Of all the monumentally stupid foreign policy mistakes Obama and Co have already made, this may prove the most boneheaded:

My fellow columnist Gordon G. Chang made a piquant point in this space last week in his preview of Hillary Clinton’s trip to East Asia–her first trip abroad as secretary of state. Chiding her for what he regarded as a scheduling misjudgment, he wrote that “she should have reserved time for a stop-over” in India. I agree with him 100%.

Ironically, even as Mrs. Clinton was packing her valise for Beijing, a senior spokesman for the Congress Party, which heads the ruling coalition in New Delhi, made an impassioned freelance appeal for George W. Bush to be awarded the Bharat Ratna (“Jewel of India”), the country’s highest civilian award. The Bharat Ratna is a big, big deal in India and has been awarded only 41 times since its inception in 1954–and only twice to non-Indians, one of whom was the sainted Nelson Mandela. The Congress Party quickly distanced itself from its spokesman’s appeal, no doubt regarding it as a particularly impolitic show of nostalgia for Bush so early in the Age of Obama.

But the truth is that, for all his unpopularity in the U.S. (and Europe, and Latin America, and the Middle East, and practically everywhere else outside Albania and Georgia), Bush is a much-appreciated figure in India–at least in high policy circles. As many have noted, both in Washington and New Delhi, the one indisputable foreign policy success of the eight Bush years was America’s invigorating new alliance with India…

And there goes Hillary to China and Obama finds time to talk to Hamas terrorists…but no one seems to be paying attention to India. The author goes on to generously suggest that Hillary’s failure to visit India isn’t a slight to India – but the plain fact of the matter is that the “special relationship” we’ve had with Britain since World War Two should now be transferred to India. In confronting Chinese ambitions, fighting Islamist terrorism and maintaining democratic solidarity, India and the United States require the assistance of each other. Everything which can be done to keep India on side should be done – and the Obama Administration doesn’t even seem to notice.

Perhaps because India is a democracy it is incapable of being so relentlessly corrupt that Democrats will fall all over themselves to get in on the swag – as regards China, its clear that Hillary has a serious conflict of interest. Or it might just be that India isn’t on the left’s radar – Euro- and Commie-centric, America’s left probably couldn’t spot India on a map.

I hope that someone in the Obama Administration swiftly wakes up on this issue – we need India, India needs us and the world is a safer place when India and the United States work together.

And I defy anyone to say they are surprised about this:

Even as news of the investigation into mega-lobby firm PMA Group grows, Democrats are fighting efforts to check the tarnished group’s influence.

The FBI raided PMA’s offices last November, as well as the stately exurban mcMansion belonging to the firm’s founder, Paul Magliocchetti. The probe appears to center on suspected phony campaign donations tied to the group. (A spokesman for the group declined to comment.)

In what could politely be described as a rearguard action, Democratic lawmakers have defeated an effort to start a congressional ethics investigation into the firm.

Why are Democrats being so brazen?

1. Because Democrats know that their own people are too servile and incurious to hold them to account.

2. Democrats believe they have a lock on power for another 60 years, and thus only have to please their own servile and incurious people.

Its already quite toxic in DC these days – everything is for sale and no one is calling the corrupt to account. Obama’s talk of honesty is long been proven the most laughable of lies; its got so bad in the Administration, with tax cheat after tax cheat being nominated, that its clear Obama never for a minute intended to conduct the nation’s business honestly. As for Pelosi’s long-forgotten pledge for the most ethical Congress, one might as well pine for the Moon as expect that to happen.

We’ll have to see if Democrats are right about their immunity – with their attempts to silence the critics, they might be able to make it happen. Personally, I don’t think they will be able to do so, but anything is possible with people this corrupt.

There is something incredibly wrong when the White House and the Democratic Party cares more about going after critics in the media like Rush Limbaugh, Rick Santelli, and Jim Cramer than going after terrorists.

What can we take from these acts of desperation? Well I think the obvious thing is that the Obama campaign didn’t end on Election Day… it is still in full force. The difference between now and before the inauguration is that Obama can (and will) use government resources to bully and/or silence his critics. I fully expect that conservative pundits will find themselves audited at least once over the next four years… a similar intimidation tactic used by the Clinton administration.

In the end this tactic of attacking Obama’s critics, especially Rush Limbaugh, will backfire.

The strategy took shape after Democratic strategists Stanley Greenberg and James Carville included Limbaugh’s name in an October poll and learned their longtime tormentor was deeply unpopular with many Americans, especially younger voters. Then the conservative talk-radio host emerged as an unapologetic critic of Barack Obama shortly before his inauguration, when even many Republicans were showering him with praise.

Soon it clicked: Democrats realized they could roll out a new GOP bogeyman for the post-Bush era by turning to an old one in Limbaugh, a polarizing figure since he rose to prominence in the 1990s.

Limbaugh is embracing the line of attack, suggesting a certain symbiosis between him and his political adversaries.

“The administration is enabling me,” he wrote in an e-mail to POLITICO. “They are expanding my profile, expanding my audience and expanding my influence. An ever larger number of people are now being exposed to the antidote to Obamaism: conservatism, as articulated by me. An ever larger number of people are now exposed to substantive warnings, analysis and criticism of Obama’s policies and intentions, a ‘story’ I own because the [mainstream media] is largely the Obama Press Office.”

The Democrats, now lead by Barack Hussein Obama, are attempting to make up for their lack of leadership by making Rush Limbaugh their scapegoat… But the notion that Rush leads the GOP is just as silly as saying Chris Matthews or Keith Olbermann lead the Democrat Party.

Any President should have bigger fish to fry than his critics in the media. He fooled a lot of people on Election Day into thinking he was ready to be president, but he has yet to act presidential while in office.

Just can’t figure out what to write, dear people.

Have at it.

It could come to this:

Obstetrician and gynecologist Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma) has said that pro-life medical practitioners will “go to jail” rather than violate their conscience if the Obama administration reverses federal conscience protection rules.

In an interview with CNSNews.com on Friday in Washington, D.C., Sen. Coburn was asked what he thought would happen if the administration reverses the policy.

“I think a lot of us will go to jail,” he said. “Let’s see them prosecute the first one of us for not doing that.”

And they will, too – and millions of us will also line up to go to jail, if it comes to that. If the Culture of Death people think we’re just pro-lifers for kicks, they have quite another thing coming their way if they try to force pro-life people to advance the Culture of Death. We will not betray our beliefs – we are pro-life at the command of God, and we cannot deny Life without denying God.

Think carefully, liberals, what you are doing here – you are opening up a very bad can of worms; you are, indeed, writing the title page to the book to be called “Civil War II”. Unless you change your mind, and realize that while you might think Life to be trivial, we don’t.

Just disgusting:

Alaska State Sen. Kim Elton, one of the leading officials to pursue an investigation of Gov. Sarah Palin during the heat of the presidential campaign, has taken a high-level job in the Interior Department.

Palin reacted in a short statement Monday, the day Elton announced his move to Washington.

“Senator Elton pledged his allegiance to President Obama last summer,” said the governor. “We wish him well as he moves on and hope that he uses this job for Alaska’s benefit.”

Elton did the job – when Obama needed some muck to be thrown at Palin, Elton was found scurrying around under a rock and was set loose on the governor. It profits a man nothing to gain the whole world, and yet lose his soul – but for Interior?

You don’t have to take my word for it… the market speaks for itself.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan:

From the Wall Street Journal:

…after five weeks in office, it’s become clear that Mr. Obama’s policies are slowing, if not stopping, what would otherwise be the normal process of economic recovery. From punishing business to squandering scarce national public resources, Team Obama is creating more uncertainty and less confidence — and thus a longer period of recession or subpar growth.

The Democrats who now run Washington don’t want to hear this, because they benefit from blaming all bad economic news on President Bush. And Mr. Obama has inherited an unusual recession deepened by credit problems, both of which will take time to climb out of. But it’s also true that the economy has fallen far enough, and long enough, that much of the excess that led to recession is being worked off. Already 15 months old, the current recession will soon match the average length — and average job loss — of the last three postwar downturns. What goes down will come up — unless destructive policies interfere with the sources of potential recovery.

Huh? Well, you see, Obama and Co are banking on a normal business cycle picking up later this year or early next year to provide the funds necessary to cover the bonanza of spending they’ve enacted this year. It works like that, right? I mean, an economy goes up, up, up and then hits a slump and goes down, down, down…and then its back up, right? No necessarily. One might recall that period from 1929 until 1941 when things never really went back up – and had not WWII happened, there is no indication that we would have reached 1928 equivalent prosperity as long as FDR’s New Deal policies were in place. In other words, the Great Depression could have simply become “normal times”.

Here’s a news story to sober up you liberals:

U.S. companies, consumers and communities may grow so addicted to government financial help that cutting them off could trigger another recession soon after the current one ends.

Between the U.S. Federal Reserve’s trillions of dollars in lending programs, the $787 billion stimulus package and $700 billion — and counting — in bank bailout funds, no one can accuse officials of soft-pedaling their crisis response.

But there is increasing concern that when the flow of public money subsides — beginning next year when much of that stimulus package is spent — the economy still won’t be strong enough to stand on its own.

“The stuttering attempts to repair the banking and lending mechanisms so far by the new administration suggests that by late 2010, the specter of a second dip into recession will be looming large,” said Merrill Lynch economist Sheryl King.

My friend Nevada Pundit opines that if you dump that much money on the economy, you’re going to have at least a temporary positive effect. In other words, as we get into late 2009 and early 2010, we might see some signs that things are getting better – and you just watch the MSM praise it as the strongest economic recovery ever. But it won’t continue – it can’t continue. We’re not building wealth – we’re just spending money, and spending money we don’t actually have…and the money we borrow now won’t be able to be used for new business start-ups and the money we print will just devalue all money currently in circulation. The economy will go down, and go down rather hard – and now I’m not so sure that Nevada Pundit is even partially correct…with stock values collapsing we’re losing real wealth faster than Obamunism can temporarily create fake wealth.

What will you Obamaniacs do? Spend more money? Instead of $3,600,000,000,000.00, spend $7,200,000,000,000.00? If spending three trillion is going to work, why don’t we spend seven? Unless we conservatives can gain enough power in 2010 to thwart Obama, we’re heading for a ten year long (at least) economic depression. Stupid, stupid, stupid…and all we have to do to avoid it is start making, mining and growing things and getting government out of the way of such activities. Do that, and you liberals would have more tax money to spend then you ever dreamed of…but, you’re too short sighted, too narrowly bigoted and intellectually incurious.

Like peas and carrots:

Word today that yet another Barack Obama appointee has a little problem with taxes — a $10,000 problem.

Ron Kirk, the former mayor of Dallas who would be the White House chief trade representative if confirmed, didn’t pay taxes on some speaking fees he donated to his alma mater and he tried to write off the full $17,000 costs of his Dallas Mavericks season tickets.

We’ve gone entirely through the Looking Glass here – a completely buffoonish Administration headed by a man who doesn’t know what he’s doing, staffed by people who view government as a means of personal enrichment and taxes as something only Republicans have to pay.

Its going to be a long four years – but we can make it not quite so long in 2010.

Hot Air Blog has the details.

Conservatives who backed Obama – what the @*&^! were you thinking?