The Scattershot Presidency

Obama has diffuse objectives, rather than the surgical focus that most effective leaders have. He is like a priest on a bloody battlefield, administering last rites left and right, more concerned with speed than accuracy. This is an apt analogy for someone giving last rites to everything the nation has held sacred for more than two hundred years.

A Foolish Appeaser

Barack Obama declared his intention to seek rapprochement with "moderate" elements within the Taliban to bring them into the political process and bring peace to Afghanistan. The idea that there are any Wahhab fanatics who comprise the Taliban-a collection of hardened Sunni extremists who are the most violent misogynists who have ever lived and who gladly employ horrific barbarism to advance Islamist tyranny,  who can be negotiated with, is absurd. These terrorists, who gladly hosted bin Laden and al Qaeda and offered him their protection even after the September 11 attacks, must be defeated on the field of battle. There is nothing to talk with them about-they are wanton murderers who kill under the guise of religion and enforce their will by publicly executing those who demur often by beheading as was the case when a twelve year old boy was made to sever the head of an alleged American spy with a dull blade. The Taliban murdered a woman because her profession was dancing. If it took re-instituting the draft to put sixteen million men under arms as we had during World War II, it would be worth it to rid the world of this atavistic scourge. There are no moderate Taliban to engage any more than there were moderates among the Iranian ruling cadre during Iran-Contra.  Our Secretary of State rushed this week to appease the recently aggressive Russia, blaming the breakdown in relations between the countries not on Russia's bad actions that included invading a former Soviet republic, cutting off natural gas to neighbors in the heart of winter, and a campaign of murder against critics including reporters in Russia and even a former Russian agent in London, but on the Bush forty-three administration for a supposedly bellicose anti-Russian posture that never existed. Relations worsened with Moscow solely because Russia is turning herself back into an aggressive tyranny just as she was in the bad old Cold War days under the imprimatur of Soviet Communism. It is a shame there are no Jack Kennedys or "Scoop" Jacksons left in our ruling party who seek to confront and defeat evil in the world, rather than seek a cowardly compromise with it.

Stem to Stern

Roland Burris seems to be implicated in the corruption of Illinois politics. Sad but typical in a state where Governors of both parties have faced indictment or conviction in criminal proceedings of late. Chicago is of course notorious for Daley Machine shenanigans and the rot has crept into Springfield-a town Honest Abe would not recognize (though Lincoln had similar ethical clouds in his day). The Chicago Tribune has called on Burris to resign. If he did, no doubt, his replacement would soon be found to have a skeleton in his closet as well. The remarkable aspect of all this is that every politician in Illinois seems stained-even former Congressman and now White House Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel seems to have received the benefit of free housing without reporting it as income when he served in the US House of Representatives. Everyone in Illinois had a little dirt under the nails expect Obama who we are supposed to believe never got a whiff of the impropriety that is endemic to Illinois politics and was all around him. Did we elect a willful ostrich President or did BO save all his get out of jail free cards when he played board games as a kid? Barack simply soared above the fray not noticing that his peers and close confidants had their hands in the cookie jar. Maybe Obama was just a little smarter and didn't get caught...yet.

Obama Repeats Oath

The President demonstrated devotion to good form in matters Constitutional by having Chief Justice John Roberts (no not the news anchor of the same name) administer the flubbed oath of office again out of an "abundance of caution". Let us hope Obama has equal reverence for the substance of the Constitution particularly the First and Second Amendments. If he does, the nation need not worry about losing conservative talk radio to Fairness Doctrine machinations or local content requirements, and we can sleep secure knowing no BATF agents will be storming our homes to disarm us. Somehow, I doubt Obama will be as diligent in dotting the i and crossing the t when it comes to the individual God-given liberties that made America.

Blagojevich Fumbles Opportunity

I was deeply distressed when I heard disgraced Illinois Governor Blagojevich had made his appointment to serve the remainder of President-elect Obama's US Senate term. I heard the announcement on radio and feared he had offered Plaxico Burress the position. What a relief that he actually selected former state Attorney General Roland Burris to the seat. The troubled New York wide receiver would not be much of a catch as a Senator but is hardly more of a slap in the face to the nation than anyone payola Rod might try to appoint.

Richardson Refuses Post

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson who previously had falsely claimed to have been drafted into professional baseball, has turned down the position he was offered in the Obama administration. A little ethical cloud drifted over to block Richardson's sunshine. Blagojevich, Richardson, one wonders which will be the next shoe to drop. Obama like Clinton before him is promising an administration with ethics beyond reproach. Clinton was and is honest to a fault except for his stained couture problem, his renting the Lincoln bedroom to the highest bidder, and the one or two thousand little foibles America had to suffer through for eight(8) years. Obama will be different; he'll take the TV out of the Lincoln bedroom.

Summing It Up

America stumbled down a crooked path in 2008. We found our financial markets in the throes of what really was the worst reversal since the Great Depression, and not the fear-mongering rhetorical flourish Democrats trot out against Republicans in every election. We found conservatives have almost no home in the Republican party with the nomination of a fossilized moderate and the inclusion of a virtual unknown on the doomed ticket to placate real rightists. We found the faux conservative President continuing to push open-borders amnesty in the guise of comprehensive immigration reform and with the ascension of the Marxist-in-Chief, this is sadly a fait accompli. We have witnessed the boy-wonder achieve the highest office with untold cheating by ACORN and a complicit media that never bothered to mention to the public the fetid sewage that is Chicago politics until after the election. The media reports nothing remarkable about the Coleman-Franken contest with Franken now leading by forty-nine(49) votes in an election not-so-funny Al lost in November. We now find our nation being run by a party that will engage shamelessly in all sorts of chicanery to acquire and never relinquish power. We have no restraint in spending by either party with bailouts for bailouts, ineffective regulatory constraint, deliberate theft, and our oldest and most established companies either failing or essentially nationalised. We have instituted Western European socialism under a Republican President with ever more listing to the left promised by the new President who is beholden to a vast cabal of trial lawyers, homosexual activists, abortionists, gun-banners, dole-dwelling parasites, the campus cadre of communists and imbecilic idealists who are blissfully unaware of the dangers of our leftward plummet, and plain stupid folks who were convinced that all change (and we do need plenty) is in and of itself a good thing.

Obama Declares Innocence

Obama today released information affirming his innocence in the Blagojevich affair. Obama says it, so it must be true. Mike Savage on his radio show says the prosecutor must give the President-elect a pass on this as not doing so would cause great national trauma in a time of crisis. What Obama will do to the country if he is unencumbered by scrutiny, will be far worse than having Fitzgerald conduct an exhaustive inquiry. Even his majesty Obama must submit to law, his word is not gospel.

Democrat Dollar Doldrum

Tonight's PBS Newshour featured Paul Solman interviewing amongst others New Jersey Governor Corzine and a Democratic US Representative who both agreed that massive New Deal style infrastructure programs are necessary to save our economy as demand has dried up. They agreed with a leftist economist that FDR had dropped the ball by not spending more on make-work programs to pull the US out of the Great Depression. They were followed by a female Washington Post reporter who concurred that the only way out for the country was massive Federal spending on roads, bridges, schools, and "green " investment. It is the taxpayer who will see his green (money) being confiscated to finance all this and history has demonstrated that this socialism has no prospect of returning us to prosperity. This is balderdash propounded by the power mad and accepted by idiots.

Bad Management Practices

Obama reveals himself once again today to be the enemy of the capitalist economic system that has allowed America to flourish. He said he supported the $17.4 billion bailout of GM and Chrysler but wanted them to reform "their bad management practices". This places the entire onus of the companies' difficulties on management. The executives running the car companies have certainly not been sterling, but Obama, who has absolved labor which commands a much higher salary and benefit package than their foreign-owned competitors and who have demanded and received (some might say extorted) pension and health care benefits which simply make the companies unsustainable, is not credible. Obama will be the greatest ally labor has ever had in the White House, but measures like the Card Check Bill which will end the secret ballot and create nothing but closed shops will be the death knell of industry and cripple private enterprise in the US. Open shop and right to work states will have no meaning and unemployment will soar. Walmart which has advanced prosperity and literally saved consumers billions will be forced to unionize which will engender enormous increased cost of operation which will have to be passed on to the customers. Obama's economic plan will take America from recession right into depression.

Conservative Pipe Dream

Several conservative commentators have speculated that Tony Rezko and a Blagojevich aide who just pleaded guilty are singing like birds and may implicate Obama. Why in the world would they do that? Obama has the power to pardon them if they just keep cool and quiet until inauguration. They can talk or threaten to and end up like Vince Foster or they can follow omerta and be free like Susan McDougal. Sean Hannity and his compatriots may hope for someone to crack and spill the beans, but no one wants to be defenestrated.

Events Overtake Us

It doesn't help to cuss/ The nation's gone bust/ Don't know who to trust/ When events have overtaken us/ Politicians lead us astray/ Bankers take life savings away/ No place left to stay/ Those who raise expectations high/ Disappoint in the blink of an eye/ Don't place your faith in Obama/ The world is sadly due for great drama and unimaginable trauma.

Foreign Interventions Redux

While Obama will orchestrate a hasty draw down in Iraq, it is quite possible that he will deploy US forces in Africa to the Republic of Congo, Zimbabwe, and perhaps back to Somalia. Will the Congress which demanded votes on Bush's adventures be such sticklers when in comes to Obama and military deployments? Democrats have threatened to invoke the War Powers Act should President Bush feel compelled to use force to thwart Iran's nuclear ambitions. The Congress will grant Obama great latitude to deploy our forces where the US has no particular strategic interest. He will be able to enter unending African involvement unhindered. His unfettered reach will not solve the continents problems while Iran will arm up and Chavez will export insidious insurgency throughout Latin America. You can only keep your eye on the ball if you know where the game is.

Job One Bankruptcy

President Bush is evidently directing Secretary of Treasury Paulson to forestall the collapse of the US automotive manufacturers and allow Obama to ultimately solve the problems of the Big Three with a socialistic rescue of the UAW. Our Republican President has embraced the socialist tactics of French or Swedish leadership. At least there are enough capitalist Republicans left in the Senate to have prevented a bailout that would not have solved the structural deficiencies of the companies with their overwhelming legacy costs. There is a widespread misconception that all the jobs would cease to exist if GM or Chrysler took bankruptcy. Under Chapter 11, many of the positions would have been preserved and the corporations could have negotiated new labor contracts that would make their operations more sustainable. Chrysler may have been absorbed by another vehicle manufacturer. The court(s), judge(s), and receiver would not simply have padlocked plants and denied hundreds of thousands their income. As it is now, Obama will, probably in conjunction with a car czar, act by fiat and direct these companies to produce enviro-friendly compacts that few people will want and large families will find impractical. Tariffs and trade barriers will be imposed to prevent the importation of more desirable foreign models. Older vehicles will be legislated off the roads by strict emission/pollution controls that will force drivers to buy the new gas-savers or into mass transit. Fossil fuels will be saved, but freedom will be sacrificed.

Truth Is Power

Obama and particularly Kerry repeated the "speak truth to power" mantra throughout their Presidential campaigns, a meaningless turn of phrase for two who have enjoyed the immense benefits of privilege, both graduates of Ivy League institutions that only legacies, those from enormous wealth, or affirmative action admissions recipients who have displaced the more qualified ever are able to attend. In John Kerry's case, marrying two women with a collective net worth of half a billion dollars would never confer its own power. These politicians assert influence over our day to day conduct, but they do not recognize the Truth. The Ultimate Truth is a Power that power mad politicians can not even begin to contemplate. Torah, Testaments, the Gospel are the key to success and satisfaction in life, in eternal life. The secular masters who have facilitated forty-five (45) million plus abortions since Roe hold not only no monopoly on truth-they can't even see it. They take some momentary grievance or contrived crisis and use it to separate people one from another and from their reason. A system of indoctrination has removed prayer from the classroom and is reinforced by a mass media and even video games that pump visual sewage into our living rooms corrupting the eyes of the innocent and weakening their minds while making false gods of singers, rappers, actors, and politicians (especially mini-Messiah Obama). The current cause celebre of homosexual marriage is a great example, as is euthanasia, of the prevalent media culture and political manipulation of five thousand years of Judeo-Christian morality being turned on its head. The prodigal son who turns from his sin and makes firm purpose of amendment may return to the house of his father, but a society that revels in its own iniquity is doomed to economic catastrophe and natural cataclysm. And it will have earned it.

What It Takes

This morning Diane Sawyer bantered with Stephanopoulos that Blagojevich had to be delusional to discuss Presidential aspirations in his secretly taped conversations. Why delusional? The US just elected a junior Senator who had ducked tough votes in both the Illinois legislature and in the Senate with numerous "present" votes except on infanticide where Obama stood for denying medical care for infants who had somehow survived abortion attempts. Hillary's parley of taking a few dollars and turning it into $100,000 in the cattle futures market has become legend but never raised eyebrows as a possible payoff and did not disqualify her from seeking the highest office. The Resko scandal and Obama's criminal cronies did not slow him down. Was Obama more deeply involved in the septic malfeasance in Illinois or simply oblivious like Hogan's Heroes Sargent Shultz? Neither is very heartening in a nation's leader.

Rose Colored Glasses

Rice and Obama featured on the punditry programs this morning. In Rice's case, she continues to promote the virtues of what has to be regarded as the worst Republican administration since Hoover (if not ever). But what else would she tell Chris Wallace? Perhaps the blood and treasure expended were justified, but even so, they helped drain the coffers of the nation and put the opposition party in power. The new socialist leader also propounded his Utopian vision of New New Deal a la FDR. I just can't wait for the bureaucrat to arrive at my door with my energy consumption meter. This is something that would have made Stalin "green" with envy. How much government intrusiveness will formerly free Americans be willing to take? And don't look to weak as water Republicans like my own Senator Alexander to stand in Obama's way. On reducing carbon footprints, Lamar agrees with Barry. They will have a love fest and an era of good feelings at the cost of our liberty. Perhaps it is time for a third party, one with only conservatives in its ranks.

Splitting the Difference

Eric Shinseki will serve as Obama's Secretary of Veterans Affairs. This should be no surprise as Shinseki seemed to be a political general. His suggestion that hundreds of thousands of troops would be needed to occupy Iraq was a gross exaggeration. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was wrong as well, trying to mount operations on the cheap. Hindsight has acquitted the position of General David Petraeus advanced at some risk forcefully by Senator John McCain of a troop surge to slightly more than 160,000. A cynic might wonder if Shinseki pushed such a high number to dissuade the US liberation of Iraq in the first place. If this was so, Shinseki is being rewarded now.

The Shrinking President

Our current President (we only have one at a time regardless of how it now appears) has had opportunity after opportunity to do the right thing throughout his career but has failed to act. He is not driven by principle nor moved by pragmatism, but base cronyism seems to be his guiding ethos. Harriet Miers' Supreme Court nomination is proof of this. Did Bush stand on conservative belief in free speech and veto campaign finance reform? Did he allow the largest entitlement expansion since LBJ with the prescription drug benefit? Did he pardon ICE agents Ramos and Compean who wounded an armed fleeing drug trafficker in the buttocks or David Olofson who had a technical failure on a borrowed gun at a firing range? When he was governor, did he spare Karla Tucker who had become the cover girl for reform and who had served twice the time of the average murderer? Did Bush stand for free markets or did he endorse the unprecedented bailout with inherent risk of abuse or even outright fraud with the massive amounts of money involved and the power once again given to friends of friends that accompanies it? The President and his successor now have the chance to avert the potential unconventional attack that a report says will strike the US in the next five(5) years. If Bush announces that national policy will be to obliterate two major cities in any nation that can be tied to a biological or nuclear attack, the terrorists may have second thoughts. A proposal after the 9/11 assault to blow up Mecca if any subsequent mass casualty attack takes place also holds water particularly since a Saudi cleric endorsed unconventional attacks on America killing up to ten(10) million in a fatwa. The Saudi authorities did not take him into custody or force him to retract the mass murder decree. Should an event happen perpetrated by Islamic extremists against the heartland, Bush and Obama must let it be known that the US will unleash the whirlwind.

Severe Withdrawl Symptoms

The Iraqi parliament approved the three(3) year withdraw plan for American forces last week. It is incumbent upon Obama to make it clear that the US will not pull out under fire or with her tail between her legs. The examples of Israel's evacuation from Lebanon and later from Gaza illustrate what not to do. The South Lebanon pull back was done literally in the middle of the night. This allowed Hizbollah to proclaim victory over Israel and rallied countless fanatics to the Jihadi cause. The Gaza situation was mishandled with no dark of night pullout possible due to the presence and resistance of the Gush Katif block of Israeli citizens, Israel had a protracted effort sometimes under rocket or mortar fire and the occasional try at direct assault by members of the PRC, Hamas, or members of the al Qaeda sympathizing Dogmush klan. Once again, terrorists heralded a victory over the West and Israel. The British exit from Basra is also instructive. Much of Iraq remains a cauldron of simmering ethnic tension, but even in almost exclusively Shia Basra, after the British, Basra has become a tinderbox of gangs and warlords contesting the oil revenues. An American retreat seen as capitulation will engender renewed sectarian violence in mixed areas with the grave possibility of Saudi assistance to the Sunnis and Iranian aid or actual combat participation by Iranians on the side of the Sadrist block. Incidentally, Muqtada al Sadr's supporters in parliament opposed the Three(3) Year Plan and pushed for immediate American removal where the Iranians and their Shia surrogates could claim they had chased the Yankees from the country. No matter what else, America must conduct an orderly pull back that can only be seen as leaving in victory.