Letting go of the year

What have I accomplished this year that was positive?

I stopped waiting for my oldest son to build me a web site and took the courses necessary to do it myself.

After 12 years in the same school system I removed my youngest boy and placed him in one closer to our home. His grades and attitude changed he has only 18 months to go. So far no drugs and alcohol

I placed a bat behind my bedroom door and instructed my youngest to hit me in the head with it if I endeavor to bail his mother (my x) out of any further jams...

I am not taking on any other legal problems outside of immediate blood related cases and then only with sworn statements under penalty of fine that whomever seeks my help must pay monetarily if they do not follow through

After many many years I almost began a relationship with one of the opposite sex

Although still slim my finances are in better shape despite the downturn

I decided not to buy the property in New Mexico and am looking at Hawaii

Continuing on my Panama project.

Accepted an invitation to come visit a female friend whose hand I held as she struggled through a tough divorce and who is now living in seclusion on the Canadian/US frontier. At least it gives me good reason to spend time next summer in Montreal and get my RV fixed and ready

Passed the Census test for a part time job. Got a note from the FBI about my history. Must be doing something right I'm on their list.

Reopened a dialogue with my only sister after her debilitating stroke

Committed to never retiring but instead beginning my working vacation for the rest of my life.Come to think of it I have always been on a working vacation.

Secured an inner city garden plot

Mended some fences, tore a hole in no new ones.

Felt the passing of some very old and dear friends and wondered about my own mortality and how its timing sucks no matter when it comes

Am one year closer to understanding the human experience

Gave away a lot of good karma as a future investment

Brietbart says it the best for Obama's end of year critique

HERE

And now an appropriate note to end the year

Taken from Brietbart.. Big Government

ObamaCare Corrupt Deal Shows Need to Amend the Speech and Debate Clause
by Mark J. Fitzgibbons

Several state attorneys general have been asked, or plan, to investigate the deal struck by Senator Ben Nelson to permanently exempt Nebraska from paying Medicaid expenses in exchange for his voting for Obamacare.

An investigation of the Nelson deal would likely have two focuses. First, is the Nebraska exemption unconstitutional under Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the Constitution, which requires “all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States?” Secondly, did the deal constitute a form of corruption?


Whether the Nebraska exemption constitutes unlawful corruption obviously depends on the facts surrounding how Senator Nelson cut his deal. However, even a pure constitutional challenge would benefit from a clear understanding and presentation of the facts underlying how and why the Nebraska exemption was reached.

If an investigation about unlawful corruption were to proceed, it would of course be critical to question Senator Nelson himself. Senator Nelson – and Harry Reid – would assuredly invoke the Speech and Debate Clause (Article I, Section 6, Clause 1 of the Constitution) to block such an investigation.

The Speech and Debate Clause provides that members of Congress:

shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their attendance at the Session of their Respective Houses, and in going to and from the same, and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.

(Emphasis added.)

The Speech and Debate Clause was written so an overly aggressive executive would not suppress and intimidate critical legislators. The Founders, however, did not envision a Congress as gluttonous and corrupt as the one we have today.

The Speech and Debate Clause has been construed by the courts more broadly than its text to include legislative acts and congressional staff within its protections. Given how too many members of Congress have demonstrated contempt for the first principles embodied in our Constitution, and how they’ve exhibited disdain towards limits on power, perhaps the Speech and Debate Clause needs to be reformed by way of amendment.

The most recent high-profile example of use of the Speech and Debate Clause involved now-imprisoned former Democratic Congressman, William Jefferson, along with former Republican House Speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, who invoked the Clause after Jefferson’s congressional office was raided by the FBI using a judge-authorized search warrant. A United States District Court declared the FBI raid unconstitutional. Congressman Jefferson, however, was unsuccessful in later using the Speech and Debate Clause to challenge his conviction of bribery.

Unfortunately, the Speech and Debate Clause has come to be abused all too frequently. Many members of Congress engage in otherwise actionable defamation to bully and impugn witnesses at congressional hearings, or even members of the public. Emboldened by constitutional immunity, and obviously not respecting their offices as representatives of the people, members of Congress frequently degrade hearings into circuses of false charges more suitable for banana republics than the United States.

The more serious degradation of the Speech and Debate Clause, however, may be that it is used to protect corruption under the guise of official activity in Congress. Even if the promise of ‘transparency’ weren’t an utter joke, there are billions of taxpayer dollars being used for payola. Just look at ACORN as one example, where public money is traded for political endorsements.

The states and the people, from whom Congress derives its enumerated powers by their consent, should be able to question their representatives under oath under certain well-defined circumstances, such as when taxpayer money may have been spent unconstitutionally, or as quid pro quo. The Ben Nelson deal appears to be both, and Americans deserve answers under oath, not in response to fluff from a press favoring Obamacare.

I’ve been critical of some state attorneys general, such as former New Yorker AG Eliot Spitzer, for abusing their investigatory powers over private entities and people. However, if state attorneys general may not investigate federal elected officials when corruption may be present, and question them under standards of reasonable cause when there appears to be corruption, then who’s to stop it?

It seems it’s time for a limited amendment to the Speech and Debate Clause, one that fosters the original intent of the Founders in spirited debate among our representatives, yet does not allow – or even encourage – corruption and abuse of the offices representing the people.

A constitutional amendment is no small matter or accomplishment, but the Founders never intended any provision in the Constitution to protect government corruption on the scale we see today. The Speech and Debate Clause should no longer give corrupt elected officials cover, especially because the Constitution was created by men far more honorable and respectful than they.

Ending the year of false choices!

It has been the year of Obama. I only wish it were done and over with, its not.
BO burst onto the scene with half the country believing in his false choices scenarios, not so much anymore.

The economy suffers, and people are worse off than they were under Bush. Most of all what do we have to look forward to this coming year anything good?

With the controlling government jamming socialism down the throats of the American people and trying their damnedest to wreck the fee economy, while leaving us indebted into the end of the century to China. The people are just beginning to question or leadership or lack thereof of the Obama era.

2010 is the year that it must turnaround or I fear be lost for a very long long time if not forever.

What to watch for as signs that things will reverse;

The MSM will begin to fall out of love with BO completely

Health care will pass in the House and be signed into law but will begin to be reversed almost immediately after the next election.

Amnesty will not succeed this coming year

The economy will worsen

A major scandal will break out inside the White House, Rahm Emanuel will be forced to leave

More world leaders will question the United States roll as protector of the free world and demand it reassure Europe of its alliances

More terrorists released from Gitmo will turn up in AQ, Europe will come under intense attack



Taken from American Thinker
December 31, 2009
Obama's Game of False Choices
By Monte Kuligowski
"Let me be clear," "Failure is not an option," and "I reject that false choice" appear to be three of Barack Obama's top phrases. They are the hallmarks of Obama-style rhetoric. Of the three, let's consider the Obama tactic of false choices.

From war to foreign policy to the economy, Obama is constantly setting up his "false choices" in order to soundly "reject" the false choice at hand. The gimmick works well to make Obama appear really smart, as one who thinks outside the box. In the "fallacy of false choices," Christopher Beam notes that Obama often sets up straw men and appears to create wiser third options in rejecting the false choices.

To the faithful, the false choice is obviously immature, and Obama's third choice is strikingly brilliant. Bush had been giving us false choices for eight years, but Obama rejects those false choices.

A cursory analysis of the choice to set up false choices to make one's point, however, reveals that it's sort of childish. Anyone can play the game, but only a certain personality profile would choose to do so.

Any conservative could use the false choice device. Imagine any conservative leader behind the microphone playing Obama's game:

Let me be clear: There are those who say we must overhaul health care now (desiring to act in a hasty and partisan manner). And there are those who say we must allow the status quo to continue indefinitely. I reject this false choice...

[Now imagine the speaker striking a pose with his head cocked upward as he pauses.]

A conservative could set up the "false choice," pretending to be smarter than everyone else. Or he could just come out and say what he really believes about health care reform.

For example: Tearing down the arbitrary barriers to purchasing health insurance across state lines would bring down costs overnight. And placing a harness on the medical malpractice trial lawyers (the Democrats' loyal voting block) would also bring down costs immediately. "Let me be clear," a conservative politician could say. "That is called tort reform. Of course, those in bed with the trial lawyers don't want to talk about real reform."

Here's how an eight-year-old might use the Obama gimmick on his parents:

There has long been a tension between those who say parents need to have their kids in bed by eight o'clock and those who say allowing children to stay up all night playing around is perfectly fine. Let me be clear: I reject that false choice. I will not accept the status quo. No, not now, not this time. There is hope. And change is coming. Failure is not an option.

That probably wouldn't work out too well for the kid. And we shouldn't allow Obama's nonsense to work, either.

Sometimes Obama will use an actual false choice (as with the first example) and other times, like the eight-year-old example, the "false choice" he uses is not a false choice at all. It's simply a tool for the fundamental transforming of the current tradition.

On deficits, jobs, and government spending, Obama says that

[t]here are those who claim we have to choose between paying down our deficits on the one hand, and investing in job creation and economic growth on the other. This is a false choice.


With his chin raised to the heavens, he rejects that false choice. In this instance, Obama believes he can spend trillions and pay down our deficits simultaneously. Only Obama the Great can make that kind of illusion believable.

What Obama really rejects is a reality-based economic philosophy which holds that prosperity-producing jobs are created not by government investing. Incidentally, "investing" is code for spreading around billions of taxpayer dollars. If Obama would actually keep his promises to cut government spending and to lower the tax burden on small business, he could pay down the deficits while allowing jobs to flourish.

Writing in the Chicago Tribune earlier this year, Obama presented this choice:

But I also know that we need not choose between a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism and an oppressive government-run economy. That is a false choice that will not serve our people or any people.


Mark Steyn notes that inasmuch as Obama is not offering a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism, only one option remains. Never mind that Obama views capitalism through the lens of Jeremiah Wright. The point is that in this instance, Obama's rhetorical device really presents no choice at all. Obama's oppressive government-run economy is "pretty much the only game in town."

At this point many are nostalgic for the old days of (chaotic) free-market cycles and wonderful (unforgiving) freedoms to both succeed and fail.

Obama can't come out and say that he's a Marxist-oriented, big-government statist who is recklessly driving our country and traditions into the ground. But he can say he rejects that false choice and that failure is not an option. It's becoming increasingly clear that the perception of his personal failure is the real non-option; the bankruptcy of the United States apparently is optional.

Of course, Obama rejects that false choice.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/obamas_game_of_false_choices.html at December 31, 2009 - 10:41:13 AM EST

Why is it I don't believe him ?

Harry has been busy trying to raise money. Today I received this in my pseudonym email box that I use to monitor Harry's news letters.

Dear Gary,

Democrats have been busy this year.

We've accomplished much, and have fought the Republican's obstructionist tactics every step of the way. They've made defeating President Obama's agenda their top legislative priority, and they've made defeating me their top political priority.

In a few short hours, I will close the fundraising books for the year. Will you stand with me today and help beat back the Republican's attacks?

We have done so much this year to put our country back on the right track:

* With our economy teetering on the brink of collapse, Democrats passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which is putting Nevadans to work as we speak.

* The Lilly Ledbetter Act made fair pay for women and minorities the law of the land.

* We expanded SCHIP so 37,000 kids in Nevada can see a doctor and be treated when they get sick.

* We passed sweeping changes to our nation's hate crimes laws, ensuring violent denials of civil rights will not go unpunished.

* We protected more than 2 million acres of wilderness, and thousands miles of scenic rivers and trails. And we stopped progress on the nuclear dump at Yucca Mountain in its tracks.

* We made the largest investment ever in clean energy, creating thousands of jobs in Nevada and putting our country on a path to energy independence.

* We stood up to the credit card companies, forcing them to treat their customers fairly.

* And of course, we are well on our way to truly historic reform of our nation's health care delivery system.

Last month, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee sent a fundraising letter to the extreme wing of his party, claiming I'm pushing a "radical liberal agenda" on our country. I guess he considers tax cuts for working families and putting more cops on the street "radical" and "liberal."
Will you consider making a donation of $50, $30 or $15 today? With the right-wing fringe running the Republican Party these days, you know they will pull out the Karl Rove playbook next year.

Years from now, pundits will look back on 2009 and proclaim it the most productive legislative year since the first year of FDR's administration - despite the economic turmoil and the non-stop obstruction of the GOP. There is still so much to do. With your help, we can continue to bring about the change America deserves.
Happy New Year,

Harry
Harry

PS - As we move forward into the next legislative session, I'm eager to know what issue is most important to you in 2010. Send me a text message at 42779 (HARRY).
Text E to 42779 for Climate Change.
Text F to 42779 for Jobs Package.
Text G to 42779 for Financial Regulation Reform.
Text H to 42779 for Immigration Reform.
Thank you!

I guess he couldn't say more without his teleprompter

President Barack Obama on Monday vowed to track down all those behind an attempt to bring down a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day:

“We will not rest until we find all who were involved and hold them accountable.”

Didn't Obama say almost exactly the same thing about Osama Bin Laden, except I think he said He or my Administration. () will not rest until we have hunted him down and killed him.

Oh here it is ... the quote...

"We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda," Obama promised during an Oct. 7 2008 debate. "That has to be our biggest national security priority."

Well not quite exactly the same but you get the point.

Former Vice-President Dick Cheney came out with his own statement today.

Here is Cheney’s full statement:

"As I’ve watched the events of the last few days it is clear once again that President Obama is trying to pretend we are not at war. He seems to think if he has a low key response to an attempt to blow up an airliner and kill hundreds of people, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gives terrorists the rights of Americans, lets them lawyer up and reads them their Miranda rights, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if we bring the mastermind of 9/11 to New York, give him a lawyer and trial in civilian court, we won’t be at war.

“He seems to think if he closes Guantanamo and releases the hard-core al Qaeda trained terrorists still there, we won’t be at war. He seems to think if he gets rid of the words, ‘war on terror,’ we won’t be at war. But we are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren’t, it makes us less safe. Why doesn’t he want to admit we’re at war? It doesn’t fit with the view of the world he brought with him to the Oval Office. It doesn’t fit with what seems to be the goal of his presidency – social transformation—the restructuring of American society. President Obama’s first object and his highest responsibility must be to defend us against an enemy that knows we are at war."

Most MSM services are trying to lightent the embarassment to Obama by pointing out that the Bush administration also delayed releasing a Presidential statement during the almost shoe bomber incident under Bush.

There is a difference. The Bush Admin had never encountered this type of terrorist attempt or weapon before and busied themselves gathering all of the information possible in order that they might put in place the safe guards to prevent or deter this from happening again immediately.

Under Obama it appears that they were not only lax in their efforts of enforcement under TSA, but had recently cut back on TSA's budget allocation which may have allowed this to happen. That's egg on your face no matter how you cook it.

But in keeping with his none response mode Obama had to send out his entourage of CYA er's before he would dare issue the slightest statement and then when it did come, it was about as reassuring as his Copenhagen speech.

I am beginning to think that Obama is quite comfortable with letting everyone else in his staff run the show while he idles his time away enjoying all the perks he thinks come naturally with the office of "I won".

Even it is not a reality that Obama is psychologically and socially detached as it seems, he certainly depicts that type of personality by consistently avoiding any verbal commitment during crisis.

He truly is incompetent to the point of frightening. Any minute I was waiting for the "Bush did it". Where's Joe Biden when you need him?

Is Obama Administration playing race politics?

Originally published 05:45 a.m., December 29, 2009, updated 01:57 p.m., December 29, 2009 Washington Times
Justice Dept. moves Panthers pursuer to S.C.

Jerry Seper

The veteran Justice Department voting rights section chief who recommended going forward on a civil complaint against members of the New Black Panther Party after they disrupted a Pennsylvania polling place in last year's elections has been removed from his post and transferred to the U.S. attorney's office in South Carolina.

Justice Department officials confirmed Monday that Christopher Coates, who signed off on the complaint's filing in federal court in Philadelphia in January accusing the party and three of its members of civil rights violations, would begin his new assignment next month.

The complaint, which accused party members of intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place while wearing black berets, black combat boots, black dress shirts and black jackets with military-style markings, and wielding a nightstick, was later dismissed by Obama administration political appointees at the Justice Department.

The incident gained national attention when it was captured on videotape and distributed on YouTube.

The dismissal resulted in outrage by some Republican members of Congress and in a formal investigation by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which subpoenaed Mr. Coates and J. Christian Adams, the lead attorney in the case, to testify on why the complaint was dismissed. The commission also is seeking documents to explain why the charges were dropped just as a federal judge was about to approve sanctions.

Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler on Monday said that as a general policy, the department does not comment on personnel matters, but she said she could confirm that Mr. Coates continues to be a Justice employee and will begin an 18-month detail with the U.S. attorney's office in South Carolina, beginning in January.

Ms. Schmaler also said the decision to move Mr. Coates to a new position within the department had nothing to do with the New Black Panther Party case but was the result of conversations Mr. Coates initiated with officials within the Civil Rights Division earlier this year.

She did not elaborate.

Mr. Coates declined to comment and referred inquiries Monday to the department's public affairs office.

Kevin McDonald, spokesman for U.S. Attorney W. Walter Wilkins in Columbia, S.C., confirmed Monday that Mr. Coates had been "detailed" to that office and that officials there were "looking forward to his arrival." He said the veteran civil rights attorney had been assigned to the office's criminal division.

"It is our understanding he was willing to take the detail, and we look forward to him being on the job," Mr. McDonald said.

Justice Department insiders said Mr. Coates' transfer was not unexpected, despite the fact that many within the department consider the veteran prosecutor as key to efforts by Justice to apply federal civil rights laws in a fair and neutral manner.

Members of the Civil Rights Commission also have questioned whether the decision to drop the New Black Panther Party complaint constituted a departure from long-standing enforcement policy and whether the dismissal might lead to more voter intimidation.

Commissioner Todd Gaziano, a former Justice Department lawyer who served in the Office of Legal Counsel during the Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations, said the dismissal had the potential to significantly change enforcement of the Voting Rights Act "for good or for bad."

In a letter to the Justice Department in June, Commission Vice Chairman Abigail Thernstrom and Commissioner Ashley L. Taylor Jr. said they were "gravely concerned" that the dismissal "weakens the agency's moral obligation to prevent voting rights violations, including acts of voter intimidation or vote suppression."

"We cannot understand the rationale for this case's dismissal and fear that it will confuse the public on how the Department of Justice will respond to claims of voter intimidation or voter suppression in the future," they wrote.

Earlier this month, Joseph H. Hunt, director of the Justice Department's Federal Programs Branch, told Mr. Coates and Mr. Adams not to cooperate with the commission's investigation, citing what he described as "well-established" and "lawful" department guidelines.

Mr. Hunt also said the Civil Rights Commission had no authority to enforce its subpoenas and had the ability only to make referrals to the Justice Department recommending that a criminal case be opened.

His comments, outlined in a letter, were in response to concerns raised by Mr. Adams, who -- through his attorney, Jim Miles of Lexington, S.C. -- asked whether he would be subject to prosecution if he declined to respond to a commission subpoena.

Mr. Miles said he thought Mr. Adams had a "statutory obligation superior to that imposed by the Department of Justice" and that his refusal to cooperate might subject him to imprisonment or contempt charges.

Mr. Hunt had said there was "no reasonable likelihood of imprisonment" for Mr. Adams because "the Department of Justice itself has instructed your client not to provide any information (either via testimony or documents) to the commission."

Mr. Miles on Monday said he was surprised by the transfer.

"As it has been explained to me, Mr. Coates was an attorney of great skill, and it is ironic he would be moved out of that position," Mr. Miles said. "But I assure you his quality of life will be substantially improved by moving to South Carolina out of the Washington Beltway area."

Mr. Miles said he had no way of knowing whether circumstances would impact his client, but added that he was "amazed" that the Justice Department had "gone to such length, depth and height to torch the disclosure of its decision-making process in this case."

Career attorneys in the Justice Department's Voting Rights section had decided as early as Dec. 22, 2008, to seek charges in the New Black Panther Party case.

The decision to dismiss the complaint came from then-Acting Assistant Attorney General Loretta King after an April 2009 meeting she had with Associate Attorney General Thomas J. Perrelli, the department's No. 3 political appointee, according to interviews with lawyers familiar with the case.

At the time, the career attorneys wanted the department to seek sanctions in the case because the government already had won a default judgment. They were in the final stages of completing that work when they were told to seek a delay, according to federal records and interviews with lawyers familiar with the case.

The complaint had accused the New Black Panther Party, its chairman, Malik Zulu Shabazz, a D.C. lawyer, Minister King Samir Shabazz, head of the Philadelphia chapter, and Jerry Jackson, a Philadelphia party member. Justice later sought an injunction against Samir Shabazz, who carried the nightstick, barring him from displaying weapons at polling places until 2012.

Party members have not returned numerous telephone messages and e-mails for comment, but told the Associated Press earlier this month in Dallas that the Justice Department was correct in dismissing the complaint. Malik Shabazz described the complaint as a "political witch hunt" aimed at discrediting Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. - the first black man to be named to the post.

Is this just singing to the choir since the deed is done ?

Taken from American Thinker

I Am Not a Spendthrift'
By Jeffrey Folks
The Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard once defended the proposition that every statement suggests its opposite. Others have expressed a similar skepticism concerning the trustworthiness of words, especially when those words are not backed by action. From Shakespeare ("The lady doth protest too much, methinks") to Emily Dickinson ("A word is dead/When it is said"), our great writers have always been suspicious of flowery words.

Modern political history offers plenty of examples of words that suggest their opposite. For many who watched the speech, Richard Nixon's insistence that he was "not a crook" immediately heightened the suspicion that he was. Bill Clinton's finger-wagging denial of ever having had "sex with that woman" only whetted public curiosity to find out what he had been doing with that woman.

So far, the Obama presidency has disappointed those with a taste for criminality or prurience among those in high office. Aside from some difficulty understanding the tax code, most of Obama's appointees have avoided legal difficulties, and it is hard to imagine a Lewinsky moment for a president as cold and detached as Obama appears to be.

Though this president may not be a philanderer or a crook, he clearly is a spendthrift. His great failing is that he simply does not understand the difference between a billion and a trillion, nor does he seem to understand that even a billion is real money. That is the very reason why, from early in the presidential campaign up to the present, the president has taken pains to portray himself as a frugal cost-cutter. The $878-billion stimulus spending package was an "emergency" item, a one-time expenditure -- though it was soon followed by a $600-billion omnibus spending bill, and thus was not to be viewed as a permanent increase in spending. Nor is the likelihood of a second round of stimulus spending (designed to create temporary jobs) ahead of the fall election to be interpreted as spending. In the president's linguistic universe, "spending" can be called "saving," just as "taxes" can be said to be "contributions."

Whenever a president resorts to bluster, as Obama has done when the topic of the cost of health care reform has come up, we can be sure that he has something to hide. When asked about the long-term cost of the government takeover of health care, the president insists that extending coverage to 30 million Americans will actually save hundreds of billions of dollars over ten years. Not only that, but it will be paid for with no tax increase for those earning less than $250,000 -- the only tax increases will fall upon insurance companies and high-worth health insurance plans. But the manner in which Obama tells us these things -- more like the steely tone of a prison guard than an elected official -- suggests that he will brook no further discussion.

When a president blusters, the public needs to ask why. In the case of the House and Senate health care bills now in conference, they need to ask why Obama is so adamant about the reform's saving money in the first ten years. It is because new coverage does not even begin to kick in until 2014, while new taxes and Medicare cuts begin immediately. By 2019, according to the Congressional Budget Office as reported in the Wall Street Journal, the Senate bill results annually in $106.8 billion in new taxes, $105.4 billion in Medicare cuts, and $199 billion in new spending. That's what the president means by "savings." And of course, this projection assumes that Congress will actually have the nerve to cut Medicare by $105 billion per year and face the wrath of a rapidly expanding population of seniors.

Granted that budgetary abuses lack the voyeuristic appeal of criminality and sex, Obama's fiscal recklessness ought nonetheless to be of the greatest concern. Obama's pledge not to raise taxes on those earning less than $250,000 -- "not one penny" -- is starting to sound a lot like George H. W. Bush's "read my lips" oath. The difference is that Obama is a lot more brazen, since he will have to raise taxes a great deal more than Bush did to pay for an expansion of government spending from 18% to 30% of GDP, as now anticipated. An increase of government spending by 67% entails an equal increase in revenue, either from taxes or debt.

Taxing and spending may not be sexy, but in fact they are far more scandalous activities than those engaged in by Presidents Nixon and Clinton. They are scandalous because unlike the foibles of his predecessors, Obama's bad judgment will affect the life of every American, including those yet unborn. Unlike the failings of his predecessors, Obama's fiscal recklessness affects what we are and what we shall be for generations. Shall we be a rich and powerful nation with a strong and trusted currency and prosperous markets -- or an unproductive nation dependent on the fiscal dictates of others? Shall we be a nation of affluence and opportunity, or a nation of beggars housed in public shelter, fed with food stamps, heated and clothed with vouchers, educated in dysfunctional schools, and treated within an overcrowded, government-regulated medical system? The choice depends on whether government is able to restrain its spending.

Certainly, Obama wishes to appear to be a fiscally responsible president who will both lower the deficit and hold the line on taxes. He is loud and insistent, even to the point of browbeating opponents, about controlling spending and not raising taxes. But as Kierkegaard, Shakespeare, and Dickinson understood, "not one penny" is one of those phrases meant to disguise the speaker's intention. It is a classic example "the big lie," a falsehood so outrageous that it cannot easily be challenged. It is, in fact, a rhetorical trick to which Obama frequently resorts.

"Raising taxes next year," says the president, "would be the wrong thing to do." Why would it be the wrong thing to do next year if it is necessary in future years? Does it have anything to do with the November election? What about every year after 2010? The American people recognize lawyerly speech when they hear it. As the American people grow weary of Obama's deception, the moment of truth may finally catch up with him. That is the moment when bluster, deception, and denial no longer work.

With each week that passes, the president's assurances that "spending is saving" ring more hollow. At some future press conference, during some tense interview or angry speech, the moment will surely arrive when the president glowers angrily at the camera and insists that "I am not a wastrel." And at that point, everyone in America will know that he is.

Dr. Jeffrey Folks taught for thirty years in universities in Europe, America, and Japan. He has published ten books.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/i_am_not_a_spendthrift.html at December 29, 2009 - 11:20:24 AM EST

Here is one to stay tuned in on lots of Administrative Law and procedure before it ever reached the Fed court which then rubber stamped their actions

December 28, 2009
High Court to Consider Government's Low Tactics
By Steven Geoffrey Gieseler
As government gets bigger, freedom suffers. Nowhere is this truth more evident than in property rights law, where a state of affairs unthinkable a century ago -- let alone at America's founding -- has today become the unfortunate status quo.

But every so often, there is an instance of the government abusing one of its citizens so drastically and for so long that it catches our eye. Such is the case of Gilbert Fornatora, a Florida property owner who has fought this abuse all the way to the United States Supreme Court.

Fornatora owns property near the Everglades National Park in South Florida. Seeking to expand the park in the 1970s, the federal government targeted Fornatora's land for acquisition. But in a rare moment of fiscal concern, the feds decided not to make Fornatora an offer good enough to persuade him to sell, or even to pay fair market value for the land after forcibly taking it through eminent domain.

Instead, the government began to pressure local authorities to increase the regulations on Fornatora's property. These regulations served no valid purpose; instead, they were designed solely to make the land less attractive to potential buyers. With the market for the property thus depressed, government officials then could argue in court that they owed Fornatora an artificially low payment as compensation when they seized his land.

This tactic of down-zoning in anticipation of eminent domain actions is deplorable, but it is not uncommon. For this reason, courts have formulated a doctrine called the "scope of the project" rule that says, quite reasonably, that decreases (or increases) in a property's value that stem from the project for which the land is taken cannot be considered in determining just compensation in eminent domain cases.

But courts do not apply this rule uniformly. In some states and federal circuits, the rule is aggressively enforced by courts seeking to foreclose government chicanery. In other jurisdictions, though, courts are apt to turn a blind eye, instead deferring to government schemes not just to not to take a citizen's land, but also to game the judicial system to keep from paying full price for it.

That's where the second part of Fornatora's story takes place. After years of federal pressure to devalue the land, the government finally initiated condemnation proceedings. But the government was not content with even this level of constitutional abuse.

They instead argued in federal court that the scope of the project protections should not apply to Fornatora's land. Despite documented evidence to the contrary, the feds disavowed any connection to the increased regulation of Fornatora's property, writing it off as a coincidence.

Furthermore, the government manipulated the eminent domain trial itself in order to further cheat Fornatora of his constitutional right to just compensation. Fornatora's case was grouped with numerous other properties taken for the park expansion. Aware that the courts typically seek to assign uniform values to properties in these groups, the feds immediately dismissed cases filed against property owners aided by attorneys and expert witnesses prepared to argue for higher values.

Now facing a spate of defenseless property owners at the outset of proceedings, the government was able to argue unopposed for absurdly low compensation payments. When the represented parties were finally scheduled to make their cases after being reinstated, the government pled to the court that these low values should govern as precedent, and that in the interest of uniformity, the represented owners should be subject to the artificially low valuations regardless of the evidence they might present.

This parade of monstrosities might seem like something out of a dystopian novel or a third-world country, but it happened to an American citizen theoretically protected by the American Constitution. What's worse, the courts --l argely unwilling to second-guess the government when it comes to property rights, which are unique among constitutional guarantees -- signed off on the down-zoning scheme, ignored the scope of the project rule, allowed the trial manipulation, and thus rubber-stamped thirty years of government abuse of Gilbert Fornatora.

In October, Fornatora petitioned the United States Supreme Court to review his case and put a stop to this travesty. The court is scheduled to decide whether to take the case at its conference on January 8. On that day, the nation's highest court will signal whether constitutional rights to property are to be taken seriously, or whether our nation of laws has taken yet another step toward becoming something else.

Steven Geoffrey Gieseler is an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation, the nation's oldest public interest property rights law organization. He is lead counsel in the Fornatora case, entitled 480 Acres v. United States.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/high_court_to_consider_governm.html at December 28, 2009 - 09:52:13 PM EST

Economy saved by dope smokers, not stimulus !

Could you imagine the following story coming to fruition and ending with a positive result!

I don't smoke never have. Even less consider pot as a choice I want to make. But given legal controls such as those related to alcohol (age/advice} I have a very open view of its legalization.

I do think there are more for than against its legalizing and maybe now with the economy so bad it could help turn things around.

High expectations? States weigh marijuana reform
By RACHEL LA CORTE, Associated Press Writer Rachel La Corte, Associated Press Writer
OLYMPIA, Wash. – Washington is one of four states where measures to legalize and regulate marijuana have been introduced, and about two dozen other states are considering bills ranging from medical marijuana to decriminalizing possession of small amounts of the herb.

"In terms of state legislatures, this is far and away the most active year that we've ever seen," said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the New York-based Drug Policy Alliance, which supports reforming marijuana laws.

Nadelmann said that while legalization efforts are not likely to get much traction in state capitals anytime soon, the fact that there is such an increase of activity "is elevating the level of public discourse on this issue and legitimizing it."

"I would say that we are close to the tipping point," he said. "At this point they are still seen as symbolic bills to get the conversation going, but at least the conversation can be a serious one."

Opponents of relaxing marijuana laws aren't happy with any conversation on the topic, other than keeping the drug illegal.

"There's no upside to it in any manner other than for those people who want to smoke pot," said Travis Kuykendall, head of the West Texas High Intensity Drug-Trafficking Area office in El Paso, Texas. "There's nothing for society in it, there's nothing good for the country in it, there's nothing for the good of the economy in it."

Legalization bills were introduced in California and Massachusetts earlier this year, and this month, New Hampshire and Washington state prefiled bills in advance of their legislative sessions that begin in January. Marijuana is illegal under federal law, but guidelines have been loosened on federal prosecution of medical marijuana under the Obama administration.

Even so, marijuana reform legislation remains a tough sell in some places. In the South, for example, only Mississippi and North Carolina have decriminalization laws on the books.

"It's a social and cultural thing," said Bruce Mirken, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington, D.C.-based marijuana advocacy group. "There are some parts of the country where social attitudes are just a little more cautious and conservative."

Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, a Seattle Democrat who is sponsoring the legalization bill in Washington state, said that she "wanted to start a strong conversation about the pros and cons of legalizing marijuana."

Under her bill, marijuana would be sold in Washington state's 160 state-run liquor stores, and customers, 21 and older, would pay a tax of 15 percent per gram. The measure would dedicate most of the money raised for substance abuse prevention and treatment, which is facing potential cuts in the state budget. Dickerson said the measure could eventually bring in as much to state coffers as alcohol does, more than $300 million a year.

"Our state is facing a huge financial deficit and deficits are projected for a few more years," Dickerson said, referring to the projected $2.6 billion hole lawmakers will need to fill next year. "We need to look at revenue and see what might be possible."

Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said that tough economic times across the country have lawmakers looking at everything, and may lead even more states to eventually consider the potential tax value of pot.

"The bean counters are now reporting back to their elected officials how much money is being left off the table," he said, adding that billions of dollars worth of pot is going untaxed.

Ron Brooks, president of the National Narcotics Officers' Associations' Coalition, said that he feared that, if legalized, marijuana would contribute to more highway accidents and deaths, as well as a potential increase in health care costs for those who smoke it.

State lawmakers, he said, need to ask themselves "if they believe we really will make all that revenue, and even if we did, will it be worth the suffering, the loss of opportunities, the chronic illness or death that would occur?"

Legalization isn't the only measure lawmakers across the country are weighing. About two dozen states, including Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Wisconsin, are considering bills ranging from medical marijuana to decriminalizing possession of small amounts of marijuana, St. Pierre said. Washington state is among the states that are considering decriminalization, with a bill that would reclassify adult possession of marijuana from a crime with jail time to a civil infraction with a $100 penalty.

Fourteen states, including Washington state, already have medical marijuana laws, and 13 have decriminalization laws on the books, St. Pierre said. About two dozen cities across the country, including Seattle, make marijuana offenses a low law-enforcement priority.

Marijuana advocates said that while increased activity in the statehouse is heartening, change most likely will come at the ballot box through voter-driven initiatives.

"Inevitably, the politicians are going to be behind the curve on this stuff," Nadelmann said, noting that almost all of the medical marijuana laws came about by initiative.

This month, a group campaigning to put a marijuana legalization measure before California voters said it had enough signatures to qualify for the 2010 ballot.

That proposal would legalize possession of up to one ounce of marijuana for adults 21 and older. Residents could cultivate marijuana gardens up to 25 square feet. City and county governments would determine whether to permit and tax marijuana sales within their boundaries. And in Nevada earlier this month, backers of a move to legalize marijuana there filed paperwork creating an advocacy group aimed at qualifying an initiative for the 2012 election.

Anoother liberal defects !

Taken from American Thinker

The Hypocrisy of the Left
By Robin of Berkeley
Apparently, 'tis the season to despise conservatives.

I have been looking for God my whole life. I first recognized Him in the black foster parents I worked with who manifested Christ-consciousness.

I then found him four years ago, when my parents died three weeks apart and I was carried by a force stronger than myself. And more recently, as I've gone from left to right, I have discovered him in the many conservatives guiding me, such as AT readers.

Given my spiritual longing, I decided it was time to explore places of worship. Being a secular Jew, my first step should have been a temple. However, the synagogues around here are practically recruitment stations for Obama (aside from the Orthodox ones, but I don't speak a word of Hebrew). So I decided to experience church on Christmas Eve.

Checking out churches online, I found almost none that offered political neutrality. Most heralded their progressive credentials, welcoming the transgendered, but not conservatives.

I was pleased to find an Episcopal church whose website focused on religion, not ObamaCare. I left a message for the priest that I was looking for a church that didn't press a political agenda because I wasn't a liberal.

I received an icy reply from the priest, the Reverend Lucy, who said with barely-contained disgust, "I don't think you should check us out."

Her response left me shaken and angry. I understand that leftists despise conservatives. I have seen that creepy look of pure hatred when I naïvely told a leftist friend about my political conversion.

But an Episcopal priest rejecting me during the holiest time of year? Isn't anything or anyone sacred?

In shunning me, the Reverend Lucy exposed not only her own hypocrisy, but the duplicity of the left itself. She unveiled the left's dirty little secret -- that their doctrines are as bogus as global warming.

I used to believe it all. But when I removed one piece -- that the left protects women -- the whole house of cards came tumbling down.

Obama and his friends preach tolerance, but there is bigotry at their group's core. As displayed by the Reverend Lucy, this is a spiritually vacuous ideology. While they fashion themselves as human saviors, they clearly don't like people very much, and they despise conservatives.

Why do they hate us, even during the season to be merry? I think it's because we see right through their elaborate disguises.

We know who they are -- the Audacity of Obama. Dreams from his Marxist Father. Before us, the Emperor has no clothes. Even the left's priests are no true servants of God.

The left can easily dupe the masses who are still congratulating themselves for electing a biracial president. Obama sneers, glares, and gestures dismissively. He castigates Sgt. Crowley for supposed racism, pals around with dictators, and chuckles while millions are out of work.

Yet half the country is convinced that he's the nicest guy around.

There's a resonant story about Suzuki Roshi, the beloved 60s-era Zen master. A visiting teacher asked Suzuki Roshi whether his students had mastered a particular Buddhist scripture. Suzuki responded that he didn't know.

Aghast, the visitor demanded, "Then how do you evaluate the students' progress?"

Suzuki answered quietly, "I observe how they treat each other."

To know everything about the "progressives," just observe how people have been treating each other since Obama came on the scene. For one, the misogyny has been despicable.

Then there's the surge of attacks on law enforcement, from the murders of police officers in Seattle and Oakland to the slaughter of soldiers at Ft. Hood. Obama is sending out a "question authority" vibe -- everyone's authority, that is, except his.

In the Berkeley area, there appears to be a skyrocketing of black-on-white crimes. I'm hearing stories from clients of even more brazen street crimes and harassment.

I've written about two horrendous crimes at local schools the last few months: the gang-rape and beating of a teenage girl at Richmond High School and the stoning of a middle-school teacher during her class.

Just two weeks ago, there was another horrific assault at the same middle school: a fourteen-year-old boy raped a twelve-year-old girl during the school day. While the politically correct media refuses to tell, the word on the street is that these recent crimes have been racially motivated.

We are a country in rapid decline -- another red flag that leftist ideology is destructive. Not only is the value of the dollar sinking, but our moral fiber is unraveling before our eyes.

Gandhi taught that a civilization's greatness can be measured by how it treats its weakest citizens. So how are society's most vulnerable doing?

Medical care may be withheld from the elderly, children are being sexualized and "queered" in public schools, and conservative women are subject to degradation and rape threats.

Another measure of a nation: whether political opponents can speak freely. In Obama's America, prepare to be labeled a racist should you question "The Man." Find yourself ostracized by liberal friends, colleagues, and even churches should you not pass the political litmus test.

No wonder the left doesn't want us anywhere near their bully pulpits. We can see right through their media-orchestrated charade.

I decided to confront the Reverend Lucy about her un-Christian behavior and challenge her to do better. I e-mailed her the following:

Dear Reverend:

I inquired about whether I would feel comfortable at your church because I am not politically liberal. You left me a message with barely contained hostility. You stated, "I don't think you should check us out."

The fact that you responded to me in such an uncharitable manner makes me terribly sad. Has politics divided people so much that even a minister will treat someone unkindly for having a different political ideology?

In this holiest of seasons, I wish for you a change of heart, an opening of the heart, to those who come to your door. Because when someone makes a phone call to you -- which isn't easy -- they are in need of God. Don't you, as a minister, have a sacred duty to respond with God's infinite love and mercy?

With the blessings of the season,

Robin

No, she didn't write back.

A frequent AT contributor, Robin is a psychotherapist and a recovering liberal in Berkeley. She enjoyed a beautiful Catholic mass on Christmas Eve.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/the_hypocrisy_of_the_left.html at December 28, 2009 - 09:03:48 AM EST

So where is Barack Obama?

Righteously borrowed from Gateway Pundit
and followed by Reuters release later in day. HOW MANY DAYS WILL IT BE BEFORE OBAMA MAKES HIS PUBLIC STATEMENT?

Do you think there is any connection between Iran invading and occupying an abandoned oil well and the camel sticking his nose under the tent?

The most recent terrorist wannabe has more balls left after his attempt, than Barack Obama has ever held of his own in one hand.

“Iranian protesters are dying for freedom – where is Barack Obama?”


from GP.
I wrote back in June about the shameful silence of the Obama administration during the mass street protests that greeted Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s fraudulent re-election victory as President of Iran. As White House spokesman Robert Gibbs ludicrously put it, the administration was “impressed by the vigorous debate and enthusiasm this election generated.” Or in Vice President Joe Biden’s words on NBC’s Meet the Press, describing Ahmadinejad’s victory – “we’re going to withhold comment… I mean we’re just waiting to see.”

Embarrassingly for Washington, even many European leaders showed more backbone in condemning the Iranian regime’s brutal suppression of protestors, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton humiliatingly outflanked by her French and German counterparts, who had no qualms about speaking out quickly and firmly against the election result and the actions of the Iranian government.

In the six months that have followed, Barack Obama’s high-risk engagement strategy has simply encouraged more repression from the Mullahs, as well as ever greater levels of defiance over Iran’s nuclear weapons programme. As Con Coughlin noted in an excellent piece for The Wall Street Journal last month, Obama’s Iran diplomacy isn’t working:

“Iranian human-rights groups say that since the government crackdown began in late June, at least 400 demonstrators have been killed while another 56 are unaccounted, which is several times higher than the official figures. The regime has established a chain of unofficial, makeshift prisons to deal with the protesters, where torture and rape are said to be commonplace. In Tehran alone, 37 young Iranian men and women are reported to have been raped by their captors.”

Now once again huge street protests have flared up on the streets of Tehran and a number of other major cities, with several protestors shot dead this weekend by the security forces and Revolutionary Guards, reportedly including the nephew of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi, and dozens seriously injured. And again there is silence from the White House. And where is the president? On vacation in Hawaii, no doubt recovering from his exertions driving forward the monstrous health care reform bill against the overwhelming will of the American people and without a shred of bipartisan support.


Here he is:


White House condemns "unjust" actions in Iran
WASHINGTON
Sun Dec 27, 2009 3:19pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House condemned on Sunday what it called the "unjust suppression" of civilians by the Iranian government and said the United States was on the side of protesters.


Four people died in Tehran on Sunday when pro-reform protesters clashed with security forces, Iranian state TV said, in the worst outbreak of violence since June's disputed presidential election sparked political turmoil.

"We strongly condemn the violent and unjust suppression of civilians in Iran seeking to exercise their universal rights," White House National Security Council spokesman Mike Hammer said in a statement.

"Hope and history are on the side of those who peacefully seek their universal rights, and so is the United States," Hammer said.

"Governing through fear and violence is never just, and as President (Barack) Obama said in Oslo -- it is telling when governments fear the aspirations of their own people more than the power of any other nation," Hammer said in a reference to Obama's speech this month accepting the Nobel Peace Prize.

Iranian opposition websites said eight people were killed as tens of thousands demonstrated across Iran during the Shi'ite Muslim Tasoua and Ashura festival on December 26-27.

It was the first time people had died in street protests against Iran's clerical leadership since the immediate aftermath of the presidential election in which the opposition says more than 70 people were killed.

The unrest that erupted after that June vote is the biggest in the Islamic state's 30-year history. Authorities deny opposition charges that the voting was rigged.

The turmoil has complicated the international dispute over Iran's nuclear program, which the West believes may have military ends and Iran denies. Tehran has rejected the year-end deadline set by Washington and other world powers to agree to a U.N.-drafted deal to ship most of its low-enriched uranium abroad in exchange for fuel for a research reactor.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle, editing by Will Dunham

Seniors Are America's New Jews

Taken from American Thinker

December 27, 2009

By Stuart Schwartz
They are objects of derision. Influential government officials refer to them as unproductive, of less value than others in society. The political party running the government aggressively denies them access to health services while putting in place bureaucracies devoted, in effect, to ending their lives.

The Jews in Nazi Germany? In the Soviet Union of Stalin? In a socialist paradise set up by the rabidly anti-Semitic United Nations? No...seniors in a United States governed by the party of President Barack Obama and his allies on the Democratic left.

The Democratic Senate health care bill makes it official: Seniors are America's new Jews.

An exaggeration? Yes and no. In no way do I wish to trivialize the horrific slaughter of Europe's Jewish population by the Nazis, nor the systematic oppression of Jews in history. However, Obama and the Democratic Party have embraced a worldview that allows them to go after seniors in much the same manner that tyrants (and the United Nations) have used Jew-bashing as a tool to accumulate power and steal wealth.

Seniors are the new go-to group for this radical president and Democratic congress as they pursue power, wealth, and the cultural transformation of the United States. Every version of the Democrat health care bill -- with all senate Republicans opposing this war against seniors -- relies on drastically reduced access to the services for which seniors have paid through taxes over a lifetime, or upon which they may choose to spend personal resources.

The party and government of Barack Obama is astonishingly brutal about the value of that lifetime. A "senior moment" should be just that, they say: a brief period rarely extending beyond the 60s (for us, of course, not them).

This is government by those who consider themselves the intellectual elite, thinkers who insist that a free-market economy that has enabled the elderly to live longer violates the rights of the younger by disproportionate consumption of health care resources.

The president's health care czar views the optimal age for societal worth as somewhere south of sixty years. The Democrat approach is philosophically founded upon the work of Ivy League academic Dr. Daniel Callahan, who mentored Obama health policymaker Ezekiel Emanuel and who advocates medical resource rationing as a simple and powerful solution to the "dilemma" -- lack of usefulness in the community -- posed by market-enabled longer lives.

Simply put, the utility of a citizen's life to an Obama government is defined by the amount of one's work that can be taxed versus the resources consumed, and the government-defined value of the group to which the individual belongs. Seniors are just not useful, says Tom Daschle, the prominent Obama Democrat who continues to play a key role in shaping Obamacare, and it is time for them to accept the "pain" of less access to health care.

Too many Jews...uh, seniors? Okay -- let 'em die.

What Sarah Palin termed "dealth panels" are only a small part of a new bureaucracy that will stand between seniors and life. Small wonder The Wall Street Journal characterized Obamacare as an "assault" on seniors, while a British newspaper, surveying events across the pond, starkly stated that "the elderly might as well have a bull's eye painted on their backs. ... Creepy, right? It's totalitarian, it's ugly, and it's not the American way."

But it is the American way in a nation governed by Obama, who has a vision that requires some to have less so that others may be given more. And the vast middle class of seniors -- almost forty million strong with a lifetime of work and paid taxes behind them -- are the ideal scapegoats to fund a radical Democrat vision.

James Lewis describes the Obama team's approach with devastating clarity: they have perfected scapegoating, an "emotional high explosive that you can direct at will." And not just Will -- we're talking Bernice, Fred, and Gladys, the fifteen percent of the population who have the audacity -- an Obama word -- to age.

Seniors now find themselves the official go-to group for a president intent on taking both life and property and giving to those who are younger, to people who are more diverse, to illegal immigrants, and to Democratic Party allies. Consequently, the Obama-led Democrats, with the help of intellectual and media elites, have declared open season on grandma and grandpa, with Newsweek going so far as to feature a cover detailing "The Case for Killing Granny."

In Obama's America, wrinkles are about as trendy as white belts and polyester slacks, and gray is the new Jew.

Democrat health care is one of many "audacious visions," a Georgetown University professor wrote, to replace a Judeo-Christian culture with a statist worldview. The founders were wrong, Obama says, when they unashamedly founded a nation based, as Thomas Jefferson put it, upon the belief in the dignity of each individual -- regardless of age -- possesses "personal liberty" given "by the Author of nature."

Newsweek president and editor Evan Thomas, who called Obama "sort of God," takes issue with the view of seniors dictated by the "Author of nature," that rock of Judeo-Christian culture who demands in His Word (in Deuteronomy) that humanity "Honor your father and your mother as the Lord your God has commanded you, that your days may be long..."

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob views long life and respect for seniors as a blessing. But the Democratic Party health care bill is no Deuteronomy. Long life is viewed as a market-driven curse, and for Barack Obama -- the god of Harry, Nancy, and Evan -- seniors are expendable.

It is not hard to imagine President Obama standing at a window of the White House, watching the Tea Parties and streams of protesters. He observes the multitude of seniors in the crowds, smiles a smug smile, and quietly whispers in their direction:

"If the Jew fits, wear it."

Stuart H. Schwartz is on the faculty at Liberty University in Virginia.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/12/seniors_are_americas_new_jews.html at December 27, 2009 - 04:13:52 PM EST

Peggy Noonan reinterpreted

I just had to do this to the December 26 piece by Peggy Noonan, WSJ.
Lets see what kind of Obituary she writes for Obama when he looses the next election and is bumped out of office.

Was she feeling sorry for him because he had to go all the way to warm Hawaii to get away ? You know all that decision making and stuff. Or is it just that the holidays get Noonan depressed (you know Christian celebration and all) so she felt a little melancholy while thinking of poor Barry and his loneliness.


He Just Does What He Thinks Is Right'
By PEGGY NOONAN @ WSJ

Cannon to the left of him, cannon to the right of him, cannon in front of him volley and thunder. That's our president's position on the political battlefield now, taking it from all sides. And the odd thing, the unique thing in terms of modern political history, is that no one really defends him,(Right Gibbs and Axelrod have remained silent after Obama remains silent on important issues) no one holds high his flag. When was the last time you put on the radio or TV and heard someone say "Open line Friday—we're talking about what it is we like best about Barack Obama!" When did you last see a cable talking head say, "The greatness of this man is as obvious as it is unnoticed"?(How can it be unnoticed? Have we forgotten his Nobel acceptance speech already or his "I won speech" or Copenhagen Olympics, Globel Warming)

Is the left out there on the Internet and the airwaves talking about him? Oh, yes. They're calling him a disappointment, a sellout, a DINO—Democratic in name only. He sold out on single-payer health insurance, and then the public option. He'll sell you out on your issue too.(Wait til the blacks figure it out)

The pundits and columnists, dreadful people that they are, call him cold, weak, aloof, arrogant, entitled.(What no Arugula?)

So let's denounce him again.

Wait—it's Christmas. Let's not.(What religious service did you say the Obama's went to?) There are people who deeply admire the president, who work with him and believe he's doing right.(Of course they do, they are getting paid to) This week, this column is their forum. They speak not for attribution to avoid the charge of suckupism.
***

We start with a note from an accomplished young man who worked with Mr. Obama on the campaign and in the White House. He reminded me this week of a conversation we'd had shortly before the president's inauguration. "I remember you asked me back in January if I loved my guy. And in light of all that's happened in this first year, I still do. Even more so. And I also have a strong sense—based not just on polls but on a lot of folks I've talked to who don't always pay attention to politics(Non Voters)—that he DOES have that base of people(less than 36%) who still love him too.

"It's hard to detect, because the part of the 'base' that's represented on cable and on blogs is so vocal (and by vocal I mean shrill), but it's there. I also read it in the letters he gets. Some of them are amazingly poignant and appreciative of what he's done and what he's doing. Some of them are tough—very tough—but still respectful and hopeful that he's doing the right thing. Even if they're unsure right now, they want him to succeed. . ."

He sees them as a kind of quiet majority,(Is that anything like a Silent Majority?) or at least quiet-but-large-group-within-the-electorate.(Shades of wannabe Reaganism?)

"[T]hey're not going to run out and defend him on the blogs or start screaming back at his detractors, because they know its fruitless and they're sick of all that Washington nonsense anyway." They want him to cut through the mess and "get things done for them. And they're willing to give him that chance. Still."

The president, he suggested, tends toward the long view and the broad view. "Here's what I know about him. He still has this amazing ability to tune out the noise(I think he meant to say advice) from Washington, read the letters from the people, listen to their concerns, listen to his advisors, hear both sides, absorb all the information, and make the decision that he honestly feels is right for the country."

He does this "without worrying too much about the polls, without worrying too much about being a one-term president. He just does what he thinks is right.(Wasn't Bush slammed for the very same thing?) And that consumes a lot of his time. Most of it, in fact."

He is aware that Obama is "perceived as alternately too weak and too Chicago, too left and too right, too willing to compromise and too beholden to his majority, too detached and too much meddling in too many things." The administration needs "to do better in resetting the story and telling it the way we want it told."(Geez they already have the Press in the basement!) But "the fractured, petty, biased-towards-the-sensational media today makes that more difficult than ever before."

He knows now, he said, "how the Bushes and the Clintons must have felt,"(I thought he just said Obama pays no attention or worry to this sort of thing) and wonders "if that just happens to all White Houses. I don't know. But I do know that we have some very big, very unique problems right now. And we live in a very cynical . . . time where it's difficult to maintain the benefit of the doubt as you're navigating through the storm." They're giving it their best. "Lots of good people are trying. We won't fix it all, but I think we'll succeed (and think that in some cases, we already have!)(like what for instance?) at fixing a good deal." (Oh Fixing deals... lots of them, I get it now)
***

Another staffer spoke warmly of President Obama's warmth.(More touchy feely shit) "He's interested in who you are, and it's not manufactured." He sometimes finds himself briefing the president before events. "I know he's just come out of a meeting on Afghanistan" and maybe the next meeting isn't as important, but he wants to know who they are and where they're from and has a gift(like his own recorded speeches) for "making them feel important."

"He's a young president, young in terms of youthful."(he meant immature) Sometimes people come in to meet him and find "they came for a photo and he gives them a game" of pick-up basketball on the White House court. "Those are the things from a human perspective that make him so accessible. Accessible is the right word. He's emotionally available."(God how far from the truth)

He is appreciative of his staff's efforts. "When you're working hard for your country and you know [he cares] it is huge." How does he show his thanks? "It's a little like a basketball game—'Thanks for that, I know what you did.' It's not a note or a pat or a call, it's a guy-to-guy thank you, 'That's cool, that's good.' You think, 'My coach got that I worked my ass off.'"(Yeah like all those visits to the troops)

"As a person he is just an incredible human being who you can't help but love."(Thank You I CAN help myself from not.)

A third Obama staffer spoke of last week's senior staff dinner, at which the president went around the table and told each one individually "what they meant to him, and thanked the spouses for putting up with what they have to put up with." He marks birthdays by marching in with cakes. He'll walk around the White House, pop into offices and tease people for putting their feet on the desk.(Where does he find the time, with all his decision making?) "Sometimes he puts his feet on the desk." He's concerned about much, but largely unruffled. "He's not taken aback by the challenges he has. He seems more focused than he's ever been. He's like Michael Jordan in that at the big moments everything slows down for him."((like taking 4 months to make an Afghanistan decision) He's good in the crunch.
***

I end with a story told to me by an old Reagan hand who, with another former Reagan administration official, was being given a private tour of the White House by Michelle Obama. This was last summer. Mrs. Obama led the two through the halls, and then they stopped by the Lincoln bedroom. They stood in the doorway, and then took a step inside, but went no deeper. Everything looked the same, but something was different. "We don't allow guests to stay in this room anymore," Mrs. Obama explained. She spoke of it as a place of reverence. They keep it apart, it's not for overnights.

Unspoken, but clearly understood by the Reagan hands, was: This is where he signed the Emancipation Proclamation. A true copy of it is here, on the desk. He signed it: "Abraham Lincoln." The Reagan hands were impressed and moved. It is fitting and right that the Lincoln bedroom be held apart. It always should have been. Good, they thought. Good.(Now Noonan can read thoughts)
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A11

Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Undoubtedly the greatest soldier who ever served.

I don't know how I missed this the day it happened.

I have always been proud to have been in Special Forces, and to have the (3) in front of my military MOS. It meant I had made it.

My three tours in Southeast Asia were all volunteer and my choice within the Projects was also. I would never equate myself among those such as Col Bob Howard even so.

I had the privilege of knowing "Bob Howard" from CCC, FOB2 Kontum . We were not friends nor did we spend time together . We merely worked for the same outfit for awhile.

A more serious, funny, and professional man they didn't make. Everyone knew Howard was a legend except him.

Humility and courage were his two greatest strengths. He was the Universal soldier.

The web site below is a fitting tribute to "Bob" may he rest in peace.

RIP Col Bob Howard

This is Great for Nevadans!

From the Las Vegas Review-Journal

SHERMAN FREDERICK: Hey Harry: Where is Nevada's gift?



I'm very disappointed.

It's Christmas morning and I can't find one single gift to Nevada from Sen. Harry Reid under the health-care "reform" tree.

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Louisiana got a nice package. Florida and Connecticut, too. And Nebraska scored a really big present.

Just three days ago Uncle Harry said that if a senator didn't get his state "something" in the health-care "reform" package, then that senator wasn't doing his or her job.

And yesterday Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., upped the ante. He said that every state did "get something" in the measure.

OK. I'm excited. What's Nevada's gift? Uncle Harry, as everyone knows, is the Big Kahuna of the Senate. He "brings home the bacon," his TV commercials claim. So if Nebraska got dispensation from Medicaid increases forever, one can only imagine the magnitude of Nevada's present.

Flat screen TVs for every man, woman and child? No, no -- that's way too small.

A new military base ... for every county?

A lump of coal and a power plant to fire it?

Maybe double our water allotment from the Colorado River?

Oh, I know: Lifetime exemptions for Nevada residents and all of their descendents from federal income tax? That would be nice.

Whatever it is, I can't wait for the UPS truck tomorrow. The suspense is unbearable.

Sherman Frederick (sfrederick@ reviewjournal.com) is publisher of the Review-Journal and president of Stephens Media.
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It's Christmas...

Winning the War in Afghanistan

by The Honorable John S. McCain

Abstract: America has a narrow window of opportunity in which to show clear signs of progress to a skeptical and war-weary public. In the next 18 months, with a properly resourced counterinsurgency strategy, we can reverse the momentum of the insurgency. We can create conditions for the vast majority of insurgents to lay down their arms and reintegrate peacefully into Afghan society. We can train greater numbers of more capable, battle-tested Afghan Security Forces to lead the fight, in time, against a degraded enemy. We can isolate al-Qaeda and target their fighters more effectively. And we can create the time and space for Afghan leaders, with our support and pressure, to reform their government, to crack down on corruption, and to build a nation that will never again serve as a base for attacks against America and our allies.

It is a real pleasure to be back among my friends at The Heritage Foundation. I want to thank you all for giving me this opportunity to speak with you today.

By my recollection, the last time I spoke at Heritage, I talked about what I call the "generational theft" that is the practice of earmarks in our budget. Well, guess how I spent my weekend? On an omnibus appropriations bill larded with tons of pork-barrel spending. $30,000 to study Woodstock: I imagine further research was needed because no one remembers what happened the first time around. And then there's my favorite: $2.6 million to support surgical operations in space -- just in case the Klingons attack, I guess. It would be funny if it weren't so corrupt.

Whether it's earmarks or some other issue, my approach to policy is the same as it's always been: I call things like I see them. Where I see decisions that I disagree with, I offer criticism. I can be passionate in my opposition, but I always try to ensure that it is loyal, civil, and constructive opposition. That said, when I see policy decisions that are right and worthy of praise, whether they are made by Democrats or Republicans, I do not hesitate to support them on their merits.

One of those decisions is the President's plan for Afghanistan. I think he made the right choice: to affirm a counterinsurgency strategy and to resource it properly, including a surge of 30,000 troops. Though I would have preferred that General McChrystal receive all of the U.S. forces he had requested, I have spoken with our civilian and military leaders. I think this policy can succeed, and I think it deserves robust public support, both from Democrats and Republicans.

My main concern, as you know, is the President's decision to begin withdrawing our forces in July 2011, regardless of conditions on the ground. We've discussed this issue a lot over the past two weeks in congressional testimony with Secretaries Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates, Admiral Mike Mullen, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, and General Stanley McChrystal. I appreciate their efforts to try to clarify the meaning of this decision. I understand that this date marks the beginning of a process, that the pace of our drawdown will be conditions-based, and that large numbers of U.S. combat troops will likely remain in Afghanistan long after July 2011.

Sending the Wrong Signal

Still, the fundamental problem remains: We have announced a date, divorced from conditions on the ground, when we will start to withdraw our troops. It doesn't matter whether we call it a "cliff" or a "ramp" or anything else. It's still an exit sign.

* It sends the wrong signal to our friends, who fear -- and not without reason -- that the United States will abandon them before they can defend and sustain themselves.
* It sends the wrong signal to our enemies, who will use this July 2011 date to undermine and intimidate our partners.
* And it sends the wrong signal to all in the region who are now hedging their bets -- Pakistani generals reluctant to cut ties with the Taliban or Afghan civilians who ask our troops, "Are you staying this time?"

On this issue, the Administration and I will have to agree to disagree. It matters immensely what signals we send. That is why I was very pleased to see that Secretary Gates, when he visited Kabul last week, delivered the strong message that "We are in this thing to win." I couldn't agree more.

I've been critical of the President during the past several months, but that is behind us. Our focus now must be on succeeding in Afghanistan. And the fact is, we now have the right mission. We now have the right leadership. And we now have a request for sufficient resources to succeed.

So our friends can know that we will support them. Our enemies can know that we will defeat them. And all can know that we are committed to the long-term success of Afghanistan and Pakistan as stable states that can govern themselves, secure themselves, and sustain their own development. Though the nature of our commitment to Afghanistan, Pakistan, and their region will change over time, our commitment to their success will endure.

A Window of Opportunity

We now have a narrow window of time in which to show clear signs of progress to a rightly skeptical and war-weary American public, and I believe we can do this. In the next 18 months, with a properly resourced counterinsurgency strategy, we can reverse the momentum of the insurgency. We can create conditions for the vast majority of insurgents to lay down their arms and reintegrate peacefully into Afghan society. We can train greater numbers of more capable, battle-tested Afghan Security Forces to lead the fight, in time, against a degraded enemy. We can isolate al-Qaeda and target their fighters more effectively. And we can create the time and space for Afghan leaders, with our support and pressure, to reform their government, to crack down on corruption, and to build a nation that will never again serve as a base for attacks against America and our allies.

Now, I know there are many who take issue with this last point -- who doubt that the Afghan government, in particular President Hamid Karzai, will be able to get its act together, to become more capable and legitimate. I think the Afghans can do better and must do better, but it all depends on increased security.

The Lesson of Iraq

Here I think we can learn a lesson from Iraq: When we started the surge in early 2007, Iraq did not just have a corrupt government; it had a collapsed government. Sectarian militias and terrorists had the advantage, and Iraqis who sought a better, decent alternative had little power.

The surge changed that. We protected Iraqi populations. We degraded the insurgency and the death squads. We strengthened and emboldened Iraqis who wanted better for their country. Together, we restored basic security, and that created openings for responsible Iraqis to strengthen and reform their government while marginalizing the extremists in their midst.

The restoration of basic security led to political progress, not the other way around, and there is no reason why our surge of forces into Afghanistan cannot create a similar dynamic there. At present, Afghan leaders feel they are losing control of their country, and they are. As a result, they are reluctant to take on and make enemies of corrupt officials, powerful warlords, or even insurgents -- any of whom could be running Afghanistan in a few years if current trends persist. This is just self-preservation.

However, if we change the context, if we weaken the enemies of Afghanistan and strengthen our friends, it will create an opportunity for Afghan leaders to make different decisions, better decisions. Consider: Three years ago, many people in this town were saying, "If only we had a Karzai for Iraq." Now many of those same people are saying, "If only we had a Maliki for Afghanistan."

Achieving Sustainable Success

Things can change, and we have a lot of influence to bring that change about, but this won't happen by itself. Nor can the military do it alone. When it comes to increasing the legitimacy of the Afghan government -- which is the definition of sustainable success in any counterinsurgency -- military force is necessary, but it is not sufficient. We also need a civilian strategy, a political strategy, and it must be integrated into a joint civil-military campaign plan that spells out how our troops, our diplomats, and our development professionals will all work together with Afghan officials, security forces, and local populations to "clear, hold and build" -- to clear areas from insurgent control, to hold that ground securely, and to help Afghans build political and economic institutions that they can sustain and defend themselves with less and less of our assistance. That is how we define success.

In addition to a joint civil-military campaign plan for Afghanistan, we also need to craft a regional strategy around it -- a diplomatic framework to reinforce success within Afghanistan and to ensure that the country emerges not as a field of regional competition and proxy battles, but rather as a source of regional cooperation and integration. No one disputes that Afghanistan's neighbors will have influence in Afghanistan. The real question is, what kind of influence? External influence that adds to Afghanistan's success and security should be encouraged, while external influence that only destabilizes the country must be checked and countered. The United States is the only actor in the region with the strength, the stake, and the good relations with all the other powers to broker this kind of regional cooperation.

Just as our civilian strategy must turn military gains into political progress within Afghanistan, our regional strategy must turn military gains into diplomatic leverage outside the country. We must demonstrate to Afghanistan's neighbors -- many of which are now hedging their bets and playing both sides of the fence -- that the government of Afghanistan will prevail, that the insurgency will lose, and that to back the Taliban in this fight will only result in regional isolation, growing weakness, and deepening insecurity for states in the region.

In all that we do, our goal must be the restoration of Afghan sovereignty -- to help Afghanistan emerge from three decades in which it was a pawn of regional powers and a battleground for their conflicts, to support Afghanistan in becoming better able to sustain and defend its own independence, and to ensure that Afghanistan never again servesas a base for terrorist attacks against America and our allies.

Conclusion

We now have an opportunity to build a bipartisan consensus in support of a vital national security priority: defeating al-Qaeda and its violent extremist allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Americans need to know why winning this war is so essential to our country's security. They need to know that things in Afghanistan will get worse before they get better -- that, unfortunately, casualties will likely rise in the year to come -- but that, ultimately, we can and we will succeed.

The President made the right decision on Afghanistan, but even that is not enough. Now he must fight for it. He must work to build bipartisan support for the war in Afghanistan, both among the public and in the Congress.

The President must lead this public campaign himself, but I will be an ally in this effort. I will work to get this policy the votes, the resources, and the time it needs to work. And I pledge to do everything I can to ensure that we win this war -- not just end it, but win it.

The Honorable John S. McCain represents Arizona in the U.S. Senate, where he serves as Ranking Member on the Committee on Armed Services and member of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources; Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions; Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; and Committee on Indian Affairs.

About Avatar !

I'm not much on 3d movies, never have been, and have probably been to less than 3 in my entire life.
I am of the generation where the "Creature from the Black Lagoon" came with 3d cardboard and cellophane lenses that had difficulty getting you through to the end of the pop corn break without tearing .

Now along comes Avatar. Admittedly I hold a soft spot for Space Sci-fi with class flicks or a real plot. But I am not amused at all by adult cartoons. Yeah yeah I know its not cartoon any more its animation or spect-a-mation or some kind of next "slang dictionary" word mation. Still its animated editing.

I don't get off on 10,000 B.C. Saber tooths, at all, and only moderately tolerate the giant human idiota type lego bots of robitrons or whatever they were called, but do always enjoy the techno boom, booms. And of course Megan Fox even though she can't act worth a s---.

Now here we have what appears to be the most sophisticated and advanced studio digital-graffic of all time and this I believe.

James Cameron is beyond a doubt a visionary and no criticism there. But even before I see the flick, (grabbed all the trailers I could) I now know the plot of the movie and shit.. Whats new in Hollywood? Zilch!

Granted Cameron waited 15 years to put his movie on digital, but even as far back as 15 years ago the plot of this movie was old.

I think Cameron's pick of not so star quality actors may be a good choice for such a flick and bringing on some veteran alien types like Sigourney Weaver, adds an experienced touch. But shit with all the anti climategate press and expose lately the plot of this film is lame. Just today to spice up attendance they are now labeling the flick with multiple political agenda's. Whats the matter not enough left wingers are attending?

After reading reviews of its foreign premier and its stateside debut. I get to think we are looking at a mere combinational fiction of Disney Pocahontas verses, Peter Panchito, some Snow White, and Sleepy Hollow thrown in.

Cameron's story line unfortunately is lame , and that is before I have even seen the flick.
Will I go see it.? Absolutely These days I don't just run out to the movies all too often, with everything coming out in digital pretty quick compared to when I was a kid. It took five years for flicks to make it to any sort of t.v. viewing and often two years to be brought back to your local theater on rewind.

I will go see this flick because, James Cameron is a genius as I said. Not because Hollywood promotion is anything more than pure regurgitation of re-swallowed bile, which it is.

One more thing;

Stephen Lang of "Last Exit to Brooklyn "and the more recent "Public Enemies " has never been a favored actor of mine.

Although he has had good rolls like in "Exit" in which he depict's a more realistic Jewish momma's boy, freudian potty trained personality. as his subject matter. Lang has never struck me as a macho man, anymore so than Jeff Goldbloom.

His choice as the original killer of "John Dillinger", Charles Winstead in Enemy's, and that of Col. Miles Quaritch, in Avatar leaves something to be desired looking at the trailers and viewing "Enemies". Some guys just lack the testosterone even with the buff.

Lang is one of those guys..., overkill method acting, and too little real life grasp. I'll bet as a kid he was terrified by the Irish street punks who chased him all the way to Synagogue for Torah classes.

Victor Davis Hanson.. Always Good and Always Right On!

December 23, 2009
Why Are We Tiring of Obama?
by Victor Davis Hanson
Pajamas Media

The China Presidency

I have an heirloom china pitcher on my mantle that has dozens of glued cracks — so much so that it is now purely ornamental and will not hold water. When I was a boy I’d ask my mother when, and under what circumstances, did the china crack apart.

She would provide stories about each fissure and mend, many of the break narratives handed down to her from her own grandparents in the house. There wasn’t one single accident, but instead dozens that rendered a once useful pitcher into a non-functional art object.

Something of the same is happening with our President. He is experiencing the sharpest popularity decline in the history of first-year administrations. The problem is not just that he inherited a bad economy; Reagan did too. Or that the war in Afghanistan heats up, since it is not nearly as bad as the mess Nixon inherited in Vietnam.

Instead, after 11 months there has emerged a series of bothersome incidents that the public has come to associate with Obama, both the man and his philosophies. Some are major policy issues; others trivial acts of no cosmic importance. None in themselves matter all that much. Each gaffe or mistake was contextualized and mended, or attended to by Robert Gibbs. Some are Obama’s fault; others the work of associates. Sometimes mere chance is the culprit.

I know Bush had his own list of catastrophes; other Presidents did as well. Again, my point is not trying to adjudicate relative culpability, but rather just to remind us all how and why Obama dived over 20 points in the polls in just 11 months—and his speeches transformed from inspirational to caricatures.

In short, taken together, after nearly a year, these fissures have nearly ruined the once pretty texture of the Obama administration, and almost rendered it incapable of effective governance.

Here is a random selection. I provide no chronology or theme. Nor do I judge the relative importance of any one incident. The point, again, is only that each was a fissure, some small, some major—all were glued over. The result is that now the public understands that its china presidency is fragile and held together by mere glue.

Here it goes:

Constant apologies abroad for everything from slavery to Hiroshima

Bows to Saudi royalty, the Japanese emperor, and Chinese autocrats

The on-again/off-again Guantanamo shut-down mess

The fight with the former CIA directors

The public show trial of Khalid Sheik Mohammed

The reach out to Ahmadinejad Castro, Chavez, and assorted thugs

The Honduras fiasco

Czars everywhere

The serial “Bush did it”/reset whine abroad

The Queen of England/I-pod fiasco

Gordon Brown gets snookered in his gift-giving

Unceremoniously shipping back the Churchill bust

The end of the special relationship with the UK

The New York on-the-town presidential splurge

Anita Dunn and her Mao worship

Timothy Geithner/Tom Daschle/Hilda Solis and their taxes

What ever happened to Gov. Richardson?

“No lobbyists” = gads of them

The Podestas’ insider influence-peddling empire

Sotomayor’s “wise Latina” chauvinism

The Special Olympics silly quip

Trashing Nancy Reagan

The Skip Gates/police acting “stupidly” mess

The get-Chicago-the-Olympics jaunt to Copenhagen

Cap-and-trade boondoggle

“Millions of green jobs”

Ignore gas, oil, coal, and nuclear power production

Cash-for-clunkers

The Joe Biden gaffe machine

Jobs “saved” or “created” rather than references to the actual unemployment rates

Van Jones, the racist and truther

Desiree Rogers won’t testify

The blowback from, and silence about, the Rangel/Dodd corruption

The White House party crashers plan to take the 5th Amendment

The ‘bipartisanship’ con

The pork-barrel stimulus spoils

The demonization of the Town-Hallers

The Acorn Mess

The Kevin Jennings/Safe School Czar embarrassment

The SEIU direct access to the White House

The Asian Tour comedown

The politicization of the take-over of GM and Chrysler

The Obama readjustment in the order of paying back car creditors

Car dealerships closed on shaky criteria

Obama as “Caesar”

The Emanuel “never let a serious crisis go to waste” boast

The Black Caucus/Rangel/Waters bid to bail out the inner-city radio stations

Yosi Sergant and the NEA

$1.7 trillion deficit

The planned $9 trillion added to the national debt

New income tax rates; health care surcharge talk; and payroll tax caps to be lifted

Rahm Emanuel’s promised payback to those states that trash the stimulus

The supposed C-span aired health care debate

The promised website posts of pending legislation

Czechs and Poles sold out on missile defense

Sermons to and finger pointing at the Israelis

The failed ‘Putin helps to stop a nuclear Iran’ gambit

Voting present on the Iranian reformers in the street

Serial but empty deadlines to Ahmadinejad

The good war/bad war twisting and turning on Iraq/Afghanistan

The months-long dithering over Afghanistan

Renditions, tribunals, Patriot Act, etc. once trashed, now OK

Healthcare take-over

The 2,000 page proposed new health code

The embarrassing Nobel Peace Prize nomination

The attacks on surgeons, Chamber of Commerce, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, etc.

The Islam mythologies in the Cairo Speech

The al Arabiya “Bush did it” interview

Obama’s TV “my Muslim faith” gaffe

The Nobel Speech

I listened to it this morning quite early and posted at NRO. Bottom line: an academic sermon on peace/war with the now accustomed Obama characteristics:

1) long again (4,000 words); 2) “I” or “me” 34 times: same old self referencing; 3) the inadvertent cosmic arrogance [“I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war.” = you think?]; 4) straw men trope: some say this; others say that; but I uniquely say…; 5) reference to my own personal inspirational story; 6) trash my predecessor or his policies; 7) end with hopey/changey cadences.

That was pretty much it — a pulpit exegesis that could have been cut to 500 words. I would have done the speech in 10 minutes and used the extra time to have lunch with poor neglected King Harald. (Second recommendation: Obama should try to hire some speech-writers over 40. There are a lot of old pro Democrat wordsmiths around that might come in and offer something new other than the now tired boilerplate.)

Some books…

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I’m rereading two great books on Belisarius—the 1828 classic by the then 24-year-old Lord Mahon (with a new intro by Jon Coulston), and a new biography by Ian Hughes. They read like Greek tragedies: Belisaurius is Justinian’s fireman, sent to stop Persians, Goths, Vandals, etc. always with too few troops, a plotting wife, court intrigue at his back, and a never satisfied emperor at home — apparently in some hope that Romanism could hold back the tide in the crumbling 6th century.

I am halfway through David Horowitz’s moving tribute to his late daughter Sarah (A Cracking of the Heart) that recounts their four-plus-decades relationship through turbulent politics, ill heath, and the often baffling past three decades in America. A sad, but fine reflection on life and the inevitably of change and death.

©2009 Victor Davis Hanson