Author: Mark Noonan

How Dare We Call Obama the “Worst President”!

Mark Noonan112 Comments

Thus far, that seems to be the general, liberal reaction to the publication of 150 Reasons Why Barack Obama is the Worst President in History.  While we have not been able to detect any liberal who has purchased and read the book before commenting on it, we have had plenty of negative comment, all of which tends towards outrage at the very concept of writing a book critical of The One.  The unreality of the criticism is shown by the complaint that by writing this before the end of Obama’s term in office we can’t be putting things in to historical perspective – this critique is joined with a claim that historians are rating Obama as our 15th greatest President.  I’m not quite sure just how a person wraps themselves around that sort of thing – only a resolute refusal to think can account for it.

But it occurs to me that  maybe a lot of people are not understanding the purpose of the book.  Its not just a hit piece of Obama – it is not designed merely to feed right wing anger, nor serve as a provocation of the left.  The purpose of the book is, quite simply, to ensure that the full truth of Obama is available.  Matt came up with the idea a few days after the election – both of us were flabbergasted that Obama had been re-elected.  As fairly well-informed observers – and seconded by many expert electoral forecasters – we were both of the opinion that Obama was done.  His horrifically bad record and the terrible state of the nation indicated that any reasonably credible alternative would be chosen – and Romney was certainly at least that.  But, in the event, Obama managed to win – with a gigantic reduction in votes over 2008, but still a win.  How to account for it?  Lots of people have put out reasons for this and there is plenty of blame to go around – and much work to do on the GOP/Conservative side of the aisle to refurbish our message and our electoral tactics:  but for Matt and I, a large part of the problem seemed to be that a majority of voters were unaware of just how bad Obama has been.

And this view was borne out as we wrote the book and repeatedly came across absolutely terrible Obama actions which neither of us were aware of prior to writing the book.  In its initial genesis, we were going to write “50 Reasons”.  Then it grew to “100 Reasons”; eventually we flew right past 150 and realized that we could keep going but we’d better cut it off at 150, to ensure that the book was published before Obama left office.  I am quite certain that even the most informed person out there will be several score things in the book which he had not heard of.  Just to take one, small example – answer to yourself honestly:  how many of you know that Obama let out a no-bid contract for a smallpox vaccine which (a) cannot be tested on humans and (b) cost $255 per dose when regular smallpox vaccines cost $3 a dose?  The boss of the vaccine maker is, of course, a big Democrat donor.  And this is really rather small beans compared to other things – it was included in the book because it illustrates the larger pattern of Obama:  which is that everything done is to serve his political needs and there is no law which won’t be broken, at need, in order to serve Obama’s political needs.

Now, as to just why Obama would subordinate everything to his personal, political needs is open for debate – none of us can peer in to his soul and see exactly why he’s doing this.  Maybe it is to impose a socialist dictatorship on us – on the other hand, maybe it just to set up all his friends and cronies in vast wealth so that they can all be fat and happy after Obama leaves office.  I don’t know – and don’t actually care, because the result of a President subordinating all to himself is the same whether he’s a tyrant or a grafter:  the breakdown of government and the end of liberty are the sure results of either action.  And that is why Obama is the worst President in history – because whether from accident or design, Obama’s policies, carried through long enough, could prove fatal to the ability of Americans to successfully govern themselves.  If everything is for sale and everything at the service of the Ruling Class, then even if Obama doesn’t want to be a tyrant, he’ll ensure we eventually get one because a nation will not remain ungoverned – and if we can’t govern ourselves because of government corruption, then someone will govern us…if for no other reason than just to keep the wheels moving and people fed.

This does not have to be put in historical perspective – this is not a debate about whether or not ObamaCare will be as good or bad as Social Security.  Once you take each Obama action and put it in to relation to all, you see what is happening – and it is horrible for our nation.  And it is terribly sad that people didn’t see it in 2012…though, of course, the media hiding things for Obama helped Obama carry it out.  Everything we state in the book is sourced – it was all reported.  But it was reported on page A-32 of the newspaper, or in the last 30 seconds of the Sunday night newscast, or some such.  And it wasn’t at all relentlessly reported, as it all would have been had Obama had an (R) after his name.  We have gathered it together; it is now available for anyone to see, if they want.  I strongly urge everyone to buy it – especially if you are an Obama supporter.  If you are, then you’ve been taken for a ride – a con-artist has bamboozled you in to betraying even your liberalism and its time you found it out.  Meanwhile, fellow conservatives, it is also time for you to see the whole story – because we won’t be able to defeat Obama until we see all of what he’s doing and thus fight against all his efforts.

Give Democracy a Chance

Mark Noonan120 Comments

It occurred to me a little earlier today that there never was a mass, popular movement to created the United States Federal Reserve.  There also wasn’t any such thing to legalize abortion.  Or to create the Environmental Protection Agency  Doesn’t seem to have been many mobs rioting in favor of a Department of Education.  Don’t seem to remember us voting on a ban on smoking in airplanes.  You get the picture – quite a lot of things we take for granted as part of our political structure did not spring from a popular movement…they were imposed on us.  To be sure, some of them were voted on in Congress, but its not like Congressmen running in the 1912 election actually campaigned on establishing the Federal Reserve and while Nixon said a lot of things to get elected in 1968, I don’t think “I promise to create a bureaucratic nightmare called the EPA” among his promises.

The point here is that for an allegedly democratic republic, we sure don’t have a lot of democracy these days.  Things are proposed, deals are made behind closed doors and things which are allegedly laws ooze out…only to be sliced and diced endlessly by judges and bureaucrats as well-heeled special interests make sure they are taken care of.  I want a bit more democracy – a bit more mob rule, as it were.

I’m telling you, I’m willing to put everything up for a vote – including the 1st and 2nd amendments.  Lets have a vote, people – let us see what the real will of the people is.  Marches and demonstrations and furious arguments across the fruited plains – and then we vote and see what we have.  At least we’ll all know we participated in what we’re living under – we’ll know that we, the people, took a hand in ruling our own destiny.  Of course, I’m very willing to do this because I suspect that my point of view would come out on top in a fair vote 9 out of 10 times.

What say you, fellow Americans?  Anyone out there willing to actually have the people decide?

Benghazi

Mark Noonan55 Comments

They say its not the crime, but the cover up – but with Benghazi, it might be the crime and the cover up:

At least four career officials at the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency have retained lawyers or are in the process of doing so, as they prepare to provide sensitive information about the Benghazi attacks to Congress, Fox News has learned.

Victoria Toensing, a former Justice Department official and Republican counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, is now representing one of the State Department employees. She told Fox News her client and some of the others, who consider themselves whistle-blowers, have been threatened by unnamed Obama administration officials.

“I’m not talking generally, I’m talking specifically about Benghazi – that people have been threatened,” Toensing said in an interview Monday. “And not just the State Department. People have been threatened at the CIA.”…

Good to keep in mind that Nixon was brought down because Dean managed to sucker him in to giving post-facto approval to Dean’s attempted cover up of Watergate – and no one died in Watergate.  Here we’ve got dead people and possible obstruction of justice…and potentially attempted cover ups of both events.

Now, will this topple Obama?  Not a chance.  As long as at least 34 Senators are Democrat, then there is absolutely nothing Obama can do which would result in his conviction by the Senate.  We might do pretty well in the 2014 mid-terms, but we’re not going to win a net of 22 seats.  So, Obama will get the stay on – but it is important that the truth come out for two reasons:

1.  Simple justice.  The dead deserve to have the truth told regarding what happened.  Also, in future Administrations, wise people will take to heart what happened and work against a repeat.

2.  Benghazi doesn’t just mean Obama, it means Hillary – she is, in my view, one of the lowest people we have engaged in politics today, and that is in world where Obama is President and her husband was President.  Keeping her out of the White House would be a patriotic service to our nation – and the truth about Benghazi will be devastating to Hillary as well as Obama (and, in fact, perhaps more devastating to Hillary).

The bottom line of what happened in Benghazi – regardless of criminal folly – is that a President, a world-view, was put to the test and found wanting.  The Islamists enemies hate us, all the time and every where and nothing we can do short of dying or surrendering will change them. To ignore the Islamist threat is plain and simple idiotic – to try and explain it away as the result of Israeli or American action is simply to ignore the fact that Islamists, acting as Islamists, have been around for many centuries…not just since before Israel became a nation, but before we became a nation.  One example – in a book written long before our current troubles – really struck home for me.  America existed at the time, but we weren’t in any way involved – in this case, the Great Mutiny in British India in the 1850’s.  A group of Muslim soldiers were being whipped up by an Imam – urged to fight and die for Islam – and at the end of the fiery sermon, the Imam shouted “and now I, too, will die for Islam” and went down in to the fight, where he was promptly killed.  These are the kind of people we fight today – they won’t quit and whether we are soft or hard, they will keep fighting us – because they believe that God commands them to do so and will reward them magnificently for fighting.  Unless our government keeps this fact firmly fixed in mind, we’ll never get anywhere – we have to decide to either fight them to the death or surrender entirely.  Pick one, because our enemies will allow no other choice.

Obama and his Administration believed that words of sweet reason would change things – and our ambassador in Libya (perhaps very voluntarily) was sacrificed to this absurd ideal.  It is to be hoped that once Obama leaves office, his successors will have a more realistic view of things.

What’s Next for Syria?

Mark Noonan19 Comments

There have been many reports recently that the Syrian government used chemical weapons against the rebels – and this action supposedly crossed Obama’s “red line”, which should have triggered a US response.  But, no response.  Why?  This article in the New York Times gives a pretty solid reason:

As Islamists increasingly fill the ranks of Syrian rebels, President Bashar al-Assad is waging an energized campaign to persuade the United States that it is on the wrong side of the civil war. Some government supporters and officials believe they are already coaxing — or at least frightening — the West into holding back stronger support for the opposition.

Confident they can sell their message, government officials have eased their reluctance to allow foreign reporters into Syria, paraded prisoners they described as extremist fighters and relied unofficially on a Syrian-American businessman to help tap into American fears of groups like Al Qaeda.

“We are partners in fighting terrorism,” Syria’s prime minister, Wael Nader al-Halqi, said.

Omran al-Zoubi, the information minister, said: “It’s a war for civilization, identity and culture. Syria, if you want, is the last real secular state in the Arab world.”…

Which statement is pretty close to the truth – but doesn’t change the fact that Assad’s regime has been an unrelieved series of rat-bastard actions since the days when his dad was in charge.  While I doubt recent claims of chemical weapons use, it is pretty sure that the Syrian regime has used poison gas in the past against rebels.  Additionally, while the Assad regime is officially secular it has been long allied with Islamist Iran and has provided vital support to Islamist Hezbollah in Lebanon.  Even as an allegedly secular State, Syria has been helping our Islamist enemies – in addition to being implacably opposed to the existence of the State of Israel.  There is, in short, not much for us to love there.  Of course, the rebels do appear dominated by Islamists, so if they do manage to topple the Assad regime, it also won’t work to our advantage.

And so I’ve always said we should stay out – no matter who wins in Syria, we lose.  But what we should have been doing is using Syria’s civil war as a means to pry Hezbollah out of Lebanon.  Right now, no one in Syria has much time or resources to be supporting Hezbollah – a concerted effort against Hezbollah will now ultimately bear fruit because all actions against them will weaken their power, which cannot be easily rebuilt without active Syrian support.  Partnering with Israel and those elements in Lebanon (which are substantial) which would prefer to see an end to the quasi-State run by Hezbollah in Lebanon, we could have secured genuine Lebanese independence – so that no matter who wins the Syrian civil war, Syria’s position in Lebanon is permanently destroyed.

But, we did nothing of the kind –  because Obama doesn’t see enemies over in the Muslim world, just alienated friends (alienated by us, of course).  Obama – and all his foreign policy team – probably never even thought about how to exploit the Syrian civil war to our strategic advantage.  We’ve dithered and blustered and threatened and half-armed the rebels – and we may yet be dragged in to direct participation in the war and the subsequent cost of pacification and rebuilding.  But we won’t secure a pro -US regime in Syria and we may well end up midwifing a new, virulently anti-US regime which also controls Lebanon.

Its a miserable situation and because our leaders are ignorant of the realities of the Middle East, it will likely just get worse.

The Food Stamp President

Mark Noonan203 Comments

It just keeps getting worse and worse:

Record Dow, record S&P, record debt, record plunge in gold, and now: record US households on foodstamps. What’s not to like. While today’s gold selloff may be confusing to everyone, one can scratch off some 23,087,886 US households, or the number that according to the USDA, were on foodstamps in January and just happen to be a fresh all time high, as the likely sellers, especially when one considers that the average monthly benefit to each household dropped to a record low of $274.04. This number probably ignores, for good reason, the once every four years fringe benefits of Obamaphones and other such made in China trinkets…

Serious question for those who voted for Obama – is this what you voted for?  Ever more people on welfare while the rich get richer and more Chinese garbage gets exported to the United States?  Did you consider the possibility – even for a moment – that just perhaps someone else might be able to do a better job at it?  Or was it always and ever going to be a vote for Obama?  If so, why?  Because you just wanted to stick it to us Republicans?  Because you were afraid to vote against our first black President?  Because you were actually worried that Romney was going to go after your birth control?  Tell us what motivated you last November…

Recovery? Yeah, Whatever…

Mark Noonan46 Comments

From Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis:

The surge in employment fueled by part-time jobs and the Obamacare effect may finally be over. Although the establishment survey showed a gain of 88,000 jobs, the household survey, off which the unemployment rate is based, showed a loss of 206,000 jobs.

The unemployment rate edged lower by .1% because a whopping 496,000 people dropped out of the labor force.

Last month, voluntary part-time employment rose by a reported 446,000. It’s plain to see that last month’s numbers were a statistical aberration. This was a miserable jobs report from every angle….

Keep that clearly in mind – the unemployment rate dropped to 7.6% in a month when the source for the 7.6% figure showed a loss of 206,000 jobs.  The only reason it dropped – rather than shooting up – is because nearly half a million people dropped out of the labor force.  The labor force participation rate is now back to 1970’s levels.

This, my friends, is a dying economy.  Dying more slowly here than in Europe because parts of the country are still rationally governed (places like Texas and Florida, for instance), but still dying because of a sea of debt and fake money.Europe, too, was kept afloat for a while by France and Germany…how long can Texas and Florida make up for California and New York?

UPDATE:  Given that two more Democrat Senators have “evolved” (between November and April, astoundingly!) on gay marriage, Kruiser is dead on:

Gay marry the jobs report, that’s Plan B today.

Liberal Fascist Perfection: Insurance Mandate for Gun Owners

Mark Noonan56 Comments

From Fox News:

A New York Democratic lawmaker is behind a national push that would force gun owners to buy liability insurance or face a $10,000 fine.

The Firearm Risk Protection Act, pushed by Rep. Carolyn Maloney and seven co-sponsors, follows efforts at the state level to create the controversial new kind of insurance for gun owners.

“For too long, gun victims and society at large have borne the brunt of the costs of gun violence,” Maloney said in a written statement. “My bill would change that by shifting some of that cost back onto those who own the weapons.” …

For a liberal Democrat, this is just the best thing ever:

1.  It punishes the law abiding.

2.  It restricts gun ownership to those wealthy enough to afford insurance (so that Hollywood stars can still have them!  Cool, huh?).

3.  It opens up massive opportunities for Democrat-supporting trial lawyers to rake it in using lawsuits against gun owner insurance policies.

4.  If you have to have insurance then the government needs to be sure you’ve got it – so, licensing of guns.  And, hey, we gotta make sure that insurance policy is in force – so we need to renew your gun license each year!

5.  It provides additional revenue streams for Big Government.

6.  Once everyone is licensed, registered and insured any DA or US attorney out there looking to boost his conviction rate can troll trough the registration records to see if anyone is in violation of some obscure provision of a local, State or federal gun law or regulation.  You didn’t know you were in violation because you stored your gun in the closet instead of in a federally certified gun case?  That’s your problem!  Pony up a guilty plea, surrender your guns (forever) and pay a $10,000 fine or go to jail for 5 years!

I could go on – and if such a provision ever becomes law, then federal and State law enforcement agencies will go on and on and on.  Make absolutely no mistake about it – gun confiscation is the Democrat aim and they will keep at it and at it and at it…hoping that if they throw 100 laws and regulations against the wall that one or two of them will stick.  And then they’ll throw another 100.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

We must stand absolutely firm against all Democrat gun efforts because all of them have the same gun confiscation aim.  Do keep in mind that in theory I am in favor of gun licensing and registration (I’m also in favor of abolishing the National Guard and re-instituting the State Militia…because that what guns are really for:  to arm our militia against all enemies, foreign and domestic), but as long as these liberals are involved, I won’t go an inch down that road…because they are not honest; they don’t want reasonable regulation of guns but an end to an armed citizenry.

Stockman: The End is Nigh!

Mark Noonan24 Comments

Quoting former Reagan OMB director Stockman over at Pajamas Media:

…The state-wreck ahead is a far cry from the “Great Moderation” proclaimed in 2004 by Mr. Bernanke, who predicted that prosperity would be everlasting because the Fed had tamed the business cycle and, as late as March 2007, testified that the impact of the subprime meltdown “seems likely to be contained.” Instead of moderation, what’s at hand is a Great Deformation, arising from a rogue central bank that has abetted the Wall Street casino, crucified savers on a cross of zero interest rates and fueled a global commodity bubble that erodes Main Street living standards through rising food and energy prices — a form of inflation that the Fed fecklessly disregards in calculating inflation.

These policies have brought America to an end-stage metastasis. The way out would be so radical it can’t happen. It would necessitate a sweeping divorce of the state and the market economy. It would require a renunciation of crony capitalism and its first cousin: Keynesian economics in all its forms. The state would need to get out of the business of imperial hubris, economic uplift and social insurance and shift its focus to managing and financing an effective, affordable, means-tested safety net…

Stockman notes that no one in power is going to do any of the things necessary to fix the problem – last week, I read a quote attributed to the Prime Minister of Luxemburg which went along the lines of, “we all know what needs to be done, but we don’t know how to get re-elected after we do it”.  Whether or not the PM said any such thing, it is precisely why our Ruling Class won’t make the necessary changes – because to make them means that whomever does it loses the next election, big time.  I agree with Stockman on what is wrong and why it won’t be fixed – I don’t agree in his laying a great deal of the blame for changing the budget dynamic on Reagan, mostly because Stockman still carries a grudge from waaaay back when…Reagan rejected some of Stockman’s policy ideas in the mid-80’s and Stockman hasn’t quite gotten over it, but his claim that Reagan brought us to fiscal irresponsibility is absurd given that Social Security – the first step in complete fiscal irresponsibility – came about nearly 50 years before Reagan.  That said, the basic thrust that things are collapsing and that it has been a bi-partisan effort to wreck things is completely true.

What do to?  Stockman advises to get out of stocks and bonds and in to cash – not so sure that is the way to go because our cash is already devaluing and will do more so as time goes on with Bernanke continuing to print.  Still, getting out of debt and having as much cash on hand as possible is a good idea – gold, silver and a supply of canned goods also isn’t a bad idea, either.  The main thing is to be prepared for a very rough time, and not too long in the future.  How long?  I don’t know.  No one does.  Could happen tomorrow – could hold off for five years.   Something will trigger the final collapse – our entire economic world is based upon fake money and debt and in a very real sense, the amount of debt in the world exceeds the ability of the entire world to pay for it. And the thing about debt that can’t be repaid is that it doesn’t get repaid.

I’m not at all worried or frightened about this.  We’re going to pay the piper for 80 years of sheer idiocy in government and economics.  A better and wiser people will emerge from the collapse.

UPDATE:  Stockton, CA, goes bankrupt.

UPDATE II:  Eurozone unemployment hits 12%.  Glad that we haven’t gone down their route of fake money and massive debt…oh, wait…

Happy Easter!

Mark Noonan20 Comments

He is risen, indeed:

At daybreak on the first day of the week
the women who had come from Galilee with Jesus
took the spices they had prepared
and went to the tomb.
They found the stone rolled away from the tomb;
but when they entered,
they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
While they were puzzling over this, behold,
two men in dazzling garments appeared to them.
They were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground.
They said to them,
“Why do you seek the living one among the dead?
He is not here, but he has been raised.
Remember what he said to you while he was still in Galilee,
that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners
and be crucified, and rise on the third day.”
And they remembered his words.
Then they returned from the tomb
and announced all these things to the eleven
and to all the others.
The women were Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James;
the others who accompanied them also told this to the apostles,
but their story seemed like nonsense
and they did not believe them.
But Peter got up and ran to the tomb,
bent down, and saw the burial cloths alone;
then he went home amazed at what had happened. – Luke 24:1-12

Avoiding a “Morally Vacuous and Historically Ignorant” Foreign Policy

Mark Noonan45 Comments

Ran across a useful and interesting argument between the generally conservative and generally libertarian views of our foreign policy – especially as it relates to war and the use of force in general.  Here is Noah Rothman arguing against the essentially libertarian idea of non-intervention (using Syria as an example of why we should, at times, intervene), and here is the retort by Nick Gillespie forcefully arguing the libertarian viewpoint.  Both articles repay reading – but my view is that both of them got it wrong, to a certain extent.

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