Obama's Ideological Foreign Policy and its Collision with Reality

Not long after posting on The Washington Post's story about Pakistan's rapidly growing nuclear arsenal, I came across Caroline Glick's terrific op-ed on the same subject and it references the same WaPo article. Anyway, she connects the dots between Pakistan, the not-so-great foreign policy the US enacted with it in the past, and Obama's ideological stances that endanger the US, the Middle East, and more. It's an excellent piece of work, and I highly recommend reading the whole work at the link below.

From Glick's essay:

"The Obama administration has been silent on Pakistan's nuclear proliferation activities. As ISIS President David Albright said to the Washington Post, "The administration is always trying to keep people from talking about this knowledgeably.

"'They're always trying to downplay the numbers [of Pakistan's nuclear warheads] and insisting that "it's smaller than you think."'

"Pakistan's nuclear growth goes on as its economy is in shambles, its government is falling apart and a large portion of the country's territory is controlled by the Taliban.

"Pakistan is the largest recipient of US foreign aid. In 2009 Congress approved a five-year $7.5 billion civilian aid package. Last October, the Obama administration proposed supplementing the aid with $2b. for Pakistan's military.

"The administration requested the supplemental aid despite criticism that economic assistance to Pakistan indirectly funds its nuclear project, since Pakistan is in an effective state of bankruptcy.

"Moreover, a US Inspector-General's Report published this week concluded that the $7.5b. in assistance has achieved little.

"For their part, the Pakistani government and military adhere to a radically anti-American line, and Pakistan's powerful ISI intelligence service and large sections of its military continue to maintain intimate ties with al-Qaida and the Taliban.

"Last month, Pakistani police arrested US diplomat Raymond Davis in Lahore after he killed two gunmen who were reportedly about to rob him at gunpoint. Pakistani law enforcement officials have charged Davis with murder and refuse to release him to US custody, despite the fact that he should enjoy the protection of diplomatic immunity. Rather than attempt to quiet passions, the Pakistani government is fanning anti-American sentiments by among other things, releasing a videotape of Davis's police interrogation.

"To date, while members of Congress are beginning to threaten to curtail aid to Pakistan pending Davis's release, the administration has limited its response to this de facto act of hostage-taking by Pakistan to refusing to hold high-level exchanges with Pakistani leaders. And even this limited response has been inconsistently implemented."

Glick then really hits the nail on the regarding the danger that Obama's ideology has put the US and the world in.

"Since taking office, the Obama administration has failed to conceive of a strategy for contending with the situation. One of the main obstacles to the formation of a coherent US strategy is the Obama administration's move to outlaw any discussion of the basic threats to US interests. Shortly after entering office, President Barack Obama banned the use of the term 'War against terror,' substituting it with the opaque term 'overseas contingency operation.'

"Last April, Obama banned use of the terms 'jihad,' 'Islamic terrorism' and 'radical Islam' in US government documents.

"Given that US officials are barred from using all the terms that are relevant for describing reality in places like Pakistan, it is obvious why the US cannot put together a strategy for contending with the challenges it faces there.

"Imagine an intelligence officer in Peshawar trying to report on what he sees. Imagine a defense attaché in Lahore trying to explain the problems with the jihad-infested Pakistani military to his superiors in Washington. Imagine a USAID officer trying to explain why the jihadist-mosque attending public refuses to work at US-funded highway programs.

"The Obama administration's decision to ban relevant language from the official US policy discourse was ideologically motivated. And in choosing ideology over reality, the Obama administration has induced a situation where rather than construct policies to deal with reality, at all levels, US officials have been charged with constructing policies to deny and ignore reality.

"Against this backdrop it becomes fairly clear why the Obama administration's handling of the political turmoil in Egypt has been so incompetent.

"Upon entering office, Obama made a determined effort to ignore the political instability percolating under the surface throughout the authoritarian Arab world. US government officials were instructed to curtail programs aimed at developing liberal alternatives to authoritarianism and the Muslim Brotherhood. The justification for this behavior was again ideological.

"As the world's biggest bully, the US had no moral right to judge the behavior of tyrants like Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

"Once the dutifully ignored long-repressed popular discontent boiled over into the popular revolts we have seen over the past month in Tunisia and Egypt as well as Yemen, Jordan, Algeria and beyond, the Obama administration rushed to get on the 'right side' of the issue. To avoid criticism for refusing to contend with the problems bred by Arab authoritarianism, Obama went to the other extreme. He became the most outspoken champion of unfettered popular democracy in Egypt.

"Of course, to occupy this other side of the spectrum, Obama has had to ignore the danger constituted by the most powerful opposition movement in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood's hostility towards the US's most fundamental strategic interests in the Middle East has been swept under the rug by the Obama administration and its supporters in the US media.

[...]

"From its slavish devotion to appeasing Iran, its single-minded insistence on withdrawing from Iraq, its announced commitment to withdrawing from Afghanistan, to its tolerance of Hugo Chavez, and its infantile reset button diplomacy towards Russia, the Obama administration's foreign policy is on a collision course with reality."

I really wish that Glick was way off base here, but I'm afraid she isn't. Obama's rank amateurism coupled with his American counter-culture ideology have destabilized much of the world, turning many parts of the underdeveloped world into a very chaotic, and dangerous place. Hope and Change...

A Father's Tribute to Christopher Monson (aka snaggletoothie)

I had recently posted about the tragic passing of blogger Chris Monson, aka snaggletoothie. I had learning the news from Pat in Shreveport. Once again through Pat, I've found that Chris Monson's father has posted a moving tribute to his son at his blog. Go visit and leave a note, if you are so inclined.

As Pat noted, snaggletoothie's absence is felt, and will continue to be felt, in many corners of the blogosphere.

May he have found peace.

Paul Krugman Makes Fraudulent Claim Against Michelle Bachmann in NYT-- Not a Surprise

The New York Times' Paul Krugman is reasserting that he's on par with Ed Schultz. In the wake of the deranged Loughner's shooting spree, Krugman has taken up the cause to slander political opponents and mislead the public. Disguised as an opinion on "hate speech" (in other words anything not in line with the Left's political agendas), Krugman's column self-righteously disparages political opponent and spreads lies.

On Monday he wrote this:

"It's hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be 'armed and dangerous' without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P."

As James Taranto in The Wall Street Journal points out:

"As we noted in yesterday's column, in October then-Rep. Paul Kanjorski, a Pennsylvania Democrat, mused about assassinating a fellow politician. Not only was he not ostracized; he was rewarded with a spot yesterday on the op-ed page of Krugman's newspaper."

Yet, the quote, or phrase actually, attributed to Bachmann was cherry-picked from any sort of context and then grossly warped to fit Krugman's needs.

This is the actual quote from Bachmann via blogger Dave Evers at Fish Fear Me (with audio available at the link):

"We met with Chris Horner last week, 20 members of Congress. It takes a lot to wow members of Congress after a while. This wowed them. And I am going to have materials for people when they leave. I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us, having a revolution every now and then is a good thing, and the people--we the people--are going to have to fight back hard if we're not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States and that's why I want everyone to come out and hear. So go to bachmann.house.gov and you can get all the information."

Yup. Telling people to be armed with facts about energy taxation is just about the same as inciting people to violence-- like let's say the band Rage Against the Machine's songs performed for arrestables just prior to a protest. Does Krugman really expect us to believe this?

Taranto continues:

"Krugman, who recreationally burns politicians in effigy, described Bachmann's comment as 'eliminationist rhetoric.' That is flatly fraudulent.

"If the broader claim--that the 'rhetoric' of Republican politicians and the nonliberal media was to blame for last Saturday's act of mass murder--is true, why can't it be presented without false factual assertions? Krugman's little lie undermines the big lie he and his newspaper are attempting to purvey.

"Krugman and his colleagues on the Times editorial board are not skilled enough to be effective liars. That is far from the worst thing you can say about newspapermen. But when did the people who run the New York Times forget that their job--their duty--is to tell the truth?"

This sort of nonsense that Krugman and many others are indulging in has to stop. The Left is walling itself in by making up it's own facts, isolating itself by printing obvious, and easily researched, distortions. While that's politically advantageous for the Right, it is ultimately damaging to the country as a whole.

I have to wonder if this is not the natural outgrowth of the Marxist belief that if you control the media, you control the people. It's a myth of course, as any study of Soviet Union, Eastern Bloc countries, and China can easily confirm. Hardly anyone believed the official line, and what resulted was simply that facts and truth became lost between rumor-mongering and cynicism.

The American Left (so keen on imitating policies that have repeatedly failed in foreign countries) seems intent on following this path-- even without a state-run media. The results for America will be the same-- pessimism, cynicism, distrust, and a loss of the truth.

UPDATE: Heh. The guys over at HillBuzz.org have a couple of choice quotes from Krugman.

"You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers".

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, January 2011

"A message to progressives: By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy".

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman – December 17th, 2009

Now to be fair to Krugman (which is far more than he does for his opponents) this is the context of his hanging Joe Lieberman in effigy statement:

"A message to progressives: By all means, hang Senator Joe Lieberman in effigy. Declare that you're disappointed in and/or disgusted with President Obama. Demand a change in Senate rules that, combined with the Republican strategy of total obstructionism, are in the process of making America ungovernable.

"But meanwhile, pass the health care bill."

Yup. It's the old America-isn't-governable-by-Leftist-political-elitists-unless-they-are-given-power-to-rule-by-decree theory--like Venezuela. That's a Woody Allen favorite, by the way. If only we could go a step further and get rid of those pesky, smelly, unintelligent, gun and religion clinging, ungovernable voters...

You may notice that Krugman's own 2008 election night party in which political effigies were burned is not mentioned. Hey, nothing eliminationist about that. No hypocrisy here. Nothing to see. Move on.

South Sudan, the Abyei Problem, and the Coming War

Caroline Glick has an excellent op-ed regarding the South Sudan referendum. I highly recommend clicking on the link and reading the whole piece.

From Glick's piece "Sudanese Crossroads":

"On Sunday, the southern Sudanese began voting on a referendum to secede from the Republic of Sudan and establish their own sovereign nation. By all accounts, they will soon secede from the Arab, Islamic country and form an independent African, Christian and animist state.

"The consequences of their actions will reverberate around the world.

"This week's referendum takes place in accordance with the US-brokered Comprehensive Peace Treaty between the Khartoum government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement signed on January 9, 2005.

[...]

"The South Sudanese referendum will not settle the issue of control over all of southern Sudan. Numerous flashpoints remain. Most importantly, the disposition of the town of Abyei remains undetermined. Abyei is where most of Sudan's oil deposits are located.

"Unlike the rest of the south, its population is a mix of Arabs and Africans and its residents are split over the issue of separation from Khartoum. If there is war after independence, Abyei will likely be its cause.

"Abyei's residents were supposed to vote on a referendum to determine the disposition of their town at the same time as the rest of the south. But fuelled by their conflicting interests, they could not agree on how to run the poll, and so it did not take place.

[...]

"But then, last Friday, pro-Khartoum militias attacked anti-Khartoum targets in Abyei. By Monday, 23 people had been killed. According to South Sudanese military spokesmen, militiamen captured in Abyei said they were ordered to attack by Khartoum.

[...]

"In its 54-year history, Sudan has suffered from civil war between the north and south for 39 years. Some 200,000 south Sudanese were kidnapped into slavery. Two million Sudanese have died in the wars. Four million have become refugees.

"But the fact is that with the West openly supporting southern Sudanese independence, a new war's consequences will not be limited to Sudan itself. Therefore it is worth considering why such a war is all but certain and what southern Sudanese independence means for the region and the world.

"There were two main reasons that Bashir agreed to sign the peace treaty with the south Sudanese in 2005. First, his forces had lost the civil war. The south was already effectively independent.

"The second reason Bashir agreed to a deal that would give eventual independence to the oil-rich south is because he feared the US.

"In 2004, led by then president George W. Bush, the US cast a giant shadow throughout the world. The US military's lightning overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime frightened US foes and encouraged US allies. The democratic wave revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Lebanon were all fuelled by the world's belief in US's willingness to use its power to defeat its foes.

"Bashir's regime is closely linked to al-Qaida, which he hosted from 1989 until 1995.

"When the US demanded that he accept the south's victory, he probably didn't believe he could refuse.

"Today, the US is not feared or respected as it was six years ago. And according to a recent article in the online Small Wars Journal by US Army Lt. Col. Thomas Talley, Bashir's current dim perception of the US makes war inevitable.

"Talley argues that without Abyei, South Sudan will be rendered an economically nonviable failed state. South Sudan, he claims is too weak to secure Abyei from Khartoum without outside assistance.

"According to Talley, the deterioration of the global perception of US power has convinced Bashir that the US will not protect Abyei for the south and so his best bet is to invade the town or at a minimum prevent the south from securing it."

This is a reality ignored by Obama, and rarely reported on by the American media. Obama's exaggerated shows of weakness, his apologizing and attempts to ingratiate himself to foreign leaders and people, have placed American allies in a very difficult position across the globe. Obama's incessant need to satisfy the Left's self-serving vanity is tantamount to betrayal for American allies and has and will continue to cost many lives.

Glick continues:

"THE FACT of the matter is that the Arabs have reason to be concerned about what is happening in Sudan. If South Sudan becomes an independent nation, it will be the first case of rollback of Arab imperialism since World War I.

"One of the central aspects of Middle Eastern politics that is overwhelmingly ignored by scholars is Arab imperialism and the role it has played in shaping the region's politics.

"Both during the post-World War I breakup of the Ottoman Empire and with the breakup of the British and French empires after World War II, British and French imperial authorities colluded with Arab imperialists to guarantee the latter's nearly uninhibited control over the Middle East.

"For the Kurds, Shi'ites, Druse, Alawites, Copts, and other non-Sunni, non-Arab, or non-Muslim populations in the region, the end of Western rule meant the end of their relative freedom.

"In the case of southern Sudan, during the half century of British rule, the south was administered separately from the Arab north.

"But when the British withdrew in 1956, in their haste to leave, they placed the south under Arab rule. Fearing disenfranchisement and oppression, the south began the first Sudanese civil war in 1955 - the year before independence.

[...]

"AGAINST THIS backdrop of Western perfidy towards the Middle East's non-Arab minorities, the West's support for South Sudanese independence is nothing short of miraculous.

"Unfortunately, the West's support for South Sudan probably owes to Western ignorance rather than a newfound Western will to defy Arab imperialists. That is, it is likely that West is doing the right thing today in Sudan because it doesn't understand the ramifications of its own policy.

"If the West doesn't understand its policy, then it is unlikely to understand the significance of a challenge to that policy by Khartoum and its allies. And if it fails to understand the significance of a challenge to its policy by Khartoum, then it is unlikely to defend its policy when it is challenged.

"Against this backdrop, it is important to recall Lt. Col. Talley's claim that Bashir will attack Abyei because he does not believe that the US will defend South Sudanese control of the border town. The shallowness of Western support for South Sudan will lead to war."

It is crucial to understand America's place in the world, and the influence it exerts upon foreign nations-- something Obama both loves to deny and works mightily to reduce. Likewise, it is important to understand the history of the regions in the world in which much flux and chaos currently takes place. Reducing the world around us to two sides (often in opposition-- West vs. East for instance) is ridiculously simplistic and leads to terribly skewed world views and easily avoidable mistakes.

As a side note, I wonder if George Clooney will notice or care when war breaks out in South Sudan? Who will he urge to come to the rescue? Surely not Obama...

Wohlstetter: Debunking the Defense of the TSA

Check out John C. Wohlstetter's "Eight Air-Security Myths" from the NRO. Read the whole thing , but here's some highlights.

"Two solid analysts, ex–Bush 43 speechwriter Marc Thiessen and Hudson Institute intelligence scholar Gabriel Schoenfeld, have published defenses of the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) controversial new scanning and patdown policies. They argue that TSA’s policy is a necessary reaction to the evolution of terrorism. Their analysis rests on eight air-security myths.

"1. The fact that there have been no attacks since 9/11 vindicates TSA.

"The logical fallacy here is known as post hoc, ergo propter hoc ('after this, therefore on account of this'). There is zero reason to credit TSA’s new tactics with anything save annoying unlucky travelers. We can see this by looking at incidents in which governments actually foiled terror plots. None of them involved TSA-style measures.

"Remember the 2006 ten-jetliner plot hatched at Heathrow? The 1995 'Bojinka' terror plot hatched by 1993 World Trade Center–bombing mastermind Ramzi Youssef? The 2006 plot was broken up by the Brits, and the Filipinos broke up the second. Neither used TSA’s methods. The Brits used shoe-leather investigating, phone taps, and intelligence from a Pakistani interrogation of one detainee. And in 1995, Youssef was interrogated by the Philippine government, and confessed.

"No other government uses the TSA scanners. No one — including the Israelis — uses intimate patdowns.

"2. The Christmas Bomber’s near-success requires scans.

"The underwear bomber who nearly ruined America’s 2009 Christmas flying season used PETN, an explosive that is difficult to detect even with the new scanning machines. (So are twelve-inch razor blades, apparently.) What was easily detectable by the U.S. was the bomber’s dad’s visiting our embassy in Lagos, Nigeria, and warning us about his son — several times. Israeli experts tell us that most of their security is applied before a traveler reaches the airport. Kids and lawmakers likely do not get stuck on Israeli no-fly lists.

"3. Each method terrorists use requires a targeted response.

"Because terrorists have hidden stuff in their underwear, we must pat them down. So when terrorists use body cavities to conceal things, as surely they will, will TSA attempt to search everyone’s orifices? Not a chance: Americans will not stand for anything like this. Which is why the excuses for today’s patdown molestations are so infuriating and phony.
We need to catch people before they bring down planes. But we do not do this by making flying, already a grim business since 9/11, a humiliating ordeal. Making travelers cringe gives terrorists a victory even without bringing a plane down.

"4. The U.S.’s air-travel volume precludes TSA from using Israel’s methods.

"Yes, America is bigger than Israel, is home to 45 times as many people, and has 75 times as many flights travel through its airspace every day. But America also has vastly more resources to draw upon; its per capita flight total is less than twice Israel’s.

[...]

"8. Americans won’t tolerate profiling.

"Does anyone really believe that Americans, if given a choice between intimate patdowns and Israel-style interviews, would choose being groped?

"The bottom line is that Israel’s methods work. Instead of having ill-trained TSA agents search for bad things, have well-trained agents search for bad people. Profile by behavior and circumstance (cash ticket, one-way trip, etc.), and leave most of us alone. Compile accurate no-fly lists. Heed credible warnings. Ignore political correctness.

"Instead, Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano reportedly has two more Bright Ideas: unionizing TSA employees and special reduced screening for Muslims in traditional garb. The former, rejected when the Department of Homeland Security was established, would make it harder to fire incompetent employees. The latter would have the unintended impact of so enraging most Americans that they will insist lawmakers make TSA apply uniform rules.

"Israel’s skies have been friendly for 42 years. Not a bad record. We should learn from it."

The most infuriating part of this whole TSA crud is that it's all theater. These measures would not have prevented many past terrorist attacks and it's unlikely to prevent future ones. Instead it's all vaudeville, a show for the American people so the Government can say "Look we're doing something! We're groping you and scanning you for your own protection!"

HillBuzz Unmasks Modern Leftist Democrats

Wow!

Kevin DuJan of Hillbuzz.org really went for it in "An Open Letter to Rush Limbaugh and His Listeners — With Notes on the Democrat Civil War Already In Progress" (h/t to Fuzzy at Fuzzy Logic for pointing out this post). Check it out.

From DuJan's post:

"None of this is being reported in the media, but a Civil War in the Democrat ranks has been raging since May 31st, 2008…a date every Hillary Clinton supporter knows well, because that was the date of the Democrat Rules & Bylaws Committee Meeting where Howard Dean (then-DNC Chair), Donna Brazile, and scores of other Kool-Aid slurping Obama flunkies took off their masks and revealed the full extent of the Leftist coup that had taken over the party. This was the day when the DNC took delegates Hillary Clinton won in Michigan away from her and handed them to Obama (despite the fact he wasn’t even on the primary ballot in that state, because he removed his name when his campaign realized he’d come in third in that race).

"May 31st, 2008 was a day when Hillary 'babes' (as you call us sometimes) like us flew to Washington in large numbers to stand outside the Marriott near the National Zoo, where this Rules & Bylaws Committee Meeting was held, to shout for the DNC to count all the votes and operate the nominating process fairly — but they refused. The anger over that day has never abated. In fact, it’s grown considerably since then.

"This was the determining factor in millions of us leaving the Democrat Party for good. This was the day when the P.U.M.A. movement began — in response to Donna Brazile’s calls for 'party unity' following the Rules & Bylaws Committee Meeting, we 'Hillary babes' said 'Party Unity My A$$' (or People United Means Action, depending on how you want to phrase it). Exit polls showed 8 million PUMA voted Republican for the first time in our lives in the fall of 2008…casting ballots for McCain/Palin (and in truth, mainly for Palin, whom we support, and not to a small degree because she receives many of the same attacks lobbed at Hillary Clinton all these years).

[...]

"This is also when most of us stopped using the term 'Democratic Party', since there’s nothing “democratic” about these people. They are the 'Democrat Party', and even that is hard to acknowledge because they really and truly have proved themselves to be enemies of real democracy.

"I’m still registered as a Democrat here in Chicago (because the Cocktail Party GOP establishment so disgusts me I can’t will myself to party-ID Republican, and there’s no Independent option here in Illinois) but I can’t imagine ever voting for another Democrat again, as long as I live. To Hell with Democrats. This was solidified for me on Christmas Eve of last year, when Democrats rushed Obamacare through the Senate in the dead of night, through various secret channels, and every single Democrat voted for its passage (even supposed moderates like Evan Bayh in Indiana, who quickly realized his vote would cost him re-election…so the coward retired rather then face angry voters over what he did). I just don’t believe Democrats should be given elected office by voters because they cannot be trusted to even read bills before they vote on them, not even when said bills seek to permanently alter the entire American economy. This is reckless and reprehensible to the point of treason.

"I was a Democrat for 32 years before the heavy-handed push for Obama alienated me from the party…and I borrow what Hillary Clinton said about Republicans once, back when she was a Goldwater Girl, and will paraphrase by saying that I didn’t leave the Democrat Party, the Democrat Party left me.

"After it beat me to a pulp, called me a racist, berated and insulted me, and used Alinsky Rules to hit me with everything it had. Not just me, but all Hillary supporters.

[...]

"The media has never talked about this. I don’t remember ever hearing you talk about it. But one of the biggest reasons the Democrats are in the trouble they’re in right now is because of how frequently the Left and the media (one and the same, really) called anyone who opposed Obama a RAAACIST. If you supported Hillary Clinton in the primaries instead of Obama, you were called a RAAACIST. If you were someone like me who fundraised for Hillary, who hosted events for her, who put yourself out there and wrote columns advocating her or did media spots talking up her candidacy, you were aggressively targeted by the Obama campaign and his supporters…relentlessly attacked as a RAAACIST! and assaulted with the Alinksy Rules for Radicals in hopes of breaking your spirit, terrorizing you, and making you abandon Clinton for fear of having these people destroy your life, ruin your business, and make you an absolute pariah in your community.

"This is what the Obama campaign, the media, and the DNC did to DEMOCRATS.

"For almost a year, the Obama zealots and the Left waged all-out-war not just on Hillary Clinton, but on lifelong, loyal, dyed-in-the-wool Democrat voters like me. This came straight from the top, from Obama himself. Both he and his wife Michelle called the Clintons racists. Obama’s surrogates like James Clyburne, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, John Lewis, and others called Geraldine Ferraro, Madeline Albright, and others racists. The Obamas toxified the South Carolina primary, in particular, with foul race-baiting and turned North Carolina and Indiana into racial powder kegs by ramping up accusations that anyone not supporting Obama was a vile racist that needed to be pounded into the ground.

[...]

"This is similar to the grief that I’ve received here in Chicago for being a gay Hillary former Democrat in Boystown who never drank any Kool-Aid, never stopped speaking out against Obama, and who recently fully came out as a conservative — in the face of the same kind of Alinsky-grade, identity-based, 'traitor' hectoring that Tubbs Jones got for being a black woman who didn’t kneel before the Obama altar.

[...]

"Those of us who worked Democrat campaigns in the past put up with union associations and the other unsavory aspects of being a Democrat because we were told this was the only way Democrats could win…with union muscle. But, in 2008 the Democrats revealed themselves to be an SD6 [from the TV show Alias] conglomeration of every force in this country that wants to bring America down, tank our economy, usurp our Constitution, and lay waste to the American way of life.

"Democrats took off the mask. The DNC reveled in being fully Leftist-controlled. Crazy people unapologetic in their Communist admiration took over positions of great influence not just in the DNC, but in our state and federal governments as well.

"I’m horrified by that.

"Hillary supporters are horrified by that.

"And we have not sat back quietly to allow this to happen without a fight."

Again, I highly suggest reading the whole piece. It is very interesting.

Schisms have been growing in the Democratic Party since the late 1970s (although their roots are in the late 60s). If DuJan is accurate, perhaps things are far worse than I thought in the rank and file of the Dems. If more non-Leftist Dems refuse to be "Obamafied" this could cause a severe, and long overdue, readjustment within the Democratic Party and pull it back to the center-Left (and reality).

It's also interesting to note the similarities with DuJan's experiences with the Dem Left and those of Black Conservatives and conservative women with the Dem Left-- which I wrote about in my post "Jeneane Garofalo and the Left Reinvent 16th Century Tyranny."

Thomas Sowell: Misleading Political Labels

Thomas Sowell has an interesting essay about the terms "liberal" and "conservative." Check it out.

From Sowell:

"Among the many words that don’t mean what they say, but which too many of us accept as if they did, are those staples of political discussion, 'liberals' and 'conservatives.'

"Most liberals are not liberal and most conservatives are not conservative. We might be better off just calling them X and Y, instead of imagining that we are really describing their philosophies. Moreover, like most confusion, it has consequences.

"The late liberal professor Tony Judt of New York University gave this definition of liberals: 'A liberal is someone who opposes interference in the affairs of others: who is tolerant of dissenting attitudes and unconventional behavior.'

"According to Professor Judt, liberals favor 'keeping other people out of our lives, leaving individuals the maximum space in which to live and flourish as they choose.'

[...]

"Communities that have had overwhelmingly liberal elected officials for decades abound in nanny-state regulations, micromanaging everything from home-building to garbage collection. San Francisco is a classic example. Among its innumerable micromanaging laws is one recently passed requiring that gas stations remove the little levers that allow motorists to pump gas into their cars without having to hold the nozzle.

"Liberals are usually willing to let people violate the traditional standards of the larger society but crack down on those who dare to violate liberals’ own notions and fetishes.

[...]

"As for conservatism, it has no specific political meaning, because everything depends on what you are trying to conserve. In the last days of the Soviet Union, those who were trying to maintain the Communist system were widely-- and correctly-- described as "conservatives," though they had nothing in common with such conservatives as William F. Buckley or Milton Friedman.

"Professor Friedman for years fought a losing battle against being labeled a conservative. He considered himself a liberal in the original sense of the word and wrote a book titled 'The Tyranny of the Status Quo.' Friedman proposed radical changes in things ranging from the public schools to the Federal Reserve System.

"But he is remembered today as one of the great conservatives of our time. Great, yes. But conservative? It depends on what you mean by conservative.

"Conservatism, in its original meaning, would require preserving the welfare state and widespread government intervention in the economy. Neither Milton Friedman nor most of the other people designated as conservatives today want that."

Sowell is quite right about confusion having consequences. I've had many arguments with people over political labels, and very often people bring up conservatives in other countries as being somehow equivalent to conservatives in the US. My favorite is a person brought up old school conservative Soviets as being equivalent to American conservatives (a confusion Sowell directly mentions). Additionally one of my undergraduate Poli Sci professors had an entire Marxist world history based solely on the battle between conservatives and progressives. He was thus was able to equate Ronald Reagan with Oliver Cromwell. Of course that comparison is foolish on every level, but even held to the prof.'s own standards this was nonsense. Cromwell was actively attacking Charles I and set up the short-lived Commonwealth of England-- truly the acts of someone devoted to the status quo.

Obama the Boring Scapegoat?

Check out Jennifer Rubin's short piece "Obama Is Borrrring!" (h/t Nickie Goomba).

From Rubin's piece:

"Obama’s public persona is so predictable and his image so overexposed that even the left is over him. He’s gone from fascinating and cool to a crashing bore in less than two years. Greg Sargent: 'Seems the consensus is that Obama’s presser [Friday] was way too boring, substantive and unemotional to produce an abrupt and massive enough turnaround in the polls to guarantee in advance that Dems hold their majority.' Ditto, hisses Maureen Dowd: 'How did the first president of color become so colorless?' Well, he ran out of catchphrases and revealed himself to be less articulate than George Bush. Dowd admits he sounds downright loopy at times"

[...]

"Why are liberals so bored all of a sudden? Conservatives, of course, rolled their eyes over his New Age-like campaign rhetoric and have begun to pine for Bill Clinton, who, at least, was intellectually creative and amusing. There are, I think, several things at work."

[...]

"Second, it is easier to admit that the candidate they swooned for is boring than it is to say he’s incompetent (or an empty suit). The former implies that Obama has lost his charm, the latter suggests that their own judgment was faulty. This also neatly sidesteps the troubling matter that Obama’s policies have tanked. (If he could only be more eloquent about the trillions spent, the public wouldn’t dessert him, the thinking goes.)"

I find that last idea particularly interesting.

Will the Left readily drop Obama to save the face of their agendas? Will they actively place the blame for the unpopularity of big government policies and laws on the president? Would America buy the attempt?

Certainly it's much too early to suggest that the Left is trotting out Obama as a scapegoat, although the Democrat candidates distancing of themselves from Obama does not demonstrate great confidence in the chief executive.

I think it's more likely the Left will blame the Republicans once their expected House takeover is completed. As ObamaCare, the bill for Obama's spending sprees-- er, um "stimulus packages"-- and the rest wreak havoc on the economy the Dems will blame Boehner and the rest of the House Republicans (the Party of No, remember?) for America's woes.

The next two years are going to be ugly, and the 2012 presidential campaign will probably be as polite and respectful as the Hillary Clinton/Obama race for the 2008 Democratic nomination. If the stakes weren't so incredibly high for the US at this point in time, all of this would be very amusing.

VDH: "Our Waning Obama Worship"

Check out Victor Davis Hanson's op/ed "Our Waning Obama Worship" at the National Review Online.

From Hanson:

"Apparently the liberal elite did not consider that perfect storm of events that elected a northern liberal in a way that had been impossible with George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, and John Kerry. Instead, they really believed that Obama’s election was proof that at last America had shed its odious -isms and -ologies. America was now ready for an updated FDR New Deal — as if, after seven decades, America had never tasted Social Security, unemployment and disability insurance, a 40-hour work week, and trillions in unfunded pensions and entitlements. In this 'never let a crisis go to waste' teachable moment, the cognitive elite was convinced that America had at last crossed the liberal threshold and so evolved from the passé equality of opportunity to the promised equality of result.

"But now a grouchy elite and a petulant president see that they were sorely mistaken about us, and Mr. Obama’s election was more flukish than predestined. Americans were given government takeovers of business, multi-trillion-dollar deficits, promised higher taxes, a path to socialized medicine, and an end to building the odious border fence — with, to top it all off, accusations from the likes of Van Jones and Eric Holder, apologies and bows abroad, and the beer summit. And yet the rustic ingrates are rejecting both the benefactor and his munificence."

Read the whole piece.

While many MSM columnists are conjuring every conceivable excuse for Americans not wanting to let Obama to run this country into the ground (either we're being racist and/or acting like spoiled brats), it's nice to see people not being cowed by the bullies in the media.

Added New Links! Kristin's Mishmash and Nickie Goomba

I thought I'd better update my Blog List. I've been really bad about that for the last several months.

First there's Kristin's Mishmash. Check out her blog. Right now she's blogging about a petition making the rounds that would ban lead from ammunition and fishing sinkers. Such crap in Washington now...

Second is the Nickie Goomba site. Very funny stuff. Right now there's a caption contest for a picture of a trenchcoated Putin contemplating a rock. "If they they knew... I am the Batman."

Also put up links to Israel National News and The Jerusalem Post.

All are now listed on the Blog List to the left. Check them out, especially Goomba and Kristin's Mishmash.

Cash for Clunkers: Subsidies for Raising the Price of Used Cars for Working Class Families

As the fallout from the "Cash for Clunkers" program has become more readily apparent, we are once again confronted with the fact that Obama and his economic advisory team really have no clue about what they're doing.

Ed Morrisey has this from HotAir.com:

"With home prices falling, fewer people employed, and every economic indicator on the dashboard flashing red, deflation has started to become a big enough worry that the Fed has adjusted its monetary policy to account for it. There are no such worries in the used-car industry, however. Prices have jumped 10% overall and in some cases as much as a third for used cars, thanks not to demand as much as a restricted supply after the government destroyed billions of dollars in assets as part of its Cash for Clunkers program last year (via Instapundit):

"[quoting from edmunds Daily] 'Car buyers on average paid $1,800 more for a used vehicle in July than they paid a year ago at this time, according to Edmunds.com data. That’s a 10.3 percent increase, bringing the average cost of a 3-year-old vehicle to $19,248. The price of a Cadillac Escalade spiked nearly 36 percent. “A lack of confidence in the economy is driving more people to used cars, putting upward pricing pressure on a limited supply of vehicles,” said Joe Spina, a senior analyst for Edmunds. …'

"'Spina said that at this time last year, a troubled economy had consumers buying less- expensive fuel-efficient vehicles and trading in "gas guzzlers" through Cash for Clunkers (more formally known as the Car Allowance Rebate System). "Now, those who need trucks and large SUVs are buying them and in many cases are turning to used vehicles as a way to save money," he said. "Prices are high because this demand comes at a time when inventory is low as a result of the current shortage of lease returns and trade-ins for vehicles of this type." And, he said, while prices are indeed very high now, last year’s prices were low, making the gains even more dramatic.'

"In other words, there was real and rational demand for the cars that the Obama administration sent to the grinders. That demand hasn’t stopped, even if tainted with political incorrectness.

[...]

"As predicted last year, the people most hurt by the price increases are those who can least afford them. The used-car market usually attracts people who need transportation on a budget, who cannot afford to buy new. By destroying a quarter’s worth of trade-ins in three weeks and permanently taking them off the market, the Obama administration has forced an artificial inflation by supply restriction. Moreover, they did so by subsidizing new-car sales that would have occurred anyway, eating up three billion dollars in taxpayer money.

"In other words, the White House spent $3 billion to make used cars more expensive for working-class families. Nice work."

Jason Kuznicki has an excellent post on this (h/t Jacobson at Legal Insurrection):

"That’s because money isn’t wealth. Money is at best a measure of wealth, which actually consists of goods. Money retains its value as long as there are goods to be traded for it. When the goods disappear, the economy grows poorer, regardless of how the money is shuffled around.

"And the payback isn’t long in coming — today’s used car prices are soaring owing to reduced supply. (This link gives even more dramatic numbers, but I’m less sure of them. h/t Radley Balko.)

"See how that works? You can’t get something for nothing. Cash for Clunkers turns out to have been a highly inefficient wealth-transfer program, that is, one that destroyed a bunch of wealth along the way. It gave wealth to those already relatively wealthy people who did the government’s bidding (that is, those who could afford to part with a used car and buy a new one). And now it’s taking wealth from those relatively poor people who need a used car today — in the form of higher prices.

[...]

"And this is what passes for a successful government program."

Don't worry though. It was all Bush's fault...

More Obama Deceit: The "Lives Touched" Stimulus Headcount

While putting an absurdly positive spin on the $787 billion economic "stimulus" package which saved us from the unemployment rate reaching 8%-- oh wait, I'm sorry it did and then some... but it was all Bush's fault-- the US Department of Energy (DOE) came up with a new term that will haunt us.

First there was "jobs created" by the stimulus, but then there didn't readily appear to be a whole lot of jobs created by the money. Next was "jobs created or saved" a wonderful bit of post-modernist thought which requires basically no proof for the numbers. After all, if only 10,000 jobs remained in the US, the Obama Administration could claim they were "saved" by the stimulus and it would've been worse without it. Yet, even that doesn't seem to be enough, so now the DOE have trotted out the new, touchy-feely sounding phrase "lives touched" by the stimulus.

Of course from the sound of it, every man, woman and child in the US is touched by the stimulus-- mostly with the feel of the stimulus going after their wallets. But wait, there is a definition of it. Rusty Weiss and NewsBusters.org has the details.

From Weiss' article:

"In late July, a Government Accountability Office report circulated which analyzed stimulus funding being spent by the Department of Energy. The main gist of that report involved the cost of each job being generated by the stimulus bill - a staggering $194,000. Tucked away in that report was a phrase that was new to most of us, a way to calculate jobs through a term called 'lives touched'.

"Last week it was confirmed that some departments being funded by the stimulus are indeed using the metric ‘lives touched' - a regression from the absurd ‘jobs saved or created', which was already a step down from the incalculable ‘jobs created'.

"A spokesperson from the CH2M Hill Plateau Remediation Company explains:

"'Lives Touched' is a figure that the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) uses to track the amount of people who have been positively affected by the Recovery Act funds. This total would include people who have been provided full time employment (i.e. saved and created jobs) through the Recovery Act and people who at some point have supported a project funded by the Recovery Act.'

"Essentially, the Obama administration had figured out another way to inflate job numbers to better fit their claims of success. And yet, the media has remained largely silent on this matter. Even as Vice-President Biden released a report on the Recovery Act yesterday, with a specific focus on the Department of Energy and job creation."

[...]

"The Biden report being cited, The Recovery Act: Transforming the American Economy Through Innovation, references several companies that have generated jobs through the Recovery Act. Each footnote in the report explains that the job estimates are from a company's own reports, which is the norm for reporting job results through the recovery website.

"Referring back to the CH2M company, we know that their reports include a directive to use numbers which estimate 'lives touched' by the stimulus. We not only know this from the spokesperson's explanation of the metric above, but by the reporting instructions provided to subcontractors which defines the phrase as '(the) total number of workers who have directly charged 1 or more hours of work time to a ... contract.'

"One hour of work and your life has been touched.

"Additionally, the instructions state that, 'The lives touched headcount will remain the same or increase over time as new workers become involved with ARRA contracts. The total headcount will never decrease.'

"In other words, a temporary, part-time, or seasonal worker can come into a project, work no more than one hour on said project, and that person will continue to appear in the headcount with each report. They will not be removed upon their departure from the project."

[...]

"When these numbers are presented publicly and then parroted through the mainstream media who have clearly not done their homework, as was the case with yesterday's Biden report, the result is deceit. The administration provided job estimates while failing to provide any context or explanation as to how the numbers were derived.

"An example of this can be seen in an April News Flash provided by the Office of Environmental Management. The chart on the right tallies up the total headcount or ‘lives touched' as 20,249. A statement on the left claims that 'EM Recovery Act funding has employed over 20,000 workers on stimulus projects in 12 states.'

"Which is it, employed or touched?

"A contract award summary for the National Opinion Research Center speaks volumes of the disparity. In their ‘description of jobs created' section, they explain how the numbers are derived:

"'...the total headcount, (the number of "lives touched" or, the number of people who have labor hours funded by stimulus funds, not distinguishing between part-time and full-time, or the length of the job, as of June 30th is a combined total of 480 staff members hired/retained as of the end of the quarter.'

"The summary then goes on to explain that only 2 of the 480 jobs being discussed were newly created positions. Two jobs, but a grand total of 480 are being reported. That's a markup up of 24,000%.

"It would be funny, if it weren't so sad.

"It's all part of the overall deception, however. The White House continues to throw out random numbers in their quest to convince the public that their behemoth stimulus bill is saving jobs at a massive rate [emphasis mine]."

Way to pad those numbers, boys. Too bad none of this actually creates jobs, but then the Obama Administration has always been all about simple appearances-- from inauthentic apologies, to bows to foreign nobility. No wonder Obama polls so well in Hollywood.

Battling the Claims of Islamaphobia, and the Left's Fickle Favors

Check out Jonah Goldberg's short piece at the National Review Online (h/t Anne Leary at Backyard Conservative).

From Goldberg's article:

"According to the FBI, hate crimes against Muslims increased by a staggering 1,600 percent in 2001. That sounds serious! But wait, the increase is a math mirage. There were 28 anti-Islamic incidents in 2000. That number climbed to 481 the year a bunch of Muslim terrorists murdered 3,000 Americans in the name of Islam on Sept. 11.

"Regardless, 2001 was the zenith or, looked at through the prism of our national shame, the nadir of the much-discussed anti-Muslim backlash in the United States — and civil libertarians and Muslim activists insisted it was 1930s Germany all over again. The following year, the number of anti-Islamic hate-crime incidents (overwhelmingly, nonviolent vandalism and nasty words) dropped to 155. In 2003, there were 149 such incidents. And the number has hovered around the mid-100s or lower ever since.

"Sure, even one hate crime is too many. But does that sound like an anti-Muslim backlash to you?

"Let’s put this in even sharper focus. America is, outside of Israel, probably the most receptive and tolerant country in the world to Jews. And yet, in every year since 9/11, more Jews have been hate-crime victims than Muslims. A lot more.

"In 2001, there were twice as many anti-Jewish incidents as there were anti-Muslim, according to the FBI. In 2002 and pretty much every year since, anti-Jewish incidents have outstripped anti-Muslim incidents by at least 6 to 1. Why aren’t we talking about the anti-Jewish climate in America?

"Because there isn’t one. And there isn’t an anti-Muslim climate either. Yes, there’s a lot of heated rhetoric on the Internet. Absolutely, some Americans don’t like Muslims. But if you watch TV or movies, or read, say, the op-ed page of the New York Times — never mind left-wing blogs — you’ll hear much more open bigotry toward evangelical Christians (in blogspeak, the 'Taliban wing of the Republican party') than you will toward Muslims [emphasis mine]."

Not a bad bit of work from Goldberg. However I have to add that America doesn't talk about an anti-Jewish climate in the US because there is no political gain in it for the Democrats and the Left-friendly portions of the media.

The Left champions those they perceive as victims. Marxism, a theory inextricably based on class conflict and revolution, requires such a narrow oppressed/oppressor focus. The watered down theory of Marxism, mainstream Socialism, retains its oppressed/oppressor and revolutionist nature. Succeeding therefore disqualifies a people, however arbitrarily perceived and projected upon by the Left, from the Left's good graces.

During the formation of Israel, Jews enjoyed wide support by the American Left. The Jewish people had been devastated, in the truest sense of the word, by the Holocaust and were poster children for the Left's good graces. Yet, as Israel succeeded in defending itself from the Arab nations surrounding it, as it established itself as a viable and prosperous country, the Left's view changed. Suddenly the terrorist activities of the PLO became understandable to the Left, perversely evolving into legitimate and laudable.

By succeeding and prospering, Israel managed to price themselves right out of the Left's good graces. And by extension, real or not, American Jews are no longer favored by the Left's media and Jewish hate crimes are not hidden away, but are considered to be not a big a deal. After all, the thought goes, Israel brings such actions upon Jews by oppressing the Palestinians. Should the Palestinian leadership succeed in their bid to wipe Israel from the face of the map, I'm sure the Left would suddenly be very sympathetic to the plight of the Jews. After all, the Jewish people could then be used to, once again, demonstrate how compassionate and charitable the Left is.

Goldberg should also be commended for devoting the right amount of time to the accusations. The American Left has used the strategy of crying "racist" to control an issue (see the infamous Journolist for some of the most blatant examples). By forcing conservatives to sputter and defend themselves from the charge, the Left takes control of the debate. Goldberg briefly smacks down Time and the Left's strategic but still atrocious accusation, and then moves on. That's the correct response.

Obama Stimulus: $787 Billion-- Total Cost of Iraqi War $709 Billion

So the stimulus cost more than the entire Iraqi War...

Check out this Washington Examiner op/ed by Mark Tapscott (h/t Instapundit):

"Expect to hear a lot about how much the Iraq war cost in the days ahead from Democrats worried about voter wrath against their unprecedented spending excesses.

"The meme is simple: The economy is in a shambles because of Bush's economic policies and his war in Iraq. As American Thinker's Randall Hoven points out, that's the message being peddled by lefties as diverse as former Clinton political strategist James Carville, economist Joseph Stiglitz, and The Nation's Washington editor, Christopher Hayes.

"The key point in the mantra is an alleged $3 trillion cost for the war. Well, it was expensive to be sure, in both blood and treasure, but, as Hoven notes, the CBO puts the total cost at $709 billion. To put that figure in the proper context of overall spending since the war began in 2003[.]"

And what did the stimulus accomplish again? Oh right, it kept unemployment under 8%-- wait, no it didn't. It "saved" millions of jobs, or so Obama, Pelosi, Reid keep desperately repeating. I suppose that they want us to believe that without it, unemployment would be hovering around 25% or there about, and all because of Bush and Cheney and greed... or something.

Here's some other facts from the CBO report via Tapscott quoting Randall Hoven:

Obama's stimulus, passed in his first month in office, will cost more than the entire Iraq War -- more than $100 billion (15%) more.

Just the first two years of Obama's stimulus cost more than the entire cost of the Iraq War under President Bush, or six years of that war.

During Bush's Iraq years, 2003-2008, the federal government spent more on education that it did on the Iraq War. (State and local governments spent about ten times more.)

And those numbers are simply from the "stimulus." This does not count the $1 trillion+ costs from ObamaCare, nor any other government programs that Obama et al have been pushing or have already passed.

Don't worry though, Obama and the Dems will fix it all by blaming Bush and Cheney. Now don't thank them all at once.

The 10 Broken Promises of ObamaCare

"Just words..." right?

Check out this highly recommended article "ObamCare: The sum of all fears" at HotAir.com by guest bloggers Mary Katharine Ham and Guy Benson:

"On March 21, after more than a year of contentious debate, Congressional Democrats finally passed their health care reform bill without a single Republican vote in either house. The president has challenged Republicans to run against his unpopular health care law—implying that they don’t have the political courage to do so. He may be right on that point; he may not—but the facts show that (a) many of the highest-profile selling points employed by the Left to drag Obamacare across the finish line were either incorrect or intentional distortions, (b) the consequences of not repealing this law are dire, and (c) the public’s enduring hostility toward Obamacare demonstrates a political appetite for repeal.

"Recent polls reflect America’s zeal for repeal, as does an August ballot referendum in Missouri rebuking the individual mandate, which succeeded by a margin of 71-29. Throughout the lengthy public debate, President Obama and his surrogates consistently ridiculed and denounced critics of the bill as bad-faith, fear-mongering propaganda merchants.

"The facts now prove there was plenty to fear in good faith."

Read the entire article at the link above, but the ten broken promises and their bottom lines from the article are:

Promise #1: If you are satisfied with your existing health care arrangement, you can keep it.

"Despite what the president told us repeatedly, it’s quite possible you will not be permitted to keep your health care plan– no matter how much you may like it. Supporters of health care reform argue that government mandates for certain kinds of coverage will only change health care plans for the better, making them more comprehensive, so no one will be negatively impacted. This argument ignores the loss of both choice and money inflicted by government mandates, but even if it were true, that wasn’t the promise, was it?"

Promise #2: Reform will lower America’s health care spending.

"Obamacare supporters were wrong when they told the country the legislation would lower the nation’s health care costs. Ten years after its passage, health care will represent a larger percentage of GDP than the current projection."

Promise #3: Reform will lower Americans’ health care premiums.

"Contrary to the president’s commitments, your premiums could increase under Obamacare. Why? Just count the reasons. Or ask Dick Durbin."

Promise #4: Obamacare will not lead to a doctor shortage, or escalate the primary-care physician shortfall.

"Thanks to Obamacare, America’s doctor shortfall will accelerate and it will become more difficult to get quality, timely care from a doctor."

Promise #5: There will be no government rationing of medical care.

"Whether dressed up as “comparative effectiveness research” or described bluntly by Mr. Reich or Berwick, government rationing is a frightening and unavoidable byproduct of government-administered and –regulated health care."

Promise #6: “The firm pledge” – Ninety-five percent of Americans will not see any form of tax increase because of Obamacare (or anything else).

"Hold on to your wallets."

Promise #7: Health care reform won’t add “a single dime” to the deficit—and will actually cut it.

"The president’s bill won’t add a single dime to the deficit. It will pile trillions upon trillions of dimes atop an already mountainous debt."

Promise #8: Health care reform will help businesses—employers and employees, alike.

"Some House Democrats have since realized the folly of this anti-business imposition, and have offered a bill to repeal this part of Obamacare, but are balking at the loss of revenue. They say realizing you have a problem is the first step to recovery. Let’s hope they’re right, as even Democrats begin to relinquish the farce that this bill can be all things to all people and all paid for, all at the same time."

Promise #9: Obamacare will not allow for funding of abortions with taxpayer money.

"Were it not for watchful pro-life activists and the wide unpopularity of federally funding abortions, the bill would already be paying for them in at least one state."

Promise #10: Obamacare will not only satisfy each of the promises above, but satisfy all of them at the same time with virtually no downsides.

"In defense of the administration, it did start lowering expectations shortly after passage. On Obama’s post-passage p.r. push, he gave a speech in Iowa that included this decidedly un-lofty section:

"'Now, it’s going to take about four years to implement this entire plan — because we’ve got to do it responsibly and we need to do it right. So I just want to be clear: that means that health care costs won’t go down overnight; not all the changes are going to be in place; there are still going to be aspects of the health care system that are very frustrating over the next several years.'

"With all due respect to the president, we weren’t pitched “This’ll take four years of frustration but it won’t be as bad as Republicans say it is” for $2.5 trillion. We were pitched perfection.

"Every substantive criticism was met with charges of 'fear-mongering.' We were pitched a bill that expanded coverage and increased subsidies without increasing the deficit, mandated new levels of coverage without taxing citizens, that changed everything unless you didn’t want anything to change, that cut costs without rationing, and that enacted 2,500 pages of law without any unintended negative consequences."

This law must be repealed. No compromises.

The Obama Administration's Core

William Jacobson over at Legal Insurrection wrote an excellent post, "A Time to Choose Sides" on Sunday. Check it out. Prof. Jacobson usually writes good stuff, but he was dead-on in this post.

From Jacobson:

"Not to belabor the point made here hundreds of times, but over two thousand pages of Obamacare legislation will result in several thousand pages of regulations which will control the most intimate and important aspects of our lives; cap-and-trade legislation and regulations will control the means of production; financial regulation has devolved into social planning; and it goes on and on.

"We did not need to reach this point.

"What should have been a passing financial crisis has been used by the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress to achieve what -- in the famous words of Rahm Emanuel -- could not otherwise be achieved.

"Democrats took advantage of a crisis, and then doubled-down by massively increasing our national debt to advantage preferred political constituencies.

"The answer should have been to grow the pie, not to redistribute the slices, but that alternative is off the table with Democrats in control."

Jacobson has managed to put into concise language what so many Americans are feeling. Cutting through the layers of ugly partisan politics, the race-issue shield, and the media blitz, Jacobson precisely describes the core of the Obama Administration in this relatively short post. Very fine work.

UPDATE: Heh. It seems that Carol over at Carol's Closet was also impressed with Jacobson's post and wrote about it last night.

Added New Link: Big Peace!

Just added Andrew Breitbart's newest site Big Peace to the Blog List. This site will apparently deal with national security issues and is edited by Hoover Institution Research Fellow Peter Schweizer.

Check it out!

Great Thomas Sowell Essay: "Oil and Snake Oil"

Check out Thomas Sowell's essay "Oil and Snake Oil."

Sowell is excellent at cutting straight to the bone of things (an especially useful skill with this Administration), as he demonstrates in this essay.

From Sowell's essay:

"The big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is bad enough in itself. But politics can make anything worse.

"Let's stop and think. Either the government knows how to stop the oil spill or they don't. If they know how to stop it, then why have they let thousands of barrels of oil per day keep gushing out, for weeks on end? All they have to do is tell BP to step aside, while the government comes in to do it right.

"If they don't know, then what is all this political grandstanding about keeping their boot on the neck of BP, the Attorney General of the United States going down to the Gulf to threaten lawsuits— on what charges was unspecified— and President Obama showing up in his shirt sleeves?

"Just what is Obama going to do in his shirt sleeves, except impress the gullible? He might as well have shown up in a tuxedo with white tie, for all the difference it makes.

"This government is not about governing. It is about creating an impression. That worked on the campaign trail in 2008, but it is a disaster in the White House, where rhetoric is no substitute for reality."

[...]

"[C]reating political impressions and images is not the same thing as governing. Yet Obama in the White House keeps on saying and doing things to impress people, instead of governing.

"Once the elections were over and the time for governing began, there was now a new audience to consider— a much more savvy audience, the leaders of other countries around the world."

[...]

"By the same token, domestic bungling by Barack Obama sends a dangerous signal to countries hostile to us, in addition to the signal sent by his displays of amateurism on the world stage.
President Obama had barely settled into the White House before he began demonstrating his willingness to sell out this country's friends to appease our enemies. His trip to Moscow to try to make a deal with the Russians, based on reneging on the pre-existing American commitment to put a missile shield in Eastern Europe, was the kind of short-sighted betrayal whose consequences can come back to haunt a nation for years.

"Obama spoke grandly about 'pressing the reset button' on international relations, as if all the international commitments of the past were his to disregard.

"But if no American commitment can be depended upon beyond a current administration, then any nation that allies itself with us is jeopardizing its own national security, because dangers in the international jungle last longer than 4 years or even 8 years."

That's some highlights, but go read the whole thing. It's well worth the time.

More Willful Obama Ignorance: Who Killed Daniel Pearl and Why?

Check out this post by Jim Hoft over at Gateway Pundit. (h/t Fuzzy at Fuzzy Logic)

While signing the Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act of 2009, Obama gave this prepared statement:

"All around the world there are enormously courageous journalists and bloggers who, at great risk to themselves, are trying to shine a light on the critical issues that the people of their country face; who are the frontlines against tyranny and oppression. And obviously the loss of Daniel Pearl was one of those moments that captured the world’s imagination because it reminded us of how valuable a free press is, and it reminded us that there are those who would go to any length in order to silence journalists around the world. What this act does is it sends a strong message from the United States government and from the State Department that we are paying attention to how other governments are operating when it comes to the press. It has the State Department each year chronicling how press freedom is operating as one component of our human rights assessment, but it also looks at countries that are — governments that are specifically condoning or facilitating this kind of press repression, singles them out and subjects them to the gaze of world opinion in ways that I think are extraordinarily important. [emphasis mine]"

What? "Captured the world's imagination"?! Was this some kind of inspiring and uplifting Olympic performance? This is Obama's choice of words?

There's so much wrong with this, not so much the basically toothless Daniel Pearl Freedom of the Press Act, but with Obama's statement that I don't know where to begin. Fortunately, Hoft does. Go check out his response, but here are some of Hoft's key points:

"Daniel Pearl was not beheaded because he was a journalist.

"Daniel Pearl was beheaded by Islamic extremists because he was an American and a Jew."

[...]

"After the Islamic radicals murdered Daniel Pearl they released a video of his beheading. This text was included:

"'My name is Daniel Pearl. I am a Jewish American from Encino, California USA. I come from, uh, on my father’s side the family is Zionist. My father’s Jewish, my mother’s Jewish, I’m Jewish. My family follows Judaism. We’ve made numerous family visits to Israel. Back in the town of Bnei Brak there is a street named after my great grandfather Chaim Pearl who is one of the founders of the town.'

"Obviously, the terrorists were not as concerned about Pearl’s writing as much as his Jewish blood line. But, when you are incapable of understanding who we are fighting and when you are unwilling to utter the words 'Islamic radicalism' then you tend to make these kind of mistakes."

Well put Hoft. Thank you.

Check out Jennifer Rubin's take on Obama's remarks as well, also referenced by Hoft.

Media Matters, Health Rationing, and Support for Infanticide

Check out this article by Ben Domenech at BigGovernment.com.

While defending Donald Berwick from criticism, Media Matters cited Dr. Peter Singer-- a proponent of infanticide. Brilliant guys. Just brilliant...

Dr. Singer wrote this charming sentiment in 1993:

"To take the lives of [self conscious people], without their consent, is to thwart their desires for the future. Killing a snail or a day-old infant does not thwart any desires of this kind, because snails and newborn infants are incapable of such desires."

Kinda cute, huh? I mean equating newborns to snails and all... Oh, and Dr. Singer also had co-written a book published in 1988 called Should the Baby Live? Catchy title, right?

Domenech has other painful Singer quotes. Check out the article.

And let's conclude with Domenech's own observation:

"Just to be clear: Media Matters for America has no problem quoting, in defense of rationing health care, a person who has bluntly advocated the right to kill newborn babies."

I see no problem here. Do you?

UPDATE: For the sake of clarity this background on Dr. Singer via the about the author blurb for Should the Baby Live?

"Peter Singer is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre of Human Bioethics at Monash University in Australia. In addition to his many books on ethics, he has written many articles for The New York Times and The New York Review of Books."

Singer's not a medical doctor. I just want to be clear on that. However, it is to my horror (although not surprise) that he is a professor of philosophy specializing in ethics.