Required Reading
Source: PIG News Wire [03/12/10]

During a recent visit to the Objectivism Online site, I came across an exceptionally perceptive, well reasoned, posting in one of the discussion groups. In it, the poster, ‘Money Lover’, compares the demise of America, with the death of Ancient Greece and Rome.

"The collapse of a civilization is a drawn-out process that does not happen within one day, nor even one year. Rome had been declining for centuries before Odoacer--the first Barbarian king--took it over in 476, and that particular year brought little visible change into the lives of the inhabitants of the empire, who continued to refer to themselves as Romans. Similarly, the United States has been adopting Socialist policies ever since the passage of the first "anti-trust" act in 1890; the 2008 election is just another step down a road we have been traveling on since before Ayn Rand was born. Assigning a date to the collapse of a civilization is an exercise in abstraction: one has to choose the date of an event that symbolizes the whole centuries-long process; an event that summarizes the essence of what brought about the downfall; an event that marks a point of no return.

Dr. Peikoff recenty called Obama "the first anti-American candidate." Indeed, while there have been many un-American candidates and Presidents in the past (in fact, most of the Presidents in the 20th century can be called un-American), none of them has been as avowedly anti-American as Obama. None of them kept hearing "God damn America!" as the gospel of God during their regular Sunday visits to the institution most responsible for shaping their sense of life, their ideas of morality, and their whole implicit philosophy. None of them had the likes of Bill Ayers as their closest associates. If we give them the benefit of the doubt, we might still say about all past Presidents that they were fundamentally well-meaning individuals who honestly wanted to secure a bright future for America, but were awfully handicapped as a result of the betrayal of the nation by its nihilist intellectual establishment. Obama's choice of his friends and mentors makes it clear that securing a bright future for America is definitely not his goal.

A nation cannot elect one of its enemies as its chief executive and survive for long. If we want to find a date symbolic of America's descent into statism, I cannot think of any event in the past, nor do I think there will be any event in the future, that captures it better than the election that turned the first anti-American candidate into the first anti-American president and gave him the full support of the House as well as the Senate. November 4, 2008, is the date history ought to record as the day the first American Republic fell."

"Thus, like all abstractions, assigning a date to the fall of the original United States is much more than just an idle academic exercise. Until it becomes widely accepted that we have not been able to keep the constitutional Republic the Founders gave us, everything that happens in America will continue to be seen as an American event, and as a product of American culture, i.e. of capitalism. Only when people become aware that Washington has been taken over by an element foreign to the nation's founding spirit will they stop identifying Washington's actions with that of a capitalist government; only then will they naturally think of it as having nothing to do with the original American culture.

Many patriotic Americans will say that it is premature at this point to declare the end of the Republic. Shouldn't I at least wait to see what policies Obama actually implements (given that he has yet to fully disclose the exact nature and extent of the changes he has in store for us) before pronouncing him the Odoacer of America? But I think, if anything, one has to wonder whether November 4 of this year is too late a date to name: the United States has been much closer to a democracy than a republic for several decades now. This was not the first election in which a candidate tried to gain the support of 51 per cent of the voters by promising them a little money, to be taken from the remaining 49 per cent--and did not even find it necessary to try and explain how his plan was to be reconciled with the inalienable rights Jefferson had written about. However, it was the first election in which the candidate flatly said into the face of a member of the victimized 49 per cent that his intention was to spread their wealth around, and that he knew this will make them vote against him, but it was the other 51 per cent whose vote he was counting on."

"It is time to make it official: Washington, D.C. has fallen to the Barbarians."

American Thinker scribbler, Neil Braithwaite, draws a comparison between Messiah Barry and that legendary American showman, P. T. Barnum.

‘...While we all understand that P. T. Barnum was an exceptional entertainer and showman, his financial business philosophy was always the same -- sell the hoax. And while we may not see ourselves as "suckers" in the truest sense of the word, that's what we are if we have our doubts and still buy a ticket to see the show, and then later complain that we have somehow been taken. In capitalism, it's called "caveat emptor," which for us common folk translates to "let the buyer beware."

It becomes more obvious every day that Barack Obama has turned out to be a far greater pitchman than even P. T. Barnum could have ever imagined. President -- or should I say Pitchman -- Obama's understanding of the gullibility of humanity seems eerily similar to that of P. T. Barnum.

For starters, Obama obviously believes, as Barnum did, that "there's a sucker born every minute," and he thinks that selling his entire socialist plan for America completely depends on it. Obama's radical circus has been traveling around this great land for over a year now, with the ringmaster-in-chief telling everyone that his economic plans are working to perfection, even though the facts tell a completely different story. But the president knows that he has to convince enough suckers that his plans are actually working in order to continue his socialist agenda -- so the radical circus travels on...’

‘...President Obama's pitch for health care is a great example of how he uses P. T. Barnum's sucker strategy. With his radical circus moving from town to town, pitchman Obama shows up making outrageous claims to lure people into his health care sideshow. Standing on his soapbox, the handsome, well-dressed, fast-talking radical pitchman guarantees authenticity and satisfaction. "Step right up before it's too late, and see a universal health care system that will be the envy of the entire world," shouts the persuasive pitchman. Unfortunately, by the time many people realize they have been taken, Obama's radical circus will be long-gone.

President Obama has eclipsed P. T. Barnum's wildest dreams by pitching the biggest economic and social hoax in the history of this great nation. All that is left for this audacious ringmaster-in-chief to do is sell the hoax and implement his radical socialist plan for America...’

Recommended Reading
Source: PIG News Wire [03/05/10]

American Spectator senior editor, Quin Hillyer disects Messiah Barry’s most glaring personal flaw.

There is something way off balance in the character of Barack Obama. Something in the realm of zealotry, with a touch of megalomania, and perhaps an authoritarian impulse too. He combines Alinskyite tactics and outlook with an air of self-assumed moral superiority in a way that fails to respect the usual, small 'r' republican limits on American presidents. All presidents, of course, think at some level that they know best about policy choices. But almost none of them (Woodrow Wilson perhaps excepted) were so willing to disdain, in pursuit of such radical policy upheavals, such intense and overwhelming public opinion as has been evident in the current health takeover attempt.

Grandiose plans are one thing. Most presidents fall prey to them. It's another thing entirely, though, to refuse to accept the ordinary republican restraints on implementing grandiosities without public support, and furthermore to do so by A) bending existing rules; B) directly violating multiple personal pledges; C) ignoring constitutional limits; D) directly lying; and E) demanding that other politicians sacrifice their own political careers.

A little humility would be nice. So would a sense that he answers to the public rather than to some self-proclaimed (and self-determined) imperative of history and/or call of destiny. What Obama seems to fail to understand is that his own, overblown self-assurance and self-mythologizing is actually hampering his own goals. One need not stretch too far to observe that one of the factors adding to public opposition to Obamacare is a growing public disquietude about the lack of responsiveness, the authoritarian certitude, and the zealous near-fanaticism of the government that would run the new health-rationing system -- all character traits as embodied by the president himself.

As Obama ignores public opinion while pushing for full-fledged Obamacare in one fell swoop, and as he insists that he knows best and that the public is too ill-informed to know what is good for it, he directly -- as the very symbol of the state -- reminds the public of what they distrust about government in the first place and of why they don't want government interfering in a realm as personal as health care. These feelings are especially fierce because Obama is trying not to change something with which most Americans are dissatisfied, but instead to change (and arguably take away) a system in which some four-fifths of the public remains generally satisfied with their own personal level of care.

For most Americans, Obama doesn't seem to be giving them something they don't have, but instead to be taking away something they already value.

Worse, he and the increasingly unpopular Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are doing it while hectoring the public, insulting (at least by implication) the public by belittling the public's understanding of the issue, and treating opposition as if it is guided by evil motives rather than sincere concerns.

[Read the rest of this commentary, here: Here ]

Quotes of the Week
Source: PIG News Wire [02/26/10]

Bernie Sanders slanders rational adults who won’t drink the Globally Warmed, junk science Kool-Aid:

"It reminds me of an event that took place in this country and around the world in the late 1930s," said Sanders, perhaps the most liberal member of the Senate, during a Senate hearing Tuesday. "During that period of Nazism and fascism's growth-a real danger to this country and democratic countries around the world- there were people in this country and in the British parliament who said 'don't worry! Hitler's not real! It'll disappear!"

Lauren Ashley, Miss Beverley Hills 2010, road tests her Carrie Prejean impression for the Miss California 2010 pageant:

"The Bible says that marriage is between a man and a woman. In Leviticus it says: 'If man lies with mankind as he would lie with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death and their blood shall be upon them.' "The Bible is pretty black and white. I feel like God himself created mankind and he loves everyone, and he has the best for everyone. If he says that having sex with someone of your same gender is going to bring death upon you, that's a pretty stern warning, and he knows more than we do about life."

Recommended Reading
Source: PIG News Wire [02/19/10]

James Lewis exposes America’s ‘Racial Socialism’.

The United States today has slipped toward race-based socialism: That's the true name for an overwhelming bias for one race above others, in employment, promotion, and educational opportunities. Our media are constantly stirring the witch's brew of racial grievances, constantly making black people feel aggrieved and white people feel accused. Our schools drive that lesson home with young and innocent kids in a totally ruthless way. Repeat that for twelve years of schooling and TV, and you have a brainwashed kid.

That is what European socialists have done with class envy for the last hundred years: whip up the poor against the middle and the rich. It's in their standard bag of tricks. The American Left has just added racial grievances to class anger and resentment, always feeding more and more power to the racial socialists to buy peace for the very grievances they have whipped up in the first place. The NAACP today practices racial socialism. So does Obama. "Racial Ssocialism" drives the Left's current assault on American values. That's why Jeremiah Wright is such a significant part of Obama's life. Wright specialized in whipping up racial anger for political purposes. Obama's career was powered by it.

Only 12.3 percent of Americans are black, and they cannot command a majority vote. It's therefore necessary to add gender socialism, because half the population are women. If enough women can be made to feel rage against normative America, along with blacks, Hispanics, and the poor, you've got majority control of the country. You can add the wackier Greens, the ones who fall for the global warming scam, the anti-nuclear scam, and all the other anti-scientific Luddites who vote Left. The Democrats control our major cities with a coalition of those whipped-up grievance groups.

We are no longer a society run by talent, work, and opportunity. Like ancient Egypt and Sumer, we are a society where the ruling class exploits its productive workers by taxing their labor, talent, and ability to recognize and use new opportunities.

Barack H. Obama is the logical outcome of racial socialism. You can see it in his words and actions, and his very physical stance, all signaling his sense of superiority, the flip-side of feelings of inferiority he is reacting against. Obama's core support came from the Leftist alliance of grievance groups in spite of his total lack of relevant experience. Obama is objectively the least qualified person to be elected to the presidency. But the media could not say that, because it would have been non-P.C. to tell the truth.

Obama's election was a kind of guilt propitiation by the American people for the history of slavery. But that is bizarre. Living people are not responsible for what others did two hundred years ago. That is a racist idea -- it makes sense only if whites have Evil Genes -- just like traditional anti-Semitism and hatred for blacks as a race.

We are seeing the consequences right in front of our eyes today, as this administration demonstrates its incompetence and intellectual confusion about the most obvious problems we face -- the Islamist terror threat, for starters.

Recommended Reading
Source: PIG News Wire [02/12/10]

Larrey Anderson explains the "Populist Constitutionalism" which he believes is part and parcel of Tea Party patriotism.

"Populist Constitutionalism" - that's what the Tea Party is all about. Love and respect for the Constitution is driving the movement. Sharing the document, and then discussing the meaning, purpose, and the ideas of the Constitution, that is the process that is taking place as a result of this love and respect.

This discussion is what America needs right now. The Constitution (and a real federal government) is the set of principles that can unite all Americans (with the possible exception of the most radical of those on the left who want to see some kind of socialist central state.)

Social conservatives, fiscal conservatives (that might be liberal on some social issues), libertarians, and moderates can agree to disagree about issues like abortion, legalized drugs, gay marriage, etc. The Constitution teaches all of them that the resolution to these problems should be conducted on the state or community level, as opposed to the national, level.

These divergent groups agree that the federal government has, over the last several decades, stepped further and further outside of the bounds of the Constitution. Issues, including health care, cap and trade, and excessive regulation of businesses are outside of the specific powers granted to the federal government. More and more Americans are aware of this fact. And more and more Americans are sharing the promises and the premises of the Constitution with their friends and neighbors through Tea Parties being held across America. This is what I mean when I say that the Tea Party is "populist constitutionalism."

The Tea Party movement is not a one-issue (one-hit) wonder -- like prohibition. Nor is it a bunch of political zombies mesmerized by some charismatic leader like an Edwards, a Wallace, or a Perot.

The Tea Party does not need a charismatic leader. It is, essentially, an ongoing educational process -- that will be heard (one way or another) by tone deaf and constitutionally ignorant politicians. The Tea Party teaches a multitude of Americans what they are no longer (or "rarely," I suppose I should write) taught in our public schools and universities: America was, from the beginning, intended to be a grand experiment in freedom and local and state control.

Take Nevada and Utah as instances. The states border each other. Yet one state endorses legalized gambling, prostitution, and easy access to liquor. Right next door, teetotaling Utah frowns on all of these "immoral" practices.

That's the way the Founding Fathers wanted America to be. They knew that different people had different needs and values. They realized that they should be free to express those values legislatively on the state and community levels. If an American finds Nevada's laws too promiscuous (or Utah's laws too restrictive), the citizen can either work to change the laws of the particular state ... or the citizen can move across state lines.

There are, and will continue to be, arguments and dissention within the Tea Party. (The media is already noting this and eating it up.) But Americans are famous for contention and debate. No populist movement (unless it is focused on a single issue like prohibition) will be in agreement on every issue. Disputation and disagreement in the Tea Party is a sign of health and enthusiasm -- not a portent of dissolution.

Populist constitutionalism is the surest and clearest path to saving our republic. Thank God (and I mean that literally) for that dedicated woman who asked me if she had brought enough copies of the Constitution to the Tea Party gathering. I will close by answering her -- as I should have when we were standing at that table: "As far as the Constitution goes, you can never have enough copies ... and we should never stop learning as much as we can about the greatest political document ever written."

Recommended Reading
Source: PIG News Wire [02/05/10]

Senator Orrin Hatch actually gets one right, when he takes Messiah Barry to the woodshed over The One’s deliberate whoppers about the Supreme Courts recent slap-down of Campaign Finance Reform.

During his State of the Union address last week, President Barack Obama attacked the Supreme Court — with the justices sitting right in front of him — for its decision that will allow American corporations and labor unions to speak during election season. Whether or not the criticism was appropriate, it should at least have been correct. Unfortunately, this time he was flat wrong.

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, or BCRA, bans election-related expenditures and communications by American corporations. Citizens United, a nonprofit corporation, wanted to produce and advertise a movie critical of a 2008 presidential candidate and sued to argue that BCRA's speech restrictions violated the First Amendment. On Jan. 21, 2010, the Supreme Court agreed. "If the First Amendment has any force," the court said, "it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech."

That is what the case was about. Here is what it was not about: This case had nothing to do with contributions by anyone to political campaigns. The ban on such contributions by corporations, originally enacted in 1907 as the Tillman Act, remains untouched. This case had nothing to do with campaign-related spending of any kind by foreign individuals or corporations. The ban on such spending is similarly still in place.

Federal law prohibits "foreign nationals" — such as foreign individuals, corporations or any "combination of persons" — from making either campaign contributions or other expenditures in connection with federal, state or local elections. Just in case some might remain confused, the Supreme Court actually said that its decision did "not reach the question whether government has a compelling interest in preventing foreign individuals or associations from influencing our nation's political process."

This crystal clarity renders Obama's State of the Union attack on the court completely baffling. He said that "the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections" and made possible the bankrolling of American elections by "foreign entities." That claim brought Democrats to their feet and has inflamed the Democratic political base, but the claim is patently false.

If the "century of law" that Obama mentioned refers to the 1907 Tillman Act, he is flat wrong. The case did not involve campaign contributions at all, and Citizens United did not challenge the Tillman Act. Neither Citizens United's legal briefs nor Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion even mentions it. The only reference to the Tillman Act is in Justice John Paul Stevens's dissenting opinion.

Obama was also flat wrong to say that the Citizens United decision opened the floodgates for foreign corporations to "spend without limit" and literally to bankroll American elections. The case was brought by an American, not a foreign, corporation. The court only once cited the statute banning election-related contributions or expenditures by foreigners, and it did so precisely to emphasize that its decision had nothing whatsoever to do with that statute.

It was unusual, and many think inappropriate, for a president to attack the Supreme Court in a State of the Union address. For him to do so about a recent decision, with the justices who rendered that decision in attendance, appears unprecedented.

To many, Obama seemed to be using them as props to push a political issue, a tactic that demeans the court and degrades the State of the Union address. But at the very least, if he is going to give such a lecture, he should be right about the facts, the law and the decision. This time, he was wrong on all counts.

Quote of the Week & Other Brain Food
Source: PIG News Wire [01/29/10]

Jules Crittenden paints a rhetorical bull’s-eye on blame-phobic Barry.

After that bizarre, defiant, blame-dodging, position-ditching, doubling-back, credit-grabbing performance, I’d be inclined to call Barack Obama a joke. But protocol and manners require me to call him the president of the United States, and after all, we’re stuck with him in that role for another three years, at least.

I don’t really want to go down the road the left did, with their rabid hatred and childish insults of George Bush. It’s probably too late to swear off that. I’ve tried really hard to be respectful to the office and the fact that he holds it. But I’m beginning to get the left’s visceral reaction to everything our often inarticulate, chimp-like former president did and said. The difference between the Bush and Obama cases is, that clown-like cheering section notwithstanding last night, even Obama’s own stalwarts are rejecting half of what he does and says, and feel he has betrayed them and let them down.

James Lewis points out the inherent pitfalls of electing an Affirmative Action President.

"You don't pick brain surgeons by the color of their skin. You pick them by competence only. Same thing with airplane pilots. But we have allowed the profoundly irrational liberal media to persuade the American public that we are supposed to pick a U.S. president by affirmative action. Obama was elected to universal Hosannas because he is black. It wasn't a secret. That's why the Left around the world went into ecstasies when Obama ran and got elected..."

"The vote in 2008 was even crazier than picking your brain surgeon by the color of his skin. If the knife slips in the surgeon's hand, you might die, but the nation as a whole doesn't. But if the president has a nervous breakdown in the Oval Office, the whole world is at risk. It's a mad, mad, mad idea to elect people on the basis of race or gender.

We have been so PC-whipped as a nation that Obama's election as a black man -- not as a competent black man, not as an experienced and well-qualified black man -- was celebrated by liberals and Leftists around the world. It is the victory of brain-dead ideology over common sense. The guy in the White House today is potentially the most dangerous, mentally fixated, and irresponsible demagogue we have ever known. Those wacky ideas are once again on the rise, not just in the schools and colleges, but even at the very centers of power. The election of Obama was by far the screwiest thing American voters have ever done. It throws doubt on the whole American experiment, because we have inflicted this disaster on ourselves.

The lesson of the Obama presidency is exactly the opposite of what our stuck-on-stupid media are telling us. It is that we must never, ever hire, promote, or elect somebody to a position of power and responsibility merely because of his race. Abraham Lincoln would not have been surprised. Neither would Martin Luther King, Jr. Even the editors of the New York Times choose schools for their kids not by race, but by educational competence. Somehow the American people have forgotten their common sense while Obama was rifling their wallets.

The captain is drunk in the deckhouse, and the ship of state is heading for the rocks. Our enemies are trying to take advantage of our failure to elect even sensible leadership. If you don't think al-Qaeda, Ahmadinejad, and the Russians will try to screw us royally under this perverse and incompetent leadership, just wait a month or two. The Chinese have taken the measure of this guy. So have the other jackals prowling around the small campfire of civilization. They know he's a pushover, and they will act accordingly. The only question is how badly we'll get burned."

The Left have advocated suicidal policies, and now they have found their way to power. But ultimately this is a failure of the American people, of our pathetic excuse for a media, and of the anti-American hatred that pervades the Left.

Yes, God protects orphans, widows, and the United States. But you can rely on pure dumb luck for only a little while before the ship of state comes to grief on that unforgiving iceberg.

[Read all of James Lewis’ ‘The Lesson of an Affirmative Action President’ on The American Thinker web site.]

Brain Food
Source: PIG News Wire [01/22/10]

James Lewis toe-tags the ‘L’ word: liberalism.

‘The name "liberalism" has now drifted so far from its moorings that it has turned into a lie. Anybody who uses "liberal" these days is trying to put one over on you. It's like Florida swampland peddlers talking about their "beautiful lakeshore." You can stop listening at that point, because nothing you're going to hear is true. Liberalism used to mean something. Today, it's pure Florida swampland, complete with snapping alligators.

Consider: Martha Coakley, the Democrat candidate for U.S. Senate for "Teddy Kennedy's seat" in Massachusetts, as Middlesex County D.A., kept in prison a victim of one of the worst miscarriages of justice during the witch-hunts of the 1990s against supposed Satanic child abusers based on pressured testimony by very young (and therefore unreliable) children. The case against the Admiraults was admirably exposed by the Wall Street Journal, who made it overwhelmingly clear that they were the innocent victims of a radical feminist delusional assault. But thanks to Martha Coakley's efforts, Gerald Amirault was left to rot in jail long after it was clear that he was innocent.

Coakley is not a liberal in any honest sense of that world. She is a radical, prosecutorial Leftist. That is how she made her bones in the Mass. Democrat Machine.

The l-word still has a positive flavor from the old days, when it meant tolerance, open-mindedness, and the active defense of freedom. That's how JFK used it. Barack Obama is not a liberal; he is a third-world Socialist of the really angry kind. Obama has been surrounded by enraged Leftists from childhood on, including those crucial four years of living in Indonesia right after the whole Communist Party was wiped out by the Indonesian military under General Sukarno. That's Obama's real experience of the world outside of Hawaii. Ever since then, Obama has chosen to be surrounded by anti-Western, anti-liberal Leftists. Jeremiah Wright is perfectly typical of Obama's crowd. Obama is mentally the most fixated president we've had for a century, because he has never bothered to look outside of his Hard Leftist circle. He doesn't know any normal people...sort of like the New York Times Editorial Board or the Faculty of Harvard.

A big chunk of the Left has always despised liberalism anyway. Marx and Lenin made a big thing out of sneering at soppy liberals. Those are the kinds of folks who raised and befriended Barry Soetoro. Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn were never liberals. They're maybe New Left Mao Zedong-worshipers, or some such thing...’

‘There's always been a huge amount of totalitarianism on the Left, all the way from Karl Marx onward. On the real Left, the lust for power always wins out over sucker slogans like democracy and peace. The real Left isn't against the Ruling Class; it just wants to be the new Ruling Class. Obama is the perfect example. When Lenin took over in Moscow, it was the Russian liberals who got a single bullet in the head.

Jonah Goldberg's book Liberal Fascism points out a lot of similarities between the modern Left and fascism -- they are only slightly different brands of Control-Freak Statism, alternative brands like Coke and Pepsi. I think he is right on the facts, but not on the labels. "Liberal fascism" sounds like a contradiction because the Left is no longer liberal.

That's all there is to it.

The name "liberalism" should be put in a museum of out-of-date political labels, like the Whigs and the Wobblies. If there is ever a real democratic rebellion in the Democrat Party, then maybe real liberalism will come back. But until such time, we can only wish that the l-word will Rest in Peace. The Left has killed it.’

Noting what appears to be a growing voter backlash, Victor Davis Hanson asks, ‘What’s going on’?

BUYING JOBS?
Voters are sick and tired of a terrible year of big spending and big deficits — especially the sight of Obama and his congressional allies almost daily talking breezily about spending what we do not have.

PROPHETS CAN’T MISLEAD?
No politician quite gets a pass for deception and prevarication. Obama in his narcissism thought his sonorous rhetoric made him exempt from a “read my lips” or “I didn’t have sex with that woman” moment. It didn’t.

A CESSATION OF CORRUPTION
We went from a Republican “culture of corruption” to a liberal cesspool of corruption. Sen. Chris Dodd lectures Wall Street while he gets sweetheart loans and vacation-home deals. Few could make up a story that the nation’s top tax lawmaker, House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel, is a tax dodger, and the nation’s top tax enforcer, Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, is an even more egregious tax dodger. When the Democratic Senate leadership started buying health-care votes at $300 million a clip, our Congress became little more than the praetorian guard, auctioning off its support to any wannabe late Roman emperor. The idea of a muckraking Obama nominating Tom Daschle as his Health Secretary — the liberal populist who skips out of thousands of dollars in taxes on his free corporate limousine service — was the stuff of satire.

BUSH REALLY, REALLY, REALLY DID DO IT
No one likes a serial whiner. It has been a year now — and Obama still blames George W. Bush ad nauseam. He did it in Massachusetts again — and on the eve of the election, no less. Blaming the past for the mistakes of the present gets old quickly. And when one adds in the constant What’s the Matter With Kansas? brand of condescension about naïve yokels not knowing what’s good for them, it gets even worse.

WALL STREET POPULISTS
Elite liberals are not good class warriors. Factor in multi-millionaire Nancy Pelosi’s government mega-jet or Barack Obama’s various overseas junkets or the big Wall Street money that went into Obama’s near billion-dollar campaign coffers, and it is hard to take seriously Obama’s constant war against “them.”

ELMER GANTRY
Devotees turn on false prophets with a special vengeance. Obama is beginning to grate. His flip-the-switch-on, evangelical cadences at rallies sound more like a Harvard nerd doing blues imitations than Martin Luther King Jr.

LIKED BY ALL, RESPECTED BY NONE
Obama thought the antidote to “smoke ’em out,” “dead or alive,” and “bring ’em on” braggadocio was bowing to the Saudis, promulgating new and undiscovered great moments in Islamic history, and reaching out to Ahmadinejad as he rounded up and beat down reformers in the streets of Tehran.

It’s one thing to accuse Bush of shredding the Constitution, quite another to adopt his anti-terrorism protocols like tribunals, renditions, Predators, intercepts, and wiretaps. Somehow Obama offended his base by such duplicity, and then his opposition by his tokenism of trashing Bush, promising the architect of 9/11 a show trial a few blocks from the former World Trade Center, and using touchy-feely euphemisms to suggest we are not in a war against terrorism emanating from the radical Islamic world.

The best thing that could happen to Barack Obama is more Democratic losses in hodgepodge elections that might yank away our young transfixed Narcissus from his mesmerizing reflecting pool.

Almost immediately after Obama showed his ideological cards last spring, I suggested in the first weeks of his presidency that the bait-and-switch president would soon face a Carter/Clinton moment in which he could either press on with his polarizing ideology, damage his party for a generation, and eventually end up churlish and sneering at the electorate, who did not appreciate his exalted morality and genius — or triangulate and follow the Dick Morris/Bill Clinton model of talking and acting sort of centrist.

Who knows after Obama’s Scott Brown moment? We now may hear once again the old “no more Red State/Blue State” tropes, the stale campaign promises of presidential vetoes, claims of financial sobriety, the return of a “war on terror,” and smaller government.

We’re either down to all that — or Obama’s more principled road to perdition.

[I strongly recommend that you cyber surf to National Review Online and read the entire piece.]

Recommended Reading
Source: PIG News Wire [01/15/10]

Neal Boortz gets real about Obamanomics.

Obama's chief economic dog washer Christina Romer says, "The sense that we need to do more (to promote job creation) is overwhelming." Well, she's right. Trouble is, the Democrats have exactly the wrong idea of what they need to do.

If Barack Obama wants to do what is best for his fellow Democrats and their chances in the November elections, he will do something about unemployment and he will do something quick. While unemployment remains at 10%, the real unemployment rate is 17.3%. Obama and his team believe that the way to solve this is to spend MORE money. Just last week, Obama announced details of his "green jobs" program which include $2.3 billion in tax credits for companies that create "green jobs."

Green jobs? Now think about this for a moment. What we have here is simple central planning. Do you remember the days of the Soviet Union? Well, since I have a young listenership and readership, perhaps you don't. But I remember in the 60s and 70s when the Communist leaders in the Soviet Union and in Communist China would proudly announce their five year plans for this, that and the other thing. They have five-year plans for agriculture. They had five-year plans for housing. They had five-year plans for pretty much everything --- including jobs. The government decided where the jobs were going to be in the Soviet economy. The private sector played no role, because there was NO private sector.

Well doesn't that sound suspiciously like what The Community Organizer is doing now? We need jobs .. oh my do we need jobs. And what does Obama do? Let's see .. he has two basic choices. Let the private sector lead job creation, or lead job creation through government incentives and programs. What does he choose? Well .. there you have it. Let's put a tax credit out there for companies that create green jobs.

Now Obama comes by this honestly. Never forget that this man who, by his own admission, gravitated toward Communist student groups and Marxist professors during his formative college days. Never forget that he once referred to the private sector as "the enemy." This is a man who lives, breathes, eats and excretes government. He believes that America's greatness flows from government ... and that more government (and that means more centralized government planning) makes America that much greater.

Why has our private sector worked so well to create the highest standard of living civilization has ever seen? It was the lack, not the presence of centralized planning that brought us here. Millions of consumers leave their homes every single day with ballots (dollar bills) in their pockets. These tens of millions of consumers scatter throughout the marketplace casting ballots. They cast ballots for consumer goods and services all the way from $5 energy drinks to accounting services. Those who offer these consumer goods and services in the marketplace either adjust their offerings to meet the expectations and desires of those tens of millions of consumers, or they fail. The battle for consumer attention is going on hour after hour, day after day. Winners advance, losers either change their game plan or fall by the wayside. The economic winners expand and add jobs. The losers contract and eliminate jobs.

Now we have a president with a different idea. The consumers don't get to pick the winners and losers with their dollars. Those decisions will come from the White House .. and right now the White House chooses [ta da!] GREEN JOBS!

In the real world If the companies offering green products and services capture the attention and the ballots of the consumers .. then green jobs it is! If not, then these companies should fail and the jobs should go away. Obama wants to change these laws of the marketplace. So did Marx.

Romer is right. Something needs to be done .. and done fast. But Marxist-style central planning is not the answer.

Some basics: Where do the jobs come from? Small businesses, that's where. Small businesses - generally defined as companies that employ 499 or fewer people and who report their business income on someone's personal income tax return. These small businesses account for about 80% of all jobs, and are responsible for over 70% of all jobs being created today. You want jobs? This is where you get them; America's small businesses.

But what is Obama doing to or for America's small businesses? The National Federation of Independent Business' recently conducted a survey of small and independent business owners. Here's the finding:

A major concern is the level of uncertainty being created by government ... The "turbulence" created when Congress is in session is often debilitating, this year (2009) being one of the worst. Themes include "tax more," "tax the rich even more," "VAT taxes," higher energy costs due to Cap and Trade. Mandates and taxes for health care ... Uncertainty is the enemy of the real economy as well as financial markets."

Uncertainty? Can you put yourself into the head of a small business owner? This poor man or woman is anxious to expand his business. He has dreams of growth. He's also sitting on some money right now that he could use to hire more people, expand his production or business space ... he's ready to rip. But there's a problem. That problem is Democrats. He just doesn't know what they're going to do to him. The possibilities are not encouraging:

* He knows that he is going to be nailed with a 5% tax increase when the Democrats allow the Bush tax cuts to expire.

* One version of ObamaCare calls for another 5.4% tax increase on his business profits to pay for health care.

* The Democrats want to make it easier for his workplace to be unionized.

* He's going to have to pay a penalty if he doesn't provide health insurance for his employees.

* If he does provide health insurance the premiums are sure to go up.

* The Democrats Cap and Trade program will cost him even more money.

* The Democrats want to expand the Americans with Disabilities plan and the Family Leave Act to include his company.

* The Democrats are threatening to raise both his Social Security taxes and his Medicare Taxes.

And this is the type of economic climate that will encourage you, as a small businessman, to take that chance and undergo an expansion program?

Jargon Or Gibberish?
Source: London Telegraph [01/08/10]

I’ll begin this rant with a confession. When it comes to coining new terms, and playing word games, I plead guilty as charged. I’m tempted to blame this pagan scribbler proclivity on ‘my writer’s muse’, but you’d never believe it. I like words. I like making up words. In short, I like PIGlish. So sue me.

I am what I am, when it comes to word games, but I do NOT employ my PIGlish, when I’m performing my DAY JOB. Why? Because it’s counterproductive, if you can’t make your co-workers understand what the hell you’re saying. I get that, and so do you. There are, however, some word-warping pinheads who overload their mouths with buzzwords and incomprehensible jargon. It’s true here in the Obamunist Amerika and it’s true in J.O.E. (Jolly Old England), where MBA meatheads, routinely, spew these some gibberish gems.

The London Telegraph deployed what they deem the ‘Most ridiculous pieces of business jargon and their translations’:

- We need the right pin numbers: (we need it to work)

- A lighthouse on a cloudy night: (coming up with a good/bright idea)

- I'm coming into this with an open kimono: (throwing an idea out into the open but being open to criticism)

- Let's touch base about this offline: (let's meet up face to face)

- Finger in the air figure: (just an estimate)

- I think someone needs a bite of the reality sandwich: (someone needs to think a bit more practically)

- Let's run that idea up the flagpole and see if it flies: (simply trying out an idea)

- Let's not try to build a chestnut fence to keep the sand-dunes in: (face a problem head on, rather than battling it unsuccessfully)

- Expecting the moon on a stick: (when clients have ridiculous expectations)

"I’m coming at this with an open kimono"? Wow, I would flee in abject horror if any of my day job co-workers hit me with that one - cringe, shudder, nightsweats.

Brain Food
Source: PIG News Wire [12/31/09]

Phil Orenstein, discusses the coming sea change in American politics.

The majority of Americans are honest, hardworking, conservative-leaning folks who want to believe in James Stewart's character in Frank Capra's film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Jefferson Smith, the wide-eyed, idealistic new senator launches an extensive filibuster on the Senate floor abounding with the truths and vision of our Founding Fathers. Smith ultimately triumphs over the thuggery and lies of the corrupt machine politicians ruling Washington, D.C. This scenario is depressingly similar to today's political scene in our capital, and although patriotic Americans are pessimistic, they yearn to see numerous Mr. Smiths going to Washington to reclaim the basic foundational principles of America. But where will the anticipated Mr. Smiths come from?

In answer to this question, Florida's Republican congressional candidate in the 22nd District, Lt. Col. Allen West, advises us in his January Washingtoons column to place principle over party. He writes: "The GOP has to win back 40 seats in order to remove the gavel from the hands of Nancy Pelosi." We need to win an overwhelming landslide to surmount the devious liberal ploys the Democrats will utilize, cheating and lying their way to victory. Predictably, they will be employing ACORN and Organizing for America to register twelve to fifteen million potential new voters once the amnesty bill is passed as Rahm Emmanuel sits squarely in control of the 2010 census.

In order to win a landslide, we need bold leadership and a unifying conservative message, which LTC West best exemplifies today. The Reaganesque message and the type of leadership that bring hope and pride in our country's future is the model for the GOP to embrace as we scour the landscape to find and groom our prospective Mr. Smiths.

LTC West forecasts a revolution brewing in America: the Tea Party movement. These American patriots, young and old, Republican, Democrat, conservative, Libertarian, former Obama and Hillary supporters, and reformed grassroots activists are fighting daily to take our country back. They are the unknown soldiers, ridiculed among the pissant state-run media, organizing the rallies and protests, faxing, emailing, calling and petitioning their representatives on a daily basis, up until Christmas Eve and beyond to stop the destruction of our free Republic and the enslavement of all Americans to an escalating government goliath.

The Tea Party movement is real, and out of this cauldron of dissent and true patriotism will emerge the future leaders of America. The movement is now organizing and meeting in order to select and vet candidates for township, city council, school board, state assembly, state senate, and especially Congress. In order for our public elected officials to be directly accountable to the people, a mass mobilization in support of the right candidates is on the horizon. This grassroots bulwark will eliminate these new candidates' need to be indebted to special moneyed interests and the old-school political machines.

A new Reagan revolution is brewing. It is a revolution within the ranks of the GOP, as the movement sweeps in to take control of the Republican Party. The days of the top-down old guard are over. This is a bottom-up movement of the grassroots, or what Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY) prefers to call the angry mobs "who commandeer the town-hall meetings." It is no longer acceptable for New York GOP bosses to reject principled Conservative Doug Hoffman and instead select a tax-and-spend Republican like Dede Scozzafava for NY's 23rd Congressional District special election. Neither is it allowable for the National Republican Senatorial Committee to dismiss Marco Rubio, the new Republican star running to take back our country in favor of Obama sycophant Governor Charlie Crist for the Florida Senate race. The new Republican rising stars will win. Borrowing the words of Thomas Paine for advice to the GOP: "Lead, follow, or get out of the way."

James Lewis muses about a Stalinism revival.

The Left is now furious to finally grasp that Obama tells a constant stream of lies, just like the Chicago hustler he really is. Conservatives have known that from day one. It wasn't hard to see, but I suppose it's just as well that the Left now gets it, too. Reality hurts, but it also educates. Indeed, Nat Hentoff, who spent a career writing for the Village Voice, now believes that "Obama may be the most dangerous and destructive president in U.S. history." Hear, hear.

Green Stalinism is what we are seeing today, but the color is purely decorative. It has nothing to do with real environmentalism; after all, eco-icon Rachel Carson got DDT outlawed on totally phony evidence, thereby saving hundreds of millions of tsetse flies in Africa at the cost of millions of African children. How is that for really evil racism? How many deadly flies would you trade for the life of a child? Maybe that's what environmentalism really comes down to, but in that case, how do you tell eco-freaks from Stalinists or Hitlerites? You shall know them by their deeds, and their deeds show no difference. The whole intention behind Fraudenhagen was to impoverish the West and to hold back the developing world from creating prosperity for its people. Even Stalin destroyed Soviet agriculture only inadvertently. These folks want to do it.

Before Green Stalinism, we had other colors -- Soviet Red and Nazi Black. We forget at our peril how close those imperialistic conspiracies came to dominating the world. If the Allied Invasion of Europe had failed in 1945 -- as Eisenhower was afraid it might -- if we had lost the Battle of the Bulge -- if Hitler and Tojo had developed the atom bomb before America did -- all of our coins would have Adolf Hitler's profile embossed on them, not Abe Lincoln's. "Aryan" racism would be celebrated, and millions more Jews would be dead -- along with blacks, Gypsies, the handicapped, Chicanos, Chinese, a great many Russians, and all the other "inferior peoples." We came within a head-breadth of that reality -- a random toss of history's coin. Human history only looks inevitable in retrospect. When you live it forward, there is no inevitability at all. Just because we lucked out in the past does not mean we will in the future.

What makes Green Stalinism more than a mob fad, and more than Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, is that it shows every sign of international collusion in fraud, data manipulation, and hundreds of billions of dollars of carbon credit bribes and payoffs. The media have been mired hopelessly in this cesspit for a long, long time. To their eternal shame, so have the scientific establishment, including the great science journals -- like Nature, which was founded by Isaac Newton, and Science, established to rival Nature in publishing first-class science. Scientific American used to be a fine, credible journal, but now it is disgusting. National Geographic used to be wonderful, but it has become poisoned beyond retrieval. Need we say anything about the unspeakable BBC, the mafia-like New York Times, and the macaca-dropping Washington Post? This is all corruption -- the deepest betrayal of the role of independent media in a democratic land.

The penalty for failure in a free market is bankruptcy, and we need a genuine market purge of the corrupt Yellow Press -- a long series of richly deserved bankruptcies to wipe out the toxic lies that have poisoned our body politic. It is a sign of our times that it was a Russian daily that first exposed the distortion of Siberian temperatures manipulated by the Fraudocrats of the CRU. It was China's Premier at Fraudenhagen who asserted his national sovereignty to protect his people from the Green fanatics. Maybe the Chinese aren't looking for another Mao Zedong, and even Putin doesn't want another Stalin. They've been there, done that, and seen the dead bodies. Thanks, but no thanks.

The British Meteorological Office now looks equally complicit in fraudulent pseudoscience, but all the lines of power lead to the Labour Government of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown over the last dozen years. NASA Goddard climastrology has been run by the dreadful James Hansen, the Trofim Lysenko of Stalinism 2.0. Even the NOAA is in over their heads, because they are the ones who were responsible for the worldwide database of surface temperatures -- and have never released the raw data to the public. It is this astonishing degree of corruption, connivance, intimidation, and collusion that turns this whole business from high farce into deadly tragedy. The halls of science are now awash in corruption. The only way to clean up the mess is via mass resignations of those responsible, and that will never happen in an Obama administration. It is another reason why we must throw the bums out and hope they hit a fire hydrant as they land.

Snacks For Synapses
Source: PIG News Wire [12/25/09]

Writing in Commentary Magazine, Peter Wehner ponders the DeathCare blowback.

1. Few Democrats understand the depth and intensity of opposition that exists toward them and their agenda, especially regarding health care. Passage of this bill will only heighten the depth and intensity of the opposition. We’re seeing a political tsunami in the making, and passage of health-care legislation would only add to its size and force.

2. This health-care bill may well be historic, but not in the way the president thinks. I’m not sure we’ve ever seen anything quite like it: passage of a mammoth piece of legislation, hugely expensive and unpopular, on a strict party-line vote taken in a rush of panic because Democrats know that the more people see of ObamaCare, the less they like it.

3. The problem isn’t simply with how substantively awful the bill is but how deeply dishonest and (legally) corrupt the whole process has been. There’s already a powerful populist, anti-Washington sentiment out there, perhaps as strong as anything we’ve seen. This will add kerosene to that raging fire.

4. Democrats have sold this bill as a miracle-worker; when people see first-hand how pernicious health-care legislation will be, abstract concerns will become concrete. That will magnify the unhappiness of the polity.

5. The collateral damage to Obama from this bill is enormous. More than any candidate in our lifetime, Obama won based on the aesthetics of politics. It wasn’t because of his record; he barely had one. And it wasn’t because of his command of policy; few people knew what his top three policy priorities were. It was based instead on the sense that he was something novel, the embodiment of a “new politics” – mature, high-minded and gracious, intellectually serious. That was the core of his speeches and his candidacy. In less than a year, that core has been devoured, most of all by this health-care process.

Mr. Obama has shown himself to be a deeply partisan and polarizing figure. (“I have never been asked to engage in a single serious negotiation on any issue, nor has any other Republican,” Senator McCain reported over the weekend.) The lack of transparency in this process has been unprecedented and bordering on criminal. The president has been deeply misleading in selling this plan. Lobbyists, a bane of Obama during the campaign, are having a field day.
President Obama may succeed in passing a terribly unpopular piece of legislation – but in the process, he has shattered his carefully cultivated image. It now consists of a thousand shards.

6. This health-care bill shouldn’t be seen in isolation. It’s part of a train of events that include the stimulus package, the omnibus spending bill (complete with some 8,500 earmarks), and a record-sized budget. In addition, as Jim Manzi points out in the new issue of National Affairs:

[Under Obama] the federal government has also intervened aggressively in both the financial and industrial sectors of the economy in order to produce specific desired outcomes for particular corporations. It has nationalized America’s largest auto company (General Motors) and intervened in the bankruptcy proceedings of the third-largest auto company (Chrysler), privileging labor unions at the expense of bondholders. It has, in effect, nationalized what was America’s largest insurance company (American International Group) and largest bank (Citigroup), and appears to have exerted extra-legal financial pressure on what was the second-largest bank (Bank of America) to get it to purchase the country’s largest securities company (Merrill Lynch). The implicit government guarantees provided to home-loan giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been called in, and the federal government is now the largest de facto lender in the residential real-estate market. The government has selected the CEOs and is setting compensation at major automotive and financial companies across the country. On top of these interventions in finance and commerce, the administration and congressional Democrats are also pursuing both a new climate and energy strategy and large-scale health-care reform. Their agenda would place the government at the center of these two huge sectors of the economy…

Together, these actions tell quite a tale. Mr. Obama has revived the worst impressions of the Democratic party – profligate and undisciplined, arrogant, lovers of big government, increasers of taxes.

Writing In the American Thinker, Wendy Lynn G explains, why she, like so many members of we the people, is pissed.

On election night, I grieved from knowing, knowing what was to come: something utterly unlike the America in which I grew up with such hope and patriotic pride. I wasn't alone in this, but at the time, I didn't know it.

From day one of Obama's presidency, the dismantling commenced. We have continued to call and write to our elected officials. "We don't want the bailouts, spending, cap-and-trade, ObamaCare," etc. On April 15, 2009, I joined thousands across the country in attending our first protest. We wanted to be heard by our representatives. We believed that in addition to reading letters and fielding calls -- if they even did that -- perhaps our visibility would finally capture their attention. Then, at a town hall, the president un-presidentially and mockingly dismissed us, saying we were "waving tea bags around" like we're just a joke! As our disapproval and disagreement with the Obama agenda has grown ever louder, we have essentially asked, "can you hear us now?!" And the answer has been further dismissal, lack of acknowledgment, and blatant media attacks utilizing the aforementioned Saul Alinksy skill set.

We're trying in every way legally and officially possible to make clear that we don't want the radical meal we're being forced to eat. We fervently do not want to "fundamentally transform" America. But there is such a huge disconnect from our world to our representatives'. It's as if we are ghosts whom they can't see or hear! When someone refuses to listen, going so far as to ignore you, don't you shout louder? Doesn't it anger you? When you're attacked and belittled because you have to shout to be heard and you're still ignored, doesn't that infuriate you? These people miss that we passionately don't want what they want. The more they refuse to hear us, the more we try to make them. We are not going away.

We're justly and increasingly angry because our reps not only refuse to hear us, but they also chastise us for wanting to be heard. How else would they expect us to react when we feel so helpless and hopeless? No matter what we want, say, or do, our government is going to force us to eat a meal we never ordered. In addition, we keep saying, "no, we don't want this," but they keep putting affirmations in our mouths and proceeding with their radical agenda anyway. We are not enjoying the governmental rape of our country. We said "no," and "no" means "no" in every language. Why doesn't this matter? Every poll reflects the president's rapidly declining approval rating -- for good reason. And still, Robert Gibbs flippantly dismisses it. How are "we the people" supposed to feel? Certainly we do not feel happy, or even just mildly upset, about being disregarded. Far-left ideologues who supposedly espouse "compassionate" causes have no compassion for how we feel, nor do they have a clue that we are an angry mob of their own creation.

PIG-Worthy Prose
Source: PIG News Wire [12/18/09]

American Thinker scribbler, Lloyd Marcus, decries the NO-NADS’ demonization of manhood.

To a certain degree, radical feminists have been successful in their quest to wimpify American men. You see it in everything from the way news stories are covered to national political issues. We are overly concerned with feelings rather than doing the right thing.

I saw a great old movie based on a true story titled, "Lifeboat". After a shipwreck, a young captain attempted to save as many survivors as possible who were crammed well over capacity in a lifeboat. The captain was forced to make extremely difficult decisions: rationing food and water, dumping the almost dead overboard. A weak leader who refused to do what needed to be done would have caused the deaths of everyone. Despite strong criticism and mutiny by some, the courageous young captain took responsibility and made painful decisions which saved the lives of most of the survivors. Upon their rescue, everyone in the lifeboat was overwhelmingly grateful to the brave captain even calling him a hero. Once safe and secure on dry land, they called him a murderer. How typical. Eagles fly alone. Where are America's great men?

America needs politicians of character and strength who will say, "No" to entitlement/redistribution programs. Such counterproductive programs become law when we are seduced by characterless politicians. These scoundrels skillfully appeal to our lower nature by playing the class envy card. Like perfect suckers we demand, "Let's get those rich S.O.Bs who have succeeded on the backs of the poor!" It is also time we say no to our Oprah-ized society where everything is about feelings and everyone is a victim.

American men have a perfect example of strength and taking a stand for what is right to emulate. Ironically, it is a woman from Alaska.

Whether in athletics, business or government, controlled, well placed and appropriate amounts of testosterone is a good thing. Boldly say no to tyranny and evil. Radical feminism is a perversion. It is not representative of the desires of most men and women.

Men should take pride and honor their maleness. This in no way diminishes women. Quite the opposite, real men are not threatened and even enjoy women with healthy self images.

So look out radical feminists, we American men are back! Wow, writing this article has me feeling pretty macho fighting an urge to pound my chest and provide meat for my family. "Honey, get dressed! I'm taking you to dinner at our favorite steak house! Afterwards, we'll rent a movie. How about, "Tarzan, KING of the Jungle?"

Lloyd Marcus (black) Unhyphenated American

Another American Thinker scribe, James Lewis, explores Messiah Barry’s Marxist roots.

‘...The word "Marxist" is now used as a kind of a sly boast in academia; I just talked with a professor who calls himself a "Marxist historian," and smiles to himself when he says it. He obviously thinks he's a hero by being a Marxist in America. But according to Marxist historians themselves Red regimes killed at least 100 million people in "crimes, terror and repression," with still more dying today in North Korea. That's not even counting the dead and wounded in wars fought by Communist regimes.

Obama's early life indicates that young Barry may have been brought up as a Red Avenger against America. We know that he talks like an anti-capitalist and an anti-Constitutionalist, and that he compulsively apologizes for American actions during the Cold War. The Cold War was not something we started; it was started by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and other totalitarian mass murderers long before the Korean War and the Vietnam War, our two hot proxy wars in the Cold War.

What we haven't understood is how deeply Obama was indoctrinated in the war against America from childhood onward. But every intelligence agency in the world has to have it figured it out, because it's all in the public record. Leftists around the world have also known it from day one, and that includes the leading Democrats. Obama was not an unknown to Democrat Party apparatchiks. Or the media. Only the American people were kept in the dark. The media and the Democrats are still doing their Obama cover-up today, and hoping they will get away with it.

Why is Obama so deeply, emotionally opposed to America's defense of freedom and democracy in the Cold War? Because Barry Soetoro was born in 1961 and lived in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta from age six to ten, the years 1967-1971 --- right after the bloodiest civil war in Indonesian history, which took place from 1965 to 1967. The Indonesian Communist Party, the PKI, was wiped out and massacred during that civil war. There is absolutely no way a Leftwing family living in Jakarta could not have been in a constant uproar during those years, even after the massacres had died down. After all, his parents were active sympathizers if not Party Members themselves, as was his biological father...’

‘...Barry's childhood and education under the guardianship of Communist Party rep Frank Marshall Davis, followed by an endless parade of far Leftist mentors from Hawaii to Harvard and Chicago, were all shaped by the identical political narrative. Every adult he ever knew told the same story. Everybody hated the same satanic enemy: American capitalism -- also known as freedom and democracy -- the CIA, the US military; Senator Joe McCarthy, President Eisenhower, and Richard Nixon. We now know that Nixon was overthrown by the American Left using the Watergate scandal, including the Washington Post's Ben Bradlee, in close coordination with the FBI's Assistant Director Mark Felt, who was Woodward and Bernstein's Deep Throat.

The Jesuits used say "Give us a boy before he is ten and we will have him for life. That's why the Ranting Reverend Wright's Church of Marxism was such a natural place for the Obamas to go every Sunday, and to bring up their own girls. It's what they were used to; it had that old home feeling.

When kids believe that their mothers and fathers are in danger, they often imagine themselves to be the saviors -- they can get a Savior Complex. (Sound familiar?) Children in abusive families often feel that way. Barry Soetoro grew up needing to rescue his side in the Cold War -- the Red side.

Human beings who think they are world saviors are narcissists from day one, because they believe they have God-like powers. How else can you Save the Planet? How else can you "keep the seas from riiiiising," as Obama said in his acceptance speech to the Democrats? Narcissism is a standard character trait on the Left. It's one of the basic differences between ideological Leftists and conservatives. Edmund Burke, the granddaddy of Anglo-American conservatism, pointed that out in his most important book, Reflections on The Revolution in France (1791).

Conservatives are generally normal people. Ideological Leftists are ambitious World Saviors who turn out to kill a lot of people who resisted being saved by coercive force. Can you think of any American conservative who acts like Obama?

Take a kid with a savior complex and raise him with an endless slew of Leftist mentors, from Mom onwards. He is the savior child as far as they are concerned -- the Red Avenger. He will redeem them in the bitter aftermath of the defeat of Communism. Barack Obama has had substitute parents -- patrons who eased his way -- throughout his life, including Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and Emil Jones.

Notice that I have not said that Obama is dangerous. A lot depends on defeating ObamaCare, Cap and Trade, EPA regulation of CO2 and dozens of other mad and foolish schemes.

The American political system is resilient, but we must know the truth. I believe that "Red Avenger" is the ground truth of who Obama really is. It's not Obama's blackness that's at issue. It's his redness.

Brain Chow
Source: PIG News Wire [12/11/09]

Neal Boortz serves up a must read list of things that people believe.

It is beyond my imagination that people actually believe:

* That the Social Security taxes they pay are actually put into a trust fund ... an account with their name on it from which they will later draw their retirement benefits.

* That their employer actually "matches" what the government calls their "contribution" to their very own personal Social Security trust fund.

* That the founders of this nation actually wanted a system where the majority of people would decide what was and what was not to be ... with no provision for a firm set of laws that could not be breached by majority rule.

* That your average homeless bum on the streets would be enjoying a life of plenty if he had just been lucky like people with actual homes and jobs and stuff

* That it is the goal of schools owned, operated and staffed by the government to take our children and teach them to be self-sufficient so that they will not have to rely on government and politicians so much.

* That the Democrats are pushing for a health reform law because they are actually concerned about the quality, affordability and availability of health care in this country.

* That when the colonies got together and formed a federation to provide for a common defense and to oversee certain relationships between the governments and the people of the several states, it was intended for 95% of all governance to pack up and move to Washington DC.

* That our founding fathers contrived and envisioned a system where the federal government could seize money from the people of a state, and then promise to give that money back, but only if the state would pass some specific laws pleasing to the federal government.

* That there is a Constitutional right to vote in a federal election. (Well, I guess I can understand why so many people believe this; after all, this is what they're taught in the government schools.)

* That when the majority of voters figure out that they can use the ballot box to take property away from their fellow Americans, nothing bad will happen.

* That changes in the intensity of solar activity couldn't possibly have anything to do with the heating and cooling cycles we experience here on earth.

* That the evil rich don't, in fact, already pay much more than their "fair share" of all taxes, whatever that might be.

In a National Review commentary, Mark Steyn, paints a rhetorical bull’s-eye on Barry’s so-called leadership.

Obama’s speech is only about Afghanistan if you’re in Afghanistan. If you’re in Moscow or Tehran, Pyongyang or Caracas, it’s about America. And what it told them is that, if you’re a local strongman with regional ambitions, or a rogue state going nuclear, or a mischief-making kleptocracy dusting off old tsarist dreams, this president is not going to be pressing your reset button. Strange how an allegedly compelling speaker is unable to fake even perfunctory determination and resilience. Strange, too, how all the sophisticated nuances of post-Bush foreign-policy “realism” seem so unreal when you’re up there trying to sell them as a coherent strategy. Go back half a decade to when the administration was threatening to shove democracy down the throats of every two-bit basket case whether they want it or not. Democratizing the planet is, in a Council of Foreign Relations sense, “unrealistic,” but talking it up is a very realistic way of messing with the dictators’ heads. A pipsqueak like Boy Assad sleeps far more soundly today than he did back when he thought Bush meant it, and so did the demonstrators threatening his local enforcers in Lebanon.

As for Assad’s friends in Tehran, you wonder if they’re not now flouting “world opinion” merely to see how ever more watery and qualified the threats from Washington get.

One of the most interesting developments in recent months have been the emerging alliances of convenience between Iran and its clients, on the one hand, and the likes of Russia, North Korea, and Venezuela on the other. Some of this is simple mischief-making, but, in the vacuum of the Hopeychange, a lot of it shows a shrewd strategic calculation. A nuclear Tehran, for example, serves Moscow’s interest in promoting itself as a guarantor of Eastern European “security.” It’s one of the oldest of protection rackets: You need me to protect you from my psycho friend. For their part, the Sunni Arab dictatorships will soon face the choice of accepting de facto Persian regional hegemony or embarking on their own nuclearization. As for Israel, they’ll either be living under the ever-present threat of annihilation. Or they’ll be dead.

Whatever your view of this scenario, “stability” doesn’t seem to cover it. In his speech, the so-called “leader of the free world” all but physically recoiled from the job description. Sorry about that. Not his bag. In the more toxic presidential palaces, you would have to be awfully virtuous not to take advantage of such a man. And soon.

Synaptic Snacks
Source: PIG News Wire [12/04/09]

Writing in the nominally lefty Politico, John F. Harris spills the beans on 7 stories Messiah Barry doesn’t want told.

Here are seven storylines Obama needs to worry about:

He thinks he’s playing with Monopoly money
Economists and business leaders from across the ideological spectrum were urging the new president on last winter when he signed onto more than a trillion in stimulus spending and bank and auto bailouts during his first weeks in office. Many, though far from all, of these same people now agree that these actions helped avert an even worse financial catastrophe.

Along the way, however, it is clear Obama underestimated the political consequences that flow from the perception that he is a profligate spender. He also misjudged the anger in middle America about bailouts with weak and sporadic public explanations of why he believed they were necessary.

The flight of independents away from Democrats last summer — the trend that recently hammered Democrats in off-year elections in Virginia — coincided with what polls show was alarm among these voters about undisciplined big government and runaway spending. The likely passage of a health care reform package criticized as weak on cost-control will compound the problem.

Obama understands the political peril, and his team is signaling that he will use the 2010 State of the Union address to emphasize fiscal discipline. The political challenge, however, is an even bigger substantive challenge—since the most convincing way to project fiscal discipline would be actually to impose spending reductions that would cramp his own agenda and that of congressional Democrats.

Too much Leonard Nimoy
People used to make fun of Bill Clinton’s misty-eyed, raspy-voiced claims that, “I feel your pain.” The reality, however, is that Clinton’s dozen years as governor before becoming president really did leave him with a vivid sense of the concrete human dimensions of policy. He did not view programs as abstractions — he viewed them in terms of actual people he knew by name.

Obama, a legislator and law professor, is fluent in describing the nuances of problems. But his intellectuality has contributed to a growing critique that decisions are detached from rock-bottom principles.

Both Maureen Dowd in The New York Times and Joel Achenbach of The Washington Post have likened him to Star Trek’s Mr. Spock.

The Spock imagery has been especially strong during the extended review Obama has undertaken of Afghanistan policy. He’ll announce the results on Tuesday. The speech’s success will be judged not only on the logic of the presentation but on whether Obama communicates in a more visceral way what progress looks like and why it is worth achieving. No soldier wants to take a bullet in the name of nuance.

That’s the Chicago Way
This is a storyline that’s likely taken root more firmly in Washington than around the country. The rap is that his West Wing is dominated by brass-knuckled pols.

It does not help that many West Wing aides seem to relish an image of themselves as shrewd, brass-knuckled political types. In a Washington Post story this month, White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina, referring to most of Obama’s team, said, “We are all campaign hacks.”

The problem is that many voters took Obama seriously in 2008 when he talked about wanting to create a more reasoned, non-partisan style of governance in Washington. When Republicans showed scant interest in cooperating with Obama at the start, the Obama West Wing gladly reverted to campaign hack mode.

The examples of Chicago-style politics include their delight in public battles with Rush Limbaugh and Fox News and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. (There was also a semi-public campaign of leaks aimed at Greg Craig, the White House counsel who fell out of favor.) In private, the Obama team cut an early deal — to the distaste of many congressional Democrats — that gave favorable terms to the pharmaceutical lobby in exchange for their backing his health care plans.

The lesson that many Washington insiders have drawn is that Obama wants to buy off the people he can and bowl over those he can’t. If that perception spreads beyond Washington this will scuff Obama’s brand as a new style of political leader.

He’s a pushover
If you are going to be known as a fighter, you might as well reap the benefits. But some of the same insider circles that are starting to view Obama as a bully are also starting to whisper that he’s a patsy.

It seems a bit contradictory, to be sure. But it’s a perception that began when Obama several times laid down lines — then let people cross them with seeming impunity. Last summer he told Democrats they better not go home for recess until a critical health care vote but they blew him off. He told the Israeli government he wanted a freeze in settlements but no one took him seriously. Even Fox News — which his aides prominently said should not be treated like a real news organization — then got interview time for its White House correspondent.

In truth, most of these episodes do not amount to much. But this unflattering storyline would take a more serious turn if Obama is seen as unable to deliver on his stern warnings in the escalating conflict with Iran over its nuclear program.

He sees America as another pleasant country on the U.N. roll call, somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe
That line belonged to George H.W. Bush, excoriating Democrat Michael Dukakis in 1988. But it highlights a continuing reality: In presidential politics the safe ground has always been to be an American exceptionalist.

Politicians of both parties have embraced the idea that this country — because of its power and/or the hand of Providence — should be a singular force in the world. It would be hugely unwelcome for Obama if the perception took root that he is comfortable with a relative decline in U.S. influence or position in the world.

On this score, the reviews of Obama’s recent Asia trip were harsh.

His peculiar bow to the emperor of Japan was symbolic. But his lots-of-velvet, not-much-iron approach to China had substantive implications.

On the left, the budding storyline is that Obama has retreated from human rights in the name of cynical realism. On the right, it is that he is more interested in being President of the World than President of the United States, a critique that will be heard more in December as he stops in Oslo to pick up his Nobel Prize and then in Copenhagen for an international summit on curbing greenhouse gases.

President Pelosi
No figure in Barack Obama’s Washington, including Obama, has had more success in advancing his will than the speaker of the House, despite public approval ratings that hover in the range of Dick Cheney’s. With a mix of tough party discipline and shrewd vote-counting, she passed a version of the stimulus bill largely written by congressional Democrats, passed climate legislation, and passed her chamber’s version of health care reform. She and anti-war liberals in her caucus are clearly affecting the White House’s Afghanistan calculations.

The great hazard for Obama is if Republicans or journalists conclude — as some already have — that Pelosi’s achievements are more impressive than Obama’s or come at his expense.

This conclusion seems premature, especially with the final chapter of the health care drama yet to be written.

But it is clear that Obama has allowed the speaker to become more nearly an equal — and far from a subordinate — than many of his predecessors of both parties would have thought wise.

He’s in love with the man in the mirror
No one becomes president without a fair share of what the French call amour propre. Does Obama have more than his share of self-regard?

It’s a common theme of Washington buzz that Obama is over-exposed. He gives interviews on his sports obsessions to ESPN, cracks wise with Leno and Letterman, discusses his fitness with Men’s Health, discusses his marriage in a joint interview with first lady Michelle Obama for The New York Times. A photo the other day caught him leaving the White House clutching a copy of GQ featuring himself.

White House aides say making Obama widely available is the right strategy for communicating with Americans in an era of highly fragmented media.

But, as the novelty of a new president wears off, the Obama cult of personality risks coming off as mere vanity unless it is harnessed to tangible achievements.

 

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