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..the latest
iteration of ..
Dick John's
place ..
Following is an ever changing collection of
current opinion with which, unless
otherwise noted, I strongly agree.
No apologies
by Newt Gingrich
Posted 02/29/2012 ET
President Obama’s apologies keep getting more outrageous and more
destructive.
They started in the summer of 2008, before he was even elected
president. Then-Senator Obama travelled to Berlin to introduce
himself as “a citizen of the world,” and said “I know my country has
not perfected itself…We’ve made our share of mistakes, and there are
times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our
best intentions.”
Next came the Apology Tour of 2009, when President Obama travelled
to France to apologize for our “failure to appreciate Europe‘s
leading role in the world,” saying “America has shown arrogance and
been dismissive, even derisive.” (It’s hard to know where to begin
with that one.)
He told the Turkish Parliament that “the United States is still
working through some of our own darker periods in our history.”
He apologized to Central and South America for the United States
having “at times been disengaged and…having sought to dictate on our
terms.”
In Cairo, he explained American actions after 9/11 by saying, “The
fear and anger that it provoked was understandable, but in some
cases, it led us to act contrary to our ideals,” and said tensions
between the U.S. and Muslim world were due in part to “a cold war in
which Muslim-majority countries were often treated as proxies
without regard to their own aspirations.”
An illegally leaked diplomatic cable from Japan to the U.S. even
seems to suggest President Obama wanted to visit Hiroshima to
apologize for the Atomic bombing during War War II, until Japan
nixed the idea.
For all this apologizing the president was rewarded with a Nobel
Peace Prize, but his actions weakened the United States
diplomatically and made America less secure.
As damaging as President Obama’s compulsion to apologize has been,
however, it was not until last week that we saw its true potential
to put American lives and military objectives at risk. By
apologizing unnecessarily to Afghan President Hamid Karzai for the
accidental burning by U.S. forces of Korans which had been
confiscated from imprisoned extremists, the president made the
situation in Afghanistan even worse.
Apparently the prisoners were writing in the books -- which had been
provided by the U.S. military -- using them as a means to pass
extremist messages among each other. When military personnel
discovered this, they confiscated the books and, in an unfortunate
mistake, another service member who apparently was unaware of their
origin sent them to the trash facility outside Bagram Air Base,
where they were spotted during the incineration process by local
Afghans.
The violence that has erupted in Afghanistan in response to this
unintentional disposal has been completely disproportionate. Riots
and protests across the country have resulted in more than 30 people
killed and hundreds injured. At least four Americans have died in
targeted attacks since the crisis began. In one incident, an Afghan
official apparently murdered his counterparts in the U.S. military,
inside a base.
Instead of the United States treating this issue as it was—an
accident, not reflective of any American policy or attitude—our
leaders behaved as though the protests were based on a legitimate
grievance. Afghanistan received apologies from “Afghanistan
commander Gen. John Allen, the White House, NATO's International
Security Assistance Force and other Pentagon officials,” as Fox News
reported.
The United States apologized for this accidental disposal even
though the military intentionally burned a significant number of
bibles in 2009 that had been sent unsolicited from an American
church, on the fear that “if they did get out, it could be perceived
by Afghans that the U.S. government or the U.S. military was trying
to convert Muslim.” Clearly there’s no endemic lack of sensitivity
in the military leadership.
Yet finally, on Thursday, President Obama apparently could resist no
longer. He wrote President Karzai a letter in which he expressed his
“deep regret,” offered his “sincere apologies,” and promised to
“take appropriate steps to avoid any recurrence, to include holding
accountable those responsible.”
Tens of thousands of American men and women are in Afghanistan
fighting to maintain security and prop up President Karzai’s
government. Thousands of American and coalition troops have died.
Four have been killed as a result of the protests. And President
Obama is promising to “hold accountable those responsible” for the
accidental burning of a few books prisoners were themselves
desecrating to pass messages?!
The president’s letter is outrageous, and he first owes an apology
to the men and women in uniform for his failure as
Commander-in-Chief to defend their honor. What’s worse, he may have
made their jobs even more dangerous. By apologizing he inflamed the
sense that Afghans had been wronged and gave anti-American forces
there the message that their violent, senseless protests were
achieving something. It might come as a surprise to the president,
but not all of his apologies win people over. Most of the time, they
just make America look weak.
There’s no doubt that President Obama has a lot to apologize for.
But before he continues diminishing the United States on the world
stage, he should start by apologizing to the American people.
For what, all these wars?
by Patrick J. Buchanan
Posted 02/28/2012
"I wish to express my deep regret for the reported incident. ... I
extend to you and the Afghan people my sincere apologies."
As President Obama sent this letter of apology to Hamid Karzai for
the burning by U.S. troops of Qurans that were used to smuggle notes
between Afghan prisoners, two U.S. soldiers were murdered in
reprisal.
Saturday, a U.S. colonel and a major working in the Interior
Ministry were shot dead by an Afghan protesting the desecration of
the Islamic holy book. All U.S. officers have been pulled out of the
ministries in Kabul.
Sunday, seven U.S. troops on base were wounded by a grenade.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. John Allen, commander in
Afghanistan, have also offered their apologies.
Remarkable. After fighting for 10 years, investing $500 billion, and
losing nearly 2,000 dead and many more wounded and maimed to save
Afghanistan from a Taliban future, America is issuing apologies to
the regime and people we are fighting and dying to defend?
And how has Obama's apology been received?
Abdul Sattar Khawasi, a member of Parliament, stood with 20 other
members to declare, "Americans are invaders, and jihad against
Americans is an obligation." He urged mullahs to "urge the people
... to wage war against Americans."
In what other war would we have tolerated this from an elected
leader of a government we had sent an army of 100,000 to protect?
Undeniably, the soldiers who burned the Qurans blundered. Yet there
is no evidence that it was malicious. If vandals desecrate a Bible
in America, burning and replacing the holy book would not be
regarded a valid excuse for mayhem and murder.
If Afghans cannot understand this mistake and have no other way to
express their rage than rioting and ranting, "Death to America!"
what kind of raw material are we working with in building a
Western-style democracy in any foreseeable century?
Two pertinent questions need to be put.
While keeping Afghanistan free of the Taliban is a desirable goal,
what vital U.S. interest would be imperiled should the Taliban take
over again, now that al-Qaida is largely gone?
What price in blood and billions should we expend on what appears a
dubious enterprise at best -- creating a pro-American democracy in a
country that seems mired in some distant century?
It is time we took inventory of all of these wars we have fought
since the Army of Desert Storm restored the emir of Kuwait to his
throne.
That 1991 war was seen as a triumph of American arms and a model of
the global cooperation to come in establishing the New World Order
of George H.W. Bush.
But the savage sanctions we imposed on a defeated Iraq and the
planting of U.S. bases on Saudi soil that is home to Mecca was a
casus belli for Osama bin Laden. Ten years after the triumph of Bush
I, he brought down the twin towers.
This atrocity caused us to plunge into Afghanistan to dump over the
Taliban and eradicate or expel al-Qaida. We succeeded, then decided
to stay on and build a nation. After 10 years, what have we
accomplished to justify the immense price we have paid?
In 2003, George W. Bush, seeking to complete the work begun by his
father, invaded Iraq. But Saddam had no role in 9/11 and was no
threat to America. Iraq did not even have weapons of mass
destruction.
Today, after eight years of war, 4,500 dead, 35,000 wounded and a
trillion dollars sunk, the 15,000 Americans we left behind are
largely holed up in the Green Zone, as Iraq descends into sectarian,
civil and ethnic war.
What did it all profit us?
How goes Libya after the U.S.-NATO intervention to dethrone Moammar
Gadhafi?
Here is the Rand Corp.'s Frederic Wehrey:
"A weak transitional government confronts armed militias. ...
Defiant young men with heavy weapons control Libya's airports,
harbors and oil installations. Tribes and smugglers rule desert
areas south of the capital. Clashes among various militias for turf
and political power rage. ...
"Libya teeters dangerously on the brink."
Now we see a push for intervention in Syria from Sens. John McCain,
Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman. That would make us allies of
al-Qaida, the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, all of which also seek
the fall of Bashar al-Assad and the rise of a Sunni regime in
Damascus.
But it is the clamor for a U.S. war on Iran that grows loudest.
But why, when the U.S. intelligence community still claims to have
no hard evidence Iran has even decided to build a bomb?
Since Ronald Reagan went home, the United States has attacked or
invaded Panama, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Serbia, Afghanistan,
Iraq again, and Libya.
How have Americans benefited from all this war? How have the Chinese
suffered these 20 years by not having been in on the action?
Patrick J. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author
of Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost
Its Empire and the West Lost the World, The Death of the West, The
Great Betrayal, A Republic, Not an Empire,Where the Right Went
Wrong, and most recently Suicide of a Superpower: Will America
Survive to 2025?
Thursdays with John Hayward:
It’s not surprising how often Big Government treats its people like
children, but it’s a bit depressing that the public has grown so
accustomed to it.
Dependency is essentially childish. Independence and responsibility
are fundamental components of both liberty and adulthood. A nation
of welfare and bailouts is a nation in which none of the children
are permitted to fall down and hurt themselves. You can’t have
entrepreneurship without risk, and you can’t have risk without
consequences. Calculated risk is the business of adults.
The government treats us like children in matters large and small.
From federal agents pronouncing mothers unfit to pack bag lunches
for their kids, to the State declaring its contraceptive wisdom has
supremacy over Catholic teachings, it’s all about putting citizens
in a playpen with very high walls, and telling them to behave
themselves. Meanwhile, the President frightens his
child-constituents into line with ghost stories about the dangers of
freedom, and offers excuses for his failures that only sound
reasonable in the ears of the very young.
One thing can be said with certainty about childhood: it ends. The
realities we have been persuaded to ignore are catching up with us.
Confronted with a chart that showed our national debt skyrocketing
to ludicrous heights by 2075, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner
snorted that it might as well have included projections for the year
3000. House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan replied that there
was no point in taking things any further, because “the economy,
according to the CBO, shuts down in 2027 on this path.”
And, that’s what
it sounds like when an adult sternly reprimands a snot-nosed child.
We will not survive another four years of “leadership” by snot-nosed
children, suited only for the government of infants.
Friday with Erick Erickson:
Last week The New York Times reported
that the federal social safety net is now used to keep the middle
class in the middle class much more so than it is used to lift the
poor out of poverty. This is causing a lot of resentment among the
middle class that still believes its members can work hard and
elevate themselves into the upper levels of society. But they really
cannot any more.
Were a person to start taking the risks necessary to elevate them
and their family out of the middle class, they would have to cut the
strings to the safety net under them, which in turn puts them at a
competitive disadvantage in the short term to their neighbors. Too
few are willing to take that risk.
Compound that with the most horrifying fact you will read today. In
the United States today, a single parent family with income of
$14,500.00 actually has more disposable income than a family earning
$60,000.00 a year. Yes, you read that correctly.
Now are you ready for your head to explode? "If the family provider
works only one week a month at minimum wage, he or she makes 92
percent as much as a provider grossing $60,000 a year." When the
government is taxing the middle class to subsidize the middle class
and the poor have more disposable income than the middle class,
we're doing something wrong. We are failing.
On top of that, now the Nanny State does not just want to subsidize
us, they also want to inspect our children’s lunches and convey a
sense to our kids that Uncle Sam, not mom and dad, will take care of
them. And if you want the really dirty little secret, the fact is
this is a bipartisan problem. No one on the left has the fortitude
to take on the problem without further subsidies. Too few on the
right are willing to tackle the subject. The votes are not there in
Congress to do what must be done.
But we must cut the social safety net out from the middle class and,
in doing so, make it far simpler for the middle class to grow. We
must return to an America where the small businessman can become a
big businessman. Today, it is virtually impossible for that to
happen.
Overreach: Obamacare vs. the Constitution
By Charles Krauthammer
Give him points for cleverness. President Obama’s birth control
“accommodation” was as politically successful as it was morally
meaningless. It was nothing but an accounting trick that still
forces Catholic (and other religious) institutions to provide
medical insurance that guarantees free birth control, tubal ligation
and morning-after abortifacients — all of which violate church
doctrine on the sanctity of life.
The trick is that these birth control/abortion services will
supposedly be provided independently and free of charge by the
religious institution’s insurance company. But this changes none of
the moral calculus. Holy Cross Hospital, for example, is still
required by law to engage an insurance company that is required by
law to provide these doctrinally proscribed services to all Holy
Cross employees.
Nonetheless, the accounting device worked politically. It took only
a handful of compliant Catholic groups — Obamacare cheerleaders
dying to return to the fold — to hail the alleged compromise and
hand Obama a major political victory.
Before, Obama’s coalition had been split. His birth control mandate
was fiercely opposed by such stalwart friends as former Virginia
governor Tim Kaine and pastor Rick Warren (Obama’s choice to give
the invocation at his inauguration), who declared he would rather go
to jail than abide by the regulation. After the “accommodation,” it
was the (mostly) Catholic opposition that fractured. The mainstream
media then bought the compromise as substantive, and the issue was
defused.
A brilliant sleight of hand. But let’s for a moment accept the
president on his own terms. Let’s accept his contention that this
“accommodation” is a real shift of responsibility to the insurer.
Has anyone considered the import of this new mandate? The president
of the United States has just ordered private companies to give away
for free a service that his own health and human services secretary
has repeatedly called a major financial burden.
On what authority? Where does it say that the president can
unilaterally order a private company to provide an allegedly
free-standing service at no cost to certain select beneficiaries?
This is government by presidential fiat. In Venezuela, that’s done
all the time. Perhaps we should call Obama’s “accommodation”
Presidential Decree No. 1.
Consider the constitutional wreckage left by Obamacare:
First, the assault on the free exercise of religion. Only churches
themselves are left alone. Beyond the churchyard gate, religious
autonomy disappears. Every other religious institution must bow to
the state because, by this administration’s regulatory definition,
church schools, hospitals and charities are not “religious” and thus
have no right to the free exercise of religion — no protection from
being forced into doctrinal violations commanded by the state.
Second, the assault on free enterprise. To solve his own political
problem, the president presumes to order a private company to enter
into a contract for the provision of certain services — all of which
must be without charge. And yet, this breathtaking arrogation of
power is simply the logical extension of Washington’s takeover of
the private system of medical care — a system Obama farcically
pretends to be maintaining.
Under Obamacare, the state treats private insurers the way it does
government-regulated monopolies and utilities. It determines
everything of importance. Insurers, by definition, set premiums
according to risk. Not anymore. The risk ratios (for age, gender,
smoking, etc.) are decreed by Washington. This is nationalization in
all but name. The insurer is turned into a middleman, subject to
state control — and presidential whim.
Third, the assault on individual autonomy. Every citizen without
insurance is ordered to buy it, again under penalty of law. This
so-called individual mandate is now before the Supreme Court —
because never before has the already hypertrophied Commerce Clause
been used to compel a citizen to enter into a private contract with
a private company by mere fact of his existence.
This constitutional trifecta — the state invading the autonomy of
religious institutions, private companies and the individual citizen
— should not surprise. It is what happens when the state takes over
one-sixth of the economy.
In 2010, when all this lay hazily in the future, the sheer arrogance
of Obamacare energized a popular resistance powerful enough to
deliver an electoral shellacking to Obama. Yet just two years later,
as the consequences of that overreach materialize before our eyes,
the issue is fading. This constitutes a huge failing of the
opposition party whose responsibility it is to make the opposition
argument.
Every presidential challenger says that he will repeal Obamacare on
Day One. Well, yes. But is any of them making the case for why?
"Transformers"
The Catholic church learns the true meaning of Obama's
'transformative' presidency.
by Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal
Pope John Paul II, surveying from his seat in the eternal hereafter
the battle between the American Catholic Church and the Obama
administration over mandated contraception services, must be
permitting himself a sad smile. The pope knew more than most about
the innate tensions between the state and its citizens.
The Obamaites will object that it is unfair to liken their
government to the Communist Party of Poland. That is not the point.
What the former Karol Wojtyla knew is that any state will claim
benevolence on behalf of doing whatever it thinks it needs to do in
pursuit of its goals.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney invoked the good in defense
of the Obama law's universal reach: "The administration decided—the
president agrees with this decision—that we need to provide these
services that have enormous health benefits for American women and
that the exemption that we carved out is appropriate."
The American Catholic Church is now being handed a lesson in the
hierarchy of raw political authority. One hopes they and their
supporters will recognize that they have not been singled out. The
federal government's forcings routinely touch other groups in this
country—schools, doctors, farmers, businesses. The church's fight is
not the whole or the end of it.
Since he appeared, no other word has been invoked more often to
describe Barack Obama's purposes than "transformative." Last year,
Mr. Obama began to be criticized by some of his supporters for being
insufficiently transformative while holding the powers of the
presidency—this despite passing the biggest social entitlement since
1965, an $800 billion stimulus bill, raising federal spending to 24%
of GDP and passing the Dodd-Frank restructuring of the U.S.
financial industry. Naturally an interviewer this week asked Mr.
Obama why he hadn't been more "transformative." The president
replied that he deserved a second term, because "we're not done." In
term two, it will be Uncle Sam, Transformer.
For many years, Catholic Charities U.S.A. has taken federal money to
enlarge its budget. The people who run the Catholic Church, though
not everyone in the pews, thought this was a good bargain. Here is
the head of Catholic Charities, in 1997, describing the
relationship: "We have been partners with government to help
government do what it wants to do and what we believe it should do."
This 1997 statement was in response to criticism leveled at Catholic
Charities back then by freshman U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of
Pennsylvania, who attacked the organization for its opposition to
welfare-reform legislation. Mr. Santorum said welfare hurt rather
than helped poor families.
Over decades, this deal with the federal government didn't change,
even as Catholic bishops closed churches and parochial schools
across the country for lack of funds. Here is Sr. Carol Keehan's
statement when the House in 2009 passed the Obama health-care bill
with only one Republican aye vote: "The Catholic Health Association
applauds the U.S. House of Representatives and President Obama for
enacting health care legislation that will bring security and health
to millions of American families." Let the record show that the
Catholic bishops opposed the legislation, fearing a conflict with
the church's beliefs.
So here we are, with the government demanding that the church hold
up its end of a Faustian bargain that was supposed to permit it to
perform limitless acts of virtue. Instead, what the government
believes the deal is about, more than anything else, is compliance.
Politically bloodless liberals would respond that, net-net,
government forcings do much social good despite breaking a few eggs,
such as the Catholic Church's First Amendment sensibilities. That is
one view. But the depth of anger among Catholics over this suggests
they recognize more is at stake here than political results. They
are right. The question raised by the Catholic Church's battle with
ObamaCare is whether anyone can remain free of a U.S. government
determined to do what it wants to do, at whatever cost.
Older Americans have sought for years to drop out of Medicare and
contract for their own health insurance. They cannot without
forfeiting their Social Security payments. They effectively are
locked in. Nor can the poor escape Medicaid, even as the care it
gives them degrades. Farmers, ranchers and loggers struggled for
years to protect their livelihoods beneath uncompromising
interpretations of federal environmental laws. They, too, had to
comply. University athletic programs were ground up by the U.S.
Education Department's rote, forced gender balancing of every sport
offered.
With the transformers, it never stops. In September, the Obama Labor
Department proposed rules to govern what work children can do on
farms. After an outcry from rural communities over the realities of
farm traditions, the department is now reconsidering a "parental
exemption." Good luck to the farmers.
The Catholic Church has stumbled into the central battle of the 2012
presidential campaign: What are the limits to Barack Obama's
transformative presidency? The Catholic left has just learned one
answer: When Mr. Obama says, "Everyone plays by the same set of
rules," it means they conform to his rules. What else could it mean?
Anyone who signs up for more of this deal by assuming that it will
never force them to fall into line is getting what they deserve.
Write to henninger@wsj.com
and
don't ever say you weren't warned.
"From the "Now, I've seen everything" department:"
A majority of Americans remain opposed to almost all
abortions despite the mainstream media’s pro-choice bias in
its coverage of the subject.
That’s the thrust of an opinion piece by New York Times columnist
Ross Douthat written amid the controversy over the Susan G. Komen
for the Cure foundation’s decision — later rescinded — to defund
Planned Parenthood.
In a column headlined “The Media’s Abortion Blinders,” Douthat
points out that in a recent poll, 58 percent of Americans stated
that abortion should either be “illegal in all circumstances” or
“legal in only a few circumstances.”
He also states that the first Gallup poll to show a pro-life
majority was conducted back in May 2009.
“But if you followed the media frenzy” surrounding the Komen
foundation’s move, “you would think all these millions of
anti-abortion Americans simply do not exist,” Douthat writes.
“Conservative complaints about media bias are sometimes overdrawn.
But on the abortion issue, the press’s prejudices are often
absolute, its biases blatant and its blinders impenetrable.
“Millions of Americans — including, yes, millions of American women
— do oppose Planned Parenthood. They oppose the 300,000-plus
abortions it performs every year, and they oppose its tireless
opposition to even modest limits on abortion.”
Douthat notes that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg pledged
$250,000 to Planned Parenthood following the Komen foundation’s
decision to defund — which it has now rescinded.
“That’s obviously his right,” Douthat observes. “But reporters have
different obligations. Even if some forms of partiality are
inevitable, journalists betray their calling when they simply ignore
self-evident truths about a story.”
(One can only hope Douthat is still gainfully
employed after such blasphemy! ...)
A 23-year-old Saudi writer, Hamza Kashgari, faces
charges of blasphemy after his candid "tweets" about Muhammad
by David Keyes, February 9
Saudi journalist Hamza Kashgari was detained in Malaysia on
Wednesday night and is likely to be extradited soon to Saudi Arabia,
where he will be tried for blaspheming religion. Kashgari, 23, had
fled the kingdom Monday after he received thousands of death
threats. His crime? He posted on Twitter a series of mock
conversations between himself and the Islamic prophet Muhammad.
“On your birthday I find you in front of me wherever I go,” he wrote
in one tweet. “I love many things about you and hate others, and
there are many things about you I don’t understand.”
Another reads: “No Saudi women will go to hell, because it’s
impossible to go there twice.”
The tweets came to light last week around a celebration of
Muhammad’s birthday, and Kashgari’s ordeal began. Hours before he
was detained, Kashgari spoke to me by phone from the house in which
he was hiding. “I was with sitting with my friends and one of them
checked Twitter on his mobile phone,” he said. “Suddenly there were
thousands of tweets of people calling to kill me because they said
I’m against religion.”
Kashgari posted an apology tweet: “I deleted my previous tweets
because after I consulted with a few brothers, I realized that they
may have been offensive to the Prophet (pbuh) and I don’t want
anyone to misunderstand,” he wrote. But the damage was done. As an
electronic lynch mob formed, with users posting to a Twitter hashtag
that translates as “Hamza Kashgari the dog,” the regime called for
his arrest and trial.
Friends advised him to leave Saudi Arabia immediately. “I never
expected this. It was a huge surprise. My friends are writers and
bloggers and now their lives are in danger too,” he told me. “They
fear what will happen to them. The government is trying to scare
them and show that what is happening to me can happen to them sooner
or later.”
Kashgari noted with sadness that many young Saudis are leaving their
country in hopes of escaping the government's repressive policies.
“It’s not logical that, if someone disagrees with the Saudi
government, that he should be forced to leave the country. Many of
those who have been arrested are fighting for simple rights that
everyone should have — freedom of thought, expression, speech and
religion.”
When we spoke Wednesday, Kashgari asked that I not reveal where he
was hiding or his plan of escape. Now that he has been detained, his
friends hope publicity will build pressure on the Malaysian
government not to extradite Kashgari to Saudi Arabia. Karpal Singh,
a well-known Malaysian lawyer and member of parliament, is being
encouraged to take Kashgari’s case. Former Canadian justice minister
Irwin Cotler has offered to serve as Kashgari’s international legal
counsel. Cotler has served as legal counsel to such famous
dissidents as Nelson Mandela, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Natan Sharansky
and Maikel Nabil. Many have credited him with creating the
international pressure that led to their release.
Kashgari encouraged Western nations to support human rights in his
country and raise the names of activists under threat. “Pressure
alone won’t be enough, but at least it will help people feel that
they are not alone,” he said.
The young writer surmised that the threats against him were, in
part, a result of the tens of millions of dollars the Saudi king
allotted to the religious police last spring. Many Saudi dissidents
have noted increased repression in the past few months and are
terrified of the ascent of Crown Prince Naif, who has served as
interior minister for decades.
The Saudi ambassador to the United Nations, Abdallah Y. Al-Mouallimi,
told a packed audience at New York University this week that Saudi
Arabia was a “land of opportunity” where there was no oppression of
dissidents. I confronted the ambassador with lists of liberals,
women and dissidents that had been arrested, beheaded and whipped.
When questioned about Kashgari, Mouallimi replied that the
journalist “has gone beyond the limits of what is acceptable in
society.” His tweets were “not acceptable in a country like Saudi
Arabia. This can never be acceptable,” the ambassador added.
“I don’t think I’ll ever be able to return to my homeland,” Kashgari
told me hours before he was detained. Now, unfortunately, it looks
as if he may returned against his will. If that happens, his fate is
all but certain as a blasphemer’s guilt is preordained in the
theocratic dictatorship of Saudi Arabia.
Predictably, there hasn't been a
peep of protest out of Obama's Washington. We make a lot of noise
about other human rights violations .. but none apparently,
when it involves the Saudis, the same nation whose billions upon
billions of American oil dollars have financed terrorist training
camps for years, the same nation to whose king President Obama
bowed in a disgusting and unprecedented display of subservience
...
Pray, tell me what has happened to the America
a lot of us remember? "It's the oil" is no longer even a bad
rationale; there is more oil in North America than there is in the
Middle East but the Obama administration continues to thwart those who want to
develop it.
What the hell is going on?
The Gospel according to Obama
By Charles Krauthammer, Published: February 9
At the National Prayer Breakfast last week, seeking
theological underpinning for his drive to raise taxes on the rich,
President Obama invoked the highest possible authority. His policy,
he testified “as a Christian,” “coincides with Jesus’s teaching that
‘for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.’”
Now, I’m no theologian, but I’m fairly certain that neither Jesus
nor his rabbinic forebears, when speaking of giving, meant some
obligation to the state. You tithe the priest, not the tax man.
The Judeo-Christian tradition commands personal generosity as
represented, for example, by the biblical injunction against
retrieving any sheaf left behind while harvesting one’s own field.
That is for the gleaners — “the poor and the alien” (Leviticus
19:10). Like Ruth in the field of Boaz. As far as I can tell, that
charitable transaction involved no mediation by the IRS.
But no matter. Let’s assume that Obama has biblical authority for
hiking the marginal tax rate exactly 4.6 points for couples making
more than $250,000 (depending, of course, on the prevailing
shekel-to-dollar exchange rate). Let’s stipulate that Obama’s
prayer-breakfast invocation of religion as vindicating his politics
was not, God forbid, crass, hypocritical, self-serving
electioneering, but a sincere expression of a social-gospel
Christianity that sees good works as central to the very concept of
religiosity.
Fine. But this Gospel according to Obama has a rival — the newly
revealed Gospel according to Sebelius, over which has erupted quite
a contretemps. By some peculiar logic, it falls to the health and
human services secretary to promulgate the definition of “religious”
— for the purposes, for example, of exempting religious institutions
from certain regulatory dictates.
Such exemptions are granted in grudging recognition that, whereas
the rest of civil society may be broken to the will of the state’s
regulators, our quaint Constitution grants special autonomy to
religious institutions.
Accordingly, it would be a mockery of the Free Exercise Clause of
the First Amendment if, for example, the Catholic Church were
required by law to freely provide such “health care services” (in
secularist parlance) as contraception, sterilization and
pharmacological abortion — to which Catholicism is doctrinally
opposed as a grave contravention of its teachings about the sanctity
of life.
Ah. But there would be no such Free Exercise violation if the
institutions so mandated are deemed, by regulatory fiat, not
religious.
And thus, the word came forth from Sebelius decreeing the exact
criteria required (a) to meet her definition of “religious” and thus
(b) to qualify for a modicum of independence from newly enacted
state control of American health care, under which the
aforementioned Sebelius and her phalanx of experts determine
everything — from who is to be covered, to which treatments are to
be guaranteed free of charge.
Criterion 1: A “religious institution” must have “the inculcation of
religious values as its purpose.” But that’s not the purpose of
Catholic charities; it’s to give succor to the poor. That’s not the
purpose of Catholic hospitals; it’s to give succor to the sick.
Therefore, they don’t qualify as “religious” — and therefore can be
required, among other things, to provide free morning-after
abortifacients.
Criterion 2: Any exempt institution must be one that “primarily
employs” and “primarily serves persons who share its religious
tenets.” Catholic soup kitchens do not demand religious IDs from
either the hungry they feed or the custodians they employ. Catholic
charities and hospitals — even Catholic schools — do not turn away
Hindu or Jew.
Their vocation is universal, precisely the kind of universal
love-thy-neighbor vocation that is the very definition of
religiosity as celebrated by the Gospel of Obama. Yet according to
the Gospel of Sebelius, these very same Catholic institutions are
not religious at all — under the secularist assumption that religion
is what happens on Sunday under some Gothic spire, while good works
are “social services” properly rendered up unto Caesar.
This all would be merely the story of contradictory theologies,
except for this: Sebelius is Obama’s appointee. She works for him.
These regulations were his call. Obama authored both gospels.
Therefore: To flatter his faith-breakfast guests and justify his tax
policies, Obama declares good works to be the essence of
religiosity. Yet he turns around and, through Sebelius, tells the
faithful who engage in good works that what they’re doing is not
religion at all. You want to do religion? Get thee to a nunnery. You
want shelter from the power of the state? Get out of your soup
kitchen and back to your pews. Outside, Leviathan rules.
The contradiction is glaring, the hypocrisy breathtaking. But that’s
not why Obama offered a hasty compromise on Friday. It’s because the
firestorm of protest was becoming a threat to his reelection. Sure,
health care, good works and religion are important. But reelection
is divine.
To Stop the Multiplication of the Unfit
by Michelle Malkin
Posted 02/10/2012
If you aren't creeped out by the No Birth Control Left Behind
rhetoric of the White House and Planned Parenthood, you aren't
listening closely enough. The anesthetic of progressive benevolence
always dulls the senses. Wake up.
When a bunch of wealthy white women and elite Washington bureaucrats
defend the trampling of religious liberties in the name of
"increased access" to "reproductive services" for "poor" women, the
ghost of Margaret Sanger is cackling.
As she wrote in her autobiography, Sanger founded Planned Parenthood
in 1916 "to stop the multiplication of the unfit." This, she
boasted, would be "the most important and greatest step towards race
betterment." While she oversaw the mass murder of black babies,
Sanger cynically recruited minority activists to front her death
racket. She conspired with eugenics financier and businessman
Clarence Gamble to "hire three or four colored ministers, preferably
with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities" to
sell their genocidal policies as community health and welfare
services.
Outright murder wouldn't sell. But wrapping it under the egalitarian
cloak of "women's health" -- and adorning it with the moral
authority of black churches -- would. Sanger and Gamble called their
deadly campaign "The Negro Project."
In other writings, historian Mike Perry found, Sanger attacked
programs that provided "medical and nursing facilities to slum
mothers" because they "facilitate the function of maternity" when
"the absolute necessity is to discourage it." In an essay included
in her writing collection held by the Library of Congress, Sanger
urged her abortion clinic colleagues to "breed a race of
thoroughbreds." Nationwide "birth control bureaus" would propagate
the proper "science of breeding" to stop impoverished, non-white
women from "breeding like weeds."
Speaking with CBS journalist Mike Wallace in 1957, long after her
racist views had supposedly mellowed, Sanger again revealed her true
colors: "I think the greatest sin in the world is bringing children
into the world -- that have disease from their parents, that have no
chance in the world to be a human being practically. Delinquents,
prisoners, all sorts of things just marked when they're born. That
to me is the greatest sin -- that people can -- can commit."
Sanger also elaborated on her anti-Catholic animus, telling one of
Wallace's reporters that New York Catholics had no right to protest
the use of their tax dollars for birth city birth-control programs:
"(I)t's not only wrong, it should be made illegal for any religious
group to prohibit dissemination of birth control -- even among its
own members." When Wallace pressed her ("In other words, you would
like to see the government legislate religious beliefs in a certain
sense?"), Sanger laughed nervously and disavowed the remarks.
Fast forward: Five decades and 16 million aborted black babies
later, Planned Parenthood's insidious agenda has migrated from
inner-city "birth control bureaus" to public school-based health
clinics to the White House -- forcibly funded with taxpayer dollars
just as Sanger championed.
Several undercover stings by Live Action, pro-life documentarians,
have exposed Planned Parenthood staff accepting donations over the
years from callers posing as eugenics cheerleaders who wanted to
earmark their contributions for the cause of aborting minority
babies. "We can definitely designate it for an African-American," a
Tulsa, Okla., Planned Parenthood employee eagerly promised.
What has cheap, easy and unmonitored "choice" for poor women in
inner cities wrought? Nightmares like the Philadelphia Horror, where
serial baby-killer Dr. Kermit Gosnell and his abortion clinic death
squad oversaw the systematic execution of hundreds of healthy,
living, breathing, squirming, viable black and Hispanic babies over
40 decades -- along with several minority mothers who may have lost
their lives in his grimy birth control bureau.
City and state authorities looked the other way while jars of baby
parts and reports of botched abortions and infanticides piled up.
Beltway Democrats who now bray about their concern for "women's
health" were silent about the Gosnell massacre and countless others
like it in America's ghettos. Why?
The Obama administration is crawling with the modern-day heirs of
the eugenics movement, from Planned Parenthood golden girl Kathleen
Sebelius at the Department of Health and Human Services to the
president's prestigious science czar John Holdren -- an outspoken
proponent of forced abortions and mass sterilizations and a
self-proclaimed protege of eugenics guru Harrison Brown, whom he
credits with inspiring him to become a scientist.
Brown envisioned a government regime in which the "number of
abortions and artificial inseminations permitted in a given year
would be determined completely by the difference between the number
of deaths and the number of births in the year previous." He urged
readers to "reconcile ourselves to the fact that artificial means
must be applied to limit birth rates." He likened the global
population to a "pulsating mass of maggots."
Listen carefully as this White House dresses its ObamaCare abortion
mandate in the white lab coat of "reproductive services" for all.
The language of "access to birth control" is the duplicitous code of
Sanger's ideological grim reapers.
Thursdays with John Hayward 02.02.12
The Congressional Budget Office released its annual Budget and
Economic Outlook this week. Last year's was a tragedy, but the new
one is a horror story. The crushing burden of government debt and
persistent unemployment — which, contrary to the carefully massaged
statistics released for public consumption, has really been in
double digits for years, when the collapsing work force is taken
into account — will conspire with skyrocketing taxes after the
expiration of the Bush tax rates, and leave us with only 1.1 percent
projected GDP growth next year.
The government is still spending nearly a quarter of the total U.S.
economy every year, and trillion dollar deficits have become the new
normal. In fact, during only one year in the CBO's 10-year
projection do we get below a $1 trillion deficit, and it's not by
much. The government will be spending over $6 trillion a year by
2022. And none of that accounts for the ticking time bomb of
unfunded entitlement liabilities, due to Social Security and
Medicare, which Washington deals with by officially ignoring them.
Macro-economics and the discussion of public debt often involve
numbers so huge that it makes our eyes water. Here are some simple
numbers to ponder: the health of the private sector calls for growth
of about three percent, to drive job creation commensurate with
population increase. Financing our government without massive
deficits would take more like five percent, and actually resolving
the debt crisis would demand seven percent growth or more, sustained
over many years. Our government-controlled economy is completely
incapable of reaching any of those growth levels. There is no way to
make this equation work without making the government dramatically
smaller.
America should carefully ponder those difficult growth targets
before entertaining the notion of another four years under the
people who got us to the "new normal" of one percent growth. They're
talking about buying a shiny new saddle and spurs for a work horse
that's about to drop dead in its tracks.
Thomas Sowell (born June 30, 1930) is an American
economist, social theorist, political philosopher, and author. A
National Humanities Medal winner, he advocates laissez-faire
economics and writes from a libertarian perspective. He is currently
a Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the
Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Sowell was born in North
Carolina, but grew up in Harlem, New York City. He dropped out of
high school, and served in the United States Marine Corps during the
Korean War. He had received a bachelor's degree from Harvard
University in 1958 and a master's degree from Columbia University in
1959. In 1968, he earned his doctorate degree in economics from the
University of Chicago. Dr. Sowell has served on the faculties of
several universities, including Cornell and University of
California, Los Angeles, and worked for "think tanks" such as the
Urban Institute. Since 1980 he has worked at the Hoover Institution.
He is the author of more than 30 books.
The following is the latest from Dr. Sowell, and in the winter of
his life, he's still "calling 'em exactly as he sees 'em."
"The current Occupy Wall Street movement is the best illustration to
date of what President Barack Obama's America looks like. It is an
America where the lawless, unaccomplished, ignorant and incompetent
rule. It is an America where those who have sacrificed nothing
pillage and destroy the lives of those who have sacrificed greatly.
"It is an America where history is rewritten to honor dictators,
murderers and thieves. It is an America where violence, racism,
hatred, class warfare and murder are all promoted as acceptable
means of overturning the American civil society.
"It is an America where humans have been degraded to the level of
animals: defecating in public, having sex in public, devoid of basic
hygiene. It is an America where the basic tenets of a civil society,
including faith, family, a free press and individual rights, have
been rejected. It is an America where our founding documents have
been shredded and, with them, every person's guaranteed liberties.
"It is an America where, ultimately, great suffering will come to
the American people, but the rulers like Obama, Michelle Obama,
Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, Jesse
Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, liberal college professors, union bosses
and other loyal liberal/Communist Party members will live in opulent
splendor.
"It is the America that Obama and the Democratic Party have created
with the willing assistance of the American media, Hollywood,
unions, universities, the Communist Party of America, the Black
Panthers and numerous anti-American foreign entities. "Barack Obama
has brought more destruction upon this country in four years than
any other event in the history of our nation, but it is just the
beginning of what he and his comrades are capable of.
"The Occupy Wall Street movement is just another step in their plan
for the annihilation of America. "Socialism, in general, has a
record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore
or evade it.""
The GOP’s suicide march
By Charles Krauthammer, Published: January 19
“Are you better off today than you were $4 trillion ago?”
— former presidential candidate Rick Perry
It’s the campaign line of the year, and while the author won’t be
carrying it into the general election, the eventual nominee will.
The charge is straightforward: President Obama’s reckless spending
has dangerously increased the national debt while leaving
unemployment high and the economy stagnant. Concurrently, he has
vastly increased the scope and reach of government with new
entitlements and oppressive regulation, with higher taxes to come
(to offset the unprecedented spending).
In 2010, that narrative carried the Republicans to historic
electoral success. Through most of 2011, it dominated Washington
discourse. The air was filled with debt talk: ceilings,
supercommittees, Simpson-Bowles.
What’s the incumbent to do? He admits current conditions are bad. He
knows that his major legislative initiatives — Obamacare, the
near-trillion-dollar stimulus, (the rejected) cap-and-trade — are
unpopular. If you can’t run on stewardship or policy, how do you win
reelection?
Create an entirely new narrative. Push an entirely new issue. Change
the subject from your record and your ideology, from massive debt
and overreaching government, to fairness and inequality. Make the
election a referendum on which party really cares about you, which
party will stand up to the greedy rich who have pillaged the 99
percent and robbed the middle class of hope.
This charge, too, is straightforward: The Republicans serve as the
protectors and enablers of the plutocrats, the exploiters who have
profited while America suffers. They put party over nation, fat cat
donors over people, political power over everything.
It’s all rather uncomplicated, capturing nicely the Manichaean core
of the Occupy movement — blame the rich, then soak them. But the
real beauty of this strategy is its adaptability. While its first
target was the do-nothing, protect-the-rich Congress, it is
perfectly tailored to fit the liabilities of Republican front-runner
Mitt Romney — plutocrat, capitalist, 1 percenter.
Obama rolled out this class-war counter-narrative in his Dec. 6
“Teddy Roosevelt” speech and hasn’t governed a day since. Every
action, every proposal, every “we can’t wait” circumvention of the
Constitution — such as recess appointments when the Senate is not in
recess — is designed to fit this reelection narrative.
Hence: Where does Obama ostentatiously introduce the
recess-appointed head of the new Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau? At a rally in swing-state Ohio, a stage prop for the
president to declare himself tribune of the little guy, scourge of
the big banks and their soulless Republican guardians.
For the first few weeks, the class-envy gambit had some effect,
bumping Obama’s numbers slightly. But the story was still lagging,
suffering in part from its association with an Occupy rabble that
had widely worn out its welcome.
Then came the twist. Then came the most remarkable political
surprise since the 2010 midterm: The struggling Democratic class-war
narrative is suddenly given life and legitimacy by . . .
Republicans! Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry make the case that private
equity as practiced by Romney’s Bain Capital is nothing more than
vulture capitalism looting companies and sucking them dry while
casually destroying the lives of workers.
Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO nods approvingly. Michael Moore
wonders aloud whether Gingrich has stolen his staff. The assault on
Bain/Romney instantly turns Obama’s class-war campaign from partisan
attack into universal complaint.
Suddenly Romney’s wealth, practices and taxes take center stage. And
why not? If leading Republicans are denouncing rapacious capitalism
that enriches the 1 percent while impoverishing everyone else,
should this not be the paramount issue in a campaign occurring at a
time of economic distress?
Now, economic inequality is an important issue, but the idea that it
is the cause of America’s current economic troubles is absurd. Yet,
in a stroke, the Republicans have succeeded in turning a Democratic
talking point — a last-ditch attempt to salvage reelection by
distracting from their record — into a central focus of the nation’s
political discourse.
How quickly has the zeitgeist changed? Wednesday, the Republican
House reconvened to reject Obama’s planned $1.2 trillion
debt-ceiling increase. (Lacking Senate concurrence, the debt ceiling
will be raised nonetheless.) Barely noticed. All eyes are on South
Carolina and Romney’s taxes.
This is no mainstream media conspiracy. This is the GOP maneuvering
itself right onto Obama terrain.
The president is a very smart man. But if he wins in November, that
won’t be the reason. It will be luck. He could not have chosen more
self-destructive adversaries.
SIMPLY AMAZING WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT;
Isn't it amazing that, within only one week of Tiger Woods crashing
his Escalade, the press found every woman with whom Tiger had an
affair during the last few years? And, they even uncovered photos,
text messages, recorded phone calls, etc.!
Furthermore, they not only knew the cause of the family fight, but
they even knew it was a 9 iron from his golf bag that his wife used
to break out the windows in the Escalade. Not only that, they knew
which wedge!
And, each & every day, they were able to continue to provide America
with updates on Tiger's sex rehab stay, his wife's divorce
settlement figures, as well as the dates & tournaments in which he
will play.
Now, Barack Hussein Obama has been in office for over three years,
yet this very same press:
· Cannot find any of his childhood friends or neighbors;
· Or find any of Obama's high school or college classmates;
· Or locate any of his college papers or grades;
· Or determine how he paid for both a Columbia & a Harvard
education;
· Or discover which country issued his visa to travel to Pakistan in
the 1980's;
· Or even find Michelle Obama's Princeton thesis on racism.
They just can't seem to uncover any of this. Yet, our dumbed-down
public still trusts that same press to give them the truth!
There's an old saying: the water will never clear up until you get the pigs out
of the creek...
Here are some important questions. Why are we afraid or embarrassed
to ask them?
1. Back in 1961 people of color were called 'Negroes'. So how can
the Obama birth certificate that he finally presented after months
of delay state he is 'African-American' when the term wasn't even
used at that time? In fact it was decades later before that
identification term was used.
2. The birth certificate that the White House released lists Obama's
birth as August 4, 1961. It also lists Barack Hussein Obama as his
father. No big deal, right? At the time of Obama's birth, it also
shows that his father is 25 years of age, and that Obama's father
was born in "Kenya, East Africa." This wouldn't seem like anything
of concern, except the fact that Kenya did not even exist until
1963, two whole years after Obama's birth, and 27 years after his
father's birth.
How could Obama's father have been born in a country that did not
yet exist? Up and until Kenya was formed in 1963, it was known as
the "British East Africa Protectorate".
3. On the birth certificate released by the White House, the listed
place of birth is "Kapi'olani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital".
This cannot be, because the hospital(s) in question in 1961 were
called "KauiKeolani
Children's Hospital" and "Kapi'olani Maternity Home", respectively.
The name did not change to Kapi'olani Maternity & Gynecological
Hospital until 1978, when these two hospitals merged.
How can this particular name of the hospital be on a birth
certificate dated 1961 if this name had not yet been applied to it
until 1978?
Why hasn't this been discussed in the major media?
Are we afraid to discuss them??
A German's View on Islam - worth reading
(This is the best explanation of the Muslim terrorist situation I
have read. His references to past history are accurate and clear.
Not long, easy to understand, and well worth the read. The author is
said to be Dr. Emanuel Tanya, a well-known and well-respected
psychiatrist.)
A man, whose family was German aristocracy prior to World War II,
owned a number of large industries and estates. When asked how many
German people were true Nazis, the answer he gave can guide our
attitude toward fanaticism. 'Very few people were true Nazis,' he
said, 'but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more
were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis
were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all
happen. Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost
control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost
everything. I ended up in a concentration camp and the Allies
destroyed my factories.'
We are told again and again by 'experts' and 'talking heads' that
Islam is the religion of peace and that the vast majority of Muslims
just want to live in peace. Although this unqualified assertion may
be true, it is entirely irrelevant. It is meaningless fluff, meant
to make us feel better, and meant to somehow diminish the spectre of
fanatics rampaging across the globe in the name of Islam.
The fact is that the fanatics rule Islam at this moment in history.
It is the fanatics who march. It is the fanatics who wage any one of
50 shooting wars worldwide. It is the fanatics who systematically
slaughter Christian or tribal groups throughout Africa and are
gradually taking over the entire continent in an Islamic wave. It is
the fanatics who bomb, behead, murder, or honour-kill. It is the
fanatics who take over mosque after mosque. It is the fanatics who
zealously spread the stoning and hanging of rape victims and
homosexuals. It is the fanatics who teach their young to kill and to
become suicide bombers.
The hard, quantifiable fact is that the peaceful majority, the
'silent majority,' is cowed and extraneous.
Communist Russia was comprised of Russians who just wanted to live
in peace, yet the Russian Communists were responsible for the murder
of about 20 million people. The peaceful majority were irrelevant..
China's huge population was peaceful as well, but Chinese Communists
managed to kill a staggering 70 million people.
The average Japanese individual prior to World War II was not a
warmongering sadist. Yet, Japan murdered and slaughtered its way
across South East Asia in an orgy of killing that included the
systematic murder of 12 million Chinese civilians; most killed
by sword, shovel, and bayonet.
And who can forget Rwanda , which collapsed into butchery. Could it
not be said that the majority of Rwandans were 'peace loving'?
History lessons are often incredibly simple and blunt, yet for all
our powers of reason, we often miss the most basic and uncomplicated
of points; what is it about what follows you don't understand?
· Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.
· Peace-loving Muslims will become our enemy if they don't speak up,
because like my friend from Germany, they will awaken one day and
find that the fanatics own them, and the end of their world will
have begun.
· Peace-loving Germans, Japanese, Chinese, Russians, Rwandans,
Serbs, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians,
and many others have died because the peaceful majority did not
speak up until it was too late. As for us who watch it all unfold,
we must pay attention to the only group that counts--the fanatics
who threaten our way of life.
Lastly, anyone who doubts that the issue is serious and just deletes
this email without sending it on, is contributing to the passiveness
that allows the problems to expand.
So, extend yourself a bit and pass this along,
before it's too late!
Again ...
Thursday with John Hayward:
President Obama recently decided to do away with
that pesky little “Constitution” thing, and assign himself the power
to make recess appointments when the Senate is not in recess.
The Constitution could not be clearer about this: “The President
shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the
recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at
the end of their next session.” The meaning of this power is equally
clear, providing a mechanism for the president to expediently fill
important offices left vacant by sudden illness or resignation. The
president is most certainly not granted the power to unilaterally
decide whether the Senate is in recess or not.
This was all done for the purpose of installing Richard Cordray as
director of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is
not what the Founders had in mind when they contemplated the need to
swiftly fill crucial offices so the government could discharge its
limited Constitutional duties.
"When Congress refuses to act and as a result hurts our economy and
puts people at risk, I have an obligation as president to do what I
can without them,” President Obama explained. “I will not stand by
while a minority in the Senate puts party ideology ahead of the
people they were elected to serve." And yet, somehow the Republic
prospered quite nicely without a Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau until now. In fact, it prospered quite a bit more than it has
under Obama’s job-killing policies and budget-busting corruption.
The Constitution of the United States obliges you to stand by
sometimes, Mr. Obama. That’s the entire point of placing limits upon
your imperial power. Those limits do not exist to be discarded when
a really brilliant President becomes especially angry at a minority
he judges unfit to fulfill its representative duties. What chills
every American should feel, hearing this extremist, arrogant
President declare that he “will not stand by” while a minority takes
lawful actions he disapproves of!
The oath of office of the
President of the United States is an oath or affirmation required by
the United States Constitution before the President begins the
execution of the office. The wording is specified in Article Two,
Section One, Clause Eight:
"I, <name>, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully
execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to
the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the
Constitution of the United States."
(E.J. Dionne rarely gets it right. Recently, in the Washington
Post, he got it right. He wasn't trying to prove why Newt Gingrich
is the only Republican who can beat Obama, but he did. If
Republicans want to win in 2012, Gingrich is the only person in the
race thus far who stands a chance .. and only because he's not only
the brightest candidate we've seen in years, but because he's the
only one who seems to understand it's a war we're fighting and he's
the only person the GOP has who knows how to fight such a war - and
win it. dj)
Newt Gingrich and the revenge of the base
By E.J. Dionne Jr., December 18
It is one of the true delights of a bizarrely entertaining
Republican presidential contest to watch the apoplectic fear and
loathing of so many GOP establishmentarians toward Newt Gingrich.
They treat him as an alien body whose approach to politics they have
always rejected.
In fact, Gingrich’s rise is the revenge of a Republican base that
takes seriously the intense hostility to President Obama, the
incendiary accusations against liberals and the Manichaean division
of the world between an “us” and a “them” that his party has been
peddling in the interest of electoral success.
The right-wing faithful knows Gingrich pioneered this style of
politics, and they laugh at efforts to cast the former House speaker
as something other than a “true conservative.” They know better.
The establishment was happy to use Gingrich’s tactics to win
elections, but it never expected to lose control of the party to the
voters it rallied with such grandiose negativity. Now, the joke is
on those who manipulated the base. The base is striking back, and
Newt is their weapon.
It’s not as if the criticisms being leveled at Gingrich are wrong.
On the contrary, there is a flamboyant self-importance and an eerie
sense of mission about him. “I am a transformational figure,” he has
said. He explains the hatred of his enemies as growing from their
realization that “I’m so systematically purposeful about changing
our world.” He has also declared: “I have an enormous personal
ambition. I want to shift the entire planet. And I’m doing it.”
But wait a minute: Gingrich offered the first set of thoughts in
1994 and spoke of shifting the planet way back in 1985. Newt, in
other words, has been Newt for a long time. Yet many of the same
conservatives who now find him so distasteful were cheering him on
for the very same qualities when he was their vehicle for seizing
control of the House of Representatives in 1994. Liberals who
criticized these traits in Gingrich back then were tut-tutted for
not “getting it,” for failing to understand the man’s genius. It’s
only now, when Gingrich threatens the GOP’s chances of defeating
Obama, that party elders have decided that what they once saw as
visionary self-confidence is, in fact, debilitating hubris.
Gingrich is said to be too tough on his opponents, too quick to
issue outlandish charges. He’s actually been quite candid about his
take-no-prisoner approach to politics.
“One of the great problems we have had in the Republican Party is
that we . . . encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal and
faithful, and all those Boy Scout words which would be great around
the campfire but are lousy in politics. ... You’re fighting a war.
It is a war for power. ... Don’t try to educate. That is not your
job. What is the primary purpose of a political leader? To build a
majority.”
That would be Gingrich in 1978, reported by John M. Barry in his
excellent “The Ambition and the Power,” a book about the fall of
former House speaker Jim Wright and Gingrich’s role in bringing him
down. Again, Gingrich is a thoroughly consistent figure. The guy you
see now is the same guy who always preached a scorched-earth
approach to politics.
And in truth, the party took his approach to heart. If discrediting
John Kerry’s service in Southeast Asia through false attacks in 2004
was what it took to reelect a president who had avoided going to
Vietnam, what the heck. Those who believe in Boy Scout virtues don’t
belong in politics, right?
Perhaps the establishment will yet manage to block Gingrich. There
are certainly enough contradictions in his record, and he carries
more baggage than an overburdened hotel porter. When National
Review, that keeper of conservative ideological standards, recently
criticized Gingrich for “his impulsiveness, his grandiosity, his
weakness for half-baked (and not especially conservative) ideas,”
its editors were reciting from a catechism that his critics wrote
long ago. Meet the new Newt, same as the old Newt.
This quality endows Gingrich with a peculiar integrity, which I
realize is a problematic word to apply to such a problematic figure.
I use it in a very specific sense: He is who he is and always has
been. The base knows this and loves him for it. But for Republican
leaders, Gingrich has become inconvenient. He’s the loudmouthed
uninvited guest who is trying to rejoin the country club. The effort
to blackball Newt Gingrich will be the next drama in this
fascinating train wreck of a campaign.
National Review Editor Praises Gingrich, Slams Editorial
December 18, 2011
National Review contributing editor and columnist Andrew C. McCarthy
says Newt Gingrich is a strong conservative with a significant track
record — and countered his own publication's editorial criticizing
the former House speaker.
In McCarthy's online column posted Saturday, he wrote: "I
respectfully dissent from National Review's Wednesday evening
editorial."
He writes further that he has been advised that the editorial’s
timing “was driven by its inclusion in the last edition of the
magazine to be published this year."
McCarthy continued: "Regarding former Speaker Gingrich, I have no
objection to the cataloguing of any candidate’s failings, and Newt
has certainly made his share of mistakes. But there ought to be
balance — balance between a candidate’s failings and his strengths,
balance between the treatment of that candidate and of his rivals.
The editorial fails on both scores."
In his own column, entitled "Gingrich's Virtues," McCarthy seeks to
offer that balance.
"Gingrich’s virtues are shortchanged," McCarthy argues, "His great
accomplishment in balancing the federal budget is not even
mentioned, an odd omission in an election that is primarily about
astronomical spending."
He added that National Review had not offered similar critiques of
other GOP candidates with liberal records.
"Nevertheless, if the Editors were enterprising enough, they could
just as easily write a similar editorial, with the same tone of
alarm, about, say, Governor Romney or Governor Huntsman," McCarthy
said.
McCarthy recounted some of Gingrich's spectacular conservative
successes:"Gingrich is the candidate who can say he actually
wrestled the federal budget into balance . . . "
“In an election about the imperative to repeal Obamacare, Gingrich
is the candidate who helped defeat Hillarycare — by comparison,
Governor Romney ushered in a health-care system that became a model
for Obamacare (and he stubbornly continues to insist that it was a
great achievement — the main reason he can’t crack the 25 percent
ceiling in most polls)."
"Gingrich is the candidate who reformed welfare — which, the Editors
acknowledge, is 'the most successful social policy of recent
decades.'”
At the same that the National Review dismissed Gingrich, an
incredulous McCarthy said, the publication was heaping praise on
Gov. Jon Hunstman.
McCarthy says Huntsman doesn't pass the conservative sniff test: He
was appointed ambassador to China by President Barack Obama; he was
a big spender as Utah governor; and he has been a "global-warming
alarmist who was lax on illegal immigration and favored a government
mandate that citizens purchase health insurance."
McCarthy questioned the editorial’s negative treatment of Texas Gov.
Rick Perry and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann at the same time it
embraced former Obama administration official Huntsman.
The editorial said Perry would spend much of his time untying his
own tongue and added that Bachmann has exhibited a "casual
repetition of false anti-vaccine rumors."
In pointing out that, like many other voters, he has not decided
which of the Republican presidential candidates to support, McCarthy
says, "What I want at this very early stage is information about the
candidates so I can consider them, not a presumptuous and premature
pronouncement that good conservatives do not even rate
consideration."
McCarthy writes that he is not against anyone’s listing Gingrich's
faults, but he emphasizes that he believes the former House
speaker's accomplishments in Washington are being "shortchanged."
The former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York
points to Gingrich's balancing the federal budget not being
mentioned in the Review editorial, adding that "his downsides are
exaggerated."
McCarthy concludes his dissenting opinion saying, "If the editors
were enterprising enough, they could just as easily write, with the
same tone of alarm, about say, Governor Romney or Governor
Huntsman."
"Their heresies too are notorious and their explanations no more
satisfying," McCarthy states.
He adds that he is not suggesting that such editorials about Romney
and Huntsman be done; rather he is just pointing out that they could
be done.
"For the editors to single out Gingrich, for this kind of raking,
particularly when his accomplishments in government dwarf anything
his rivals have managed to achieve — fails the test of judgment
conservatives expect from National Review," McCarthy concludes.
Newt Gingrich
commits a capital crime
By George F. Will, Published: December 13
Newt Gingrich — the friend of his detractors, to whom he offers
serial vindications — provided on Monday redundant evidence for the
proposition that he is the least conservative candidate seeking the
Republican presidential nomination: He faulted Mitt Romney for
committing acts of capitalism.
Gingrich did so when goaded by Romney regarding his, Gingrich’s,
self-described service as a “historian” for Freddie Mac, which paid
him more handsomely than anyone paid Herodotus. Romney was asked by
an interviewer about the $1.6 million Gingrich earned, or at any
rate received, from Freddie Mac, the misbegotten government-backed
mortgage giant. In the service of Washington’s bipartisan certitude
that too few people owned houses, Freddie Mac helped produce the
housing bubble and subsequent crash. It did so even though it paid
Gingrich $30,000 an hour. That is about what he received if, as he
says, he worked for Freddie Mac about an hour a month, telling it
that what it was doing was “insane.”
Anyway, Romney’s interviewer mischievously asked him if he thought
Gingrich should “give that money back” to Freddie Mac. Romney said,
“I sure do.”
Soon thereafter, Gingrich, when asked about Romney’s cheeky
judgment, replied: “I would just say that if Governor Romney would
like to give back all the money he’s earned from bankrupting
companies and laying off employees over his years at Bain Capital,
that I would be glad to listen to him.”
This departure from his pledge that his campaign “will be
relentlessly positive” represents the virtue of recycling applied to
politics. Gingrich is reusing the attack honed by Ted Kennedy in
1994, when Romney suffered a 17-point loss in attempting to take
Kennedy’s Senate seat.
The Kennedy-Gingrich doctrine is this: What the economist Joseph
Schumpeter called capitalism’s “creative destruction” is not really
creative. Rather, it is lamentable and, when facilitated by
capitalists, reprehensible. For Kennedy, this made sense:
Reactionary liberalism holds that whatever is, from Social Security
to farm subsidies to the Chrysler Corp., should forever be. But
Gingrich is supposedly our infallible guide to the sunny uplands of
a dynamic future.
Gingrich has three verbal tics which, taken together — and they
usually come in clumps — signal his depth and seriousness. Deploying
his three F words, he announces his unique candor by prefacing this
or that pronouncement with the word “frankly.” What he frankly says
is that “fundamental” change is necessary for America. He knows this
because he sees over the horizon, into a “future” requiring
“transformational” (Gingrich’s self-description) leadership.
Romney, while at Bain, performed the essential social function of
connecting investment resources with opportunities. Firms such as
Bain are indispensable for wealth creation, which often involves
taking over badly run companies, shedding dead weight and thereby
liberating remaining elements that add value. The process, like
surgery, can be lifesaving. And like surgery, society would rather
benefit from it than watch it.
Romney surely anticipated that such an attack would come — but from
Democrats, in the general election, not from a volatile Republican.
He now understands Rep. Paul Ryan’s response when Gingrich attacked
his entitlement reform as “right-wing social engineering.” Said
Ryan: “With allies like that, who needs the left?”
Intra-party competitions are supposed to reveal candidates’
potential susceptibilities to attacks. Two unfair attacks against
Romney concern his polish and his past. Four years ago, Mike
Huckabee, targeting Romney without mentioning him, slyly said, “I
want to be a president who reminds you of the guy you work with, not
the guy who laid you off.” And there is a photograph of Romney that
will eventually be seen far and wide (and can be seen at
http://wapo.st/romneybain. It shows a young Romney and six Bain colleagues feeling their oats,
with paper currency protruding from their dark suits. The young men
are overflowing with what John Maynard Keynes called “animal
spirits.”
We should welcome such spirits and should hope for political
leadership that will hasten the day when American conditions are
again receptive to them. Until then, economic dynamism will not
return. We should not expect Gingrich to understand this until he
understands that his work for Freddie Mac was not, as he laughably
insists, in “the private sector.”
He probably believes that. He seems to believe there is always some
higher synthesis, inaccessible to lesser intellects, that makes all
his contradictions disappear. One awaits the synthesizing of his
multicity tour in 2009 with Barack Obama’s education secretary, Arne
Duncan, and Al Sharpton promoting “a common education reform”
of primary and secondary schools.
(Disclosure: This columnist’s wife, Mari Will, is an adviser to
another Republican presidential candidate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry.)
Obama’s campaign
for class resentment
By Charles Krauthammer, Published: December 8
In the first month of his presidency, Barack Obama averred that if
in three years he hadn’t alleviated the nation’s economic pain, he’d
be a “one-term proposition.”
When three-quarters of Americans think the country is on the “wrong
track” and even Bill Clinton calls the economy “lousy,” how then to
run for a second term? Traveling Tuesday to Osawatomie, Kan., site
of a famous 1910 Teddy Roosevelt speech, Obama laid out the case.
It seems that he and his policies have nothing to do with the
current state of things. Sure, presidents are ordinarily held
accountable for economic growth, unemployment, national indebtedness
(see Obama, above). But not this time. Responsibility, you see, lies
with the rich.
Or, as the philosophers of Zuccotti Park call them, the 1 percent.
For Obama, these rich are the ones holding back the 99 percent. The
“breathtaking greed of a few” is crushing the middle class. If only
the rich paid their “fair share,” the middle class would have a
chance. Otherwise, government won’t have enough funds to “invest” in
education and innovation, the golden path to the sunny uplands of
economic growth and opportunity.
Where to begin? A country spending twice as much per capita on
education as it did in 1970 with zero effect on test scores is not
underinvesting in education. It’s mis-investing. As for federally
directed spending on innovation — like Solyndra? Ethanol? The
preposterously subsidized, flammable Chevy Volt?
Our current economic distress is attributable to myriad causes:
globalization, expensive high-tech medicine, a huge debt burden, a
burst housing bubble largely driven by precisely the egalitarian
impulse that Obama is promoting (government aggressively pushing
“affordable housing” that turned out to be disastrously
unaffordable), an aging population straining the social safety net.
Yes, growing inequality is a problem throughout the Western world.
But Obama’s pretense that it is the root cause of this sick economy
is ridiculous.
As is his solution, that old perennial: selective abolition of the
Bush tax cuts. As if all that ails us, all that keeps the economy
from humming and the middle class from advancing, is a 4.6-point
hike in marginal tax rates for the rich.
This, in a country $15 trillion in debt with out-of-control
entitlements systematically starving every other national need. This
obsession with a sock-it-to-the-rich tax hike that, at most, would
have reduced this year’s deficit from $1.30 trillion to $1.22
trillion is the classic reflex of reactionary liberalism — anything
to avoid addressing the underlying structural problems, which would
require modernizing the totemic programs of the New Deal and Great
Society.
As for those structural problems, Obama has spent three years on
signature policies that either ignore or aggravate them:
●A massive stimulus, a gigantic payoff to Democratic interest groups
(such as teachers, public-sector unions) that add nearly $1 trillion
to the national debt.
●A sweeping federally run reorganization of health care that (a)
cost Congress a year, (b) created an entirely new entitlement in a
nation hemorrhaging from unsustainable entitlements, (c) introduced
new levels of uncertainty into an already stagnant economy.
●High-handed regulation, best exemplified by Obama’s failed
cap-and-trade legislation, promptly followed by the Environmental
Protection Agency trying to impose the same
conventional-energy-killing agenda by administrative means.
Moreover, on the one issue that already enjoys a bipartisan
consensus — the need for fundamental reform of a corrosive,
corrupted tax code that misdirects capital and promotes unfairness —
Obama did nothing, ignoring the recommendations of several
bipartisan commissions, including his own.
In Kansas, Obama lamented that millions “are now forced to take
their children to food banks.” You have to admire the audacity.
That’s the kind of damning observation the opposition brings up when
you’ve been in office three years. Yet Obama summoned it to make the
case for his reelection!
Why? Because, you see, he bears no responsibility for the current
economic distress. It’s the rich. And, like Horatius at the bridge,
Obama stands with the American masses against the soulless
plutocrats.
This is populism so crude that it channels not Teddy Roosevelt so
much as Hugo Chavez. But with high unemployment, economic stagnation
and unprecedented deficits, what else can Obama say?
He can’t run on stewardship. He can’t run on policy. His signature
initiatives — the stimulus, Obamacare and the failed cap-and-trade —
will go unmentioned in his campaign ads. Indeed, they will be the
stuff of Republican ads.
What’s left? Class resentment. Got a better idea?
The great
pipeline sellout
By Charles Krauthammer
In 2008, the slogan was “Yes We Can.” For 2011-12, it’s “We Can’t
Wait.” What happened in between? Candidate Obama, the vessel into
which myriad dreams were poured, met the reality of governance.
His near-$1 trillion stimulus begat a stagnant economy with 9
percent unemployment. His attempt at Wall Street reform left in
place a still-too-big-to-fail financial system, as vulnerable today
as when he came into office. His green-energy fantasies yielded
Solyndra cronyism and a cap-and-trade regime not even a Democratic
Congress would pass.
And now his signature achievement, Obamacare, is headed to the
Supreme Court, where it could very well be struck down. This comes
just a week after its central element was overwhelmingly repudiated
(by a 2-to-1 margin) by the good burghers of Ohio.
So what do you do when you say you can, but, it turns out, you
can’t? Blame the other guy. Charge the Republicans with making
governing impossible. Never mind that you had control of Congress
for two-thirds of your current tenure. It’s all the fault of
Republican rejectionism.
Hence: “We Can’t Wait.” We can’t wait while they obstruct. We can’t
wait while they dither with my jobs bill. Write Congress today! Vote
Democratic tomorrow!
We can’t wait. Except for certain exceptions, such as the 1,700-mile
trans-USA Keystone XL pipeline, carrying Alberta oil to Texas
refineries, that would have created thousands of American jobs and
increased our energy independence.
For that, we can wait, it seems. President Obama decreed that any
decision must wait 12 to 18 months — postponed, by amazing
coincidence, until after next year’s election.
Why? Because the pipeline angered Obama’s environmental
constituency. But their complaints are risible. Global warming from
the extraction of the Alberta tar sands? Canada will extract the oil
anyway. If it doesn’t go to us, it will go to China. Net effect on
the climate if we don’t take that oil? Zero.
Danger to a major aquifer, which the pipeline traverses? It is
already crisscrossed by 25,000 miles of pipeline, enough to circle
the Earth. Moreover, the State Department had subjected Keystone to
three years of review — the most exhaustive study of any oil
pipeline in U.S. history — and twice concluded in voluminous studies
that there would be no significant environmental harm.
So what happened? “The administration,” reported the New York Times,
“had in recent days been exploring ways to put off the decision
until after the presidential election.” Exploring ways to improve
the project? Hardly. Exploring ways to get past the election.
Obama’s decision was meant to appease his environmentalists. It’s
already working. The president of the National Wildlife Federation
told The Post (online edition, Nov. 10) that thousands of
environmentalists who were galvanized to protest the pipeline would
now support Obama in 2012. Moreover, a source told The Post, Obama
campaign officials had concluded that “they do not pick up one vote
from approving this project.”
Sure, the pipeline would have produced thousands of truly
shovel-ready jobs. Sure, delay could forfeit to China a supremely
important strategic asset — a nearby, highly reliable source of
energy. But approval was calculated to be a political loss for the
president. Easy choice.
It’s hard to think of a more clear-cut case of putting politics over
nation. This from a president whose central campaign theme is that
Republicans put party over nation, sacrificing country to crass
political ends.
Nor is this the first time Obama’s election calendar trumped the
national interest:
● Obama’s decision to wind down the Afghan surge in September 2012
is militarily inexplicable. It comes during the fighting season. It
was recommended by none of his military commanders. It is explicable
only as a talking point for the final days of his reelection
campaign.
● At the height of the debt-ceiling debate last July, Obama pledged
to veto any agreement that was not long-term. Definition of long
term? By another amazing coincidence, any deal large enough to get
him past Election Day (and thus avoid another such crisis next
year).
●On Tuesday it was revealed that last year the administration
pressured Solyndra, as it was failing, to delay its planned Oct. 28
announcement of layoffs until Nov. 3, the day after the midterm
election.
A contemporaneous e-mail from a Solyndra investor noted: “Oddly they
didn’t give a reason for that date.” The writer was obviously born
yesterday. The American electorate was not — and it soon gets to
decide who really puts party over nation and reelection above all.
We can’t wait.
(Neither can I, George .. neither
can I!)
In case you'd like some
company while you're surfing the web, my friend here's available ..
Happy
Place
Page One, Life in North Texas
Page Two, We Can Do Better Than This
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