he skip class during the lessons about the 2 world wars?);
To an adoring crowd of adolescents in a Czech stadium, he intoned that Americans were too often inclined to be "arrogant, dismissive, even derisive" (And speaking of arrogance, Mr. President, who gave you permission to apologize for any of us? There wasn't too much evidence of arrogance on the beaches of Normandy, was there? Or is that just too last century for him and the Euros to recall?);
And gracious god that he is, he apologized to the world for our leading them into financial meltdown.

The President likes to remind us that "words matter." Indeed, they do. Unfortunately, when words escaped his mouth this week, That Giant Sucking Sound of the Sycophant and Brown Nose exhaled across the world:

Barack Obama, the leader of the free world, bowed at the waist to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, as only the King's subjects are required to do.
As if that wasn't bad enough, in Turkey he droned on about how peaceful Islam is, and how the US wants to convey its "deep appreciation" for the Islamic faith, "which has done so much over so many centuries to shape the world for the better -- including my own country." (We do? It did? Try telling that to the 17 year old girl who was beaten recently by the Taliban brother in Pakistan for the crime of leaving the house with her father.)

And what's Obama getting out of this? More than a little tongue in cheek amusement on the part of the foreign press. While our media is still and forever locked in drool-mode and rhapsodizing about Michelle's elegant (J. Crew-elegant?) attire, the British press, in particular, is having a lot of fun with his gaffes and quotes.

Obama said he wanted to improve our image abroad. This is not the way to do it. Words do matter. And if he can't say something nice about America, he shouldn't say anything at all.

A Report on BO’s 1st 60 Days, and a Plan for Surviving the Next 1,440

2009-04-05T11:30:00.001-07:00

Hard to believe it's only been 60 days since Barack Obama (BO) took office. What a pace he's set! Our far left Politico in Chief has been a virtual energizer-bunny-on-steroids of radical plans for America.

Every day he takes so many new far-left turns, that it is dizzying trying to keep up with it all, much less remember what has transpired. So I've decided to keep track of the high?lights of Team Obama's 1^st 60 days, and am sharing them with you and some of my other political correspondents.

I apologize for the length of this list, though it barely scratches the surface. So as not to overtax my fingers and your attention span-(we've all been taxed enough as it is), I've tried to keep my commentary limited.

Here's what this incredibly smart (so we are constantly told) man has been up to and what's happened on his watch: (The parenthetical phrases contrast his campaign image and promises with his actions.)

On the Economy:

As of March 20, the GAO predicts BO's budget will produce a $1.8 trillion deficit in the first year alone. (messiah of hope, he's not a big-spending liberal, he's so smart)

The stock market dives thousands of points since his inauguration; (messiah of hope, change)
Like Chicken Little crying "the sky is falling," BO has been bearish on the country's prospects, constantly criticizing Wall Street, the banks, CEO's, and Republicans, repeatedly crying about the imminent "catastrophe" and "crisis" if we don't do his bidding-i.e. massive spending on liberal causes; (messiah of hope, bipartisanship, "I will be your president, too", cool head Barry)
Rammed through his big-spending "stimulus" bill without giving people, especially the opposition, enough time to read it after he'd promised to give them 5 days (transparency, bipartisanship, he's not a big-spending liberal)
Slipping into the stimulus bill provisions on restructuring the country for national health care and then avoiding a serious debate on it by speeding the bill through the democrat controlled Congress (transparency, bipartisanship)
Promising to raise taxes on the "rich," -including limiting their mortgage and charitable deductions- during a recession, which history indicates will make the recession worse; (he's so smart, "I will be your president, too", he's not a radical-he just has radical friends)
Promising to impose new "cap & trade" energy taxes which will affect all the people to advance his green agenda, and which will hurt the economy; (only the rich will be taxed, he's so smart, he's not a radical-he just has radical friends)
Proposing to punish the "rich" and charities by limiting charitable deductions is tied to a plan to redirect charitable donations to BO-approved projects-in the "community"; (transparency, he's not a radical-he just has radical friends, he's not trying to redistribute wealth)
BO as Bailout King: TARP, AIG twice, Auto Industry, Stimulus, Record-Breaking Budget, Auto Parts; (he's not a big-spending liberal, he's so smart)
Signed last year's budget containing $9 billion in earmarks, which Bush refused to sign, without eliminating the earmark waste, demurring that it was "last year's budget" (accountability, we are going to end the practice of earmarks, "I will go line by line")
We're still waiting for BO's plan to fix the banking crisis. (Hey, Barry, how are you going to get the public to support spending more money on the banks after vilifying them so?) (he's so smart)

On AIG:
- Feigning outrage – he told Jay Leno he was "shocked" - over the AIG retention bonuses, and railing against the bonus recipients when the authorization for them was written into his
  stimulus bill that democrats wrote and voted for, and that he signed! (transparency, accountability, the most ethical administration, "I will go line by line," he's so smart)
Using and fueling the bonus outrage in order to deflect outrage about the greater squandering of our money to foreign banks through AIG payouts – $130 million in bonuses vs. $90 billion in payouts. (transparency, accountability)
Failing to speak out against Congress's action in targeting the bonus recipients for a 90% tax on the bonuses –surely an unconstitutional bill of attainder as BO, a former con law professor, should know –which act Congress took to distract from its own and BO's culpability over the retention bonuses they themselves included in the stimulus
(he's so smart, transparency, accountability, the most ethical administration)

On Illegal Immigration:
- Responding in Orange County's town hall meeting to a question about illegal immigration, BO suggested that it should be easier for unions to organize workers that are here (he's not a radical-he just has radical friends)
The BO administration has ordered ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officers to stop trying to enforce the immigration laws, creating fear in the department over doing their job (he's not a radical-he just has radical friends)

On the Unions:
- Approved a union proposal to prohibit a secret ballot among workers when deciding to unionize or not. (he's not a radical-he just has radical friends)
Started a trade war with our best trading partner, Mexico, over his decision to dissolve a successful trucking program at the border to please the unions who opposed it. (he's not a radical-he just has radical friends. You can expect to be paying a lot more for your fruits and veggies with newly imposed Mexican duties.)
On Individual Liberties:
- Creating an environment where individuals (AIG bonus recipients) are targeted by the government (NY AG Andrew Cuomo has demanded to have their names provided), resulting in some of those families receiving death threats, and being subjected to bus tours to their homes by union members who "just want to see how these rich AIG people live on our money"–McCarthyism? (he's not a radical-he just has radical friends)
Singling out private citizens for Presidential criticism for criticizing BO, such as Rush Limbaugh and CNBC's Rick Santelli who dared to express outrage at the President's mortgage bailout plan for certain deadbeat homeowners – Can you imagine Geo. W. Bush going after his many detractors like that? (he's not a radical-he just has radical friends, "I will be your president, too," cool head Barry)
On Veterans Affairs:
- While dispatching wife Michelle to minister to veteran families, on the other hand, he proposed to take away VA medical benefits, even for war injuries, in favor of a plan to make vets have their private insurers pay for treatment. (This is so outrageous, I don't know what category to put it in.)
On National Security:
- Made haste to do away with many of the Bush era practices put in place to protect us from terror attacks. ("I will improve the security of this country.")
Ordered GITMO closed without a clear plan for what to do with the detainees, though we hear that some of them will be released into the US. (he's not a radical-he just has radical friends)
Oh, I forgot: the plan is to no longer call them "enemy combatants." Apparently BO has decided to use semantics as a weapon in the war on terror; oh, excuse me, there is no longer a war on terror. I think they call it something else… (he's so smart)

Assembling his team:
BO reminded us that he had an enormous amount of executive experience running…well, his campaign. Using that experience, he said he'd assemble "the most ethical and transparent administration of all time," which has included the following, grouped by category:
Tax Cheats:
- Tim Geithner, architect of the AIG and Porkulous Spending Bills, and confirmed $34,000.00 Tax Cheat as Sec'y of the Treasury;
Former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, BO's new US Trade Rep failed to pay $10,000 in taxes;
BO's pick for Chief Performance Officer, Nancy Killefer, withdraw her name for failure to perform in paying her taxes; and,
Tom Daschle as head of Health and Human Services, who had to withdraw for failing to pay $200,000 in taxes.
Lobbyists/Activists:
- As Labor Sec'y, Helga Solis, whose father was a Teamster, is a well-known advocate for low-wage workers who has supported strikes and helped boost the minimum wage in California;
A Raytheon lobbyist (Wm. Lynn III), to be Deputy Defense Sec'y;
Mark Gitenstein, a lobbyist and a top Justice Dept. nominee, who qualifies under two categories-(see Ethically Challenged, below.)

Ethically Challenged:
- Bill Richardson, (former Dem. Governor of New Mexico) as Commerce Sec'y (until he pulled out due to a grand-jury investigation into his contracting practices in his state);
BO's Atty General, Eric Holder, who was instrumental in the "I now know it was wrong" Marc Rich pardon, and who pushed for clemency for 16 violent Puerto Rican militants while he was in Clinton's Justice Department;
Leon Panetta as head of the CIA, who has no intelligence experience and who earned last year $700k in speaking fees from troubled financial firms now receiving TARP money;
David Ogden as Deputy Atty. Gen'l, who represented pornographers in private practice;
Mark Gitenstein, a top Justice Dept. nominee, needed an ethics waiver because he's a lobbyist;
Hillary Clinton as Sec'y of State, who along with hubby Bill has received multi-million dollar donations for the Clinton Library from the same foreign states with whom she must now deal; and
last but not least, BO himself, for taking over $100,000 of AIG money during last year for Obama '08.

Obama's Dependence on TOTUS
- BO uses the teleprompter (dubbed "TOTUS," the Teleprompter of the United States, by Rush Limbaugh) for even minor, casual introductions (he's so smart, cool-head Barry)
- Getting confused at the Irish PM reception, and using the Irishman's teleprompter cues, BO thanked himself for hosting the reception (he's so smart)
Well, I'm running out of time and must conclude this without completing it, omitting such entertaining sideshows as the insult to the Brits over BO's gift to the British PM-a pack of movie DVD's! – when the Brits had a well thought out gift made from an anti-slavery ship commemorating the historic significance of BO's election. ("we'll get our allies to respect us again," he's so smart)
I'm sure I've left out lots of other important items, too, so feel free to let me know what they are. Also, please share this with others, if you consider it worthy.
There's another 1,440 days to go and I hope we and the country will survive them. Perhaps an answer would be to capture or sabotage TOTUS, since the economy seems to do better when BO doesn't open his mouth.
Best,
Michelle