The Pacific Presidency

On his current Asia excursion, Barack Hussein Obama has proclaimed his is the first "Pacific Presidency", citing his youth spent in Indonesia. Notice, Obama did not emphasize his birth which has been alleged to have occurred in the fiftieth state, nor did he focus on his high school years that clearly were spent in Hawaii. Obama highlighted his life in the world's most populous Muslim nation as the source of his Pacific affinity. Does anyone else not find this curious? This may ad fuel to the fire on the right of those questioning Obama's very eligibility to serve. Why did the President not say his was the first Pacific Presidency simply because of his Hawaiian place of birth, what he did say only fans the doubts amongst what till now was considered a fringe "birther" crowd. Maybe Obama delights in yanking his most strident critics chains.

Obama's Pocket Judges

Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi was asked this week about the constitutionality of the public-option health care plan that passed narrowly in the House and is now in the hands of the Senate. The Speaker looked at the reporter with the temerity to ask what should be an obvious question with utter contempt, saying in her expression "the Constitution is whatever we say it is. We bend it to our will". Pelosi is right, the activist judges facilitate the rise of radicalism with their Constitution as living document philosophy. Conservatives believe in the natural rights of man which gave rise to natural law that became the basis of our founding documents. Starting with the bizarre Roe v Wade ruling with a majority opinion based on "penumbras and emanations" to a right to privacy nowhere delineated in the Constitution to McCain-Feingold restricting free speech, the life's blood of democracy, the left has its politicians and judges working hand in hand to gut our rights. From rejecting the plain language of the Second Amendment to destroying property rights with eminent domain and an expansive consideration of environmental regulation, the courts are the handmaidens of those who grow government the most. There is a natural inclination of any organization or bureaucracy to consolidate power, advance its own fiat, and do everything it can to perpetuate itself. It was no surprise to see the courts declare military tribunals for Gitmo detainees deemed illegal, the courts wanted that purview for themselves and now Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will receive a trip to the scene of the monstrous crime he has openly bragged of planning, the September 11 attacks, at our expense he will be tried in New York City. This trial will cause chaos, increase danger, and does nothing to advance our national security. This is just the way Pelosi, a radical Representative from radical San Francisco, and Obama whose own Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, notoriously uttered "You never want to let a serious crisis go to waste", want things to go. If tension is simmering everywhere with violence, that seems to have been preventable, boiling over at Fort Hood and unemployment nearing Great Depression levels, people will be too distracted to see their rights are diminishing, disappearing, being stolen by the internationalists, the elite, the cadre of leftist politicians, and their anti-Constitutional rights-robbing robed bandits, the very judges who we have entrusted to safeguard our God-given liberty.

None Too Discerning

I never (to my knowledge) met a terrorist. Barack Hussein Obama began his political career in a terrorist's home (Bill Ayers- one of the founders of the Weathermen who exploded bombs that left several people dead in the 1960s). I do not know any racketeers and certainly never had a Tony Rezko arrange a sweetheart deal to buy a primary home as Obama did in Chicago. I never thought the regime of the mullahs in Iran could be talked down from their A-bomb aspirations or that they would not use the three hapless US students who allegedly wandered across the poorly-demarcated border from Iraqi Kurdistan as pawns as this is the same fanatic brand of tyrant who violated every international norm to hold fifty-two members of our embassy staff in Tehran for 444 days, but Obama is convinced he can use his charisma to charm Iran back into the family of nations. Beyond poor initial instincts, Obama with his hasty comments on the Cambridge Gates affair, with his policies which are evidently not working, and with his radical agenda, is either in well-over his head or deliberately dismantling the underpinnings of the country as his past associations with scofflaws and America-hating terrorists would suggest. I do not fault some of Obama's voters for their lack of discernment because the old-line media assiduously avoided digging into Obama's unusual background and almost never revealed much of what was known to implicate Obama that was only circulating in the small universe of the right-wing press. Many who voted for Obama, as clean as a whistle as he was portrayed, now are clearer on his character, but it is way to late to change their ballots to favor McCain.

Stench of Weakness

Iran rejects Western-offered compromise over their nuclear program, yet the world's lone superpower, the United States, says give Iran more time to reconsider, and sanctions which might have some suasion, are not ratcheted up but deferred to give Ahmadinejad and the mullahs more time to build a weapon and attach said weapon to a viable delivery system. This is appeasement of the worst kind and comes after we betrayed the Czech Republic and Poland by withdrawing the missile shield we had promised in what must be seen as an act of capitulation to angry Russia which gave us nothing in return for our servile gesture. So much of the former Eastern Bloc, the Warsaw Pact members which have embraced the West and sent their sons to die along side ours in Iraq and Afghanistan, have simply been sold out by the Obama administration which does not want to rock the boat with an ever-strengthening resurgent Russia which is reasserting military dominance as we cut our defense budgets and which is like the bad old days, interfering in Latin America- this time making common cause with Latin America's new Castro, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Even yesterday's North Korean incursion into South Korean territorial waters must be viewed in the light of the meeting US diplomats are about to have with North Korea, as we come crawling to resume talks over that last Stalinist state's atomic threat. The US could obliterate the pygmy pretend power in moments, but stands quaking at a tiny dictator who can not even pose as well as Mussolini. Even proposing talks with so-called "moderate Taliban" invites aggression as our enemies smell blood. They know their roadside bombs and suicide attacks are having an effect, or we would not be seeking talks. Obama's dovish outreach does the opposite of what the President intends. Domestically, the President's deliberate mischaracterization of the Fort Hood attack as anything other than jihad-inspired terrorism reeks with political correctness and is another symptom of a weakening resolve. Obama sells out friends and leaves Israel in Iran's crosshairs, as we learn yet again, the lesson of the schoolyard, weakness invites aggression. Obama has only emboldened the enemies of peace.

Boxes and Bags

Some volunteered, some were conscripted/ Some strode off, knowing they could beat the world/ Some were filled with trepidation from that fateful premonition/ Some were great patriots who embraced the founding ideal/ Some were fresh off the boat and had no idea what we were fighting for/ But they went anyway/ Think of what they could have done and seen/ Had they been allowed to play out the string/ Their future generations that never were/ The achievements becoming great accomplishments never made/ How they would have loved to live past Armistice Day/ In trenches, in forests, in fields, in oceans- lost to the sea/ In jungles and mountains and deserts of later struggles/ They fell in ones, and tens, and stacked like cord wood/ Did they pine for home as the were dying?/ Their love and loss that left us crying/ All those unrealized dreams/ Never tarnish their legacy and defend that spark of liberty that burned in their breasts and impelled them forward into the jaws of eternity.

Really Not Clever

Barack Hussein Obama has been called our most brilliant President by his acolytes. Obama has incredibly poor initial instincts for so supposedly smart a person. When Henry Louis Gates was arrested following a confrontation the professor fueled in Cambridge, Obama rushed to Gates' defense, essentially slandering American law enforcement with the broad-brush charge of racism. Obama was precipitous, uninformed, and ultimately wrong. In the Fort Hood atrocity, Obama listened to his advisors and hurried a Presidential statement, delivered on live TV by Obama himself. Obama followed advice and came out to speak but then spent two minutes on a shout-out on a completely unrelated matter while he monopolized network coverage, diminishing the impact of the meat of the statement he was making. He deliberately undercut the horror of the Fort Hood event, deflecting the terroristic intentions of the shooter, with some tangent about native Americans and Indian affairs involving a medal-recipient that had absolutely nothing to do with Fort Hood, but the cameras were there, were on, and Obama could betray his own misunderstandings, lack of comprehension of the attack, apprehension that real evil exists with fatal intentions toward the innocent, and Obama used the podium and chance he enjoyed to cloud the issue for the rest of us. A wiser statement would have been, "An act of terrorism has been perpetrated today against innocents on American soil. We will get to the bottom of the attack, capture the guilty, prosecute them to the full extent of the law, and do everything possible to assist the victims' families, the wounded, and the survivors, while doing all we can to never permit such an act in the future."

Stop the Presses

When the last President Bush was in office, the press was shouting "spider, spider", suggesting Bush was drawing us ever deeper into a web of lies. Bush was supposed to be a self-indulgent, bumpkin of a frat boy, who relied on the first President Bush and Dick Cheney to make his decisions for him, yet, George the Second was so practiced a liar that he could manipulate intelligence services around the world, the press, and the public, to initiate an unnecessary war with Iraq over non-existent weapons of mass destruction. My take is that George W. Bush was honorable and that the Iraqi government firing at US patrol aircraft in the no-fly zones was sufficient reason to resume hostilities, but some on the fringe of politics both right and left have even convinced themselves that Bush had a secret hand in the September 11 attacks to justify rewarding Halliburton cronies and in so doing, initiate worldwide carnage. The press has even granted airtime to the most bizarre conspiracy theorists who insist the fall of Tower Seven at the World Trade Center proves an inside job. Now, with Barack Hussein Obama in office, the dinosaur press gladly helps construct a web of lies, not daring expose even the most ludicrous Obama exaggerations (doctors enriching themselves by unnecessarily lopping off diabetic limbs for instance- which no physician could ever become wealthy by doing because reimbursement for said procedure is so low). The old-line press is actively complicit, doing all it can to advance the Obama agenda because they agree with Obama on his goals and where he is taking the nation. So, Obama's inauthentic moments are ignored, when he is insincere or contrived, the old-line media spins to his favor. If a Republican were doing or saying the same things, the main stream media would hammer him for it.