Woohoo! So good to have a President who is so Johnny-On-The-Spot!

He also told the troops that the next 18 months are “going to be a critical period.” He referred to an Aug. 31, 2010, deadline he has set for the withdrawal of U.S. combat brigades from Iraq as part of a plan to end the war there and pull all U.S. forces out by the end of 2011, meeting a timetable set by Iraq and the United States last year in a bilateral agreement.

“It is time for us to transition to the Iraqis,” Obama said to cheers and applause. “They need to take responsibility for their country and for their sovereignty.”

Uh, Barry, we reached this point back in 2007, remember?

I have made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq’s other leaders that America’s commitment is not open-ended. If the Iraqi government does not follow through on its promises, it will lose the support of the American people — and it will lose the support of the Iraqi people. Now is the time to act. The Prime Minister understands this. Here is what he told his people just last week: “The Baghdad security plan will not provide a safe haven for any outlaws, regardless of [their] sectarian or political affiliation.”

This new strategy will not yield an immediate end to suicide bombings, assassinations, or IED attacks. Our enemies in Iraq will make every effort to ensure that our television screens are filled with images of death and suffering. Yet over time, we can expect to see Iraqi troops chasing down murderers, fewer brazen acts of terror, and growing trust and cooperation from Baghdad’s residents. When this happens, daily life will improve, Iraqis will gain confidence in their leaders, and the government will have the breathing space it needs to make progress in other critical areas. Most of Iraq’s Sunni and Shia want to live together in peace — and reducing the violence in Baghdad will help make reconciliation possible.

A successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations. Ordinary Iraqi citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities. So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.

To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq’s provinces…

And what did you say to President Bush waaaay back when?

On January 17, 2007, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) announced plans to introduce a resolution calling for not only a cap in troop levels, but also a phased redeployment of U.S. forces in Iraq. He stated, “I cannot in good conscience support this plan (troop surge). As I first said two months ago, we should not be sending more U.S. troops to Iraq, we should begin redeploying them to let the Iraqis know that we will not be there forever and to pressure the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds to finally reach a political settlement…Escalation is a failed policy opposed by generals, Democrats and Republicans, and now even the Iraqis themselves, and the fact that the President is already moving ahead with this idea is a terrible consequence of the decision to give him the broad, open-ended authority to wage this war in 2002.”

On the night of January 30, 2007, Obama sent his bill, the Iraq War De-Escalation Act of 2007 (S.433), to the Senate floor calling for complete withdrawal of troops by March 31, 2008.

So, Mr. President, it is great that you visited the troops and we do back you in the pursuit of victory in Afghanistan…but the “critical period” in Iraq came quite a while ago and it was President Bush – in direct conflict with you and other liberals – who carried the matter through with grace and determination. The victory in Iraq has only one father – President Bush. Without him, the whole thing would have been lost – and had we listened to you in 2007, it would have been lost. You should be taking this as a lesson in humility, not trying to strut about like Iraq is your baby, now that it is a success.

So says the Canadian “Human Rights Commission“:

I don’t have any problem with the government running electronic surveillance on, say, drug gangs or terror suspects — or even hatemongers, if there’s proof that they’re engaged in actual violence. But of course, that involves showing probable cause, and getting a judge to issue a warrant. HRC types have no time for that sort of due process. Nor, in fact, do they have any real legal training.

In fact, for an organization that is supposed to promote “human rights,” the HRC’s agents seem curiously oblivious to basic aspects of constitutional law. In one famous exchange during the Lemire case, Steacy was asked “What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate?” — to which he replied “Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value.” (I guess Section 2 has been excised from his copy of the Canadian Charter of Rights.)

I know that some Canadians visit this website – are you guys gonna sit still for this? Do you understand that you are falling under a fascist dictatorship, step by step, in the name of protecting “human rights”, which is actually just a cover for “stop speech liberals don’t like”? Come, on, Canadians – once upon a time you poured out your blood and treasure for human liberty! You can’t really be ok with this sort of nonsense, can you?

And, now, American liberals: this is why we fight you tooth and nail on “hate crimes” laws…not because we like crimes motivated by ethnic or other bigotry, but because once down such a path there’s no way to stop a fascist busybody from essentially trying to ban free speech under the rubric of human rights.

Now what were you liberals saying about wiretaps?

The Obama administration is again invoking government secrecy in defending the Bush administration’s wiretapping program, this time against a lawsuit by AT&T customers who claim federal agents illegally intercepted their phone calls and gained access to their records.

Disclosure of the information sought by the customers, “which concerns how the United States seeks to detect and prevent terrorist attacks, would cause exceptionally grave harm to national security,” Justice Department lawyers said in papers filed Friday in San Francisco.

Kevin Bankston of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a lawyer for the customers, said Monday the filing was disappointing in light of the Obama presidential campaign’s “unceasing criticism of Bush-era secrecy and promise for more transparency.”

Yeah. No kidding.

Kudos to President Obama for having at least some sense of national security – but minus a million points for irresponsibly buying into the kook left talking points about signals intelligence during the campaign.

Naturally, you liberals out there are going to call for Obama’s impeachment. Right?

With all this talk of spend, spend, spend and borrow, borrow, borrow the assurances by Obama and his Democrats that they’ll only tax “the rich” are starting to fall a bit flat:

While the economy remains the top issue nationwide, taxes are moving up on the priority list. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 64% of voters see taxation as very important; it’s highest level in nearly two years.

Last month, 61% said taxes were very important to them. Prior to that survey, that number never rose above 60%.

Obama ran as a tax-cutting deficit hawk – I know, you have to think back a bit. Our liberals won’t be able to manage this trick as their minds are entirely controlled by the DNC – but those who aren’t liberals can, if they wish, stretch their mind back to last September and realize that one of Obama’s most effective ads against McCain was his assertion that McCain wanted to tax health care benefits. Obama, naturally, was being mendacious in his attempts to portray himself as something other than a tax and spend liberal – and now that he’s in office and need not face the voters until 2012, he’s all set to tax and spend us into oblivion…and thus the issue of taxation rises in national consciousness.

At the end of the day, Obama and his Democrats are handing issue after issue which if we can’t win on, then we have no business being in politics at all.

And replace the “never again” we as a people pledged after the Holocaust. On April 20th we’ll have a celebration, in a sense, of Adolf Hitler’s 120th birthday – a grand assembly of racists and anti-Semites will gather in Durban to take up, in the name of the whole world, the issue of racism:

Engagement in this U.N. forum is about giving voice to anti-Semites and racists — under the guise of combating racism. Today Iran used the U.N. megaphone to express its views about human rights as many times as the entire European Union did; Iran was second only to South Africa. Syria took the opportunity to announce it had reservations about the Holocaust paragraph, which reads: “Recalls that the Holocaust must never be forgotten, and in this context urges all U.N. members to implement GA resolutions 60/7 and 61/255.” Iran’s delegate immediately declared “a lot of support for the specific comments of Syria.”

Naturally, President Obama is wary of not “engaging” the world via the Durban conference – I mean, the damage which would be caused by American absence from this anti-Semitic hate-fest is hard to imagine, right?

The problem, dear liberals, with trying to project a favorable image of the United States is that the people who have an unfavorable view of us hate us not for what we do, but for what we are…the Islamists hate us because we’re not Islamic; the Euro-socialists hate us because we’re not socialists; the Chinese hate us because we are powerful and they are not…on and on it goes. While there is some residual hatred of Britain around the world, the plain fact of that matter is that the white-hot hatred we feel here in 2009 was directed towards Britain in 1909 for the same reasons – they were free, the most powerful nation in the world and a force for good. Nations which were enslaved, weaker and had nefarious plans for the world naturally disliked this state of affairs.

Even if we set out on a deliberate, announced policy of appeasement it would not change the world’s view of us – other than adding contempt to hatred. We are the imperial power of the world – the sole power capable of defending liberty and human decency by human agency. If we refuse our office, then there is no one to take it, and the world will become the plaything of wicked people – Britain refused its office in the 1930’s and the reward wasn’t peace, but World War Two. If we want World War Three, all we have to do is abase ourselves before the world and show ourselves unwilling to defend – by muscular and at times violent action – human decency.

Going to Durban and begging pretty-please for anti-Semites to accord some respect to Israel and some remembrance of the Holocaust is the worst thing we can do, and I hope President Obama realizes this before its too late.

Neatly encapsulated:

It was surely an act of hubris for President Obama to ask Congress to approve a $3.6 trillion federal budget for 2010 that runs a trillion-dollars worth of red ink its first year and then projects half-trillion deficits every year thereafter for a decade. Congress has never before been asked to consider spending of such magnitude, not even during wartime. Obama’s budget proposal also included provisions committing the nation to far-reaching policy changes that are certain to drive federal taxes higher, send gasoline and electricity costs soaring, socialize doctors and patients by putting Washington bureaucrats in charge of health care, and make Uncle Sam the Daddy Warbucks of college tuition for everybody. . . . So how did Congress deal with this landmark legislation? The House of Representatives gave opponents exactly 20 minutes to present an alternative, then gaveled the Obama measure to approval. The Senate approved it after considering a handful of amendments. But note that even before the 2010 budget was approved, this Congress had approved spending more than $1.2 trillion, or $24 billion per day. That’s $1 billion every hour since the 111th Congress convened in January.

We can’t do this – it isn’t sustainable (to use a favored liberal word). When it comes crashing down – and it will, sure as night follows day – we’ll be under a mountain of debt which will take decades of sustained economic growth to get out of, but we won’t have the money necessary to invest in the economic activities which will would provide the wealth necessary to discharge the debt. Essentially, Obama and his Democrats are blithely spending us into oblivion because they are ignorant and think that the New Deal helped, so the Super-Duper Newer Deal will help even more.

If only we could get into their heads a bit and make them understand – the reason it costs $5,000 a month to pay for nursing home care is because Medicaid is willing to pay that…so regular folks who can afford $3,000 a month (and thus don’t qualify for Medicaid) are priced out of the market; the reason why the average in-State tuition for a public college is $18,000 is because the government backs loans and grants which allow kids to “afford” that high a tuition; the reason why health care costs in 2008 rose at twice the rate of inflation is because Medicare and Medicaid are willing to pay such extortionate prices, thus pricing Joe Average out of the market and forcing him to seek private or government insurance…on and on it goes; the reason things cost so much and thus seem to require government aid is because government aid is distorting the market price.

We won’t be able to make them see this – but as things fall apart we can craft a message which wins for us great power, and thus we can just show them, by actions, that the best means of doing things is to not have government do them except in a genuine, and temporary, emergency.

Read it and weep, Democrats:

As he prepared to take a job in the White House at the end of last year, David Axelrod sold the political consulting firm that helped elect President Barack Obama for $2 million to a group of consultants who helped steer Obama’s campaign.

According to a disclosure form released Friday evening by the White House, the firm, AKP&D Message & Media, paid him $897,000 last year, when it had basically turned itself into an arm of the Obama campaign, which paid the company $2.5 million.

The disclosure indicates that Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe — the “P” in AKP&D and still an influential political consultant for Obama and the Democratic National Committee — was not among the buyers, though he’ll remain a senior adviser to the firm.

Instead, Axelrod reported the new owner is a “newly formed S corporation” owned by Obama campaign vets John Kupper, John Del Cecato and Larry Grisolano.

Kupper and Del Cecato — the “K” and “D,” respectively — handled research and for the campaign and also wrote many of its ads. Grisolano is a Los Angeles-based strategist who handled direct mail for Obama’s campaign.

This is a new day in Washington? This is something other than business as usual? This is open, honest government which only speaks for the people?

I’m telling ya, liberals, you’ve been taken for suckers – Obama might be a leftist, but those who elevated him to power did it for the money and the power, and now they are running the show behind the scenes while Obama reads the script off a teleprompter.

You’ve been had – wake up!

This is the Hope and Change we got:

A top city official says City Council President Monica Conyers pulled strings to get her brother, an ex-con with a violent record, a job in the building department that was to last only 120 days but was extended for two years.

“She came up to me, handed me his resume and said ‘You should hire him. He’s a good guy,’ ” said Amru Meah, director of Building & Safety Engineering.

Reggie Esters, 38, was fired from the $30,500 job last summer on claims of chronic absenteeism. About the same time, he was charged with 10 felonies stemming from allegations he brandished a shotgun at two people, according to court records. He pleaded guilty to one count and faces sentencing April 17.

Records obtained this week by The Detroit News show Esters submitted a resume showing he worked continuously for two construction firms from 1999 to 2006. State records show he was incarcerated for assault and weapons charges for much of that time.

Meah said Conyers wanted her brother hired as a $50,000 inspector, but he wasn’t qualified and wouldn’t pass a license exam. Instead, he was hired as an investigator who checked if businesses are properly licensed.

Conyers, whose maiden name is Esters, said Meah is wrong. She denied that Esters is her brother, despite papers filed in Wayne County Probate Court in 1976 that identify them as siblings with the same parents, Robert H. and Alice Esters.

“I have no idea what Mr. Meah is talking about,” Conyers said.

Calls to Marlon Evans, Esters’ attorney, were not returned.

The city has no rules against hiring felons and Meah said he didn’t know of Esters’ record until a reporter told him about it Thursday.

“Human Resources is supposed to check that,” he said.

Mrs Conyers is the wife of Representative John Conyers (D-MI), who is Chairman of the House Judiciary committee – you know, the people’s watch dog for Justice in the United States. Conyers is also the guy who was leading the charge to impeach President Bush.

Ok, Democrats – I’m waiting for you to call for Conyers immediate resignation because you know darned well that if this were a GOP House member who’s wife had got her felon brother a job, you’d be demanding the GOPers head on a platter.

The news story:

North Korea fired a long-range rocket on Sunday, provoking international outrage and prompting the U.N. Security Council to call an emergency meeting.

The reclusive communist state said a satellite was launched into orbit and circled the earth transmitting revolutionary songs. But both the U.S. military and South Korea said it had failed to enter orbit.

Analysts say the launch was effectively a test of a ballistic missile designed to carry a warhead potentially as far as Alaska.

It was the first big challenge for U.S. President Barack Obama in dealing with the North, whose efforts to build a nuclear arsenal have long plagued ties with Washington.

“With this provocative act, North Korea has ignored its international obligations, rejected unequivocal calls for restraint, and further isolated itself from the community of nations,” Obama said, speaking on a European tour.

Which statement from our President is the merest boilerplate – now comes the question: what do we do?

The UN will be perfectly useless – even if an appearance of strength is immediately issued, we know that it will eventually fall flat on the fact that China is not interested in curbing North Korea because a rampaging North Korea serves China’s interests vis a vis the United States and Japan. The international community, outside of UN action, will be heavy with denunciations the light on action. At the end of the day, any real action will have to be American action of a unilateral nature.

Does it serve our best interest to make a big deal out of this? Is rote condemnation sufficient for the moment and now we can move off to other things? If North Korea is permitted to get away with this, will this just be the first step in making missiles capable of hitting all of the United States, thus opening us up to nuclear blackmail?

Discuss.

Well, he passed away this evening – likely from a stroke, almost certainly with no pain and without knowing it was happening. He had received absolution and died a good son of the Church. He kept his mental faculties up to the end – I had seen him just this afternoon. He seemed to have a bit of a stroke while I was there, but when in hospice one doesn’t call 911. He held my hand tight – a sign of affection he was normally not given to, and that is really when I knew the end was very near…

He was born in California to George Childs and Elizabeth Noonan – “Papa George” and “Nana Liz” to their multitude of grand children. George, Sr. was a veteran of the First World War and was quite a character; Elizabeth was an incredibly strong influence – mostly towards the requirements of being a Christian gentleman.

In 1944, at the age of 17, in great folly or great bravery, he joined the United States Marine Corps and served in the Saipan campaign. The memory of the Corps remained to the end among the fondest memories of my father, and the thing he was most proud of. Love of country was intrinsic to my father, and he imparted this strongly to all of his children.

After the war, my father worked in varied aspects of the aerospace industry – including, at times, working on NASA’s space program and, most notably, being part of the team which brought the F-117A Stealth Fighter to life. To work in science and to do math was a grand love and adventure of my father’s life – married to a physicist, my late mother, Barbara Jane Noonan, the talk around the family often ended up revolving around things scientific. One of the last memories I shared with my father was how, when I was about 12, my mother woke the whole family up in the middle of the night shrieking that she needed to – immediately – know the orbital rotation of Venus. Such things were usually far beyond his 5th child and 3rd son – a much greater influence on said son was his father’s philosophic bent of mind.

Dad was more Catholic than the Pope, went the family jest – too the end adhering to the Church and its teachings and, being the sort of man he was, always willing to offer a stout defense of all Catholic dogmas to all comers. I’ve never actually met another man with a stronger sense of the truth of Catholicism and the real history behind its growth and development. While I was a stubborn child and unwilling to follow where he led in this matter, I eventually accepted my Catholic legacy with gratitude – to me, to not have the Church is to not have anything at all. Upon my own death, my thanks will be to me father for transmitting me this precious gift, the finest ever given.

I shall miss him – I shall miss having to make his coffee, do his laundry, take him out to play blackjack, helping him get his scotch and soda. I will, please God, see him again along with all the faithful departed, but there is a gap in my life which will not be filled while I remain confined within the circles of this world. That gap shall be placed next to that once filled by my mother, and next to others similarly missing their proper element of my life. But it is with great joy that I contemplate my father, glorified, and seeing Our Lord, face to face.

Thank you all for your prayers during this trying time in my life and the life of my family.

“Hear the word of the LORD, O nations, and declare it in the coastlands afar off; say, `He who scattered Israel will gather him, and will keep him as a shepherd keeps his flock.’

For the LORD has ransomed Jacob, and has redeemed him from hands too strong for him.

They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion, and they shall be radiant over the goodness of the LORD, over the grain, the wine, and the oil, and over the young of the flock and the herd; their life shall be like a watered garden, and they shall languish no more.

Then shall the maidens rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry. I will turn their mourning into joy, I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow. – Jeremiah 31:10-13