Blogs For Victory

It was Barack Hussein Obama who once crowed about America’s supposed arrogance toward its allies, while on foreign soil:

President Barack Obama has offered an apology for the Bush era, declaring that America had “shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive” towards its allies.

President Obama said the US had “failed to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world”

Physician, heal thyself:

WARSAW, Poland – Poles and Czechs voiced deep concern Friday at President Barack Obama’s decision to scrap a Bush-era missile defense shield planned for their countries.

“Betrayal! The U.S. sold us to Russia and stabbed us in the back,” the Polish tabloid Fakt declared on its front page.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski said he was concerned that Obama’s new strategy leaves Poland in a dangerous “gray zone” between Western Europe and the old Soviet sphere.

Perhaps Barack Hussein Obama, when pondering “Europe’s leading role in the world,” may also ponder that it was Eastern Europe, at one time under the claws of the Russian bear, that was instrumental in breaking the back of Soviet despotism and expansionism, and perhaps they know a thing or two of which they speak.

Yet the arrogance of “The One,” and his administration knows no bounds. But don’t take my word for it. Take the word of our new “regulatory czar“:

“Why is the executive not permitted to construe constitutional ambiguities as it sees fit?” asks Sunstein. “The simplest answer is that foxes are not permitted to guard henhouses … but who is the fox?”

He concludes “the executive should usually be permitted to interpret (law) as it reasonably sees fit.”

“The allocation of law-interpreting power to the executive fits admirably well with the twentieth-century shift from common law courts to regulatory administration if the governing statute is ambiguous,” he writes.

In other words, in Sunstein’s opinion (and no doubt the opinion of his boss, as well), Obama and his administration should have free rein to interpret laws as fits their fancy on a particular day; because, after all, they’re smarter than you, and smarter than the courts.

Hopenchange, baby.

I can remember, during Bush’s presidency, the unemployment rate going down every month, the stock market going up, real wages going up, and all sorts of economic indicators supporting the fact that the economy was strong, getting better … for everyone. Despite month after month of data supporting Bush’s claim that his tax cuts succeeded in getting us out of recession into a period of record-breaking economic growth, Democrats found all sorts of ways to talk the economy down, and pretend as though we were living in hard economic times like the Great Depression.

So, now, with an economy now owned by Obama and his party, with the unemployment rate getting higher, we’re getting equally ridiculous claims of how Democrats “rescued” the economy, and today, Obama even tried to take credit for an economic turnaround.

President Obama on Saturday continued his administration’s careful efforts to take credit for the slowly improving economy, using his radio address to tout the economic turnaround since world leaders met in London in April.

At the time of the G-20 summit, the world’s economic situation was dire, Obama said in the radio address. The meeting in London marked “a crisis that required unprecedented international cooperation to jumpstart the world’s economies and help break the downward spiral that enveloped all our nations,” he said.

Next week, Obama and the same world leaders will gather in Pittsburgh for what Obama called “a five-month checkup” on the financial actions taken by their countries.

“Because of the steps taken by our nation and all nations, we can now say that we have stopped our economic freefall,” the president said in the address, which is broadcast on the radio and the internet.

But the president was quick to note that he is not satisfied with the extent of the recovery in the United States or globally, saying that “stopping the bleeding isn’t nearly enough.”

“Our work is far from over,” he said. “We know we still have a lot to do, in conjunction with nations around the world, to strengthen the rules governing financial markets and ensure that we never again find ourselves in the precarious situation we found ourselves in just one year ago.”

How’s that for audacity? As i recently wrote for the American Issues Project, “How can [Obama] claim the economy has rescued even as economists are warning of a double-dip recession, his own economic advisor says there may be high unemployment for years to come, US credit is shrinking at a Great Depression rate, and so on and so forth?” Some economists also put the true unemployment rate in double digits.

Are we really supposed to beliieve Obama when he says that two plus two is five? For Obama to claim he rescued the economy is like him taking credit for curing polio and discovering uranium. Sadly, there are plenty willing to drink that Kool-Aid, and talk about a million jobs “saved or created” as 7.4 million Americans have lost their jobs in less than a year.

Two plus two is five, is that the “change” Obama was talking about?

I’m kind of out of position until Saturday afternoon, or so – have at it while I’m gone…and remember, trolls, the Monitors are still on the job.

The story – from The Washington Examiner:

Reuters reports an interesting nugget in the wake of President Barack Obama’s decision to grant Vladimir Putin his wish and kill the Eastern European missile shield:

Shortly after the pullback on the shield programme was announced, Russia’s government said Prime Minister Vladimir Putin would meet several U.S. executives on Friday from firms including General Electric, Morgan Stanley as well as TPG, one of the world’s largest private equity firms

General Electric may be the company with the closest ties to the Obama administration (if not, GE is second only to Goldman Sachs), and here we see the company benefiting from an abrupt foreign policy change made by President Obama. But GE isn’t the only company benefiting. Reuters paints the broader picture:

“U.S. companies have arguably lost out to some European companies in joint ventures, and better diplomacy will likely improve the chances for investors in the strategic sectors of the Russian economy,” said Carlo Gallo, senior Russia analyst at London-based consultancy Control Risks.

GE CEO Jeff Immelt sits on Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board, and GE owns MSNBC, the network famously friendly to Obama.

Obama got some ‘splainin’ to do…

Do keep in mind that I’m predicting the government will tell us that we’re in positive growth for Q3, 2009 – and I expect this to continue at least through Q2, 2010…with an outside chance it might go all the way through Q1, 2011. But I’m also saying that its complete BS – its just shuffling money around. Here’s an excellent take which tracks with my views:

…We see more than 100% of GDP growth as completely dependent on government(s) spending.

The Federal Housing Administration has issued more than a trillion dollars in mortgages this year, picking up where Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac left off (they really haven’t stopped either). Delinquency rates are approaching 17%.

Real GDP may be positive for the quarter, but when the government is involved there are lots of shenanigans.

For example, we’ve heard it plans to deduct the cash rebate for cars from the sales price, thus lowering the GDP deflator and artificially raising the reported real GDP number.

Senseless…

…When the market realizes that the Fed can’t create inflation (a full monetization of the majority of debt; something that would make even Ben blink), it’ll see that the S&P 500 is really trading at 20 times earnings that are not growing.

It’ll realize that all we’ve done is actually increase the overall debt in the system with massive stimulus and spending.

It’ll see the risk in stocks as extremely high.

Its what I expect, too – and my prediction is March of 2010 is when the proverbial poop will hit the fan. It might come sooner than that – the upcoming Christmas shopping season looks to be a disaster, and as that bad news comes home it might start the renewed slide in stocks right after Thanksgiving. On the other hand, Obama and Co might manage to weave and dodge (and borrow and print) their way through for a while longer…but eventually the truth comes out: we can’t spend our way to wealth, and when you’re broke the worst thing you can do is borrow more money.

Credit is contracting; incomes are falling, home prices continue to slide (in spite of some alleged stats to the contrary…my house is probably worth $153,000.00…three months ago, it would have fetched about $187,000.00; all around the country, this is what is happening…especially in FL, NV, CA and AZ), corporate insiders continue to bail out of stocks, unemployment continues to grow…its called a Depression. It can be fixed – but not by Obama’s warmed over New Deal.

Why wars start:

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap. – Ronald Reagan

And Obama is telling Iran and the rest of our enemies that the price of aggression is very, very low.

First, the attention grabbing, please-every-liberal-out-there opening paragraphs:

U.S. states whose residents have more conservative religious beliefs on average tend to have higher rates of teenagers giving birth, a new study suggests.

The relationship could be due to the fact that communities with such religious beliefs (a literal interpretation of the Bible, for instance) may frown upon contraception, researchers say. If that same culture isn’t successfully discouraging teen sex, the pregnancy and birth rates rise.

But then, on starting on paragraph 16:

Other factors that may have been important to consider include ethnic backgrounds of state residents, according to Adamczyk, the City University of New York sociologist.

“We know that African American women on average tend to underreport their abortions, which means they could also underreport the likelihood that they got pregnant,” Adamczyk said. “If you’re dealing with states with a high number of African American women, you might run into that problem.”

Adamczyk’s own, separate research has shown a nearly opposite correlation, at the individual level. “What we find is that more religious women are less likely to engage in riskier sex behaviors, and as a result they are less likely to have a premarital pregnancy,” Adamczyk said during a telephone interview. But for those religious teens who do choose to have premarital sex, they might be more likely to ditch their religious views and have an abortion, she has found.

Since we have a noted and respected sociologist who came to the conclusion that Christianity leads to sexual morality, why not write that as the story? Because its not what liberals want to hear – its really nothing more than that. But the real kicker, here, is that if you take a look at the graph which allegedly shows the correlation between a State’s religiosity and teen pregnancy, you’ll find that only five of the top ten teen pregnancy States are also top ten religious States. How can you get correlation from something like that? While Mississippi is rated number one in both categories, number two in teen birth rates is New Mexico, rated 22nd in religiosity.

The study is bull – but its put out there and you can bet that for years now we’ll have liberals linking to it claiming that it proves Christianity to be a crock. This is how liberals are sustained – fools fed lies.

Bush administration policies made it tough on tyrants. Saddam Hussein was toast. Mohammar Khadaffy, seeing the writing on the wall, suddenly turned into a good guy. Even Kim Jong Il thought twice about beating his chest and preening his trollkin hair in touting his nuclear capabilities.

Yep, to paraphrase a rap song, during the Bush administration, it was hard out there for a tyrant.

Enter Barack Hussein Obama: Since his inauguration, Ponyang has re-started its nuke program, Ghadaffi is now supporting Iran’s nuclear program, and Iran is…well, kicking its thermonuclear program into full gear.

Ain’t it a caution as to the difference nine months can make, now that Barack Hussein Obama is doing his level best to make the world safe for tyranny…

President Obama dismayed America’s allies in Europe and angered his political opponents at home today when he formally ditched plans to set up a missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The project had been close to the heart of Mr Obama’s predecessor, President Bush, who had argued before leaving office in January that it was needed to defend against long-range ballistic missile attacks from rogue states such as Iran and North Korea.

But it had hobbled relations with Russia, which considered it both a security threat and an unnecessary political provocation in its own backyard.

This of course, comes on the heels of this news:

VIENNA — Experts at the world’s top atomic watchdog are in agreement that Tehran has the ability to make a nuclear bomb and is on the way to developing a missile system able to carry an atomic warhead, according to a secret report seen by The Associated Press.

The document drafted by senior officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency is the clearest indication yet that the agency’s leaders share Washington’s views on Iran’s weapon-making capabilities.

It appears to be the so-called “secret annex” on Iran’s nuclear program that Washington says is being withheld by the IAEA’s chief.

The document says Iran has “sufficient information” to build a bomb. It says Iran is likely to “overcome problems” on developing a delivery system.

At any rate, since Putin and the neo-Soviets in Russia got their way, at the very least, Obama’s decision to pull a Nancy will reap dividends in getting Russian cooperation, right?

Not so fast, appeasement breath:

“Those who are talking about a concession to Russia are primarily those who are looking for a bargaining chip in seeking extra dividends of some kind from us,” said Dmitry Rogozin, the Russian envoy to NATO, in remarks carried on the Interfax news agency. “In actual fact, the Americans have simply put their own mistake right. And we are not duty-bound to pay for someone to put their own mistakes right.”

The Obamateur makes the world less hostile to tyrants, destabilizes the balance of power, and continues to weaken the United States to the point of impotence in the process.

A socialist utopian trifecta.

There. Don’t you feel safer, now that hopenchange is here?

First, some quotes from the old gal:

“Bush is an incompetent leader. In fact, he’s not a leader. He’s a person who has no judgment, no experience and no knowledge of the subjects that he has to decide upon.”

“He has on his shoulders the deaths of many more troops…”

“They’ll take food out of the mouths of children in order to give tax cuts to the wealthiest.”

And now:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “I have concerns about some of the language that is being used because I saw … I saw this myself in the late ’70s in San Francisco,” Pelosi said, choking up and with tears forming in her eyes. “This kind of rhetoric is just, is really frightening and it created a climate in which we, violence took place and … I wish that we would all, again, curb our enthusiasm in some of the statements that are made.”

Nancy – go jump in a lake.

Nile Gardiner of the Telgraph (UK) calls it a shameful surrender… I have to agree.

I blogged a couple of weeks ago that the Obama administration was about to abandon its plans for Third Site missile defence installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. I wrote then that “if enacted, this would represent a huge turnaround in American strategic thinking on a global missile defence system, and a massive betrayal of two key US allies in eastern and central Europe. Such a move would significantly weaken America’s ability to combat the growing threat posed by Iran’s ballistic missile program, and would hand a major propaganda victory to the Russians.”

It now looks as though the president has surrendered to Russian demands to kill off Third Site.

Pouring salt on the wound, the announcement came on the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland.

Well, President Bush was right,”This is a dangerous world, & [Obama] isn’t remotely qualified to handle it. This guy has no clue, I promise you.” 

Senator Mitch McConnell issued the following statement with regard to the news:

“The administration’s decision to abandon an important missile defense program for the defense of NATO and our allies in Poland and the Czech Republic, in my view, is both shortsighted and harmful to our long-term security interests.  We must not turn our backs on two loyal allies in the War on Terror.  Further, the administration has secured no apparent commitment from the Russians to work with us to reduce either the missile or nuclear threat from Iran.  More troubling will be if the administration has made these concessions to Russia in pursuit of expediting ill-considered arms control deals.”

True enough, The Wall Street Journal reported today that Russia “welcomed the news but said it saw no reason to offer concessions in return.”

So, Obama, what they hell are you thinking?

What also gets me about this whole thing is that Obama and the Democrats have claimed that Bush was the one alienating our allies and making us less safe. Ain’t that something? After such stupid allegations against Bush, Obama can insult our allies time and time again, end the war on terror, approve of the release of the Lockerbie bomber, and now this — without blinking an eye. Obama has done more to appease our enemies that protect this country and there is no reason why any American should stand for it.

UPDATE, by Mark Noonan: It makes no sense . Why do we even care what Russia thinks? Does anyone seriously contemplate war with Russia? We don’t need an arms control agreement with Russia…we don’t need anything with Russia.

We’re selling out superb allies in order to…what? What the heck are we doing? Is this just rote liberalism? Because liberals wanted arms control agreements with Russia in the 80’s, we must continue to want arms control agreements with them forever? Russia is a dying nation – Putin’s an arrogant ass, but one day he’ll be gone and Russia will face the stark fact that unless we support them, they won’t be able to hold their country against China and Islam. We need give them nothing – but we’re giving them this gift, on the 70’s anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Poland on conjunction with Hitler’s Nazi Germany.

Fool or idiot? More and more, “idiot” is coming to the fore in my view of Obama.