Month: June 2009

As the Wheels Start to Come Off the Obama Express

Mark Noonan

GOPers gear up for battle:

Congressmen and senators have departed Washington, D.C., for the July 4 recess. But unlike ordinary Americans who may take a break from their normal jobs for the holiday week, Republicans will be busy — taking time to rally voters and prepare for the giant legislative battles which await them upon their return.

Roll Call reports that Republicans are hoping to call attention to cap-and-trade, health care, and other items on the liberals’ wish list:

Using the Independence Day break to malign the work of the majority party is a time-honored tradition in Washington, and Republicans hope to live up to tradition by branding Democrats as a “far left” party intent on “big government takeovers,” “bringing terrorists to the U.S.” and purposefully inflating the debt through “wasteful spending,” according to recess messaging documents prepared for House and Senate Republicans.

At the top of the list will be Friday’s vote on cap-and-trade. Minority Leader John Boehner provided some dramatic moments in a mini-filibuster and some 44 Democrats defected from one of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s primary legislative proposals…

…Republicans will argue that, not unlike the Obama stimulus plan, the cap-and-trade measure is long on government and short on jobs.

And jobs are increasingly a worry for Democrats. Even liberal columnists like Bob Herbert complained:

Some months ago, the Obama administration and various mainstream economists forecast a peak unemployment rate of roughly 8 percent this year. It has already reached 9.4 percent, and most analysts now expect it to hit 10 percent or higher. Economists are currently spreading the word that the recession may end sometime this year, but the unemployment rate will continue to climb. That’s not a recovery. That’s mumbo jumbo.

Why this rampant joblessness is not viewed as a crisis and approached with the sense of urgency and commitment that a crisis warrants, is beyond me.

Indeed – and mumbo jumbo is all Obama and his Democrats have. It all worked splendidly while there wasn’t any actual responsibility for the mess, while there was an unpopular GOP incumbent; while the economy was shaky but not collapsed….but now Democrats are responsible, President Bush is retired in Texas and the economy more and more resembles 1932. Working with the tried-and-true, Obama and his Democrats hope to fool the American people – via their lapdog MSM – into believing that things aren’t as bad as they are and, if they are bad, that its still not Obama’s fault. This will hold as much water as a funnel as things really fall apart on the economy (just as an illustration – the other day I went to celebrate a friend’s birthday at a class Strip eatery…it was dinner time on a Saturday in the summer on the Las Vegas Strip…the place wasn’t even 1/3 full…when parking is easy at the Fashion Show Mall – and we parked mere steps away from the front door, as it were – you know that things are bad…really, really bad).

All it will take for a GOP win is for the GOP to get into the fight. We are going to have some trouble due to our 8 turncoats allowing the Democrats to put a patina of bi-partisanship on their fascist “energy” bill – but, in the end, we’ll still be able to clearly define ourselves in opposition to the job killing, liberty eroding leftist economic policies of Obama and his Democrats.

Phrase of the Day

Mark Noonan

The news of the world get you down at times? Then have a little faith:

For I am already on the point of being sacrificed; the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.

Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved his appearing…

But the Lord stood by me and gave me strength to proclaim the message fully, that all the Gentiles might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth.

The Lord will rescue me from every evil and save me for his heavenly kingdom. To him be the glory for ever and ever. Amen. – 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 17-18

Obama's Chance to Bring Real Foreign Policy Change

Mark Noonan

If he can do the right thing by the people of Columbia:

President Obama gets an opportunity to show genuine foreign-policy leadership Monday when he meets with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe. Between them will sit the unratified Colombia-U.S. free trade agreement. The U.S. failure to get this deal done is a long-running travesty, but that now offers Mr. Obama a chance to show how adept he is at international politics.

The free-trade issue has become complicated by another urgent matter: Will Colombia grant a U.S. request to use the Palanquero military installation north of Bogotá as a U.S. air base, or “cooperative security location”? Mr. Uribe is still asking for ratification of the trade deal (FTA) negotiated in good faith and signed more than 30 months ago. Beyond this display of patience, America’s most important South American partner has gone to great lenths to satisfy Democrats who’ve made charges of violence against labor leaders in the country. The undisputable fact is that under Mr. Uribe’s leadership Colombians are safer than they have been in years.

Democrats nonetheless continue to prevent a vote on the FTA. Big Labor has simply drawn a line in the sand against any new trade agreements, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is complying. Colombia gets whacked.

Now that Obama has gone on a couple “I’m sorry my country is creepy” world tours, it is time to actually get into some foreign policy. Given the state of play in South America, securing Columbia as an energetic security, economic and political ally is crucial – Brazil is ruled by a leftist, Venezuela is ruled by a socialist-fascist tyrant…only Columbia remains as a major South American player open to American friendship. We dare not screw this up – we have to do the right thing, and that means telling the unions to jump in a lake and ratify the FTA.

Will Obama pass the test, or will he scuttle America’s South American policy in order to curry continued favor from corrupt American union bosses?

I Want a Divorce

Mark Noonan

Ed. Note: Got this by e mail – if anyone knows who authored it, please let me know so I can assign proper credit:

American liberals, leftists, social progressives, socialists, Marxists and Obama supporters, et al:

We have stuck together since the late 1950’s, but the whole of this latest election process has made me realize that I want a divorce. I know we tolerated each other for many years for the sake of future generations, but sadly, this relationship has run its course.

Our two ideological sides of America cannot and will not ever agree on what is right so let’s just end it on friendly terms. We can smile and chalk it up to irreconcilable differences and go our own way.

Here is a model separation agreement:

Our two groups can equitably divide up the country by landmass each taking a portion. That will be the difficult part, but I am sure our two sides can come to a friendly agreement. After that, it should be relatively easy! Our respective representatives can effortlessly divide other assets since both sides have such distinct and disparate tastes.

We don’t like redistributive taxes so you can keep them. You are welcome to the liberal judges and the ACLU. Since you hate guns and war, we’ll take our firearms, the cops, the NRA and the military.

You can keep Oprah, Michael Moore and Rosie O’Donnell. You are however, responsible for finding a bio-diesel vehicle big enough to move all three of them.

We’ll keep the capitalism, greedy corporations, pharmaceutical companies, Wal Mart and Wall Street. You can have your beloved homeless, homeboys, hippies and illegal aliens. We’ll keep the HOT Alaskan hockey moms, greedy CEO’s and rednecks. We’ll keep the Bibles and give you NBC and Hollywood.

You can make nice with Iran and Palestine and we’ll retain the right to invade and hammer places that threaten us. You can have the peaceniks and war protesters. When our allies or our way of life are under assault, we’ll help provide them security.

We’ll keep our Judeo-Christian values.. You are welcome to Islam, Scientology, Humanism and Shirley McClain. You can also have the U.N. but we will no longer be paying the bill.

We’ll keep the SUVs, pickup trucks and oversized luxury cars. You can take every Subaru station wagon you can find.

You can give everyone healthcare if you can find any practicing doctors. We’ll continue to believe healthcare is a luxury and not a right. We’ll keep The Battle Hymn of the Republic and the National Anthem. I’m sure you’ll be happy to substitute Imagine, I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing, Kum Ba Ya or We Are the World.

We’ll practice trickle down economics and you can give trickle up poverty your best shot. Since it often so offends you, we’ll keep our history, our name and our flag.

Would you agree to this? If so, please pass it along to other like minded liberal and conservative patriots and if you do not agree, just hit delete. In the spirit of friendly parting, I’ll bet you Answer which one of us will need whose help in 15 years.

Sincerely,

Real America

P.S. Also, please take Ted Turner, Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, Barbara Streisand, & Jane Fonda with you.

P. S. S. And we won’t have to press 1 for English.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-06-28

Matt Margolis

Crisis in Honduras

Mark Noonan

Wonder if Obama will keep as hands off here as he has in Iran:

Honduran President Jose Manuel Zelaya said he awoke to gunfire in his home and was still in his pajamas when the military forced him to leave the country Sunday.

Zelaya, a leftist elected in 2005, had found himself recently pitted against other branches of government and military leaders over a referendum planned for Sunday that could have allowed the president to run for another term.

Honduras’ Supreme Court ruled the referendum illegal, and the military and Congress agreed.

Despite the military and Congress’ position, Zelaya pressed forward, vowing last week that he would push for the referendum. His four-year term ends in January 2010, and under current law he cannot run for re-election.

Obviously a very confused situation – as a general rule, we should back the legitimately elected President…on the other hand, the legitimately elected Legislature and properly established judiciary are saying that the President is breaking the law. Now the military has broken the law by removing the President. So, what to do?

Tread very carefully but let everyone know that maintenance of normal relations will require a very swift restoration of completely democratic governance in Honduras – no junta, no dictator. No going slow on democracy in the name of “stability”.

Educated Ignorance

Mark Noonan

A subject for discussion: The problems of our world today can largely be traced to people who think they are educated, but who are actually just indoctrinated.

I haven’t been able to locate any recent polling on it, but a 2003 poll by Gallup revealed that 75% of the poll respondents believed that more than one man was involved in the assassination of JFK. I’ll bet that this figure would hold true today. There is only one, tiny thing wrong with the concept that people other than Oswald were involved – there isn’t even the slightest bit of evidence to indicate someone other than Oswald was involved. I know, some people out there are already going, “but what about the…” and “didn’t you know about the…”…yes, yes; I know. I’ve heard them all. All of the assertions underpinning a conspiracy are based on outright falsehoods or gross misrepresentations of the data. A screwball killed the President for utterly screwball reasons. Its tragic – but that is, also, the end of the story.

Why is this important? Because it illustrates how utter nonsense can be imprinted on the national consciousness – in other words, it shows that we can be indoctrinated…and if a poll shows 75% believe that multiple people had a hand in killing Kennedy, that means that a very large percentage of the educated believe such nonsense. We have vast amounts of knowledge continuously at our fingertips – we have, for the first time in human history, the ability to learn whole, new fields of knowledge just by clicking on a computer screen. And yet we are a startlingly ignorant people. We believe stuff fit for fairy tales.

We can send a man to the moon, but we can’t tell truth from a lie – which situation is a delight, no doubt, to he who started the lies, but which is not conducive to maintaining freedom and justice in America. We are educated enough to make an atomic bomb, but too ignorant – in a lot of ways – to be trusted with it. We need to start being a lot less ignorant, lest we wind up slaves with MBAs.

Phrase of the Day

Mark Noonan

The commonality between socialism and democracy:

Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude. – Alexis de Tocqueville

Hating Obama as Much as Bush

Mark Noonan

So much for the “change” part of “hope and change“:

The president may have changed, but the excesses of American politics have remained. Barack Obama and George W. Bush, it has become clear, are more similar than they might seem at first glance.

Ex-President Bush was nothing if not zealous in his worldwide campaign against terror, transgressing human rights and breaking international law along the way. Now, Obama is displaying the same zeal in his own war against the financial crisis — and his weapon of choice is the money-printing machine. The rules the new American president is breaking are those which govern the economy. Nobody is being killed. But the strategy comes at a price — and that price might be America’s position as a global power.

In his fight against terrorism, Bush had the ideologue Dick Cheney at his side. “We must take the battle to the enemy,” he said — and sent out the bomber squadrons toward Iraq on the basis of mere suspicion. The result of the offensive is well known.

Obama’s Cheney

Obama’s Cheney is named Larry Summers. He is Obama’s senior-most economic advisor, and like the former vice president, he is a man of conviction. The financial crisis may be large, but Summers’ self-confidence is even larger. More importantly, President Barack Obama follows him like a dog does its master.

That’s harsh, to say the least. Stripped of its bizarre anti-Bush views, what we have here is the default position for European elites: utter contempt for whomever happens to be President of the United States.

You can’t change this – its built-in; anti-Americanism is so ingrained in the world that nothing short of the end of America would stop it. Used to be, of course, that the default position was to be anti-British…back a century ago when Britain was the world’s most powerful nation. Britain dropped out and while there might be the odd stab at Britain from time to time, most of the fire of the world is reserved for the United States…and this is simply because we are the most powerful nation in the world, because whatever happens in other countries is trivial compared to what happens in ours and, most importantly, because self-absorbed and self-important intellectuals just can’t stand the fact that those yokels in the USA have that much power.

Obama still has the aura of a rock star and thus can still draw large, worshipful crowds…but that is a vanishing commodity. No matter what Obama does over the remainder of his term, he’ll find the world growing ever stronger in expressions of hatred and contempt for us…which things are entirely unimportant because righteous indignation doesn’t do anything to anyone. If Obama has an sense at all, he’ll swiftly stop trying to kowtow to foreign opinion and just get on with it…but I doubt that Obama has the simple guts to put up for long with opposition…he’ll continue to try to curry favor, which will result in more contempt, which will result in more favor currying….it could get rather nauseating over the next couple years.