The Obama Administration’s Ineptness

by Peter Wehner - March 30th, 2011 - Commentary Magazine

On Sunday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – when asked about why we’re involving ourselves in Libya but not Syria – said this about Bashar Assad: “Many of the Members of Congress of both parties who have gone to Syria in recent months have said they believe he’s a reformer.” For understandable reasons – more about that in a moment– those comments didn’t fly very well.

So it was time for a retake. Yesterday, when asked about her statement at a press conference, Secretary Clinton said, “Well, first, Jay [Solomon], as you rightly pointed out, I referenced opinions of others. That was not speaking either for myself or for the administration.” As walk backs go, this one was unusually clumsy and obviously untrue. Mrs. Clinton could simply have said her previous comments were wrong and she was revising them. Instead we get a response that no one believes.

Secreatary of State Hillary Clinton is starting to look as stupid as President Barack Obama. The question is whether this is because she is still trying to cover up for his errors, or simply making just as many as he is in the midst of the chaos that Obama is making of the Middle East problems.

Drill, Brazil, Drill, Says The U.S.

Editorial - March 25th, 2011 - The Washington Post

When was the last time an American president stood before an audience in a foreign country and announced that he looked forward to importing more of its oil? Answer: Just over a week ago, when President Obama joined political and business leaders in Brasilia in hailing the fact that their newly discovered offshore petroleum reserves might be twice as large as those in the United States. Americans “want to help with technology and support to develop these oil reserves safely, and when you’re ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers,” Mr. Obama said.

What greater proof is needed that the Democrats are only interested in weakening America with their anti drilling hysteria. They are not serious about banning oil production in the world at large, just where it would help our nation end its foreign dependence on this cheap source of energy. Absolutely everyone understands that the availability of cheap energy is the basis for national wealth.

The more we import the poorer we are. The more we pay for so-called "green" energy (that is so expensive it is not practical without government subsidies to hide the cost), the poorer we are. The more we ban nuclear power, the poorer we are. The Cloward-Piven strategy of driving Americans to depend on the welfare state to collapse our government and create the chaos needed to turn our nation to socialism - is well advanced.

Denial that this is the Obama and Democrat strategy is no longer tolerable or reasonable. Obama made it clear that is the strategy with his public support for Brazil oil, a position that sabotages every lie previously used to defend banning oil here. Rham Emmanuel advanced the strategy when he implored Democrats, "Never let a crisis go to waste." They have now gone even further. They are not just using crisis to advance their corrupt and duplicitous agenda. They are intentionally creating crisis to harm us.

There is an increasing crisis in energy. Oil is up to $4 a gallon and heading towards $5 or more. Obama is actively promoting this increase. His agenda is clear.

The Paranoid Style In Liberal Politics

The left’s obsession with the Koch brothers

by Matthew Continetti - April 4th, 2011 (Publication date) - The Weekly Standard

By the time the Tea Party was getting started in 2009, the left-wing counter-counter-establishment was a juggernaut, investing vast energy in destroying the reputations of its favorite targets: Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Rush Limbaugh...

What happened to the Kochs was a classic example.

The United States is currently in a war for the survival of freedom. The paranoid delusions of the left wing radicals who have developed strategies of hate are winning this war. Smears based on lies are at the heart of each and every Alinsky attack that are a major part of this strategy of hate. The gang method of destroying your opponent by threats and fear is always successful when there is no organized resistance. It is even worse when civil society stands by and allows the gang dominance to fester. All you have to do is look at the way the left has destroyed freedom of speech in America.

Ann Coulter cannot speak on a college campus without riots intended to deny her the freedom of speech that progressives demand for themselves. Neither can David Horowitz. The riots in Wisconsin are typical of the threatening and berating of conservatives that has become common. Death threats are always a part of the hate tactics of the progressives. Our courts do nothing. Denial of free speech is considered to be perfectly okay to the ignorant judges that fill the federal bench. They approve when a few riot and howl down others who are kept from speaking, usually much larger groups whose freedom of speech is destroyed in the process. One after another are targeted by this strategy of hate and intimidation. But to the judges free speech of the screamers out weighs free speech of the civil.

This is an excellent article that explains the real history of the Koch brothers. It then compares that history with the strategy of personal destruction being practiced by the organized and well funded hoard of hate mongers in the progressive movement. Their outlandish distortions of the Koch brother's actions are identified and the perpetrators exposed. Yet it will take a huge expansion of this knowledge, an expansion not likely to occur with our press so dominated by practitioners of progressive hate, to ever derail the lies and smears that are being directed at these decent men.

Liberals: They Blinded Us With Science

by Ann Coulter - March 23rd, 2011 - Human Events

In response to my column last week about hormesis -- the theory that some radiation can be beneficial to humans -- liberals reacted with their usual open-minded examination of the facts.

According to Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters, MSNBC's Ed Schultz devoted an entire segment to denouncing me. He called me toxic, accused me of spreading misinformation and said I didn't care about science.

One thing Schultz did not do, however, was cite a single physicist or scientific study.

I cited three physicists by name as well as four studies supporting hormesis in my column. For the benefit of liberals scared of science, I even cited The New York Times.

Ann Coulter was an excellent lawyer. She was also an excellent law clerk. In both activities she was a master of research. That is one reason that progressives absolutely go ballistic when she writes something that they dislike. Because they know they cannot win an argument with Ann based on reason or facts. What they also hate is the sarcastic way in which she skewers them. As she does in the last sentence above and thoughout the article.

Now I know that being skewered is not fun. So it is not surprising that progressives have absolutely no tolerance for Ann. However if you are not a progressive, she is one of the best writers America has provided to learn usefull information in a funny way. This article is typical of that skill.

How General Electric Pays No Tax At All

... and actually MAKES $3.2 billion from the rest of us

by Daniel Bates - March 25th, 2011 - London Daily Mail

General Electric paid no tax at all in America last year and even managed to get a $3.2 billion ‘rebate’ from the government.

The utilities giant allocated just 7.4 per cent of its $5.1 billion U.S. profits in tax - around a third of what others companies its size are paying.

But through a complex series of measures GE, which is America's largest company, will not even have to hand that over.

Instead it will get $3.2 billion back from the U.S. government after paying top tax lawyers and lobbyists to work the system on its behalf.

[Snip]

President Barack Obama shows no sign of clamping down on corporate tax and even hired GE’s chief executive Jeffrey Immelt to advise him on future changes.

The reason Obama likes Immelt? Huge bribes to the Democrat Party assures special corporate welfare flows to the "right" corporations (like GE) even as Democrat leaders slander small business and denounce corporate greed. The Democrats and the big corporations are playing a duplicitous game. The reality is that the only corporations Democrats dislike are those who don't pay the appropriate bribes. Obama knows who to buddy up with. So does GE.

Wall Street has learned this scam too and got on board the corporate socialism bandwagon in a big way many years back. That is why 75% of their campaign contributions go to Democrats and have for nearly a generation.

Democrats are the party of big business. Republicans are split between the middle class supporters of small business free enterprise and the rich Country Club wing that is happy with Wall Street's leftovers.

No wonder socialism is taking over in America. It is supported by both of the big political entities. Freedom - and free enterprise - is only supported by a minority of one of the two major parties. That is probably not enough to keep freedom alive.

Do Obama and the Democrats not see the irony of portraying the king of coporate wellfare, GE's Immelt, as their buddy who will advise them on tax policy? Sometimes Democrat hypocrisy is too blatant not to point out.

ACLU: 'Communism Is The Goal'

by Matt Barber - March 25th, 2011 - Townhall.com

There is perhaps no greater example of ironic doublespeak than inclusion of the phrase "civil liberties" within the inapt designation: "American Civil Liberties Union."

Indeed, few leftist organizations in existence today can compete with the ACLU in terms of demonstrated hostility toward what the Declaration of Independence describes as "certain unalienable rights" with which Americans are "endowed by their Creator."

Consider the doublespeak inherent throughout the "progressive" Goliath's flowery self-representation:

The ACLU is our nation's guardian of liberty, working daily in courts, legislatures and communities to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties that the Constitution and laws of the United States guarantee everyone in this country.

Now contrast that depiction with ACLU founder Roger Baldwin's candid vision:

I am for socialism, disarmament, and, ultimately, for abolishing the state itself... I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class, and the sole control of those who produce wealth. Communism is the goal.

It is exactly for that reason I have long referred to the ACLU as the "Anarchy and Criminal Liberties Union". It is far more accurate than their duplicitous self adulation.

America Is Ruled By Insanity

While Obama searches for clarity, we're plunged into another war - by John Kass

Obama: No U.S. Forces on the Ground in Libya… Except For Those Guys - by Jim Geraghty

These are two of the articles among dozens from yesterday that indicate our President may be insane.

The first article talks about an ignorant statement from Obama. When asked about the confusion that dominates the chain of command in this war in which he has committed our forces - Obama promised with great confidence he would fix that. Even while the guns and bombs are already killing people, Obama insists that he will get clarity on how the war will be organized in "a few days." In the meantime Libyans are dying (hopefully all bad guys) and American lives are at risk. In fact the second article talks about the Marines who have been sent in to rescue one of our pilots who went down in Libya. As noted by one sarcastic commenter, since Obama has insisted that we will have no "boots on the ground" the Marines must be presumed to be wearing flip-flops to avoid violating that pledge.

This war has been going on for only a few days and chaos has ruled from the beginning. The Germans have pulled their forces out of NATO in protest of the chaos. No one knows who is in charge. The Italians are threatening, if they have not already done so, to ban use of their bases to conduct the war. Sarkozy of France is given credit for all the bombing (that is being conducted overwhelmingly by Americans) on the signs held up by Libyans on the ground who are revolting against Qaddafi. Indications are emerging that the people who we are assisting are the same Islamic Jihadists with whom we are at war in Afghanistan.

Obama's staff gives conflicting accounts of what we are doing and why we are doing it that border on lying to the American people. The rush to war was ordered by an Imperial President who thought that informing congress of his decision to go to war constituted consulting them. He even insists that killing people with bombs does not constitute an act of war. Instead Obama sounds confident and in control as he reads from his teleprompter defending his actions. Does everyone remember when Obama proudly proclaimed, "I can tell you this -- when I am president of the United States, the American people and the world will always know where I stand." Now even though his staff is confused Obama is still certain he is in control of everything. No one knows where he stands, least of all the "world".

No drama Obama is never upset or confused or wrong. The question that bothers me is whether that perpetual confident attitude is an indication that Obama has no clue?

America's Accelerating Downward Spiral

by Peter Ferrara - March 23rd, 2011 - The American Spectator

For two years now, I have been arguing in this column and elsewhere that President Obama's economic policies were a throwback to the 1970s, and so were going to produce the same result as the 1970s -- the worsening cycles of inflation and recession known as stagflation. With last week's reports regarding the Producer Price Index and the Consumer Price Index, those results are now here.

But these developments are just several further spins in an accelerating downward spiral for America that leaves our traditional prosperity, high standard of living, and national security extremely vulnerable to three looming disasters...

It has been a catastrophe for our nation that so few Republicans have believed these predictions of the economically literate. Unfortunately we have few of our own leaders who were not scared to death that what Obama was doing might actually work. They neither believe in or understand free enterprise. George W. Bush is a perfect example. His economic track record is socialism lite. We have two wings of our party that now embrace socialism. The "compassionate conservative" wing and the "country club" wing. With that being true it is hard to mount a strong defense of free enterprise.

As a result, the Republican leadership has been afraid to condemn many of the actions of the Obama czars and appointees. The Republicans will not criticize the Obama people because they are in over their heads when it comes to economics. They don't know, so they stand there befuddled and unsure.

When people like Ferrara who understand economics talk, Republican leadership doesn't even listen. It makes them uncomfortable. However by their failure to act they are complicit in the disaster that is coming.

The Fukushima 50 And The White House Cipher

by Clarice Feldman - March 20th, 2011 - The American Thinker

... it is hard to believe that this blurb from the official White House web page could be real, but I am sad to report this infantile, narcissistic, piece of tripe, utterly lacking in empathy or dignity is authentic:

As he does every year, the President filled out his brackets predicting the winners of the men's and women's NCAA basketball tournaments, but discussing it with Doris Burke of ESPN, he began with a call to stand with the people of Japan:

One of the things I wanted to do on the show was, as people are filling out their brackets -- this is obviously a national pastime; we all have a great time, it's a great diversion. But I know a lot of people are thinking how can they help the Japanese people during this time of need. If you go to usaid.gov -- usaid.gov -- that will list all the nonprofits, the charities that are helping out there. It would be wonderful for people to maybe offer a little help to the Japanese people at this time -- as they're filling out their brackets. It's not going to take a lot of time. That's usaid.gov. It could be really helpful.

In another time, people would already be chiseling the name of such an inept leader off all official tablets to hide from history his having reached such an exalted place . As it is, perhaps we will have to settle for the unmaking of all the acts and legislation undertaken in his name, Already in Asbury Park, N. J., one of the first schools named for him has been shut down. It was an elementary school where the community spent $36,000 per pupil only to get low test scores in return. Somehow it seems fitting.

It is hard to know what else to say. After posting the infantile gibberish included above on his web site, Obama took off on Air Force One on another of his frequent vacations, this time to Brazil. While out of the country, he launched war against Iraq, in total conflict with his previous claims that such an action would be unconstitutional. Even though I support the removal of Qaddafi, it seems that Obama could have at least taken sending our troops into harms way seriously enough that he would stay in the White House as it started. Obama proves once again, he could care less. Our press, once again, sees NOTHING wrong with anything Obama does.

Eight Out of Ten Illegal Aliens Apprehended In 2010 Never Prosecuted

by Edwin Mora - March 17th, 2011 - CNS News

An illegal alien apprehended by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency during the last fiscal year had an estimated 84 percent chance of never being prosecuted, according to figures compiled by the office of Rep. John Culberson (R-Texas).

Culberson submitted the figures for the record during a hearing Wednesday of the House Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security.

And they wonder why no one respects our borders. We are a joke.

President Hamlet

by Victor Davis Hanson - March 17th, 2011 - National Review

President Obama has spent most of his life either in, or teaching, school — or making laws that he was not responsible for enforcing. His hope-and-change speeches were as moving in spirit as they were lacking in details.

But now Obama is chief executive, and learning, as did Prince Hamlet, that thinking out every possible side of a question can mean never acting on any of them — a sort of Shakespearean “prison” where “there is nothing either good or bad.” Worrying about pleasing everyone ensures pleasing no one. Once again such “conscience does make cowards of us all.”

Hamlets, past and present, are as admirable in theory as they are fickle — and often dangerous — in fact.

Obama as Hamlet? I agree. In fact this is probably more enlightening about his shortcomings and failings as President than the prescient recognition that Obama is a malignant narcissist. Bill Clinton was a malignant narcissist too, and yet he at least had the intelligence and experience to make good decisions very quickly.

I wonder how many Democrats are like a close friend of mine who spent some time on the phone yesterday lamenting the fact that Bill could not be elected to another term? He was more than sad, he was truly angry about that, because he has reached a point where he absolutely despises Obama. I don't think he is alone in that feeling, even among Democrats.

Ignoring Death Threats To Wisconsin Politicians Is Media Bias

by Lee Stranahan - March 15th, 2011 - Big Journalism

I’m in an odd position. In the last few months, I’ve had one foot in the left wing news stream and one foot in the right. My media duality began when conservative publisher Andrew Breitbart hired me to work with him on the Pigford ‘black farmers’ settlement story. I’m a pro-choice, pro-single payer, anti-war, pro-gay rights independent liberal with years of work in print and film backing those positions. Breitbart hired me to bring a different perspective to the non-partisan issue of corruption in Pigford.

Since then, I’ve written both here for the left-leaning Huffington Post and at Breitbart’s right leaning BigGovernment.com. I’ve ended up reading a lot more conservative sites and dealing firsthand with a lot more conservatives than any time since I attended a high school dedicated to the principles of Ayn Rand about 30 years ago.

Unlike many on the left, I didn’t view the Wisconsin battle as the end of days. I wasn’t convinced that I had a dog in that hunt, in part because I think there’s a strong case to be made those public employees shouldn’t have the same collective bargaining rights as private sector workers — a case made well by Franklin D. Roosevelt, who said…

“All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress.”

Roosevelt’s statement makes sense to me; it does seem that public employees are different than private. I’m not at all anti-union. (I’ve publicly supported unionizing the visual effects industry, for example.) I’m open to a good rational argument against the case FDR made but in discussions on Twitter and elsewhere, all I got in response from people on the left was anger and insults. I saw little light and felt much heat.

That tone of extreme hostility I experienced brings me back to the death threats in Wisconsin. Frankly, the bile and invective in that threat reminded me of the tone I saw directed at me from many so-called liberals because I committed the heresy of taking a different position from them on the issue of collective bargaining for public sector employees… based on something FDR said.

Is this really what liberalism has come to in 2011?

Since working with Breitbart, my position on political issues hasn’t changed but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I’m deeply disappointed by the virulent, lockstep attitude I see on the left. My experience in the last few months tells me what I would not have believed possible; on any number of issues (including Pigford, by the way) I’ve seen liberals act much nastier and with less factual honesty than the conservatives... and this includes on issues where I disagree with conservatives.

The attitude which concerns this writer is the attitude by the left that is tearing America apart. The double standard, lies, vitriol and hate expressed by the left will not serve our nation well. The reality is that politics is war by less violent means. However the line between politics and war is far closer than those on the left are willing to concede. They think they have the right to cross that line of violence -- but their opponents don't. Delusions such as these led to civil war in the 1800s and could easily lead down that same path again today.

What irony it is that the people who are imitating the role of the slave masters of the past, willing to tear our republic to shreds if they do not get their way, are those same Democrats who supported the slave masters before.

And Still Western 'Liberals' Support These People

by Melanie Phillips - March 12th, 2011 - The American Spectator

The Palestinian terrorist slaughter overnight of an Israeli couple Rabbi Udi Fogel and his wife Ruth and three of their children, 11-year-old Yoav, four-year-old Elad and three-month-old Hadas who were stabbed to death in their house in Itamar in Samaria -- three other children aged under 12 survived -- has received scant coverage in the British and western media.

The progressives who dominate news media never dramatize the occasions when their favored psychopaths stab and slit the throat of a three month old child. Also ignored is the aftermath of one of their bloodbaths, when these murderous scum go home to a party of candy to celebrate their great victory over the helpless three month old Jew.

That is what happened.

Of course this slaughter will not change the fact that Democrats continue to support the Palestinian murderers. The Democrats will simply wait for some issue to come up where they can spin it as Israel as the bad guy. Obviously only in Palestine is the brutal savage murder of a 3 month old Jew cause for celebration. The reality that Palestinians are the bad guys is not politically acceptable to Democrats. So for now they ignore the murder of a three month old baby, butchered by their favorite victims, the Muslims.

That is called strategy. It allows for selective outrage.

It’s Time For The Jews To Stand Up For Themselves

by David Horowitz - March 11th, 2011 - Front Page Magazine

This article about Palestine and the intolerance of Jews by Muslims was primarily written to encourage Jews to stand up against the campaign of deceit being waged by the progressive movement and its jihadist component throughout the world. It also addressed (almost as an afterthought) an eqaully serious problem in America today. As Horowitz wrote about what he had said at a recent event, these thoughts attracted my attention.

I said the frontline battle in our present war with totalitarianism was the First Amendment’s right to disagree. When protests were designed to shut down speakers, when speakers were defamed in advance of their appearances, one side of the argument was effectively silenced, and if that were allowed to continue we would soon lose our democracy. I said the attacks on freedom of speech had already gone so far in this country that you couldn’t mention terror and Islam in the same breath without being labeled a bigot or an Islamophobe, accused of labeling all Muslims as terrorists.

Even President Bush who had heroically defended us against the attacks of Islamic terrorists could not identify our enemies by name for fear of offending other terrorists and their sympathizers and allies. He could not identify them as Islamic extremists or Islamic radicals or Islamic jihadist which is what they call themselves. I happened to be speaking on the day Congressman Peter King opened his hearings on the radicalization of Muslims in America and had watched the attacks on those hearings on my hotel television screen. I said we had reached a point in our country where we could not even make inquiries about the threat of domestic terrorism posed by militant Islamists who are responsible for 17,000 terrorist attacks since 9/11 without being attacked as “McCarthyites” and “bigots.”

What struck me was the failure to equate these activities to the practice of progressives who embrace the same tactics on every single issue. A perfect example is the recent near riots in Madison, Wisconsin. Near riots? Excuse me. With millions of dollars in damage lets call them what they were. Riots.

The State of Wisconsin was trying to pass a law that gave Wisconsin government workers more bargaining rights than federal employees possess. MORE bargaining rights. Please note that. Because if you only listened to the mob of pro government-worker union protesters, you would have thought that they were being enslaved. The only thing that the protesters focused on was the requirement that they not continue to be paid nearly 50% more than private workers, get free benefits that private workers (you know - the tax payers who paid the salaries of the government workers who composed the mob) had to pay for, and starting to limit unbelievable early retirement programs that allowed government-workers to work for a few years and then draw retirement for two and three times as many years as they worked. They were rioting in support of their own greed against the reality of our economic problems.

Our courts have allowed the concept of free speech to be sabotaged whenever any group is willing to abuse the idea that actions equate to speech, even when those actions become the denial of free speech to others. If a mob of evil extremists strips your rights, the courts have no problem with that, as long as it is not "paid" government employees doing this in the name of government. Yet in Madison, the free speech rights of the voters were stripped by government workers. Nothing was done to punish them because they were acting in opposition to the elected leaders, not at their behest.

Isn't there at least a modicum of irony that these government workers were permitted to deny the free speech of others in behalf of their own government power when if they had been acting on behalf of government power serving the people as a whole they would have been restricted?

Our courts don't think so. However this is merely proof our courts have become so corrupt they are part of the tyranny of our nation rather than being our defender.

O's Urgent Inaction

by John Podhoretz - March 12, 2011 - New York Post

The White House is worried: The Libyan crisis and the general instability in the Middle East have led to spiraling gas prices. The president wanted to show the American people he knows it's a problem.

So he staged a press conference yesterday, and he basically said he's going to do . . . nothing.

He's not going to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. He's not going to authorize more drilling to reduce American dependency on foreign oil because, first of all, we're already doing more drilling -- and, second of all, we can't drill our way out of the problem.

[Snip]

Khadafy must be quaking in his boots to hear that the president "has organized a series of conversations about a wide range of options that we can take." A series of conversations -- now there's something to strike fear in the heart of a merciless, murderous, monstrous dictator out to crush a rebellion.

I don't know what makes me sadder. Remembering the incoherent policies on Libya supported by George W. Bush. Or watching the incoherent policies supported by Barack H. Obama.

I am certainly not a fan of the radical jihadists who are striving to take over Libya. However Qaddafi is a brutal evil enemy of our nation who has killed our citizens. Ambivalence is not a policy that can be justified.

That said, it is hard to see how we can do anything effective at this point. The problem is that we never had a clear and effective policy when it might have made a difference in steering this nation towards freedom and away from blaming us for all the problems of the Middle East. However I certainly agree with the author of the article that Obama could have done a lot of things in the current crisis that did not leave him looking like an imbecile. That is unfortunately what he looks like.

As the discord all over the world increases, it is not in the long term interest of our nation for our leader to be viewed as an imbecile.

Outrage! US Government Funding La Raza With Your Tax Dollars

by Mike Piccione - March 11th, 2011 - Human Events

The United States government is funding the National Council of La Raza with our tax dollars. La Raza, which literally means in Spanish “The Race,” is a radical organization that advocates open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens. I pulled and analyzed the tax return Form 990, the form filed by 501(c) 3 organizations to the IRS, and here is what was reported:

Government Grants (contributions) to the National Council of La Raza:

2008 Tax Returns, (October 1 2008 to September 30, 2009) $5,136,535

That is five million dollars to a group that hates America, believes our borders should be opened to allow Latinos to invade our nation without penalty, advocates that anyone physically present in America should have the right to vote with no citizenship test, promotes the secession of the western states into a Spanish Speaking separate nation, and which spends nearly ten percent of the tax payer funded grants lobbying to increase the tax payer funded grants we give them.

Why should the American tax payer fund a movement campaigning to destroy our nation?

Does that make sense?

The Soft Evil Of Barack Obama

by Stuart Schwartz - March 11th, 2011 - The American Thinker

Obama ignores the vow of the Muslim Brotherhood to "kill the Jews -- to the very last one" and, instead of decrying their murderous intent, pronounces them worthy of friendship. Hard evil hates Jews; soft evil embraces their murderers.

Soft evil inevitably leaches into public life. Harvard Law professor and liberal icon Alan Dershowitz, a frequent speaker on university campuses, traces the growing hate directed at Jewish students and faculty to the willingness of Obama to embrace and thereby legitimize the hard evil of those who hate, "thus blurring the line between legitimate political criticism and illegitimate bigotry."

Such is the nature of soft evil. In international affairs, in abortion, in healthcare, in millions of new regulations and taxes, in a thousand ways and relationships the lines between unalienable rights and illegitimate policy are blurred. Soft evil whispers "power" and Obama smiles.

Take a look around this country. Outside the Beltway, we are all Jews now.

Do you remember last year when Democrats insisted that vague terminology they called aggressive was inciting people to evil acts. They could not smear the Tea Party movement fast enough, and they looked long and hard for slights they could exaggerate into the basis for outrage.

Yesterday we find out that the union thugs who are rioting in Madison, Wisconsin have put vile threats of death on signs, have verbally threatened to kill the legislators and Governor Walker, and have also sent vicious emails with threats not only to kill the legislators, but their families, children and wives. Democrats of course are rushing to the microphone to loudly proclaim, these people should be doing this, because the act of voting to reverse some laws that Democrats passed are shameful and deserving of death.

Hate language has a double standard. Anything said by a Republican is vile and unacceptable unless Democrats approve. Anything said by a Democrat is justified and acceptable irrespective of its truth. This is freedom of speech in America today.

Stuart Schwarz has written an article that goes behind this double standard and addresses the subtle process of Soft Evil that is the foundation of this double standard. Though covered up with his laughing smile and non threatening manner, Barack Obama is the master of soft evil. From dealing with Qaddafi to the issue of bullying by some children, Barack Obama is on the job and insinuating Government Czars into every issue of our daily lives and the lives of those around the world.

The problem is that outside America Obama is considered a joke and no one listens to him. Inside America, Obama is expanding the government goon squads so rapidly that we citizens have no choice. His whim is our law. His hate for those of us who disagree with him is merely one more brick in his wall of defensiveness. The end result is, as the article stated, "Outside the Beltway, we are all Jews now."

Obama is slowly constructing a government that can pick and choose who has rights. And those of us who are "jews" have no rights.

World's Biggest Bond Fund Dumps All U.S. Debt

Pimco’s Gross Eliminates Government Debt From Total Return Fund

by Susanne Walker - March 9th, 2011 - Bloomberg News

Bill Gross, who runs the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., eliminated government-related debt from his flagship fund last month as the U.S. projected record budget deficits.

Pimco’s $237 billion Total Return Fund last held zero government-related debt in January 2009. Gross had cut the holdings to 12 percent of assets in January, according to the Newport Beach, California-based company’s website. The fund’s net cash-and-equivalent position surged from 5 percent to 23 percent in February, the highest since May 2008.

The world starts its purging of American debt, abandoning our out of control government to enemies like China. It appears China does not think it will need to invade America if it can simply buy America. Obama and the Democrats are fine with that.

Welfare Nation

Government handouts make up ONE THIRD of America's salaries and wages

by David Gardner - March 9th, 2011 - London Mail

Government handouts now make up a record-breaking one third of the total amount of wages and salaries in the U.S., according to a bombshell new study. The payouts – including Social Security, Medicare and unemployment insurance – are placing an increasing burden on the state at a time it is trying to dig itself out from a mountain of debt.

And economists fear the toll on taxpayers will only increase further if quick action isn’t taken before the majority of baby boomers reach retirement age.

Social benefits make up 35 per cent of wages and salaries this year, up from 21 per cent in 2000 and 10 per cent in 1960...

For more than 40 years Democrats have increased the tax burden by wasting money and creating more and more undeserved giveaways. A classic example of the idiocy of this - the Jimmy Carter passed requirement that we pay social security to any immigrant who moves here after they turn 65. They have never paid into the system yet they get to draw benefits as if they did. This fueled a huge surge in the number of immigrants who worked to bring their parents to America as soon as they could, under the premise of reuniting a family. The only problem is the cost of their care was paid not by the immigrant but by the American taxpayer.

Add up a huge list of such unjustified nonsense passed year after year after year and we have a culture of welfare people who have never worked in their entire lives. They simply suck at the public trough to pass their days on earth, always at the courtesy of Americans who work to support them.

Japan Must Develop Nuclear Weapons...

... warns Tokyo mayor

by David McNeill - March 8th, 2011 - The London Independent

Tokyo's outspoken [Mayor] says his country, which suffered history's only nuclear attack, should build nuclear weapons to counter the threat from fast-rising China.

In an interview with The Independent, Shintaro Ishihara said Japan could develop nuclear weapons within a year and send a strong message to the world.

Another nation seeks nuclear weapons, this time an ally. One more consequence of an American President that is so clearly unwilling to defend our allies that none of them trust us any longer.

Grand Dream Loses Sheen In Glare Of Daylight

by Michael Finnegan and Gale Holland - March 6, 2011 - Los Angeles Times

L.A. community colleges' green energy plan proves wildly impractical. The blunders cost taxpayers $10 million.

One thing was for sure: No matter how it was financed, the bill for all those solar panels and wind turbines would be huge. Eisenberg's cost estimates for taking the nine campuses off the grid ranged as high as $975 million — this for a college system that in 2010 spent less than $8 million on power bills.

An engineering consultant put the cost far higher: $1.9 billion. That number caught the attention of Marshall Drummond, then chancellor of the college district. It was enough to pay for several dozen new classroom buildings. In December 2008, the chancellor summoned Eisenberg and his energy team to explain.

As it turns out, the explanations were riddled with lies, or mistakes - if you believe the pie in the sky dreamer Eisenberg who was enchanted with the idea of green energy.

A few of his ignorant ideas?

Nine wind turbines were proposed for campuses which had so little wind they would barely light up a single light bulb, but cost millions to construct.

Battery solutions were proposed with technology that could not maintain the energy charge needed for the campuses, even ignoring the vastly greater costs over existing energy sources.

Geothermal projects were planned in Southern California where the mild temperatures would not support the concepts.

Solar panels were discovered to be so heavy and the supports so weak that they could not survive an earthquake. Eisenberg's solution was to put the panels on wheels so that the agency charged with approving their construction would not have jurisdiction to block them. That guaranteed that in an earthquake, they would kill the people below them. Eisenberg considered their probable deaths simply one cost of progress.

Eisenberg made commitments for financing that directly contradicted his claims on which approvals were granted, costing the college district $3 million instead of the $300 thousand approved. Eisenberg insisted this was not fraud, but "misunderstandings."

The reality is that Eisenberg is a classic green energy dreamer. He repeatedly ignored all obstacles, failures of technology, cost considerations and practicality of the technology and spent government money to fund projects that were idiocy in the extreme. Green energy does not work and is going nowhere.

This project represents a perfect example of the disasters that Europe has also experienced with their attempts at green energy. Why is it that the proponents of green energy are bragging about our need to catch up with Europe when they are abandoning the idea?

Stop Bernanke's Hanky-Panky

by Quin Hillyer - March, 4th, 2011 - The American Spectator

Literally halfway through writing this column, the latest email arrived from the always-wise economist David Gitlitz, blasting Bernanke: "The Fed chair didn't do any better attempting to explain the ongoing commodity price rally. The CRB spot commodity price index is now at record high levels and has risen by 85% since the Fed began its first quantitative easing program two years ago." And: "At some point, the reality that inflation can no longer be dismissed as a non-issue might become too obvious even for Bernanke to ignore. That realization, however, is not likely to come soon enough… to prevent the American economy from facing a bout of substantially higher inflation."

This article is an interesting take on the counter thought by some economists to "conventional thinking" by Bernanke's school of monetary policy. I agree that Bernanke is making a big mistake. I am simply not sure that raising rates artificially above "market dictated rates" will accomplish what even the author concedes violates the thinking of market "purists".

It certainly is a better option than continuing to pretend inflation is not breaking out in numerous places. With oil about to skyrocket, home prices about to fall again, food soaring, the collapse in the dollar pricing imports higher in an era when little is manufactured here in America, the overall picture for both the short and medium term is quite dismal. That is a key component in the refusal by those with money to invest in expanding our economy.

In addition to distrust in Bernanke, there is equally major distrust in Obama. He has already given our economy and free markets enough bad surprises. No one really trusts what will happen next, especially with so many in the left wing media predicting that Obama is going to have little trouble in defeating anyone the Republicans put up. Media influence is still a powerful force.

If it was your life savings that you had to invest, would you gamble on a future that might include Obama for six more years, or would you wait and see what happens in 2012?

To Save America, We Must Dethrone King Obama

by Lloyd Marcus - March 5th, 2011 - The American Thinker

Incredibly, Obama continues to boldly go where no other president has gone before. Apparently, none of the rules apply to him. Without consequence, at will, Obama ignores laws and the Constitution to implement his progressive/socialist agenda.

America's first black president has morphed into America's first king. All hail King Obama, our supreme ruler. Think about this folks, King Obama has put together his royal court of an unprecedented 32 czars who only answer to him. His czars consist of people who have socialist and communist leanings, many simply do not like America. King Obama's czars, without congressional over sight, set new rules and regulations for our lives; boldly ignoring laws and the U.S. Constitution.

[Snip]

Is it unfair to say Obama governs more like our king rather than our president? You be the judge.

Obamacare was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge. King Obama basically said "screw that! I'm implementing it anyway".

DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act) is the law. King Obama said in effect, "I don't like that law and we are not defending its constitutionality."

A federal ruling said King Obama's deep offshore drilling moratorium in Louisiana is illegal and ordered it lifted. Again, King Obama simply ignored the federal ruling.

No President has ever shown as much contempt for the courts as this former lecturer on Constitutional law. Yet, Obama never ever wrote anything that could be construed as showing he had any special knowledge in this area. Some of the things he has said since he became President, indicate he actually knows little about the Constitution or the legal interpretations that have arisen from its implementation.

His knowledge is superficial and biased by left wing beliefs about how it should be changed, or re-interpreted, not what most Americans (including most judges) believe it is.

Perhaps that ignorance is the source of his belief that being President makes him so powerful he can do anything he wants, the legislature and courts be damned. It is truly frightening to see Obama act as if no one can stop him from doing anything that he wants. If we have morphed into a Dictatorship or Monarchy, perhaps someone should let us know. Or has Obama already done that with his actions?

Manufacturing's Dismal Decade

by Patrick Buchanan - February 25th, 2011 - Human Events

The U.S. trade deficit in 2010 worsened by 33 percent, rising from $375 billion to $498 billion, the largest percentage increase in a decade. If Obama keeps this up, he may prove as big a disaster for U.S. manufacturing as his predecessor, although these are big shoes to fill.

As he has each February for years, Charles W. McMillion of MBG Information Services has compiled the stats on the industrial decline of his country under our free trade presidents. Here are but a few numbers for the decade from December 2000, the month before George W. Bush took the oath, to December 2010, the end of Obama's second year.

In that decade, America ran a total of $6.1 trillion in trade deficits, more than our entire economic growth. To finance those 10 years of deficits, America had to borrow $1.553 billion every day.

And we wonder why China owns America.

There are some great points in this article. However Buchanan makes the classic mistake of equating trade deficits to being a bad thing in and of itself. Usually a student of history, Buchanan ignores that America grew from a small nation to a huge powerhouse while running trade deficits for most of the last two hundred years.

The issue is no more trade deficits leading to borrowing than it is if an entrepreneur borrows money to grow his business due to cash flow constraints. If the business doesn't grow, borrowing is a really bad idea. If the business grows faster than the money borrowed, it can build a huge enterprise.

Our problem has not been running trade deficits. It has been that we have not reinvested our profits into growth of our nation. Instead we have consumed too much and invested overseas.

A perfect example is a comparison of BMW and GM. While GM was busy exporting jobs to Mexico with its "outsourcing" efforts, BMW was "insourcing" to low cost areas within our borders. BMW learned that there were places in America where they could hire workers who were super productive, built extremely high quality products, and were still low cost.

Why didn't GM do the same thing? GM was a union shop and couldn't. They had to pay the same wages no matter where they built the cars. So they could not move manufacturing to areas with a lower cost of living inside America and reduce labor costs to stay competitive. The end result? GM kept getting smaller and BMW kept getting bigger.

All over America, governments see manufacturing as a cash cow to tax. Our failure to appreciate the value of manufacturing has led to tax policies that drove manufacturing offshore. The IRS rules have to change to promote manufacturing. We must cease driving these jobs overseas.

Combine these two practices, union stupidity and government greed, and the results were predictable. Yet our government, the unions and even the American voter did not predict the consequences. We are paying the price for their refusal to accept reality.

I don't agree with all that Buchanan says. His solutions are not always the right answer. His claim of deficits being a serious problem are not even correct. However you cannot disagree that he has pointed out some key issues that we must start to address. The current stupidity cannot continue. Our nation will not survive if it does.

Holder Ill Serves His ‘People’

Editorial - March 2nd, 2011 - The Washington Times

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. played the race card in congressional testimony on Tuesday, referring to blacks as his “people” while neglecting the rest of Americans. That race-based lens pervades his Justice Department, causing consistently skewed enforcement of the law.

[Snip]

Mr. Holder has a history of stoking racial resentments. In 2009, he quipped that “in things racial” Americans form “a nation of cowards.”

[Snip]

Mr. Holder doesn’t understand that while he’s attorney general, his “people” are all citizens of the United States, not just black Americans.

I don't think either Holder or Obama misunderstands the premise that they represent all of the people or our nation. I think they reject the premise. For them, it is all about payback. For them, it is "their turn on top." That is why they have ignored the legislature's overwhelming vote for the Defense of Marriage act and unilaterally declared it unconstitutional without any input from the courts. That is why they continue to move forward with Obamacare even though it has been declared un-Constitutional by the courts at this point. They do not believe anyone can tell them what to do. They see their power as unlimited. When it comes down to it, I suspect they will ignore the Supreme Court too.

They simply do not care what anyone else thinks.

A ‘Green’ Catastrophe In The Making

by Arnold Ahlert - March 1st, 2011 - Jewish World Review

For the last four decades, Americans, who favor domestic energy production by a two-to-one margin, have been told that we are being "held hostage" by oil-exporting nations. That is, quite simply, a lie. America is holding itself hostage, courtesy of progressives for whom no amount of economic upheaval, no number of job losses, and no increase in the national debt or deficit spending is too high a price to pay for the continued implementation of their "green" agenda. Even America's national security is a secondary consideration for a movement whose philosophy can be reduced to one over-riding idea:

We have to destroy America in order to save it.

The save it part is not possible. The destroy it part is well under way. It is happening at the hands of left wing progressives whose hatred for America exceeds all common sense.

69 Year Old NASCAR Driver Chases Down Thief In Las Vegas

by Staff - March 1st, 2011 - Channel 41 NBC News

Most NASCAR drivers don't come to mind when you think of Las Vegas crimefighters, but then again, most NASCAR drivers aren't 69-year-old Morgan Shepherd.

The veteran of 44 NASCAR seasons was getting out of his rental car in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart store Monday evening just minutes away from Las Vegas Motor Speedway just as three men burst from the store's entrance with security forces trailing behind.

That's when Shepherd, a daily jogger and fitness perfectionist, sprang into action.

"I just got out and took off after them," Shepherd said. "I caught one of them just as they were getting ready to hop a little wall at the end of the parking lot. I yanked him down and got on top of him."

I love this story on so many levels.

First, race drivers are often denigrated as not being athletes. The truth is that fighting the high G-forces of a race car is really hard physical work and when you have to keep making split second decisions while enduring these muscular stresses for more than 3 hours, you better be in good shape. Morgan clearly is.

Second, the past retirment age 69 year old Morgan outran an 18 year old and SAT on him. It just proves that old guys are not necessarily over the hill.

Third, Morgan and his wife shop at Walmart. It proves that being frugal is still a part of the culture of our nation.

Finally, the cops were able to differentiate the difference between someone who was on the side of justice and the criminals. On TV, cops are often shown as hostile to all civilians, and it is just not true.

Stories like this used to be the normal way America operated. Now they are rare. That is the only sad part of the story.

Obama's Libya Response Lacks Courage, Direction

by Jonah Goldberg - March 1st, 2011 - USA Today

"The genius of you Americans," former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser reportedly once said, "is that you never make clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which make us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them which we are missing."

This article starts slowly and the point is not clear at first, yet it works its way inexorably to the conlusion that Obama is in over his head. Goldberg is usually right.

The West's Proxy War Against the Jews

by Caroline Glick - March 1st, 2011 - TownHall.com

It was a stunning moment of moral clarity. As the South Vietnamese refugees clambered onto rickety boats in the South China Sea to escape the victorious Communists, the American Left that orchestrated the US defeat through a sustained campaign of propaganda and fake calls for peace stood silent...

The silence of the likes of Susan Sontag, Jane Fonda, Noam Chomsky and their fellow travelers came to mind last week when the Western media and intellectual elites averted their gaze as Sheikh Yusuf Qaradawi, the long exiled spiritual guide of the Muslim Brotherhood spoke before a crowd of millions at Cairo's Tahrir Square...

Two important things happened during Qaradawi's appearance in Cairo. First, his handlers refused to allow Google's Egyptian Internet revolutionary Wael Ghonim to join the cleric on the dais. For anyone willing to notice, Qaradawi's message in spurning Ghonim was indisputable. As far as the jihadists are concerned, Ghonim and his fellow Internet activists are the present day equivalent of Lenin's useful idiots.

They did their job of convincing credulous Western liberals that the overthrow of Mubarak was all about sweetness and light.

And now they are no longer needed.

The second message was Qaradawi's call to destroy Israel.

It is clear that thanks to progressives in the Western Democracies the arc of history is going to favor the Islamist extremists in this nation of 90% Sunni Muslims. Even before Mubarak was overthrown, it was clear that the jihadist hatred for the Coptic Christian minority was getting out of hand.

It appears that another Islamist nation, Egypt, is about to join the active jihad against the infidel Jews and Christians. Though Muslims flip their focus from one to the other and then back, there is little to suggest that Islam will ever fail to find all the hatred they need for anyone who is not a Muslim.

Even within that community of Islam, there is competition to see who is the more devout -- and dedicated to the death of all infidels. With the Shiite Muslims of Iran being neither Sunni nor Arab, it is not likely to seek a union with Sunni and Arab Egypt. However even a competition to see who is the more violent against infidels will condemn our world to the provision of arms to violent jihadists bent on the re-institution of the Caliphate. With Pakistan already having nuclear arms and Iran clearly well on the way, both branches of this violent religion are about to have access to arms that could turn our world into a nuclear holocaust.

Even worse, Egypt is sure to join this nuclear arms race and they have the technical expertise to make it happen quickly. Libya almost had nuclear weapons until Qaddafi's fear of George W. Bush caused him to give up the program to save him from invasion. Now it appears that Qaddafi is going to shortly be gone anyway, and this jihadist campaign will reappear quickly in Libya. They have the oil money to acquire nuclear weapons quickly too.

In short order, the desire of progressives in the West to see their fellow travellers in Islam on top in the Middle East will be reality. That will be followed shortly by 4 nuclear capable Islamist states competing to support the Islamo-fascist groups. Do not think for a minute that this will be good for Western Civilization -- or even good for individual freedom of the people in the Muslim countries.