An Enfeebled Obama

by Caroline Glick - September 28th, 2009 - Townhall.com

... Obama's foreign policy as a whole makes it fairly easy to imagine him ordering the US military to open hostilities against a US ally to defend a US adversary - even as that adversary goes out of its way to humiliate Obama personally and the US in general.

Since Obama took office, he has been abandoning one US ally after another while seeking to curry favor with one US adversary after another. At every turn, America's allies - from Israel to Honduras, to Columbia, South Korea and Japan, to Poland and the Czech Republic - have reacted with disbelief and horror to his treachery. And at every turn, America's adversaries - from Iran to Venezuela to North Korea and Russia - have responded with derision and contempt to his seemingly obsessive attempts to appease them.

The question is, "Can Americans become aware of the growing international disaster when the MSM continues to hide Obama incompetence." It is the press that reports goofs which allow the American people to learn about the inexperience of her leaders. Yet from the refusal by the press to comment on the 57 States stupidity, to the latest refusal to note that Barack Obama is demanding on behalf of Hamas (a terrorist organization) more concessions than Hamas requested from Israel, America's press has not done its job. Obama cannot ask of Isarael more than her enemies if he wants to try and look like a neutral party. Barack Obama has such contempt for his opposition that he treats them as if they are stupid. In the process he looks stupid himself. There is an argument to be made that he may well be.

Obama may well be a front man for others who ran his campaign. It was the refusal by the press to note his constant goofs that allowed for the image of competence to gain credence. In reality these goofs (or gaffes if you wish to be polite) were a constant reality in the campaign. Now they are a constant reality of his governance. When your enemies hold you in contempt and you stab your allies in the back, it does not leave you much support in the world. The impression of competence can quickly turn to an impression of incompetence... especially if incompetence is the reality.

Nightmare Presidency

Editorial - September 28th, 2009 - New Delhi Daily Pioneer

There has been a remarkable absence of clarity on Mr Obama’s strategic goals. In the early months, it was easy to pretend he was making up his mind. Now, it would seem he has no mind. His confusion on AfPak (the term which implies the unity of goals between Afgahnistan and Pakistan towards India) and constant shifting of tactical milestones would suggest he has little understanding of the nature of the challenge there and, behind those engaging phrases, is thoroughly confused.

If the Obama Administration’s most recent thoughts on AfPak are taken as final, the American President is looking to cut and run. He would want to begin bringing troops home by early 2012, in time for his re-election. This would mean delegating Afghanistan to the Pakistani Army, and asking it to control the Taliban. It would also activate a lethal Saudi-Pakistani-Taliban alliance. This formidable combination of wealth, geography, religious appeal, unending foot-soldiers and nuclear weapons would create a monster power straddling south and west Asia. To some degree, it could be offset by a strong India and a stable Iran, which would flank AfPak.

However, Mr Obama is determined that Teheran must not pursue its Bomb and India should be pressured to sign the NPT. Strangely, he has not considered asking Pakistan to give up its nukes in return for billions of dollars of “sustained and expanded commitment”.

One of the more intriguing aspects of this editorial is the clear explanation of why India has not supported the American goal of trying to limit Iran's nuclear ambitions. India sees Iran in light of its shiite majority as a counter balance to the sunni dominated Saudi and Pakistan extremists who threaten it. India does not see as credible the possibility that Iran will join with the Saudis and the Pakistanis in a common Muslim front. I wonder if they are reading this more accurately than is America?

Whatever their outlook on the sunni-shiite scism, it is clear that all sides in India have come to despise Barack Obama and see him as a clear threat to their national security.

Literary Lion Obama Will Roar No More

by Jack Cashill - September 28th, 2009 - American Thinker

This article documents new evidence of the literary fraud perpetrated by Barack Obama. He claims to have written two autobiographies in the form of memoirs. Forget the arrogance of writing an autobiography by someone who had accomplished so little at the time of their writing one, much less two. Forget that Obama spends millions on lawyers to assure his academic career remains secret. How narcissistic must you be to insist that you wrote two different books that are so clearly the work of another?

As Jack Cashill wrote:

From textual sleuthing, I had come to a comparable conclusion more than a year ago, namely that Obama had "turned the framework of his life over to terrorist emeritus Bill Ayers who roughed it in with his own darker sentiments and experiences." Embedded here is a visual summary of this research, produced by Chris Kusnell. (Part I) (Part II)

What is most amusing about this episode is the fact that liberals like Obama think having a couple of books supposedly written by them is just as good as being an actual author. The continuing dominance on the best seller lists by conservative books truly galls the supposedly intellectual elite liberals.

To conservatives the secrecy of Obama about his real history, so clearly intended to deceive, makes the books of Obama a great joke. Nearly as funny as the amateurish leader who cannot give a speech without "ghost written" words on a teleprompter. The poster showing Obama as the evil jokester from "Batman" is the most telling of insults. Liberals may still be in awe of Obama, but conservatives merely hold him in contempt. He is the ultimate affirmative action token.

The very best comment on this article was posted by Stuart Williamson, "Speaking of adulation: there are at least two large, worshipful books in the children's sections of the book chains on The Great I Am. In one of them there is a full page of Obama with a golden halo, and another of him, head bowed in a church. The accompanying text says that, one Sunday, as He prayed for guidance, God spoke to Him, saying 'Press forward, for eternity' while tears streamed down His cheeks."

Liberals are writing such adulation about Obama because they cannot accept the truth. He has learned to hate white people with a sincere grin on his face. He never lets his true emotion slip past that grin. His control amazes them as they cannot hide their own hate of conservatives nearly so well. So they let their admiration become adulation. Most of them are atheists. Still they have to have their 'God', even if they deny there is one. They have chosen Obama. In my opinion they should have chose someone smarter.

The Dead End Kids

by Richard Wilner - September 27th, 2009 - New York Post

The unemployment rate for young Americans has exploded to 52.2 percent -- a post-World War II high, according to the Labor Dept. -- meaning millions of Americans are staring at the likelihood that their lifetime earning potential will be diminished and, combined with the predicted slow economic recovery, their transition into productive members of society could be put on hold for an extended period of time.

And worse, without a clear economic recovery plan aimed at creating entry-level jobs, the odds of many of these young adults -- aged 16 to 24, excluding students -- getting a job and moving out of their parents' houses are long. Young workers have been among the hardest hit during the current recession -- in which a total of 9.5 million jobs have been lost.

There is not a single political appointment by Barack Obama in his growing regime of socialists who has EVER had their own company and had to make a payroll. Not one. Barack Obama and the Democrats are clueless about small business. Then again, I think it honest to say that George Bush and his Republican supporters were clueless about small business as well. Bush only stood by his Wall Street cronies and big business. He loved big business as much as he loved big government.

Bush did some things right, but not enough things right. People forget he was the first of our recent Presidents to think that handing out tax rebates would stimulate the economy. They didn't. He was the first to think that bailouts for huge corporations that had failed due to stupid business practices was an acceptable use of our tax dollars. It wasn't. Bush was also guilty of making our money worthless with ignorant monetary policy. That was indefensible.

However as bad as Bush was, Obama is vastly more damaging. The proof is in this story. The young cannot get jobs because of Obama. I know that Obama is still ranting about how he "inherited" these problems. Yet people have got to see that we are not coming out of the recession the way we always have before (except for the similar failure during the depression when the same ignorant actions were taken - why isn't that a lesson Obama can learn). This is due to how Obama is trying to fix the problems. The coming second plunge down during this crisis is ALL Obama. It was not necessary. It will condemn our young to a permanent lifetime reduction in wealth.

Now that is not change you can believe in.

Why Capitalism Fails

by Stephen Mihm - September 13th, 2009 - Boston Globe

Since the global financial system started unraveling in dramatic fashion two years ago, distinguished economists have suffered a crisis of their own. Ivy League professors who had trumpeted the dawn of a new era of stability have scrambled to explain how, exactly, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression had ambushed their entire profession.

This is an intriguing article by a person who is clearly an enemy of capitalism and free enterprise. You can tell that by a single sentence from the article, "In his writings, Minsky looked to his intellectual hero, Keynes, arguably the greatest economist of the 20th century." Actually, Milton Friedman pretty much superseded the thinking of Keynes. Anyone who still thinks of Keynes as "the greatest economist of the 20th century" is not up to speed. You will note, the writer of this article never even mentions Friedman. This antipathy to Friedman is typical of anti-capitalists who favor the socialism of Keynes.

I have a lot of problems with much of economic theory. As people like Schumpeter has noted, it is a messy process. Never so messy as when it discards rational history for Utopian perfection. However when someone writes an article titled "Why capitalism fails", you have to expect a bias in their writing. Certainly the history of America is proof that capitalism, whatever its imperfections, is a better solution in the long haul than any other system that has been proposed. Europe is a pretty good example of socialism. The key complaint about capitalism is it cannot guarantee full employment. Yet the socialism of Europe consistently has unemployment twice as high as America.

What supporters of capitalism often ignore is that there is a role for government in capitalism. The reality of competition is that ultimately there will be a single winnereven when the players do not cheat. That is called a monopoly, and capitalism has self destructed. Unfortunately that is the primary role of Wall Street in our modern system. As noted in this article, Minsky is right. Capitalism has inherent in it the elimination of risk when it stops funding new companies and only funds mergers and acquisitions. That leads to asset bubbles that bring the system down when the bubble bursts.

However we have to acknowledge that issue mentioned above, cheating. Capitalism doesn't work for the people unless it is fair competition. This gives a second powerful reason that government must play a role in capitalism. However that role must not pick winners or allow for monopolies. However we have evolved into a system that is not effectively resisting cheating or fraud based bubbles.

We have observed this problem in the last 20 years with the Internet, Real Estate, Banks and Insurance. That does not mean we abandon capitalism. We simply need to stop bailing out the failures and provide some more orderly mechanism to deflate the bubbles. Unregulated laissez faire capitalism is not the answer.

Ronald Reagan unleashed small business and created 20 years of growth. Clinton and Bush tried to unleash big business and created a rapid series of bubbles and busts. There are some important lessons in that pattern.

The Rules Murdering Our Troops

by Ralph Peters - September 24th, 2009 - New York Post

Over the decades, political correctness insinuated itself into the ranks of our "Washington player" generals and admirals. We now have four-stars who believe that improving our enemies' self-esteem is a crucial wartime goal.

And the Army published its disastrous Counterinsurgency Manual a few years back -- doctrine written by military intellectuals who, instead of listening to Infantry squad leaders, made a show of consulting "peace advocates" and "humanitarian workers."

The result was a manual based on a few heavily edited case studies "proving" that the key to success in fighting terrorists is to hand out soccer balls to worm-eaten children. The doctrine ignored the brutal lessons of 3,000 years of history -- because history isn't politically correct (it shows, relentlessly, that the only effective way to fight faith-fueled insurgents is with fire and sword).

The New York Times lavished praise on the manual. What does that tell you?

A few senior officers continue to push me to "lay off" the Counterinsurgency Manual. Sorry, but I'm more concerned about supporting the youngest private on patrol than I am with the reputation of any general.

As a real general put it a century ago, "The purpose of an Army is to fight." And the purpose of going to war is to win (that dirty word). It's not to sacrifice our own troops to make sad-sack do-gooders back home feel good.

We need to recognize that true morality lies in backing our troops, not in letting them die for whacko theories.

The next time you read about the death of a soldier or Marine in Afghanistan, don't just blame the Taliban. Blame the generals and politicians who sent them to war, then took away their weapons.

It is just such contemptible behavior by our generals that has moved me solidly into the get out of Afghanistan camp. We cannot trust anyone to protect our troops. The reality is that if the Taliban and Al Qaeda win the insurgency, we can go back in and clean house in weeks, losing a lot fewer troops than sitting around letting them pick us off. Even gutless Republicans like John McCain have tolerated cutting our missile defense and killing the F22 fighter jet we will need for the next war. Robert Gates is a traitor. Barack Obama plans to gut our defense. Yesterday he was announcing his plans to give up our nuclear weapons.

We need to bring our troops home because there is no one who can be counted on to not waste their lives in stupid rules of engagement. Even Bush tolerated this nonsense, which is part of the reason I stopped supporting him. We are currently at war with three forces in the world and no one seems serious about engaging any of them.

HSBC Bids Farewell To Dollar Supremacy

by Liam Halligan - September 20th, 2009 - London Telegraph

The sun is setting on the US dollar as the ultra-loose monetary policy of the US Federal Reserve forces China and the vibrant economies of the emerging world to forge a new global currency order, according to a new report by HSBC.

In less than one year, the profligate spending policies of Barack Obama has weakened America to the point that the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, one of the most powerful banks in the world (if not the most powerful), is predicting the end of American currency as the basis for international trade.

Barack Obama is so ignorant of the way the world currency system works, that he thinks the crisis in our banking system is over. He has been running around saying that he fixed the problem, when he has only made problems worse. Inflation is about to hit us hard due to the loose money policy of Obama's fed. Simultaneously, commercial mortgages are experiencing a rising default rate as prices collapse due to the unwillingness of foreign investors to risk the foreign exchange losses they will incur by investing in America.

It is no wonder that Castro and Putin love Barack Obama. Both have longed for American collapse for years and Obama is giving them their wish while asking for nothing in return. They have to be pinching themselves in wonder at their great fortune.

Ayers Is A Friend Ayers Wrote 'Dreams'

by Jack Cashill - September 23, 2009 - American Thinker

In his new book, "Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage," Best-selling celebrity journalist, Christopher Andersen, has blown a huge hole in the Obama genius myth without intending to do so.

Relying on inside sources, quite possibly Michelle Obama herself, Andersen describes how Dreams came to be published -- just as I had envisioned it in my articles on the authorship of Dreams. With the deadline pressing, Michelle recommended that Barack seek advice from "his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers."

To flesh out his family history, Obama had taped interviews with various family members. Andersen writes, "These oral histories, along with a partial manuscript and a truckload of notes, were given to Ayers." Andersen quotes a Hyde Park neighbor, "Everyone knew they were friends and that they worked on various projects together. It was no secret. Why would it be? People liked them both."

Two lies by Obama are exposed with this one story. He DENIES being a friend of Bill Ayers. He has insisted that NO ONE helped him write 'Dreams from my father'.

You would have to be an idiot to think that someone Barack Obama calls "just a guy in the neighborhood" was allowed to write his biography. Yet it is clear from the incompetent manuscript Obama originally submitted, and the total similarity with Ayers writing style of the second submittal, that 'Dreams' was authored by Ayers. His friends knew that Ayers had been asked to help. That Obama denies this is beyond arrogant. Obama thinks that everyone who supports him is an idiot.

More and more it is becoming clear that Obama is a lightweight. All his claims of genius are simply a grand con by people on the left who have helped to prop Obama up all his life. His latest United Nations speech proclaiming how America is the evil in the world is simply more proof that Obama is the first American President who does not love his country. Why is anyone surprised communist dictator Fidel Castro praised Barack Obama for his criticism of America.

The key to understanding Barack Obama is...
HE LIES.

The Dog Ate Global Warming

by Patrick J. Michaels - September 23rd, 2009 - National Review Online

Replication of experiments is welcomed by scientists so that their conclusions can be verified as credible. However the scientists whose work is the basis of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's claim of man caused global warming... will not share their data! Warwick Hughes became suspicious of the validity of the analysis by Phil Jones, one the two scientists who made the claims that appeared spurious when investigated.

Jones’s response to [this] fellow scientist attempting to replicate his work was, “We have 25 years or so invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?”

Reread that statement, for it is breathtaking in its anti-scientific thrust. In fact, the entire purpose of replication is to “try and find something wrong.” The ultimate objective of science is to do things so well that, indeed, nothing is wrong.

It is this arrogance, coupled with the repeated insistence by the scientists who believe in global warming that if you dispute them you are an evil "denier", that is starting to unravel support for their global warming claims. The hockey stick program made famous by Al Gore has been proven to be a fraud. Now the data fed into the program is being challenged. And all you get is the now disproved lie that 90% of all scientists accept global warming as fact so please "shut up".

Why are these people so unwilling to share the data behind their claims? Why is the known fraud in the claims simply ignored? Why is the standard response to any questioning of global warming to slander and defame the scientists who ask the questions?

This article now reports on the incredible pretense by the global warming fanatics that the scientists who were supposed to put together the data have lost the data that proves their claims?

After all that has happened in this debate you would have to be incredibly gullible to believe this.

White People Need To Be Forced To Step Down So Blacks Can Have Power

by Seton Motley - September 23rd, 2009 - Newsbusters

"Mark Lloyd is the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)'s Chief Diversity Officer, a.k.a. the Diversity Czar." He is the Barack Obama point man on the creation of a Negro Nation to replace America by creating rules to take away freedom of speech.

Lloyd now sits astride the FCC, which regulates and oversees a very finite world indeed. That being the radio dial, and the limited number of broadcast licenses that can be issued.

As Lloyd has said repeatedly if not exhaustively in writing, he thinks too few white people hold too many of this finite resource. And he has designed (in his 2006 book Prologue to a Farce) and co-authored (the 2007 Center for American Progress report The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio) a fee, fine and regulatory nightmare to effect a reduction in the number of the licenses they hold so that they may be redistributed to "more people of color, gays" and "other people."

Barack Obama does not want you to realize that he embraces Reverend Jeremiah Wright's extreme honkey hating views. He calls himself the "post racial" President, while each and every day he works to replace white America with black America, and give blacks power to take (i.e. redistribute) the wealth of whites.

Glen Beck has called Obama racist. It created a furor when he said it. Perhaps in this politically correct world where blacks insist that they cannot be racist, only whites can, the term is wrong. However I would like to know what you call someone who hates whites and seriously plans to "redistribute" their wealth and power if the term "racist" cannot be used? It damn sure is not "post racial".

Palin Speaks To Investors In Hong Kong

by Mark McDonald - September 23, 2009 - New York Times

A number of people who heard the speech in a packed hotel ballroom, which was closed to the media, said Mrs. Palin spoke from notes for 90 minutes and that she was articulate, well-prepared and even compelling.

“The speech was wide-ranging, very balanced, and she beat all expectations... ”

Another quote from Doug A. Coulter, head of private equity in the Asia-Pacific region for LGT Capital Partners, is I think the most compelling, "She didn’t sound at all like a far-right-wing conservative. She seemed to be positioning herself as a libertarian or a small-c conservative... "

That is what so many missed during the constant slander thrown at Palin during the campaign. She was never the extreme conservative she was portrayed as. She is a libertarian and extremely ethical. She is also very bright. It is those attributes that cause Democrats to go crazy when she speaks. That is America today... and Democrats hate it.

"We Suck Less"

The New York Times Aims Low

by Stuart Schwartz - September 22nd, 2009 - American Thinker

"We Suck Less." This is the catchphrase used by New York Times publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. to describe his operating and journalism philosophy. It is his "pet" expression, throwing out the initials "W.S.L." in answer to those who comment upon the dire straits of the news industry.

I would love to get an explanation from any of the left wing zealots who are so proud of Obama how they defend his primary supporters, The New York Times, spouting an operating philosophy of "We suck less."

It begs the argument, "Are you sure?" It seems to me that the New York Times "sucks more!" As does the President that they have worked so hard to put in power.

I am sure of it!

US Credit Shrinks At Great Depression Rate

... prompting fears of double-dip recession

by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - September 14th, 2009 - London Telegraph

Professor Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research said US bank loans have fallen at an annual pace of almost 14% in the three months to August (from $7,147bn to $6,886bn).

"There has been nothing like this in the USA since the 1930s," he said. "The rapid destruction of money balances is madness."

Barack Obama has started bragging about saving the banking system. He seems to lack understanding that pouring liquidity into an unstable system is bailing out the failures and not those who were still on sound footing. Bailing out failures has never been sound policy, especially when those failures are already the ones who have modeled their business on government largess.

It is therefore not surprising that Barack Obama cannot see the continuing financial system meltdown. The shrinking credit noted here is not the only serious catastrophe that is building up in the system. Commercial mortgages continue to default at higher and higher rates and the bubble in this market will burst soon.

Neither the growing credit collapse nor the growing commercial mortgage meltdown are sustainable. At the same time, Barack Obama is spending money like he runs Zimbabwe. That is a third serious problem that is also growing rapidly in America. Of course it is well known that Obama will not blame any of this on the true cause, government policy failures. He insists it is capitalism that is the cause. His solution is greater government control with Democrats at the helm.

At a time of disaster he may well persuade the American people to go along with him again. The coming crash may well end the experiment in American freedom and leave us with the same socialist tyranny that is destroying most of the rest of the world.

Obama's Bizare Beliefs

There have been a number of articles that have come out recently that indicate to me that Barack Obama is delusional in some of his positions. Two that stand out are linked below.

The first of these is his explanation of how he can say that he is certain that illegal aliens will not receive benefits under his health care plan. He simply proposes to "Legalize illegals to get them health care". Of course with that confusing position it can be argued he is not lying when he says his health plan will not fund care for illegals, though his position is not one that most Americans not support.

The second of these is his position that "We need to bail out newspapers or blogs will run the World ". Old line "Main Stream Media" supports him overwhelmingly. Blogs do not, though he certainly has a large number who do. However a press that is not uniformly subservient is not acceptable to Barack Obama. So he plans to take money from tax payers and bail out the failing newspapers that support him over fear that blogs will "run the world"? Blogs are the ultimate debating society. You can find someone on every side of an issue. So how can a debating society run the world when issues are openly debated?

I think it is honest to say these positions are delusional and dishonest. Barack Obama is not open about either of these positions though he occasionally states them in groups that support the ideas. He is confident that his subservient press will not expose them to a broader audience. How did we elect someone as President who thinks it is okay to secretly harbor beliefs that he hides to deceive the public?

As Acorn Falls, Democrats Would Be Wise to Duck

by Kevin Hassett - September 21st, 2009 - Bloomberg News

At least until last week, Democrats at the highest levels aggressively defended their political ally. That quickly changed. Last Monday, the Senate voted to sever federal funding for the organization. The House followed three days later. The U.S. Census Bureau also severed ties with Acorn, after planning to work in conjunction with the group on the 2010 census.

These steps are too little, too late. Democratic leadership has been running interference for the organization for years.

This is going to get rough. The Democrats have been so intimately allied with this corrupt organization that they can not credibly distance themselves at this point. However with Democrats controlling all the levers of power in our nation, I find myself doubtful that even the open corruption displayed by the recent videos will be enough to trigger anything that truly stops, or even slows down, ACORN activities. Already, the bills to stop funding ACORN are being carefully structured so that the complex oganization of affiliates will not be excluded from the tax payer funded gravy train.

In other words, the same people will get the same money, and do the same work they do now. It will simply be called something else. Even as Democrats have stopped calling themselves "liberals" because it became an unpopular term... they are now "progressives". "ACORN' will change its structure and its name and next week supposedly 'new' groups will be using tax payer dollars to illegally fund Democrat Party activities, just as they do now under ACORN. Barack Obama was one of the trainers of ACORN. He used to brag about this. Now he acts exactly as he did with Reverend Jeremiah Wright. "Why I had no idea that Reverend Wright was a honkey hating ractist." "why I had no idea that ACORN people were corrupt 'community organizers'."

Yeah, right.

Hi-Ho, The Derry-O Queen Michelle Goes Shopping

by Dana Milbank - September 18, 2009 - Washington Post

Let's say you're preparing dinner and you realize with dismay that you don't have any certified organic Tuscan kale. What to do?

Here's how Michelle Obama handled this very predicament Thursday afternoon:

The Secret Service and the D.C. police brought in three dozen vehicles and shut down H Street, Vermont Avenue, two lanes of I Street and an entrance to the McPherson Square Metro station. They swept the area, in front of the Department of Veterans Affairs, with bomb-sniffing dogs and installed magnetometers in the middle of the street, put up barricades to keep pedestrians out, and took positions with binoculars atop trucks. Though the produce stand was only a block or so from the White House, the first lady hopped into her armored limousine and pulled into the market amid the wail of sirens.

Then, and only then, could Obama purchase her leafy greens.

Queen Michelle is as tone deaf today as on the day when she told America that she was ashamed of it - until they voted for her husband. Read her Master's thesis and it is clear that this child of privilege, who got a government funded education at the grandest American schools (courtesy of affirmative action) still does not have a clue about the world.

Study after study has proved that organic gardening is a disaster if you are trying to feed the world's people. Yields are a fraction of the yields gotten when you use professional farm processes. If we converted to organic farming by law, as many of Michelle's extreme left wing friends would like, half the world would starve.

It is ironic that Norman Borlaug has just died at age 95. Most will respond to the news by saying "Who?" And that's a shame. As Investor's Business Daily noted in an editorial here:

Borlaug did more for humanity than all of the government programs ever devised put together.

Borlaug was known as the father of the Green Revolution, but he was no environmentalist. Unlike the greens, he was actually concerned about the condition of man.

While misanthropes and neo-Malthusians were predicting mass starvation, Borlaug developed technologies that dramatically increased the yields of food crops and made them more resistant to disease. Between 1960 and 1990, the agronomist's work was responsible for more than doubling world food production.

Queen Michelle shows no indication she has a clue who Borlaug was or how he did this. Of course when you have more servants than any first lady in the history of America, and consider yourself our first Queen, why would you care?

"Let them eat organic arugula", is an easy (even if stupid) response.

Is Obama A Narcissist?

by Robin of Berkeley - September 16th, 2009 - American Thinker

I picture Obama as a man crying out that he's thirsty although he's standing knee high in a fresh water stream. He's been blessed by the fortunes of a king -- prestigious private schools and universities, a lavish home in Chicago, two healthy little girls, state Senate and US Senate appointments, and now the Presidency.

And yet deep down, I beileve that Obama is still the wounded, angry little boy whose parents abandoned him and, years later, died. Rather than resent and mourn them, he's turned his rage on a more convenient target -- the entire United States system -- even though it's that very same system of largely White Americans who elected him President.

Is there anything more to Obama et al. than their righteous indignation? Their seething anger? Their leftist dogma?

These are crucial questions because "People of the Lie" eat, sleep, and drink rage. They are dangerous people because they are soulless, and the soul is where love, forgiveness, and truth live. They're like fallen angels; there is no there there.

Are Obama and his closest advisors, "People of the Lie" -- malignant narcissists? God, I hope not.

This is an intriguing article by someone who has rejected liberalism specifically because of the contradictions and bigotry that Obama has exposed. People on the left, liberals (progressives), socialists, fascists and communists, all adore Obama. What is it they see?

Fear of Obama and the America haters that he is appointing to power should be something that we talk about. Yet our MSM has declared this politically incorrect. Even such obvious problems as Van Jones and ACORN are off limits to the Obama supporters in the press. That conversation must happen.

It is one thing to say that you hope Obama is not a malignant narcisisst. But what if he is? What do we do?

Questions About Bush's Conservative Principles

by Byron York - September 15th, 2009 - Washington Examiner

If you are still deluded and under the belief that George W. Bush is - or ever was - a conservative, this article should change your mind.

Byron York writes:

Bush was preparing to give a speech to the annual meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC. The conference is the event of the year for conservative activists; Republican politicians are required to appear and offer their praise of the conservative movement.

[Matt] Latimer got the assignment to write Bush's speech. Draft in hand, he and a few other writers met with the president in the Oval Office. Bush was decidedly unenthusiastic.

"What is this movement you keep talking about in the speech?" the president asked Latimer.

Latimer explained that he meant the conservative movement -- the movement that gave rise to groups like CPAC.

Bush seemed perplexed. Latimer elaborated a bit more. Then Bush leaned forward, with a point to make.

"Let me tell you something," the president said. "I whupped Gary Bauer's ass in 2000. So take out all this movement stuff. There is no movement."

Bush seemed to equate the conservative movement -- the astonishing growth of conservative political strength that took place in the decades after Barry Goldwater's disastrous defeat in 1964 -- with the fortunes of Bauer, the evangelical Christian activist and former head of the Family Research Council whose 2000 presidential campaign went nowhere.

Now it was Latimer who looked perplexed. Bush tried to explain.

"Look, I know this probably sounds arrogant to say," the president said, "but I redefined the Republican Party."

If you look at the big government disaster that Bush left us, you will have to admit that he did redefine it. He did not just redefine it. He nearly destroyed it.

He and Karl Rove deluded nearly half the party with the idea that his liberal big government programs were "compassionate conservatism". In truth, there was never anything conservative about Bush. His redefinition is more accurately described as "compassionate communism". He conned the Republican Party. He even conned the Democrat Party which is why they worked so hard to destroy Bush. They never understood how liberal he was.

That is the key point that even Bush made above. He is arrogant, not conservative. What I can't understand is why so many Bush loyalists continue to insist he is conservative when even Bush rejects that label. The disaster he left our party still echoes. We struggle to protect our nation from one consequence of Bush subverting conservative unity... Barack Hussein Obama.

Fables For Adults

by Thomas Sowell - September 15th, 2009 - Townhall.com

Many years ago, as a small child, I was told one of those old-fashioned fables for children. It was about a dog with a bone in his mouth, who was walking on a log across a stream.

The dog looked down into the water and saw his reflection. He thought it was another dog with a bone in his mouth-- and it seemed to him that the other dog's bone was bigger than his. He decided that he was going to take the other dog's bone away and opened his mouth to attack.

It is with simple stories like this one that Thomas Sowell teaches us all about the important things in life. He must be tearing his hair out right now, as he watches the nation we both love and admire going down a road to a system that requires us to believe that the dog was right to drop his bone. Insanity. Nothing but insanity.

Media Malpractice: Tom Brokaw's World Implodes

by Jeffrey Lord - September 15th, 2009 - American Spectator

On the verge of being nominated for president on the Republican ticket, Senator Barry Goldwater is, says CBS journalist Daniel Schorr, heading to Germany for a vacation after the GOP Convention. Germany? Why Germany? The trip was, said reporter Schorr, "a move by Senator Goldwater to link up" with the far right-wing of German politics. Meaning, of course, the Nazis. Goldwater would not only be consorting with these Nazis, he was scheduled to stay at Berchtesgaden, the infamous country estate of Adolf Hitler. In fact, Goldwater had no such plans. None. Zero. Zip. But it was a vivid story that successfully added a few brush strokes to the portrait the media and his opponents sought to create (as in the CBS "Thunder on the Right" documentary) that Barry Goldwater was a far-right wing extremist, a nut case. Said a still angry Goldwater decades later of the attempt to paint him as a Hitler-loving Nazi-sympathizer (Goldwater was a Major General in the U.S. Air Force Reserve and a World War Two veteran): "The CBS broadcast was false, and Schorr's was the most irresponsible reporting I've witnessed in my life. The New York Times followed with an untrue account of its own."

This is just one of a string of anecdotes portraying the liberal track record of lies and distortions over 5 decades in America. This article, structured as a letter to Tom Brokaw, most recognized among the current generation of liberal liars in the mainstream media, tears open the fraud being perpetrated on the American people.

I doubt it will be answered. It will be ignored as all exposes on this bias have been ignored during the 50 years of liberal hypocrisy. However, as noted in the article, the Internet is making the fraud more obvious and more difficult to continue. The American people are seeing the fraud. The only question? Is it too late? It is hard to argue that 53% of America voted for an avowed Marxist. Anyone who did not know that Barack Obama was an avowed Marxist is an idiot. The evidence was there. However many chose to believe in "hope and change" despite the evidence. That willful refusal to accept reality is exactly what Tom Brokaw and the other powerful people in the mainstream media count on.

I suspect that Brokaw will ignore this article, and its accurate portrayal of his corruption, exactly as other liberals have ignored this accusation during the many decades of their dominance of the press. Losing that dominance will not matter as long as they can deliver the majority of votes to left wing extremists such as Barack Obama.

The Next Meltdown

by Charles Gasparino - September 14th, 2009 - New York Post

Lehman Bros. filed for bankruptcy a year ago tomorrow; nearly to the minute it did, CEO Dick Fuld believed the feds would come to his firm’s rescue. That would’ve been somewhat of a repeat of events in 1998, when the Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve saved Lehman by arranging a bailout of the notorious Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund because Lehman copied the fund’s money losing trades.

This is another article among many that have come out in the last few days predicting that our financial system crisis is not done yet. We have not fixed the problems in our financial institutions. We have merely hidden them behind a mountain of public debt.

Obama cannot add anything useful to this dialog with his speech today, since he is totally ignorant of what free enterprise means. Of course since Wall Street and our financial systems have ceased to be free enterprise, his useless thoughts will not be perceived as being as useless as they actually will be.

Crony capitalism is the only appropriate term for the Wall Street of today that is currently struggling to survive. Nothing that our government does will cover up the reality that it is a house of cards, propped up by a corrupt government. When Obama talks today, filter his words through the reality that this crisis was caused by excessive government spending, stupid financial actions of a corrupt financial system and government guarantees to companies "too big to fail". Nothing significant has been done to change the laws and the Wall Street attitude that existed last year when the system collapsed. Though we have loaned or invested nearly a trillion dollars of public money, the system is still an irrational fraud.

Get ready for another breath taking plunge down. This roller coaster ride is not nearly over.

Virtue And Sarah Palin

By Claude Sandroff - September 12th, 2009 - American Thinker

Of all the attributes we [her supporters] fix to her, charisma, fearlessness, wit, and most recently to our delight, formidable polemicist, we should remember that she entered national life in Dayton, Ohio as the enemy of politics as usual and a champion of the politics of virtue.

She sold the state's private jet as governor, brought property tax relief as mayor and resigned from appointed office when necessary. We should remind her vacuous, raging, class-obsessed critics that the governorship was not the first office she "quit". Her reputation of "quitter" is one we should celebrate and demand that other politicians emulate. For she hardly quit as Ethics Commissioner of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission for venal or trivial reasons. She quit when she found her office so ripe with corruption that she was rendered ineffective as a moral leader.

If this is a "quitter" Sandroff is right. Why do we criticize quitting when it is done for moral reasons?

Why I Am No Longer An African American

by Mary Baker - September 12th, 2009 - American Thinker

The Obama election was a milestone in our country's history. Blacks danced in the streets, talked about feelings of finally being able to feel at home in America, and cried for the cameras. But as a black woman in the Age of Obama, I don't see anything that reveals that Blacks in America have anything to celebrate.

[Snip]

The Founders of this country envisioned a nation that would secure the God-given rights of its citizens. The desire that every citizen born in this country would not suffer the oppression they endured under England's rule, set as the backdrop for guaranteeing freedom for all Americans. The Founders especially desired that our nation would be one ruled and protected by our Creator God. Many beg to differ, but the Founders' insistence that God guide the ways of this nation is apparent in their acknowledgement of His hand in the creation of life, the rights of life, and the prosperity of life.

It is these principles that make me proud to just be an American. So, I select for my identity the title of American.

There is little argument that most of those who claim the identity of African-American are honkey hating racists who despise our nation and wish it ill. It is my opinion that Barack Hussein Obama is one of these. Yet there are many in the black community who do not hate whites and do not hate America. I have a real fear - whether those of good faith in our two races can stop this Marxist hate monger and his socialist followers before he destroys our nation.

Eight Years On

by Mark Steyn - September 11th, 2009 - National Review

No dynamic culture can stand still, so we shouldn't be surprised that fewer and fewer people, from the president down, find it harder and harder to remember quite what "the day that changed the world" was all about. Nevertheless, there is unfinished business — starting with that hole in the ground in lower Manhattan. As James Lileks says:

That we couldn’t stand there eight years ago was their fault. That we cannot stand there today is ours.

At Ground Zero and in that field in Pennsylvania, we broke faith with the dead. What a small number of brave civilians did on Flight 93 was magnificent. The feeble passivity of their wretched memorial — the "crescent of embrace" or whatever nancified modification is on the table this week — is a national disgrace.

The article posted below asks a question that can make you discouraged. This article should make you mad. I have been annoyed by the weak governmental response to the Muslim rage about some obscure cartoons, but had never really thought about how much that response indicates we are losing the battle against Islamo-fascism. We have become weak and gutless and unwilling to stand up for our own beliefs.

That does not bode well for our chance to win this war for the future of the world.

Is America Coming Apart?

by Patrick J. Buchanan - September 11th, 2009 - Human Events

We seem not only to disagree with each other more than ever, but to have come almost to detest one another. Politically, culturally, racially, we seem ever ready to go for each others' throats.

One half of America sees abortion as the annual slaughter of a million unborn. The other half regards the right-to-life movement as tyrannical and sexist.

Proponents of gay marriage see its adversaries as homophobic bigots. Opponents see its champions as seeking to elevate unnatural and immoral relationships to the sacred state of traditional marriage.

The question invites itself. In what sense are we one nation and one people anymore?

This article raises what I see as the most important point in politics today. Can America survive as one nation? Buchanan asks it in a slightly different way in closing "Is America, too, breaking up?

There seem to be fewer and fewer basic truths that unite us and more and more issues that divide us. I cannot believe that any President in history would have appointed Van Jones to a position of power before the Magic Marxist Messiah. Yet my own insulting name for Obama indicates that unity is not in my heart either.

I tell people repeatedly the simple example I use to explain much the same thing that Pat Buchanan said in this article. When I grew up the First Amendment spirit of free speech was enforced in heated conversations with an admonition of "I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

Today no one says this. Ever. Instead the new fuel added to any debate is a vitriolic "I don't agree with what you say and demand that government thugs stop you from saying it in my presence." Our courts are actually accepting the idea that if you say something that makes someone uncomfortable that government representatives can sanction you. Free speech is dying under a wave of tyranny.

At the same time certain elements of society can hurl insults of "racist" and "fascist" with impunity [Truly ironic since the people hurling the term fascist are the philosophical descendents of the original fascists!]. The courts have also accepted this under the premise that the Constitution is a "living document". What that means is that the words of our Constitution have no meaning and that men can govern as they please. We no longer live under the rule of law but instead tolerate the rule of judges.

I fear the answer to Buchanan's closing question is yes.

9-11 - Never Forget!

Please say a prayer for the 3,000 souls who died eight years ago today. They died for no reason other than Muslim fanatics hate America and want to create a world where you are compelled to worship Allah under fear of beheading.

Islam is NOT a religion of peace. Islam is a religion of intolerance and hate. Failure to accept that guarantees we will not win this war.

Betraying Our Dead

by Ralph Peters - September 11th, 2009 - New York Post

Eight years ago today, our homeland was attacked by fanatical Muslims inspired by Saudi Arabian bigotry. Three thousand American citizens and residents died.

We resolved that we, the People, would never forget. Then we forgot.

We've learned nothing.

Instead of cracking down on Islamist extremism, we've excused it.

Instead of killing terrorists, we free them.

Instead of relentlessly hunting Islamist madmen, we seek to appease them.

Instead of acknowledging that radical Islam is the problem, we elected a president who blames America, whose idea of freedom is the right for women to suffer in silence behind a veil -- and who counts among his mentors and friends those who damn our country or believe that our own government staged the tragedy of September 11, 2001.

[Snip]

We've forgotten the shock and the patriotic fury Americans felt on that bright September morning eight years ago. We've forgotten our identification with fellow citizens leaping from doomed skyscrapers. We've forgotten the courage of airline passengers who would not surrender to terror.

We've forgotten the men and women who burned to death or suffocated in the Pentagon. We've forgotten our promises, our vows, our commitments.

We've forgotten what we owe our dead and what we owe our children. We've even forgotten who attacked us.

We have betrayed the memory of our dead. In doing so, we betrayed ourselves and our country. Our troops continue to fight -- when they're allowed to do so -- but our politicians have surrendered.

Are we willing to let the terrorists win?

I pray the answer to this question is NO! This is a great article, and I apologize to Ralph for including as much as I did in the excerpted portion above, but it is simply so powerful. However I recommend to everyone that they click on the title above and read the whole article in its original form and not just read my poor attempt at commenting on his work.

An American Socrates And Other Myths

by Peter Wehner - September 10th, 2009 - Commentary Magazine

Obama is, in almost every respect, the opposite of what he portrays himself to be. He is a divisive, polarizing figure, among the most divisive and polarizing we have ever seen. He has shown no interest at all in reaching across the aisle and working with the opposition party. He is an orthodox liberal through and through. He denigrates his critics and questions their motives. He has made the health-care debate more muddled, more confused, and less honest. He has hardened the disdain many Americans have toward their government. And he is increasing cynicism among the polity.

He is also a man of astonishing arrogance. “I am not the first President to take up this cause [health care],” Obama said last night, “but I am determined to be the last.” The last President to take up the issue of health care? Are we to take from this that Obama’s plan will be so perfect that this issue—among the most complicated public policy issues of all— will be solved now and forever more?

The critque by Peter Wehner is devastating. Those in the Democrat Party and on the left are mesmerized by Obama, yet he is held in contempt by most of those on the right and in the Republican Party. I would go farther. To me the Magic Marxist Messiah is the most demagogic hate monger I have ever seen in American politics. He constantly calls his opponents "liars" and condemns them while complaining about their responses. The wedge he is driving between the factions in the political dialog is accentuated by the his arrogance and the arrogant premise of his followers that he is above criticism.

Conservative Health Care Reform

Several times in the last couple of weeks I have had liberals and Democrats snarl at me that conservatives have no ideas about health care and all Republicans do is say no. That is not true. To counter that erroneous belief, here is the essence of what conservatives and libertarians think should be the focus of health care reform.

1. Remove barriers to competition between insurance companies across state lines to reduce costs.
2. Stop the refusal of coverage for pre-existing conditions when changing insurers and prohibit exorbitant rate increases when serious illness develops.
3. Institute tort reform to reduce extorted settlements and defensive medicine which waste money and dramatically increase costs.
4. Require co-pays for all coverage so patients get involved in reducing the costs of their health care decisions.
5. Provide high deductible "pared down" plans for young people to significantly lower premiums for the major problem of uninsured.
6. Eliminate the massive fraud of government programs like Medicare and Medicaid, considered to be around $120 billion or more a year.
7. Give all individuals the same tax benefits received by those who get coverage through their employers.

These seven changes would reduce costs for health care by one half.

What Republicans and most Independents OPPOSE is abandoning the world's best health care system (adopting the failed system of socialist countries) simply because our system is not perfect, especially since most of the problems are government created. The reality is that no other nation has a system where 75% of the people are very happy with their health care, with another 10% somewhat happy. Only 15% of Americans are somewhat unhappy or very unhappy, and those are the ones who think that someone else should pay for their health care so they get it free. An example of the superiority of our system is the vastly better life expectancy of cancer patients. This applies to most other categories of serious illness as well and is why so many come here from other nations for treatment. The changes we make must not undermine the strengths of our current system.

However even after I provide this list of solutions I am often met with the insistent that I have not provided solutions because these are "unrealistic". That just shows how unlikely it is to ever get a bi-partisan bill, since Democrats reject out of hand any of the solutions that would reduce costs without a government bureaucrat being able to order the action. The democrat solutions are all about increasing the size and power of government. With that as the true goal, nothing that Republicans suggest in opposition to THAT goal will be accepted as reform.

China Alarmed By US Money Printing

by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard - September 6th, 2009 - London Telegraph

"If they keep printing money to buy bonds it will lead to inflation, and after a year or two the dollar will fall hard. Most of our foreign reserves are in US bonds and this is very difficult to change, so we will diversify incremental reserves into euros, yen, and other currencies," he said.

China's reserves are more than – $2 trillion, the world's largest.

"Gold is definitely an alternative, but when we buy, the price goes up. We have to do it carefully so as not to stimulate the markets," he added.

The comments suggest that China has become the driving force in the gold market and can be counted on to buy whenever there is a price dip, putting a floor under any correction.

Because China has taken the attitude that "sort of free" markets are an imperative to national wealth, this communist country is actually more sensitive to monetary policy and its economic impact on markets than the socialist oriented technocrats of the American left.

This article indicates China understands the threat to creating asset bubbles when loose money policy is matched with a leadership that only watches consumer inflation. Our own leadership, as exemplified by Obama and his advisers, seem oblivious to this risk. George W. Bush and his advisers missed the growing threat of the asset bubble here. Obama did, and is doing, the same. Or maybe those are correct who postulate that Obama understands this but really does believe that destroying America's free market underpinings will not harm anyone but the rich.

In either case, whether due to oblivious ignorance or deceitful intent, our policies are still heading in the same direction... only now at a faster pace. The interesting intellectual discussion is whether that leads America to follow the Zimbabwe model or the Argentinian model of national collapse. However this ceases to be an "interesting intellectual discussion" as soon as you remember that those of us whose lives will be destroyed by this collapse are not only those who live in America but those who live in any part of the developed world. There is no place to hide. Only poverty stricken areas like third world nations are indifferent to these consequences and living in those places is not what I would consider a good answer.

Obama seems totally oblivious to these concerns... and that frightens the hell out of me.

Barack Obama Accused Of Making 'Depression' Mistakes

by Edmund Conway - September 6th, 2009 - London Telegraph

Barack Obama is committing the same mistakes made by policymakers during the Great Depression, according to a new study endorsed by Nobel laureate James Buchanan.

[Snip]

The study represents a challenge to the widely held view that Keynesian fiscal policies helped the US recover from the Depression which started in the early 1930s. The authors say: "[Franklin D. Roosevelt's] interventionist policies and draconian tax increases delayed full economic recovery by several years by exacerbating a climate of pessimistic expectations that drove down private capital formation and household consumption to unprecedented lows."

This is another lesson in the great debate between "nanny state empathy" of the left and "tough love sympathy" of the right. Yet the most obvious problem is that neither side in the debate believes anything the other side says because of the gulf between their understanding of how the world works. Friedman adherents have no doubt that most people excel in a free economy. Keynes adherents believe that those few true failures who are helped by government intervention are worth the damage their policies do to everyone else.

The problem is that both sides cannot be correct. One is wrong. And though I believe that side is the Keynes side, I can see no way to ever get them to understand why they are wrong since they will never believe that I am not evil in my views.

This is a good article that I fear will only be read by those who already believe it. I think one expression to explain that is called "singing to the choir."

Obama And The Bureaucratization Of Health Care

by Sarah Palin - September 8, 2009 - Wall Street Journal

Instead of poll-driven "solutions," let's talk about real health-care reform: market-oriented, patient-centered, and result-driven. As the Cato Institute's Michael Cannon and others have argued, such policies include giving all individuals the same tax benefits received by those who get coverage through their employers; providing Medicare recipients with vouchers that allow them to purchase their own coverage; reforming tort laws to potentially save billions each year in wasteful spending; and changing costly state regulations to allow people to buy insurance across state lines. Rather than another top-down government plan, let's give Americans control over their own health care.

Democrats have never seriously considered such ideas...

This is the second well reasoned article from Sarah Palin. I wonder if the conservative hate mongers that have joined liberals in denigrating her intelligence will be influenced? Kathleen Parker, Jonah Goldberg, Peggy Noonan and Charles Krauthammer were among many conservatives to insist she was not intelliegent enough to represent a movement where they were the intellectual leaders.

Though all four are pretty smart, I think that a lot of people are starting to learn that the Barracuda from Alaska is not the lightweight they thought she was.

Too Late For Obama To Turn It Around?

by Camille Paglia - September 9th, 2009 - Salon

By foolishly trying to reduce all objections to healthcare reform to the malevolence of obstructionist Republicans, Democrats have managed to destroy the national coalition that elected Obama and that is unlikely to be repaired. If Obama fails to win reelection, let the blame be first laid at the door of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who at a pivotal point threw gasoline on the flames by comparing angry American citizens to Nazis. It is theoretically possible that Obama could turn the situation around with a strong speech on healthcare to Congress this week, but after a summer of grisly hemorrhaging, too much damage has been done. At this point, Democrats' main hope for the 2012 presidential election is that Republicans nominate another hopelessly feeble candidate. Given the GOP's facility for shooting itself in the foot, that may well happen.

Though I have been aware that the extreme left wing feminist Camille Paglia was (like Christopher Hitchens) prone to take stands that alienate the liberal faithful, this article is still something of a surprise. I doubt that we share any solutions to the health care problem, yet it is interesting how unhappy she is with some of the current leaders of the Democrat Party.

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills). Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism. How has "liberty" become the inspirational code word of conservatives rather than liberals?

It is sentiments such as these that have led me to include this article here. I am not normally in favor of providing links to leftist organizations like Salon, but this article certainly proves how complex the health care debate has become. It also proves that those who are conservative have a real opportunity to speak for the heart and soul of America again. Camille does not hesitate to take a few cheap shots at Republicans (she is after all a professional liberal) yet she gets in some pretty good digs at Democrats first.

We really must throw the crony capitalists out of the Republican Party first if we are going to truly appeal to independents and discouraged liberals. The Wall Street and Big Corporation mentality of some in our party is no longer truly our thing. No matter how much it used to represent conservative beliefs, Wall Street does not represent free enterprise any more. Wall Street, with its mergers and acquisition attitude to create corporate monopolies "regulated" by Democrats (who are bribed to turn the other way as long as profits are shared) is neither capitalism nor conservative. With some of the smart people like Christopher Hitchens and Camille Paglia tuning away from the tyranny of the Democrat Party, Republicans need to pay attention to how we stay the party of freedom and win some of them to our side. Of course right now these people would be smeared as RINOs if they joined the party, so maybe a new third-way party focused on freedom is our only chance to save America.

Sun-Caused Warming

Editorial - September 8th, 2009 - Investor's Business Daily

Mankind once worshiped the sun. Now the world studiously ignores it as nations prepare to hammer out a successor to the failed Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012, in Copenhagen in December. Something is indeed rotten in Denmark.

Our own government is committed to fighting climate change whether it be though Son of Kyoto or our own growth-capping, job-killing cap-and-trade legislation known as Waxman-Markey.

Of course this new evidence that the sun caused the warming of the last century is merely more science that the global warming extremists will ignore. They are not happy at all that CO2 has increased for 11 straight years while the temperatures have slightly declined. According to their theories this cannot happen. Since all their theories are based on the conclusion that CO2 is causing global warming, this inconsistency with their beliefs is hard for them to take. Yet take it they are as they frantically try and "improve" their theories to account for all the evidence that contradicts them. Just because your theories fail doesn't mean you should look at how the theories are wrong. A much more satisfactory solution is to get outraged at the people who point out the failure.

We are not drilling for oil despite the fact that we have 3 huge new fields that have just been discovered in North America, 2 of which contain more oil than the entire middle east. Why? Environmentalists are determined that America and free enterprise must be brought down and having cheap energy is simply not a part of their plan. They are not truly environmentalists nearly so much as they are socialists who hate our success.

Oil just hit $71 a barrel on its way to the $75 that Saudi Arabia believes should be the current price.

When oil prices sky rocket next year after Obama's weak dollar collapses, please remember this prediction. It will not be the "greedy" oil companies that do this to America. It is the socialists among the environmental extremists who are to blame. We could have all the energy we need if we stopped the ridiculous insistence that "green" energy will be the solution. The only rational solution is "drill, baby drill!"

We have way more that 1000 years of cheap energy available. We need to start using it before we bankrupt America. At that point all the cheap energy will used by the Muslim hordes that will invade our country after America collapses.

Our Tragedy Of The Commons

by Star Parker - September 7th, 2009 - Townhall.com

A common grazing field is available to a community of herders. Everyone brings his or her cows there. Because there is no clear ownership, the only incentive each herder has is to bring all of his cows to graze and consume as much as possible.

With everyone doing it, and no one having any incentive to consider the implications of their behavior beyond consuming as much as possible, the final result is obvious. The field is destroyed.

With this analogy to the general problem of government, Star Parker has produced another extremely effective article explaining the problems we currently face in our health care system. One of her points eviscerates the hypocrisy of Ted Kennedy and his support for programs whose consequences his great family wealth meant he was not exposed to. What I think the Democrats are missing is just how angry people are becoming over this hypocrisy. Whether it was serious or merely sarcasm, one of the comments on the Townhall.com web site where Star's article was posted was the following:

"When our country descends into chaos and revolution, and after we emerge victorious and restore the republic, there are certain things we must do to make sure we don't have to do it again. All registered democrat voters, liberals, all MSM notables and other domestic enemies must immediately be put behind barbed wire compounds, investigated, put on trial and hanged. We must dig up Ted Kennedy's rotting corpse and hang it too."

I wonder just how many Democrats realize how angry much of the public really has become? This comment might give them a clue. However I doubt it will not because they simply ignore anything that does not fit their preconceived notions.

"How Democracies Perish"

by Lance Fairchok - September 5th, 2009 - American Thinker

I discovered Jean Francois Revel quite by accident. While researching anti-American organizations that support terrorist groups, I came across a thin volume entitled simply, Anti-Americanism. Written by a respected French intellectual, it is the rarest of works, examining and condemning the reflexive and unjustified anti-Americanism found in the European and particularly the French press. It is a clear and biting indictment of the unreason of the popular press and of the totalitarian left. Revel's regard for the US was unclouded by naive romanticism. He judged us fairly, took stock of our strengths and weaknesses and found us admirable.

While visiting a used bookstore a few weeks later, I found another Revel book, How Democracies Perish. In its pages, I found a chilling examination of the methodologies used to undermine and destroy free market democracies.

I have not had a chance to read this book yet, but Fairchok presents an excellent case for making it required reading at this time of a perfect example of the "internal enemy" that Revel predicts, our current President Barack Obama.

Pledging Allegiance To Our Beloved Obama

by Mark Steyn - September 4th, 2009 - Orange County Register

The president has made the mistake of believing his own publicity – or, at any rate, his own mainstream media coverage, which is pretty much the same thing. They told him he was the greatest orator since Socrates, but, alas, even Socrates would have difficulty playing six sets a night every Open Mike Night at the Soaring Rhetoric Lounge out on Route 127. Even Ashton Kutcher's charms would wane by the 112th speech.

"Mr Obama," wrote Peggy Noonan in The Wall Street Journal, "has grown boring." Amazing, but true. He's a crashing bore, and he's become one in nothing flat. His approval ratings have slumped – not just among Republicans, not just among independents, not just among seniors, who are after all first in line for the death panels. But they've fallen among young people – the starry-eyed members of the Hopeychangey Generation who stared into the mesmerizing giant "O" of his logo and saw the new Otopia. According to the latest Zogby poll, Obama's hold on the young is a wash: 41 per cent approve, 41 per cent disapprove. Zogby defines "young" as under 30, so maybe the kindergartners corralled into his audience this week will still be on side, but I wouldn't bet on it.

The President's strategy on Jan. 20 was to hurl all the vast transformative spaghetti at the wall – stimulus, auto nationalization, cap'n'trade, health care – and make it stick through the sheer charisma of his personality. Unfortunately, the American people aren't finding it quite so charismatic, and they're beginning to spot the yawning gulf between the post-partisan hopeychangey rhetoric and the budget-busting, prosperity-throttling, future-beggaring big government policies.

Mark Steyn is of the opinion that Obama is starting to lose his audience. As much as I would like it to be true, I am not sure that I buy that yet. However this is certainly descriptive of some encouraging signs.

World's Climate Could Cool First, Warm Later

by Fred Pearce - September 4th, 2009 - New Scientist

Forecasts of climate change are about to go seriously out of kilter. One of the world's top climate modellers said Thursday we could be about to enter "one or even two decades during which temperatures cool.

"People will say this is global warming disappearing," he told more than 1500 of the world's top climate scientists gathering in Geneva at the UN's World Climate Conference. "I am not one of the sceptics," insisted Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University, Germany.

This web site looks like one of the global warming support networks. It is curious how the coverage is so slanted. However the essence of the article would make anyone with a degree of cynicism to doubt global warming is anything but a religion. It admits that there is bias in many of the global warming models that has resulted in them failing to predict climate accurately. They are sorry about the bias and promise to do better in the future. The writer insists though that despite their short term predictions not being accurate there is no reason to doubt their predictions of 20 years from now.

Therefore even if the weather cools for the next 20 years, in total opposition to everything they have said up until now, you can't give up the faith that global warming is real. They just need a little longer for it to show up. Honest. Trust them. 90% of all the scientists in the world, or at least 90% of the scientists they know, or rather at least 90% of all the ones they know and like... uh... may be it is just 90% of those scientists who they know and like and who also come to these United Nations conferences on global warming... agree with them.

Honest!

Banning Books?

by Bradley A. Smith - September 2nd, 2009 - New York Post

The government argues that it can [ban books] -- relying on a 1990 case, Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce, that upheld a state law banning corporate political spending, and McConnell v. FEC, the 2003 case that upheld the constitutionality of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.

In fact, at a remarkable oral argument in March, the government claimed that Austin and McConnell give it the authority to ban books containing even one line of advocacy for or against a political candidate, if (like most books) they [were] produced or distributed by a corporation.

In June, the high court announced that instead of deciding the narrower issue of "Hillary: The Movie," it would rehear the case to consider overruling Austin and McConnell.

In anticipation of the reargument, groups that support onerous campaign-finance restrictions have launched a series of hyperbolic attacks on corporate political speech.

The reality that liberals and socialists are totally opposed to free enterprise is pretty well established. If it were not - this single case would make the case. Every single group that is arguing in favor of government regulating what you can say are generally considered extreme left wing groups. They believe that anyone who says anything they disagree with should have their freedom to speak squelched.

They use technical groupings to accomplish this goal, limiting individuals for being "rich" and limiting free enterprise groups for being "corporations". The real goal is clear. If you believe that freedom on economic issues leads to individual freedom in society, they do not want you permitted to speak.

Going NUMMI

Editorial - September 1st, 2009 - Investor's Business Daily

Toyota last week quietly announced it will shutter its famed NUMMI plant in Fremont, Calif. This should be taken as a warning: The facility had all the features of the green economy the White House wants.

[Snip]

It employs only the greenest technologies. The environmentally advanced NUMMI plant has garnered 42 environmental awards — topping even its 32 product excellence awards.

[Snip]

It was a sorry sight to see, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declaring after the NUMMI shutdown that he would replace NUMMI jobs with "green jobs," forgetting that NUMMI was ultragreen.

That is the real lesson. "Green" cannot survive the regulated obscenity of governmental control. We are going to replace productive enterprises with uncompetitive industries that will fail, just as they failed in the Utopian world of the Soviet Union, which also had its bureaucrats who never accepted blame for anything they caused.

I supported Arnold and I think he used to be a good man. However it is becoming clearer and clearer that Arnold has lost his way and become what he used to hate.