What On Earth?

The Zionist Imperative

2012-01-27T12:14:00.000-08:00

The Zionist Imperative
By Caroline Glick
1/27/2012

European and American perfidy in dealing with Iran's nuclear weapons program apparently has no end. This week we were subject to banner headlines announcing that the EU has decided to place an oil embargo on Iran. It was only when we got past the bombast that we discovered that the embargo is only set to come into force on July 1.

Following its European colleagues, the Obama administration announced it is also ratcheting up its sanctions against Iran... in two months. Sometime in late March, the US will begin sanctioning Iran's third largest bank.

At the same time as the Europeans and the Americans announced their phony sanctions, they reportedly dispatched their Turkish colleagues to Tehran to set up a new round of nuclear talks with the ayatollahs. If the past is any guide, we can expect for the Iranians to agree to sit down and talk just before the oil embargo is scheduled to be enforced. And the Europeans - with US support - will use the existence of talks to postpone indefinitely the implementation of the embargo.

There is nothing new in this game of fake sanctions. And what it shows more than anything is that the Europeans and the Americans are more concerned with pressuring Israel not to attack Iran's nuclear installations than they are in preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

Obama has a second target audience - American Jews. He is using his fake sanctions as a means of convincing American Jews that he is a pro-Israel president and that in the current election season, not only should they cast their votes in his favor, they should sign their checks for his campaign.

Both Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak were quick this week to make clear that these moves are insufficient. They will not force Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons program. More is needed.

As to American Jewry, the jury is still out.

In truth, American Jewry's diffidence towards taking a stand on Iran, or recognizing Obama's dishonesty on this issue specifically and his dishonesty regarding his position on US-Israel ties generally is not rooted primarily in American Jews' devotion to Obama. It isn't even specifically related to American Jewry's devotion to the political Left. Rather it has to do with American Jewish ambivalence to Israel.

The roots of that ambivalence - which is shared by other Western Jewish communities to varying degrees - predate Obama's presidency.

Indeed, they predate the establishment of the State of Israel. And now, as the US and the EU have given Iran at least another six months to a year to develop its nuclear bombs unchecked, it is worth considering the nature and influence of this ambivalence.

Today's principal form of Jew-hatred is anti- Zionism. Anti-Zionism is similar to previous dominant forms of Jew hatred such as Christian anti-Judaism, xenophobic and racist anti- Semitism, and Communist anti-Jewish cosmopolitanism in the sense that it takes dominant, popular social trends and turns them against the Jews. Anti-Zionism's current predominance owes to the convergence of several popular social trends which include Western post-nationalism, and anti-colonialism.

The problem that anti-Zionism poses for American Jewry is that it forces them to pay a price for supporting Israel. This is problematic because Zionism has never been fully embraced by American Jewry. Since the dawn of modern Zionism, the cause of Jewish self-determination placed American Jewish leaders in an uncomfortable dilemma.

UNLIKE EVERY other Diaspora Jewish community, the American Jewish community has always perceived itself as a permanent community rather than an exilic community. American Jews have always viewed the United States as the new Promised Land.

With the formation of the modern Zionist movement in the late 19th century, American Jews found themselves on the horns of a dilemma. Clearly, the state of world Jewry was such that national self-determination had become an existential necessity for non-American Jews.

But while supporting Jewish refugees and a scrappy little country was okay, support for the Zionist cause of Jewish national liberation involved an acceptance of the fact that Israel - not the US - is the Jewish homeland. Moreover, it involved accepting that there are Jewish interests that are independent of - if not necessarily in contradiction with - American interests. For instance, irrespective of the prevailing winds in Washington, and regardless of whether the US supports Israel or not, it is a Jewish interest that Israel exists, thrives and survives.

In a recent op-ed in Haaretz, Hebrew University political science professor Shlomo Avineri contrasted world Jewry's massive mobilization on behalf of Soviet Jewry in the 1970s and 1980s and their relative silence today in the face of Iran's Holocaust denial and open calls for the annihilation of the Jewish state. Avineri is apparently confounded by the disparity between Western Jewry's behavior in the two cases.

But the cause of the disparity is clear. Supporting the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate was easy. Unlike Israel, Soviet Jews were powerless. As such, they were pure victims and supporting them cost Diaspora Jews nothing in terms of their position in their societies.

Just as important, the cause of freedom for Soviet Jewry was perfectly aligned with the West's Cold War policies against the Soviet Union. The frequent Jewish demonstrations outside Soviet legations provided Western leaders with another tool to fight the Cold War.

In contrast, supporting Israel, and the cause of Jewish freedom and self-determination embodied by Zionism, is not cost-free for Diaspora Jews. At root, to support Israel and Zionism involves accepting that Jews have inherent rights as Jews. To be a Zionist Jew in the Diaspora means that you embrace and defend the notion that the Jews have the right to their own interests and that those interests may be distinct from other nations' interests. That is, to be a Zionist involves rejecting Jewish assimilation and embracing the fact that Jews require national independence and power to guarantee our survival. And this can be unpleasant.

PRO-ISRAEL AMERICAN Jews have historically tried to tie their support for Israel to larger, more universal themes, in order to extricate themselves from the need to admit that as Jews and supporters of Israel they have a right and a duty to support Jewish freedom even if it isn't always pretty. Again, for Israel's first several decades, it was about helping poor Jews and refugees. In recent years, the predominant defense has been that Israel deserves support because it is a democracy.

Certainly, these are both reasonable reasons for supporting Israel. But neither support for Israel because it was poor nor support for Israel because it is free is a specifically Zionist reason for supporting Israel. You don't have to be a Zionist to support poor Jewish refugees and you don't have to be a Zionist to support democracy.

You do have to be a Zionist however, to defend the Jews in Israel and throughout the world in a coherent manner when the predominant form of Jew-hatred is anti-Zionism.

You have to be willing to accept and defend the right of the Jewish people to freedom and self-determination in our national homeland against those who deny that right. You have to be a Zionist to defend Israel's right to survive and thrive even though it is no longer poor and its democratically elected government is not liked by the Obama administration.

And you have to be a Zionist to realize that since Jewish survival is dependent on Jewish power, and anti-Zionists reject the right of Jews to have power, that anti-Zionists seek to bring about a situation where Jewish survival is imperiled.

The weakness of American Jewry's response to Iran's genocidal intentions towards Israel is of a piece with its weak response to the forces of anti-Zionism generally and to Jewish anti- Zionists particularly. Since 2007, the US government has effectively ruled out the use of force against Iran's nuclear weapons program and embraced a policy of pursuing negotiations with ayatollahs while enacting impotent sanctions to quell congressional pressure. At least in part, this policy is due to the US's assessment that a nuclear Iran does not pose a high-level threat to US national security.

Both then-president George W. Bush and later Barack Obama determined that an Israeli military strike against Iran's nuclear weapons program does pose a high-level threat to the US. As a consequence, both administrations have taken concerted steps to prevent Israel from attacking Iran.

On the merits, both of these policies are easily discredited. But the fact that they continue to be implemented shows that they are supported by a large and powerful constituency in Washington.

To oppose Iran's nuclear program effectively, American Jews are required to oppose these strongly supported US policies. And at some point, this may require them to announce they support Israel's right to survive and thrive even if that paramount right conflicts with how the US government perceives US national interests.

That is, it may require them to embrace Zionism unconditionally.

No doubt, if they do so, their own conditions will improve. They will finally be able to speak coherently against the gathering forces of anti-Zionism - both from within the Jewish community and from without. This in turn will act as a lightning rod for inspiring American Jews to embrace their Judaism.

With their leaders having abjectly failed to contend with the most powerful form of Jew-hatred, it is no wonder that so many Diaspora Jews are leaving the fold. If they reverse course and go after their attackers, American Jewish leaders will give community members a meaningful reason to proudly embrace their identity.

In a speech this week at the Knesset, Netanyahu explained the different lessons the Holocaust teaches the international community on the one hand, and the Jews on the other.

As far as its universal lessons are concerned, Netanyahu said, "The lesson is that the countries of the world must be woken up, as much as possible, so that they can organize against such crimes.

The lesson is that the broadest possible alliances must be forged in order to act against this threat before it is too late."

As for the Jews, Netanyahu embraced Zionism's core principle: "With regard to threats to our very existence, we cannot abandon our future to the hands of others.

"With regard to our fate, our duty is to rely on ourselves alone."

We must hope that world Jewry will recognize today that the fate of the Jewish people in Israel and throughout the world is indivisible and rally to Israel's side whatever the social cost of doing so. But even if they do not recognize this basic truth, the imperatives of Zionism, of the Jewish people, remain in place.
_______________________________________

To read another article by Caroline Glick, click here.

Obama's Misstatements on the Union

2012-01-27T12:06:00.000-08:00

Obama's Misstatements on the Union
By David Limbaugh
1/27/2012

Only a president long shielded from criticism and accountability could make the kind of State of the Union speech President Obama did Tuesday night. It's hard to know where to begin, given his repetition of tired ideas from his previous SOTUs, his taking credit for successful policies he resisted and omitting failed ones he promoted, his numerous misrepresentations on issues big and small, and his glaring refusal to address the main issues that threaten the nation.

Let me touch on just a few highlights in this brief space.

Excessive spending is the primary threat to our nation's and Americans' financial future, yet Obama glossed over it and distorted his record.

He said, "We've already agreed to more than $2 trillion in cuts and savings. But we need to do more." But everyone knows he's had to be dragged kicking and screaming to the cutting table. His unrelenting passion is spending. Even The Washington Post said, "Obama does not mention that Republicans forced him to accept $2 trillion in budget cuts during the debt-ceiling impasse."

Obama said, "I'm prepared to make more reforms that rein in the long-term costs of Medicare and Medicaid and strengthen Social Security, so long as those programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors." Well, that's mighty magnanimous of him, but why is he so grudging about it? As president, he should be singularly focused on entitlement reform. Yet he has obstructed and demagogued such reforms. His condition that the "programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors" is completely dishonest, because Paul Ryan's plan did just that and he rejected it while ridiculing and demonizing Ryan.

Obama said, again, that to avoid Warren Buffett's secretary's paying a higher tax rate than her boss, we should adopt the "Buffett rule," prescribing that "if you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes." The Heritage Foundation tells us that according to Congressional Budget Office data, the top 1 percent of income earners already pay 30 percent of their income in all federal taxes. In addition, when wealthy people pay a lower effective income tax rate, it's a result either of lawful deductions (often charitable) or of capital gains and dividends on property they've acquired with money that has already been taxed. Also, before the wealthy realize many of these gains, the businesses that produce these gains have already paid a corporate income tax rate of 35 percent (the highest in the world). This means that Buffett, on much of this income, pays an effective rate of 50 percent (35 percent corporate plus 15 percent capital gains). Indeed, 99.4 percent of millionaires and billionaires pay far more in taxes in actual and relative terms than middle- and low-income earners, and for Obama to suggest otherwise is not only deeply deceitful but also damaging -- because of the class envy he constantly stokes -- to the social fabric of this country.

Obama said he wants to lure American companies home yet has steadfastly refused, notwithstanding his SOTU rhetoric, to agree to rectify the primary reasons they leave: punitive corporate income tax rates and onerous regulations.

Obama suggested that he is not only a pioneer in clean energy but also bullish on domestic energy. His record on the former is disgraceful, and both his claim and record on the latter are insulting. He has wasted billions of taxpayer dollars on quixotic green-energy programs with Solyndra and its cousins, spending $5 million for every single "renewable energy" job he has created. He has defiantly refused to take responsibility and is continuing to pursue more. He has waged war on domestic coal, natural gas and oil. He not only imposed a punitive moratorium on offshore drilling in the Gulf but also lawlessly reinstituted another one after federal district and appellate courts shot down his initial moratorium. When he lifted this revised moratorium, drilling remained in limbo because of the administrative obstacles his administration had imposed on drilling permits. His actions caused devastating losses to the Gulf economy and jobs, which rippled throughout the nation's economy. Most recently, to placate his environmental extremist base, he blocked the job-producing Keystone XL pipeline for no legitimate reason.

Obama threatened to withhold federal subsidies to colleges unless they hold tuition costs down without recognizing that one of the main reasons they've skyrocketed is the profligate subsidies he continues to increase.

He railed against bailouts after having established a record as President Bailout. He blamed banks again for causing the housing crisis and economic meltdown by making loans to people who couldn't afford them, without admitting that government, mainly his party, was the primary culprit.

He said he'd established the closest military cooperation with Israel in history, but he has bullied that nation for three years, and our relationship has rarely been more strained.

Believe me, I could go on.
_____________________________________________

To read another article by David Limbaugh, click here.
_____________________________________________

To read a related article, click here.

Obama's Vision for a Spartan America

2012-01-27T11:52:00.000-08:00

Obama's Vision for a Spartan America
By Jonah Goldberg
1/27/2012

President Obama's State of the Union address was disgusting.

The president began with a moving tribute to the armed forces and their accomplishments. But as he has done many times now, he celebrated martial virtues not to rally support for the military, but to cover himself in glory -- he killed Osama bin Laden! -- and to convince the American people that they should fall in line and march in lockstep.

He said of the military: "At a time when too many of our institutions have let us down, they exceed all expectations. They're not consumed with personal ambition. They don't obsess over their differences. They focus on the mission at hand. They work together. Imagine what we could accomplish if we followed their example. Think about the America within our reach."

That is disgusting.

What Obama is saying, quite plainly, is that America would be better off if it wasn't America any longer. He's making the case not for American exceptionalism, but Spartan exceptionalism.

It's far worse than anything George W. Bush, the supposed warmonger, ever said. Bush, the alleged fascist, didn't want to militarize our free country; he tried to use our military to make militarized countries free.

Indeed, Obama is upending the very point of a military in a free society. We have a military to keep our society free. We do not have a military to teach us the best way to give up our freedom. Our warriors surrender their liberties and risk their lives to protect ours. The promise of American life for Obama is that if we all try our best and work our hardest, we can be like a military unit striving for a single goal. I've seen pictures of that from North Korea. No thank you, Mr. President.

Of course, Obama's militaristic fantasizing isn't new. Ever since William James coined the phrase "the moral equivalent of war," liberalism has been obsessed with finding ways to mobilize civilian life with the efficiency and conformity of military life. "Martial virtues," James wrote, "must be the enduring cement" of American society: "intrepidity, contempt of softness, surrender of private interest, obedience to command must still remain the rock upon which states are built." His disciple, liberal philosopher John Dewey, hoped for a social order that would force Americans to lay aside "our good-natured individualism and march in step."

This is why Obama's administration believes a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. This is why Obama has been prattling about "Sputnik moments" and sighing over his envy of China and its rulers. This is why his spinners endeavored to translate the death of bin Laden as some sort of vindication of his domestic agenda: because he cannot lead a free people where he thinks they should go.

At the end of his address, Obama once again cast the slain bin Laden as the Vercingetorix to his Caesar. (Vercingetorix was the defeated Gaulic chieftain whom Caesar triumphantly paraded through Rome.) "All that mattered that day was the mission. No one thought about politics. No one thought about themselves," Obama rhapsodized.

The warriors on the ground "only succeeded ... because every single member of that unit did their job. ... More than that, the mission only succeeded because every member of that unit trusted each other -- because you can't charge up those stairs, into darkness and danger, unless you know that there's somebody behind you, watching your back. So it is with America."

"This nation is great because we worked as a team. This nation is great because we get each other's backs."

No. Wrong. It is not so with America. This nation isn't great because we work as a team with the president as our captain. America is great because America is free. It is great not because we put our self-interest aside, but because we have the right to pursue happiness.

I don't blame the president for being exhausted with the mess and bother of democracy and politics, since he has proved so inadequate at coping with the demands of both. Nor do I think he truly seeks to impose martial virtues on America. But he does desperately want his opponents to shut up and march in place. And he seems to think this bilge will convince them to do so.

What I can't forgive, however, is the way he tries to pass off his ideal of an America where everyone marches as one as a better America. It wouldn't be America at all.
________________________________________

To read another article by Jonah Goldberg, click here.
________________________________________

To read a related article, click here.

The True State of the Union

2012-01-27T11:36:00.000-08:00

The True State of the Union
By Michele Bachmann
1/27/2012

When the American people bestowed the highest office in the land onto President Barack Obama three years ago, they did so trusting him to follow through on his promise of “hope and change.” He has not kept that promise. The supposed accomplishments the President presented in Tuesday night’s State of the Union only serve to divert America’s attention from the true state of the union. Under three years of an Obama administration, our country is suffering; millions linger without a job, gas prices have nearly doubled, and our national debt is greater than the value of the entire U.S. economy.

Though he tried to do so, President Obama cannot blame the sad reality of our nation’s state on the inaction of Congress or the ineptitude of his Presidential predecessors. After all, it was President Obama, not Congress, who asked for nearly $5 trillion dollars to be added to the national debt. It was President Obama who recently cancelled the Keystone Pipeline project, killing thousands of potential American jobs. Under President Obama the unemployment rate has risen from 6.8% when he was elected to today’s 8.5%, a reality that’s caused many Americans to simply stop looking for work. Unfortunately, the unemployment rate is not the only figure that has seen an upsurge under this Administration – gas prices have nearly doubled from the day the President took office to now. When you compare that to only a 28-cent gas price increase under the last President’s administration, it is truly disheartening.

I agreed with the President when he called for all Americans to reclaim their “American values.” But, contrary to the President’s beliefs, the time-tested values that made America great do not include redistribution of wealth or lack of incentive to prosper. In reality, our country was founded by Americans who believed in values such as hard work and determination. They believed strongly in “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” None of them believed in taking away from their neighbors to achieve their dreams, but instead worked hard to provide for their own families and carve out a home in America for the generations to come.

Yet there is still hope for our nation. There is hope because we are the descendants of these hard working Americans. The same values that inspired them to greatness inspire us today. We don’t need handouts or bailouts, we need incentive and inspiration. As a member of Congress, I will continue to fight everyday to preserve and promote these true American values.
________________________________________

To read another related article, click here.

The second Florida debate: Santorum's big night

2012-01-27T11:18:00.000-08:00

The second Florida debate: Santorum's big night
Gingrich and Romney disclose all over each other.
by John Hayward
01/27/2012

It’s only natural that the front-running candidates would receive extra attention, especially when they go after each other as vigorously as Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney did during the second Florida debate, hosted by CNN. Somewhere in the melee of accusations about each others’ finances, campaign advertising, hunger to deport elderly illegal aliens, and reverence for Ronald Regan, a winner emerged: Rick Santorum.

The outcome in Florida between Romney and Gingrich wasn’t really in doubt, due to Gingrich’s spectacularly ill-advised radio ad calling Romney “anti-immigrant.” This brought the previously neutral Senator Marco Rubio into the contest, to Romney’s defense. Romney’s anger at Gingrich’s continuing insistence on calling him “the most anti-immigrant of the four candidates” was genuine – one of the most genuine moments a stiff Romney had on the stage that night – and it made Gingrich look scurrilous. Gingrich didn’t help himself with paranoid mutterings that all the stories appearing about his complex relationship with Ronald Reagan were the handiwork of the Romney attack machine. (I think Gingrich has the better of the Reagan debate in general, but he's not going to get anywhere portraying Romney as puppetmaster of the conservative press.)

For some reason, Gingrich was convinced that accusing Romney of a desire to deport illegal alien grandmothers and grandfathers was a trump card, and he kept trying to play it. Romney pointed out that his strategy involved, not roundups and deportation, but cracking down on those who employ illegals until the lack of jobs prompts them to “self-deport” – a strategy President Obama has actually proved can be quite effective, although his method of implementing it leaves much to be desired, since it involved destroying everyone's ability to work.

When Romney said our illegal immigration problem doesn’t involve 11 million grandmothers, Gingrich found himself holding a thoroughly deflated talking point. Judging by the crowd reaction, Gingrich’s odd plan to help those illegal septuagenarians live out their days on American soil with board-issued “residency” permits still isn’t selling very well.

It also wasn’t much fun watching Gingrich pretend he doesn’t know what a blind trust is, or watching Romney ignore a belated, but well stated, plea from Gingrich to save the campaign-ad nitpicking for other venues and use debate time for the discussion of important issues. It turns out both Romney and Gingrich, through trusts and mutual funds, own pieces of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The stage grew thick with stagnant pools of disclosure.

Most of Gingrich’s best moments - such as saying that we should be cutting government spending down to match income instead of taxing people to meet government spending demands, or calling for the repeal of disastrous financial regulations - came from his back catalogue of greatest hits. His claim to have presided over four balanced budgets was punctured by Ron Paul, so effortlessly that Gingrich ended up agreeing with him. His attempt to recapture a bit of Rubio magic, by saying he had the young Senator in mind for “a more dignified and central role” than a Cabinet post, spawned a thousand instantaneous Twitter jokes that he obviously wasn’t thinking about Rubio for Vice President.

Maybe Gingrich has Rubio in mind for moonbase commander. The proposal Gingrich has been taking the most heat over, his desire to establish a lunar colony as a gateway to manned exploration of Mars, he actually defended quite ably. He talked about the importance of having big, inspirational ideas, and said his plans for reviving space exploration involved offering “prizes” to private citizens and companies, not big government spending programs. This is an intriguing concept he’s been talking up for a long time, in many areas besides space exploration.

Gingrich said he envisions a “90 percent privatized” space program, with the goal of routine commercial launches from our spaceports. Nevertheless, everyone else agreed space exploration is a luxury America cannot afford right now, with our titanic budget deficit and economic problems. How sad a commentary on our exhausted, indebted, crumbling leftist government that is! Our parents went to the Moon in tin cans guided by pocket calculators. Barack Obama blew the Moon and Mars on a handful of useless “green energy” junk that generated nothing except bankruptcies.

Romney gave a lot of vague answers, including a Cuba policy involved sticking to the Helms-Burton Act and hoping something better waits for that island dungeon after the Castro boys shuffle off. It tasted like the kind of platitude-flavored cotton candy nobody is supposed to remember eating after the election is over. “If I’m President,” Romney vowed, “I’ll use every resource we have to help the people of Cuba enjoy freedom after Castro leaves this planet.” Maybe he should work with Gingrich on that. Romney can help the people of Cuba, while Gingrich helps Castro leave this planet.

Romney was at his best when defending entrepreneurial success, declaring that he was proud to be in a free enterprise system making investments that create jobs, as well as paying his huge tax bill and making even larger charitable donations. “Success should be seen as an asset that can help America,” he said with conviction.

The problem is that many of Romney’s other answers, while often logical, were not memorable. People are likely to come away thinking he got the better of Gingrich in their conflict, but they’ll soon forget what it was about, and might not remember much else that Romney said during the evening. When his Massachusetts health care plan came under intense criticism, he began his response with, “First of all, it’s not worth getting angry about.” It might someday be remembered as the epitaph of his campaign.

Romney also found himself on the wrong end of an embarrassing flap over a campaign ad that was profoundly unfair to Gingrich. Romney claimed he didn't know anything about the ad, and it was probably from one of the nefarious Super PACs, but CNN checked it out in real time and found it was a bona fide campaign production, complete with "I'm Mitt Romney, and I approved this ad" at the end. The comical lengths Romney exeted to express ignorance left no one laughing. If he really is that clueless about his campaign's activities, it's even worse, because that would do a lot of damage to his image as a highly skilled professional manager of complex operations.

Ron Paul had a good night, staying focused on his themes of individual liberty, sound money, and disengaging from military deployments overseas. The collapse of the housing bubble is a big issue in Florida, and Paul gave a sharp and concise diagnosis of excessive credit, interest rates held artificially low for too long, and public money poured into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. His criticism of the Federal Reserve, and the “rip off” of fiat money, was as energetic as ever.

Paul’s faith in the power of free trade to reform dictatorships is rather inflated, and his belief that ending the welfare state and military deployments would save enough money to enable the complete repeal of income taxes is absurd, no matter how tantalizing the repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment might be to small-government enthusiasts. On the subject of spending reduction, he made a good point when he noted that his debate opponents weren’t talking about a lot of specific cuts, while he’s got a trillion dollars’ worth of them ready to go.

This was really Rick Santorum’s night to shine… right from the start, when he gave an introduction filled with lovable enthusiasm and a shout-out to his 93-year-old mother in the audience, instead of political boilerplate. He concluded with his assessment of the 2012 election as America’s decision between being “a country built from the bottom up or top down,” and an appeal to the Reagan Democrats so thoroughly abandoned by Barack Obama.

While confessing that his tax reform ideas aren’t as dramatic as the others’, Santorum demonstrated a good understanding of the way high tax rates crush investment. He was compelling in his criticism of Democrats for their “abysmal” treatment of South America, where they have sided with the likes of Chavez and Castro, and against the people of Honduras during their constitutional crisis, while a largely ignored jihadist menace festers. (He did, unfortunately, feel compelled to use the European Union as a positive example of disparate nations coming together in economic harmony. Maybe he’s been so busy campaigning that he hasn’t found time to keep up with the news from Europe.)

When it came time to move the debate along from the Romney / Gingrich squabble over petty campaign issues, Santorum was commanding. He vowed that his Administration would spend less every year until it reached a balanced budget at the end of his first term, which is a bold agenda, but not impossible. He was adept at criticizing the incumbent President, doing an especially good job of trashing his delusional State of the Union speech from this week… but he was particularly good at hammering Mitt Romney (and to a lesser extent Gingrich) over health care reform.

Calling health care a “foundational” issue that Republicans can’t give away in this election, he leveled a blistering indictment of RomneyCare, and quite simply defeated Romney on the issue of mandates and fines. He said Romney’s system amounts to forcing people to either buy insurance or pay a fine, and many of them are paying the fine because it’s cheaper than obeying the insurance mandate, just as we’ve seen happening with ObamaCare.

Santorum invoked the fear that has plagued many who don’t support Romney, that he’ll end up getting killed in the general election when Obama pats him on the head and thanks him for the swell health care reform ideas. While Romney was able to highlight some important differences between the two programs, including ObamaCare’s tax increases and Medicare raid, he also found himself claiming that his Massachusetts program would be working better if he were still in office to manage it.

In responding to a question about the role of religious faith in the Presidency, which sounded a bit like a mousetrap designed to make the GOP candidates look eccentric, Santorum had one of his best moments, expounding on the Constitution as the “how” of America, while the Declaration of Independence is the “why.” He talked about the uniqueness of our Constitutional defense of God-given rights, for “if our President believes that rights come from the State, then everything government gives you can be taken away.”

Santorum was doubtless helped by being able to stay out of the mudslinging exchange between Romney and Gingrich. Far too much of his charisma drains away when he gets angry, but at his best he seemed warmer and more authentic than the others. He had much more to offer than incoherent anger at the incumbent President. It might not be enough to totally upend the presidential race at this point, but if this debate has any impact, Santorum will have a shot at finishing second in Florida.

Maybe that will give him enough gas to stay in the race. At a minimum, it will increase his appeal as candidate for a dignified and central role in the next Republican administration, such as moonbase commander.
_________________________________________

To read another article by John Hayward, click here.
_________________________________________

To read a related article, click here.

Neither liberty nor safety

2012-01-27T11:10:00.000-08:00

Neither liberty nor safety
by Roger Hedgecock
01/27/2012

"Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety," said Benjamin Franklin in 1759.

Liberals everywhere were in full-throat roar protesting George Bush's Patriot Act and his War on Terror in the aftermath of the attacks of 9/11. What price in liberty to be safe from terrorism? Barack Obama himself decried the loss of liberty, the loss of personal freedoms, declaring in 2005 that the Patriot Act "puts our own Justice Department above the law."

Today only crickets from the Left as Obama assaults liberty and freedom of choice on a nearly daily basis.

Consider the list of Obama's assaults on liberty. Any one of these done by a Republican President would bring down the wrath of the Left. Done by Obama, the action is noted in the Obama reelect media for a single news cycle and then dropped

Obama's Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is more arrogantly intrusive than ever. The Fourth Amendment protection against "unreasonable" searches and seizures has been repealed at your local airport. Rep. John Mica, who authored the TSA legislation, observes that the unionized TSA now strip-searching grannies and detaining Senators bears little resemblance to his original idea.

Doctor-patient confidentiality? ObamaCare is requiring doctors and hospitals to make records of every aspect of your personal health, and health history, for use by Obama's Department of Health and Human Services. For use by the "death panels"?

ObamaCare tramples First Amendment religious freedom by ordering Catholic hospitals to cover free contraceptives, requiring Catholic adoption agencies to adopt kids to gay couples (resulting in the adoption agencies closing), and requiring Catholic taxpayers to fund federal abortion grants.

"No Child Left Behind" has been expanded to collect not only student test scores and grades, but the government now keeps permanent records on students' disciplinary actions, economic status, and even pregnancies. Worse, the feds discourage the states from allowing parents to access these "permanent records." What police state has ever done without such record keeping? Old East Germany's Stasi would be proud.

The federalization of K-12 education continues under Obama. A group of Bay Shore, Long Island, high school students will soon be wearing electronic monitors to allow school officials to track their physical activity around the clock to fight obesity. Is any excuse sufficient to ban all privacy?

The Obama EEOC has ruled that a private employer's requirement for a high school diploma to qualify for a job might violate the Americans With Disabilities Act. The act does not cover this issue, but Obama's EEOC thinks it should.

Obama wants restrictions on guns sold to Americans in violation of the Second Amendment even as his Justice Department runs the Fast and Furious program to allow the same guns to walk across the border into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels.

EPIC(Electronic Privacy Information Center), a privacy advocacy group, sued Obama's Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to discover through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) that DHS is monitoring political dissent. EPIC has more than 300 pages of contracts and memos detailing work done by General Dynamics for DHS. One "tracking report" titled "Residents Voice Opposition Over Possible Plan to Bring Guantanamo Detainees to Local Prison-Standish MI" summarizes dissent on blogs and social networking sites, quoting commenters by name.

Angry that FOIA requests and lawsuits were revealing the extent of Obama's liberty-shredding actions, Obama's "Justice Department" issued new rules allowing federal agencies to deny the existence of requested documents even when the agency knows they in fact do exist. The Right to Lie to protect the public from knowing about the loss of their liberties is now the official policy of the Obama administration.

Obama's FBI has obtained a court order against an American woman accused of mortgage fraud to force her to decrypt her PGP-scrambled hard drive so that the FBI can fish around without a warrant in her personal computer for incriminating evidence. The judge said the Fifth Amendment did not apply. For Obama, the Constitution (that "list of negative rights") does not apply whenever it acts to restrain his objectives.

The State of the Union? Slipping into dictatorship. Where's the ACLU?
______________________________________

To read another article by Roger Hedgecock, click here.

Mr. and Mrs. Cranky Pants

2012-01-27T11:04:00.000-08:00

Mr. and Mrs. Cranky Pants
by Michelle Malkin
01/27/2012

So, it turns out that the cool cat billed as "No Drama Obama" by his sycophants is actually quite the drama queen. While the White House publicly pretends to ignore conservative detractors of his administration, Chief Touchy-Touchy seems to be personally consumed by our critiques. Yes, mine included.

On Wednesday, the president had himself a mini-"Toddlers and Tiaras"-style meltdown with Arizona GOP Gov. Jan Brewer after landing in Phoenix for a post-State of the Union dog-and-pony show. As Brewer told pool reporters on the scene, Obama took umbrage at Brewer's recent memoir. She minced no words on the cover: "Scorpions for Breakfast: My Fight Against Special Interests, Liberal Media, and Cynical Politicos to Secure America's Border."

And she minced no words describing her impressions of Obama as they sparred over her state's tough immigration enforcement law, which is now the subject of a Justice Department witch-hunt. Brewer called Obama "patronizing" and "condescending." I'd say she was excruciatingly polite.

According to Brewer, "He was a little disturbed about my book. ... I said to him that I have all the respect in the world for the office of the president. The book is what the book is. I asked him if he read the book. He said he read (an) excerpt." In the shadow of Air Force One, Obama complained that Brewer hadn't "treated him cordially" and then stalked off while she was responding mid-sentence.

Photogs captured the fracas on film. The civility police gasped at Brewer's "disrespectful" finger-pointing. On cue, one progressive commentator insinuated the gesture was a "racist" jab tantamount to lynching.

The president was singing a more laid-back tune last summer. As debate on Capitol Hill over the debt ceiling and spending sizzled, Obama bragged to reporters: "I'm not trying to poke at you guys. ... I generally don't watch what is said about me on cable. I generally don't read what's said about me even in The Hill (newspaper), so part of this job is having a thick skin and understanding that a lot of this stuff is not personal."

Uh-huh. At least two other Republican governors -- Rick Perry of Texas and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana -- have recounted similar presidential snit fits on the tarmac. He sulked over a letter Jindal wrote to the administration about food stamps for Gulf oil spill victims; he bolted after a half-minute meeting with Perry at an Austin airport over border security issues.

You know those "petty grievances" of "Washington politics" that Obama has long condemned? Now it can be told: He knows whereof he squawks.

As New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor's new book, "The Obamas," reveals, the president and his inner circle spent even more time carping about conservative influence on public opinion. "He wanted the media to be more of a referee; to put unfair Republican charges to rest," Kantor discovered. "He could brush off the wildest, most baseless attacks themselves, he told (senior adviser and Chicago pal) Valerie Jarrett, along with (campaign finance bundler and treasurer) Marty Nesbitt and (bundler and finance mogul) John Rogers, at lunch in the little dining room next to the Oval Office."

But what "galled him," the book observed, "was when they gained mainstream credibility despite distortions of truth."

Kantor then dutifully served as a pro-Obama referee:

"Rogers had just noticed a new book by the conservative columnist Michelle Malkin called 'Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks and Cronies.' Among many other allegations, Malkin wrote that Michelle Obama -- the president's 'bitter half' -- was secretly running the country in Lady Macbeth-like fashion. Malkin even took a hatchet to long-dead Fraser Robinson (Mrs. Obama's father), arguing with no evidence that his job at a water plant made him part of the 'Chicago political corruptocracy.' The book debuted at number one on The New York Times nonfiction bestseller list and stayed there for weeks."

The facts? It was a former alderman in Chicago, Leon Depres, who provided evidence that Robinson's job in the city water department was a reward for loyalty to the Daley political faction.

It was Washington Post writer Liza Mundy who reported that the department was "a renowned repository of patronage jobs."

It's the Illinois press that has long documented Mrs. Obama's ties to the Chicago machine. It's Kantor herself who spotlighted the first lady's internecine warfare with her husband's Cabinet. And from her meddling in everything from the AmeriCorps inspector general firing case to her aggressive, Big Labor-backed push for a publicly subsidized food police corps, Michelle Obama has been openly expanding her East Wing fiefdom in Marie Antoinette-like fashion.

How long before we see a FLOTUS tarmac tantrum? We did get two divas for the price of one. As longtime observers of the royal Obamas have long observed: Mr. and Mrs. Cranky Pants' problem has never been the color of their skin. It's the thinness.
__________________________________________

To read another article by Michelle Malkin, click here.

The State of the Union flop

2012-01-27T10:54:00.000-08:00

The State of the Union flop
by Charles Krauthammer
01/26/2012

WASHINGTON -- Once upon a time, small ball was not Barack Obama's game. Tuesday, it was the essence of his State of the Union address. The visionary of 2008 -- purveyor of hope and change, healer of the earth, tamer of the rising seas -- offered an hour of little things: tax-code tweaks to encourage this or that kind of behavior (manufacturing being the flavor of the day), little watchdog agencies to round up Wall Street miscreants and Chinese DVD pirates, even a presidential demand "that all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn 18." Under penalty of what? Jail? The self-proclaimed transformer of America is now playing truant officer?

It sounded like the Clinton years with their presidentially proclaimed initiatives on midnight basketball and school uniforms. These are the marks of a shrunken presidency, thoroughly flummoxed by high unemployment, economic stagnation, crushing debt -- and a glaring absence of ideas.

Of course, this being Obama, there was a reach for grandeur. Hope and change are long gone. It's now equality and fairness.

That certainly is a large idea. Lenin and Mao went pretty far with it. As did Clement Attlee and his social-democratic counterparts in postwar Europe. Where does Obama take it? Back to the decade-old Democratic obsession with the Bush tax cuts, the crusade for a tax hike of all of 4.6 points for 2 percent of households -- 10 years of which wouldn’t cover the cost of Obama's 2009 stimulus alone.

Which is why Obama introduced a shiny new twist -- the Buffett Rule, a minimum 30 percent rate for millionaires. Sounds novel. But it's a tired replay of the alternative minimum tax, originally created in 1969 to bring to heel all of 155 underpaying fat cats. Following the fate of other such do-goodism, the AMT then metastasized into a $40 billion monster that today entraps millions of middle-class taxpayers.

There isn't even a pretense that the Buffett Rule will do anything for economic growth or job creation (other than provide lucrative work for the sharp tax lawyers who will be gaming the new system for the very same rich). Which should not surprise. Back in 2008, Obama was asked if he would still support raising the capital-gains tax rate (the intended effect of the Buffett Rule) if this would decrease government revenues.

Obama said yes. In the name of fairness.

This is redistribution for its own sake -- the cost be damned. It took Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels about 30 seconds of his State of the Union rebuttal to demolish that idea. To get the rich to contribute more, explained Daniels, you don't raise tax rates. This ultimately retards economic growth for all. You (a) eliminate loopholes from which the rich benefit disproportionately (tax reform) and (b) means-test entitlements so that the benefits go to those most in need.

Tax reform and entitlement reform are the really big ideas. The first produces social equity plus economic efficiency; the second produces social equity plus debt reduction. And yet these are precisely what Obama has for three years steadfastly refused to address. He prefers the easy demagoguery of "tax the rich."

After all, what's he got? Can't run on his record. Barely even mentioned Obamacare or the stimulus, his major legislative achievements, on Tuesday night. Too unpopular. His platform is fairness, wrapped around a plethora of little things, one mini-industrial policy after another -- the conceit nicely encapsulated by his proclamation that "I will not cede the wind or solar or battery industry to China or to Germany." As if he can command these industries into existence. As if Washington funding a thousand Solyndras will make solar economically viable.

Soviet central planners mandated quotas for steel production, regardless of demand. Obama's industrial policy is a bit more subtle. Tax breaks for manufacturing -- but double tax breaks for high-tech manufacturing, which for some reason is considered more virtuous, despite the fact that high tech is less likely to create blue-collar jobs. Its main job creation will be for legions of lawyers and linguists testifying before some new adjudicating bureaucracy that the Acme Umbrella Factory meets their exquisitely drawn criteria for "high tech."

What Obama offered the nation Tuesday night was a pudding without a theme: a jumble of disconnected initiatives, a gaggle of intrusive new agencies and a whole new generation of loopholes to further corrupt a tax code that screams out for reform.

If the Republicans can't beat that in November, they should try another line of work.
_______________________________________

To read another article by Charles Krauthammer, click here.
_______________________________________

To read a related article, click here.

A Little Bit Ghetto

2012-01-27T10:47:00.000-08:00

A Little Bit Ghetto
By George Neumayr on 1.27.12 @ 6:09AM

CNN's GOP presidential debate in Florida revolves around trash talk and tacky questions from Wolf Blitzer.

Early in Thursday's Republican presidential debate, CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer caught Mitt Romney flatfooted on one of his anti-Gingrich ads. The ad accuses Newt of calling Spanish a "language of the ghetto." What, Blitzer asked Romney, did you mean by that? "I haven't seen the ad, so I'm sorry, I don't get to see all the TV ads," replied Romney. "I doubt that's my ad."

But it is his ad. "We did double check, just now, Governor, that ad that we talked about," said Blitzer. "We double checked. It was one of your ads. It is running here in Florida on the radio, and at the end you say 'I'm Mitt Romney and I approved this ad.'"

The exchange captured what Romney has tried to avoid -- the image of a remote plutocrat working so hard to buy an election he isn't even aware of his own ads.

Establishment pundits will no doubt ooh and ah over Romney's generally confident performance -- CNN informed viewers that he now enjoys the services of a new "debate coach" -- but rank-and-file conservatives should find the prospect of a rising Romney deeply depressing. How is it possible that two years after the Tea Party propelled the GOP back to congressional power Republicans are contemplating a former Paul Tsongas voter as the head of their party?

Gingrich spent too much of the debate responding to attacks rather than making them. He should have used every question as an occasion to remind voters of Romney's liberalism. The best licks on Romney as a liberal ended up coming from Rick Santorum. Training less fire on Gingrich at this debate than at previous ones, Santorum turned his attention to Romney with a sustained broadside against Romneycare. How, Santorum asked, will the GOP be able to argue against the Obamacare mandate with a nominee who hatched the idea? Romney said in reply: "It is not worth getting angry about." Yes, it is.

Romney's tutelage under a new debate coach admittedly bore some fruit. America's immigration problem isn't "11 million grandmothers," he said concisely after Newt had belabored his point about not deporting elderly illegal immigrants.

Newt had his moments in the debate, but he failed to deliver any knockout punches. His knowledge of policy is far more detailed than Romney's, who usually just sticks to his narrow talking points, and Newt's conservative credentials remain far stronger. Romney continues to appear as a more handsome and taller GOP version of Michael Dukakis -- the bloodless and visionless technocrat who, as Newt suggests, just wants to "manage the decay" in Washington, D.C.

Romney's contribution to the Reagan Revolution was nil, as he admitted in a roundabout way to Blitzer. Newt used the same question to remind the audience that Michael Reagan had just endorsed him. Newt added that Nancy Reagan had also conferred upon him her husband's mantle in a past speech.

The Republican establishment has been working overtime to hoodwink GOP voters into overlooking the ideological differences between Romney and Newt, trotting out Big Tenters with zero expertise on conservatism to claim that Newt is not "conservative." Against an immutable standard of conservatism, he is not, but next to Romney he looks like Edmund Burke.

The establishment never fails to choose the more liberal of two leading candidates. The boys from the yacht club have once again decided to lose with a semi-reformed RINO.

If Romney wins the nomination, he will have won largely on personal attacks and a plastic, big-bucks campaign. Some victory.

Ron Paul had one of the most endearingly direct lines in the debate when he said, after a petty back-and-forth between Newt and Mitt that Wolf Blitzer had encouraged, "That subject doesn't really interest me a whole lot." Blitzer seemed determined to ask "nonsense" questions, as Newt put it, circling back several times to now-exhausted tax return and Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac issues. When he wasn't trying to stir up trouble on that front, Blitzer was uncorking cutesy questions about the candidates' wives and an ageist question to Ron Paul about his medical records.

From time to time Blitzer kicked control of the microphone over to "CNN en Español." Modern America doesn't have segregated schools anymore, but it does have segregated channels. Media liberals call this progress.
_________________________________________

To read another article by George Neumayr, click here.
_________________________________________

To read a related article, click here.

Florida Fireworks Finale

2012-01-27T10:36:00.000-08:00

Florida Fireworks Finale
By Robert Stacy McCain on 1.27.12 @ 6:10AM

Romney, Santorum shine in Sunshine State debate.

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. -- Newt Gingrich tried to defend his claim that Mitt Romney is "the most anti-immigrant candidate" in last night's Republican presidential debate here, an accusation that Romney called "inexcusable" and "repulsive."

Gingrich did not seem to understand that this accusation, made in a Spanish-language radio ad aimed at South Florida's large Latino population, may actually end up helping Romney win next week's primary. The controversy stirred by the ad, which Gingrich ordered his campaign to pull off the air, highlights differences of policy -- and puts Gingrich clearly to Romney's left, which isn't a good place to be in a Republican primary.

After a long discussion of the issue, CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Gingrich, "I just want to make sure I understand. Is [Romney] still the most anti-immigrant candidate?" The former House Speaker answered: "I think, of the four of us, yes." This provoked a long response from Romney, who said he favors "enforcing the U.S. law to protect our borders," a position that is not "anti-immigrant." Romney accused Gingrich of "the kind of over-the-top rhetoric that has characterized American politics too long," and then invoked the most popular Republican in Florida: "I'm glad that Marco Rubio called you out on it. I'm glad you withdrew it. I think you should apologize for it, and I think you should recognize that having differences of opinions on issues does not justify labeling people with highly charged epithets."

Thursday's debate, the 19th televised debate among Republican presidential candidates this year, certainly did not lack fireworks. And while many political junkies have become weary of watching these affairs, the event here on the campus of the University of North Florida may be as decisive as the South Carolina debates that were credited with helping Gingrich score a crucial win there Saturday. Polls this week in Florida show Romney pulling away, and the former Massachusetts governor had one of his best-ever debate performances Thursday, while Gingrich had one of his worst yet.

While arguments between the two Florida frontrunners got the biggest play, however, Thursday was also an impressive performance for former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Polls show Santorum running a distant third in the Sunshine State, but he slammed both Gingrich and Romney for their previous stances on health care. "This is the top-down model that both of these gentlemen say they're now against, but they've been for, and it does not provide the contrast we need with Barack Obama if we're going to take on that most important issue," Santorum said. "We cannot give the issue of health care away in this election. It is too foundational for us to win this election."

This provoked an extended argument between Santorum and Romney over the so-called "individual mandate" in the health legislation Romney supported in Massachusetts. When Santorum's criticism of the Massachusetts plan grew heated, Romney replied by saying "it's not worth getting angry about." Asked after the debate about that flare-up, Santorum described himself as "passionate," and his passionate performance won praise from many conservatives, including Guy Benson of Townhall.com: "What a night for the former Pennsylvania Senator … he definitely made a very serious case that he might be the best Not Romney in the race." Santorum seems unlikely to score the kind of miraculous last-minute surge in the Sunshine State that carried him to victory in the Iowa caucuses three weeks ago, but Thursday's debate could help him gain support as he seeks to rekindle his campaign's sense of momentum.

At this point, no candidate in the race has been able to win two consecutive contests. After Santorum edged Romney in Iowa, Romney came back to win convincingly in New Hampshire. But Gingrich won solidly in South Carolina, halting Romney's momentum. If current Florida polls are accurate and Romney wins here Tuesday, the biggest challenge for Romney's opponents will be to raise enough money to continue the fight through a long campaign.
_______________________________________

To read another article by Robert Stacy McCain, click here.

Obamination

2012-01-27T10:24:00.000-08:00

Obamination
By Lisa Fabrizio on 1.26.12 @ 6:07AM

How this president "marked" the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

So let me see if I've got this straight; because being a brainwashed, knuckle-dragging, bitter clinger sometimes makes it hard for me to absorb all of the nuanced penumbrae emanating from the declarations of men like Barack Obama. A man who goes out of his way to encourage Americans to make sure that they never offend the followers of certain faiths, yet chooses January 23 -- a day of mourning for all who cherish life -- to offend the largest segment of them; pro-life Christians. A man who is the first U.S. president in my memory to issue a statement in favor of abortion on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade.

Of all the cherished utterances of our beloved leader the last three years, perhaps none is so divisive and offensive as this, his tribute to the judicial fiat that has resulted in the deaths of more than 40 million Americans, and a testament to his twisted views:

As we mark the 39th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, we must remember that this Supreme Court decision not only protects a woman's health and reproductive freedom, but also affirms a broader principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters. I remain committed to protecting a woman's right to choose and this fundamental constitutional right.

While this is a sensitive and often divisive issue -- no matter what our views, we must stay united in our determination to prevent unintended pregnancies, support pregnant woman and mothers, reduce the need for abortion, encourage healthy relationships, and promote adoption. And as we remember this historic anniversary, we must also continue our efforts to ensure that our daughters have the same rights, freedoms, and opportunities as our sons to fulfill their dreams.

Yes, this sorry statement is not only insulting but also instructive, as it displays the same perverted outlook on the subjects of life and love he evinced when he opined that, should his daughters make a "mistake," he didn't want them "punished with a baby." What exactly can he mean by suggesting that our sons and daughters -- chilling words from the mouth of an abortion advocate -- should have the same rights and freedoms? Do they not have them now? Might he be suggesting further gender-bending fiats along the lines of gays in the military, same-sex marriage, and his elevation of gay rights as a foreign policy priority?

Yes, that's right; he has singled out discrimination against homosexuals abroad as a "deep concern" for his administration: not slavery, honor-killing, forced abortion or religious persecution. This sordid episode gives new meaning to George Washington's warning about avoiding "foreign entanglements." But what else can we expect from a man who for years sat at the feet of Bill Ayers and Jeremiah Wright?

A man who has the nerve to assert that "government should not intrude on private family matters," by inserting itself into America's sacred bedrooms, is the same man who, through his myrmidons in the Congress, used every unethical and thuggish subterfuge at his command to intrude that same government into every doctor's office, nursing home, and operating room in the land via Obamacare.

That this man, who uses every occasion to spurn the Constitution -- from czars, to executive orders to illegal recess appointments -- has the nerve to lecture those who actually understand and revere that august document on the definition of the First Amendment is particularly appalling. Speaking of which, this is the same purported professor of constitutional law who just released an edict, aimed primarily at the Catholic Church, stating that she must comply with healthcare dictates that directly violate her sacred teaching.

Fortunately for us, the Constitution provides for a firewall against the foreseen ravaging of a free people by a tyrant like our current commander-in-chief and his accomplices in Congress. It is indeed ironic that the U.S. Supreme Court -- the same body that found a right to abortion amid the smoking ruins of the 14th Amendment -- recently issued a slap-down to Barack Obama and all who would seek to use the arm of government to control religious entities, in the form of a shocking unanimous decision in defense of religious liberty.

Such judicial victories may pave the way for more success against the incursions of men like Barack Obama, who have little understanding of our Constitution and even less about what passes for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
_____________________________________________

To read another article by Lisa Fabrizio, click here.

Harry Reid's Parallel Universe

2012-01-27T10:12:00.000-08:00

Harry Reid's Parallel Universe
By Peter Hannaford on 1.26.12 @ 6:07AM

Even more amazing, he's hardly the only Dingy Democrat in Washington.

One year when George W. Bush was president, there was talk of his making recess appointments when Congress would be on holiday. Senate Leader Harry Reid countered by keeping the Senate technically in session by having one or two members show up each day. Bush, with the Constitution in mind, dropped the recess appointment idea.

Barack Obama, by contrast, went right ahead with a recess appointment last month, despite the fact the House Republicans stayed in session for the same reason -- to prevent such a move.

This time, Harry Reid said it was right and proper for Obama to do what he did. Reid saw neither the irony nor he inconsistency in this, for he lives in a parallel universe.

The other day he returned to Washington with a warning to House Republicans to eschew Tea Party "extremism." The Tea Party movement was driven by a desire to stop the government's profligate spending and the rapidly growing national debt. In Harry's universe, this is "extremism."

In December, the Senate Democrats and Obama wanted a two-month extension of the payroll tax rate holiday and unemployment benefits. The House Republicans said it didn't make sense to come back after two months and re-argue the issue, so they proposed a 12-month extension. Reid wouldn't budge and ultimately the House blinked before the two items ran out on December 31.

About this Reid said, "I hope that the Republicans will understand, as they learned in the last week of last year, they can't be led over the cliff by this extremism."

Saying that Senate Democrats had "bent over backwards" to work with House Republicans, Reid declared that all he was asking for was a spirit of compromise. His version of compromise is, you give, I take.

Since January 2007, Harry Reid has been Senate Majority Leader. Speaking of bending over backwards, one thousand days have now passed since the Senate last passed a federal budget -- an all-time record, thanks to Harry Reid. By stalling over and over again, he and his Democrat colleagues have not had to make tough choices about cutting the government's bloated spending. Instead, the government operates on "continuing resolutions" that have kept existing spending in place, plus automatic annual increases. The result? Spending grows apace and the national debt is now over $16 trillion.

No wonder House members supported by Tea Party groups are upset. Harry Reid -- living off in space -- thinks uncontrolled spending is normal and fiscal responsibility amounts to "extremism."

Harry has brought some of his colleagues along into his parallel universe. Democratic National Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, for example, recently said, "I have noticed the tone take a very precipitous turn toward edginess and a lack of civility with the growth of the Tea Party movement." (Translation: Anyone who disagrees with the Democrat playbook is uncivil.) Vice President Joe Biden, who takes frequent trips to the parallel universe, has likened Tea Party members to terrorists.

These are the same folks who have extolled the "Occupy" people as earnest exercisers of First Amendment rights. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was one who cooed over the Occupy movement. It is useful to compare its record in recent months to that of the Tea Party groups. For example, arrests: Occupy 4,149, Tea Party 0; rapes Occupy 12, Tea Party 0; anti-Semitic diatribes: Occupy 12, Tea Party 0; murder: Occupy 1, Tea Party 0; head and body lice infestations: Occupy 1, Tea Party 0; scabies outbreaks: Occupy 1, Tea Party 0; suicide: Occupy 1, Tea Party 0. Now if you live in the Harry Reid parallel universe, as so many Democrat office holders and operatives do, that is clear evidence that the Tea Party members are extremists.

Most people would say they are extremely well behaved, but the parallel universe people would like you to think they are a danger to the nation.
________________________________________

To read another article by Peter Hannaford, click here.

Birther Alert - The Plot Thickens on Obama Fraud

2012-01-26T11:05:00.000-08:00

Birther Alert - The Plot Thickens on Obama Fraud

The Plot Thickens...

An intensive investigation has revealed the identity of the man whose Social Security number (SSN) is being used by President Obama: Jean Paul Ludwig, who was born in France in 1890, immigrated to the United States in 1924, and was assigned SSN 042-68-4425 (Obama's current SSN) on or about March 1977.

Ludwig lived most of his adult life in Connecticut. Because of that, his SSN begins with the digits 042, which are among only a select few reserved for Connecticut residents.

Obama never lived or worked in that state! Therefore, there is no reason on earth for his SSN to start with the digits 042. None whatsoever!

Now comes the best part! Ludwig spent the final months of his life in Hawaii, where he died.

Conveniently, Obama's grandmother, Madelyn Payne Dunham, worked part-time in the Probate Office in the Honolulu Hawaii Courthouse, and therefore had access to the SSNs of deceased individuals.

The Social Security Administration was never informed of Ludwig's death, and because he never received Social Security benefits there were no benefits to stop and therefore, no questions were ever raised.

The suspicion, of course, is that Dunham, knowing her grandson was not a U.S. Citizen, either because he was born in Kenya or became a citizen of Indonesia upon his adoption by Lolo Soetoro simply scoured the probate records until she found someone who died who was not receiving Social Security benefits, and selected Mr. Ludwigs Connecticut SSN for Obama.

Just wait until Trump gets past the birth certificate and onto the issue of Barry O's use of a stolen SSN. You will see leftist heads exploding, because they will have no way of defending Obama. Although many Americans do not understand the meaning of the term "natural born" there are few who do not understand that if you are using someone else's SSN it is a clear indication of fraud.

When will we wake UP? Where there is smoke, there is FIRE.

So is our president really an American, or a fraud? Click here and follow the links to learn a lot more about some very reasonable doubts. All of you people who have doubted and ridiculed the Birthers - get ready to eat a shit sandwich, assholes!

America and the Arab Spring

2012-01-25T15:48:00.000-08:00

America and the Arab Spring
By Caroline Glick
1/25/2012

A year ago this week, on January 25, 2011, the ground began to crumble under then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's feet. One year later, Mubarak and his sons are in prison, and standing trial.

This week, the final vote tally from Egypt's parliamentary elections was published. The Islamist parties have won 72 percent of the seats in the lower house.

The photogenic, Western-looking youth from Tahrir Square the Western media were thrilled to dub the Facebook revolutionaries were disgraced at the polls and exposed as an insignificant social and political force.

As for the military junta, it has made its peace with the Muslim Brotherhood. The generals and the jihadists are negotiating a power-sharing agreement. According to details of the agreement that have made their way to the media, the generals will remain the West's go-to guys for foreign affairs. The Muslim Brotherhood (and its fellow jihadists in the Salafist al-Nour party) will control Egypt's internal affairs.

This is bad news for women and for non-Muslims. Egypt's Coptic Christians have been under continuous attack by Muslim Brotherhood and Salafist supporters since Mubarak was deposed. Their churches, homes and businesses have been burned, looted and destroyed. Their wives and daughters have been raped. The military massacred them when they dared to protest their persecution.

As for women, their main claim to fame since Mubarak's overthrow has been their sexual victimization at the hands of soldiers who stripped female protesters and performed "virginity tests" on them. Out of nearly five hundred seats in parliament, only 10 will be filled by women.

The Western media are centering their attention on what the next Egyptian constitution will look like and whether it will guarantee rights for women and minorities. What they fail to recognize is that the Islamic fundamentalists now in charge of Egypt don't need a constitution to implement their tyranny. All they require is what they already have - a public awareness of their political power and their partnership with the military.

The same literalist approach that has prevented Western observers from reading the writing on the walls in terms of the Islamists' domestic empowerment has blinded them to the impact of Egypt's political transformation on the country's foreign policy posture. US officials forcefully proclaim that they will not abide by an Egyptian move to formally abrogate its peace treaty with Israel. What they fail to recognize is that whether or not the treaty is formally abrogated is irrelevant. The situation on the ground in which the new regime allows Sinai to be used as a launching ground for attacks against Israel, and as a highway for weapons and terror personnel to flow freely into Gaza, are clear signs that the peace with Israel is already dead - treaty or no treaty.

EGYPT'S TRANSFORMATION is not an isolated event. The disgraced former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh arrived in the US this week. Yemen is supposed to elect his successor next month. The deteriorating security situation in that strategically vital land which borders the Arabian and Red Seas has decreased the likelihood that the election will take place as planned.

Yemen is falling apart at the seams. Al-Qaida forces have been advancing in the south. Last spring they took over Zinjibar, the capital of Abyan province. In recent weeks they captured Radda, a city 160 km. south of the capital of Sana.

Radda's capture underscored American fears that the political upheaval in Yemen will provide al- Qaida with a foothold near shipping routes through the Red Sea and so enable the group to spread its influence to neighboring Saudi Arabia.

Al-Qaida forces were also prominent in the NATO-backed Libyan opposition forces that with NATO's help overthrew Muammar Gaddafi in October. Although the situation on the ground is far from clear, it appears that radical Islamic political forces are intimidating their way into power in post-Gaddafi Libya.

Take for instance last weekend's riots in Benghazi. On Saturday protesters laid siege to the National Transitional Council offices in the city while Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, the head of the NTC, hid inside. In an attempt to quell the protesters' anger, Jalil fired six secular members of the NTC. He then appointed a council of religious leaders to investigate corruption charges and identify people with links to the Gaddafi regime.

In Bahrain, the Iranian-supported Shi'ite majority continues to mount political protests against the Sunni monarchy. Security forces killed two young Shi'ite protesters over the past week and a half, and opened fired at Shi'ites who sought to hold a protest march after attending the funeral of one of them.

As supporters of Bahrain's Shi'ites have maintained since the unrest spread to the kingdom last year, Bahrain's Shi'ites are not Iranian proxies. But then, until the US pulled its troops out of Iraq last month, neither were Iraq's Shi'ites. What happened immediately after the US pullout is another story completely.

Extolling Iraq's swift deterioration into an Iranian satrapy, last Wednesday, Brig.-Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps Jerusalem Brigade, bragged, "In reality, in south Lebanon and Iraq, the people are under the effect of the Islamic Republic's way of practice and thinking."

While Suleimani probably exaggerated the situation, there is no doubt that Iran's increased influence in Iraq is being felt around the region. Iraq has come to the aid of Iran's Syrian client Bashar Assad who is now embroiled in a civil war. The rise of Iran in Iraq holds dire implications for the Hashemite regime in Jordan which is currently hanging on by a thread, challenged from within and without by the rising force of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Much has been written since the fall of Mubarak about the impact on Israel of the misnamed Arab Spring. Events like September's mob assault on Israel's embassy in Cairo and the murderous cross-border attack on motorists traveling on the road to Eilat by terrorists operating out of Sinai give force to the assessment that Israel is more imperiled than ever by the revolutionary events engulfing the region.

But the truth is that while on balance Israel's regional posture has taken a hit, particularly from the overthrow of Mubarak and the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafists in Egypt, Israel is not the primary loser in the so-called Arab Spring.

Israel never had many assets in the Arab world to begin with. The Western-aligned autocracies were not Israel's allies. To the extent the likes of Mubarak and others have cooperated with Israel on various issues over the years, their cooperation was due not to any sense of comity with Jewish state. They worked with Israel because they believed it served their interests to do so. And at the same time Mubarak reined in the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas because they threatened him, he waged political war against Israel on every international stage and allowed anti-Semitic poison to be broadcast daily on his regime-controlled television stations.

Since Israel's stake in the Arab power game has always been limited, its losses as a consequence of the fall of anti-Israel secular dictatorships and their replacement by anti-Israel Islamist regimes have been marginal. The US, on the other hand, has seen its interests massively harmed. Indeed, the US is the greatest loser of the pan-Arab revolutions.

TO UNDERSTAND the depth and breadth of America's losses, consider that on January 25, 2011, most Arab states were US allies to a greater or lesser degree. Mubarak was a strategic ally. Saleh was willing to collaborate with the US in combating al- Qaida and other jihadist forces in his country.

Gaddafi was a neutered former enemy who had posed no threat to the US since 2004. Iraq was a protectorate. Jordan and Morocco were stable US clients.

One year later, the elements of the US's alliance structure have either been destroyed or seriously weakened. US allies like Saudi Arabia, which have yet to be seriously threatened by the revolutionary violence, no longer trust the US. As the recently revealed nuclear cooperation between the Saudis and the Chinese makes clear, the Saudis are looking to other global powers to replace the US as their superpower protector.

Perhaps the most amazing aspect to the US's spectacular loss of influence and power in the Arab world is that most of its strategic collapse has been due to its own actions. In Egypt and Libya the US intervened prominently to bring down a US ally and a dictator who constituted no threat to its interests. Indeed, it went to war to bring Gaddafi down.

Moreover, the US acted to bring about their fall at the same time it knew that they would be replaced by forces inimical to American national security interests. In Egypt, it was clear that the Muslim Brotherhood would emerge as the strongest political force in the country. In Libya, it was clear at the outset of the NATO campaign against Gaddafi that al-Qaida was prominently represented in the anti-regime coalition. And just as the Islamists won the Egyptian election, shortly after Gaddafi was overthrown, al-Qaida forces raised their flag over Benghazi's courthouse.

US actions from Yemen to Bahrain and beyond have followed a similar pattern.

In sharp contrast to his active interventionism against US-allied regimes, President Barack Obama has prominently refused to intervene in Syria, where the fate of a US foe hangs in the balance.

Obama has sat back as Turkey has fashioned a Syrian opposition dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Arab League has intervened in a manner that increases the prospect that Syria will descend into chaos in the event that the Assad regime is overthrown.

Obama continues to speak grandly about his vision for the Middle East and his dedication to America's regional allies. And his supporters in the media continue to applaud his great success in foreign policy. But outside of their echo chamber, he and the country he leads are looked upon with increasing contempt and disgust throughout the Arab world.

Obama's behavior since last January 25 has made clear to US friend and foe alike that under Obama, the US is more likely to attack you if you display weakness towards it than if you adopt a confrontational posture against it. As Assad survives to kill another day; as Iran expands its spheres of influence and gallops towards the nuclear bomb; as al- Qaida and its allies rise from the Gulf of Aden to the Suez Canal; and as Mubarak continues to be wheeled into the courtroom on a stretcher, the US's rapid fall from regional power is everywhere in evidence.
__________________________________

To read another article by Caroline Glick, click here.

Schools of Education

2012-01-25T15:38:00.000-08:00

Schools of Education
By Walter E. Williams
1/25/2012

Larry Sand's article "No Wonder Johnny (Still) Can't Read" -- written for The John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, based in Raleigh, N.C. -- blames schools of education for the decline in America's education. Education professors drum into students that they should not "drill and kill" or be the "sage on the stage" but instead be the "guide on the side" who "facilitates student discovery." This kind of harebrained thinking, coupled with multicultural nonsense, explains today's education. During his teacher education, Sand says, "teachers-to-be were forced to learn about this ethnic group, that impoverished group, this sexually anomalous group, that under-represented group, etc. -- all under the rubric of 'Culturally Responsive Education.'"

Education majors are woefully lacking in academic skills. Here are some sample test questions for you to answer. Question 1: Which of the following is equal to a quarter-million? a) 40,000, b) 250,000, c) 2,500,000, d) 1/4,000,000 or e) 4/1,000,000. Question 2: Martin Luther King Jr. (insert the correct choice) for the poor of all races. a) spoke out passionately, b) spoke out passionate, c) did spoke out passionately, d) has spoke out passionately or e) had spoken out passionate. Question 3: What would you do if your student sprained an ankle? a) Put a Band-Aid on it, b) Ice it or c) Rinse it with water.

Guess whether these questions were on a sixth-grade, ninth-grade or 12th-grade test. I bet the average reader would guess that it's a sixth-grade test. Wrong. How about ninth-grade? Wrong again. You say, "OK, Williams, so they're 12th-grade test questions!" Still wrong. According to a Heartland Institute-published School Reform News (September 2001) article titled "Who Tells Teachers They Can Teach?", those test questions came from prospective teacher tests. The first two questions are samples from the Praxis I test for teachers, and the third is from the 1999 teacher certification test in Illinois. According to the Chicago Sun-Times (9/6/01), 5,243 Illinois teachers failed their teacher certification tests. The Chicago Sun-Times also reported, "One teacher failed 24 of 25 teacher tests -- including 11 of 12 Basic Skills tests and all 12 tests on teaching learning-disabled children." Yet that teacher was assigned to teach learning-disabled children in Chicago. Departments of education have solved the problem of teacher test failure. According to a New York Post story (11/14/11) titled "City teacher tests turn into E-ZPass," more than 99 percent of teachers pass.

Textbooks used in schools of education advocate sheer nonsense. A passage in Enid Lee et al.'s "Beyond Heroes and Holidays" reads: "We cannot afford to become so bogged down in grammar and spelling that we forget the whole story. ... The onslaught of antihuman practices that this nation and other nations are facing today: racism, and sexism, and the greed for money and human labor that disguises itself as 'globalization.'" Marilyn Burns' text "About Teaching Mathematics" reads, "There is no place for requiring students to practice tedious calculations that are more efficiently and accurately done by using calculators." "New Designs for Teaching and Learning," by Dennis Adams and Mary Hamm, says: "Content knowledge is not seen to be as important as possessing teaching skills and knowledge about the students being taught. ... Successful teachers understand the outside context of community, personal abilities, and feelings, while they establish an inside context or environment conducive to learning." That means it's no problem if a teacher can't figure out that a quarter-million is the same as 250,000. Harvey Daniels and Marilyn Bizar's text "Methods that Matter" reads, "Students can no longer be viewed as cognitive living rooms into which the furniture of knowledge is moved in and arranged by teachers, and teachers cannot invariably act as subject-matter experts." The authors add, "The main use of standardized tests in America is to justify the distribution of certain goodies to certain people."

Schools of education represent the academic slums of most any college. American education can benefit from slum removal.
______________________________________

Top read another article by Walter Williams, click here.

A Brass Age?

2012-01-25T15:29:00.001-08:00

A Brass Age?
By Thomas Sowell
1/25/2012

This may be the golden age of presumptuous ignorance. The most recent demonstrations of that are the Occupy Wall Street mobs. It is doubtful how many of these semi-literate sloganizers could tell the difference between a stock and a bond.

Yet there they are, mouthing off about Wall Street on television, cheered on by politicians and the media. If this is not a golden age of presumptuous ignorance, perhaps it should be called a brass age.

No one has more brass than the President of the United States, though his brass may be more polished than that of the Occupy Wall Street mobs. When Barack Obama speaks loftily about "investing in the industries of the future," does anyone ask: What in the world would qualify him to know what are the industries of the future?

Why would people who have spent their careers in politics know more about investing than people who have spent their careers as investors?

Presumptuous ignorance is not confined to politicians or rowdy political activists, by any means. From time to time, I get a huffy letter or e-mail from a reader who begins, "You obviously don't know what you are talking about..."

The particular subject may be one on which my research assistants and I have amassed piles of research material and official statistics. It may even be a subject on which I have written a few books, but somehow the presumptuously ignorant just know that I didn't really study that issue, because my conclusions don't agree with theirs or with what they have heard.

At one time I was foolish enough to try to reason with such people. But one of the best New Year's resolutions I ever made, some years ago, was to stop trying to reason with unreasonable people. It has been good for my blood pressure and probably for my health in general.

A recent column that mentioned the "indirect subsidies" from the government to the Postal Service brought the presumptuously ignorant out in force, fighting mad.

Because the government does not directly subsidize the current operating expenses of the Postal Service, that is supposed to show that the Postal Service pays its own way and costs the taxpayers nothing.

Politicians may be crooks but they are not fools. Easily observed direct subsidies can create a political problem. Far better to set up an arrangement that will allow government-sponsored enterprises -- whether the Postal Service, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac or the Tennessee Valley Authority -- to operate in such a way that they can claim to be self-supporting and not costing the taxpayers anything, no matter how much indirect subsidy they get.

As just one example, the Postal Service has a multi-billion dollar line of credit at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Hey, we could all use a few billions, every now and then, to get us over the rough spots. But we are not the Postal Service.

Theoretically, the Postal Service is going to pay it all back some day, and that theoretical possibility keeps it from being called a direct subsidy. The Postal Service is also exempt from paying taxes, among other exemptions it has from costs that other businesses have to pay.

Exemption from taxes, and from other requirements that apply to other businesses, are also not called subsidies. For people who mistake words for realities, that is enough for them to buy the political line -- and to get huffy with those who don't.

Loan guarantees are a favorite form of hidden subsidies for all sorts of special interests. At a given point in time, it can be said that these guarantees cost the taxpayers nothing. But when they suddenly do cost something -- as with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- they can cost billions.

One of the reasons for so much presumptuous ignorance flourishing in our time may be the emphasis on "self-esteem" in our schools and colleges. Children not yet a decade old have been encouraged, or even required, to write letters to public figures, sounding off on issues ranging from taxes to nuclear missiles.

Our schools begin promoting presumptuous ignorance early on. It is apparently one of the few things they teach well. The end result is people without much knowledge, but with a lot of brass.
___________________________________

To read another article by Thomas Sowell, click here.

Obama Misquotes Lincoln

2012-01-25T12:30:00.000-08:00

Obama Misquotes Lincoln
The past is what our betters decide to make of it.
by John Hayward
01/25/2012

During his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night, President Obama quoted Abraham Lincoln as follows:

I'm a Democrat. But I believe what Republican Abraham Lincoln believed: That Government should do for people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more. That's why my education reform offers more competition, and more control for schools and States. That's why we're getting rid of regulations that don't work. That's why our health care law relies on a reformed private market, not a Government program.

Leaving aside the tortured logic of describing a government takeover of health insurance, with the practical effect (and secret ultimate goal) of driving private companies out of the industry altogether, as “a reformed private market,” or a top-down federally controlled public education system as containing any meaningful amount of “competition,” Obama is deliberately misquoting Lincoln, in a way that completely changes the meaning of what the Great Emancipator said.

Charles C. Johnson at Big Government got the actual Lincoln quote from distinguished professor Harry Jaffa of Claremont McKenna College, who was able to recite it from memory. The full quote is easily found on the Web, and presumably could have been located by President Obama’s immense royal retinue, if they had been interested in anything other than propaganda.

Here is what Lincoln actually said:

The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and individual capacities.

Obama didn’t merely paraphrase Lincoln’s words. He completely inverted their meaning. The government isn’t supposed to usurp the freedom of citizens when it thinks it can handle elements of their lives better than they can. That’s a recipe for “soft tyranny,” since the ruling class gets to decide whether it can handle any given endeavor better than the people. As Obama has demonstrated, the ruling class will make, and cling to, these judgments in defiance of all evidence to the contrary. He did just promise to double down on his solar-energy boondoggles, didn’t he?

Lincoln said the government is supposed to act in the case of serious needs the people cannot adequately meet on their own, in most cases because they involve the use of compulsive force to correct injustice: “all crimes, misdemeanors, and non-performance of contracts,” as he put it. He did list a few specific items that “exist independently of the injustice in the world,” some of which could have proved useful to President Obama, if he had been interested in quoting Lincoln accurately: “Making and maintaining roads, bridges, and the like; providing for the helpless young and afflicted; common schools; and disposing of deceased men's property, are instances.”

Honest Abe was comfortable with the government spending money on “infrastructure,” but that’s entirely separate from questioning how much of our money the government should be spending. Granting the duty of federal or state agencies to maintain roads and bridges does not mean granting limitless discretion for them to exercise as much power as they please in the endeavor. Obama tried to advance a false dichotomy during the State of the Union by suggesting that anyone who supports the government building roads is some kind of hypocrite for demanding reduced government spending, right after his butchered Lincoln quote:

On the other hand, even my Republican friends who complain the most about Government spending have supported federally-financed roads, and clean energy projects, and federal offices for the folks back home.

Lincoln was very clear about the limits of legitimate government, in the same speech that our supposedly super-intelligent President is either lying about, or did not bother to read. “In all that the people individually do as well for themselves,” Lincoln asserted, “government ought not to interfere.” He didn’t say “interfere a little” or “interfere when the government thinks it has detected some unfairness.”

The government Obama presides over has gone far beyond “providing for the helpless young and afflicted.” If vital welfare services for the truly destitute were the sum total of government spending, it would be a miniscule fraction of its current size. That’s why assaults on limited-government conservatives as heartless misers who don’t care about the poor are so deeply disingenuous. We have sailed very far beyond a “welfare state” for the needy. The Obama “transformation” is all about promoting middle-class dependency.

The title of Lincoln’s speech, by the way, is “The Nature and Object of Government, with Special Reference to Slavery.” Just try to imagine Barack Hussein Obama reading this passage out loud, without choking on the words:

Equality in society alike beats inequality, whether the latter be of the British aristocratic sort or of the domestic slavery sort. We know Southern men declare that their slaves are better off than hired laborers among us. How little they know whereof they speak!

There is no permanent class of hired laborers amongst us. Twenty-five years ago I was a hired laborer. The hired laborer of yesterday labors on his own account to-day, and will hire others to labor for him to-morrow. Advancement—improvement in condition—is the order of things in a society of equals. As labor is the common burden of our race, so the effort of some to shift their share of the burden onto the shoulders of others is the great durable curse of the race.

Lincoln was talking about slavery, but there are many other forms of indenture.
____________________________________________

To read another article by John Hayward, click here.
____________________________________________

To read a related article, click here.

Mitt Romney's taxes

2012-01-25T12:03:00.000-08:00

Mitt Romney's taxes
The defenders of an ineffective state whine about effective tax rates.
by John Hayward
01/25/2012

Mitt Romney’s long-awaited tax returns for 2010, and his estimated taxes for 2011, are finally in the hands of the media. The New York Times combed through hundreds of pages of documents…

… whoa, wait a second. Romney’s taxes are hundreds of pages long? I guess that might seem par for the course, as he’s pulling in $20 million per year. But when did we become comfortable with American citizens, even the rich ones, shuffling stacks of paperwork thicker than a Stephen King novel while Uncle Sam shakes the loose change out of their pockets? Americans are said to spend over 6 billion hours per year filling out tax forms. We have, sadly, come to accept that as reasonable.

At any rate, here’s the big picture, according to the Times:

Mr. Romney and his wife, Ann, had an effective federal income tax rate in 2010 of 13.9 percent, paying about $3 million in taxes on an adjusted gross income of $21.6 million, the vast majority of it flowing from a myriad of stock holdings, mutual funds and other investments, including profits and investment income from Bain Capital, the private equity firm Mr. Romney retired from in 1999.

That rate will rise to 15.4 percent for 2011, when the couple expects to report an adjusted gross income of about $20.9 million.

There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth about that 13.9 percent tax rate. As it happens, the lowest effective tax rate paid by a recent presidential contender was 13.1 percent. That fat-cat tax-evading money-grubbing greedy snob was none other than John Kerry, the Democrat candidate for President in 2004. As Romney pointed out in the Monday night GOP debate, he inherited nothing and earned his wealth. Kerry inherited everything, by marrying a rich man’s widow. Do you remember a lot of Democrats howling with rage over Kerry’s amazingly low effective tax rate? Was it ever mentioned at all?

Even at an effective rate of 13.9 percent, Romney forked over $3 million dollars, which is more than the combined payment of several hundred middle-class taxpayers. Barack Obama’s $3.6 trillion government spent Romney’s three million bucks in precisely 27 seconds. If every penny of Romney's annual tax was used to pay down the national debt, Obama's government would borrow it all back in 73 seconds. If the government had confiscated Romney’s full 2011 earnings of $20.9 million, it would have enough money to run for just over three minutes.

Since the average cost of Obama's "green jobs" works out to about $4.8 million apiece, Mitt Romney's annual taxes are not quite enough to fund one green job.

Romney's income puts him squarely in the special "super rich" category, the top one-tenth of one percent of all Americans. The Weekly Standard recently noted that this tiny group - there are less than 150,000 of them - pays 16.4 percent of the total federal tax burden. They pay more taxes than the lower 80 percent of income earners combined... but they're still not paying their "fair share." Confiscate 100 percent of their income, and you could fund the federal government for about two months.

The Times complains that “thanks to rules that tax income from investments at rates far lower than income earned in wages, Mr. Romney has a lower effective tax rate than many affluent Americans. Indeed, Mr. Romney will have given more to charity in 2010 and 2011 than to the federal treasury: more than $7 million in charitable donations, or about 16.5 percent of the family’s income, both directly and through the couple’s family foundation.”

And that’s supposed to be bad? Society would be better off if Romney gave all that money to Obama’s government, where it would be devoured by bureaucrats, doled out to politically connected supporters, and eventually burped out as a handful of coins for the needy? Romney said in the last debate that he was proud to pay a huge sum in taxes, but he should be much prouder of those charitable donations. At least they didn’t vanish into an insatiable black hole of waste and graft.

In a similar vein, the corners have already been chewed off those capital gains dollars, through some of the highest corporate taxes in the world, before they get taxed again as personal income. But we’re not supposed to think about the double taxation at all. Instead, the Left wants us to view capital gains as another rich potential source of government revenue. Never mind that we also want to encourage private investment… but we’ll see less of it when taxes rise, and then liberals will scratch their heads about the mysteriously stagnant economy, and start looking for someone else to blame. They'll crank up the tax rates, introduce a new round of brilliantly crafted deductions to control how money is spent, and then start complaining about the greedy sons-of-guns who actually take all those deductions.

The whole point of the encyclopedia-sized maze of paperwork someone like Mitt Romney files with the IRS is to protect income by taking lawful deductions, which the government offers to encourage certain forms of behavior. The immense power conveyed by using the tax code to fine-tune our populace is not something politicians would surrender without the fight of their lives, which is why they’ll battle Fair Tax and Flat Tax reform plans to the death. And yet, someone who dutifully obeys the State and spends his money in the desired manner becomes a target of hatred and envy. Instead of just asking how much money Mitt Romney paid in taxes, why don’t we total up how much he spent in ways the authors of our tax code directed him to?

Instead of fiddling around with huge volumes of tax law to produce ideologically acceptable outcomes, the government should be taking as little as possible from its citizens, using the most clear and simple methods possible, and spending no more than it collects. That will never happen, but the acolytes of leftist Big Government also don’t have the guts to do what they really want, and call for the seizure of all income above a politically determined limit. “I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money,” as lifelong politician Barack Obama once observed.

Instead, we get the Times sniffing about how Romney’s tax disclosure is likely to “spur new questions about the structure of his investments, including those in partnerships and funds based overseas.” Big Government will never stop “spurring” itself to ask “new questions” about a vast number of things that should be none of its business. The penumbra of State power extends far beyond merely enforcing clear, duly passed laws. Its acolytes presume to pass judgment on lawful behavior they find unacceptable… and they keep repeating that judgment until it becomes unlawful.

That’s how we’ve reached the point where a law-abiding, successful man can submit a phone book worth of paper to the government every year, and be told he still hasn’t submitted enough.
____________________________________________

To read another article by John Hayward, click here.

Republican response: Obama's speech didn't ring true

2012-01-25T11:44:00.000-08:00

Republican response: Obama's speech didn't ring true
by Audrey Hudson
01/25/2012

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address was full of promises for reforming the government and boosting the economy but Republican lawmakers say they don’t have much confidence in the president or his policies.

“He talks a good game but the results just aren’t there for the American people,” said Sen. John Barrasso (R. –WY).

“The country is not better off today than it was three years ago,” Barrasso said. “We are living under Obama’s economy and we have the president and his policies to thank for where we are – higher unemployment, higher costs for energy, lower values on our homes, the list goes on an on.”

Rep. Tom McClintock (R. –CA) said the speech was indistinguishable from Obama’s previous addresses and highlighted the “same government bromides that have utterly failed.”

The more Obama invests in his mistake, the less willing he is to admit them, McClintock said.

“We have needlessly lengthened and prolonged and deepened this economic suffering and squandered trillions of dollars in the process, and his answer to this failure is more of the same,” McClintock said.

Obama came armed with a long to-do list for Congress, and said that if Republicans obstruct his agenda he will find a way around them. “Some of what’s broken has to do with the way Congress does its business these days,” the president said.

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels delivered the GOP response immediately following the president’s annual speech, and called Obama’s attacks on Congressional Republicans unfair and untrue.

“No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us, to curry favor with some Americans by castigating others,” Daniels said.

“As in previous moments of national danger, we Americans are all in the same boat. If we drift, quarreling and paralyzed, over a Niagara of debt, we will all suffer, regardless of income, race, gender, or other category. If we fail to shift to a pro-jobs, pro-growth economic policy, there will never be enough public revenue to pay for our safety net, national security, or whatever size government we decide to have,” Daniels said.

House Republicans are the only lawmakers who have passed bills in the last year to reduce borrowing, reform entitlements and encourage new job creation, “only to be shot down nearly time and again by the president and his Democrat Senate allies,” Daniels said.

Rep. Steve Pearce (R. –NM) said the president’s words didn’t match his actions of the last three years.

“I’m all for the things that he says, I’m just not sure he’s all for the things that he said. He says we need more energy but he’s doing everything he can to make energy harder to produce. He wants to reform the tax code and I agree, but he hasn’t done anything about it, and I agree with offshore drilling, but he never got around to doing it,” Pearce said.

Added Rep. David Schweikert (R-AZ): “How this Senate and administration can continue to talk about jobs and reining in government spending with a straight face is beyond me. The House has passed a budget, not to mention nearly 30 jobs bills, only to see them die in the black hole of Harry Reid’s Senate.”

The focus shifted to First Lady Michelle Obama’s box above the House chamber floor and her guest Debbie Bosanek as the president touched on his plan to raise taxes on the rich. Bosanek has worked for two decades as Warren Buffett’s secretary.

“Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary,” Obama said.

“We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by. Or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

One Republican Senator was heard to remark that perhaps the billionaire Buffett should consider giving his employee a raise.

Republicans said it’s not likely Congress will pass Obama’s proposed taxes, and in light of the federal deficit reaching more than $15 trillion, say the focus should remain on spending cuts.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R. –FL) called it “counterproductive” to tell Americans the only way their jobs can be protected is to raise their bosses’ taxes. “When I hear policymakers in Washington pitting the American people against each other, telling people that the only way you can do better is if someone else is worse off, I get concerned. Because not only is it not true, that type of thought has never worked anywhere in the world,” Rubio said.

Added Rep. Jim Jordan (R. –OH), chairman of the Republican Study Committee: "Scattered throughout tonight's speech was the ridiculous idea that America isn't fair because successful people get to keep too much of the money they earn. The president also prescribes more taxpayer-funded failures like Solyndra while blocking the jobs and energy that would come from building the Keystone pipeline.

That's not the way to create jobs or an economy that’s built to last.”

(Watch Gov. Mitch Daniels deliver the GOP response below.)
Click here.
_________________________________

To read a related article, click here.
_________________________________

To read another article by Audrey Hudson, click here.

Affirmative Action Reconsidered

2012-01-25T11:32:00.000-08:00

Affirmative Action Reconsidered
By Kevin Mooney on 1.25.12 @ 6:08AM

New legal cases and initiatives confirm renewed popular opposition to race as an organizing principle in American society.

When President John F. Kennedy included a call for "affirmative action" as part of an executive order he issued in 1961, the phrase was widely viewed as a proactive extension of the civil rights movement. The idea was to adopt corrective measures that would reverse discriminatory practices and for employers to open up new opportunities to minorities who had been denied equal treatment. However, for Americans living in the 21st century, the concept of affirmative action in employment, college admissions, and government contracting has conflicting connotations.

For some, the term is synonymous with the use of racial quotas, set-asides, and other preferential policies at odds with constitutional rights. For others, affirmative action continues to register as a benign, anti-discriminatory policy measure aimed at compensating minority groups for past injustices and safeguarding hard fought gains.

But the existing legal regime that sorts out individual Americans on the basis of race is no longer tenable in a society that has become more multi-ethnic at the turn of the century, Roger Clegg, the president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO), told listeners during a recent Federalist Society luncheon in New Orleans. In fact, in some parts of the country, it is no longer clear which group is actually in the minority, Clegg noted in his talk. Moreover, many individual Americans check off more than one box when asked about their ethnicity in census samples, he points out.

But there is another option gaining momentum at the state level that appeals to long-standing constitutional ideals. In defiance of academic elites, far-left pressure groups and establishment figures in both major political parties, average Americans are voting down race and gender preferences as a matter of government policy; and they are doing so by sizable majorities. The demographic shift that has become evident in recent years is at least partly responsible for the public's heightened opposition toward preferential policies, Clegg suggested.

"There is a form of affirmative action that is not controversial, that no one is trying to abolish," he said. "It does not violate the original meaning of the phrase. The idea was that companies that may have had a history of discrimination could not just sign a piece of paper and pretend that it wasn't a problem anymore. Instead, they had to take proactive measures."

But affirmative action does become controversial, Clegg added, when it is attached to policies that treat people differently based on their ethnicity or gender. This approach, which is still operative in many government agencies and academic institutions, no longer sits well with a growing majority of Americans.

Up next for voter approval, is the Oklahoma Civil Rights Initiative (OCRI), which will be on the state ballot in November. The proposal would amend the state constitution with language prohibiting government-sanctioned discrimination.

State Sen. Robert Johnson, the prime sponsor of the resolution to put the civil rights initiative on the ballot, has invoked language reminiscent of Martin Luther King Jr. to make his case.

"I have always believed we should be evaluated by our character and merit, not by the color of our skin," he has observed. "Equality of the law is a fundamental American value. This proposal would give Oklahoma voters the opportunity to reaffirm the importance of that value in state government."

The proposed amendment declares: "The state shall not grant preferential treatment to, or discriminate against, any individual or group on the basis of race, color sex, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting." The Oklahoma initiative is closely patterned after California's Proposition 209, which passed with 54 percent of the vote in 1996.

While the language is as clear and unambiguous as the public sentiment behind it, the mixed messages of the U.S. Supreme Court have created an uncertain legal environment that allows for continued judicial mischief at the lower level. Writing for the majority in the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger opinion, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor ruled that it was permissible for the University of Michigan Law School to use race as one of many factors in a "narrowly tailored" fashion to achieve student diversity. But in the concurrent Gratz v. Bollinger ruling, the majority of justices rejected the point system used at the University of Michigan undergraduate school. When the two rulings are blended together, it is evident that the high court is opposed to the use of overt quotas and set-asides.

Left-leaning political figures who are working to overturn or block the civil rights initiatives typically aim their arrow through the Grutter ruling. Gov. Jerry Brown of California filed an amicus brief last year backing up the latest legal challenge to Proposition 209 that is now before the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. But just a few months later, Brown also saw fit to veto legislation that would have reinstated race and gender preferences. Even as he attempts to placate his far left base, Brown recognizes that he faces an uphill climb in the court system.

Ward Connerly, the former University of California regent who was the galvanizing influence behind the civil rights initiative, had threatened to take legal action if Brown signed off on the bill. Moreover, the 9th Circuit and the California Supreme Court have already upheld the constitutionality of Proposition 209.

"By Any Means Necessary"

The key instigator behind the continued legal challenges to Connerly's initiatives is a highly aggressive pressure group known in full as the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), which came together in response to Proposition 209. Shanta Driver, a 1975 Harvard graduate with a J.D. from Wayne State University Law School, founded the organization in 1995. BAMN claims it is out to "restore the real meaning" of the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause.

To this end, it has repeatedly filed suit in an effort to overturn the initiatives. Last year, on July 1, two Clinton appointees, who formed a majority on a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, embraced BAMN's tortured legal reasoning. Judges R. Guy Cole Jr. and Martha Craig Daughtrey ruled that the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI), widely known as Proposal 2, is unconstitutional because it alters the state's political structure in a manner that unduly burdens racial minorities. The case could conceivably go back to the U.S. Supreme Court if the ruling in Michigan stands and remains in conflict with court decisions that uphold Proposition 209 in California.

"When it comes to race, nothing is unbelievable and nothing is surprising," said Connerly, who now heads up the American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI) based on Sacramento. "This is the kind of decision that reaffirms the idea that some groups will work to preserve preferences 'by any means necessary.' I know they [BAMN attorneys] believe they have hit pay dirt here. But I have spoken with very good constitutional scholars and I am absolutely convinced that this case will be overturned before the full sixth circuit. If by some chance this case does go to the U.S. Supreme Court, I expect that we'll get the ruling we have long desired on the issue of preferences and they will bite the dust once and for all."

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette has successfully petitioned the Sixth Circuit to rehear the case en banc (in full). He issued his first brief in defense of MCRI earlier this month. The civil rights law remains in full force pending a final court ruling, which is expected within the next few months.

While BAMN and other hostile litigants continue to invoke Grutter as a rationale for the continuation of race and gender preferences, they persistently misconstrue the larger point behind the ruling, Jennifer Gratz, the executive director of the MCRI, explained.

"While it's clear that O'Connor favored a holistic approach that included race, she also said it was acceptable for voters in states to make preferences unconstitutional," observes Gratz, who was also the plaintiff in the other Supreme Court case that struck down quotas at the University of Michigan. "She [O'Connor] certainly did not mandate the use of preferences and made it clear that over the next 25 years [from the time of that decision] race should ultimately cease to be a factor."

O'Connor specifically cited state laws in California, Washington State, and Florida (that were in effect at the time of her ruling) banning race and gender preferences as examples of what other states should be emulating. Since then, Arizona and Nebraska have also passed constitutional amendments banning preferential policies.

While Connerly continues to encourage grassroots activists who are ambitious to pass new initiatives in their home states, he cautions them against placing too much faith in either major political party. Despite embracing post-racial sentiments during his 2008 election effort, President Obama has inserted race and gender preferences into the Dodd-Frank finance bill, the health care bill, and the stimulus package, which are highlighted in a report from ACRI.

In Michigan, former President Gerald Ford joined with other Republicans running for state-wide office in 2006 to oppose the initiative banning preferences. Those Republicans lost; the initiative passed with broad support across party lines.

There's a lesson in that.
_________________________________________

To read another article by Kevin Mooney, click here.

Obama Against Any President

2012-01-25T11:16:00.000-08:00

Obama Against Any President
By Burton Folsom, Jr. & Anita Folsom on 1.25.12 @ 6:08AM

What really makes a president great?

According to President Obama, those presidents who grow government the most are candidates for being the greatest presidents. Big glitzy programs count for a lot. In an interview with Steve Kroft of CBS on 60 Minutes Overtime, President Obama spoke glowingly of his contributions: "I would put our legislative and foreign policy accomplishments in our first two years against any president -- with the possible exceptions of Johnson, FDR, and Lincoln -- just in terms of what we've gotten done in modern history."

A key problem, of course, is that the president's two largest programs, his stimulus package and Obamacare, are both under an avalanche of criticism. The stimulus package led to a rise, not a fall in unemployment, and its pork-barrel provisions are exposed almost daily. Obamacare scores low in the polls; it is heavily challenged in the courts; and all Republicans voted against it and most ran elections against it very successfully in 2010.

Presidents Johnson and FDR have similar baggage. In Johnson's first two years, Vietnam became intractable; and increasing the payments in Aid to Families with Dependent Children gave single mothers incentives to take the cash from the government and not get married. FDR's major programs of his first two years, the AAA and the NRA, were both struck down by the Supreme Court. And FDR ended up with more than 19% unemployment in 1938 when the countries of Europe, according to a League of Nations survey, had only 11%. Is that the kind of success a president should emulate?

If we look at the opinions of historians, however, President Obama may be on the right track. They tend to give high ratings to presidents who announce big programs and increase the national debt sharply. Johnson does well, and FDR does even better -- ranking among the top three presidents in most polls. The Arthur Schlesinger Presidential Polls, for example, conducted in 1948, 1962, and 1996, consistently exalted FDR at the top, or near the top.

How do historians rank presidents who achieve prosperity and security for Americans? Let's pose the question this way: What if we had a president who, in his first two years as president, cut federal spending in half; produced budget surpluses in both years; cut tax rates, and slashed unemployment from 12 to 2%? Where should historians rank such a man?

The answer is "in last place -- the worst president in U.S. history." That has been the fate of Warren G. Harding, who was president from 1921 to 1923. He accomplished all of the above -- the federal budget plummeted from $6.4 billion in 1920 to $3.1 billion in 1923; tax rates on the rich fell from 73 to 56%; and the U.S. slashed the national debt and unemployment during Harding's two years as president -- before his untimely death in office.

True, some historians point out, Harding had two major scandals with the Veterans' Administration and with oil leases at Teapot Dome. His appointees extorted or stole public money, but Harding seems to have known nothing about it. Along these lines, Solyndra and Fast and Furious, two recent Obama scandals, may prove to be as damaging to him as Teapot Dome was to Harding.

But Harding's record at improving prosperity for Americans was strong. And shouldn't that be a major point in evaluating his presidency? Harding's humdrum cuts in tax rates and federal spending may lack drama, but they gave Americans jobs.

Under President Obama, by contrast, millions of jobs have disappeared, home values are way down, and standards of living have declined. Yet President Obama tells us he likes "what we've gotten done" with Obamacare and stimulus spending. So do most historians. But historians are safe with tenured jobs; other Americans get laid off when taxes rise, regulations increase, and debt skyrockets to pay for Obama's hope and change. And they, more than the historians, will elect the next president in 2012.

About the Author

Burton Folsom, Jr. is professor of history at Hillsdale College and author of New Deal or Raw Deal? (Simon & Schuster, 2008). His new book, co-authored with Anita Folsom, is FDR Goes to War: How Expanded Executive Power, Spiraling National Debt, and Restricted Civil Liberties Shaped Wartime America (Simon & Schuster, 2011).

About the Author

Anita Folsom works at Hillsdale College and is co-author of FDR Goes to War: How Expanded Executive Power, Spiraling National Debt, and Restricted Civil Liberties Shaped Wartime America (Simon & Schuster, 2011).

Obama's Open Buffet

2012-01-25T11:07:00.000-08:00

Obama's Open Buffet
By George Neumayr on 1.25.12 @ 6:09AM

He dishes up more gimmicky socialism in his State of the Union address.

Glib and cocky as ever, Barack Obama used his State of the Union address on Tuesday night to push his sophomoric and gimmicky socialism. While the nation drowns in debt and the economy continues to teeter, Obama devotes himself to the empty symbolism of the "Buffett rule." He had the Omaha billionaire's secretary placed in a seat of honor near the First Lady.

Barack and Michelle are the quintessential champagne socialists, enjoying the trappings of power -- the First Lady donned an ostentatious royal blue designer dress that probably cost more than several months of her prop's secretarial salary -- while decrying the excesses of the rich.

The speech was immensely dull, revolving around the usual tedious laundry list of nothing proposals. It made Monday's sterile Republican presidential candidates debate look stimulating.

Obama conceives of himself as the great puppet master of the American economy, doling out "rewards" and "punishments" to the business community. He paid tribute to the widow of Steve Jobs, also strategically placed in the audience. This seemed odd. Didn't Steve Jobs regard Obama as an anti-business president? Jobs was also known for shipping jobs to Asia, owing to the left's stifling regulations. Obama, in this address, made a special point of condemning this practice, vowing to reward companies that keep jobs at home and punish companies that go global.

It is clear that Obama doesn't want companies to prosper here or abroad, unless they somehow fit into his statist schemes. The speech was full of dreary government-knows-best proposals. The great community organizer announced that community colleges under his leadership will play a pivotal role in the revival of the American economy. Community colleges can become "community career centers" that tutor Americans in new skills, he said. Obama also revealed his high hopes for wind farms and other forms of "clean energy."

He made liberal use of the word "investment" as his euphemism for new government programs. Near the beginning of the speech, he praised bailouts (he bragged at length about bailing out the American auto industry); by the end of it, he had vowed to end them.

He professed great regard for the martial virtues of America's soldiers, holding them out as an example to bickering and undisciplined politicians. Candidate Obama had said George W. Bush's wars ruined America's standing in the world. But now he says that the returning soldiers from Iraq elevated the world's "respect" for America.

Having already turned America's military over to gay rights activists, he now unleashes environmentalists on them too. One of the military's new missions, according to his State of the Union address, is to offer a helping hand in the search for "clean energy."

Obama strained hard to remind Americans that Osama bin Laden was killed on his watch and that he is passionately pro-military. He said that he wants to set up a jobs program for returning vets. He rejected the assertion that America is in decline. "America is back," he declared.

Sensing that he needed to offer a few words in support of leaner government, he quoted a line from Abraham Lincoln to the effect that government should only perform those tasks beyond the power of the people. Never mind that most of the proposals in the speech were a violation of this principle. By "shared responsibility," the jargony phrase with which he peppered the speech, he means a fatter federal government that swoops down and takes responsibility from the people.

"Spreading the wealth around," as he said to Joe the Plumber in 2008, is his organizing principle. Wealth belongs to the government automatically, under this thinking, and so any money not taken by Obama constitutes in his mind reckless government "spending." It pains him to think that millionaires are making profits off already-taxed money. He proposes the Buffett rule to correct this injustice and usher in a new era of income equality. This isn't "class warfare," he said, but "common sense," a threadbare claim the 2012 race will test.
_______________________________________

To read another article by George Neumayr, click here.
_______________________________________

To read a related article, click here.

Gingrich Frames the Debate

2012-01-25T10:52:00.000-08:00

Gingrich Frames the Debate
By Peter Ferrara on 1.25.12 @ 6:09AM

Before this campaign is over, America will know who Saul Alinsky is, even if Mitt Romney does not.

Let me just say that I believe the debate we're going to have with President Obama over the next eight or nine months is the outlining of the two Americas:

Those two choices, I believe, will give the American people a chance to decide permanently whether we want to remain the historic America that has provided opportunity for more people of more backgrounds than any country in history, or whether, in fact, we prefer to become a brand-new, secular, European-style, bureaucratic socialist system.

The America of the Declaration of Independence v. the America of Saul Alinsky; the America of paychecks v. the America of food stamps; the America of Independence v. the America of Dependence; the America of strength in foreign policy v. the America of weakness in foreign policy.

In so summarizing his South Carolina victory speech last week, Newt Gingrich framed the debate against President Obama with a clear vision that will sharply clarify the choice the American people will have to make this year.

Do we want the America of the Declaration of Independence? Or the America of radical Marxist revolutionary and social manipulator Saul Alinsky? One TV commentator indicated that most Americans do not even know who Saul Alinsky was. But that is exactly why Gingrich is so right to frame the debate this way, because with Barack Obama as their President, Americans need to know who Saul Alinsky was, and when Gingrich is done with his campaign, every American will.

President Obama is not only a follower of Saul Alinsky, and literally a practitioner of his strategies and tactics for the radical socialist takeover of America. After graduation from Harvard Law School, Obama was an instructor of fellow Marxist comrades in the Alinsky philosophy and methodology of social manipulation for the radical Marxist organization ACORN.

The American people need to know this, and all about Alinsky, to make an informed decision on whether to vote for Obama for reelection. That vote would represent a fundamental rejection of America, and all it has stood for since 1776.

America has long been the land of world leading prosperity, a true workers' paradise. But the real point of Obama's State of the Union last night was that all of that has to change now, because America is "unfair," in the Alinsky/Marxist worldview.

Let's give the President credit where credit is due. Obama is a very sophisticated Marxist philosopher, combining the highly advanced social manipulation tactics of Alinsky with careful, long developed insights in how to craft a modern, neo-Marxist message to sell to a majority of modern America. This is what we heard in last night's State of the Union. The real question this year is whether this generation of Americans can be duped into trashing the greatest, most prosperous, most successful nation in the history of the world, for a retrograde Marxist vision that thoroughly failed throughout the last century, and which the rest of the world has learned through hard experience is confused to the point of practical silliness. This only indicates how much deep trouble America is in, with Obama as President, and his philosophy and worldview having taken over the modern Democrat party.

What Gingrich indicated in his South Carolina victory speech is that he understands what Obama is really all about, and the fundamental challenge he represents to the future of America. And he intends to reveal the truth of Obama's carefully crafted neo-Marxist message to the American people.

Gingrich is the only candidate remotely capable of carrying the flag for the true, original, historic America in this fundamental, existential battle for national survival. He so rightly identified the public mood in his South Carolina speech, saying, "The American people feel that they have elites who have been trying for a half-century to force us to quit being American and become some kind of other system." He further identified the pending danger, "If Barack Obama can get re-elected after this disaster, just think how radical he would be in a second term."

Gingrich recognizes the central importance of the economic issues in this campaign, and has proposed the most specific, most bold, most comprehensive supply-side economic recovery program of all the candidates, which I have discussed in this space before. He very effectively dramatizes that by saying, "President Obama has been, historically, the most effective food stamp President in American history…. If you want your children to have a life of dependency on food stamps, you have a candidate, it's Barack Obama. If you want your children to have a life of independence and paychecks you have a candidate, it's Newt Gingrich."

Gingrich recognizes another component of his long-term economic recovery and prosperity program is an American energy policy, unleashing producers to maximize production of American energy from all sources. He adds as another central component: "Since I am the only Speaker of the House in your lifetime to have helped create four consecutive balanced budgets, I think I can tell you, as President, I will work very hard to get back to a balanced budget as rapidly as possible, and then to run a surplus to pay down the debt so no Chinese leverage exists on the United States by having our debt." Indeed, as Speaker, he left a legacy of paying down $560 billion in debt with four consecutive record budget surpluses.

Gingrich rightly touts his proven leadership and success on these policies, saying, "I worked with Ronald Reagan to create jobs, and 16 million jobs were created by the American people in the 1980s. I worked with Bill Clinton, the Democrat, to create jobs, and 11 million jobs were created by the American people during the four years that I was Speaker." His goal in sharp contrast to Obama: "I would like to be the best paycheck President in American history."

He also recognizes that "One of the key issues is the growing anti-religious bigotry of our elites." He served as one of the most faithful, highly effective leaders in modern history on social conservative issues while in office, from pro-life, to pro-gun rights, to pro-family and traditional moral values issues. Most intriguing, he has proposed in this campaign a comprehensive, truly original, historically and legally based strategy to counter liberal activist judges, who have implemented from the bench in recent decades the social liberal agenda. (See Newt.org).

Gingrich concludes, however:

But the centerpiece of this campaign, I believe, is American exceptionalism versus the radicalism of Saul Alinsky….[W]hat we are going to argue is that American exceptionalism, the American Declaration of Independence, the American Constitution, the American Federalist papers, the Founding Fathers of America, are the source from which we draw our understanding of America. [Obama] draws his from Saul Alinsky, radical left-wingers, and people who don't like the classical America.

Having served President Reagan in the White House Office of Policy Development in the early 1980s, I can say the comprehensive conservatism and breadth of this South Carolina victory speech is quintessentially Reagan.

The Romney Trash-Talking Contrast

In sharp contrast, Romney is the perfect foil for Obama's Alinsky strategy and tactics. Everything about him, from his business career, to his public record, to his appearance, to his inability to express fundamental principles and philosophy, only communicates "Country Club" Republican. Al Sharpton calls him "Mr. 1%." Does the Republican Party, let alone confused "conservative" talking heads, really want to run this year against Obama a Wall Street multimillionaire who pays a 15% tax rate, and can't explain or defend that?

Instead of the inspiring substance of leadership that Gingrich has provided, Romney has engaged in low brow trash talking, backed by the millions provided by his Country Club cronies. Romney says, "We're not seeking a talk show host. We're seeking a leader." New Jersey Governor and Romney crony Chris Christie chimes in, "Newt has been an embarrassment to the Republican Party."

You want a leader? Gingrich led the entire party to an historic victory in 1994 to the first Republican takeover of Congress in 40 years, something even Reagan didn't accomplish. Then in 1996 and 1998, Gingrich as Speaker led the first reelection of Republican House majorities in since the 1920s. Some embarrassment, Chris.

Romney has no comparable history of successful political leadership. Instead, he has lost every race he has run, except his one gubernatorial victory in Massachusetts. Some leadership.

Instead, Romney has sent his surrogates out to trash the true leader with the false claim that he had to resign as Speaker in disgrace, the only Speaker to have to resign in U.S. history, they say. The only problem is that there was no resignation, and there was no disgrace.

Gingrich never resigned as Speaker. In 1998, after Republicans failed to make the traditional gains expected in a second midterm election, Gingrich took responsibility as the leader to decline to run for reelection as Speaker.

Moreover, the Romney campaign is engaging in the same calculated deception as Obama in arguing he had to resign in disgrace over supposed ethics charges, taking advantage of what it hopes is a public with short memories. The "ethics" charges were filed against Gingrich at the beginning of his service as Speaker, by defeated left-wing Democrats bitter over losing their first majority in 40 years. This was the exact same thing that was done to Sarah Palin recently. Out of 84 supposed charges, 83 were dismissed. The IRS cleared Gingrich of the last years later. In January 1997, upon returning for a second term as Speaker, Gingrich settled to end the political mudslinging by agreeing to pay $300,000 to cover the costs of the investigation. There was no fine. Gingrich did not leave as Speaker until two years after that, upon the disappointing election results discussed above.

But he left as a legacy the first reelected Republican House majorities in 70 years, since the 1920s, and record budget surpluses, balancing the budget in three years instead of the expected seven, doing it the only way it has ever been done, cutting both taxes and spending. Contrast that with Romney mentor and cheerleader George H.W. Bush, who in 1990 fell for Democrat seduction for tax increases that are still with us, in return for budget cuts that never happened, with the deficit soaring by 50% as a result.

Yet, Romney continues with his own disgrace, charging Gingrich with "influence peddling." But he provides exactly zero documentation of any instance of actual influence peddling. Gingrich's consulting contracts all included prohibitions of any lobbying of any sort, at his insistence. For making that dishonest charge without documentation, it is Romney who should resign his campaign, in disgrace.
_________________________________________

To read another article by Peter Ferrara, click here.
_________________________________________

To read a related article, click here.

SOTU FACT CHECK: Obama pushes plans that flopped before

2012-01-25T10:34:00.000-08:00

FACT CHECK: Obama pushes plans that flopped before
CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press
Updated 04:32 a.m., Wednesday, January 25, 2012

President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012. Listen in back are Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker John Boehner, right.
President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address on...

WASHINGTON (AP) — It was a wish list, not a to-do list.

President Barack Obama laid out an array of plans in his State of the Union speech as if his hands weren't so tied by political realities. There can be little more than wishful thinking behind his call to end oil industry subsidies — something he could not get through a Democratic Congress, much less today's divided Congress, much less in this election year.

And there was more recycling, in an even more forbidding climate than when the ideas were new: He pushed for an immigration overhaul that he couldn't get past Democrats, permanent college tuition tax credits that he asked for a year ago, and familiar discouragements for companies that move overseas.

A look at Obama's rhetoric Tuesday night and how it fits with the facts and political circumstances:

___

OBAMA: "We have subsidized oil companies for a century. That's long enough. It's time to end the taxpayer giveaways to an industry that's rarely been more profitable, and double-down on a clean energy industry that's never been more promising."

THE FACTS: This is at least Obama's third run at stripping subsidies from the oil industry. Back when fellow Democrats formed the House and Senate majorities, he sought $36.5 billion in tax increases on oil and gas companies over the next decade, but Congress largely ignored the request. He called again to end such tax breaks in last year's State of the Union speech. And he's now doing it again, despite facing a wall of opposition from Republicans who want to spur domestic oil and gas production and oppose tax increases generally.

___

OBAMA: "Our health care law relies on a reformed private market, not a government program."

THE FACTS: That's only half true. About half of the more than 30 million uninsured Americans expected to gain coverage through the health care law will be enrolled in a government program. Medicaid, the federal-state program for low-income people, will be expanded starting in 2014 to cover childless adults living near the poverty line.

The other half will be enrolled in private health plans through new state-based insurance markets. But many of them will be receiving federal subsidies to make their premiums more affordable. And that's a government program, too.

Starting in 2014 most Americans will be required to carry health coverage, either through an employer, by buying their own plan, or through a government program.

___

OBAMA, asking Congress to pay for construction projects: "Take the money we're no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home."

THE FACTS: The idea of taking war "savings" to pay for other programs is budgetary sleight of hand. For one thing, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been largely financed through borrowing, so stopping the wars doesn't create a pool of ready cash, just less debt. And the savings appear to be based at least in part on inflated war spending estimates for future years.

___

OBAMA: "Through the power of our diplomacy a world that was once divided about how to deal with Iran's nuclear program now stands as one."

THE FACTS: The world is still divided over how to deal with Iran's disputed nuclear program, and even over whether the nuclear program is a problem at all.

It is true that the U.S., Europe and other nations have agreed to apply the strictest economic sanctions yet on Iran later this year. But the global sanctions net has holes, because some of Iran's large oil trading partners won't go along. China, a major purchaser of Iran's crude, isn't part of the new sanctions and, together with Russia, stopped the United Nations from applying similarly tough penalties.

___

OBAMA: "Tonight, I want to speak about how we move forward, and lay out a blueprint for an economy that's built to last - an economy built on American manufacturing, American energy, skills for American workers, and a renewal of American values."

THE FACTS: Economists do see manufacturing growth as a necessary component of any U.S. recovery. U.S. manufacturing output climbed 0.9 percent in December, the biggest gain since December 2010. Yet Obama's apparent vision of a nation once again propelled by manufacturing — a vision shared by many Republicans — may already have slipped into the past.

Over generations, the economy has become ever more driven by services; not since 1975 has the U.S. had a surplus in merchandise trade, which covers trade in goods, including manufactured and farm goods. About 90 percent of American workers are employed in the service sector, a profound shift in the nature of the workforce over many decades.

The overall trade deficit through the first 11 months of 2011 ran at an annual rate of nearly $600 billion, up almost 12 percent from the year before.

___

OBAMA: "The Taliban's momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home."

THE FACTS: Obama is more sanguine about progress in Afghanistan than his own intelligence apparatus. The latest National Intelligence Estimate on Afghanistan warns that the Taliban will grow stronger, using fledgling talks with the U.S. to gain credibility and stall until U.S. troops leave, while continuing to fight for more territory. The classified assessment, described to The Associated Press by officials who have seen it, says the Afghan government hasn't been able to establish credibility with its people, and predicts the Taliban and warlords will largely control the countryside.

___

OBAMA: "On the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Some even said we should let it die. With a million jobs at stake, I refused to let that happen. In exchange for help, we demanded responsibility. We got workers and automakers to settle their differences. We got the industry to retool and restructure. Today, General Motors is back on top as the world's number one automaker. Chrysler has grown faster in the U.S. than any major car company. Ford is investing billions in U.S. plants and factories."

THE FACTS: He left out some key details. The bailout of General Motors and Chrysler began under Republican President George W. Bush. Obama picked up the ball, earmarked more money, and finished the job. But Ford never asked for a federal bailout and never got one.

___

OBAMA: "We can also spur energy innovation with new incentives. The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change. But there's no reason why Congress shouldn't at least set a clean energy standard that creates a market for innovation."

THE FACTS: With this statement, Obama was renewing a call he made last year to require 80 percent of the nation's electricity to come from clean energy sources by 2035, including nuclear, natural gas and so-called clean coal. He did not put that percentage in his speech but White House background papers show that it remains his goal.

But this Congress has yet to introduce a bill to make that goal a reality, and while legislation may be introduced this year, it is unlikely to become law with a Republican-controlled House that loathes mandates.

___

OBAMA: "Right now, because of loopholes and shelters in the tax code, a quarter of all millionaires pay lower tax rates than millions of middle-class households."

THE FACTS: It's true that a minority of millionaires pay a lower tax rate than some lower-income people. On average, though, wealthy people pay taxes at a much higher rate than middle-income taxpayers.

Obama's claim comes from a Congressional Research Service report that compared federal taxes paid by people making less than $100,000 with those paid by people making more than $1 million. About 10 percent of families with incomes under $100,000 paid more than 26.5 percent in federal income, payroll and corporate taxes. And about a quarter of millionaire taxpayers paid a rate lower than that.

___

OBAMA: "We can't bring back every job that's left our shores.... Tonight, my message to business leaders is simple: Ask yourselves what you can do to bring jobs back to your country, and your country will do everything we can to help you succeed."

FACT CHECK: Many of the jobs U.S. companies have created overseas won't return because they were never in the United States in the first place.

As Obama said in his speech, U.S. workers have become more productive and labor costs have fallen.

But there are powerful forces pushing the other way: Many of the overseas jobs in U.S. companies weren't transferred from the U.S. They were created in fast-growing markets in Latin America, Asia and elsewhere to serve customers in those markets. Companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 index now earn more than half of their revenue from overseas.

That has fueled more job creation abroad. U.S. multinationals cut more than 800,000 jobs in the United States from 2000 to 2009, according the Commerce Department. They added 2.9 million overseas in the same period.

___

OBAMA: "Anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned doesn't know what they're talking about ... That's not how people feel from Tokyo to Berlin; from Cape Town to Rio; where opinions of America are higher than they've been in years."

THE FACTS: Obama left out Arab and Muslim nations, where popular opinion of the U.S. appears to have gone downhill or remained unchanged after the spring 2011 reformist uprisings in the Middle East. A Pew Research Center survey in May found that in predominantly Muslim countries such as Turkey, Jordan and Pakistan, views of the U.S. were worse than a year earlier. In Pakistan, a major recipient of U.S. foreign aid that went unmentioned in Obama's speech, just 11 percent of respondents said they held a positive view of the United States.

FOUND ON A SEABEE MESSAGE BOARD:

2012-01-25T10:03:00.001-08:00

FOUND ON A SEABEE MESSAGE BOARD:

Piss on a Crucifix, and they'll call you an "Artist"

Piss on The American Flag, and they'll call you a Freedom of Speech "Constitutionalist"

Piss on a Police Car, and they'll call you an Occupy Wall Street "Freedom Lovin' 99 percenter"

Piss on a Taliban piece of shit that just tried to kill you and your fellow Marines, and they'll call you a "Villain"

Sure is a messed-up administration we have running this great country!!!!!

Be sure to vote them ALL GONE in November!!!!!

A bogus chart on Obama and the debt gets a new lease on life

2012-01-25T00:35:00.000-08:00

A bogus chart on Obama and the debt gets a new lease on life
Posted by Glenn Kesslerat 06:00 AM ET, 09/29/2011

Who Increased the Debt? President Reagan 189%. President GHW Bush 55%. President Clinton 37%. President GW Bush 115%. President Obama 16%.”

— Data on a chart floating around the Web this week (an older version of the chart above)

This post has been updated since it was first published.

There’s a saying attributed to Winston Churchill that goes something like this: "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."

Try as we might at The Fact Checker, we find that no matter how many times we clearly identify an untruth — such as a ridiculous e-mail on Obama’s health-care plan — it still keeps popping up, months later.

So imagine our surprise when we found in our Facebook feed this week a chart, purporting to show how Republican presidents — Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush — had increased the debt by a significantly greater percentage than either Bill Clinton or President Obama. Pretty impressive chart, “liked” by at least 7,000 people on a posting by the liberal group MoveOn.org.

But this chart, originally created by the office of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, is as phony as a three-dollar bill. Our friends at PolitiFact did a pretty thorough takedown of it in May, giving it their worst rating: “pants on fire.” They even caught the Pelosi people in a bad mathematical error, based on the fact that the Democrats calculated the numbers as if Obama took office a year later than he did.

That error greatly reduced Obama’s supposed percentage increase (from 35 percent to 16 percent) and boosted George W. Bush’s increase (from 86 percent to 115 percent). Pelosi’s office corrected the math error after it was spotted by PolitiFact, but amazingly, the chart that turned up in several places in our Facebook feed was the old chart.

But even with the corrected number, this is still a Four-Pinocchio whopper. Let’s explain why.

The Facts

The person who posted this on Facebook noted: “From the US Treasury Dept — any questions?” But it actually is not a Treasury Department calculation, just manipulated data taken from the Treasury Web site.

The chart has some basic conceptual flaws. For instance, as the debt keeps getting higher, the possible percentage increases will keep getting smaller. Under the mixed-up logic of this chart, a person can go from 10 to 20, and that would be a 100 percent increase. If the next person goes from 20 to 30, that’s only a 50 percent increase, even though the numerical increase (10) is the same.

The chart also cherry-picks the data that portray Obama in the best light by claiming to show “public debt” but in actuality using the statistics for gross debt.

Gross debt includes intergovernmental transactions such as bonds held by Social Security and Medicare, but public debt is the more commonly used figure of national indebtedness, at least among economists.

If the chart actually used public debt rather than gross debt, it would have put Obama and George W. Bush virtually in the same league — 60 percent increase (as of September 2011) for Obama versus 70 percent for Bush — even though Bush served as president much longer.

But the biggest problem is that this is just dumb math. What really counts is not the raw debt numbers, but the size of the debt as a percentage of the gross domestic product. The GDP is the broadest measure of the national economy and directly indicates the nation’s ability to service its debts. In fact, the White House budget office historical tables portray much of the data as a percentage of GDP, because that is the best way to truly compare such numbers over time.

If the chart were recast to show how much the debt went up as a percentage of GDP, it would look pretty bad for Obama after not even three years in office. In fact, Obama does almost twice as poorly as Reagan — and four times worse than George W. Bush.

Reagan: plus 14.9 percentage points

GHW Bush: plus 7.1 percentage points

Clinton: down 13.4 percentage points

GW Bush: plus 5.6 percentage points

Obama: plus 24.6 percentage points

(Note: We derived most of these data from table 7.1 of the budget office historical tables, which gives end-of-fiscal year figures, so they do not quite match up to presidential terms. Obama’s figures are based on the GDP: public debt ratio as of June 30, 2011)

Update: David Clayton, one of our dedicated readers, crunched the numbers for calendar years and shows that, in the transition from Bush to Obama, adjusting the dates makes a difference in the result. His math shows that a more accurate figure would be plus 11.6 percentage points for Bush and plus 19.7 percentage points for Obama. The shift doesn’t change the overall result but divides up the responsibility for the debt more accurately. In a later column, we also posted other ways that readers suggested to look at presidential debt records.

One can offer reasons for why Obama’s performance appears so poor, including the fact that he is battling a recession. An improvement in the nation’s economy would boost the gross domestic product, which would certainly begin to reduce his ratio. But the fact remains that under basic economic measures, not phony ones, his record on the growth of the national debt is the worst of recent presidents. (We make that statement using the logic of Pelosi’s office, which pins all of the growth of the debt on individual presidents. In reality, many factors, including the economy, wars and congressional actions, contribute to the rise of the debt.)

The Pinocchio Test

If MoveOn.org or Pelosi’s office had any sense of shame, they would have quietly removed the links to this chart from their websites when PolitiFact gave it a “pants on fire” rating four months ago. The fact that an outdated version is still floating around — and that people are still deluded into thinking it to be correct — is doubly shameful.

Four Pinocchios
__________________________________________

more facts about debt - a repost...

Obama Has Now Increased Debt More than All Presidents from George Washington Through George H.W. Bush Combined
By Terence P. Jeffrey
October 5, 2011

(CNSNews.com) - The Obama administration passed another fiscal milestone this week, according to new data released by the Treasury Department. As of the close of business on Oct. 3, the total national debt was $14,837,099,271,196.71—up about $44.8 billion from Sept. 30.

That means that in the less-than-three-years Obama has been in office, the federal debt has increased by $4.212 trillion--more than the total national debt of about $4.1672 trillion accumulated by all 41 U.S. presidents from George Washington through George H.W. Bush combined.

This $4.212-trillion increase in the national debt means that during Obama’s term the federal government has already borrowed about an additional $35,835 for every American household--or $44,980 for every full-time private-sector worker. (According to the Census Bureau there were about 117,538,000 households in the country in 2010, and, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were about 93,641,000 full-time private-sector workers.)

When Obama was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2009, according to the Treasury Department, the total national debt stood at $10,626,877,048,913.08.

At the end of January 1993, the month that President George H. W. Bush left office, the total national debt was $4.1672 trillion, according to the Treasury. Thus, the total national debt accumulated by the first 41 presidents combined was about $44.8 billion less than the approximately $4.212 trillion in new debt added during Obama’s term.

As of Monday, Obama had been in office 986 days—or about 32 and a half months. During that time, the debt increased at an average pace of $4.27 billion per day. Were that rate to continue until Obama’s term ends on Jan. 20, 2013, the debt would then stand at about $16.86534 trillion—an increase of more than $6.2 trillion for Obama’s four years.

That would equal nearly $53,000 for each American household or more than $66,00 for each full-time private-sector worker.

That total national debt did not exceed $6.2 trillion until 2002, when George W. Bush was president.

A Few Words About Abortion

2012-01-25T00:14:00.000-08:00

A Few Words About Abortion
By Judge Andrew Napolitano
1/25/2012

Last week marked the 39th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that permitted abortions. Prior to that case, abortion was regulated by each state, and most of them prohibited it unless two physicians could certify that the baby growing in the mother's womb would likely result in the death of the mother. Even the states that permitted abortions when the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest, an extremely rare occurrence, did not permit it after the sixth month of pregnancy.

Roe vs. Wade changed all that. It permits abortions in all 50 states during the first three months of pregnancy for any reason or for no reason. It permits abortions during the second three months of pregnancy for the health of the mother. "Health of the mother" can mean mental health; thus, most states have taken the liberal position that if a continued pregnancy would make the mom sad or challenge her psychologically, or if she has second thoughts about the pregnancy, the baby may be aborted.

Roe vs. Wade also permits the states to prohibit or to allow abortions during the last three months of pregnancy. Most states prohibit all abortions during the final three months, as this is the period of viability; when the baby can live -- assisted, of course -- outside the mother's womb. New Jersey, my home state, is the exception, as it permits abortions up to the moment of birth.

In the past 39 years, American physicians have performed more than 50 million abortions. Abortion is the most frequent medical procedure performed in the U.S. The linchpin to Roe vs. Wade is the Court's rationale that because the decision to undergo an abortion ordinarily occurs between patient and physician, and because that interaction ordinarily takes place in private, the right to privacy insulates abortion from the reach of the State. Roe vs. Wade itself does not define the right to an abortion, but it does unambiguously declare that the baby in the womb is not a person, and that the right to privacy protects the mother's decision to kill the baby.

Did you catch that? The Supreme Court declared that the baby in the womb is not a person. When it made that declaration, it rejected dozens of decisions of other courts, in America and in Great Britain, holding that the baby in the womb is a person. This is reminiscent of the Supreme Court's infamous Dred Scott decision in 1857 in which it ruled that blacks were not persons. In both cases, it cited no precedent, it gave no rational basis, and in Roe vs. Wade, it merely said that because philosophers, physicians and lawyers could not agree on whether babies in wombs are persons, it would declare them not to be persons.

If the baby in the womb is a person, then all abortion is unlawful. That's because of the constitutional protection for all persons. The Constitution unambiguously prohibits the government from impairing or permitting others to impair the life, liberty and property of persons without due process. Here's my political beef with so-called pro-life politicians in both parties. In the years in which the pro-life Ronald Reagan and both Presidents Bush were in the White House, from time to time, both chambers of Congress had pro-life majorities. Did you see any legislation passed that declared a baby in the womb to be a person? No. This could have been done by a simple majority vote and presidential signature, and Roe vs. Wade, and all the killing it spawned, would have ended.

How scary is this? The Supreme Court declares a class of humanity not to be persons, and then permits people to destroy the members of the class. That's what happened to blacks during slavery; that was the philosophical argument underlying the Holocaust; that's what is happening to babies in the womb today; and that might become the basis for the government killing persons it hates or fears in the future. It will declare them to be non-persons.

Is the baby in the womb a person? Of course babies in wombs are persons. From the moment of the union of egg and sperm, there is present a fully actualizable human genome; meaning all the genetic material necessary for post-birth existence is there. And the parents of that union are human beings. With human parents and a human genome, what else could a baby in a womb be but a person? If you have any doubt, why not give the benefit of that doubt to life, rather than to death? Unless you prefer death to life and killing to nurturing and misery to joy, I expect you agree.

Since you have been reading this essay, 10 babies have lost their lives, as abortions occur in the U.S. about two and a half times a minute. How long can a society last when we cannot protect the weakest among us, and when we destroy them out of convenience, and when we make that destruction legal? Who will be destroyed next?
______________________________________________

To read another article by Judge Andrew Napolitano, click here.
______________________________________________

To read a related article, click here.

The Euphemisms of 'Pro-Choice' Evil

2012-01-25T00:05:00.000-08:00

The Euphemisms of 'Pro-Choice' Evil
By Ben Shapiro
1/25/2012

This week marked the 39th anniversary of the greatest American moral tragedy of the 20th century: Roe v. Wade. And yet the left cheered this anniversary with the enthusiasm of an intoxicated teenager stumbling on a free copy of Penthouse. Planned Parenthood, which rakes in millions each year by performing abortions, asked via Twitter, "How has #Roe changed your life?"

The sample answers were horrifically fascinating. "Because of Roe, I have grown up knowing that my girlfriends won't die from back-alley abortions," one young man wrote. The young man might as well have written, "Because of Roe, I don't have to use condoms." It's certainly easier to sleep after a night of unprotected sex knowing that the girl you just impregnated can always have her uterus scraped. One young woman wrote, "Because of Roe, I get to go to college, instead of bearing a child who wouldn't." And, as we all know, a child who won't go to college isn't worthy of life. The true value of human life can only be justified by attending a Modern Dance in Lesbian Thought course taught by an otherwise unemployable 45-year-old harpy.

Most of the posts, though, were not quite as foolish. Most employed the hackneyed expressions of the abortion crowd.

They spoke about women's choice -- a powerful euphemism never deployed when discussing a woman's choice to refrain from having sex. When it comes to the choice to have sex, women are simply slaves to passion; when it comes to killing the unborn, then they suddenly have the ability to exercise choice.

They spoke about women's health -- another euphemism implying that pregnancy is a disease of some sort, a cancer eating away at the mother's vitals. (President Obama himself used this analogy.) Women rarely have therapeutic abortions -- they almost always have abortions because they simply don't want the responsibility of bringing up a child, and they don't want the guilt of having to give up a child to adoption.

They spoke about the right to control their body -- but neglected to mention the living, breathing being inside it. Until that being was there, pro-lifers were perfectly happy to leave these women and their uteruses to their own devices. Nobody was clamoring to examine these women's reproductive organs until they decided to begin sucking the living contents into a waste can.

The great moral evil that is abortion-on-demand -- and it is a moral evil -- has been papered over in the public mind by euphemisms. That's why it's considered impolitic to show actual photographs of abortion -- we mustn't offend the sensibilities of those who think of it as a clean, quick "termination." No more biologically involved than a polyp removal. That's why pro-lifers are derided as benighted apes when they have the temerity to call fetuses babies -- we should never remind mothers that they themselves call the being in their wombs babies. No mother I have ever met -- or have ever heard of -- has ever referred to her child as either a fetus or an embryo, except by conscious militant choice.

The euphemistic thinking of liberals on the abortion issue ends in logic so twisted it should be sold by Wetzels.

Liberals scream "right to privacy," but seem to throw that euphemism out the window when they demand that taxpayers pay for their birth control (Obama announced this week that we'd all been drafted into the War on Unprotected Sex) and abortion (Planned Parenthood is government-funded), and sanctify any sexual relationship they choose to engage in that day.

Liberals suggest that they aren't pro-abortion -- they just want it to be "safe, legal and rare." If they want it to be safe and legal, they clearly don't want it to be rare, and the numbers show it: nearly 55 million abortions since Roe. If liberals hadn't been quite so concerned about keeping abortion safe and legal, they'd have an entire generation of youngsters ready to support their enormous entitlement state. Instead, they have millions of morally-scarred young women justifying the mass murder of the unborn.

The real liberal argument for abortion is simple and requires no euphemism. It states that babies are not babies until some unspecified time when they become babies -- and until that time, they are entirely disposable.

The only problem with the argument is that it requires that we ignore both science (a fetus' heart begins to beat within three and a half weeks of embryonic fertilization) and basic human decency in favor of a callous selfishness that sears our collective soul.

The left's Orwellian recasting of abortion as an issue about "freedom" is only its latest attempt to defend the indefensible. And it has worked. Clarity of language is important. Those who defend life must not be afraid to use the language of truth -- and life -- to fight the emanations and penumbras of ethical falsehood.
_________________________________________

To read another article by Ben Shapiro, click here.
_________________________________________

To read a related article, click here.

Reagan's Young Lieutenant

2012-01-24T18:41:00.000-08:00

Reagan's Young Lieutenant
By Jeffrey Lord on 1.24.12 @ 6:09AM

Gingrich a star on Reagan team: Romney "work product" as conservative at issue.

Mitt Romney has raised the issue of Newt Gingrich's "work product."

Wow.

Intended to prod the former Speaker on the issue of his work for Freddie Mac (Gingrich last night released his contract with Freddie), the question, as seems to be a Romney characteristic, has clumsily backfired. It raises an all-too obvious question that is becoming increasingly revealing.

What is Mitt Romney's "work product" for the conservative cause?

The closest Mitt Romney ever got to the Reagan Revolution is apparently because he reads about it 30 years later. And he isn't even reading everything he should. This is the man, remember, who proudly professed when running against Ted Kennedy in 1994:

"I was an independent during the time of Reagan-Bush. I'm not trying to return to Reagan-Bush"

A peculiar stance considering Reagan carried Massachusetts twice in his two presidential landslides. Romney now assures that Newt Gingrich -- who actually had a serious and considerably well-known role working with Reagan -- had little role in it. (By the way, Reagan won over 1, 310, 936 votes and over 51 percent in Massachusetts in his 1984 re-election race, while Romney won his solitary gubernatorial victory in 2002 with 1,091,988 votes and 49.77 percent. Which is to say, Reagan outpolled Romney by over 200,000. In 1980, third party candidate John Anderson drew off 15 percent of Reagan's vote, otherwise, one suspects, Reagan would have trumped Romney then as well.)

Why? Why is Romney going after Gingrich on his supposed lack of Reagan ties?

Because the former Governor apparently looked into the "G" section of the Reagan Diaries and found the then backbench congressman's name but once.

The ignorance this shows about what was actually happening inside the Reagan Revolution -- not to mention the positive change Ronald Reagan and his lieutenants like Newt Gingrich were bringing to Washington and America -- is almost painful to watch. Romney flounders, giving the impression that he is learning conservatism as others learn painting by numbers. A splotch of free market economics here at Number 1, a dab of social issues over there at Number 2… or not…or, well, maybe… or… yes, kinda sort of maybe… ending with bright bold colorful strokes of national security war paint at Number 3.

And voila. Conservatism by Romney.

Why would one in the position Mitt Romney now finds himself -- thoroughly defeated in South Carolina by a surge of support for Gingrich's conservatism -- ever even entertain the idea of going after Newt Gingrich on Reagan?

This utterly dumb line of attack for Romney is as bad if not worse than Gingrich's flirtation with attacking Bain Capital. It raises exactly all the questions of Romney's vulnerabilities. Why, for example, did Romney deliberately play the wimp when it comes to defending Ronald Reagan in Massachusetts? At precisely the time in the fall of 1994, it should be noted, when Newt Gingrich was leading Chapter 2 in the Reagan Revolution? Is Romney really trying to draw attention to the fact that while Gingrich and hundreds of Republicans were on the verge of a historic landslide retaking the House by attaching themselves to the Reagan legacy… Romney ran from Reagan… and got clobbered?

If even those simple political basics can't be learned, which in Romney's case now include not just the broader inability to defend either Reagan or free markets but the quite specific inability to use the general principle of free markets and capitalism to defend himself over the inevitable "Mr. 1%" accusations -- this should be a red flag for conservatives.

Who knows why Romney gets tongue tied ? Or, as our friends at the Wall Street Journal note, "befuddled."

But the very fact of this latest attack on Gingrich for what Romney tries to imply is Newt's lack of ties to Reagan shows the "Massachusetts Moderate" (as Gingrich tags him) is unfamiliar with the details of Gingrich's role. Worse, Romney indicates a considerable ignorance about why Gingrich and others -- none of whom painted conservatism by the numbers -- were there fighting in the first place. All working under Reagan's leadership to begin to right a ship of state that was perilously close to the rocks in 1981 -- economically, socially, and on issues of national security.

Be that as it may, Romney has raised the question of Newt Gingrich's real role in the Reagan era. So let's take a look.

TO MORE FROM ART to sports, let's use a baseball analogy, the New York Yankees of the 1920's who were famously known as "Murderers' Row." They possessed in their line-up the man seen as the greatest baseball player of the day and -- arguably -- all time: Babe Ruth. But Babe Ruth alone did not a Murderers' Row make. What made the New York Yankees of the 1920s such a legend -- in particular in 1927 -- was the collective power of the rest of the line-up. In particular the first six men at bat terrified opponents. One of them, Lou Gehrig, was later immortalized on film by Gary Cooper. The 1927 Yankees had a 110-44 win/loss record, won the pennant by 19 games, and swept the World Series.

If politics were sports, the period of the Reagan Revolution from 1981-1989 would be the 1927 Yankees. Without doubt, Ronald Reagan, would be the political version of Babe Ruth. As seen today by his fellow Americans, Reagan is viewed as America's greatest president in poll after poll (as in this one last year from Gallup that puts him even above the revered Abraham Lincoln).

But just as Babe Ruth was the leader of the Yankees, the leader of the team -- there was a team. Without which there would have been no Murderers' Row. Not to mention, no pennant and no World Series.

Ronald Reagan and the Reagan Revolution that he led had the political, intellectual, and governmental version of Murderers' Row. There was vision, energy, and principle when they ran out onto the political playing field. As with the Yankees of 1927, the Reagan Revolution had a star line-up. Government having a larger starting line-up than the nine positions on a baseball team, the Reagan Revolution's Murderers' Row had a considerable number of stars, every one of whom was a key player in their own fashion. Names like Jack Kemp, William Bennett, Edwin Meese, James Baker, Drew Lewis, Lyn Nofziger, Edward Rollins, Lee Atwater… the list goes on and on. Many were true conservatives -- some, like Baker and his deputy the late Richard Darman, were moderates. Yet all were brought together by Reagan to serve the conservative cause he had been outlining to the nation since that first famous speech he gave on behalf of Barry Goldwater in October, 1964 (seen here if you have never seen).

In 1985, as the second Reagan term began, an interesting book was published that captured the major players of the day. Not, as one might think, a biography or written record. The season of the Reagan Revolution was still very much ongoing. There was no time for the inevitable flood of memoirs. No, this book was something else -- a book of photographs, titled People and Power: Portraits From the Federal Village.

Its author/photographer was Michael Evans, President Reagan's personal photographer. Evans had the idea to make a list of the most influential people of the day in Washington, inveigle them to his studio, and take a quite personal black-and-white photo of each. Capturing for the record the men and women who made Washington what it was in the 1980s. The Reaganites and their opponents. Conservatives and liberals. Politicians and journalists. The famous and the unknown.

Dubbed "The Portrait Project," it was a considerable project. Not least because Evans forced himself to sit down and sift through a literally endless list, sorting out those who were considered in the day to be the people of power in their own individual areas within the nation's capital. Of all the thousands, he whittled his list down to over 600, in his words "from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to the Assistant Food Service Coordinator of the White House, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices, administrative aides, journalists," and so on. From the thousands who became the 600-plus, Evans finally selected a mere 139. Say again, 139 men and women. Each pictured simply in black-and-white, identified only by their full, formal name (middle names included, no nicknames-thank-you-very-much) and title -- all who were seen in the day as what might be called Washington's movers and shakers in the time of the Reagan Revolution.

And of that list, on page 178, there he is:

Newton Leroy Gingrich (R-GEORGIA)
United States Representative

The famous mop of hair is only beginning to shade to its now-familiar white. There is a friendly, open smile and, yes, what appears to be several fewer pounds.

But the question is, considering the Romney implication that Gingrich was just another anonymous back-bencher congressman in the Reagan era -- what was Newt Gingrich doing in the middle of this book in the first place?

Photographer Evans selected only 19 members of the 435-member House of Representatives for his book featuring 139 people. The photograph that opened the book was perhaps the most influential and famous conservative outside of Reagan himself: Arizona's Senator Barry Goldwater. Like Goldwater in the Senate, most of those 19 House members were men of long tenure and vast power. They included the then-current Speaker of the House and the man who would succeed him as Speaker, Tip O'Neill. O'Neill's opposite number, the Republican House Leader Bob Michel. The powerful old bulls of both parties in the House were there -- men like Florida's Claude Pepper, Virginia's Dan Daniel, Illinois' Dan Rostenkowski and Henry Hyde as well as Michigan's Guy Vander Jagt.

But there, selected as one of the 19, was Newt Gingrich.

Why young Newt in this particular book recording the serious power players of Reagan's Washington?

Newt Gingrich certainly was not Speaker or the House member pictured who already (and correctly) was thought to be the one who would follow O'Neill -- Jim Wright. He wasn't the Republican Leader or the Whip like the also-photographed Trent Lott or even a ranking member of a committee. By 1985 Newt Gingrich had been in the House of Representatives a sum total of six years, next to nothing against much older men like Speaker O'Neill (33 years in 1985) or Claude Pepper (23 years).

So why the young Congressman Newt in this book?

Answer: Newt Gingrich was part of the Reagan Revolution's Murderers' Row. And anybody who was in Washington in the day, much less in the Reagan White House or the 1984 Reagan re-election campaign (and I would make that particular cut of three), knew it.

WHAT, EXACTLY, DOES this mean? To use Mitt Romney's words, what was Newt Gingrich's "work product" for conservatism -- for America -- as part of Reagan's Murderers' Row?

Glad you asked. Here is an example of the kind of "work product" that made a young congressman from Georgia such a key player on Reagan's Murderers Row.

1984. Dallas, Texas. A story.

In May, former Reagan Secretary of Transportation Drew Lewis, now a senior adviser in the President's re-election campaign, is asked by the Reagan White House to be the White House liaison to the Republican Platform Committee. A job scheduled to be done by presidential counsel Edwin Meese until Meese was nominated as attorney general.

Lewis jumped into the job, and I with him as his chief of staff in the campaign. The very first thing to be done was get a copy of the platform draft. It existed, drafted by a collection of staffers at work for the Platform Committee chair, then-Congressman Trent Lott of Mississippi.(The staff director's, by the way, was a young John Bolton, future Ambassador to the United Nations.) Once read -- line by line (my task) -- Lewis began meeting with key members already elected to the Platform Committee.

One of the first? That would be young Congressman Newt Gingrich, already serving as a member of the Platform Committee's executive committee. The meeting took place in Gingrich's basement book-lined House office, a cramped affair reflecting precisely how junior in rank Gingrich actually was in the House pecking order. The three of us -- Lewis, Gingrich, and myself -- sat for over an hour talking about what Newt saw as the problems ahead.

The meeting was pure Newt Gingrich. Precisely the kind of talk that so struck the Republican voters of South Carolina the other day and has captured Gingrich such a following in the GOP debates. It was filled with polite if barely disguised disdain for the American Left in general, and what he would later refer to as "the old, passive and reactive Republican party."

Specifically in focus was Gingrich's fear that the Republican RINO/Establishment members on the Platform Committee -- specifically this meant people like then-Kansas Senator Bob Dole (the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee) Connecticut Senator Lowell Weicker, and Virginia Senator John Warner -- would somehow try and moderate the Reagan Revolution with calls for tax increases or somehow lessening the Reagan demand for American military superiority over the Soviet Union.

To shorten the tale, once the executive committee arrived in Dallas in August for the week ahead of the actual convention and the traditional period in which the Platform Committee delegates assemble to do their task -- Gingrich's fears were realized in spades. All hell broke loose as Senator Dole -- carrying the prestige of the chairmanship of the Senate's tax writing committee -- insisted on an open-ended plank on taxes that would accept a tax increase as a "last resort."

BAM!

Newt struck back. Hard. In private session -- and public. Working with his fellow Young Turks Rep. Jack Kemp and Tom Loeffler from Texas, Newt Gingrich raised holy hell. What Dole was proposing was a violation of the Reagan 1980 platform, a gross violation of Reaganomics, and just plain dumb. With Democratic nominee Walter Mondale already out there pledging to raise taxes, this was effectively caving in to Mondale. Bob Dole, Newt snapped at one point, was nothing other than the "tax collector for the welfare state."

Ouch.

The media ate it up. Gingrich, Kemp, and the Young Turks taking on the Old Guard. The problem, of course, was that the liberal media of the day -- remember there was no talk radio/Fox/Internet -- presented this all as a battle between old extremists and younger ones who were even worse (that would be Newt). The press delighted in trying to humiliate Reagan, who spent the week at his ranch in California more or less inaccessible until arriving the following week to accept his re-nomination. Meanwhile, on the phone were all manner of people furious with Newt Gingrich. Dick Darman was calling me. And then Secretary of the Treasury Donald Regan called Lewis. In that case I got to listen -- and didn't need an extension to do so. Notoriously short fused, sensitive to perceived slights and not the most politically skilled, Regan called from Washington threatening to come to Dallas personally and deal with Gingrich. Who was Newt Gingrich to be deciding on the tax prerogatives of the Treasury Secretary? The line practically melted, but Lewis soothed him and Regan stayed put.

The solution? A comma.

This sentence was the proximate cause of the fury:

We therefore oppose any attempts to increase taxes which would harm the recovery and reverse the trend to restoring control of the economy to individual Americans.

At the insistence of Gingrich and Kemp and in an amendment proposed by Loeffler, a sentence that kept the door open for tax increases had a comma added to it after the word "taxes."

The sentence now read subtly but considerably different: "We therefore oppose any attempts to increase taxes, which would harm the recovery and reverse the trend to restoring control of the economy to individual Americans."

The Gingrich work product? Making certain that Ronald Reagan was not put on record leaving the door open for any more ill-fated tax increases. Dole was furious with the young Newt -- and, it might be noted, recently made a point of endorsing Mitt Romney. Hmmmmm.

THE OTHER EXAMPLE of the kind of "work product" from Newt Gingrich that week was his opposition to Senator Warner's insistence that the word "superiority" be stricken from the national security section of the platform -- a word the Reaganites had insisted be in the 1980 platform. Getting his way in his Subcommittee on National Security, Warner suddenly found himself confronting Gingrich and Kemp over this issue as well. Gingrich insisted on inserting language saying that the U.S. must be "stronger than any potential adversary." He also insisted the full Platform Committee vote on the issue. The full committee sided with Gingrich and overruled Senator Warner.

Is it any wonder the Washington Republican Establishment can't stand Newt Gingrich? Doubtless there is some sincere sentiment about his management capabilities, his verbal and intellectual wanderings, and other things that did in fact disappoint conservative leaders over the years of his speakership. Perhaps the WSJ captured the sentiment best when it described the ex-Speaker's "penchant for over-the-top statements and sudden shifts of strategy or policy based on personal whim."

That said, time after time after time in the Reagan years, a number of those times which I had the opportunity to see up close as a young Reagan staffer charged in my duties with being the White House liaison to Gingrich and Kemp's Conservative Opportunity Society, Newt Gingrich was out there again and again and again for Ronald Reagan and conservative principles. In his own memoirs, The Politics of Diplomacy, James Baker noted of his days as Reagan White House Chief of Staff that he always "worked closely" with the people Baker described as "congressional leaders." And who were those leaders? Baker runs off a string of names of the older leaders of both House and Senate in the formal positions of power -- plus one. That's right: young Newt Gingrich.

Gingrich repeatedly demonstrated a considerable ability to illustrate conservative principle, help Reagan using events of the day. Here were two notable examples.

• Was the House of Representatives being run as a liberal fiefdom after decades of unchallenged power? It was Newt Gingrich who came up with the idea in 1984 of using what were called "special orders" -- a moment for House members at the end of the work day to stand in the well of the House and give speeches on the subject of their choice. With C-SPAN cameras newly present, Gingrich used these moments to launch a fusillade of attacks on liberals, enraging Speaker O'Neill and prompting the Speaker into a personal attack, violating House rules. The news was everywhere, and the Republican caucus of the day promptly gave Gingrich something South Carolinians did three times at the last two debates: a standing ovation.

• Was there a letter out there from ten House Democrats, including then-Majority Leader Jim Wright, playing up to the Nicaragua Sandinista Communist Daniel Ortega -- even as Reagan worked to fund the Contras and their fight for democracy? It was Newt Gingrich who made a point of getting a debate on the House floor, flatly accusing Wright and the others in their sycophantic "Dear Comandante" letter of violating the Logan Act. The law that prohibited anyone other than the executive branch from conducting American diplomacy. "Jim Wright is corrupt," Newt remarked at one COS meeting in my presence… a sign of things to come. It was Gingrich who boldly filed the ethics charges against the powerful Speaker Wright in 1988 -- charges that eventually forced Wright to resign as Speaker in 1989. There are many who believe the ethics charges against Speaker Gingrich, charges Romney is now trying to use against Gingrich, were made up and sold to a Gingrich-hating media by livid congressional liberals as payback for both nailing Wright and humiliating O'Neill -- not to mention Gingrich's role in electing a GOP House for the first time in forty years. For Romney to be following this line gives the impression he can be easily taken in by both the liberal media and the anti-Newt Democrats and GOP Establishment.

And so on. And on. Newt Gingrich's "work product" in the Reagan years was and remains highly visible and on the historical record. Unlike Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich was not busy defensively claiming his independence and running from Reagan.

He never failed Ronald Reagan or the cause both believed in so passionately. Newt never wavered, and he always led. "Ronald Reagan is the only coherent revolutionary in an administration of accommodationist advisers," Gingrich is quoted as saying in Steven F. Hayward's The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution 1980-1989.

Whatever the status of Newt Gingrich's advisers, it is crystal clear that in the narrowing choice between Gingrich and Mitt Romney, it is decidedly Gingrich whose "work product" as a card-carrying member of the Reagan Revolution is repeatedly marked with the contributions of the type that landed him in Michael Evans book of photographs of the most important players of the Reagan era.

The kind of contributions, the kind of vision and the kind of boldness that won him the respect and votes of South Carolina voters across the board.

Hayward also notes that in one instance towards the end of the administration, Gingrich discussed complaints about things left undone. Writes Hayward of the president Jack Kemp fondly nicknamed the "Oldest and Wisest":

Reagan put his arm around the young Georgia Congressman and said in his typically gentle fashion, "Well, some things you're just going to have to do after I'm gone."

Ronald Reagan is now gone.

No one, and this is perhaps important to say, is expecting Newt Gingrich or Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum or anyone else to be Ronald Reagan. That is silly.

But to anyone who was present, awake, and paying attention in the 1980s -- anyone who is listening to Newt Gingrich right now -- it doesn't take much to understand that some version of those gentle words from Ronald Reagan when he put his arm around a young Newt Gingrich is in fact driving the older Newt Gingrich in this campaign.

Ronald Reagan's very last public appearance in 1994, coincidentally at the approach of Gingrich's triumph later that year in winning a GOP House, was an evening in Washington with his old friend and fellow conservative the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. In a dinner that re-united the Reagan team with their chief one last time, a small memento of the night was given to all of us. Underneath a picture of the two great conservatives Reagan and Thatcher strolling the grounds of Camp David, deep in conversation, was this reminder of conservatism from Reagan:

History comes and goes, but principles endure and inspire future generations to defend liberty, not as a gift from government, but a blessing from our Creator.

Why did Newt Gingrich win South Carolina?

Because he was one of Reagan's Lieutenants. A member of Reagan's Murderers Row of conservative stars.

It's too soon to know whether the conservative Gingrich or the moderate Romney will win this nomination. Or, yes, Santorum. Or even, if all those panicked rumblings from the Washington Establishment are true, someone not yet in the race -- a Daniels, Jindal, or Ryan.

But whatever happens, quite unlike the picture Romney is trying to paint of his prime opponent in South Carolina, Newt Gingrich was very much present and accounted for on the Reagan team. To borrow from Reagan's farewell address to the nation and the men and women who served him, Newt Gingrich wasn't just marking time. He made a difference. He helped make that City on a Shining Hill stronger. He helped make the City freer.

Quite to the contrary of the Romney message, Newt Gingrich was in fact one of Reagan's Young Lieutenants.

One of the best.
____________________________________

To read another article by Jeffrey Lord, click here.

Nothing sound about EPA science

2012-01-24T18:20:00.000-08:00

Nothing sound about EPA science
by Sen. David Vitter and Sen. James Inhofe
01/24/2012

Three years after President Obama’s inaugural promise to “restore science to its rightful place,” independent government agencies have uncovered numerous instances of scientific abuse at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). As the EPA grapples with this criticism as well as a recent embarrassing court decision, President Obama must have felt compelled last week to appear at headquarters to give his EPA a “pep talk.”

Flawed endangerment finding

The President’s EPA morale boost came just months after an Office of the Inspector General report found that the EPA cut corners and short-circuited the required peer review process for its December 2009 endangerment finding, which is the foundation for EPA’s plan to regulate greenhouse gases. EPA was dealt another blow to its scientific integrity when President Obama forced the agency to withdraw its plan to tighten the ozone standards because the economic and scientific analyses were so blatantly unsound.

More recently, an extraordinary D.C. Circuit Court ruling in December blocked EPA from moving forward with its signature air rule, the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule, because EPA failed to follow an adequate, open and transparent process.

And just last week, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report confirmed that EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS) program–which EPA acknowledges is the “scientific foundation for decisions”–is flawed. The report highlights “both long-standing and new challenges” EPA faces in implementing the IRIS program, echoing previous concerns from the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) that the agency is basing its decisions on shoddy scientific work.

Scientific concerns also extend to EPA’s recent activities regarding hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.” Last month, the agency released a highly criticized draft report on an investigation attempting to link fracking to ground water contamination near Pavillion, Wyo. This draft report–which has yet to undergo peer review and has substantial data gaps as well as methodological concerns–supplements a broader agency study on the potential impacts of fracking on drinking water resources, which has likewise been criticized for not adhering to established scientific procedures.

It’s unfortunate that the EPA under President Obama has degenerated into an agency that won’t review, assess, share or critically analyze its scientific work. We voiced our concerns with the quality of work coming out of EPA regarding the ozone standard in a nine-page letter last June, in which we asked EPA to address numerous questions related to significant matters of scientific integrity, weight of evidence, data selection, conclusions and impacts based on the best available scientific and economic analysis. We have not yet received a response. In fact, EPA was so reluctant to have any review of their work that it was necessary to block a key nominee in order to get EPA to contract with the NAS for a single review. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson later admitted on the record that the NAS review would not have happened without the hold.

It was White House Science Advisor John Holdren, who promised to ensure “Executive Branch policies are informed by sound science.” In October 2011, along with House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, we sent Holdren a nine-page letter asking more than 30 specific questions relating to scientific matters and concerns of scientific integrity at multiple agencies. In December, Holdren refused to answer even a single question.

When EPA fails to act after multiple concerns are raised by the GAO, the NAS, and even the agency’s own inspector general, the only conclusion is that EPA is fraught with a dangerous willingness to disregard scientific evidence when it contradicts the agency's political goals.

EPA’s science–the foundation of the Obama Administration’s damaging regulatory agenda–is not sound. And because the administration refuses to be transparent, we don’t have any clue whether anyone at the White House or EPA is even trying to fix the problem.

Senator David Vitter (R.) is the junior senator from the state of Louisiana.
Mr. Inhofe, a Republican, is ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.
_______________________________________

To read another article about Obama's EPA hijinx, click here.

I Love Ann Coulter Even When She Is Wrong

2012-01-24T18:11:00.000-08:00

I Love Ann Coulter Even When She Is Wrong
By Tony Katz
1/24/2012

Ann Coulter is wrong about Newt Gingrich. She is wrong about Mitt Romney. She is wrong about President Obama. Since the election race began, Ann Coulter has been wrong about near everything having to do with the GOP race in 2012. Yet, she's still smarter than near everyone out there. I love Ann Coulter, even when she's wrong.

Gingrich won the South Carolina primary by 13% over Romney. In vote total, that is 75,874 more votes for Gingrich. In context, Gingrich beat Romney by a vote total only 2000 less than Rep. Ron Paul got overall. On FOX and Friends on Sunday, Coulter responded to the victory by Gingrich in the South Carolina by admonishing the voters:

Apparently, South Carolinians would rather have the emotional satisfaction of a snotty remark toward the president than to beat Obama in the fall...We saw it in the debates when Gingrich would say things that didn’t really make sense. That is what you usually associate with Democrats, which I described in my last book, ‘Demonic,’ how mobs behave.

Coulter commenting negatively on snotty remarks is like Bill Maher commenting negatively on snotty remarks. The bigger, more accurate story is that Gingrich's remarks were not snotty, they were accurate. South Carolina agreed that it was wrong of CNN's John King to start a debate with so-called scandal described by Gingrich's ex-wife Marianne Gingrich. The applause that Gingrich got Thursday night in Charleston is about a disgust for sensationalism over content. In exit polling, women voted overwhelmingly for Gingrich. If that trend follows in Florida, then it can be clearly said that female primary voters don't care about Gingrich's bedroom.

Coulter is wrong about the idea of electability. Legal Insurrection made this point about Coulter's thoughts just last year:

In February 2011 she told us at CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) that Romney was a certain loser against Obama, now she tells us he will win. Her excuse was that she was “sick” at CPAC. She also played the birther card on the Tea Party in making the case for Romney. Inexcusable and unforgivable. Coulter’s endorsement of Romney does not a case for Romney make.

The idea of Romney electability of Obama is a myth. It is pushed by Romney supporters with tremendous passion and desire for it to be truth, but it is not. Proof shows just the opposite, as Romney lost in Iowa and South Carolina. The "inevitable" front runner is 1 for 3. Good in baseball, less good in politics. On my radio show, and in interviews across the country, I have stated that Obama can't win re-election. Any of the men on stage right now will win over Obama.

In South Carolina, both Sen. Rick Santorum and political analyst Dick Morris made sure to stop by the Blogger Bash after their back to back appearances on Hannity Friday night. In front of a gathering of bloggers and radio hosts, Morris made the same point; Obama won't we re-election. He went so far as to say that Republicans will win 40 states in the general election with any candidate (sans Rep. Ron Paul.)

Coulter might still be feeling scorned by her one true love, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who decided not to run for President. While questions about his conservatism persist, people love Christie's tone, mannerisms, and attitude. They love that he's no nonsense, that he takes on all comers. They salivate for those videos where people try to challenge him. They watch them in their entirety...waiting eagerly for the eventual smack down. Then, they cheer wildly, and share the videos on Twitter and Facebook and G+, in emails and at computer work stations. People like honesty, and respond to those who act firmly in the face of usually unanswered leftist assaults.

Coulter followed Christie in backing Romney. Romney, however, has none of these qualities. He has responded to one questioner on the concept of Capitalism with some aplomb. Otherwise, he comes off as quasi-hysterical. When he took on Gov. Rick Perry (in a conversation about hiring illegals) about who had the right to speak at the moment, his voice was not that of a man in control, but rather a scorned child who wanted her oompa-loompa now! When on FOX with Bret Baier, he called the interview absurd. Just take a look at him answering questions about when he will release his tax returns. He mumbles, he bumbles, he takes offense. Only when trounced by Gingrich does he set a firm date for their release.

Trounced, it must be said, by a man who takes on all comers, who is will to take on the media, who isn't afraid of a heckler. Trounced by a man who has people salivating over his debate performances. They watch them in their entirety...waiting eagerly for the eventual smackdown. Then, they cheer wildly. It's not that they agree with Gingrich on everything, or agree with every political or personal decision he has ever made. They like someone who fights to win. They like Christie. They like Gingrich. They LOVE Ann Coulter! They would like Romney if he did the same. So far, he doesn't.

Ann Coulter will continue to dominate big think, and will continue to do us proud when it comes to taking on nonsensical leftist talking points. She will eviscerate those who haven't done their research. She will do it with a smile, with a historical understand about America, its culture and its values. When she does, we will watch and cheer wildly.

I love this woman. She's just wrong about the 2012 race.
__________________________________________

To read another article by Tony Katz, click here.
__________________________________________

To read articles by Ann Coulter, click here.

Evangelicals and Romney: Should Theology Matter?

2012-01-24T17:54:00.001-08:00

Evangelicals and Romney: Should Theology Matter?
By Dennis Prager
1/24/2012

As an American, a Republican, and a fiscal and social conservative -- and though I have endorsed no Republican candidate -- there is one thing that would disturb me greatly if Mitt Romney were not the Republican nominee: if Romney's Mormon faith were a factor in his defeat.

Many evangelical leaders have said that if Romney is the Republican presidential candidate, they would not vote for him in the general election. What is implied -- and sometimes explicitly stated -- is that his Mormonism prevents them from voting for him in the primaries.

Most evangelicals label Mormonism a cult, and many accuse Mormons of being dishonest for calling themselves Christians.

Let me explain where I'm coming from on this issue. First, all I care about with regard to the forthcoming election is that a Republican wins. It is difficult to see how the United States could survive as anything but another Europe between Mexico and Canada (while Europe itself is not surviving as Europe) with another four years of the most left-wing president in American history. Just the prospect of Barack Obama appointing one or more Supreme Court justices should focus every non-leftist's mind.

Second, as a Jew, I have no religious pony in this race. I believe that American Christianity has been the greatest force for good in the modern world and that evangelicals are at the core of America's backbone. And I have enormous respect for Mormons. Third, none of my favorite candidates -- Paul Ryan and Marco Rubio, for example -- are running. So I do not write this column on behalf of Mitt Romney or against Newt Gingrich.

Having said that, let me offer three observations on Mormonism and evangelical views of it.

Observation No. 1: Regarding Mormonism being labeled a cult, my study of religious history has taught me that just about every religion is seen as a cult in its formative years by the religion from which it sprang, or it gets labeled a cult by the older religion in order to delegitimize it. Jews and others regarded Christianity as a cult in its early years. Sunnis regard Shiites as a cult. The Catholic Church saw the early Protestants as a cult, while Protestants regarded the Roman Church as a cult. And Christians regarded the early Mormons as a cult.

Over the course of time, as a religion establishes itself and its members act more or less like members of the older religions, the charge is usually dropped. Jews hardly regard Christianity as a cult, and few Catholics or Protestants regard the other as members of a cult. After nearly 200 years, Mormons are an integral part of American society, with impressive reputations for family life, integrity and other values. The "cult" label just doesn't seem appropriate.

Observation No. 2: I may be mistaken, but I believe that what most annoys evangelicals (and some other Christians) about Mormonism is that Mormons call themselves Christian. In order for Jews to better understand evangelicals -- and for evangelicals to better understand Jews -- I think there is a parallel here.

The vast majority of Jews understand that in a free society, people convert to other religions. Therefore, some Christians convert to Judaism and some Jews convert to Christianity. What particularly annoys Jews is not the existence of converts but the existence of "Jews for Jesus." To most Jews, this is a misleading label because people who come to believe in Christ should call themselves Christian, not Jews.

So, too, in the view of most evangelicals, if people wish to believe in the divinity of the Book of Mormon and the prophecy of Joseph Smith, that is their business, but to call these and other distinctive Mormon beliefs "Christian" bothers many evangelicals. Of course, Mormons respond that a religion that calls itself The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, can hardly be dismissed as non-Christian. But it is not my interest here to adjudicate this debate. I only wish to offer one reason that evangelicals might be disturbed by Mormonism calling itself Christian.

Observation No. 3: Most importantly, theology and values are not the same thing. Traditional Jews and evangelical Christians have quite different theologies, but they often have virtually identical values. (That is why this Jew is so supportive of evangelicals and why evangelical Christians syndicate my radio show.) Conservative Catholics and evangelicals differ on theology but share virtually every important value. The Founders differed on theology but rarely on values.

It is hard to identify any area of life in which Mitt Romney's values and life differ in any way from the finest evangelical's values and life. And with regard to electing a president, that is what matters.

What I am asking here is that evangelicals and other traditional and conservative Christians who have problems with Mormonism not allow those problems (however legitimate they may be from the perspective of Christian theology) to play a role in their primary voting or in their general election voting if Mitt Romney wins the nomination. The fate of America and the world hangs in the balance.

In other words, fight the left now. You can fight theology later.
______________________________________

To read another article by Dennis Prager, click here.

15 Questions The Mainstream Media Would Ask Barack Obama If He Were A Republican

2012-01-24T17:48:00.000-08:00

15 Questions The Mainstream Media Would Ask Barack Obama If He Were A Republican
By John Hawkins
1/24/2012

During the practically endless series of Republican debates, we have heard almost every question imaginable asked to Republican candidates – if by every question imaginable, you mean horribly slanted, often irrelevant questions designed to make them look bad and help Obama. We've heard questions about contraceptives, religion, Newt's angry ex-wife, Gardasil, etc., etc., etc. So, what would happen if the mainstream media treated Barack Obama the exact same way that they treat Republicans? The questions might sound a little something like this.

1) Numerous Mexican citizens and an American citizen have been killed with weapons knowingly provided to criminals by our own government during Operation Fast and Furious. If Eric Holder was aware that was going on, do you think he should step down as Attorney General? Were you aware that was going on and if so, shouldn’t you resign?

2) In 2010 you said Solyndra, which gave your campaign a lot of money, was "leading the way toward a brighter and more prosperous future." Today, Solyndra is bankrupt and the taxpayers lost $500 million on loans that your administration was well aware might never be paid off when you made them. What do you say to people who say this is evidence of corruption in your administration?

3) Unions invested a lot of time and money in helping to get you elected. In return, they gained majority control of Chrysler, the taxpayers lost 14 billion dollars on General Motors, and General Motors received a special 45 billion dollar tax break. What do you say to people who view this as corruption on a scale never before seen in American history?

4) Through dubious means, you and your allies in Congress managed to push through an incredibly unpopular health care bill that helped lead to the worst election night for the Democratic Party in 50 years. Since the bill has passed, many of your claims about the bill have proven to be untrue. For example, we now know the bill won't lower costs and despite your assurances to the contrary, big companies like McDonald's say they may drop health care because of the health care reform. Since the American people have rejected your health care reform and it doesn't do what you said it would, shouldn't you work with the Republicans to repeal it?

5) When you took office, gas was $1.79 per gallon. Since then, you've demonized the oil industry, dramatically slowed offshore drilling, blocked ANWR, and killed the Keystone Pipeline. Now, gas is $3.34 per gallon. How much higher do you anticipate driving gas prices?

6) Occupy Wall Street has been protesting against Wall Street and the richest 1 percent in America. You are in the top 1 percent of income earners in America and you have collected more cash from Wall Street than any other President in history. So, aren't you exactly the sort of politician that Occupy Wall Street wants to get rid of?

7) How do you decide which foreign leaders to submissively bow towards and why do you think that's appropriate for an American President?

8) If they could, don't you think the Nobel Committee would take back the Nobel Peace Prize that you were awarded?

9) You made bipartisanship one of the central themes of your campaign in 2008. Yet, you've worked to push bills through Congress with almost no Republican support, spent much less time negotiating with Congress than George Bush, and you've said things like, "But, I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking." Why did you decide to break your campaign promise to pursue bipartisanship?

10) America lost its AAA credit rating for the first time under your watch. What do you think you should have done differently to have prevented that historic failure?

11) You cut more than 500 billion dollars out of Medicare to fund your wildly unpopular health care reform bill. Given that Medicare is running in the red already, don't you think it's irresponsible to cut money out of one entitlement program, that millions of seniors depend on -- to put it into a risky new entitlement program?

12) Back in July, you said, "Nobody’s looking to raise taxes right now. We’re talking about potentially 2013 and the out years." Since you plan to raise taxes if you're elected and you've had kind words for a value added tax, shouldn't every American expect a tax increase if you're reelected?

13) Why should the American people reelect you when your 10 year budget saddles America with more debt than all previous Presidents combined?

14) Your stimulus bill cost more in real dollars than the moon landing and the interstate highway system combined. What do we have to show for all of that money spent?

15) Members of your administration promised that the trillion dollar stimulus would keep unemployment under 8 percent. Instead, we've had 35+ months of 8% and above unemployment. Doesn't that mean we wasted a trillion dollars on nothing?
______________________________________

To read another article by John Hawkins, click here.

South Carolina Message

2012-01-24T17:31:00.001-08:00

South Carolina Message
By Thomas Sowell
1/24/2012

Just days before the South Carolina primary, polls showed Mitt Romney leading Newt Gingrich. Then came the debates and the question about Gingrich's private life, which brought a devastating response from the former Speaker of the House -- and a standing ovation from the audience.

Apparently the television audience felt the same way, judging by the huge turnaround in the support for Gingrich. The stunning victory in South Carolina brought Newt's candidacy back to life.

But the message from South Carolina was about more than a reaction to how Gingrich dealt with a cheap shot question from the media. Nor was it simply the Republican voters' response to Newt's mastery as a debater.

The more fundamental message is that the Republican primary voters do not want Mitt Romney, even if the Republican establishment does -- and it is just a question of which particular conservative alternative the voters prefer.

The successive boomlets for Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry and Herman Cain showed the Republican voter's constant search for somebody -- anybody -- as an alternative to Romney. The splintering of the conservative vote among numerous conservative candidates allowed Romney to be the "front-runner," but he never ran far enough in front to get a majority.

Mitt Romney's supposed "electability" -- his acceptability to moderates and independents -- has been his biggest selling point. Moreover, he is just the kind of candidate that the Republican establishment has preferred for years: a nice, bland, moderate who offends nobody.

This is the kind of candidate that is supposed to be the key to victory, no matter how many such candidates have gone down to defeat. If the bland and inoffensive moderate was in fact the key to victory, Dewey would have won a landslide victory over Truman in 1948, and John McCain would have beaten Barack Obama in 2008.

Whomever the Republicans choose as their candidate is going to have to run against both Barack Obama and the pro-Obama media. Newt Gingrich has shown that he can do that. Romney? Not so much. Mitt Romney's fumbling when trying to answer the simple question of whether he would or would not release his income tax records is the kind of indecisiveness that is not going to cut it in a nationally televised debate with President Obama.

Gingrich is not just a guy who is fast and feisty on his feet. He has a depth of understanding of what issues are crucial, experience in how to deal with them and -- almost equally important -- experience in how to shoot down the petty, irrelevant and "gotcha" distractions of the media.

Does Gingrich have negative qualities? More than most. Wild statements, alienation of colleagues, reckless gambits. His use of the rhetoric of the left in attacking Bain Capital was a recent faux pas, though one that he quickly backed away from.

But if we are serious -- and there has seldom, if ever, been a time in the history of this nation when it was more necessary to be serious -- then we cannot simply add up talking points for or against a candidate. What matters is how that candidate stands on issues that can make or break the future of this country.

Polls show the public as a whole with more negative attitudes toward Gingrich than toward Romney. But negative opinions, like other opinions, are not set in stone.

If the election campaign changes the opinions of a significant minority of the anti-Gingrich voters -- when the alternative is Obama -- it will not matter how much the remainder may hate Newt.

Is this a gamble? The painful reality is that everyone in this year's field of Republican candidates is a gamble. And re-electing Barack Obama is an even bigger gamble.

Whichever candidate the Republican voters finally choose from this year's field, they are bound to have reservations, if not fears. Gingrich's worst could be worse than Romney's worst, both as a candidate and as a president. But Gingrich's best is much better than Romney's best.

Sometimes caution can be carried to the point where it is dangerous. When the Super Bowl is on the line, you don't go with the quarterback who is least likely to throw an interception. You go with the one most likely to throw a touchdown pass.
_________________________________________

To read another article by Thomas Sowell, click here.

The Question Is Not 'Electability,' but 'Re-electability'

2012-01-24T17:28:00.001-08:00

The Question Is Not 'Electability,' but 'Re-electability'
By David Limbaugh
1/24/2012

Republican internecine squabbles this primary season seem to turn on the vying candidates' respective electability against incumbent Barack Obama. But if even uber-liberal New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has finally awakened to President Obama's arrogance, what does it say about his electability?

It's understandable that a lib would take so long to turn on the messiah, having invested so much in his presidency. But I wonder whether these people ever realize how late they are to the party and how utterly devoid of profundity their belated epiphanies are.

Dowd starts off her latest column describing Obama's opening appearance at a fundraiser at the Apollo in Harlem: "For eight seconds, we saw the president we had craved for three years: cool, joyous, funny, connected."

Unless you are a liberal utopian, such as my friend Mark Levin describes in his latest masterpiece, "Ameritopia," you wouldn't place so much faith in one deliberately mysterious man to usher in a new, unspecified era, and you especially wouldn't hold on to the painfully unrealistic hope that after three years, this man will finally present himself to be someone he has never been.

Savor a few of the tardy revelations Dowd has now come to see with pungent clarity:

"The man who became famous with a speech declaring that we were one America, not opposing teams of red and blue states, presides over an America more riven by blue and red than ever."

"The man who came to Washington on a wave of euphoria has had the presidency with all the joy of a root canal."

Dowd quotes Obama's lament to CNN's Fareed Zakaria that he is only seen as "cool and aloof" because he stays at home with his daughters instead of going "to a lot of Washington parties." Dowd will have none of this, saying that Reagan didn't socialize with the press, either, "but he knew that to transcend, you can't condescend."

Dowd seems surprised that in Jodi Kantor's new book, "The Obamas," Kantor paints a portrait of "the first couple" as people who feel aggrieved and misunderstood and who, in Dowd's words, "do believe in American exceptionalism -- their own, and they feel overassaulted and underappreciated."

Twisting the knife further, Dowd says that the Obamas, in their minds, haven't disappointed Americans. "We disappointed them."

Dowd quotes Michelle Obama, who apparently spoke too soon when she said she was proud of America for the first time when her husband was elected. The first lady said: "The question isn't whether Barack Obama is ready to be president. The question is whether we're ready. And that continues to be the question we have to ask ourselves." The Obamas, according to Dowd, are still convinced that presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett is correct that Obama is "just too talented to do what ordinary people do."

Dowd also seemed incredulous to learn that when Democrats took a shellacking in the 2010 midterm elections, Obama "did not seem to comprehend the anxiety that had spawned the Tea Party, or feel any regret," and that he told one Democratic congressman defeated in that anti-Obama wave that his loss was "for the greater good of the country."

No offense, Maureen, but we could have spared you three years of pining, even four if you care to go back to the campaign. From the beginning, for those not blinded by messianic delusions, Obama revealed himself as singularly divisive, narcissistic, cool and aloof, and dictatorial and as one who believes he is a gift to America rather than the other way around.

When Obama gave a bizarre shoutout to Dr. Joe Medicine Crow as a preamble to what was supposed to be a somber memorial to the victims of the Fort Hood shooter, British journalist Toby Harnden observed that he exhibited "curiously bloodless" behavior and a "strange disconnectedness." After his agenda was repudiated in the election for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, Obama said he wanted the American people to take another look at his plan. When Democrats lost the 2010 congressional elections, he didn't show the slightest recognition that he had anything to do with it. The American people, he said, just wanted the parties to work together.

We've known that those in Obama's extreme leftist base are discontented with him because, amazingly, they don't believe he's been liberal enough. But now we have a prominent media liberal in Maureen Dowd acknowledging that he is an empty shell. With that in mind, how about the vaunted independents?

Think about it, folks. Next time you hear someone telling you how unelectable this or that potential Republican candidate is, consider how un-reelectable Obama is. His messianic image is gone; he has a disastrous record; and even liberals are discovering that he is insufferably arrogant and contemptuous of the American people.
_______________________________________

To read another article by David Limbaugh, click here.

Obama Birther Case In Georgia Unlikely To Bring The President, Despite Judge's Order

2012-01-24T10:46:00.000-08:00

Obama Birther Case In Georgia Unlikely To Bring The President, Despite Judge's Order
1-24-2012

The White House appears prepared to ignore a recent ruling by Georgia Deputy Chief Judge Michael Malihi that would require President Obama to attend a birther hearing in Fulton County, Ga., on Thursday.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney outlined Barack Obama's weekly agenda on Monday, noting that the president is scheduled to hit Las Vegas, Denver and Detroit on Thursday in a whirlwind tour to talk middle class job creation.

That's not likely to sit well with Malihi, who last week rejected an effort by Obama's legal team to quash a subpoena that would require president appear in court that day. The complaint, like many others of its kind, claims Obama isn't a natural-born citizen and therefore can't be president.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports on Malihi's decision to deny the administration's efforts to counter the subpoena:

In his order, Malihi noted that Obama's legal team had argued that no president should be compelled to attend a court hearing.

"This may be correct," Malihi wrote. "But [Obama] has failed to enlighten the court with any legal authority."

Obama's court filings fail to show why his attendance would be "unreasonable or oppressive" or why his testimony would be "irrelevant, immaterial or cumulative," the judge wrote.

The White House on Monday referred questions to Obama's reelection campaign, which had no public comment.

Birther queen Orly Taitz, who represents one of the complainants, is also likely to be unhappy with the administration's apparent decision to not take Malihi's order seriously.

Over the weekend, Taitz predicted that the hearing would "be 100 times bigger than Watergate."

Taitz had earlier received a $20,000 fine for a frivolous suit in Georgia. In that suit, she represented two soldiers who were seeking to avoid deployment over their belief that Obama wasn't eligible to be president.

Earlier this month, she reacted to Malihi's original decision to deny a motion by the administration to have the challenges dismissed by saying she would now be able to "depose" the president.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution spoke with attorney Melvin Goldstein, who is not involved with the case, to get some insight on what might happen if the administration simply turned a blind eye to the court order. While unprecedented, he said Malihi could possibly refer the matter to a Fulton County Superior Court judge, who could then decide whether to enforce the subpoena. If necessary, Goldstein suggested, the judge could hold the president in contempt.
____________________________________________

To read related articles, click here.

Obama’s Brazilian Oil Disaster

2012-01-23T19:11:00.000-08:00

Obama’s Brazilian Oil Disaster
So much for Plan B.
by John Hayward
01/23/2012

President Obama’s ideologically-motivated opposition to the Keystone XL oil pipeline has gotten all the headlines lately, but critics forget that our brilliant leader had a Plan B for obtaining oil. That’s “B” as in “Brazil.”

Obama has put a tremendous amount of effort into cultivating the Brazilian oil industry. In fact, he offered Brazil’s Petrobras oil company $2 billion in loan subsidies to encourage precisely the kind of offshore exploration he has forbidden American companies to engage in. His offshore drilling moratorium has already cost the American economy over a billion dollars, and killed 20,000 jobs.

In November, the Obama Administration made the bizarre decision to stiff American aircraft manufacturer Hawker-Beechcraft for a billion-dollar no-bid contract to manufacture a light attack plane. The company had already spent $100 million producing a plane that met all of the Air Force’s requirements. The contract was given to a company essentially owned by the Brazilian government, Embraer, which has very little experience producing such aircraft. Hawker-Beechcraft unsuccessfully appealed to the General Accounting Office over this decision, then filed suit in federal court. Some wondered at the time whether this was a gift to win Brazil’s favor.

The President was on a Brazilian junket when he launched the war on Libya via long-distance telephone call. He cheerfully assured the Brazilian oil industry, in words he would never use to an American energy company, that “when you’re ready to start selling, we want to be one of your best customers.” Of course, he was also prattling on about American jobs energy independence at the time. His critics noticed the wide gulf between his words and deeds, as quoted in a Fox News report:

"We have abundant energy resources off Louisiana's coast, but this administration has virtually shut down our offshore industry and instead is using Americans' tax dollars to support drilling off the coast of Brazil," Sen. David Vitter, R-La., said in a statement. "It's ridiculous to ignore our own resources and continue going hat-in-hand to countries like Saudi Arabia and Brazil to beg them to produce more oil."

Fresh off a three-country visit to the region, Obama is trying to improve relations with the powerhouses of Latin America. Gulf Oil CEO Joe Petrowski agreed it's better to encourage production in more reliable Brazil than in the "inherently unstable" Middle East.

Still, he called Obama's announcement "puzzling," even "humorous."

"More oil that is not concentrated in the Mideast is good for the world and good for America. It would be a lot better if we had the drilling here," Petrowski told Fox News. "And it seems a double standard and it seems somewhat hypocritical to a country that desperately needs jobs ... that we're encouraging other countries to create the jobs that we need."

Well, guess what? Brazil is ready to sell that oil.

To China.

The Washington Times reports on the latest Obama disaster:

Less than a month after President Obama visited Brazil in March to make a pitch for oil, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was off to Beijing to sign oil contracts with two huge state-owned Chinese companies.

The deals are part of a growing oil relationship between the two countries that, thanks to a series of billion-dollar agreements, is giving China greater influence over Brazil’s oil frontier.

Chinese oil companies are pushing to meet mandatory expansion targets by inking deals across Africa and Latin America, but they are especially interested in Brazil.

“With the Lula and Carioca discoveries alone, Brazil added a possible 38 billion barrels of estimated recoverable oil,” said Luis Giusti, a former president of Venezuela’s state oil company, PDVSA, referring to the new Brazilian oil fields.

“That immediately changed the picture,” he said, adding that Brazil is on track to become “an oil giant.”

And when you’re looking to become an oil giant, who needs a no-growth dwarf like Barack Obama? This was all a done deal before President Downgrade began making a fool of himself in Brazil. While Obama was offering $2 billion in loan guarantees, China was giving them $10 billion loans in exchange for 10-year oil deals, and buying $5 billion chunks of Brazilian oil companies. They’re also getting leverage with Venezuela, which is getting Chinese support for joint ventures with Petrobras.

So, there will be plenty of offshore drilling going on, but it won’t be done by American companies creating American jobs and earning American dollars, and we won’t be getting the oil. Plan B was an epic disaster. Plan C involves dependency on China instead of the Middle East, and a more primitive, restricted American economy settling for the “green energy” junk Obama’s top contributors are pushing.

Since the Brazil thing didn’t work out, can that American company at least have its Air Force contract back?
_________________________________________

To read another article by John Hayward, click here.

Turning the Tide On Abortion

2012-01-23T19:01:00.000-08:00

Turning the Tide On Abortion
The living salute the defenders of life.
by John Hayward
01/23/2012

Today is the annual March for Life, the biggest demonstration you never hear about. The marchers won’t “occupy” anything. They won’t grab headlines by fighting with the police. Their beliefs have been ruled beyond the pale by popular culture. They are routinely told they’re marching on the wrong side of an issue that was decided forever by judicial fiat in 1973.

But the marchers keep coming, and they are winning one of the most uphill battles of modern times. Anyone who is interested in persuasion, and the passionate exchange of ideas, should marvel at what they have accomplished. They do it with a fraction of the attention lavished upon far smaller groups. You won’t see many pro-life events where the police and reporters outnumber the demonstrators.

Today a group called Students for Life of America released a video filled with people who credit the pro-life movement with their very survival. Let anyone who doubts that a human life is at stake during every single visit to an abortion clinic argue with these folks.

To view the video, click here.

The “pro-choice” crowd isn’t very good at handling the humanity of abortion’s targets, or recognizing the choices of those who contemplated abortion, but decided to bring their children into the world. They invest much effort in confusing the unborn with the unliving. It is wise to mistrust an argument predicated on ignorance of the obvious.

A great many people who would have liked to appear in this video were not alive to participate. Conversely, the subjects of successful abortions will not be making a video critical of the procedure.
_______________________________________

To read a related article, click here.
_______________________________________

To read another article by John Hayward, click here.

The growing science of sex difference

2012-01-23T12:18:00.000-08:00

The growing science of sex difference
by Maggie Gallagher
01/20/2012

The headline at the online magazine Miller-McCune.com just about says it all: "Sex on the Brain Proves Costly for Men."

In an intriguing set of empirical studies just published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, a team of social scientists led by professor Sanne Nauts shows that the mere prospect of speaking with an unknown woman reduces men's (but not women's) performance on cognitive tasks.

In the first study, 71 college students at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands were asked to complete a "lip-reading task" while supposedly being observed on a webcam by an unseen researcher who would instant message them. When the alleged researcher messaging them was named "Lisa," the men performed worse than when the purported observer messaging them had a male name.

In a second study -- this one involving 90 students -- the researchers decided to create even more distance between actual interaction with a woman to see if merely imagining that they were about to interact with a woman could affect men's cognitive performance.

As in the first study, participants were escorted to a cubicle by an experimenter of their own sex, ostensibly to collect stimulus materials for a study on lip reading.

Then the students were merely told they were being observed by a researcher named either Danielle or Daan, who would turn on the webcam and send them an instant message. That never happened. Nonetheless, the mere idea they might soon be messaging with an unknown woman whose attractiveness they could not evaluate caused in the men what the researchers call "cognitive impairment."

The authors attribute this to the cognitively costly effect of impression management, which leaves less brain energy for other tasks:

"Men seem so strongly attuned to mating opportunities that they were influenced by rather subtle cues to a woman, even in the absence of clear information about her," they note. "Casually mentioning a female instead of a male name was sufficient to impair men's cognitive performance."

It may just be that firing up the reward systems of the brain makes men less focused on the task at hand. The authors cite a 2004 study led by Bram Van den Bergh, intriguingly titled "Bikinis Instigate Generalized Impatience in Intertemporal Choice." After men were shown photos of women in lingerie or swimsuits, they became generally more impulsive -- e.g., they tended to prefer a little cash now to more cash down the road.

When women enter the room, reason flees?

The most interesting thing is that the inverse is not true for women. On average, women who were told they would interact with men did not perform any differently on cognitive tasks than women who were told they would be interacting with women.

Gender simply matters less to women.

I've always suspected this is the root of much feminism, as well as women's sexual confusion, and the deepest source of the endless human sexual comedy.

Unlike men, women have a category called "human" in which gender (while recognized) is relatively unimportant. As a hypothesis for future busy research scientists, I offer the suggestion that this may be due to the primacy of maternity in women's evolutionarily adapted brain structure. The category "my baby" is way more important than the gender of a child to the mother.

When I sent a copy of "The Mere Anticipation of an Interaction With a Woman Can Impair Men's Cognitive Performance" to my husband, his response was: "They need scientific studies for this stuff?"

Well, yes, apparently these days we do.

Men and women really are different. Not only our bodies, but our brains react differently.

Suppressing reality in the interests of ideology doesn't help women -- it just makes us all act in dumber and dumber ways.
___________________________________________

To read another article by Maggie Gallagher, click here.

The quiet triumph of life

2012-01-23T11:51:00.000-08:00

The quiet triumph of life
by Gary Bauer
01/23/2012

Asked by NPR last week to assess the state of the political battle over abortion, NARAL President Nancy Keenan responded, “The bottom line here is that elections matter.”

That truism was never more true for the pro-life cause than in 2010, the “Year of the Tea Party.” The Tea Party’s purpose was to demand fiscal responsibility from lawmakers and to elect candidates who would address the country’s towering budget deficits.

But the Tea Party revolution also quietly produced perhaps the most significant gains ever for the pro-life cause.

The 2010 elections changed the number of states with both Republican-controlled legislatures and Republican governors from 10 to 15. Consequently, 92 pro-life laws were passed by state lawmakers across the country last year, according to the Guttmacher Institute.

That’s three times as many pro-life laws as were passed in 2010, a pro-life surge that NARAL (the National Abortion Rights Action League) called “devastating” to its cause. Abortion advocates passed only 10 laws last year.

In all, 26 states passed at least one pro-life law last year. Three states enacted laws requiring abortion workers to offer pregnant women the chance to view an ultrasound of their unborn babies. Eight states banned coverage of abortion in the state’s health insurance exchanges.

And five states joined Nebraska in passing laws outlawing abortion after 20 weeks based on the increasing evidence that unborn babies can feel pain at that stage of development.

Other states passed laws regulating abortion facilities. And seven states outlawed “telemedicine,” or webcam abortions, whereby abortion drugs are administered remotely by video.

South Dakota passed a three-day waiting period for abortions. And Arizona became the first state to enact a measure that imposes criminal penalties on doctors who provide abortion with the knowledge that race or sex was a factor in the abortion decision.

A number of states are fighting with the Obama administration over state taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood.

There were pro-life gains at the federal level too. Congress reinstated the ban on taxpayer funding of abortion in the District of Columbia. And in a surprise move, President Obama’s Health and Human Services rejected the FDA’s approval of over-the-counter purchase of Plan B, aka the morning-after pill, which can cause an early abortion.

Although it took partisan majorities for some of these measures to become law, support for many pro-life laws is remarkably bipartisan.

A 2011 Gallup Poll found that 87 percent of Americans support laws that require abortion practitioners to inform women of the risks associated with an abortion before performing them. Seventy-one per cent support parental consent for adolescent abortions, and 69 percent support 24-hour waiting periods.

Gallup found that significant majorities of self-described “pro-choice” Americans favor basic restrictions on abortion, including informed consent, a ban on partial-birth abortion, parental consent for minors, 24-hour waiting periods, and ending third-trimester abortions. A majority of “pro-choice” advocates even support a second-trimester abortion ban.

Despite abortion advocates’ best efforts, few Americans want to be associated with abortion. The share of Americans who consider themselves “pro-life” has increased from 33 percent in 1996 to 45 percent in 2011. Meanwhile, the percentage of “pro-choice” Americans has dropped from 56 percent in 1996 to 49 percent in 2011.

The abortion industry is struggling to attract medical professionals willing to perform or participate in abortions.

And a significant minority of Americans (39 percent, according to a May 2011 Gallup Poll) think abortion is “morally acceptable.” Numerous polls show that young Americans comprise the most pro-life generation ever.

Abortion proponents are on the defensive. But in some cases they aren’t playing defense at all. Whereas abortion forces have historically gone to court to challenge every kind of pro-life law, they seem more reluctant to do so now.

For instance, abortion-rights legal organizations aren’t bringing suit against fetal pain-based abortion bans because they fear that if a legal challenge ends up in the Supreme Court, it could lead to challenging the current viability standard used by the U.S. high court to determine the constitutionality of abortion laws. In other words, abortion advocates fear that the courts may no longer be entirely on their side.

Pro-lifers still have much work to do. If current trends hold, one in three American women will have an abortion in her lifetime, and of those who do, more than half will have at least one more abortion.

Hundreds of thousands of pro-life Americans are joining March for Life events in Washington, D.C., and across the country today. After 39 years of abortion-on-demand, the marchers remain an optimistic and
hopeful group.

They will be marching with an extra spring in their step today with the knowledge that even though the abortion debate doesn’t capture the headlines like it once did, their message—that all human life is
sacred and should be protected under the law—is capturing the hearts and minds of Americans like never before.
__________________________________

To read another article by Gary Bauer, click here.

Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates

2012-01-23T11:20:00.000-08:00

Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates
By Andrew B. Wilson & Robert O. Skovgard from the December/January issue

The hare wins in the end (and gives a far superior speech).

As young men born in the same year (1955), they set out from the same starting point, but with radically different personalities. In the early days of personal computers, both dropped out of college and launched their own businesses. Of the two, the late Steve Jobs was always the quick, live-for-the-moment hare, while Bill Gates was the dispassionate, lawyerly, bide-your-time tortoise.

For two decades, the race between the two went according to script, with the hare jumping out to a huge early lead, before falling hopelessly behind. Apple Computer appeared to be headed for bankruptcy in 1997 when Gates and Microsoft came to the rescue with a $150 million investment. While appearing as the noble competitor, Gates could not hide his contempt for his longtime rival. In a Vanity Fair article in 1998, Gates said sneeringly -- "What I can't figure out is why he is even trying. He knows he can't win."

But this is when the fable took an amazing twist.

In the last 12 years of his life, Jobs reinvented himself and his business not once but several times, and finished far ahead of his rival. He built the most valuable business in the world--creating more than half again as much wealth for his shareholders as Microsoft.

Microsoft reached its all-time peak in market capitalization in September of 2000, when the stock was worth $642 billion. Today it is worth only about a third as much--at $229 billion (as of Oct. 25).

By contrast, Apple's market cap has climbed from a mere $6 billion at the end of 1998 to $364 billion today (again, Oct. 25)--a 60-fold increase.

As Walter Isaacson writes in his just-released and highly readable biography, Jobs "revolutionized six industries"--personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing--and he "reimagined a seventh"--in creating the stores that became shrines to his memory in the days and weeks following his death from pancreatic cancer on October 5.

As many have commented, Jobs saw himself as an artist no less than a businessman or technologist. His artistry is evident in what now seems his last will and testament: the now-famous 2005 commencement address at Stanford.

In the speech, viewed by millions of people around the world in the days following his death, Jobs spoke publicly for the first time about his own possibly failing health--using that for his foil in telling students: "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life…have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

Countless commencement addresses contain a similar message. It is indeed what the old blow-hard Polonius said in Hamlet--"To thine own self be true." But none that we have seen have said it so eloquently or so powerfully.

It is interesting to compare this commencement address with the one that Gates gave two years later at Harvard. Jobs told his biographer that he composed his speech on his own, critiqued only by his wife. Whether that is entirely true or not, the speech shines with a sense of authenticity--a sense, that is, of the speaker being the true author of his thoughts, words, and actions.

By contrast, as Gates told the Wall Street Journal in a story published shortly after he spoke, he labored on his address for more than six months--reading Nobel Prize acceptance speeches by Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Enrico Fermi, and others; soliciting the advice of humor-and-communications coach Warren Buffett at different stages of composition; and bouncing outlines and drafts back and forth with a Gates Foundation speechwriter who had written for Slate, the online magazine owned by Microsoft. His speech has both the carefulness and the clumsiness of a document drafted by a committee, and it makes Gates seem something of a poseur--pretending to a wisdom that he doesn't possess.

Let us take a closer look at the style, structure and content of the two speeches.

OPENINGS

"Today, I want to tell you three stories from my life," Jobs began. "That's it. No big deal. Just three stories."

By contrast, Gates opened his speech with a series of remarks filled with self-directed yet self-congratulatory humor:

I've been waiting more than 30 years to say this: "Dad, I always told you I'd come back and get my degree."

I want to thank Harvard today for this timely honor. I'll be changing my job next year…and it will be nice to have a college degree on my résumé.

I applaud the graduates today for taking a much more direct route to your degrees. For my part, I'm just happy that the Crimson has called me "Harvard's most successful drop-out." I guess that makes me valedictorian of my own special class…I did the best of everyone who failed.

But I also want to be recognized as the guy who got Steve Ballmer to drop out of business school. I'm a bad influence…

And so on. Gates continued in the same jokey vein for several more paragraphs--surely making many members of the audience wince and wonder when he would get to the point.

THE THREE STORIES OF STEVE JOBS

Unlike Gates, Jobs did not boast about dropping out of college. Nor did he flatter his audience by paying tribute to how special they are as members of an elite institution. His dropping out is woven into the first of his three stories--a story "about connecting the dots" in his passage from childhood to early adulthood.

This story begins before he was born--with the decision by his unwed mother to put him up for adoption. She insisted that the working-class couple who adopted him promise to send him to college. And they did.

In his words, Jobs "naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford"--attending Reed College, a small liberal arts school in Oregon. At this stage in his life, Jobs had "no idea" what he wanted to do and "no idea" how college was going to help him figure it out. He felt guilty about putting his parents to unnecessary expense, so he "dropped out" after six months at Reed and then "stayed around," or "dropped in," for 18 more months--auditing classes of his own choosing while paying no tuition.

He took one course in calligraphy, where he "learned about serif and sans serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great."

While none of this had any practical application at the time, it did later on: "We designed it all into the Mac."

The lesson drawn: "You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something--your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life."

The second of Jobs's stories is "about love and loss"--how "getting fired from Apple [in 1985] was the best thing that could have ever happened to me":

The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods in my life. During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife.

The third and climactic story is "about death"--and the heightened awareness that came to him as a result of being diagnosed with cancer:

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything--all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure--these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

GATES'S "INEQUITIEs""

In moving from the critical moment in Jobs's speech to that in Gates's, we move (it must be said) from the sublime to the ridiculous. After all the jokiness of his opening, Gates lurches into a seriousness that is hard to take seriously in this passage:

But taking a serious look back…I do have one big regret.

I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world--the appalling disparities of health, and wealth, and opportunity that condemn millions of people to lives of despair.

But humanity's greatest advances are not in its discoveries--but in how those discoveries are applied to reduce inequity. Whether through democracy, strong public education, quality health care, or broad economic opportunity--reducing inequity is the highest human achievement.

I left campus knowing little about the millions of people cheated out of educational opportunities here in this country. And I knew nothing about the millions of people living in unspeakable poverty and disease in developing countries.

It took me decades to find out.

Shame on Harvard for not making Global Inequities 101 part of the core curriculum! The nerdy kid from Seattle had to become a billionaire many times over--had, indeed, to become the world's richest man--before he donned the armor of a knight of philanthropy and went out to do battle against those Awful Inequities.

There is much more drivel along the same lines. Gates speaks in the same language--the language of victimization--that is now heard from the Occupy Wall Street crowd. Only he is slightly to the left of them. He is not just a Ninety-Nine Percenter; he is up there at 99.5 percent:

When an airplane crashes, officials immediately call a press conference. They promise to investigate, determine the cause, and prevent similar crashes in the future.

But if the officials were brutally honest, they would say: "Of all the people in the world who died today from preventable causes, one half of one percent of them of them were on this plane. We're determined to do everything possible to solve the problem that took the lives of the one half of one percent.

Even for someone who is partly responsible for destroying more than half of his company's market capitalization over the past decade, Gates shows a shocking lack of understanding of free-market capitalism.

"If we can find approaches that meet the needs of the poor in ways that generate profits for business and votes for politicians," Gates pontificates, "we will have found a sustainable way to reduce inequity in the world."

But that is exactly and precisely wrong. Contra Gates, there is no good way to mix generating votes for politicians and generating profits for legitimate businesses. In backward countries ruled by unscrupulous (or monstrous) tyrants, anything that helps to prop up existing government will almost certainly be something that undermines the disciplines and rewards of free enterprise. It will perpetuate bribes and kickbacks and help to ensure that corrupt but politically-favored businesses win out over those that work hard to serve their customers and earn an honest profit.

According to Gates--and this is where we come to the theme of the speech--"The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity."

So, at the end of the day, it is "too much complexity" that is causing all the problems--not corruption…or man's inhumanity to man…or the desire of dictators to do everything they can to increase their power while restricting the freedom of all those they wish to keep in a state of servitude.

With his rose-colored glasses firmly in place, Gates peers into the future toward the end of an overly long address and issues this challenge to students:

I want to exhort each of the graduates here to take on an issue--a complex problem, a deep inequity, and become a specialist on it. If you make it the focus of your career, that would be phenomenal. But you don't have to do that to make an impact. For a few hours every week, you can use the growing power of the Internet to get informed, find others with the same interests, see the barriers, and find ways to cut through them.

Ah, to think that we might live in a world where Harvard boys are united in spending at least a few minutes or hours a day combating Global Inequities! Utopia must be just around the corner.

FINAL WORDS

As veteran speechwriters in our own right, we would not want to end this article on an ironic and dispiriting note.

Bill Gates does not seem such a cardboard character in Isaacson's biography of his rival as he does in his Harvard speech. Though lacking in Jobs's charisma and his outrageous, uncanny, and often hilarious ability to bend other people to his will, Gates does occasionally come to life as a real person and an astute businessman.

Jobs and Gates feuded in the mid-'80s over GUIs, or graphical user interfaces (i.e., the easy-to-use mouse and other features that replaced old-fashioned prompts such as C:/> that required users to type out commands). Jobs worried and raged that Microsoft as an Apple supplier had been stealing Apple's pioneering and user-friendly technology in this area. Gates countered that Apple had, only a few years earlier, copied the same technology from Xerox PARC. That set the stage for a classic confrontation soon after Gates revealed that he would develop a new operating system for IBM PCs featuring a new point-and-click navigation system (much like Macintosh, introduced two years earlier) that would be called Windows. As Isaacson tells the story:

Gates found himself surrounded by ten Apple employees who were eager to watch their boss assail him. Jobs didn't disappoint his troops. "You're ripping us off!" he shouted. "I trusted you, and now you're stealing from us!" [Andy] Hertzfeld [one of Jobs's lieutenants] recalled that Gates just sat there coolly, looking Steve in the eye, before hurling back what became a classic zinger. "Well, Steve, I think there's more than one way of looking at it. I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it."

In becoming the industry standard, Windows was Gates's and Microsoft's ticket to long-term success--and corporate complacency. Unlike Jobs--the endlessly inventive hare--Gates has never surprised or delighted his customers. Instead, he has kept them in more of a hammerlock--forced to accept succeeding generations of uninspired software with many annoying features.

"I hope you will come back to Harvard 30 years from now and reflect on what you have done with your talent and energy," Gates said in ending his commencement address on a characteristically preachy note. "I hope you will judge yourselves not on your professional accomplishments alone, but also on how well you have addressed the world's inequities…on how well you treated people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity."

Jobs, as usual, was more succinct and personal. In the context of another story from his younger days, he told his audience at Stanford:

"Stay hungry. Stay foolish."
_____________________________________

To read another article by Andrew B. Wilson, click here.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being the MSM

2012-01-23T11:04:00.000-08:00

The Unbearable Lightness of Being the MSM
By David Catron on 1.23.12 @ 6:08AM

Most "reporters" dwell on dirty laundry because they don't understand the serious issues.

It has been obvious for some time that the Gingrich strategy for capturing the GOP nomination for President includes running against the "news" media as well as the President, and Saturday's primary results in South Carolina seem to vindicate the shrewdness of that plan. Newt realized early on that much of the voter indignation that has manifested itself in the Tea Party movement is driven by media complicity with Obama in his ongoing effort to ignore the will of the people and transform the U.S. into a European-style social democracy. This concordance between Newt and the voters on the untoward and destructive role of the media in our political discourse was blindingly obvious last Thursday when Newt's reprimand of CNN's John King during the GOP debate drew two standing ovations from the audience.

Much has been written, of course, about media malpractice. Most commentators put it down to liberal bias, but that is actually a symptom of a larger problem -- the intellectual shallowness that afflicts most contemporary journalists. One reason John King opened the CNN debate with a question about Newt's sex life is that it required less cerebral exertion than a more substantive query about such things as the cause of high unemployment or the constitutionality of Obamacare's individual mandate. This lack of intellectual depth is why one moderator of a CNBC debate, who gave each candidate thirty seconds to propose an alternative to Obamacare, was clearly shocked and angered when Gingrich accurately labeled it an "absurd question." She had no idea that she had said something stupid.

And, if you doubt that the "shallowness theory" holds true beyond the realm of broadcast media, I recommend a perusal of the Atlantic. Andrew Sullivan's departure may have reduced that publication's creepiness factor, but it hasn't increased its intellectual heft. A case in point can be found in a recent post by David Graham about Rick Santorum. The latter served in Congress for sixteen years and, in the volatile race for the GOP presidential nomination, he pulled off a near miracle in the Iowa Caucuses. So, what does Graham offer the readers of his venerable magazine about this interesting public figure? A sophomoric critique of Santorum's "embarrassing yearbook photo, which the Atlantic first unearthed in May 2011." Just imagine the seconds of grueling toil that must have gone into "unearthing" this monumental scoop.

Comparable levels of research often go into the news analysis offered by the media. Nonetheless, when some story threatens to confuse the hoi polloi, the deep thinkers of the MSM are ready to render their opinions. For example, after Obamacare was passed and some benighted souls beyond the Beltway began raising questions about its constitutionality, the Washington Post's Ezra Klein was there to explain the problem. On MSNBC, he opined that all the unnecessary fuss was really caused by the blueprint that lays out the structure of our government: "The issue of the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than 100 years ago." And, believe it or not, he was right. That hoary document was penned in 1787, which is way more than a century ago. It was actually written before Facebook existed.

This no doubt explains why Klein's perplexity is shared by so many of his fellow journalists, Joe Conason for instance. When U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson struck down Obamacare because Congress can't "compel an otherwise passive individual into a commercial transaction," Conason denounced the ruling based on his reading of the Militia Act of 1792, a law empowering President Washington to call up the militia and require its members to buy muskets. This precedent, according to Conason, meant that the government can indeed "compel" citizens to buy things. That the Militia Act is authorized by the Constitution's militia clauses, while Obamacare's individual mandate involves the interstate commerce clause, holds no meaning for Conason. He is, as Klein might put it, confused.

Among the establishment media, this sort of thing also manifests itself in general knowledge about the nation's history. Just prior to the 2010 midterms, Sarah Palin visited Nevada and admonished a group of exuberant Tea Partiers not to "party like it's 1773" before actually winning the election. PBS's Gwen Ifill got wind of this speech and fired a tweet heard around the Internet: "Sarah Palin: party like it's 1773! ummm,." Though the former Alaska governor was obviously alluding to the Boston Tea Party, which occurred… ummm… in the year cited, Ifill and many of her colleagues were under the impression that the midnight raid had taken place in 1776. Thus, they promptly began braying about Palin's ignorance. Within twenty-four hours, however, they were desperately walking back the embarrassing gaffe.

The astonishing irony of all this is that the vast majority of establishment journalists still consider themselves to be the intellectual superiors of the voters, particularly those who don't share their ideological perspective. Thus, the cover of Newsweek's current issue brazenly asks, "Why Are Obama's Critics So Dumb?" Even worse, it contains a surreal feature story in which Andrew Sullivan explains that Obama has actually been a success: "Obama has delivered in a way that the unhinged right and purist left have yet to understand or absorb." According to a recent CBS survey, "41 percent of Americans think Mr. Obama has performed his job well enough to be elected to a second term." Presumably, then, the editors of Newsweek consider the remaining 59 percent, nearly three-fifths of the public, just plain dumb.

As dumb as we are, however, most of us grasp something that has obviously eluded the brainiacs at Newsweek -- insulting the customer is not a good strategy for selling one's product. But the editors of that increasingly ridiculous publication, like most of their colleagues in the establishment media, are intellectual lightweights. Their understanding of such mundane realities is just as tenuous as their comprehension of the major problems facing the country. Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, gets it. And he has used this knowledge to bring his candidacy back from the dead -- twice. Whether it will carry him all the way to the GOP nomination remains to be seen, but the voters obviously want the pompous asses of the mainstream media brought low nearly as badly as they want to fire Barack Obama.
________________________________

To read another article by David Catron, click here.

Race, Poverty and Abortion

2012-01-23T10:07:00.000-08:00

Race, Poverty and Abortion
By Political Calculations
1/22/2012

How are the number of annual abortions in the United States distributed by race? And how does that compare to the distribution of the potential child-bearing (Age 15-44) population of the United States by race? Or for that matter, how does that compare to the racial distribution of the poor in the United States, as measured by enrollment of the non-elderly in Medicaid?

Our chart below provides the demographic snapshot of what we found in answering each question asked above, for the years spanning 2008 through 2010:

Data Sources

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Abortion Surveillance - United States 2008. Table 21. Reported Abortions, by Known Race/Ethnicity, Age Group, and Marital Status of Women Who Obtained an Abortion --- Selected States, United States, 2008. 60(SS15);1-41. 25 November 2011.

Kaiser Family Foundation. Distribution of the Nonelderly with Medicaid by Race/Ethnicity, States (2009-2010), U.S. (2010).

U.S. Census Bureau. Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2012. Table 10. Resident Population by Race, Hispanic Origin, and Age: 2000 and 2009.

U.S. Census Bureau. 2009 Population Estimates. T4-2009: Hispanic or Latino by Race.

A Few Words in Defense of Negative Campaigning

2012-01-23T09:27:00.000-08:00

A Few Words in Defense of Negative Campaigning
By Michael Barone
1/23/2012

Those who take a certain pleasure in denouncing the evils negative political advertising should have spent the last week in South Carolina. They could have plunked down in front of TV sets, especially during morning, early evening and late evening news programs, and by adroit use of the remote control seen one negative spot after another.

They could have watched again and again the Ron Paul campaign's stinging denunciation of Newt Gingrich for, among other things, taking $1.6 million from Freddie Mac.

They could have seen a similar assault on Gingrich from the pro-Romney Restore Our Future super PAC (by the way, how do you restore something which by definition doesn't yet exist?).

They could have taken delight in the Rick Santorum campaign's ad highlighting similarities between Mitt Romney's record on issues and that of Barack Obama, or in Paul's stinging ad denouncing Santorum as a "big government conservative."

All of these ads, you may notice, targeted the three candidates who, coming out of Iowa and New Hampshire, were considered by themselves and others as having some chance of winning the nomination: Romney, Gingrich and Santorum. Left largely unattacked were Paul, who confesses he has no chance to win, and Rick Perry, who withdrew Thursday morning.

There is a near-unanimous sentiment among the high-minded that negative advertising is a bad thing. It pollutes the air even more than carbon dioxide. It breeds cynicism about politics and government. It is somehow unfair.

In response, let me say a few words in praise of negative ads.

First, elections are an adversary business, zero-sum games in which only one candidate can win and all the others must lose. Sometimes it's smart for competitors to concede points to their opponents. But it's irrational to expect one side to sing consistent praises of the other.

In second-grade elections, it may be considered bragging to vote for yourself. But it is silly to expect adults to behave this way.

It is especially foolish to expect that candidates who seem headed to win elections should escape criticism on television. Every candidate has weak points and makes mistakes. It's not dirty pool for opponents to point them out.

Second, it is said that negative ads can be inaccurate and unfair. Well, yes -- but so can positive ads. An inaccurate or unfair ad invites refutation and rebuttal, by opponents or in the media, and can boomerang against the attacker. So candidates have an incentive to make attacks that can be sustained.

Sometimes voters respond negatively even to fair attacks. That's why in multicandidate races, an attack by candidate A on candidate B can hurt A as well as B, and end up helping candidate C or D.

That's why many campaigns hesitate before attacking. And it also gives them a motive to make attacks that can be sustained because they are accurate and fair.

Third, advertising is not always decisive. Other things can matter more. The barrage of negative ads against Gingrich hurt him in Iowa and New Hampshire, but in South Carolina (which has not yet voted as I write) it did not prevent him from overtaking first Santorum and drawing even with Romney in the polls. Debate performances trumped attack spots.

Behind the disdain of the high-minded for negative campaign spots is a fear that they will erode Americans' faith in politics and government. These folks like to cite polls showing Americans once had great confidence in institutions and that now they lack it.

But polls have been showing lack of faith in institutions going back to the late 1960s. The only time when pollsters found high levels of confidence was when the questions were first asked in the 1950s. That was during the two decades when American institutions -- big government, big business, big labor -- enjoyed enormous prestige after they led the nation to victory in World War II and presided over the unexpected growth and prosperity of the postwar era.

I strongly suspect that if you could go farther back in history and ask those same questions, you would find that during much of our history, most Americans were grousing about politicians and complaining about government. Mark Twain and Will Rogers made good livings doing so.

In any case, negative campaigning will persist. Those who enjoy wallowing in negative ads should fly to Florida, find a TV and keep clicking the remote control.
________________________________________

To read another article by Michael Barone, click here.

Most Basic Choice is Choosing Life

2012-01-23T09:04:00.000-08:00

Most Basic Choice is Choosing Life
By Star Parker
1/23/2012

The U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in Texas gave good reason for celebration for the hundreds of thousands who will arrive in Washington on Monday for the 39th annual March for Life.

The Court upheld last week the constitutionality of a new law in Texas requiring that abortion providers provide ultrasound exams and that women listen to the physician’s description of her unborn child and to the heartbeat before deciding to abort.

The law, signed by Gov. Rick Perry in May, was blocked by a federal district court in August which argued that the law impinged on free speech rights of abortion providers.

Now Texas may become not just the nation’s largest creator of jobs, but the nation’s best protector of human life.

Ultrasound images of unborn children are turning the abortion game around and it is why abortion providers and organizations such as Planned Parenthood that promote the barbarous abortion regime are so on edge about it.

There is a wide range of estimates on the percentages of woman who intended to abort that change their mind after seeing an ultrasound image of their child, but all these estimates show they have a major impact.

My own anecdotal surveys from crisis pregnancy centers around the country that I work with indicate anywhere from 62% to 95% of women who intended to abort change their mind after seeing these images.

Focus on the Family reports that 84% do. Focus on the Family also operates a generous program called Operation Ultrasound through which they provide ultrasound equipment and training to crisis pregnancy centers that apply.

According to Nancy Northrup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is challenging the Texas law, “If this decision stands, it opens the floodgates for other states to insert themselves in an inappropriate way between doctors and women seeking medical care.”

What can you possibly conclude from a movement that labels itself “pro-choice” that opposes ensuring that women who make a decision as serious and grave as abortion have as much vital information as possible before making that choice?

Good information is the oxygen that enables good decision making.

The answer to the question is that the movement that labels itself “pro-choice” is not about promoting choice at all. It is about promoting abortion.

It is why the so called “pro-choice” movement opposes efforts to better provide women - disproportionately young, poor, minority women – with information that raises their awareness and understanding of what they are doing.

We might recall the impact that television images had after Hurricane Katrina when the reality of poverty in America suddenly was out there for all to see. No one could turn their eyes from this ugly and unpleasant truth.

Including our politicians. Our nation’s capital has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation. Any member of congress can see it by just walking a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol Building. But suddenly, when the images were on national television, the politicians were out there pontificating.

An ultrasound image of an unborn child is the same type of media event. Suddenly the mother-to-be sees what she didn’t know or perhaps knew and wanted to avoid confronting. That she is the bearer of human life and that she is close to murdering that very life that she chose to help create.

According to Americans United for Life, 460 pieces of legislation were considered in state legislatures around the nation last year.

The forces promoting ignorance are losing and light is shining through.

It is reason for optimism that increasingly more Americans are grasping that for a free country to function, we need informed and responsible citizens.

We need appreciation that our choices matter. And that the most important choice, as we learn in Deuteronomy, is to choose life.
________________________________________

To read another article by Star Parker, click here.
________________________________________

To read another article from the "most democrats are heading to hell" thread, click here.

The Frackin' Democrats

2012-01-22T17:02:00.000-08:00

The Frackin' Democrats
By John Ransom
1/22/2012

For every reasonable and responsible solution America comes up with to solve a problem, the frackin' Democrats have to come up with a hysterical response to stop it. Take hydraulic fracturing...

CatFish John wrote: 50 years from now water is going to be more precious than both oil and gas but you know who cares about our children and our children's children. - in response to Scientists Discover Gassy Liberal Pseudo-Science

Dear Comrade CatFish,

Water is always more precious than oil and gas. But we’ve been using oil and gas for over a century and we still have clean water here in the US. It wasn’t oil and gas that killed the Chesapeake Bay.

Liberals always have to act like the sky is falling, because they can’t rely on facts to back them up.

I don’t think we’ll run out of water, any more than the world will deflate from drilling for oil and gas or Guam will tip over from too many people.

Mark Twain once said that he felt about one of his books probably the same way that the Almighty felt about the world: “The fact is, there is a trifle too much water in both.”

Sons of Liberty wrote: The only poll I trust is the one that will be conducted on Nov. 6, 2012. And from past experience working the elections I'm not too optimistic that this President will be voted out of office. I've worked the elections for 6 years now and since then I have wondered if this republic can ever be saved. Example: out of more than

700 registered voters in my district only 100 to 150 voters show up to vote EVERY election cycle, from local to national elections. - in response to With Keystone XL, Obama Mask Slips on Jobs, Energy

Dear Liberty,

Six years isn’t that many election cycles.

I would say that it’s about the normal amount of time it takes the average voter to get completely disgusted with the party in power.

In this case that means disgust with the Democrats.

In 2008, voter turnout was the highest it’s been since 1968 at 56.8 percent of the population.

The good news is that if you want voter turnout to increase in your district, you only have to contact those 700 voters once during the preceding 30 days prior to the election. If you break it down by households, it probably comes out closer to 400-500 households. That means that you only have to make 17 phone calls per day to voters in your district to positively affect the outcome.

Call your local party for the resources to contact your neighbors.

Ibuh wrote: Here we go again: spreading misinformation about the Keystone pipeline. Preserving the lies that cancelling that pipeline will result in decreased supply of Canadian oil to the US and increased oil prices. - in response to With Keystone XL, Obama Mask Slips on Jobs, Energy

Dear Comrade Ibuh,

If that’s not true than why is the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper threatening to sell the oil to China?

I would think that maybe he knows something- actually many things- about this that you don’t. In fact, I would guarantee that he knows more about most things than you do.

“Prime Minister Harper expressed his profound disappointment with the news,” that Obama scuttled the Keystone pipeline. “He indicated to President Obama that he hoped that this project would continue given the significant contribution it would make to jobs and economic growth both in Canada and the United States of America.”

He went on to say that since the US didn’t want the oil, Canada was looking to sell the oil to someone else.

Here goes that whacky Canadian Prime Minister “telling lies again” about Canadian oil.

Beachgoer wrote: I find it very hypocritical that the president can visit Disney and call for more tourism to boost the economy but slams the door on the pipeline. My business runs on gasoline. I will not be voting to re-elect!! - in response to Expecting the Worst from President Hypocrite

Dear Beachgoer,

That’s because Obama knows as much about economics as Ibuh does.

Lon wrote: Yeah why did he make this divisive decision now? I mean besides because Republicans insisted on his making it now before they agreed to a two month extension of the payroll tax cut. - in response to Expecting the Worst from President Hypocrite

Dear Comrade Lon,

Actually this is the second time that Obama punted on making a decision. His first error was completely unforced by the GOP. In fact, it was probably Democrat-on-Democrat crime that put Obama in this mess to begin with.

He has had the opportunity to make the decision since the State Department, run by Hillary Clinton, first gave the seal of approval to the pipeline back at the end of the summer.

From HuffPo:

On Friday, the State Department issued its final Environmental Impact Statement, concluding that the proposed 1,700-mile pipeline would have "no significant impact" on the environment and recommending that the project move forward, despite warnings from environmental groups that, among other things, the project would help accelerate the warming of the planet.

Just goes to show you that Hillary has a pair, and Obama does not.

Kilgore Trout wrote: I was curious where your figure of 200,000 jobs comes from. The only place I could find that figure was from the U.S Chamber of Commerce which is a conservative lobbying group. TransCanada itself stated that figure would be more like 20,000 temporary US Jobs with permanent jobs ranging in the hundreds. - in response to Expecting the Worst from President Hypocrite

Dear Comrade Kilgore,

The US Chamber, according to CBS News, says 250,000 permanent jobs. Congress has cited 20,000 construction jobs plus another 130,000 ancillary jobs. Meanwhile, Cornell University, in a flight of fancy, has said that Keystone construction “may actually destroy more jobs than it generates.” But that says more about liberal economists than it does about how many jobs the pipeline would create.

Six percent ($533 billion in payroll) of all labor income in the United States and 5.3 percent of all jobs are either directly tied to or support the oil and gas business. Some of the supporting industries include Services, Wholesale and Retail Trade, Finance, Insurance, Real Estate, Rental and Leasing, Manufacturing, Transportation and Warehousing, Information, Construction, Agriculture, Utilities and Mining. The jobs are good paying, technical positions too.

When you figure in that Keystone will supply another million barrels of oil of the 19 million barrels the US uses- or more than a 5 percent increase- you are looking at a substantial boost to the economy. That’s $350 billion in oil. Certainly the number of jobs created by processing half-a-trillion dollars in oil in the US every year will be in the hundreds of thousands of jobs. I think 250,000 jobs is too conservative an estimate.

But the bigger issue, comrade, is that once the Keystone pipeline is operating, the US will begin to exploit is own reserves of oil, which will make it a net exporter of oil and refined product.

That’s what the Keystone issue is about.

As I have pointed out all along, the Keystone issue isn’t about the safety of a pipeline. Obama and enviro-whacko friends know that if they allow Canadian tar sands oil to be developed via the Keystone pipeline, that the US will also start to develop their own tar-sands and shale oil. The US contains well over 600 years of known reserves and that would allow the US to be a net exporter of oil. If that happens, the green economy ruse that the left has sponsored, already reeling from bankruptcies and cronyism, would collapse. It would show that there is no shortage of oil and “green” energy can not compete with fossil fuels.

Mac287 wrote: Our country is America which has purposely been broken into opposing "camps" and never the twain shall meet...how about coming together for the betterment of the country we love? Parties winning only signifies country losing as we never seem to work toward solutions...now everything is a big campaign...whoever wins, we lose as a country. Any politicians out there with character & integrity and the welfare of our country at heart?- in response to UAW, Occupy and Obama Hang Themselves Together

Dear Comrade 287,

Here’s the dead giveaway that liberals are toast the next election.

Whenever they get in trouble they start singing the Rodney King anthem of “Can’t We All Just Get Along?”

When they had Obama and both houses of Congress, it was: “We won” as they shoved Obamacare down our throats.

But, yes, there are politicians with character and integrity who have the welfare of country at heart. But very few of them now reside in the Democrat party.
_________________________________________

To read another article by John Ransom, click here.

What We've Lost

2012-01-22T16:36:00.000-08:00

What We've Lost
By Alan Sears
1/22/2012

It’s the time of year when thoughts turn more concertedly to the ongoing tragedy – and travesty – of abortion. Activists count back to the January 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade and produce new calculations on how many lives have been ended prematurely through the deliberate choice of their mothers—and with the often enthusiastic cooperation of medical professionals who have found their own ways of reconciling the destruction of life with their Hippocratic oath. (The latest addition tells us that a number roughly equivalent to the population of California, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, and Arizona has been subtracted from the human race.)

Partisans of “a woman’s right to choose” rejoice, taking shelter in the assertion that the decision to abort a child is a personal one, between a mother and … well, really, no one. A father’s rights are no longer any more sacred than the life in the mother’s womb, parents are often legally required to stand aside, and doctors these days are on hand less to offer medical counsel than to facilitate the mechanics or chemistry of destruction.

On that score: chemistry is rapidly trumping mechanics, as the efficiency of the abortionists grows. Planned Parenthood is making new fortunes in blood money through the increasingly widespread use of “tele-med” abortions, which negate the presence or participation of medical staff. An expectant mother simply steps into a room, confirms to a doctor via a video chat her determination to abort, follows his directions to press a specific button, and – voila! – a drawer pops open with two pills inside. “Take one now and one tomorrow,” the doctor says. No muss, no fuss … no baby.

Such simplicities make it easier for the body count to accumulate, and there, too, the abortionists are at an advantage, for as Joseph Stalin reminded us, “One death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” The more babies that die, the less unbearable the death of one more … a hundred more … a thousand more becomes. Abortionists know better than most that nothing succeeds like excess.

Stalin, though, had nothing on Shannon Dea, co-president of Planned Parenthood’s Waterloo Region, in Canada, who recently declared that “Medical science is irrelevant to the question of when a fetus becomes a human being – that matter is a legal and philosophical one, not a medical one.” But what, exactly, is to be gained by wading into debate with those who deem undeniable truth – and even facts – irrelevant?

Nothing, likely. But for the general benefit, let us consider one particular philosophical implication of all those lives, quenched in the womb. The roughly 53 million children aborted since 1973 equals about 17 percent of America’s current 312 million-plus population. Nearly one-fifth of us, simply taken out of the equation … the equation being our culture, our communities, our daily interactions, our myriad accomplishments as a people.

How would any of us begin to estimate the cost of losing not just the lives, but the extraordinary impact of one-fifth of our nation’s people? What diseases have gone untreated because the mind that could have isolated the necessary bacteria or virus never lived to see a laboratory?

Across those two lost generations, what outstanding leaders of business or industry, what eloquent voices of religion or politics, have been forfeited to a mother’s choice? What paradigm-shifting ideas and insights … what soul-stirring art and music and language … what heroic explorations and athletic accomplishments have never transpired because the unique imaginations and wills and endurances that would have achieved them were vacuumed from a woman’s womb?

How many of those aborted had within them the one-of-a-kind vision that might have accomplished peace … rolled back poverty … broken down racism … staved off tyrants and terrorists … translated, transformed, transcended some aspect of our civilization in a way no one ever had before?

A mind like Einstein’s … the eloquence of Martin Luther King, Jr. … the wisdom of Washington … the physical grace of Baryshnikov … these come along maybe once or twice in a generation. In our arrogance and near-sightedness, did we forfeit our most gifted ones to the expediencies of a self-centered, sex-obsessed culture?

We may never know – but we can wonder. In city after city, as child after child is destroyed without coming to fruition, what are we costing ourselves – and our own children and grandchildren? The abortionists are half right: abortion is as personal as a decision gets.

But it’s about far more – so very, very much more – than any woman’s “right to choose.”
______________________________________________

To read another article on the "Obama and most democrats are going to hell" thread, click here.
______________________________________________

To read another article by Alan Sears, click here.

Obama Doesn't Get It on Roe v. Wade

2012-01-22T16:22:00.000-08:00

Obama Doesn't Get It on Roe v. Wade
By Elisabeth Meinecke
1/22/2012

An AP story today reported President Obama said in a statement that the anniversary of Roe v. Wade -- which is today-- is about more than a woman's ability to have an abortion legally:

Obama says in a statement that the court's decision also makes clear that the government "should not intrude on private family matters."

What audacity. This is the man whose signature legislation gave government more control over private family matters than ever before.

In fact, let's talk about government interference in private family matters. The government says families can't buy raw milk. The government tells families they MUST purchase health insurance. The government is trying to control what food famillies can and cannot bring to their children's school events.

Congratulations, Obama, for a shocking display of double speak that even the past three years have not prepared us for.

Steve Ertelt of LifeNews.com included more of the president's statement, which said that "we must stay united in our determination to prevent unintended pregnancies, support pregnant woman and mothers, reduce the need for abortion, encourage healthy relationships, and promote adoption." Ertelt gives a great response to the situation:

Obama has done everything in his power to advance abortion and continue that pro-abortion legacy of the Supreme Court, including naming two more pro-abortion jurists in Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor. He has also expanded that 54 million abortions by authorizing abortion funding in various instances and decreasing funds for abstinence education.
___________________________________________

To read another article on the "Most democrats are going to hell" thread, just click here.

The Republican Party is in danger of destroying itself

2012-01-21T22:47:00.000-08:00

Mark Levin: The Republican Party is in danger of destroying itself
by Jason Mattera
01/21/2012

Thought experiment, folks.

Let’s say that “Moderate Mitt” ends up being the Republican nominee. Whatever way you slice it, Romney is more of a liberal Republican than his colleagues running for president. Naturally, he’ll stand head and shoulders above Barack Obama as Commander-in-chief, but his record in Massachusetts as well as his past positions show a comfort level with government activism that has made conservatives uneasy.

That's the reason Romney has hit a ceiling in the polls, both statewide and nationally.

But if he is the GOP nominee, does that reflect a repudiation of the Tea Party movement that helped force Nancy Pelosi to give up her gavel as Speaker of the House? Not so, says Mark Levin, in the next installment of his interview with HUMAN EVENTS.

“It’s a repudiation of conservatism as practiced by the Republican Party. The Republican Party has ceased to be a conservative party and it needs to change.”

The question that needs to be asked, says Levin, is will the Republican Party survive? “I’m not so sure if it keeps [abandoning conservative ideas].”

Watch part five of our interview with Mark Levin on his brand-new book, Ameritopia.

But for the Tea Party movement, Levin adds, there wouldn’t be an emphasis among American pols to scale back the size of government and demonstrate fidelity to the Constitution. “There would be no voice for our founding principles, for our human principles... the Republican Party is not a constitutional party,” he said before adding that there are certainly members of the GOP who don’t want to offer the country a Democrat-lite agenda.

But those politicians are few.

On the Republican presidential debates, Levin says that they have been worthless, except for reinforcing his extreme dislike of one particular entity.

“These debates teach me nothing -- except that my contempt for the media just grows.”
_________________________________________

To read part 4 of this interview, click here.
_________________________________________

To read the transcript of a Hannity interview of Mark Levin, click here.

The Divided States of America

2012-01-21T22:25:00.000-08:00

The Divided States of America
by Burt Prelutsky
Saturday, January 21, 2012

A few years ago, the folks on Martha’s Vineyard, a favorite Massachusetts island getaway for New England liberals, were under siege by a wild turkey named Tom. Unlike most turkeys who can be scared off by waving your hands or shouting at them, Tom enjoyed nothing better than attacking people. Shouting and waving merely egged him on. Compounding the problem, Tom led a flock of like-minded birds. If you think of the Hells Angels, but with wattles and feathers, you’ve got the picture.

Tom would even terrorize people in cars, daring them to come out and face him man to turkey. If they chose to wait him out, he’d peck the paint off their doors.

One day, the folks who rented cribs and cradles to vacationing tourists couldn’t make a delivery because Tom was chasing them around their truck, trying to draw blood with one of his spurs. In a panic, they dumped the stuff in the front yard and drove off. When the cops were called, Tom attacked them. Four bullets later, Tom was dead.

Naturally, Martha’s Vineyard being a community of liberals, it was the cops who came in for tons of grief. These are, after all, the same folks who get their shorts in a knot when American soldiers shoot jihadists, so you can imagine their outrage over a turkey being whacked.

I am recalling this event not merely to amuse you at the expense of liberal chickens, although that would normally be motive enough. This time, I am leading up to a reason why I think it’s time we divided America. I mean, can you imagine a town in Oklahoma, Montana or Alaska, being held hostage by psychotic poultry? That bird would only have had to look cross-eyed at a Texan and his next appearance would have been on a dinner platter with a side of cranberries.

It only makes sense to divide the United States along political lines. I’m not saying it would be easy, but it’s pretty obvious that the nation is growing increasingly polarized with roughly half the population favoring a huge federal government that oversees everything from smoking to nutrition, while the other half believes that the federal government has gone from being a necessary evil with the emphasis on necessary to one that is increasingly evil.

As I see it, the entire Pacific coast, along with the Northeast, favors Obama and the Democrats. Unfortunately, those two areas are separated by about 2,500 miles. Therefore, I would suggest connecting those two parts of the country with, say, a 30 mile corridor south of the Canadian border that would run through parts of Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. That America would include California, Washington, Oregon, New York, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland and New Jersey. We conservatives would give up Hawaii in exchange for Alaska. You can see where that would make for an odd-looking country, but no odder than the congressional districts that have been gerrymandered by the Democrats here in California.

I’m not being capricious about dividing a nation that has already cost 600,000 American lives lost during the war that was waged to preserve the Union. I simply see no other way to resolve the differences when half the population regards abortion as murder and the other half feels that young girls are entitled to state-funded abortions without parental consent. The same separation exists between those who favor same-sex marriages and those who don’t; those in favor of capital punishment and those who oppose it; those who respect the Second Amendment and those who’d like to abolish it; those who favor class and race warfare and those who believe their America is above such things; those who regard compulsory union membership as a good thing and those who don’t; those who defend public schools but send their own kids to private schools and those who believe in vouchers and home-schooling; those who oppose drilling for oil and digging for coal, and those who realize that alternative sources of energy might be sufficient for a house, but not for an industrial nation; and those who think that the rights of insects trump the rights of human beings and those of us who are sane.

If you believe that the bigger the federal government grows, the better it is, you will be right at home in the new America. If you not only believe that illegal aliens and jihadists are entitled to the same rights as a citizen, but believe that the government should intrude in every aspect of your life, including those that it is precluded from by the U.S. Constitution, you might even consider running for public office.

Just to avoid any possible confusion as to boundaries, we’d build a very high wall at both our southern and northern border.

There would be no hard feelings between our two nations, but knowing how opposed liberals are to military action and how unwilling they are to fund the Pentagon, they should not expect us squander our blood or treasure racing to save them if they are ever invaded by Canada or, for that matter, by a flock of really angry turkeys.
_________________________________________

To read another article by Burt Prelutsky, click here.

Funeral Protocol

2012-01-20T23:25:00.000-08:00

Funeral Protocol

THIS SPEAKS FOR ITSELF...IT SHOULD BE FORWARDED TO EVERYONE WHO BELIEVES IN BEING AMERICAN.
________________________________

Today I was incensed at the conclusion of a traditional Serbian-Orthodox funeral for my beloved 85 year old uncle, Daniel Martich, who proudly served in the US Army during The Korean Conflict. During the committal service at a Pittsburgh cemetery the local military detachment performed their ritual, then folded and presented the American Flag to my aunt. As I'm sure you have witnessed during military funerals, a soldier bends to one knee and recites a scripted message to a surviving relative that begins 'On behalf of the President of the United States and a grateful nation, I wish to present you with this flag in appreciation for your husband's service ...'. However, today the dialogue was 'On behalf of the Secretary of Defense and a grateful nation ...' After the service I approached the soldier who presented the flag to my aunt to inquire about the change in language. His response was "The White House notified all military funeral service detachments to immediately remove 'the President' and insert 'the Secretary of Defense'. I couldn't believe what I heard and the soldier smiled and said "You can draw your own conclusion sir, but that was the order". He, too, was ashamed of what he was required to say.

This president has taken off the gloves. My only response to this endless cesspool of Anti-American rhetoric dripping from his mouth is to borrow a phrase (with one minor change) uttered by another temporary Washington resident living in government housing: "Today for the first time in my adult life I was ASHAMED of my country". I did not serve in the military but my love of country parallels that of people like my late uncle who bled Red, White and Blue. As a second generation Serbian-American whose heritage produced many patriotic military men and women who fought for freedom both in The United States as well as in the former Yugoslavia (most recently in Kosovo against the slaughter of Serbs by Muslim extremists,) I implore you to make the American people aware of this little-known or, at least, publicly acknowledged fact.

May God Bless you and your family during these difficult times. Your voice of reason is a welcome change from the insanity plastered across the country by the liberal media. Keep up the great work and thank you for your service to our country.

Sincerely,

John G. Martich
Weirton, WV

(304) 374-3518
(304) 723-5414
_______________________________

Watch this Ronald Reagan Speech about WAR - click here.

The final South Carolina debate

2012-01-20T21:09:00.000-08:00

The final South Carolina debate
Of character, shame, and the scale of change.
by John Hayward
01/20/2012

The CNN debate in South Carolina, moderated by John King, kicked off with the crowd-pleasing full-contact sparring match between Newt Gingrich and the media that usually comes somewhat later in the evening. King made much of the “direct, fresh character attack” on Gingrich emanating from his ex-wife’s high-profile ABC News interview, which hadn’t actually been broadcast yet, although it had been extensively leaked to the press.

Nice media synergy! It almost makes you forget that the same media organizations closed ranks like a Praetorian guard around Bill Clinton’s marital infidelities, and more recently struggled with all their might to ignore Anthony Weiner for as long as possible. Remember when old indiscretions were considered dusty rubbish, and anyone who focused on the character of a presidential candidate was a Bible-thumping humorless prude? Now they’re big-money news extravaganzas that get cross-promoted by other networks!

Relating that Gingrich’s ex-wife Marianne says he asked her for an “open marriage,” King asked the former Speaker, “Would you like to take some time to respond to that?”

Gingrich stared King down and said frostily, “No. But I will.” The crowd went wild, and then sat stunned as Gingrich deployed a megaton of outrage at the “destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media,” professing himself “appalled that you would begin a presidential debate with a topic like that.”

King tried to defend himself by saying it was an ABC News story, and he was merely relaying it, but Gingrich was having none of it. “You and your staff chose to start this debate with it!” the candidate said sternly, adding the most intimidating finger jab since Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. He went on to say he was “tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans.”

The significance of this exchange is twofold. It’s strong pushback against a story that’s supposed to ruin Gingrich for social conservatives, as well as making him appear scandal-tainted to frighten off the rest of the electorate. When the other candidates were invited to take shots at Gingrich’s personal life, they refused. Rick Santorum thoughtfully remarked that “this is a very forgiving country, which understands that we are all fallen.” Mitt Romney stated that “let’s get on to the real issues” was all he had to say. Whether or not his Super PAC will follow his lead remains to be seen.

The other benefit for Gingrich is that he always looks good when he’s taking on the media directly – a striking contrast to how bad he, and every other candidate, can look when they’re merely complaining about biased coverage. Ron Paul mused that since anti-corporate fever was in the air these days, “let’s talk about the corporations that run the media for a change.” A lot of people would like to talk about that subject. Taking on the media as powerfully as Gingrich did on Thursday night doesn’t just score points with Republican voters who don’t trust liberal news organizations. It suggests that the candidate won’t fold when the press goes into full-on Obama 2012 campaign operative mode. GOP primary voters consider that a very important qualification.

All the candidates were generally quite good throughout the remainder of the debate. Romney probably had the worst night of the bunch, although that might be good for him in the long run – he needs Paul and Santorum pulling voters away from Gingrich right now. Romney got into some quicksand when the discussion turned to his tax returns. He promised to make this year’s taxes publicly available when he completes them in April, and maybe some previous years as well, although he hasn’t made up his mind yet. The crowd booed him for that.

Romney said he didn’t want to release this information piecemeal because the media would seize each drop of his financial data to gin up more negative stories about him, but the crowd didn’t seem to be buying it. Gingrich pointed out that if there was anything harmful in Romney’s tax returns, it would be best for Republican voters to see it while the primaries are still in progress, rather than waiting for April, while if the returns from prior years are harmless, there’s no point in waiting to release them.

Romney had a curiously discordant moment when, during criticism of his pro-life credentials, he rather bloodlessly declared, “I’m not questioned on character and integrity very often, and I don’t feel like standing here for that.” I cannot think of a stranger way to phrase or deliver that statement, at least not without bringing Jon Huntsman back to translate it into Chinese.

Romney invested considerable effort in painting himself as the “outsider” candidate who has not “lived in Washington,” and understands the economy at the “grassroots” level. This is technically accurate, as Santorum, Gingrich, and Paul are all either current or former members of Congress. Some voters might have trouble swallowing the adventures of Mitt Romney, Grassroots Outsider, but I think you have to give him some credit for having the nerve to try it, the way judges award extra points to those crazy triple-backward-somersault high dives, even when they end badly.

Romney was perhaps the best of the pack at attacking Barack Obama, making a point of bringing up the Keystone XL pipeline decision and some other horrors of Obamanomics. Despite the thrashing he took over RomneyCare, he sounded more convincing than ever in his desire to repeal ObamaCare… perhaps because he spent more time saying “it stinks” than “it stinks because it’s a federal program.” He was at his most passionate and engaging when defending capitalism itself, wrangling a cheer out of the very same crowd that booed him just moments before when he declared, “I’m not going to apologize for being successful.”

Besides cracking open the bones of John King to feast upon the succulent marrow inside, Gingrich was particularly good when discussing the SOPA anti-piracy legislation, currently locked in a congressional dungeon while some of its fangs and claws are surgically removed. Romney was sufficiently impressed by his opposition to SOPA to declare that Gingrich had it “just about right” when it was his turn to comment.

Gingrich is still touting his strange idea for putting together some kind of quasi-governmental local boards to grant residency permits to illegal aliens who have been in the country for 25 years or longer, but he offered plenty of other ideas to address illegal immigration concerns, including a massive project to physically secure the border by 2014, accompanied by a (presumably sarcastic)offer to relocate half the bureaucrats in Washington to Texas and Arizona so they could man the battlements if necessary.

He also stressed the importance of English as the official language, reforming visa procedures to streamline legal immigration, and outsourcing our guest worker program to credit card companies, because the federal government is “hopeless” at managing such data. Gingrich got needled by Romney and Santorum for extending special treatment to long-term illegal residents, using his arbitrary standard of 25 years, but I don’t think immigration will be a terribly damaging issue for Gingrich at this point, especially since he promised to order the Justice Department to drop its lawsuits against state immigration laws on his first day in office. One of those states just happens to be South Carolina.

Gingrich had an especially effective closing statement, in which he asserted “the American people want very dramatic, very deep change in Washington,” and described Obama as “an incompetent Saul Alinsky radical” whose defeat is “imperative.” That’s a smart way for him to pitch his campaign, and his vision.

Rick Santorum was very aggressive, hammering Gingrich and Romney repeatedly over health care and abortion, accusing them of “playing footsie” with Big Government liberals. He hectored Gingrich about his record as Speaker of the House, in an exchange that seemed on the verge of getting really nasty, especially after Santorum said Gingrich was forced out of the Speaker’s office in a “coup.”

Contrasting Gingrich’s big ideas with his record in office, Santorum observed that “grandiosity is not a problem” for the former Speaker, but he falls short on executing his projects and lacks discipline. He was only willing to extend a modicum of credit to Gingrich for engineering the 1994 ascension of the Republican Party to power in the House of Representatives. He worried that “something is going to pop” when Gingrich came under pressure during the general election.

The problem with all this is that Rick Santorum is a truly decent man who doesn’t project anger very well. It makes him look whiny, and a bit constipated. He’s good when talking up his own platform, as he did several times tonight. His pro-life passion comes straight from the heart, and he’s compelling when he talks about it. But when he got into sustained split-screen tussles with Romney and Gingrich over their records, he looked smaller than his opponents. When they challenged his facts, he looked sullen. It was strategically necessary for him to be combative, and he had some success with it, but the role really does not suit him well.

Santorum injected a bit too much populism into his defense of capitalism, and he keeps using the common but groan-worthy language of “working men and women,” as if small-business owners and corporate executives aren’t working their butts off with grueling hours. When he speaks of the need to win back Reagan Democrats, he speaks of a breed that is much thinner in today’s radicalized Democrat Party.

Ron Paul had a good night, especially during the questions about health care reform and abortion, which fell into his wheelhouse as a doctor. The crowd rallied to his side when moderator John King forgot to let him weigh in on abortion. He made a somewhat ostentatious habit of claiming his prerogatives, describing himself as the only candidate on stage who has served in the military, and declaring “I thought you were prejudiced against doctors who served in the military!” when King finally got around to asking him about health care reform. Credentials can be flashed too often.

Paul was the only candidate who spoke on the dangers of blowing the dollar’s status as reserve currency of the world, warning that “bankruptcy and runaway inflation are coming soon, and will be a far worse problem than anything else we’ve been talking about tonight.” Although Santorum pretty much left him alone, Paul was willing to take a few shots at the former Senator from Pennsylvania, chiding him for opposing right-to-work laws and remarking that his pro-life voting record was roughly comparable to Harry Reid’s.

During the discussion of immigration, Paul suggested that if the incentives for illegal immigration are removed, there will be fewer border violations. He’s absolutely right about that. Illegal immigration has slowed to a trickle ever since Obamanomics began devastating the economy. Mexico’s unemployment rate is considerably lower than America’s at the moment.

Gingrich will probably get most of the attention in post-debate analysis. The big question is whether Santorum did more damage to Romney or Gingrich when he was in attack mode. He spent much more time going after Gingrich, which is good news for the Romney camp, but I thought he might have gotten under Romney’s skin a bit more. If Santorum pulls support from Gingrich, Romney will be one step closer to wrapping up the nomination… but if Gingrich’s spectacular judo takedown of the assault on his personal life solidifies or increases his support, and a South Carolina win makes the numbers in Florida start moving, this could become quite a race.
_______________________________________

To read another article by John Hayward, click here.

Feds: Religious employers must cover the pill

2012-01-20T18:42:00.000-08:00

Feds: Religious employers must cover the pill
From AP News
1/20/2012

Many church-affiliated institutions will have to cover free birth control for employees, the Obama administration announced Friday in an election-year move that outraged religious groups, fueling a national debate about the reach of government.

In a concession, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said nonprofit institutions such as church-affiliated hospitals, colleges and social service agencies will have one additional year to comply with the requirement, issued in regulations under President Barack Obama's health care overhaul.

"I believe this proposal strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services," Sebelius said in a statement.

Yet the concession was unlikely to stop a determined effort by opponents to block or overturn the rule. If they fail, some predicted that religious employers would simply drop coverage for their workers, opting instead to pay fines to the federal government under the health care law.

"Never before has the federal government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace and buy a product that violates their conscience," said New York Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "This shouldn't happen in a land where free exercise of religion ranks first in the Bill of Rights."

Officials said the administration's ruling was carefully considered, after reviewing more than 200,000 comments from interested parties and the public. The one-year extension, they said, responds to concerns raised by religious employers about making adjustments. Administration officials stressed that individual decisions about whether or not to use birth control, and what kind, remain in the hands of women and their doctors.

Underscoring the sensitivity of the decision, Obama personally spoke with Dolan on Friday to inform him of the announcement, an administration official said.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a powerhouse law firm based in Washington that tackles religious freedom issues, predicted in a statement that religious groups "will never pay for abortion drugs in violation of their religious beliefs." Many religious conservatives consider the morning-after birth control pill to be an abortion drug.

Liberals and women's rights groups praised the decision, saying that women who work for religious employers should not have to accept a lower standard of health coverage.

"The administration stood firm," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. "As a result millions will get access to contraception, and they will not have to ask their bosses for permission."

Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, a member of Senate leadership, said, "The president made the right decision by putting access and the reproductive rights of women first."

Birth control use is virtually universal in the United States, and most health insurance plans cover the pill, usually with copays. Still, about half of all pregnancies are unplanned.

At issue is a provision of the health care law that requires insurance plans to cover preventive care for women free of charge to the employee. Last year, an advisory panel from the respected Institute of Medicine recommended including birth control on the list, partly because it promotes maternal and child health by allowing women to space their pregnancies.

Sebelius agreed, issuing a new federal regulation last summer.

That rule, however, exempted houses of worship and their employees, as well as other institutions whose primary purpose is to promote religious belief. Churches, synagogues, mosques and other places would not be required to cover contraceptives, it specified.

It was a different story for religious-affiliated hospitals, colleges and social service agencies.

Although many of those employers had not traditionally covered birth control, the new regulation required them to do so. Catholic hospitals, which at a critical moment had defied the bishops to back Obama's health care law in Congress, immediately sought a broader exemption. On Friday they were denied.

Representing some 600 hospitals, the Catholic Health Association expressed disappointment.

"The challenge that these regulations posed for many groups remains unresolved," said Sister Carol Keehan, president of the group. "This indicates the need for an effective national conversation on the appropriate conscience protections in our pluralistic society, which has always respected the role of religions."

The administration says between 1 million and 2 million people work for religious-affiliated institutions, though it's not clear how many would be affected. Some states already require religious employers to cover the pill.

For religious-affiliated employers, the requirement will take effect August 1, 2013, and their workers in most cases will have access to coverage starting January 1, 2014.

Women working for secular enterprises from profit-making companies to government will have access to the new coverage starting January 1, 2013, in most cases.

Workplace health plans will have to cover all forms of contraception approved by the Food and Drug Administration, ranging from the pill to implantable devices to sterilization. Also covered is the morning-after pill, which can prevent pregnancy after unprotected sex and is considered as tantamount to an abortion drug by some religious conservatives.

However, the new regulation does not require coverage of abortions.

Associated Press writer Julie Pace contributed to this report.
__________________________________________

To read another article on the "most democrats are heading to hell" thread, click here.

Mark Levin’s ‘Hannity’ Interview:

2012-01-20T14:41:00.000-08:00

Full Transcript of Mark Levin’s ‘Hannity’ Interview: ‘Much of What the Federal Government Does Isn’t Authorized By the Constitution’
by Hannity Posted in: 2012 Election, Ameritopia: The Making of America, Mark Levin, Sean Hannity, U.S. Constitution

Last night on Hannity, talk show host Mark Levin joined Sean to discuss his new book, “Ameritopia, The Making of America,” and also weighed in on what he says is a GOP race to the presidential nomination that is all but set in stone.

Check out the interview, and read the full transcript below. Plus, let us know if you agree with Levin’s depiction of the current state of our country by commenting on this post.

HANNITY: Welcome back to HANNITY. Now in his brand new book, just out today, “Ameritopia, The Making of America,” the great one, Mark Levin, explains that all throughout history tyranny has originated from the dream of a Utopian society that can never exist.

Now he argues that Americans are traditionally independent and explains how the battle between centralized government and individual freedom is being played out more than ever right here in American society.

Now joining me to discuss his brand new book, the GOP race and much more, the man himself, nationally syndicated radio talk show host, I call him the great one. Hello, great one!

MARK LEVIN, “AMERITOPIA” AUTHOR: Have you lost weight, by the way?

HANNITY: Yes, I did. Do I look better?

LEVIN: You look a little thin to me.

HANNITY: All right, this is a little inside joke. I’m trying to get you out of your bunker for years –

LEVIN: Congratulations.

HANNITY: You are impossible to get out and get on TV.

LEVIN: I like being in the bunker. I like being home. What is so bad about that?

HANNITY: No, but your fans love to see you. I had to start a petition on your radio show when I was a guest to get your audience to call in and get you out of there.

Well, first of all, why don’t we get your thoughts, before we get into this book. This book, I will argue, is going to be a classic. That one day some society will look at this and make it a foundation. That powerful.

LEVIN: When we are dead and gone.

HANNITY: When we are dead and gone, a long time from now hopefully. Look at this race. See what is happening in South Carolina. We watched Iowa and New Hampshire. You saw the debate last night. What is your take on the race and do you buy into the argument that it will be really difficult to beat Obama?

LEVIN: Well, a couple of things. You know what concerned me about that debate last night? Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney stumbled a lot and he’s been running for president since, you know, James Buchanan.

And at this point, he should be able to answer these things like this about his income taxes, about Bain, about any of it. So he’s not the inevitable anything that the Republican establishment tell us he is.

And the fact is, if he turns out to be the nominee, I’m going to support him, but there are other conservatives in this race who I think deserve a first look by a lot of people, let alone a second look. Newt Gingrich had a hell of a debate. Santorum had a hell of a debate. Perry was good I thought, too.

HANNITY: I thought Perry had his best debate showing to date. You now, it’s sad because if he would have come out of the box like –

LEVIN: We have plenty of time. You know, let me just be clear about this. We have in many states proportional delegates selection.

HANNITY: Proportional distribution.

LEVIN: That distribution, some states — Florida lost half its delegates because it jumped the line and then we have Florida or Nevada or something and then a month break. I don’t know why we have to decide this in Florida. Who says? Why should we?

HANNITY: Well, we don’t have to decide it, but look at the history of this. No modern day person, non-incumbent has won Iowa, New Hampshire. We might get different results in Iowa now. And if he would win South Carolina, we don’t know what’s going to happen in South Carolina.

LEVIN: You know what it means?

HANNITY: No one has won the presidency without South Carolina.

LEVIN: Nothing.

HANNITY: You don’t think it means anything?

LEVIN: When you win in Iowa by 6 votes or 8 votes, Gerald Ford won Iowa and he won New Hampshire and lost the presidency. Why does any of this matter?

HANNITY: Let me dovetail this into the book. Without getting into all the details right now, you actually make the case in this book that we live in a post-constitutional America. You have a whole chapter on that. What does that mean?

LEVIN: It means that much of what the federal government does is not authorized by the constitution. Now, when you say that, you get political responses like, you want to do away with this and you want to do away with that?

I’m not talking about that. I’m saying much of what goes on in the federal government — although I would like to do away with most of it. Much of what goes on in the federal government has no constitutional basis whatsoever.

This was part of a scheme, real scheme hatched by a number of leftists about a century ago. And you know them. Woodrow Wilson. He didn’t make any bones about his contempt for the declaration and individualism and that’s what this is, an attack on the individual.

He made no bones about his contempt for the constitution. Woodward Wilson said in a speech before he became president that the government is like a body. You can’t have one organ working against the other.

In other words, you can’t have separation of powers. So he spent his presidency, as did subsequent Democrats, trying to evade the constitution or rewrite it. FDR, of course, did the same thing.

FDR attacked the constitution. And Cass Sunstein, who now works for Obama, he made the point that we now live under FDR’s constitution. You know what that means? A powerful centralized government, exactly what the framers of the constitution rejected.

HANNITY: You talk about the sub title, the making of America. You end the book with this question. So my fellow countrymen, what do you choose, Ameritopia or America? Is America that close of a crossroads that the America that we grew up knowing, loving, cherishing, the one that talked about the individual and freedom and responsibility is likely gone?

LEVIN: Ameritopia is here. The question is how far are we going to go with this? We are not a truly constitutional republic anymore. The states have no limited power, but yet it was the other way around.

We are not a representative republic really in the true sense anymore. We have this massive administrative state with, you know, hundreds of thousands if not several million bureaucrats who are making laws and issuing them every day, 80,000 pages last year.

So that’s not a representative republic. So what are we? We are a nation that has heavy centralized you power. It’s getting more centralized by the day. Every so-called reform is said to require more government, more bureaucracy, and more taxation in pursuit of what?

HANNITY: You quote Reagan, you know, the freedoms just one general away from extinction. You quote Benjamin Franklin. Benjamin Franklin after the constitutional convention was wrapping up actually predicted that this experiment would end.

LEVIN: For a time. He said, and I paraphrase, the American people will follow this constitution for a time. But then I’m paraphrasing, they will determine whether they want to live free or they want to live in a despotism. Can I have I have the football please?

HANNITY: Yes, you want the football here.

LEVIN: Yes, thank you.

HANNITY: We did something, the way you set the book one up. We are going to explain it to everybody when we get back. We will get more of your thoughts in the election. We will continue with the great one. By the way, his book, “Ameritopia.” It’s on Amazon as of today and in bookstores around the country. As we continue on HANNITY.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HANNITY: As we continue with the great one, Mark Levin and his brand new book, “Ameritopia, The Making of America.” It’s in stores today. You do something amazing in this book. You break it into three parts.

And you start out with Utopianism, and go through and this is where you do all the hard work and all the leg work because you read all of these guys. You talk specifically about Plato, about Thomas Moore, Thomas Hobbs, you talk about Karl Marx.

And you explain, you pulled out of their works the relevant portions that really are relevant to today’s society and how there’s always been an underlying philosophy there can be this great utopia. Explain this.

LEVIN: Well, what is it that animates people that attracts them to be attracted a philosophy that destroys them. I mean, utopianism is what under girths the push for statism, these massive promises of a paradise of equality, of wealth creation.

If you will only surrender more of your liberties and surrender more of your private property, in other words, surrender yourself, your humanity to basically a handful of master minds.

And you have to ask yourselves where do the master minds get their information from? Why are they so smart? How do you become a community rabble rouser and suddenly can run every aspect of society, the answer is you can’t.

They have to try and persuade people that they can and what they use and the reason I use the great philosophers, even though these works that they wrote are horrific. The reason I use them is because take Plato. He creates a cast system. He calls it an ideal perfect society tries it twice and then fails.

Take Thomas Moore. He creates utopia and he invents the word, what is it? It’s radical egalitarianism to communism. Take Thomas Hobbs. What does he create, among other things? He creates an all powerful sovereign and the rest of the people are subjects. And then you have Marx and the worker’s paradise.

HANNITY: I’ve said this to you before, the other day I said I got the book back in early November and I’ve read now twice, and literally there are very few books that I read where every sentence, you and I could spend 10 minutes on.

We will only have time for a broad overview. Isn’t one of the reasons maybe it’s appealing to people because there’s the sense of, don’t worry. We will take care of you, the caretaker state. There’s a sense of relief that somebody else will do it. Is that part of the appeal of it?

LEVIN: It is. People want a heaven on earth. People want to be told they can get something for nothing. It’s very complicated. We have people in this society who are malcontents, who have concluded that they aren’t the problem but society is the problem.

And they demand society should change. We have other people in the society that have benefited enormously from liberty and property rights, but yet they go along with it because they want to be part of it.

HANNITY: But then you look on the other side of this, part two, Americanism. You look at guys like John Lock and the influence he had on our founders, and Montescue and the influence on our framers.

And again, you extract all of the relevant writings and teachings of these guys. Lock had a huge impact philosophically on our founders. Montescue, a huge impact on our framers, the whole issue of separation, right, three branches of government.

LEVIN: That’s right.

HANNITY: So you really tie it together. This ideological war, how is it relevant to what we are seeing debated today?

LEVIN: It’s totally relevant, which is why I wrote the book and did it the way we did it. We need to understand. You know, the founders didn’t wake up one day and say, you know what, I believe in natural law, I believe in individual sovereignty.

You know what, I believe in divided branches. I believe in sovereign government. We have been the targets of such a dumbing-down process by the media, by the politicians, that I feel it’s time to re-educate ourselves.

What is the American spirit? What is the heritage? And if we don’t discuss what undergirds the declaration, the constitution, and on the other hand what Obama is did, what FDR did and Wilson did, what they’re doing is tyranny of hundreds of thousands of years old and these things need to be explained.

HANNITY: Because it’s fascinating because I read the excerpts you pull from Plato and Hobbs and Marx, it sounds a lot like the modern Democratic Party. When I listen to really smart conservatives that really understand limited government, the individual, individualism, you know, I hear Locke.

I hear the people that you quote on the other side of it. So it seems extraordinary relevant. There was a funny line in it. Our friend Jedediah Bila wrote it in her review of your book, we are smart enough to pick our own leaders, but we aren’t smart enough to pick our own light bulb.

LEVIN: That’s in the book.

HANNITY: Yes, or put salt on the table if you go to a restaurant in New York.

LEVIN: Well, because what people need to understand is, Locke, Hobbs, Jefferson, many others talk about the fact you be can elect your own tyrants.

HANNITY: I always wondered about that.

LEVIN: And you can have a congress of tyrants and people pile law upon law and created these administrative states that operate on their own. You keep electing them, but they keep empowering themselves.

HANNITY: All right, what is the future of America and how important is this election, and which America will we ultimately decide that we are going to go down which road? We will continue with the great one. Do you want to throw this out?

LEVIN: Sure. Where do I throw it?

HANNITY: Throw it to him right over there.

LEVIN: OK, you know where you hit me with this thing?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HANNITY: As we continue on HANNITY with the great one, we call you and Russ calls you Levin.

LEVIN: And liberals call me the great big one, but go right ahead.

HANNITY: Author of the brand new book, just out today, “Ameritopia, The Making of America.”

LEVIN: I was going to write a book on liberalism. Just liberals called it “Ameridopia.”

HANNITY: “Ameridopia.” Well, in many ways, so you have these two visions and you got the philosophical underpinnings of both, the Utopianism and Americanism. You have very distinct competing differences.

One believes in the individual, one believes in freedom and one believes the state should run basically everything. Explain what is at stake in this election from your perspective as you went through and studied for over a year, all of these philosophers, read all of their writings. And how do you see this is relevant to this election?

LEVIN: Well, it’s relevant to this election because the only thing that really stands between us and this ultimate tyranny is the people. It’s not the politicians, it’s us. We have to decide how we want to live.

This is our country, this is our government and we are — we’ve been given a blessed gift, liberty, a magnificent declaration of dependence, a magnificent constitution. That is under constant assault by these figures because these are the obstacles to their power.

Obama even talks about it. You know what, Senate, you are in recess. I’m making these appointments. You know what? I don’t want all my staff confirmed. I am going to appoint a czar. You know what? I just got this law, I like part of it. I don’t like part of it. And look how casually we accept these things as a society.

HANNITY: You talk about this. You talk about the gradualism. This isn’t happening by revolution.

LEVIN: No.

HANNITY: You know, it’s not one day. You say gradualism is the morale equivalent of soft tyranny. You describe it in the book.

LEVIN: Yes, we get into this. You know, democracy in America is actually two books, one in 1835 and one in 1840. What I try to do in this book so I don’t scare people away is these are heavy topics that I try to put in plain English and try to relate them to modern day.

And what he talks about is America is so different from Europe. You know, in Europe, this is way back when, in Europe the administrative state is involved in everything. In America it’s there, but it’s innocuous.

While we are transitioning, I would ask the people who are watching this program, not what doesn’t the government — what does the government regulate, what doesn’t the government regulate?

Look around your homes and so forth. The question is this, since we are so (inaudible) from the constitution since Congress thinks it can pass laws compelling us to purchase things, since the EPA thinks it can consider issuing a regulation regulating dust, and I can go on and on, regulating toilets and open your medicine cabinet, it’s all regulated.

Look around your kitchen, it’s all regulated. The question is where does it end? I can show our opponents the constitution. What can they show me? Nothing, because the constant push for control over the individual and the stealing of the individual’s labor.

HANNITY: Yes. You know, you do the heavy lifting. Most people don’t have the time to really study Plato and Hobbs and Moore and Marx or, on the other hand, Locke on the Americanism, Montescue. You do it. You make it relevant to today. This is going to be a modern day masterpiece. I think it’s your best book yet.

LEVIN: Appreciate that, buddy.

HANNITY: Will you come out of your bunker one day?

LEVIN: Sure. I’ll be here two or three years from now.
__________________________________________

To read a related article, click here.

The Illinois Downgrade: Liberalism Fails Again

2012-01-20T13:03:00.000-08:00

The Illinois Downgrade: Liberalism Fails Again
There is no reason to take the Left seriously about the joy of tax increases.
by John Hayward
01/20/2012

It didn’t get a lot of media attention, but a couple of weeks ago, Moody’s downgraded the credit rating of Illinois to A2, giving it the worst credit rating among all of the United States. This was terribly disappointing to the Chicago Tribune:

Though Illinois took steps in the last year to address its fiscal crisis, including a temporary hike in the corporate and personal income tax rates, the steps did not lift the ratings on its debt.

As the state prepares to take $800 million in general obligation bonds to market next week, two of the three major credit rating agencies kept their ratings the same and one downgraded its rating a notch, which means Illinois continues to lag most other states. The bond issue will help finance school, transportation and other capital projects.

Gosh, they did everything right in the Land of Lincoln, and still ended up with a downgrade. There might be more downgrades to come, as Fitch Ratings doesn’t sound very confident:

"Challenges remain, including addressing increasing spending demands in the general fund from Medicaid and rising pension costs, enacting a plan to reduce the outstanding accounts payable balance, and maintaining budgetary balance in light of the temporary nature of the tax increases," Fitch wrote in its report, issued Thursday.

So what measures failed in Illinois? What philosophy of government was a total bust? Why, it was a perfect expression of the governing philosophy of Chicago’s favorite son, President Barack Obama. They did literally everything the national Democrat Party wants the entire country to do: out-of-control spending and huge soak-the-rich, sock-it-to-corporations tax increases. It was an unmitigated disaster, and they’re still $7 billion in the hole. The Wall Street Journal was moved to call them “The Greece Next Door” (article behind a paywall, but Daniel Mitchell of the Cato Institute has some excerpts.)

Incidentally, this Midwestern “Greece Next Door” is next door to Wisconsin, which actually did balance a horrific Democrat budget under a Republican governor… who is now the target of a frenzied recall effort from deranged leftists carrying stacks of fraudulent recall petitions. Don’t worry, Wisconsin voters! If you lose the War On Taxpayers, you’ll get to be Greece, too.

Mitchell sums up the painfully obvious lessons from the Illinois downgrade, which are being taught with even more vigor in Europe. To paraphrase:

1. If you raise taxes to reduce the deficit, politicians will simply spend the extra money. They always think the existing deficit is sustainable, concern about deficits is overblown, and the day of reckoning will never come.

2. Raising taxes never pulls in anywhere near as much money as politicians promise, because people and corporations take action to avoid the taxes. These actions are generally detrimental to the overall economy. At higher levels, taxes begin cannibalizing the economic machinery that fuels growth, meaning there is less productive activity to tax, and government revenue “mysteriously” collapses.

3. The targets of tax increases always have the option to escape the system entirely. This is true at the national level as well, as you can see from “outsourcing” and capital flight, which Democrats only pretend to care about when they are out of power.

History provides very few examples of a tax increase that raised anything close to the promised revenue, or tax increases that actually were used for significant debt reduction. In fact, it’s hard to find a case where tax increases were coupled with spending cuts, and the spending cuts actually happened at all. Have you noticed these deals never involve immediate, real, verifiable spending cuts (not just slight reductions in the rate of spending growth), to be followed with a tax increase somewhere down the line, once all the spending cut goals have been met?

Why doesn’t a deal like that ever appear on the table, not even once? If we supposedly can’t trust the American people to submit to the tax increases after Big Government completes its spending cuts, why are we expected to place absolute faith in the reverse proposition… no matter how many times politicians have betrayed that faith?

And yet, the American voter continues to take liberals seriously when they claim ignorance of this history, and promise that this time, everything will work as planned. There is no more absurd pronouncement in American politics, and those who make it should be greeted with nothing but derisive laughter.
___________________________________________

To read another article by John Ransom, click here.

With Keystone XL, Obama Mask Slips on Jobs, Energy

2012-01-20T12:46:00.000-08:00

With Keystone XL, Obama Mask Slips on Jobs, Energy
By John Ransom
1/20/2012

I have to admit that the blame falls squarely on the rest of us this time. Obama is not at fault here, even though his decision to scrap the Keystone pipeline- along with other energy and jobs mistakes- will probably cost him his job.

We’ve allowed Obama- and most other politicians- to continue to believe that we, collectively as a nation, are as stupid as they think we are. To Obama and his ilk, we’re all just hayseed bitter-clingers, clinging to our guns and religion or our union and our food stamps because we’re not as clever as Obama has been in parlaying our disaffection with ourselves into a career or a faith.

And while Obama’s lack of faith in ordinary Americans is wrong, he does have a point, even if it’s cynical, too blunt and a little rusty.

Only 48.3 percent of people disapprove of the job Obama has done, while 46 percent actually approve of Obama’s complete disregard for our country’s interests, according to an average of polls by Real Clear Politics. This, even as 65.3 percent of the country thinks we’re on the wrong track.

The discrepancy is explained, I believe, because there are still some people in the middle who haven’t quite made up their mind about Obama. They’d like to like him because he’s president; they’ll give him every opportunity because he’s liberal; and they don’t want to offend anyone- because he’s black.

Obama takes advantage of this benign ambivalence by speaking one way and then doing another- and some are taken-in by the act even though they do know better.

Of course Obama’s not the only politician who does one thing while saying another.

But politicians- even Obama- don’t get off quite so easily with that trick when it comes to jobs, taxes and the economy, as the president will find out on the Keystone pipeline.

Saying one thing on energy and doing another is going to present a problem for Obama and his friends at re-election.

Because energy is jobs, taxes and the economy, all in one. If you deny energy development that creates jobs, fuels the economy and doesn’t involve federally-guaranteed bankruptcies, people- even liberal people- might notice.

Since Obama first proposed another stimulus of half-a-trillion dollars back in August of 2011, he’s been campaigning like the only thing holding up job creation in the US is the act of writing a hot check with eleven zeroes after it.

He forgets to mention that we already spent a trillion dollars on stimulus measures- and more if you include bailouts and TARP and Fannie and Freddie- that created no jobs, no taxes, no growth and no energy. It truly was a do-nothing stimulus, as most conservatives pointed out it would be.

Americans still gave Obama some marks for good intentions on the stimulus, even if they subtracted marks for poor results.

He won’t get that kind of pass on his decision to kill the Keystone pipeline, which means he killed jobs, taxes and economic growth that would have cost the government nothing. The decision not to allow construction of the pipeline will cost American citizens a sum with eleven zeroes after it in lost wages, tax revenues, GDP growth and higher oil prices.

“Once again the President has sided with environmentalists instead of blue collar construction workers” said Terry O’Sullivan, head of the Laborers’ International Union of North America, whose workers expected to get the jobs Obama killed. Obama killed those jobs “even though environmental concerns were more than adequately addressed. Blue collar construction workers across the U.S. will not forget this.”

Nor will ordinary Americans.

Newspapers across the country are editorializing against it.

The Washington Post’s Robert Samuelson wrote: “Rejecting the Keystone pipeline is an act of insanity.” Obama’s hometown paper, the Chicago Tribune, says “Obama made a decision that will deny the U.S. a reliable source of oil. Note that Canada has never threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz. Obama made a decision that will cost the U.S. good jobs. He seems to think those jobs will still be there when he gets around to making a decision on the pipeline. But they may well be gone for good.”

If you’re Obama, who cares?

Jobs, taxes and the economy are small change of the Change Obama and the liberal left want to bring to the world.

But don’t think the voters won’t begin to notice.

As I have pointed out all along, the Keystone issue isn’t about the safety of a pipeline. Obama and enviro-whacko friends know that if they allow Canadian tar sands oil to be developed via the Keystone pipeline, that the US will also start to develop their own tar-sands and shale oil. The US contains well over 600 years of known reserves and that would allow the US to be a net exporter of oil. If that happens, the green economy ruse that the left has sponsored, already reeling from bankruptcies and cronyism, would collapse. It would show that there is no shortage of oil and “green” energy can not compete with fossil fuels.

The only thing left then for those bitter climate clingers would be the shoddy science of Global Something-or-Another.

Oil from tar sands, reports the BBC on the Keystone decision, “is so plentiful that full-scale development would seriously delay the transition to low-carbon alternative fuels,” which is the holy grail of the left.

Full scale development of tar sands can only be stopped by taxing oil out of existence, like was tried with cap and trade. Cape and trade was never about trying to cool the earth. It was about giving "green" technologies a competitive advantage over fossil fuels that free markets won't conceed.

The Atlantic echoes the theme:

The Keystone XL is merely on hold, and oil from all sorts of other "dirty" situations continues to flow into our gas tanks…. We need to stop fighting oil development project by project -- and instead focus on passing a Low Carbon Fuel Standard (which could make the Keystone XL economically unviable).

And the New York Times goes further, stating: “Far more important to the nation’s energy and environmental future is the development of renewable and alternative energy sources. This is the winning case that Mr. Obama should make to voters in rejecting the Republicans’ craven indulgence of Big Oil.”

But voters won’t vote for that argument, as Obama well knows. So he says one thing, and does another.

Americans want jobs, and cheap, reliable sources of energy. And Obama said he wanted those things for America too.

But the contrast between Obama’s reckless spending of a trillion dollars that created no jobs and his prevention of private capital investment that can create many jobs has let the mask slip. Obama doesn’t care about jobs if jobs don’t mesh with his ideology. He wants the America that he wants, not the one you and I create every day.

And that frames perfectly what the 2012 presidential election is all about- even if Obama won’t admit it.
________________________________________

To read another article by John Ransom, click here.
________________________________________

To read a related article, click here.