California Is Burning

Wildfire ravages the Sunshine State. Sadly, there is nothing unusual about that with seasonal La Nina or El Nino winds feeding flames from natural or man-made ignition, exacerbated by years of over-development sending urban sprawl into areas of dried scrub brush where environmental policy often prohibited common sense clearing that gives fuel to fires that could otherwise be more easily extinguished. That is par for the course in California, but the state is burning in another way-perhaps just as dire. The state is drowning in the debt of her own excesses. The courts have ordered the release of 27,000 state prison inmates, which will doubtless encourage both law abiding citizens and the tourists who are staying away in droves to place full faith and confidence in the absent one, Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has spent about a quarter of the last month in Massachusetts burying his ideological simpaticos-his Kennedy in-laws. If the state of fruit and nuts could wobble through in a conflagration without him, then maybe they do not need an ersatz conservative who gave a brief charade of a fight against his leftist legislature and in support of some ballot initiatives before letting his inner-Kennedy out and declaring that ultimately the state is responsible for providing everything for everybody.

Eleanor Clift Idiot

Rarely do I call out a member of the dinosaur media by name. The last time I did was to denounce Nancy Snyderman's overt, partisan endorsement of Obama care. Today, I feel compelled to counter a statement made on this weekend's McLaughlin Group by Eleanor Clift. In praising Obama's massive expansion of Federal education funding and a new phony "competitiveness" initiative, pitting states against each other for Federal education dollars, she said that if Truman entered today's classroom, he would recognize it as it has not really changed since 1945. What planet is Clift living on? Did she not hear about Vice President Gore's program to wire every classroom for Internet access during the Clinton administration? Has she heard of Head Start and No Child Left Behind? Today's classroom does not resemble 1945's-it is integrated, multicultural, and technological. Our schools may be failing us, but it is factually incorrect and intellectually lazy (at the least) to say our classrooms have not changed since Truman.

Miracle at Sea

Typically, there is not a world of good news to report on this forum, but last night I heard some that I will gladly relate. Not since the miracle on the Hudson has such good fortune been herein conveyed. Three men disappeared off Texas eight days back on a journey in a tiny catamaran. After about a day, the search shifted from a rescue effort to recovery, as exposure, hypothermia, drowning, death by shark became the inevitable outcome. But hope flickered in the hearts of kin, not yet ready to consign their fates to the sea. And prayers this time were rewarded when like something out of a Hemingway story, battered and somewhat worse for wear-the three wayward sailors were returned alive from one hundred eighty miles off the coast where they had clung to their upturned twin-hulled boat with hope in their hearts and prayer on their lips and returned from the brink of death-unbowed and unbroken. Thanks be to He on high who still hears the prayer and summons the rescue.

Beware Obama's Reach

When the last President Bush tried to ascertain the plans of foreign terrorists by eavesdropping on their communications with Americans, crazed, self-destructive civil libertarians gave him unshirted hell. Now, West Virginia Democrat US Senator Jay Rockefeller authors a bill to give our current President the ability to seize emergency control of the Internet, including private Internet service providers and the ACLU crowd hardly utters a peep. The left is not worried, Obama is so trustworthy he would never abuse a new power like that. We have an administration that seems bent on monopolizing the message with a new FCC head who idolizes Hugo Chavez and his tyrannical methods of manipulating Venezuela's media, a largely docile dinosaur press- content to distribute Obama's talking points, and new and dangerous schemes to silence opposition, and by the way, rid us of that troubling thing-the First Amendment. So, I had better type fast, with this crowd in charge, any given post could be my last.

Cover the Grave

The fawning coverage of Ted Kennedy in the dinosaur media is making me sick. Teddy suddenly has "risen above partisanship", when in life, he was among the most divisive Senators. (Just recall how President Bush allowed Kennedy to write the education bill only to have Teddy become one of Bush's most vociferous critics on everything else-especially trying to thwart victory in Iraq). Andrea Mitchell has been slobbering over the corpse on NBC, glossing over any failings. Other network reporters are virtually suggesting canonization. Saccharine biography becomes eulogy from so-called historians-how this royal graced us with his noblesse oblige of spending our tax-confiscated money on the dole dwellers and the deliberately unproductive. And to use his memory to force socialized medicine, which is wildly unpopular with the voting public, down our throats-Kennedy would be delighted, that is exactly how he operated as a leftist, partisan hack of a Senator. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel has pushed care-denial of what he deems no longer productive senior citizens, and he has access to Obama's administration at the highest levels where he can become the effective equivalent of Dr. Jack Kevorkian for the nation's most vulnerable-the aged, infirm, chronically ill, and disabled. Yes, the Chappaquiddick drowner would be proud to have his name attached to this monstrous piece of terminal socialism.

The Kennedy Hangover

Massachusetts was the cradle of liberty, a cauldron of revolution against a king. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Massachusetts has descended into a petty primogeniture, handing out a US Senate seat, like a Harvard legacy, to some close relation of an alum. And manipulation of law for a partisan political purpose goes hand in hand with this Fidel to Raul Castro-like display. Just as New Jersey tailored law to permit Frank Lautenberg to replace Robert Toricelli, Massachusetts is about to alter a law passed to prevent Republican Governor Mitt Romney from replacing Senator John Kerry had he won the Presidency, to facilitate Democrat Governor Deval Patrick's rapidly supplanting Ted Kennedy to expedite the speedy passage of a universal care scheme. One set of rules that applies to everyone but elite Democrats, laws crafted to their benefit-Massachusetts has gone from revolution to revulsion.

The Last Hurrah

Joseph Kennedy was a bootlegger and Nazi sympathizer. He spawned womanizing sons and had his daughter lobotomized for being as promiscuous as her brothers. Joe Kennedy used his underworld connections to manipulate vote results in Chicago and West Virginia to secure the Presidency for JFK. Ted Kennedy drowned a young, pregnant campaign worker, Mary Jo Kopechne negligently or deliberately. Teddy somehow remained in the good graces of the Roman Catholic Church despite being one of abortion on demand's staunchest defenders. He even had the Church annul a long-term marriage that had produced children to trade in a wife for a younger, more sober partner. Teddy's young physician cousin was accused of rape after picking up a woman at the Au Bar in Palm Beach in the first case I can recall in the modern era of journalistic discretion where the name of an alleged rape victim was involuntarily outed (by Kennedy sympathizers in the media). Kennedy relative Tommy Skakel managed to evade justice for decades after the rape and murder of Martha Moxely. Edward Kennedy and Chris Dodd notoriously made a "waitress sandwich" at a Washington D.C. area steakhouse-I wonder if they were small tippers. I will not endorse the poor judgement of Massachusetts' voters nor the paeans of Kennedy's Republican colleagues-who mostly think very little of their own conservative voters while offering praise to an arch-socialist. He was no lion of the Senate, nor the conscience of Congress, but a flawed and dissipated man who goes to face the Lord.

Blueprint for Defeat

Admiral Mike Mullen declared the situation in Afghanistan "serious and deteriorating", which should have been kept in close war council and not publicly disseminated where it demoralizes our forces and heartens the enemy. Even terrorists watch CNN, so they now know what they are doing is working and will boost recruitment and the Jihadis are bound to redouble their efforts. Accompany this unnecessary public disclosure with a tainted election, with our man Karzai, who only has control of Kabul, proclaiming victory, but his chief rival Dr. Abdullah Abdullah arguing massive vote fraud-no democracy we are defending- just more shenanigans and lingering doubts. Have NATO allies, who have never wanted to be there, sustain the most casualties that they have suffered and now you risk their withdrawal from the country-if they can not do it on the cheap as they have been trying, it is much more likely that they turn tail than rile their European streets and have governments fall to votes of no confidence by actually boosting their commitment of troops in a way substantive enough to make a difference. Then undercut your covert operators by charging them with crimes so the current US administration can deflect some focus from the health care debate and do some score-settling with the previous administration. There is even talk of perjury charges against former Attorney General John Ashcroft because he simply misspoke and said he thought water boarding had been used "three times" when he presumably meant on three terrorists (the actual number I have heard reported now stands at five high-value terror suspects). Ultimately, rabid leftists right up to Attorney General Eric Holder might want to see previous President Bush brought into the dock the way former President Alberto Fujimori was prosecuted for his successful campaign against terror in Peru. These al Qaeda leaders were interrogated, not to coerce information for future prosecution or even for punishment, but to divine what attack plans were already in the pipeline, mega-attacks that were indeed ferreted out and prevented, saving hundreds if not thousands. These so-called "victims" of US brutality would gladly murder any American at any opportunity, in ways so heinous they almost defy description-suffice it to say the barbarians we were mean to have a proclivity to saw off heads of conscious prisoners with dull blades-not for any strategic or military purpose but to broadcast to intimidate the decent and for their own amusement. These apprehended murderers debase humanity and any information gleaned from them is worth sullying our hands a little if it saves one innocent life. Would you join the CIA now or work as its contractor knowing you could well be prosecuted later by your own government and that your family could well be placed in jeopardy by being outed? Then place openly gay troops and women in combat, as Obama is pushing, just to make sure the morale of the troops, now handcuffed by the most restrictive rules of engagement US forces have ever fought under, is sapped even more. So you have a struggle that we have the ability to win undermined by political machinations, cowardice of leadership, and lack of a will to pay the price for victory.

Evil Marches On

Voters in Afghanistan are punished by the Taliban (translation: religious students) for having the temerity to participate in shaping their own destinies by casting a ballot in the Yakuza (translation: Japanese mafia) way and having their ink-stained fingers lopped off. A woman in Muslim Malaysia has her caning for drinking a beer "compassionately delayed" until after Ramadan. Iraq is rocked by a spate of sectarian bombings right out of the bad old pre-Petraeus surge days, and in the decadent West, a fellow famous for being famous, chops his glamour model wife like Jack the Ripper and leaves her in the luggage in San Diego. Aftonbladet, a paper in Sweden, makes some good, old blood libel charges against Israel, that Jews are abducting Palestinian men and boys to murder in an organ harvest fest-how did the Swedes know we only do that when Passover falls on a full moon in a Leap Year while we are listening to an upside down klezmer band playing Wagner conducted by a naked Daniel Barenboim-how did they ever catch us?
It is good to know that people the world over are so happy with Obama's ascension that they have packed up all their problems and are living the dream. As unemployment lines grow longer, we couldn't be any stronger in our conviction "Change" has won the day.

Blue Helmet Blues

The McLaughlin Group featured a debate on the prospect of creating a standing army for the United Nations, a concept embraced by President Obama that should terrify lovers of liberty the world over. The UN is innately corrupt and a rabid basher of Israel. It is populated and largely run by tyrannies and its troops have been accused multiple times of rape and even fostering the slave trade of prostitution in places UN peacekeepers have already been deployed. All we need now is for the internationalists with their gun-banning agenda to bring their blue helmets to overturn our Second Amendment right and come to seize our guns. Obama and his one-worlder conspirators will not feel welcomed here. The statist freedom-stealers would find a warmer reception in the hills and hollers than they could handle.

Will We Survive

President Obama is on his first official vacation in Martha's Vineyard. With his Atlas efforts and the weight of the world on his shoulders, can America make it through his absence? How can we draw a peaceful breath without Obama shepherding his revolutionary change agenda through our malleable (see spineless) Congress? Well, we made it a couple of centuries as the freest, most prosperous people without him, so I bet we can make it a while. Maybe, the Obamas will love Massachusetts so much that Barack decides to take a permanent sabbatical to stay there and abdicates-I guess we could get over it.

The Doomsday Manual

The original Doomsday Book was an English census, albeit one with a florid and intimidating name. What the VA has conjured up and Secretary Tammy Duckworth, appearing on Fox News Sunday, could only equivocate about, is truly scary. "Have a hangnail, go and hang yourself, have a head cold, blow your head off" is pronounced hyperbole, deliberate on my part, but these exaggerations convey the ethos of what the VA actually published-a monstrous death manual, that even Arlen Spectre did not try to defend but distanced himself from with a call for Senate hearings. Those that produced this euthanasia run amok advocacy share a mindset with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the President's Chief of Staff Rahm's brother (the cadaverous former ballet dancer whose skeleton-like appearance must hearten the ghouls of the political left, the type that saw nothing wrong with snuffing Terri Schiavo), and Dr. Zeke is a leading advisor to Obama on crafting his universal care scheme. The raison d'etre of these Ezekiel Emanuel-Peter Singer death salesmen is not to celebrate life but to reverence ending it. This VA document was brought to light and published in its entirety as a PDF by Jim Towey, to whom anyone who holds life dear, owes a debt of gratitude, in the Wall Street Journal. The danger of universal care becoming rationed care and this kind of euthanasia-pushing is too great to permit Obama to pass a public health option. God, not government should determine the number of our days.

Dear Union Members

The health care benefit you have earned is at stake. If a public option is passed, it will soon crowd out all other options including your current plans, that you have fought for, gone on strike for, and striven to keep. They will be forfeited when universal care morphs into single payer as it must, as government will be setting the rules that by their nature, eliminate the competition, the private insurers. So instead of listening to President Obama, your union leaders, and your shop stewards and breaking up our demonstrations and intimidating us at town halls, join us on the proverbial barricades to block socialized medicine that will deprive you and your families of your gilded plans that are already often far-superior to what is available to the non-union members of the general public. Logic would dictate that you fight side-by-side with us, not against us, because soon, we will all be sinking in the same universal care boat together.

Pillar to Post

Obama is failing in meaningful ways on virtually every level. Even in areas where he and his dinosaur media flacks trumpet victory, it is to the detriment of the nation, at least the nation as we have known it. They herald success for Cash for Clunkers but many auto dealers are yet to be paid and fear they may go under awaiting their government reimbursement checks. He is checking off agenda items as they are passed, but these are turning us into a socialist enterprise and something our founders or even Ronald Wilson Reagan would not recognize. Obama's foreign policy is a shambles with Scotland (where I will now never travel and whose products I will now scrupulously avoid) sending a convicted Libyan terror master back to Tripoli for a hero's welcome. He had merely been found guilty of killing two hundred and seventy (270) innocent people in the Lockerbie outrage. So, Scotland was "compassionate" and released this butcher after eight (8) years incarceration so he could die at home from prostate cancer rather than languishing in a prison until he drew his last breath. Then, Libya fetes this bloody-handed murderer as a national hero. You would have thought from the way he was greeted that he was a gold medalist and not a calculating killer. Obama personally received Gaddafi previously, like an equal-as if the Libyan strongman was a true international leader and to show his gratitude to Obama bending over backwards for him, Gaddafi (in a slave state where demonstrations are government-sponsored or quickly broken up) orchestrates this ceremony to spit in America's and Obama's eyes. Obama sells out tiny, beleaguered Israel, starting with his Cairo speech and continuing with relentless pressure. He increases mission tempo and objectives in Afghanistan while tightening rules of engagement that essentially prohibit collateral civilian casualties even when our or allies lives are at stake, causing a massive rise in NATO deaths. He ignores Iran revving up to create nuclear weapons. Obama produces massive, unprecedented national debt and socializes industry, delaying recovery while getting credit in the old line press for facilitating it. Unemployment continues to soar, yet the media says we must be grateful for all Obama is doing for us. We can ill-afford much more of Obama's "help".

Not a Joke

If he were not so dangerous, Obama's ineptitude would be funny.

Tyranny of One

Our Founding Fathers and those who followed were determined to prevent the tyranny of the majority and carefully crafted a republic to prevent the suppression of minority rights often visited in democracy. Both forms of governance, reverence one man-one vote, but our executives, courts, and legislatures have protected small or even fringe groups that might have been crushed under the majority had our early leaders not been so farsighted. No state religion, as had been common in the colonial era (with Maryland Catholic, the Massachusetts Bay Colony Puritan, etc.), could be propagated. But make no mistake, ours was a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles, as a Christian nation. Washington himself saw the country as a consecrated enterprise. Washington's letter to the United Baptist Churches in Virginia demonstrated that he saw an America where man could worship God " according to the dictates of his own conscience". Washington sent a missive conveying a similar message of tolerance to the Jews with his letter to a temple in Newport, Rhode Island. Ours was a Godly nation, giving thanks and seeking supplication until the appearance of a brand of anti-God fanatic led by the embittered Madalyn Murray O'Hair who wanted God expelled from schools and banished from the public square. After O'Hair met her appointed fate, her spit in the eye of the Divine banner was lifted out of the sewer by Michael Newdow who has tried to chase away the Lord from his lair in beset California. I have recently read with dismay of a coach and an athletic director at a public school facing fines and up to six months in jail for an invocation, not uttering a prayer to students but to athletic club boosters, adults who obviously wanted to be there and who presumably could leave, not "captive" children in a classroom but adults at a voluntary event. This is straight out of the Soviet constitution, not an event reasonable Americans ever thought they would witness in the heartland. Never did our forefathers envisage a day where people could go to jail for praying. This is not protecting the rights of a minority but imposing their proclivities on the rest of us. This is the tyranny of the minority-be they this booster case or a case in my hometown Nashville where the Metro Council is about to confer special rights on homosexuals with an "anti-discrimination" bill that is said to apply to public workers but will actually effect anyone doing business with the city including Head Start programs in church classrooms who will now be compelled to hire gay, lesbian, bi, and transgendered workers. So while cities construct public troughs for devout Muslims to wash their feet in prior to prayer (as in the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport), perverts are foisted on churches in the Bible Belt and God is ousted from public view. Now, Americans have plenty to fear from a leader (Obama has revelled as an abortion pusher and is power mad) who thinks he is big enough to supplant Him.

The Premier Fakers

Albert Gore is scheduled to attend the premiere of Quentin Tarantino's blood fest Nazi-smashing spectacle in Nashville, Tennessee. The movie is a juvenile, cartoonish revenge fantasy, which one would expect someone who dropped out of school at fourteen to project on the all too real horror of Nazism. The dropout Tarantino shares producer Lawrence Bender with the former Vice President. Hence the global warming entrepreneur Gore's participation. An Inconvenient Truth is every bit as fictionalized as the pretend war movie. One was contrived as innocent catharsis by a jovial lout, lacking sophistication or formal education, the other was schemed by a consummate manipulator to place vast sums of cap and trade money eventually into his pockets with the tangential effect of stealing your rights and freedoms and creating a caste system , where Gore owns boats and flies in jets, but we of the mere common classes never will be able to as we will have been gulled into relinquishing those privileges to the Hollywood elite, Occidental scions like Gore himself, and the Arianna Huffingtons of the world. After all, Saint- Tropez was becoming too crowded to glow in your all-over global warming tan.

Auto Workers Rejoice

The dinosaur media, that has Obama's back, trumpeted 1300 workers returning to GM assembly lines as the triumph of the President's Cash for Clunkers (CARS) program. A three billion dollar program, a little over a thousand jobs returned to a nationalized industry, swimming in subsidies-$200,000 plus cost to the taxpayer per job-sounds like government efficiency to me. Dealers are becoming increasingly reluctant to take part in the CARS program as the government is not prompt in its payment ethic. It is a shame the auto dealers can not repo Washington and let us start from scratch with new models with that new Congress smell, but not to worry, come 2010, we'll all get a whiff of it as Obama is now urging soon departing Democrats to go it alone on health care. Unless the Democrats and Acorn succeed with massive and unprecedented vote fraud (take this as a warning that they intend to try)-the kind they routinely accused Republicans of (that did not happen), expect to see the new House of Representatives chock full of shiny new conservatives in the election cycle that can not come fast enough. And the third of the Senate that is up has plenty of Harry Reid-type clunkers high on mileage and ready for a trade.

Leader Versus Statesman

Yesterday, I wrote of the last great American statesman, Ronald Wilson Reagan. Winston Churchill, Reagan's contemporary Margaret Thatcher, progressive Republican turned Bull Moose Teddy Roosevelt were exemplary in state craft rising above the status of mere politician. Some are statesmen without title or even office as Mahatma Gandhi adopted Henry David Thoreau's concept of civil disobedience, employing passive resistance to oust British colonial rule from India without holding governmental position. Leadership is distinct from statesmanship. A leader may be an autocrat or demagogue. Mussolini was a leader. Hitler drummed "ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer" into the receptive German populace, allowing a defeated, downtrodden people to feel like supermen under evil suasion. Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel, and even Chavez are no doubt leaders but all are or were relentlessly evil and none are statesmen. Events do not shape leaders; leaders shape events. For good or ill, the last President, "Bush the Decider" was a leader. If Bush had defeated Islamism rather than compromising with it, he might have achieved the status of statesman. To this point, Obama is neither statesman nor leader, rabble rouser at times-saying only he was between the bankers and the pitchforks and applauding a real mob dispatched to the Connecticut homes of AIG executives to spread the fear-an overt act of leftist intimidation, not any more appropriate for American democracy than Obama's saying "punch back twice as hard" and "if they bring a knife, bring a gun" in the current health care town hall meetings. Obama does not seek compromise or constructive debate, but to silence criticism. He has not displayed any characteristics of a statesman but plenty of those of the worst type of leader-one fortunately rarely seen in the American body politic.

Bob and Weave

During the primaries, I characterized Barack Obama as an "artful dodger". He was evasive and Hillary only managed to put a glove on him after he had essentially secured the nomination. Obama continues with twisted talk, while Hillary, now the nation's top diplomat, proves to be anything but diplomatic. Her ire was raised by a more or less innocent question from a hapless African asking her about the President's opinion with the only question being whether the questioner was inquiring what Obama or Bill Clinton's position was on something. Hillary was the untamed shrew many perceived her to be, a wounded woman roaring about sex subjugation when she should have simply answered, "Next time you see the President why don't you ask him". She then went on to impugn the previous President and the electoral process by maligning the Florida election 2000 outcome on foreign soil, in fact, in another corrupt African hellhole on the "Hide Hillary" dark continent tour Obama had her obscured on, while her husband grabbed the glory in North Korea. To compare the kleptocracy that ravages Africa to the most transparent Republic there has ever been is beyond unseemly, it is an unworthy insult to the country Hillary represents. Maybe America is lucky she did not secure the nomination. Many politicians are undiplomatic and unctuous, but the smooth seducer, pretending outreach convincingly, is the one to worry about. Too few statesmen seek office, who make no feather promises, but stick to principles-Reagan was the last I remember, but our new Messiah has many Utopian feathers in the ether and I don't see him being honest about his positions or objectives to the American people or even fairly trying to state his case.

A Grave Compromiser

There is currently rampant speculation that the White House may be willing to drop the so-called "public option" to have some sort of universal care passed. This would, on its face, seem a victory for conservatism but beware the details. Once the camel has its nose in the tent, the salesman has his foot in the door, it may be impossible for opposition to thwart single payer that the compromise seems to be abdicating. Those backing Obama care are not favorably disposed to speak truth when facts work against their desired outcomes. Let us take what the Democrats have widely cited at face value, their fictional fact that there are forty-seven (47) million uninsured Americans. Even without an open-borders amnesty which moderate Republicans and Democrats are scheming, which will bring in millions more aliens, the nearly fifty million already uninsured will break the system. Obama saying eliminating the deductions of the super-affluent like himself will pay for reform actually can not come near paying the newly engendered burden. The government could confiscate the entire incomes of the top two percent and still not cover the new expense, to say nothing of the delays in treatment with so many more lined up to seek preventative care. Healthy young people who would not have sought physician's counsel will now enter the system to access services they would have avoided since they feel someone else is paying for it for them, or if they happen to be the rare few amongst the high income tax bracket, why not now take advantage of something you are being forced to pay for anyway. Long waits and care rationing are inevitable. Even if end of life counseling is dropped, rationed and delayed care shortens lives. Doctors' incomes are bound to be adversely affected as well with consequently lowered reimbursement causing experienced, skilled physicians to retire early and making it less desirable for bright young students to enter the profession. Tort reform would enable doctors to avoid costly defensive medicine would have an immediate salutary effect in cost savings but seems to be a non-starter with Obama (himself an attorney and his Democrat party the beneficiaries of massive contributions from trial lawyers). If punitive judgements were simply capped at a quarter of a million dollars, injured patients could still receive compensatory damage for the real injuries they have suffered, up to and including the cost of lifetime care. All sorts of cost savings are possible if the evil possibilities of euthanasia and taxpayer subsidized abortion are excised from a compromise that promotes good medicine and sound budgets-both for taxpayers and for government. Watch out for a Republican Henry Clay who lets a bad new plan slip through-we have enough damnable compromisers already. Caveat emptor though-as always the devil is in the details, our politicians owe it to us to give us the chance to scrutinize any emerging bill.

Save the Earth

I watched a Hari Sreenivasan report on CBS News about teachers and parents shopping for their students going "green". An idealistic young instructor of middle school English was interviewed buying classroom supplies and she really believed, was firmly convicted, that her little shopping expedition was so enviro-friendly that she was "saving the earth" which she said was her most important job. For an educator to be so misdirected and filled with hubris is sad. Her mission as an English teacher presumably should be teaching English, grammar and syntax, construction of sentences and paragraphs,how to write an essay, or at least how to read our lingua franca. But our young didac is convinced it is not her job to teach these already daunting tasks; she must save the earth. To earnestly think your efforts have so great an impact must be terrifying but make an individual feel mighty powerful. So sadly deluded-an individual's ability to manipulate climate is not even negligible, it is non-existent. I am not saying that we should flagrantly waste or live for the joy of joining the profligate, as conserve is the root of conservative, but to have such horrors in the classroom as this egoist idiot and it is no wonder Johnny can't read. She should not revel so much in her secret climate-shaping talents and focus on diagramming the next sentence.

Use the Flu

The Obama administration may be forever known as consummate manipulators after Rahm Emanuel let the cat out of the bag by airing their scheming mindset. His "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste" statement has been highlighted in hasty decisions, pushing legislation through Congress without due consideration, and attempts to precipitously rush through universal care before public scrutiny was possible on an issue of unparalleled magnitude. This self-proclaimed "open and transparent" administration which was going to post proposals online and give the public ample time to absorb them, has in the event, done the opposite with no opportunity for public discussion or even a chance for Congress to read the stimulus bill before it was rushed through. H1N1, the virus formerly known as swine flu, is ravaging Mumbai (formerly Bombay), the commercial capital of India. Schools there have been closed. Out of an abundance of caution, American schools should follow the same public health standard-better to miss a few days of instruction when flu strikes than to start the world on a death spiral as was seen with the post-World War I influenza pandemic known as the Spanish flu. But the Obama administration has urged the schools to remain open during H1N1 outbreaks which would seem insanity unless the administration is trying to provoke a crisis that they may then manipulate to advance Obama's universal health regime. If the flu spreads but is contained, we have Obama's public health policy to thank. If millions are sickened and thousands die, some in the administration may believe the ravaged populace may beg for public option health care as a means to save their very lives. Either way, the charlatan in the White House can employ an insidious pandemic to advance his agenda-and once again a serious crisis has not gone to waste.

A Profession's Suicide

Journalism was once an esteemed institution. From muckrakers exposing America's ills to Ernie Pyle and Edward R. Murrow bringing World War II back to America's sitting rooms, reporters earned trust and admiration. My how they have descended into the mire. On ABC's Nightline, the profession sank to its tabloid nadir with a story "promoting" pornography for women last night, complete with exhibitionist couples dumb enough to pay for a class in which to display their perversion. Repulsive. Journalists are now openly showing contempt for the political right and outright lobbying for Obama care (see my previous post-Nancy Snyderman Marxist of July 2) or Tim Johnson's slobbering Obama advocacy. The dinosaur media no longer investigates but trots out hackneyed Democrat talking points or references reports favorable to Obama care from supposedly neutral organization factcheck.org which hides its "probama" bias rather than walking it in the open air like the network reporters. If a TV reporter is going to rely on an organization like Fact Check to keep the debate honest-what in the hell is the reporter there for-window dressing? Go out and read the House bill for yourself, reporters, you can read, can't you? Ratings must be tanking for slime like the Nightline porn story to air to "arouse" some interest. With issues of moment, real and lasting consequence, covered only to "debunk" the right with insults about "teabaggers" and "birfers", the media is committing malpractice, not by negligence but by acts of commission. They have picked Obama's side.

The Kevorkian Brigades

Plenty of consternation has been generated by the Democrat foray to provide universal health coverage. Some on the left are mocking the concerns of opponents, saying they are creating heat but no light and even accusing citizens involved enough to attend town hall meetings of "carrying swastikas" (Pelosi) and being un-American (Hoyer and Pelosi). This kind of jibe along with bashing Sarah Palin for warning of "death panels" while the President holds orchestrated town halls of his own with handpicked supporters, undermines the initiative and fuels anger in broad swathes of the American public. The aged, who in the past have largely supported Democrats, are justly leery. There is a provision for "end of life counseling" that includes financial incentives for doctors to secure living wills or hospice care for patients. Obama has ridiculed the proposition of euthanasia with "no one is going to pull the plug on granny", but denying someone a life extending procedure due to actuarial statistics not justifying the cost is effective euthanasia. Granny will never be on that ventilator because she expired after being denied a heart bypass-either way granny is just as dead. There are all sorts of logical reasons to stand against Obama care from rationing to longer waits for service, to being forced to pay for abortions, to an edict reported by martial arts actor Chuck Norris in Townhall.com that social workers or other government child welfare experts would have warrantless access to the homes of expecting parents and parents with children. Without even considering the eugenic and euthanasia potential of this monstrosity, there is plenty to carp about. If this passes, you could go to bed one night in America and wake up the next day in a horrifying semblance of Hitler's Germany. I am worried that a spoonful of Obama care will make the life expectancy and human liberty go down.

Drugged and Deluded

In yesterday's column, I contended that we have been broadly failed by our education system, leaving many Americans vulnerable to being duped. We also have many voters walking around in states of confusion or euphoria, susceptible to the rubbish Obama has been selling. A report was released recently detailing twenty-seven million Americans taking antidepressant drugs. Add to this many more prescribed other psychiatric drugs, the uncounted numbers taking illicit mind-altering substances, and those who live their lives in an alcohol-induced haze and America has a real problem with clouded perception. To slightly alter a term from a best-selling book of a few years back, we have never been a more "narcotic nation". Yet addicted and cross-addicted and alcohol dependent people often exercise their suffrage rights and Obama was the choice for many of them. After all, McCain was seen as "straight" while Obama admitted drug use in his youth in his autobiography. (What forty year old writes two autobiographies?) Beyond that, universal care does actually make some sense to those about to encounter life time caps on their private health insurance and some of those with licit or illegal drug issues have run up tremendous bills for care and rehab. So Obama appeals to them with his empathy, his provision of free drugs for life, man, and the easing of illegal drug prosecutions that would be expected when an Obama has power. A substantial number of Obama voters can simply and truthfully say they were not in their right minds when they cast their ballot. But it is up to the rest of us, sober and informed, and acquitted of our adult responsibilities to safeguard precious liberty. We must recognize that America can not afford to swallow Obama's poison pill. What's good for the drug addict may be the death knell of freedom.

The Festering Wound

How has the greatest nation in the world been brought low? I believe it is the education system that has failed us. Whether you want to recognize the level of indoctrination present in secondary education, particularly the public schools, you must acknowledge that the most essential ability, being able to think critically is not actively being taught. In fact, the opposite, group think, is often encouraged. From the earliest grades on, students are taught to give their skeptical, more discerning elders, the lecture on global warming. Yes, we adults are the powerful Shiva, destroying the earth by our willful destruction of driving and I suppose taken to the extreme, by the very act of breathing (we are after all exhaling carbon). Our youth, our religious and ethnic minorities, women on the college campus are being taught generational and gender dissonance, color and origin disharmony, and grievance against the other-seeing everything through a group-think prism rather than America and the world being possessed of one race, the human race. This was evinced in stark relief in the stories about celebrations by Hispanic judges and lawyers, who were showing their disdain for those outside their ethnic niche by wearing "Wise Latina" or "My Mom is a Wise Latina" T-shirts in their Sotomayor celebrations in the Bronx. To the rest of America, wake up-they are rubbing your face in it. Their education has been so limited that they believe the economy is static, and they are determined to grab their piece of the pie by denying you yours. To them, it is only fair to deprive you because you benefited from the old white male patriarchy.Of course, this is nonsense because if free markets are allowed to work, prosperity grows for everyone. Capitalism is a dynamic force that grows wealth everywhere and for everyone if an Obama does not stifle it. Regardless of sex, race, or ethnic origin, a simple proposition applies: the more government takes, the less your family prospers, and conversely, the less government takes, the more your family prospers. But the great congregation of Obamites, so ill-served by the education system, can not grasp the obvious. They are fed dinosaur media lies and a degenerate popular culture and are sated by it. Led by the arrogant, the ignorant eat it up. Trapped in a morass of pornography online and on cable (and satellite), being subjected to a spate of unreality shows aimed at those who seek escape from their drudgery in the most facile way, bombarded with popular culture messages that attack moral fiber and are a negation of real culture, and left without the tools to think for themselves, many Americans are at sea. They know all about Britney shaving her head, or Kanye, or Fitty, but they can not identify half of the US Presidents or define what inflation is, yet they had their vote and exercised it for Obama. They remain under a collective delusion of Obama's beneficence, brilliance, and singular greatness. Of course, not all Obama voters are brainless, some are brainwashed, some are convicted Marxists (or socialists or progressives)-some of Obama's supporters are fascists though they will not admit or are unaware of it. So, what is billed as a values' neutral education system promotes positive reinforcement, creating high self-esteem, is filled with Stuart Smalley affirmations, and conflict resolution but lacks instruction in any discrimination. In this case, discrimination is meant as discernment born of intellectual curiosity that is no longer a goal teachers push for, except in rare cases. What with social promotion, many are graduated now without the rudimentary ability to reason. They were and are easy prey to glib politicians and the dinosaur media that pushes them. They were never taught the tools to resist a demagogue selling them a bill of goods and they are distracted from their real concerns by entertainers who lack talent but make up for it with a ready eagerness to exhibit themselves or in the case of rappers, display a rap sheet as a resume to establish "street cred" to garner thug-worship fans. The arrogant leading a bread and circus society of the ignorant is a recipe for disaster.

Methods and Madness

Sarah Palin is being roundly pilloried by the elite, after her prudent statement about the real potential for evil in the universal care regime being promulgated in the US House of Representatives. As the mother of a child with disabilities, Palin recognizes an abundance of caution must be exercised when contemplating the most drastic reworking ever attempted of the US health system. Taxpayer funding for elective abortion, foeticide on demand for those who negligently had intercourse and then deliberately eschewed widely available and often free contraception (through health departments, college care providers, and even some secondary school nurses) rankles many religious people and others who simply do not want their tax confiscated lucre going to fund what they see as murder. Many look at the movers behind the administration's universal coverage push and are distressed to see Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, brother to Obama's Chief of Staff, and an acolyte of Dr. Peter Singer, the world's foremost proponent of euthanasia, in a crucial advisory position. Even the left-wing press terms Singer controversial, which is a lamentable understatement. Singer is a eugenicist, not a racial purist, but one who pushes for the termination of the aged, infirm, and the disabled. The competing Democrat plans now advancing in the House and Senate are fraught with peril beyond the evils of abortion and denial of care to those no longer or never deemed capable of being productive. Any plan to streamline the provision of medical service by digitizing all medical records is subject to data breach and abuse. All your online records could well include your social security number and your mother's maiden name. You would be easy pickings for identity theft. If you are a celebrity, your records could more easily be accessed by tabloids. If you ever had an STD (what used to be called a social disease), you could find yourself subjected to extortion. Most importantly, the social engineers can use universal care as a lever against your liberty. They will exert their authority to manipulate your behavior in terms of obesity and smoking. If a child you do not know and will never meet suffers from asthma, your medical masters may not permit you to drive a SUV-your large family will suffer to limit the pollution some bureaucrat claims is exacerbating a stranger's breathing difficulties. You may even have to limit the size of your own family based on the danger of their supposed carbon footprint. Extending health insurance to a few seems a sad trade off when measured against rationing care and forcing decisions on the many.

Mister Misery Index

The Misery Index was coined to describe economic dislocation by way of inflation and unemployment in the 1970s and used by and about Jimmy Carter as the nation neared collapse, sagging under the weight of the peanut farmer's many mistakes and the crushing interest rates of Paul Volcker (who incidentally serves our current misruler). But media was different in the days of Carter and did not attempt to spin every negative fact to the Democrat's favor. Today, misery may be stalking the land, but to hear the old-line media tell it, with Obama holding us up (a deliberate double entendre), we are in great hands. So what if nine to fifteen percent of the American labor force can not find work, Barack Hussein Obama is given credit for creating or saving a couple of hundred million jobs. A business in operation since 1800 lays off a third of its workers, but one thousand jobs remain. Obama has just "saved" a thousand jobs-he will gladly take credit for this grand accomplishment and the media and his worshippers will cheer his brilliance. If you were not made redundant this week, praise Obama. You were not retained because of your value to your employer, your intellect, your industry, economic necessity (your boss actually needs you to stay in business). You still collect a paycheck thanks to Papa BO-(my new take on Papa Joe, as our leader is eerily resembling Stalin more each day, deploying union thugs to squelch opposition). The dinosaur media arm of the Democrat party has learned to repackage a lousy product and is pitching the hell out of it (the Presidency of the neo-Marxist). Peon-don't you have the good sense to be grateful?

Nine Turncoat Republicans

Nine members of the GOP stood with Obama and his proxy on the Supreme Court, Judge Sonia "Soviet" Sotomayor. Some of these Senators have long been lost causes, long ago deciding that anything with the dint of conservatism was wrong for them. For the Collins and Snowe of Maine delegation, endorsing a judicial activist, gun banning Latina supremacist may have actually represented the will of their bizarro New York North Woods refugee constituents, but I know South Carolina fairly well having spent considerable time there (in Charleston, Hilton Head, and Myrtle Beach) throughout my life both pre and post-Hurricane Hugo, and I am a native Tennessean, so to see Lindsay Graham and Lamar Alexander spit in the eyes of their down home conservative voters confounds me. I view their betrayal as a craven kind of pandering to a breed of Hispanic voters who will never vote for them anyway. The type of person who would place race or ethnic identification over track record and character will always vote Democrat. Any voter so shallow as to play the candidate "looks like me" game is going to cast their lot with the true expanders of the welfare state, the statist dole pushers who have since FDR been Democrats. Fair-minded people from any background, the types that would never join an exclusionary organization like La Raza or even the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, will look past race or ethnicity to see the values that define a person much more than where someone was born or their skin tone. Our family doctor, who knew we were Jewish, during the Gore-Lieberman run for the White House once declared, "I bet you can't wait for the election so you can put Lieberman in the VP seat." I found this to be one of the most offensive assumptions a supposed professional could make, that as Jews we were excited about putting a coreligionist in a seat of power. In the event, we proudly voted Bush-Cheney. So political cowardice, trying not to offend a voting block that was never going to stand with them anyway, has cost two Southern Senators many of their conservative backers.

The Frozen North

A quid pro quo of some sort likely expedited the release of the two detained Chinese-American journalists from the North Korean gulag state. Kim Jong-il will never be confused with Albert Schweitzer as one of the great humanitarians. In fact, the midget madman has earned North Korea a place on the Axis of Evil by gleefully hurling missiles, building nuclear weapons after agreeing not to in exchange for US inducements, including light-water nuclear reactors provided by girl-collector William Jefferson Clinton, and proliferating, selling any weapon including WMD to any nation or group willing to pay. The Dear Leader has crafted a Stalinist nightmare of a prison state with hostages and their murderous warders in place of citizens. Make no mistake, no humanitarian measures are issued forth by a nation that has just executed a young Christian mother for distribution of Bibles and so-called espionage (enough torture and anyone will confess to anything and will regard a bullet in the brain pan as a welcome relief). Kim Jong-il starves everyone but the thugs in his security services and maintains his rule by brainwashing and completely closing off his last Iron Curtain police state. While Americans, who are a humanitarian people, are grateful for the quid, the wayward Lee and Ling are ransomed and safely returned to the loving arms of family, many of us are left to wonder what the quo is.

Some Untenable Positions

Receipts coming into the Federal government slipped eighteen percent while expenditures are expanding in an unprecedented way. This is not the recipe for national prosperity but the path to endless deficit, devalued US currency, and possibly hyperinflation. The CARS program (aka Cash for Clunkers) was supposed to be paid for through November with a billion dollar appropriation but ran out of money in one week. Now, two billion additional dollars may be squandered to continue the program as we are paying ourselves for vehicles in the cases of Chrysler and GM which the taxpayer has already bought and paid for with the bailout. This CARS scheme is largely a sop to our union masters in the UAW. Other car companies are foreign-owned, so we are sending subsidies abroad when a clunker owner selects a fuel-efficient Toyota, Honda, or Hyundai to replace the heap being traded. Finally, if the automobile is being traded in because it is no longer functional or the owner intended to trade-up for a new car, we are giving away tax-confiscated dollars for a transaction that was going to happen anyway (although I will concede that the choice of new ride might change and a new instead of used or more fuel-efficient automobile may be sold). All in all, the CARS scheme offers little benefit to taxpayers. This is one example of Obama's vast new spending which the Democrats who control Congress are rubber stamping. Revenue flowing into Federal coffers was down by the largest percentage since 1940 and down for only the second time since 1932, yet spending is soaring. Money pouring out while tax revenue is trickling in is unsustainable. We were warned this weekend on the Sunday policy wonk shows by administration economic gurus that the President's no new tax pledge for under quarter a million dollar earners may have to go out the window in spite of brisk denials later by Presidential mouthpiece Robert Gibbs. Raising taxes in recession will only make the situation worse. The gang running the country now can not talk or shoot straight.

Create an Impasse

If Obama is blocked on health care, and I emphasize if, the rest of his attack on our nation's First Principles may be thwarted. I will not pretend that I am sanguine that the care rationing scheme actually will be blocked, as I do not think many Democrats including the so-called "Blue Dogs" will stand steadfast against a President of their own party-particularly one who remains personally popular even if his support comes from idiots or the gullible, those who place race consciousness over the enduring interests of the country, and those easily manipulated by the mainstream media. In fact, I think it is much more likely that RINOs, particularly the odious Maine Senate delegation and those other Senate Republicans feverishly now seeking some compromise with their Democrat colleagues, will ultimately vote for the single-payer universal care regime to show to their constituents back home that they went to D.C. to do the business of the nation rather than sit as obstructionists in a stalled body that they would contend if legislation is not being passed, has fallen into nothing but a debating society. On most every issue of consequence going all the way back to the "gang of fourteen" in the Bush years, enough Republicans have stood against conservatism to bring catastrophe to the country, but if a bottleneck is created on public option health care, the President may also be checked on cap and trade and card check until Republicans seize back the US House of Representatives in 2010. When that happens, checkmate, we have seized the queen-no not Michelle, but defense of liberty. Alas there are too many cowards in Congress and I fear that blocking the neo-Marxist is a pipe dream. In the end, in spite of the hue and cry against socialism from the heartland, I think the nation will lose and Obama will win.

More Turbulence Ahead

Most of us who have traveled by air, have had that feeling in the pit of the stomach when the disembodied voice of the pilot comes over the speaker system to announce the warning that the craft is about to enter turbulence, followed by the precise instructions of flight attendants to stow what you are holding, secure your trays, and put on your seat belts, said quickly but in such a way as to be comforting (or at least, not to provoke additional alarm and on board distress). A Continental flight today experienced the kind of dire turbulence we all pray to avoid when we take off on an airplane. In my own experience, once on a return leg of a journey back to my hometown of Nashville, our commercial airliner was ravaged by some significant quaking-so much so that overhead bins opened, and service carts went flying. My cabin mates were invoking the deity or shouting profanities, but the Uncaused First Cause had His steadying hand on the ultimate control and we landed safely. Every individual experiences storms in their life, every nation, the world's economy- all face turbulence from time to time. That is when we must look past our elected officials to One who charts a higher course in piloting events. No matter how much power an official believes he has, what he has the ability to affect is infinitesimally small compared to the real power that created all of us.

Crush the Stakeholders

Small business has been called the backbone of America. Yet, in all of Barack Obama's pronouncements on the campaign trail and as President, they are an enemy. Obama has made those earning more than a quarter of a million dollars a year his target. Obama and his supporters want to tax these people to pay for the socialist Utopia he is bent on creating. They are his bete noire with their Robin Leach Champagne lifestyle. Yes, they must be indulging in caviar and truffles as they struggle to make payroll and devote more energy each day to the growing morass of regulation and compliance issues being forced on them at the local, state, and Federal levels. Most of these so-called high-end earners are small businesses just struggling to stay open, which is increasingly difficult during the Obama prosperity. These high earners are largely Subchapter S corporations who can not afford a mandate to provide health insurance. They are not hiring or are paring their workforce as it is. Obama is being applauded in the old line and financial press for a good month as stocks surged in July (up more than eight percent), but Obama promised to help Main Street not Wall Street. The boy President is creating the first of its kind-a jobless recovery. Yes, with unemployment hovering near ten percent (and rising) and with many job seekers nearing the end of their unemployment benefit, the resurgence Obama is stealing credit for bringing (his actions have actually forestalled the turnaround-the economy is cyclic) may bear all the hallmarks of a depression.

Poison the Well

President Obama sparked some controversy, showed his true face, and distracted from his own agenda with his foray into the Cambridge incident. His first statement was that he "did not know all the facts". Logic and discretion dictated that his next statement would be, "So, until I do know the facts, I am reserving comment." But the appointer of bad judges did not have the good judgement to say that, and instead, let his Jeremiah Wright churchgoer wade out and declared "the Cambridge police acted stupidly". He then fanned the flames in a Terry Moran interview in which he spoke of Gates' age and infirmity (implying that the professor certainly was no threat to police) without regard to the fact that Gates is younger and in better shape that the Holocaust Museum murderer. The President was thoughtless, just as his party was with the CARS program (Cash for Clunkers) that they could not successfully administer for one week and which was supposed to be funded through November but which needs immediate additional appropriation to continue. But these clowns can take over one-fifth of the economy and run health care seamlessly. Government efficiency is an active oxymoron. The domestic debacle is not enough for the neophyte in the Oval Office, Obama felt the need to exacerbate our problems abroad as well by making Israel's settlement policy the focus of the world's evils. Not Arab irredentism, not Palestinian violence, not Jihad by Muslims but a Jew adding a bedroom to his home in East Jerusalem is the cause of all the globe's ills. Of course, Obama's position only bolsters Arab intransigence and Palestinian rejectionism and this was all too vividly confirmed today with Saudi Arabia declaring no concessions would be made with Israel and with Fatah, the so-called moderate faction of Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas, hardening its stance and calling for a unilateral declaration of independence with the nascent Palestinian state then embracing Iran. Both Middle East stories appear in today's Jerusalem Post online, and highlight how Obama's efforts to advance peace in the Middle East have had the opposite effect.

Just Go Along

A certain breed of Republicans feel the need to offer something substantive rather than risk being called "obstructionist". They are GOP members who are of a mind that America wants to see comity in Congress and members working together to "get things done". For some of them, Northeastern liberals, like Collins and Snowe, the horrific pair of RINOs from Maine, this roll over for Obama view may actually reflect the will of their voters, many who escaped New York as it was descending into a leftist hellhole, to make the journey to pristine L.L. Bean land, but brought their socialist insanity, which they claimed, along with four vagrants on every block and rampant street crime, to be fleeing, with them. But it makes no sense whatsoever for a South Carolina or Tennessee Republican US Senator to poke the elephant in the eye and betray the values and interests of their right-thinking, right-wing constituents. That is just what Lindsay Graham and Lamar Alexander are doing with their vote for the confirmation of Sotomayor to the court of last resort. The core of America, lifelong conservative Republicans and Reagan Democrats want to see Obama, "the great leveler" stopped in his effort to overturn the old order. These flyover country patriots love our Constitution, our Founding Fathers, and want their representatives to reflect that and speak from the heart, but instead, ppoliticians from all parties and of all stripes and their campaign committees employ consultants, highly paid strategists like Dick Morris, who has earned his hefty compensation by helping Bill Clinton et al to dance circles around the truth and know just what to say to keep fooling voters. Yes, when Morris was in the office and not wearing his leash, he was invaluable in creating premises to keep the kind of politician who would employ such a trickster advancing his career, a politician not of conscience but one who entered politics not to represent his principles or the people who voted for him but who is laughing at anyone dumb enough to vote for him the whole time he has the public dancing to his tune and exploiting every office for all it is worth, whether in pursuit of higher office, to advance cronies and earn their eternal gratitude and obligation with all that buys, or plain old, pure and simple graft. I am not a political consultant, so I can offer some free advice to conservatives. We have a President in office in Obama, who wants to take your money, take your guns, and offer an open border amnesty. So if you want a winning mantra to stay in office and remove the RINO strain, which is willing to accept a little salt to make socialism more palatable, but is actually rubbing salt in the wounds of the conservatives who put them in office-preserve tradition, save the country-say:"Keep your money, keep your guns, close the borders". Say it and more important, mean it.