US PRESIDENCY AS ACCUMULATIVE ERROR

David Swanson, author of Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union has written a chilling piece of commentary on the state of the American presidency.

Below is an excerpt:

SECOND, I LOOKED AT THE POWER OF WAR. Our Constitution wisely placed it in Congress. It is now in the White House and growing ever stronger. President Obama has demanded and received a larger military budget than Bush ever had, plus a larger war budget on top of that, not to mention the secret budget for some of the spy agencies that engage in war. President Obama continues to insist on funding the wars off the books with so-called emergency supplementals. He's put bases into more nations. He's put more troops in the field. He's expanded the use of mercenaries and contractors. He's dramatically expanded the illegal use of drones to bomb Pakistan and other nations, resulting—among other forms of blowback—a man trying to set off a bomb in Times Square, a man whose father's job used to be guarding nuclear weapons. Obama's Pentagon is pushing hard to use drones in U.S. skies as well. Meanwhile, Obama has—in another badder than Bush innovation—formally authorized secret military action in dozens of nations. He's formally done away with habeas corpus and established the power to imprison people at Bagram and other sites completely outside any legal process. He's kept our death camp at Guantanamo open. President Obama has continued to assert the power to torture, and torture has continued. He's also continued to assert the power to kidnap or "rendition" people and send them to nations that torture. But, most disturbingly, Obama has largely replaced torture with murder. People we would have sought to capture two years ago, we now seek to murder instead. And Obama has claimed the power to assassinate anyone, including American citizens. And, needless to say, the warrantless spying programs and other violations of civil liberties roll on unquestioned, and Miranda rights may be at risk now too. And one reason to think things may be even worse than we know is that Obama has prosecuted more whistleblowers than any of his predecessors.

Read it all at Corrente: Obama Was Created By Our Failure to Impeach Bush

PALIN ADDRESSES GRIDIRON CLUB

IN A NOD to the intense interest in last year's Republican VP nominee Sarah Palin, the Gridiron Club’s board dropped a 100 year old rule—often violate—that comments made at the dinner were off the record and could not be reported. Instead, twittering was allowed, although not during speeches or songs. Palin tweets herself and noted in her dinner remarks that she had “the Twitter thing going.”

Palin was surrounded by reporters at the pre-dinner reception held on an evening when Washington was in the midst of an early snow storm. The former Alaska governor was dressed in a stylish black dress and carried what she told Chicago Sun Times correspondent Lynn Sweet was a purse made from an otter.

[The Gridiron Club, founded in 1865, is the oldest and most prestigious journalist organization in Washington DC. The annual Gridiron Dinner is attended by the media elite, at which the president is traditionally the speaker. This year, President Barack Obama was the first president to refuse to address The Gridiron Dinner since Grover Cleveland.

[Last night, Saturday December 5th, the black tie dinner at the ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel had double the attendance of recent years—for instead of Obama, the speaker was Sarah Palin. The tradition of the dinner is that the speaker pokes fun at himself and the attendees. Sarah was such a hit there were dozens of the most liberal elite journalists in America laughing their heads off, many wiping tears of laughter from their eyes. Here's her speech. It is as clever as it is funny.]

Good evening. It's great to be in Washington. I am loving the weather [it was snowing]. I braved the elements and went out for a jog! Or, as Newsweek calls it, a cover-shoot. I feel so at home here in DC. I can see the Russian Embassy from my hotel room!

It's a privilege to be here tonight at the Washington DC Barnes & Noble. Tonight, I'll be reading excerpts from my new book. Perhaps you've heard of it? "Going Rogue."

Yukon wasn't sure if I'd go with that title and somebody suggested I follow the East Coast self-help trend and go with, "How To Look Like A Million Bucks...For Only 150 Grand."

Todd liked, "The Audacity of North Slope." [She nods to him as he's at the head table]

Hey, I considered not having a title at all. I've said it before, but you Beltway types just don't seem to get it. You don't need a title to make an impact. But anyway, let's get started.

I'll begin my first reading on Page 209.

It was pitch black when we touched down in Arizona late on August 27, 2008. The next morning we drove to John McCain's ranch in Sedona. John was waiting on the porch. Before he can say a word, I tell him, I'm quoting now,

"I know why I'm here, and I'm ready. But, I'm worried. The cost of credit protection for the largest U.S. banks is rising precipitously. Have you given any thought to the run on the entities in the parallel banking system? Do you realize the vulnerability created when these institutions borrow short term in liquid markets to invest long term in illiquid assets?"

John said, "you betcha!" I thought, "you betcha?" Who talks that way?

Well, sometimes you just have to trust your instincts. When you don't, you end up in places like this. Who would have guessed that I'd be palling around with this group? At least now I can put a face to all the newspapers I do read.

It is good to be here and in front of this audience of leading journalists and intellectuals. Or, as I call it, a death panel.

To be honest, I had some serious reservations about coming to visit your cozy little club. The Gridiron still hasn't offered membership to anyone from my hometown paper in Wasilla, the Matanuska-Susitna Valley Frontiersman. And my dad thought it was just a plain bad idea to leave the book tour for some football game.

He might have a point! [She waves to her parents at a table at the back of the room] Hi, Dad! Hi, Mom! They crashed the party, you know.

I've been touring this great, great land of ours over the last few weeks. I have to say, the view is much better from inside the bus, than under it!

But really, I am thrilled to be with you. And I'd like to thank the Gridiron for the invitation and Dick Cooper for his introduction.

To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, this has to be the most extraordinary collection of people who have gathered to viciously attack me since the last corporate gathering at CBS.

Despite what you have read, or more likely, despite what you have written, I do feel a real bond with all of you. I studied journalism, earned a communications degree and for a time only wanted to be a journalist. I was even a television sportscaster back home.

I'm guessing some of you probably got your start the exact same way... once there was television.

Let me get back to the book.

I know that many of you are still upset because I wouldn't play that silly Washington game. You know, the one where all of you read a book in its entirety, from the first page of the index to the last.

But think about it, because you actually had to read the whole book in the vain hope of finding your name, you now know all about Denali, mom, dad, ungulate eyeballs, slaying salmon on the Nushagak and Ugashik near Alegnigak, where we make agootak and moose chili!

You're welcome.

Still, I want to do something very special for this audience of Washington elite. So, I'll read from the index--which I chose not to include in the hardback. Would you believe me if I said I didn't include it because we wanted to save trees?

Under A we have...

Alaska, media not understanding. Pages 1-432.

Under B...

Biased media. Pages 1-432

And under C...

Conservative media. See acknowledgments.

I'll stop there.

I know this can be a long night, and as I understand it, we're going to break with a Gridiron tradition. Normally, the Democrat speaker would deliver a speech after me. But instead, John McCain's campaign staff asked if they could use that time for a rebuttal.

A lot has been made of a few campaign relationships. The closeness. The warm fuzzy feelings. John and I both agree all those staffers should just move past it. It's history.

Let's just say, if I ever need a bald campaign manager, it appears all I'm left with is James Carville.

I don't want to say that I've burned a bridge, but I know all about canceling a bridge to nowhere.

That Democrat speaker I referred to is, of course, the one-and-only Barney Frank. And I'm the controversial one?

Barney, the nation owes you and the government a debt. A huge, historic, unbelievable debt.

But, it's good to be here with you, Mr. Chairman. Because by Chairman, I don't just mean the House Financial Services Committee. As far as I can tell, Barney's also the Chair of AIG, CITI, and the Bank of America.

I don't want to say that the U.S. Government is taking over the role of the private sector, but I have to admit, on the flight here, thumbing through a magazine and looking at a photo of President Obama with the President of China, the person next to me pointed at it and said, "Hu's a communist."

I thought they were asking a question.

Still, when I see this administration in action, I can't help think of what might have been. I could be the Vice President overseeing the signing of bailout checks. And Joe Biden would be on the road, selling his new book, "Going Rogaine."

Speaking of books.... Did I mention mine? "Going Rogue" Makes a great stocking stuffer. Available now at a bookstore near you. Hey, I have to pay for my campaign vetting bill somehow.

Really, the response has been great. So I'll close by reading a final passage. Page 403:

...I've been asked a lot lately, "Where are you going next?'

Good question! Wherever I go I know that, as with anyone in the public eye, I'll continue to have my share of disagreements with those in the media. Maybe even more than my share. It will come as no surprise that I don't think I was always treated fairly, or equally.

But despite that, I respect the media very much. It's important. A free press allows for vigorous debate! And that debate is absolutely vital for our democracy. So as hard as it can sometimes be, we must all look past personal grievances.

We must move beyond petty politics. And we must allow these incredibly talented and hard-working women and men to ask the hard questions and hold us, and our government, accountable. Because their mission is as true as the sun rising over the Talkeetna and Susitna Mountains...

Okay—so none of that is actually in the book. Not a word.

But I do believe it! And I believe we live in a beautiful country blessed with so many different people who want the best for their children, families and for our great nation. I'm so proud to be an American.

And that is what I'll be talking about when I travel to where I'm headed. No better place than here to announce where I'm going. I'm going to Iowa! I'll be there tomorrow from noon to 3:00 pm at the Barnes & Noble on Sergeant Road in Sioux City. Come early. Long lines are expected.

Thank you everyone. God Bless the U.S.A!

RETURN OF THE BIRTHERS

AFTER FIRST OBSERVING the notorious "birther" movement back in July, 2008, long before many in the nation had tuned into the election, even before the financial crisis finally broke, which I anticipated atop the formidable shoulders of others here and here and here, there is finally a break in the courts for the "eligibilty to serve" suit to get heard.

In what could prove to be a turning point in the legal challenges to Barack Obama’s eligibility to be president, a federal judge in California, also a former US Marine, has scheduled a hearing on the merits of a federal court case raising those questions.

While there have been dozens of legal challenges to Obama’s status as a “natural born citizen,” many of have summarily dismissed while others still languish in the lower courts.

The US Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, states, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President.”

Some of the lawsuits question whether he was actually born in Hawaii, as he insists. If he was born out of the country, Obama’s American mother, the suits contend, was too young at the time of his birth to confer American citizenship to her son under the law at the time.

Other challenges have focused on Obama’s citizenship through his father, a Kenyan subject to the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom at the time of his birth, thus making him a dual citizen. The cases contend the framers of the Constitution excluded dual citizens from qualifying as natural born.

Complicating the situation is candidate and President Obama’s decision to spend sums estimated from the hundreds of thousands of dollars to several millions to avoid releasing a state birth certificate that would put to rest all of the questions.

It has been concluded that the “Certification of Live Birth” posted online and widely touted as “Obama’s birth certificate” does not in ANY way prove he was born in Hawaii, since the same “short-form” document is easily obtainable for children not born in Hawaii. The true “long-form” birth certificate—which includes information such as the name of the birth hospital and attending physician—is the only document that can prove Obama was born in Hawaii, but to date he has not permitted its release for public or press scrutiny.

Congressional hearings were held to determine whether Sen. John McCain was constitutionally eligible to be president as a “natural born citizen,” although, defying both official protocol and common logic, no controlling legal authority ever sought to verify Obama’s claim to a Hawaiian birth.

The birthers are considered fringe folks, crazed radicals, racists, and inconsequential, but here's a look at the latest fring controverst, this time on the left. First, let's go to Big Hollywood.

And now, let's take a peek at the firestorm created by a White House spokesman who said the "Internet Left fringe needs to grow up, and take off their pajamas so that this administration can get on with more important issues" here's that link. Or something like that. Here's another take.

NO EXTRA HARRUMPH

Well, of course he is. Barack Obama. Chicago politics. Democratic community organizer organizing the Democratic community as far as the eye can see, and then some. But of course, in a critical era with so much already on the national plate, combined with the president's "a speech a day keeps the radical right-wing revolutionaries at bay" mentality, in my own humble opinion, signals that this action is not only dangerously overreaching as the tea party movement continues to grow in opposition to any government intrenchment not constitutionally stipulated, but is laughably frivolous. I think the record shows rather clearly that the Bush example mentioned above, brought the Republicans no extra harrumph at the polls, but indeed may have proved detrimental to those candidates.

WASHINGTON — The White House’s intervention in the race for New York governor is the latest evidence of how President Obama and his top advisers are taking an increasingly direct role in contests across the country, but their assertiveness has bruised some Democrats who suggest it could undercut Mr. Obama’s appeal with voters tired of partisan politics.

Read it all.

WITH JUST CAUSE AND FULL EFFECT

I AM SUPPORTING only one organization to stop this president's healthcare program: the League of American Voters . And I am encouraging concerned Americans to funnel their support to the League as their main venue for donations. I believe the League has the most effective program to confront directly and stop Obama's ruthless and radicalized healthcare takeover plan.

Obama is moving to ram through Congress his plan and all our resources need to be focused to stop him. Also read the League's urgent message below!

Dear Supporter:

In our last message, we warned that Obama was on the run, desperate to get his radical health plan rammed through Congress.

But Obama's falling poll numbers, and the fact that outlets such as Fox News and Newsmax are fully informing Americans about the dangers of the plan, have hurt him and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's efforts for their healthcare fiasco.

They are desperate. Obama out-and-out lied this week when he claimed that the AARP, the nation's largest seniors organization, backed his healthcare plan.

The organization does not support it. Nancy Pelosi has even compared citizens protesting against the health plan with Nazis. These futile attempts of Obama and Pelosi to twist reality prove that our efforts are working!

This weekend, we will begin our national TV ad campaign. We are rolling out our powerful new TV ad — devised by Dick Morris, our chief strategist. Dick's ad exposes how Obama's plan will lead to healthcare rationing if he succeeds in adding 50 million people to the government system.

Remember, you can't let your guard down. Obama and the Democrats know they no longer have the 60 votes to pass the radical health plan in the Senate.

We are told they are working behind the scenes to change long-standing Senate rules so that they can pass their health plan with just 50 votes!

This is again a desperate measure and an attempt to subvert our democratic and constitutional system.

I can assure you the League of American Voters is working day and night to stop Obama's plan. We are also preparing for contingencies. When Congress returns after Labor Day, we must line up all our forces for the final battle.I realize many people are on vacation or feel confident we can defeat Obama's plan.

Please don't fall victim to overconfidence. It is critically important that you join with the League of American Voters today and help us defeat Obama.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Bob Adams
Executive Director

UNMASKING THE MONSTER

Here is a short, simple, straight to the point essay penned by Steve Bussey on ResistNET, a visibly patriotic website dedicated to stopping, then rolling back the move to abolish the US Constitution inch by inch, word for word, and with it the freedom and liberty that so many have fought to preserve and enjoy for well over 200 years.

This is a site I've only recently discovered, so I am still treading lightly, trying now to rustle too many leaves before I find myself somewhere I do not wish to be. But Mr. Bussey's article offers a clear idea of what is simmering beneath the surface tension that passes for political dissection discussion all across this great land of ours. Our nation's free citizenry and our elected leadership seem to have lost their way, and have been on this false path for several decades now.

I HAVE HEARD THE MODERN tea party movement mischaracterized and slandered over the past several months, and seen yellow journalism about vocal protestors disrupting town hall meetings hosted by politicians. These and other crocodile tears are shed by journalists, politicians and pundits who are either too stupid to understand, or are intentionally trying to villainize the new conservative activism.

Some of the knocks I hear against the tea party movement are that they are racist because they didn’t protest during the Bush years, but only now when there is a black president; shut up and pay your taxes; or cries of hypocrisy because tea party protestors love big government in the form of military spending, interstate highways, or the Veteran’s Administration and oppose programs that would help the poor and downtrodden - all hogwash.

Discontent among conservatives and libertarians has been festering for several decades since George H.W. Bush succeeded President Reagan and began to walk back conservative advances. Contrary to popular belief, that is the primary reason he was a one term president.

The discontent swelled with the advent of the Clinton Administration and his largest tax increase in the history of the free world, as well as Hillary’s attempted take over of our health care industry. The Republican Revolution lead by Newt Gingrich, however, temporarily tamped down the discontent. Enter George W. Bush.

Conservatives and libertarians began to squirm in their seats with Bush’s unconstitutional federal intervention into our local schools with No Child Left Behind. The squirm turned into foot-tapping and nail biting with the Medicare prescription drug bill, and we stood and began shouting at our televisions with the expanded State Children’s Health Program and TARP – all unconstitutional expansions of federal tyranny over sovereign States and free enterprise. Enter President Obama.

President Obama has removed the mask from the monster once and for all and exposed the true Progressive agenda for America—a reshaped America based on a new foundation – his words, not mine, by taking over car companies, insurance and investment companies, Cap & Trade and a national health care plan. With his actions there can be no further debate concerning the direction Progressives in America, Democrats and Republicans, wish to take.

Why is there a modern tea party movement? Is it racist? There is a modern tea party movement because as Thomas Jefferson so eloquently wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “. . . all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable. . .”

It began before President Obama, but certainly with him and his programs, evil in the form of federal infringement upon our liberties, Progressive disrespect for our Constitution, American history, traditions and political philosophies, has become insufferable.

They may name their movement "tea party" to invoke and evoke our Founding Fathers, but the movement is much more profound than just taxes. The movement is about freedom and liberty. It is about legalizing and respecting our Constitution once again.

Yes, indeed, Mr. Bussey. We must also remember that both the 43rd president and the current Obama administration have led us—the American people—to believe that government first resides with the executive branch. Each administration also believe, the other two branches participate at the President's discretion. The problem this presents is that few constitutional scholars or free citizens agree with them, since the Constitution clearly states otherwise. Afterall, by 43rd and 44th's way of thinking, the law is just a 'guideline', and can be ignored when it gets in the way. We can think of too many dark scenarios of how this progression will eventually lead to a person to try to remain in power.

BRANDING OBAMANOMICS 101

I snagged this little ditty from a FB friend named Lyn Morales. It has the look and feel of a viral urban legend, but it is well worth a moment's ponder. Thanks Lyn...

AN ECONOMICS PROFESSOR at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class. That class had insisted that Obama's socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, "OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama's plan".

All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A. After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else. All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Could not be any simpler than that. (Please pass this on.)

If somebody is unable to understand THIS explanation, I have serious doubts about their ability to even function in society, much less run our country!

As the late Adrian Rogers said, "you cannot multiply wealth by dividing it..."

THE TRANSPARENT PRESIDENT

IT IS HIGHLY UNUSUAL that the Obama campaign would choose to first publish Obama's "Certification of Live Birth" (COLB) NOT on its own campaign website, but, on Daily Kos, a hard-left website, and then later adopt the Daily Kos document as its own "official" copy. Since Obama chose to publish his alleged COLB on a public non-campaign website, Daily Kos, he has waived all rights of privacy to it! Let's See It, Mr. O! Produce your actual Birth Certificate not just a COLB of dubious origin (which can be issued to non-citizens)! In addition, the State of Hawaii Health Director waived the privacy privilege by making official public statements about the COLB.

—Patriot Skyline

THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN no right to privacy in the first place. There is certain criteria to meet to stand for election to the highest office in this land. There was general knowledge and immediate concerns that warranted the public airing of Mr. Obama's birth records. But political operatives at every level straight up to the Supreme Court of the United States have stonewalled common sense, and legal precedent.

The man is obviously hiding facts that make him ineligible to hold the office to which he aspired.

Yet another outrage from the first Marxist American President...

Yes, these Marxists do get it. This is THEIR plan to bring America to its knees. Just watch Obama, and his smirking grin...

He knows the plan is working, is pretty damn well on track and in due time the neutron bomb of Obama politics will render us helpless. It's a constitutional outrage the way this stealth takeover of our government is operating, an administration that promised transparency, but what Obama really meant was his government would be invisible.

Can you say czarism?

Craig on July 18th, 2009 3:04 PM posted the following on another site in response to another poster named Heather, who is quoted immediately below in response to the call for sunshine on Obama's right to govern...

“Obama is all you have, so instead of bitching about it, get behind him.”
—Heather Hetherington

We obviously have diametrically opposed points of view and manny of us do not feel helpless like you.

If BHO was born in HI, we will drop that issue. But he is not “all that we have”. There are the legislative and judicial branches of our government that we will not let him marginalize or subvert. While some elements of the Opposition will challenge BHo in a principled but genteel fashion, there will be a more robust Opposition that will do everything legal to kick this Marxist counter-revolutionary to the curb and then kick him and Rahmbo some more, till we have the type of patriotic Americans administering our Republic for which our Founding Fathers fought and died.

We are waging a fight to the death for the continuation of our Republic. You can fight with us, fight against us, or sit on the back porch, but we will not drink the hemlock of neo-Marxism and statism while BHO says, “It is good drink and all of your problems will go away.”

"The birth-certificate controversy is about Obama’s honesty, not where he was born."

Meanwhile, in a surprising shift of position, the respected Andrew C. McCarthy of the National Review Online pens an excellent comprehensive opinion on why the Obama birth certificate issue has already served to root out certain truths about this president, and given the resistance of his administration to release information on other still troubling details of his life as they impact on his status as an honest man, why the issue should remain on the front burner until the American people know the full extent of their relationship with a man who promised us transparency...

Read it HERE.

THE OTHER SIDE OF RACISM

DAVID HOROWITZ has commented on Facebook today concerning the continued silence of the liberals with regard to the historical peoples revolt against the totalitarian theocratic dictatorship. His remarks are as spot on...

And let us not get carried away. No one, not even the neo-cons are advocating interceding militarily in Iran, but a voice of support for those marching hordes who are not only exercising the rights of free expression in calling for free elections that we support here in the United States, but they are also voicing opposition to an unquestionably sworn enemy of ours in Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

How much plainer can this opportunity to extend textbook American graciousness to an oppressed people be? But I suppose in this case, only the wistful teleprompter of our much heralded Barack Obama knows for sure.

Horowitz writes:

Here's one scene from the historic revolt in Iran. Everything liberals pretend to be concerned about is on the line in Tehran today. Basic freedom to vote and have your vote counted; basic freedom to protest and not be killed. Even the style of the revolt is something for liberals to celebrate—the Tweeter revolution, the women's revolution, the revolution of the young. But liberals are silent. They want their government, their White House, to pretend it has no stake in the outcome, that it can deal with either Iran, the Iran of the Islamo-fascists who oppress their own people and want to kill us, or the Iran of those freedom loving citizens whose blood is running in the streets. Shameful.

Props to Mr. Horowitz for pointing out what seems to be obvious to anyone not blinded by party shenanigans, those poor souls who prefer a knotty grudge match to anything remotely akin to what some of us prefer to call principles. Don't misunderstand me. I speak plainly here. As far as I'm concerned, the Left and the Right are opposing butt cheeks of the same dumb-ass political machine.

As a staunch constitutionalist I prefer a strict adherence to those founding principles that inform individual liberty with abiding responsibility and uniform and unifying justice. But why did we and why do we continue to waste the perceptions and inertia our founders left us in writing and in deed? Our nation is floundering in a mess. Both parties have contributed heavily to the burdens now foisted upon the American people. And as a result, I fear the worst is closing in upon us all. But I can appreciate the work David Horowitz and Anne Wortham is doing for America today, even though folks of our intellectual ilk will continue to be called racists and nazis by small minds.

So even as we note that the landscape is littered with false assumptions and intellectual scoundrels, let us turn to another important American voice on the issue of racial politics gone awry, Professor Wortham as she writes with a special combination of intelligence and self-awareness:

MY FELLOW AMERICANS, please know I am black. I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul’s name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a Black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a Black president to love the ideal of America.

I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival—all that I know about the history of the United States of America, all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the “change” that Obama asserts has come to America.

Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million Blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that Blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared “progressive” whites who voted for him because he doesn’t look like them.

I would have to wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration—political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University ’s Kennedy School of Government.

I would have to believe that “fairness” is equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that a man who asks me to “go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice” is speaking in my interest. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the “bottom up,” and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.

Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting “Yes We Can!” Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead—and no one including, especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.

So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a Black man to the office of the president of the United States, the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over—and Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a Black person.

So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a Black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to—Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine—what little there is left—for the chance to feel good.

There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness.

Dr. Anne Wortham is author of “The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness” which analyzes how race consciousness is transformed into political strategies and policy issues. She has published numerous articles on the implications of individual rights for civil rights policy, and is currently writing a book on theories of social and cultural marginality. Recently, she has published articles on the significance of multiculturalism and Afrocentricism in education, the politics of victimization and the social and political impact of political correctness. Shortly after an interview in 2004, she was awarded tenure.

RESIGNATION OF A PRESIDENT

Alan Caruba writes in the Canada Free Press that now is the time to actively call for the impeachment or resignation of the current POTUS. While we agree that the list of concerns about Barack Obama is long and severe, we also realize that in the current political climate, the kool-aid nectar still flows freely among true believers of the Obama Blitz, serving a spacious terrain littered with nervy blind followers who deny all evidence of corruption no matter how keen the odor.

As this 44th American President continues to dismantle the engines of capitalism and personal liberty, flooding the statist coffers with phony dollars, killing jobs, the economy, the future, the successes of the past, while consistently bad-mouthing on foreign soil the nation he is sworn to protect, insulting our allies and cozying up to our enemies, secure behind glaring but secret flaws and persnickety details of an incendiary public life the media helped him hide in plain sight like so many brightly painted eggs scattered along the campaign trail...

HERE'S A QUESTION I would pose to you. If the Supreme Court can act within days to approve the sale of Chrysler to Fiat, why can it not act to hear cases filed months ago regarding whether President Obama is a “natural born” citizen of the United States? Why have some lower courts refused to hear such cases citing that the parties bringing them, citizens under the rule of the Constitution, have no “standing” to do so?

The Supreme Court is famous for trying to dodge such cases. The likelihood of impeachment is zero because Democrats control Congress and only one President ever resigned from office and that was Richard M. Nixon. It took an excruciatingly long time to reach that point as anyone who lived through the Watergate scandal will tell you. The nation was shocked to learn that a President engaged in a criminal enterprise while in office.

The question of preserving and protecting the Constitution would be hard to prove except in hindsight, but by then it would be too late for the nation, ruined by excessive, unjustified taxation and borrowing that threatens the collapse of the economy.

I would argue that a President who appoints over twenty “czars” to supersede the powers of the secretaries of various federal departments; people who are apparently exempt from Congressional approval or oversight, and people who apparently do not feel the need to hold press conferences to explain what they are doing, is distinctly unconstitutional.

It will be argued that there have been various such “czars” in the past, mostly particularly “drug czars” whose purpose was to oversee and coordinate efforts to address the nation’s problems with illegal drugs, but the imposition of people to virtually replace members of the President’s cabinet is unprecedented. Cabinet officers must receive the approval of Congress, but these “czars” have not.

Even the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has been reduced to a mere figurehead as various personal envoys of the President have been authorized to act for him regarding sensitive diplomatic affairs, answerable presumably only to him. What we have is a President who is running the government through an invisible network of people who are not answerable to the citizens of the nation, yet granted powers to determine the extent of the rights of those citizens including how much compensation they may receive.

This is a President who has said during a C-Span interview that the government is out of money, but who is pressing forward for legislation to impose trillions in taxes on all energy use, who advocates the borrowing of tens of billions by the nation for a proposed healthcare “reform”, and who has already signed a so-called stimulus bill of nearly 9,000 items representing $700 billion that he deemed “imperfect.”

We have all watched the President in action since January 20, 2009 and what we have seen and heard has been constant criticism of America that has been an affront to our great history and our defense of human rights. He has done this in one foreign nation after another.

A speech in Cairo to the worldwide Muslim community President Obama distorted the facts of American history and conflated the deliberate murder of six million European Jews in the last century with the suffering inflicted on so-called Palestinians by their fellow Arabs; the result of repeated wars on Israel. No such comparison can be made and is by definition obscene.

Within months, “tea parties”, citizen protests, occurred from coast to coast and others are being planned for July Fourth. Not since the advent of the Civil War under threat of secession has a President faced such widespread opposition after taking office.

In State after State, resolutions are being passed in opposition to his proposed legislation and policies. An organization of “Oath-Keepers”, members of the U.S. military, the reserves, the National Guard, peace officers, and veterans, has emerged to say they will not blindly “follow orders” issued by this President that are contrary to the oath to uphold the Constitution they have taken.

This is a President whose Department of Homeland Security has defined as “extremist” anyone who criticizes or disagrees with his policies.

Americans who are fearful of the havoc President Barack Obama has let loose on this nation need to flood Congress with the demand that he be removed from office for his failure to protect, preserve, and defend the Constitution. Indeed, to conclusively prove he was constitutionally qualified to run for the presidency.

The White House has to hear from Americans calling on the President to resign.

Read it all.

Frankly, one of the most discouraging coup d'etats that this wicked administration has committed has been the usurping of the census mechanisms, grabbing controls for the executive branch and its sorry powers of "estimating people" whereas we favor the traditional method of an aggressive head-count. As many have pointed out, this power grab is a deception geared to overlooking massive illegal aliens of various stripes while packing the numbers aimed at boosting beyond their natural numbers certain preferred groups clamoring for tax and other stealth special interest favors.

This is highly irregular for our nation of laws, and needs to be stopped, but probably won't. After all, these smarty pants leftists are convinced that the US Constitution is mere yellow parchment, a quaint curio of the past, a surreptitious political document that failed. A debatably unAmerican Barack Obama, in this viewpoint, has come to sever America from her sordid past. End of story. All praise to Mister Obama...

Irreversible? More like fish in a barrel.

MARKING UP THE UNION SUNDOWN

JUST TO MAKE SURE YOU'VE UNDERSTOOD what I'm saying, here's another shot at conflating reality with a Bob Dylan lyric one redliner at a time. In rock mythology the roots grow deep and wide, but it's rather clear that this Dylan has no peer as the unmitigated prophet of doom and exaltation, centered as it is, upon the timeless truth we all confess but can rarely recognize in ourselves, OR others. Yes, here again was the voice that always managed to spin the magic far beyond the usual malapropism of contemporary songwriter genius. No matter how we choose to slice the banana, it seems that Dylan with Infidels had grabbed a direct pipeline from GOD in shaking down the Barack Obama bug some twenty-six years before the facts themselves show up to kick us in the pants. Sure, he was observing the germane times in which he was living back then, just as we all were, but my oh my, how fast the bodies and antibodies are piling up these days.

America has lost its industrial base to China, Japan, South Korea and elsewhere. America is financially overextended, depleted energy reserves forcing us to funnel billions of dollars annually to our duplicitous enemies, millions of Americans are jobless and under-employed leaving the nation crowned with a future of unprecedented deficits and national debt far beyond the parameters of rational manageability—the socialists.

With the UAW now taking control of General Motors, and the brazen Obama administration's irresponsible manipulation of private interests leaving many of us muttering new words for nothing left to lose, Dylan's cracked ancient voice seems ever more pertinent today than it did to the general population that score and nine years ago when these simple but crafted lines first broke into our consciousness...

Union Sundown off the Infidels LP

Well, my shoes, they come from Singapore,
My flashlight's from Taiwan,
My tablecloth's from Malaysia,
My belt buckle's from the Amazon.
You know, this shirt I wear comes from the Philippines
And the car I drive is a Chevrolet,
It was put together down in Argentina
By a guy makin' thirty cents a day.
Well, it's sundown on the union
And what's made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
'Til greed got in the way.

Well, this silk dress is from Hong Kong
And the pearls are from Japan.
Well, the dog collar's from India
And the flower pot's from Pakistan.
All the furniture, it says "Made in Brazil"
Where a woman, she slaved for sure
Bringin' home thirty cents a day to a family of twelve,
You know, that's a lot of money to her.
Well, it's sundown on the union
And what's made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
'Til greed got in the way.

Well, you know, lots of people complainin' that there is no work.
I say, "Why you say that for
When nothin' you got is U.S.-made?"
They don't make nothin' here no more,
You know, capitalism is above the law.
It say, "It don't count 'less it sells."
When it costs too much to build it at home
You just build it cheaper someplace else.
Well, it's sundown on the union
And what's made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
'Til greed got in the way.

Well, the job that you used to have,
They gave it to somebody down in El Salvador.
The unions are big business, friend,
And they're goin' out like a dinosaur.
They used to grow food in Kansas
Now they want to grow it on the moon and eat it raw.
I can see the day coming when even your home garden
Is gonna be against the law.
Well, it's sundown on the union
And what's made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
'Til greed got in the way.

Democracy don't rule the world,
You'd better get that in your head.
This world is ruled by violence
But I guess that's better left unsaid.
From Broadway to the Milky Way,
That's a lot of territory indeed
And a man's gonna do what he has to do
When he's got a hungry mouth to feed.
Well, it's sundown on the union
And what's made in the U.S.A.
Sure was a good idea
'Til greed got in the way.

Copyright ©1983 Special Rider Music

OUR LIBERAL RACIST MEDIA

Journalists who deliberately go easy on the president are practicing racism.

—T.K.Farrow, Pajamas Media

This week, Newsweek’s Robert Samuelson covers the month-old Pew Research Center study which found that “President Barack Obama has enjoyed substantially more positive media coverage than either Bill Clinton or George W. Bush during their first months in the White House.”

The study—which examined over 1200 stories by the Washington Post, the New York Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, NewsHour, and Newsweek—found more than 40 percent favorable coverage for Obama, compared to Bush’s 22 percent and Clinton’s 27. More significant than the percentage gap itself is the conclusion Samuelson reaches:

But the deeper explanation may be as straightforward as this: most journalists like Obama; they admire his command of language; he’s a relief after Bush; they agree with his agenda (so it never occurs to them to question basic premises); and they don’t want to see the first African-American president fail (emphasis added).

If Samuelson is correct, then the mainstream media is racist. And like most liberal racists, they don’t even know it.

In the late 1990s, author Jim Sleeper wrote a book titled Liberal Racism, which presented the ways in which the effort of many Caucasian liberals to close the historical racial divide and eliminate related inequities has gone horribly wrong. Sleeper writes:

It was Congressman Major Owens, a black representative from New York City, who in 1981 first told me and other members of a small audience of liberal activists and journalists that “liberals are sometimes the worst racists.”

There are many African-Americans—including this writer—who would instantly agree with the former congressman. White liberals might be surprised at how frequently his observation is a topic of conversation among the “victims” that liberals wish to lift out of oppression.

Mr. Sleeper continues:

Only gradually did I realize that liberal racism has several dimensions. Sometimes, prompted by misdirected and self-congratulatory compassion, liberal racism patronizes nonwhites by expecting (and getting) less of them than they are fully capable of achieving. … Liberal racism ends up perpetuating double standards by setting the bar so much lower for its intended beneficiaries that it denies them the satisfactions of equal accomplishment and opportunity.

No kidding! You think?

If Samuelson is right, then the media lowers the bar for Obama by consciously deciding to provide less critical analysis of his policies and performance. Under those circumstances, any presidential achievement is suspect because it’s shrouded in media assistance, rather than merely media coverage.

It also means the results of any disastrous Obama policy that manages to pass muster in the court of public opinion can be laid at the feet of those who are supposed to be the watchdogs of our democracy.

To be fair, there must be some media professionals who would never want to be an accessory to disastrous policy such as cap-and-trade or single-payer, government-run health care. But these very same liberal media members may still be unable to write critical stories about Barack Obama or his policies, even if they don’t bear the “liberal racism” belief that the black president can’t possibly accomplish his ambitious agenda without the help of the newsroom. For that group of journalists, fear is the explanation for their absence of critical thought.

Candidate Obama’s campaign staff repeatedly showed they were not above branding Obama’s critics—see the repeated complaints by former President Clinton at having been so branded—and the candidate himself used race when he believed it to be beneficial: “They’re going to try to scare you because I don’t look like all those other guys on the dollar bills.”

Some of the president’s ardent supporters participated as well, such as Janeane Garofalo with her response to the tea parties. And we’ve also seen liberal media members attack one another when one dares to disagree with an Obama policy. Although not related to race, Jon Stewart’s reaction to Jim Cramer’s criticism of economic policy was scathing.

No liberal media member wants to be branded a dissident of Obama, much less be accused of dissenting for racial reasons. So even the liberal reporters who don’t think Obama needs the help of the media have justifiable fear of being considered a hindrance to his agenda. And race, of course, is at the center of that fear.

Who said election of the first black president would make race less relevant in America? Whoever it was needs to think again.

The previous opinion was written by T.K.Farrow for Pajamas Media. We, at the Two-Fisted Quorum, completely agree with the author's honest assessment. Viewing folks as equals, in the flow of circumstances is the only way out of the maze. But be careful how you parse these simple but double-edged words. Egalitarianism is not patronizing, smug, condescending, or passed along on a piece of paper. Nor is it achieved by branding.

As a president suspiciously fond of holding two oppositional positions at the same time, I suppose it's a no brainer to conclude that when Candidate Obama said, “They’re going to try to scare you because I don’t look like all those other guys on the dollar bills,” apparently he was referring to his own rather scary administration.

OBAMA SOWS MIDEAST WHIRLWIND

From Frank Gaffney, Jr., an esteemed analyst for the Center for Security Policy, dated Jun 01, 2009, I received this letter warning us of those dire circumstances most of us who follow US foreign policy already realize, namely that the persistently barnstorming POTUS is boxing our own nation and our staunchest Middle East ally, Israel, into an impossible standard where self-defense is not about safety but about survival. However, Mr. Gaffney makes several other newsworthy disclosures.

Read for yourself:

FROM THIS VANTAGE POINT [Jerusalem], two events this week appear to be ominous straws in the wind, warnings of a "man-caused" maelstrom that may inexorably plunge the Middle East into another, potentially cataclysmic war.

The first is the fact that Israel feels obliged to undertake an unprecedented, country-wide civil defense exercise this week. At one point in its course, every man, woman and child in the Jewish State is supposed to seek shelter from a simulated attack of the kind Iran may shortly be able to execute against it.

The second is President Barack Obama's latest effort to reach out to the Muslim world, this time on June 4 from one of its most important capitals, Cairo. There, he is expected to make an address that will reiterate his previous statements on the subject—pronouncements that, unfortunately, can only have been interpreted by his intended audience as acts of submission.

If past is prelude, the President of the United States will: apologize yet again for purported offenses against Muslims by his country; promise to be respectful of Islam, including those who adhere to its authoritative, if virulent, theo-political-legal program known as Shariah; and enunciate diplomatic priorities and initiatives designed to reach out to America's enemies in the region, while putting excruciating pressure on its most reliable ally there, Israel.

This pressure has become more palpable by the day. It has taken various forms, including: U.S. stances adopted at the United Nations that will serve to isolate Israel; blank political and even financial checks for Palestinian thugs like Mahmoud Abbas; diminishing U.S.-Israeli cooperation on intelligence and military matters; and the withholding from Israel of helicopters (and perhaps other weaponry) being provided to Arab states.

Perhaps the most chilling example of this coercive pressure so far, however, was originally reported in the Israeli paper Yediot Aharonot and given international prominence by my esteemed colleague and Jerusalem Post columnist, Caroline Glick. According to these accounts, in a recent lecture in Washington, U.S. Army Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, the American officer charged with training Palestinian military forces in Jordan, made a shocking declaration.

In Ms. Glick's words, "[Gen. Dayton] indicated that if Israel does not surrender Judea and Samaria within two years, the Palestinian forces he and his fellow American officers are now training at a cost of more than $300 million could begin killing Israelis." She went on to note that neither the general nor the Obama administration seemed to find this prospect grounds for rethinking the wisdom of such a training-and-arming program. In fact, her column observed that Defense Secretary Robert Gates "just extended Dayton's tour of duty for an additional two years and gave him the added responsibility of serving as Obama's Middle East mediator George Mitchell's deputy."

Taken together with the U.S. administration's refusal to come to grips with what truly is the most serious threat to peace in the Middle East—Iran's rising power and growing aggressiveness, reflecting in part its incipient nuclear weapons capabilities—the stage is being inexorably set for the next, and perhaps most devastating, regional conflict.

Whether the signals Mr. Obama is sending are intended to communicate such a message or not, they are going to be read by Israel's enemies as evidence of a profound rift between the United States and the Jewish State. In this part of the world, that amounts to an invitation to an open season on Israel.

It is hard to believe that the Obama Middle East agenda enjoys the support of the American people or their elected representatives in Congress. Historically, the public and strong bipartisan majorities on Capitol Hill have appreciated that an Israel that shares our values, that is governed democratically and that is in the cross-hairs of the same people who seek our destruction is an important ally. Quite apart from a sense of moral and religious affinity for the Jewish people's struggle to survive in their ancient homeland, most of us recognize that it is in the United States' strategic interest to stand with Israel.

It is worrisome in the extreme that Mr. Obama does not appear to share this appreciation. To those who worried about his affinity for the Saudi king and Islam more generally and his longstanding ties to virulent critics of Israel like Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi and former Harvard professor-turned-National Security Council staffer Samantha Power, the President's attitude is not exactly a surprise. His administration's posture may have been further reinforced by Arab-American pollster John Zogby's recent Forbes Magazine article arguing that friends of Israel made up John McCain's constituency, not Obama's. (This raises an interesting question about the sentiments towards Israel of the 78% of American Jews who voted for the latter in 2008.)

My guess, however, is that, as the implications of President Obama's Mideast policies—for the United States as well as Israel - become clearer, he is going to find himself facing the sort of popular and congressional revolt that has confronted him in recent weeks on Guantanamo Bay. The question is: Will such a reaffirmation of American solidarity with and support for Israel come in time to prevent the winds of war being whipped up by Mr. Obama's posturing and rhetoric—and driving Israelis into bomb shelters—from wreaking havoc in the Middle East, and perhaps far beyond?

Not hardly. Just a day after his warm massage of His Majesty in Saudi Arabia, and on the heels of his suggestive distortion that America is one of the largest Muslim nations (after declaring that the US was no longer a Christian nation) in the world, the truth-challenged but egregiously adored POTUS gave his much anticipated speech in Cairo this morning, brimming with bogus remarks about the nature and history of Islam. To his credit, however, he did concede in rather soft terms that he believed Israel had a right to exist as an independent state.

Such a marvelous concession after all these years from such a marvelous gamer. Unfortunately, he also suggested that Iran had a right to "peaceful nuclear power" which as we all know is a red herring given the evidence Iran has provided that it wants to extinguish the nation of Israel with one mighty blow, and liquidate every remaining infidel Jew in the necessary clean-up. Frankly, this is not an acceptable solution, Mister President.

OBAMA APPOINTEES OVERRULE JUSTICE

Another case of the Obama Nation running roughshod over the American ideals exemplified in the US Constitution. We recall actually hearing of this case as it has happening on election day. Fear was rampant, the video evidence backs up eyewitness accounts, and yet, the so-called post-racial Obama administration continues to push its ugly agenda with barely a mention by the media deep in its pocket.

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT POLITICAL APPOINTEES overruled career lawyers and ended a civil complaint accusing three members of the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense of wielding a nightstick and intimidating voters at a Philadelphia polling place last Election Day, according to documents and interviews.

The incident—which gained national attention when it was captured on videotape and distributed on YouTube—had prompted the government to sue the men, saying they violated the 1965 Voting Rights Act by scaring would-be voters with the weapon, racial slurs and military-style uniforms.

Career lawyers pursued the case for months, including obtaining an affidavit from a prominent 1960s civil rights activist who witnessed the confrontation and described it as "the most blatant form of voter intimidation" that he had seen, even during the voting rights crisis in Mississippi a half-century ago.

The lawyers also had ascertained that one of the three men had gained access to the polling place by securing a credential as a Democratic poll watcher, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The Washington Times.

The career Justice lawyers were on the verge of securing sanctions against the men earlier this month when their superiors ordered them to reverse course, according to interviews and documents. The court had already entered a default judgment against the men on April 20.

RACHEL MADDOW NAILS OBAMA

THIS IS STUNNING NEWS. Election cycle Obama sycophant and MSNBC talking head Rachel Maddow has bolted from the herd in offering her poignant insights—the same poignant insights that many of us on the blogosphere have already declared as early as last August—about what the POTUS is now stealthily slipping into his record of hope and change with all this charming poetry his cult noisily adores. Unfortunately, what Ms. Maddow doesn't quite understand in her zeal to coddle the Guantanamo thugs is that Obama plans to execute this new presidential power against perceived personal enemies, which include lawful gun-owners, common cause right wingers, radicalized centrists, and hesitant liberals. Linking this plan to Guantanamo is pure technique. Bait and switch.

Maddow, along with her faithful sidekick Keith Obermann, of course, were vicious attack dogs for Barack Obama the candidate, and while I still don't think she sees the big picture—and one doubts she even cares, for her loyalty is to foreign nationals who threaten to strike with jihad against Americans, not loyal Americans—this critical analysis of Obama's latest wink and nod to the future he plans to dominate as the founder of prolonged detention earns Maddow a victory reprieve from me.

Props to Christopher Logan for this story...

DELIVERING AMERICA FROM EVIL

Dear President Obama,
 
You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.  
 
You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.
 
You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and  your upscale lifestyle and housing  with no visible signs of support.    
 
You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.
 
You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.
 
You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core.
 
You scare me because you lack humility  and 'class', always  blaming others.   
 
You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself  with radical extremists who hate America and you  refuse to publicly denounce  these radicals who wish to see America fail.
 
You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America' crowd and deliver this message abroad.
 
You scare me because you want to change  America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector. 
 
You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government  controlled one. 
 
You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.
 
You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.
 
You scare me because you have begun to use 'extortion' tactics against certain banks and corporations.
 
You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.
 
You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.
 
You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.
 
You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.
 
You scare me because you demonize and want to silence  the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative  points of view.
 
You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing. 
 
Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.
 
—Lou Pritchett

This was sent to me by a very dear person I have known my entire life. Evidence is piling up that our president is not doing all he can do to reach out to America, as he has often promised. Despite all the campaign rhetoric now safely in the past, it seems there are clearly still two Americas...

The note was prefaced simply, containing two earlier "first name only" signatures, which I have omitted here for clarity:

Hi, I really agree with this. Just wanted you to know how I think. You do not have to agree. This is still a free country. I just hope it stays that way. I foresee a time when he wants to be elected president for life.

Think about every line here, the first seven you have heard before. Remember I am truly an independent that is ticked off of both sides. Wherein lies the problem with most folks they want to align themselves with one or the other.

Hang in there and read every line, not with disgust but open consideration of reality. Those who disagree with most of what is said, I would like for you to sock it to me and tell how I am way off, et cetera...

As you can read, this person(s) who asked for rebuttals "socked to her" is obviously outside the usual spheres of influence the chattering classes dominate, where there are plenty of contrary opinions as well as similar observations. So what we have here Mr. President is a colossal failure to communicate. Step away from those teleprompters, and show us who you are, fairly and squarely, sir. America has a right to know. It's all there in the US Constitution, our founding document as a nation of laws and aspirations, a document of which we recall you are a purported scholar. Sir, you owe America that much because we heard you swear on your own word AND OURS that peculiarly American oath on Inauguration Day...

ALL THE WORLD'S A DISTRACTION

THE UNFLAPPABLE MARK STEYN has taken rightful issue with the New York Times and its coddling of the new president's fondness for declaring international events such as North Korea's recent missile launch and now the Somali pirate escapades mere distractions. Mere distractions, that is, from his stated course at full throttle to rectify national inequalities.

Steyn, who was recently cleared of charges by the Canadian Human Rights Commission, is no stranger to the leading leftist pet ideas of the day as he writes:

As my colleague Andrew McCarthy wrote, "Civilization is not an evolution of mankind but the imposition of human good on human evil. It is not a historical inevitability. It is a battle that has to be fought every day, because evil doesn't recede willingly before the wheels of progress." Very true.

Somalia, Iran and North Korea are all less "civilized" than they were a couple of generations ago. Yet in one sense, they have made undeniable progress: They have globalized their pathologies. Somali pirates seize vessels the size of aircraft carriers flying the ensigns of the great powers. Iranian proxies run Gaza and much of Lebanon. North Korea's impoverished prison state provides nuclear technology to Damascus and Tehran. Unlovely as it is, Pyongyang nevertheless has friends on the Security Council.

Powerful states protect one-man psycho states. One-man psycho states provide delivery systems to apocalyptic ideological states. Apocalyptic ideological states fund non-state actors around the world. And in Somalia and elsewhere, non-state actors are constrained only by their ever-increasing capabilities.

When all the world's a "distraction," maybe you're not the main event after all. Most wealthy nations lack the means to defend themselves. Those few that do lack the will. Meanwhile, basket-case jurisdictions send out ever bolder freelance marauders to prey on the civilized world with impunity.

Read it all.

While we are very grateful and proud that the American captain, his crew, and ship were safely rescued, even after reading all the official and unofficial conjecture, one still wonders why it took so long.

THE INSTRUCTION OF TARBABY IRAQ

"I summon my blue-eyed slaves anytime it pleases me. I command the Americans to send me their bravest soldiers to die for me. Anytime I clap my hands a stupid genie called the American ambassador appears to do my bidding. When the Americans die in my service their bodies are frozen in metal boxes by the US Embassy and American airplanes carry them away, as if they never existed. Truly, America is my favorite slave."

—King Fahd Bin Abdul-Aziz, Jeddeh 1993

BAGHDAD (AP)—Iraq's prime minister says U.S. troops will not be withdrawn from areas of the country that are not completely secure. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki tells The Associated Press in an interview that he has informed President Barack Obama and other top U.S. officials that the Iraqi government must agree to any withdrawals "and must be linked to the security situation."

Al-Maliki says that he does not want U.S. troops taken out of any area unless it is "considered 100 percent secure and under control." Otherwise, withdrawals will be postponed....

This vulgar exchange is utterly ridiculous and very sad, despite the best intentions or not of the Bush doctrine and this American soldier. The scene immediately draws my attention to the same situation portrayed in a particularly poignant film I once saw where both American soldiers and a highly acclaimed progressive social engineer of the day mandated late 19th century re-education policy while mostly failing to groom the native culture out of certain groups of survivors of the western tribes, making gentlemen and scholars of many when it would only succeed with the rare gifted one who was capable of maintaining his own culture in secret while succeeding in the new white man's world. Numerous films depicting other colonial empires attempting to train a native population evoke similar feelings of disgust with both sides of the cultural equation.

I realize I am having a sudden neo-liberal moment of doubt, a small crisis of conscience, with this observation, even as I also realize that life itself is far too often an unrelenting clash of civilizations and ideals, but the brute realities of this clash are indeed troubling to endure. Better these would-be Iraqi policemen understand their dilemma and learn to sort things out, or better these American soldiers leave Iraq to its own pan-Islamic devices, and God help us prepare for the inevitable fallout.

HOT CHILI PEPPERS IN THE BLISTERING SUN

PAMELA GELLER STRIKES OIL at the new president's feet, and let's just say, that's not a good thing. Our Atlas Shrugs blogger does this one up fine, in true showmanship stylings and aplomb. Don't miss a frame.

AN AMERICAN PRESIDENT

The following is a frightening picture of political mayhem in progress, published September 17, 2008, by Dr. Ali Sina, a former Muslim and founder of Faith Freedom International on the dangerous signs he see emanating from the personality of Barack Obama.

The essay is quite long. Be prepared to be stunned and shocked by what you may have perhaps already read in part or heard whispered around the water cooler in snippets or only fleetingly concerning the narcissistic defects of the American president. Ali Sina does not pull punches.

Understanding Obama: The Making of a Fuehrer

I MUST CONFESS I WAS NOT impressed by Sen. Barack Obama from the first time I saw him. At first I was excited to see a black candidate. He looked youthful, spoke well, appeared to be confident—a wholesome presidential package. It is so instinctive for most people to want to see blacks succeed. It is as if all humanity is carrying a collective guilt for what the ancestors of blacks endured. However, despite my initial interest in him, I was put off soon, not just because of his shallowness but also because there was an air of haughtiness in his demeanor that was unsettling. His posture and his body language were louder than his empty words.

It is surreal to see the level of hysteria in his admirers. This phenomenon is unprecedented in American politics. Women scream and swoon during his speeches. They yell and shout to Obama, “I love you.” Never did George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr. or Ronald Reagan arouse so much raw emotion. Despite their achievements, none of them was raised to the rank of Messiah. The Illinois senator has no history of service to the country. He has done nothing outstanding except giving promises of change and hyping his audience with hope. It’s only his words, not his achievements that is causing this much uproar.

When cheering for someone turns into adulation, something is wrong. Excessive adulation is indicative of a personality cult. The cult of personality is often created when the general population is discontent. A charismatic leader can seize the opportunity and project himself as an agent of change and a revolutionary leader. Often, people, tired of the status quo, do not have the patience to examine the nature of the proposed change. All they want is change. During 1979, when the Iranians were tired of the dictatorial regime of the late Shah, they embraced Khomeini, not because they wanted Islam, but because he promised them change. The word in the street was, “anything is better than the Shah.” They found their error when it was too late.

Khomeini promised there would be separation between religion and state. He lied and they did not care to look into his past to see whether he actually meant what he said. Had they done that they would have seen that he always believed in caliphate and the rule of Islam. People gobbled everything he told them uncritically. They wanted to believe and therefore closed their eyes so they did not see what they did not want to see. Eyes welled when he spoke. Masses poured into the streets by the millions, screamed and shouted to greet him. People kissed his pictures. Some saw his portrait reflected on the Moon.

Listening to Obama, it harkens back to when I was younger and I used to watch Khomeini, how he would excite the crowd and they'd come to their feet and scream and yell.

Then come the inevitable comparisons to Khomeini to Hitler, and the Obama to Hitler. The thrust of the Sina approach is psychoanalysis. Thus, several pages into the essay, Dr. Sina writes with the strength of insight a passionate biographer has for a criminal subject whom he is nonetheless drawn:

The cause of the narcissist is himself. Everything else is a tool, a stepping stone for the narcissist to ascend to power. Narcissists don’t have any ideology. They champion the cause that has a better chance of making their ascent to power easier.

Vaknin writes: “Narcissists use anything they can lay their hands on in the pursuit of narcissistic supply. If God, creed, church, faith, and institutionalized religion can provide them with narcissistic supply, they will become devout. They will abandon religion if it can't.”

Therefore, the question whether Obama is a Muslim or a Christian, whether he is pro Palestine, as he has been all his life or whether he is pro Israel, whether he is a black supremacist or an agent of racial harmony, are moot. Obama is anything you want him to be and situation dictates. He takes the side that is more expedient to his cause. To communists he is a comrade, to Islamists he is their man, to Palestinian fighters he is their hope and to the Jews he is a staunch Zionist. The narcissist’s creed is himself. Everything else is negotiable.

The best description of Obama comes from himself. “I serve as a blank screen,” he wrote in The Audacity of Hope, “on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” This is the key to Obama’s personality. He will do and say anything as long as it suits him. He will embrace any cause, will align himself with anyone, and will shift his position wherever the wind blows. Narcissists are chameleons.

Obama will do and say anything as long as it suits him. He will embrace any cause, will align himself with anyone, and will shift his position wherever the wind blows. Narcissists are chameleons.

Obama voted “present” in the Senate most of the time, (130 times to be precise) not because they were too difficult decisions, as Rudy Giuliani said at the GOP convention, but because those issues were not relevant to his cause.

Narcissists have no interest in things that do not help them to reach their personal objective. They are focused on one thing alone and that is power. All other issues are meaningless to them and they do not want to waste their precious time on trivialities. Anything that does not help them is beneath them and do not deserve their attention. If an issue raised in the Senate does not help Obama in one way or another, he has no interest in it. The “present” vote is a safe vote. No one can criticize him if things go wrong. Why should he implicate himself in issues that may become controversial when they don’t help him personally? Those issues are unworthy by their very nature because they are not about him.

Obama’s election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review led to a contract and advance to write a book about race relations. The University of Chicago Law School provided him with a fellowship and an office to work on his book. The book took him a lot longer than expected and at the end it devolved into—guess what? His own autobiography! Instead of writing a scholarly paper focusing on race relations, for which, he had been paid, Obama could not resist writing about his most sublime self. He entitled the book Dreams from My Father .

Not surprisingly, Adolph Hitler also wrote his own autobiography when he was still nobody. So did Stalin. For a narcissist no subject is as important as his own self. Why would he waste his precious time and genius writing about insignificant things when he can write about such an august being as himself?

Narcissists are magical thinkers. They live in a world of fantasy; fantasies of grandiosity and unlimited power. But they are convinced that those fantasies will become reality because they are special and destined for greatness. That is why Obama already sees himself as president and acts presidential. The very fact that he travelled abroad and visited with several heads of states is another sign of this man's delusions of grandiosity. He is not representing the government. Under what pretext he visited those heads of states and entered into negotiations with them?

Read it all.

Addendum: Okay, Barack Obama got elected. Now, while dismantling capitalism plank by plank, he struts about saying that he must repair our image in the world. But let's take a look at some reality slices. After President Obama created an uproar in the United Kingdom by sending back a famous Winston Churchill bust that was given to George W. Bush as a loaner gift after 9-11, he made matters worse by insulting Prime Minister Gordon Brown in a gift exchange. Brown gave President Obama a pen holder carved from the timbers of H.M.S. Resolute, and a first edition of a 7-volume biography of Winston Churchill—but Obama in turn gives Brown the equivalent of an Hawaiian shirt. A box of 25 DVDS included Raging Bull, Casablanca, Psycho, The Graduate...

Must have sent one of his acorns down to the nearest Walmart...

So this is how he is trying to repair our image in the world? How could he be so colossally uncouth? And we are to presume that this is the man of style and taste the Left has so often apotheosized while vilifying the previous occupant of the White House as nothing but a bushwhacking redneck? Give me a break. This man is a punk.