Category Archives: Obama

The president’s recent disappointing oval office speech elicited a chorus of criticism from across the political spectrum.  For some reason the speech seems to have put a spotlight on the president as a leader, whereas other misjudgments in which he was directly involved in making policy had not.  The oil spill, which was certainly no fault of Mr. Obama, seems to have finally caused the public and many of his cheerleaders among the pundits to focus on the president’s substance and not his style.  That has been the unspoken, elephant-in- the-room, concern throughout his presidency, his aptitude for leadership.  We are reminded of the lead-in lyrics to the signature song Ethel Merman belts out in Gypsy… “Curtain up…light the lights…you either got it…or you ain’t.”

President Obama seems to have the curtain up, light the lights part down pat.  The dramatic campaign and convention stage sets, his world photo-op tours, his big oval-office backdrop to his little oval-office speech, and his ever-masterful use of the teleprompter have all produced a “strike-up-the-band” expectation whenever and wherever he appears. It’s the “you either got it, or you ain’t” part that seems finally to have focused the public on the president’s aptitude for leadership.

The befouling glob that threatens hundreds of miles of coast or, as Peggy Noonan put it recently so aptly in the Wall Street Journal, “the monster from under the sea,” seems to be a metaphor for the president’s inability to shape the world as he wants it to be.  Speeches are not a substitute for coherent policy.  The president, with the entire world watching his prime time speech, essentially punted.  He pulled from the presidential duck-and-cover arsenal the time-tested, yawn producer of presidents bereft of solutions to all manner of problems…the formation of a new blue-ribbon commission.  This was the cornerstone of his “battle plan” to face down the “siege” of big oil’s attack on our Gulf coast.

There is nothing more to be said about the quality of Mr. Obama’s oval-office speech debut.  It seems as if all the commentators from Chris Mathews, Keith Olberman and Jon Stewart on the left, to Mark Steyn, Charles Krauthammer and Karl Rove on the right have already done that.  Besides, there is something much more revealing that is apparent here.  It isn’t about the delivery by the man who gave the speech; it is, rather, about the man who delivered the speech.  The disappointing oval-office moment was more than just a lack of writing skill by some wordsmith presidential speechwriter; it focused the attention of the American people on the man himself and on what they hoped just wasn’t so; an apparent lack of the leadership aptitude which a president must possess if he or she is to succeed.

The evidence of weak leadership skills was there before but it became shrouded in the president’s rock star image. The fact is that there was very little about Barack Obama’s pre-presidential career that suggested any real aptitude for leadership.  There was always plenty of “curtain up, light the lights” but the demonstration of leadership part was always a bit like a clock striking thirteen. That is to say, not quite reassuring.

His career as a legislator in Illinois, while always well hyped, was less than impressive.  His biggest legislative achievement in Illinois seems to be the nearly 130 times he chose to vote “present” rather than “yea” or “nay” on major bills.  And yes, we’ve heard or read the standard excuse for this apparent ambivalence.  “It’s the way things are often done in the Illinois Senate,” we’re told.  But since when has doing things the way they are done in Illinois met the definition of leadership anywhere outside of that state.

Besides, some of the “present” votes then state-Senator Obama chose to cast while in the Illinois legislature are quite revealing, if not troubling.  For example, in 1999 he was faced with a difficult vote, to support a bill that would let some juveniles be tried as adults. Understandably, many African-Americans were opposed to the bill.  On the other hand, Mr. Obama was trying to hone an image of a tough-on crime candidate. It was a difficult political call for him; so, he voted “present.”

According to the New York Times, on at least 36 occasions state-Senator Obama was either the only state senator to vote “present” or was part of a group of six or fewer to vote that way.  Politically, the option to vote “present” provides a certain amount of cover. It is a way for the faint of heart, in effect, to say, “I don’t particularly like this bill, but I don’t want to take the political risk of taking a stand.”

The juvenile crime bill was to allow offenders as young as 15 to be prosecuted as adults if charged with committing a crime with a firearm on, or near, schools. Both houses passed the measure handily. State-Senator Obama justified his “present” vote by opining there was no proof that increasing penalties for young offenders reduced crime. Mr. Obama’s aides said he was more concerned about whether the bill would be effective rather than with its political consequences.  They did not explain, however, why he did not just vote “no”.

There were other “present” votes, in which part-time law-lecturer Obama, according to the New York Times, said he had concerns about the constitutionality or effectiveness of some provisions. Among those, Mr. Obama did not vote “yea” or “nay” on a bill that would allow certain victims of sex crimes to petition judges to seal court records relating to their cases. He also voted “present” on a bill to impose stricter standards for evidence a judge is permitted to consider in imposing a criminal sentence.

On the sex crime bill, Mr. Obama cast the lone “present” vote in a 58-to-0 vote.  When it appeared that this vote might become an issue in the presidential race Mr. Obama’s campaign said he believed that the bill violated the First Amendment. The bill had passed 112-0-0 in the Illinois House and 58-0-1 in the state Senate.  Again, why didn’t he just vote, “no”?

In 2000, Mr. Obama was one of two senators who voted present on a bill on whether facts not presented to a jury could later be the basis for increasing an offender’s sentence beyond the ordinary maximum. The bill sailed through both chambers. Out of 174 votes cast in the House and Senate, two were against and two were “present”, including Mr. Obama’s.  Mr. Obama’s campaign said he voted present to register his dissatisfaction with how the bill was put together. He believed (hold on to your hat) the bill was rushed to the floor and that lawmakers were deprived of time to consider it.  Oddly, this hasn’t been a problem for the president with bills passed in the House and Senate of the United States.

The Times also reported that Mr. Obama was the sole “present” vote on a bill that easily passed the Illinois Senate that would require teaching respect for others in schools. He also voted “present” on a measure to prohibit sex-related shops from opening near schools or places of worship, which ultimately did not pass the Illinois Senate.  In both of those cases, his campaign said (hold on to your hat again) he was trying to avoid mandates on local authorities.  This from, now, President Obama, who has gone on, arguably, to impose the greatest funded and unfunded mandates on local authorities in the nation’s history.

But enough of ancient history.  Fast forward to the centerpiece of his first year in office, health-care reform.  Many on the left, and even some on the right, suggest that this massive legislative “achievement” is proof that President Obama is a formidable leader. We beg to differ.  It may, indeed, prove that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority leader Harry Reid can effectively lead their party’s foot soldiers over any cliff they choose, but it really doesn’t say much about President Obama’s leadership aptitude.  Quite the opposite.   Apparently misreading the lessons of President Clinton’s terribly misdirected attempt at health-care reform, President Obama delegated the entire effort to Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid.  He sat by as they cobbled together (in his name) the horrific 2700-page health-care reform legislation that a substantial majority of the people consistently said they did not want and consistently continue to say they now want repealed and which a third of the states are now fighting to stop in federal court. Real leadership of the type he promised, but apparently cannot deliver, would have brought both sides together instead of putting the nation through some of the worst acrimony we can ever remember.

The curtains up…light the lights first-day-in-office announcement that the prison housing terrorists at Guantanamo Bay would be closed within a year, was an early lesson that Ruffles and Flourishes without leadership aptitude is, well, just music.  The world apology tour for American foreign policy under the Bush Administration, the Cairo speech, the presidential outstretched hand to our adversaries and the long-lapsed ultimatum for a reciprocal handshake in return, the puzzling back of the hand treatment to Britain, our closest friend since the end of World War II, the insulting treatment of our friends such as South Korea, Columbia, Honduras, and Israel, and the skyrocketing spending and the attendant ever-mounting deficits all call into question the aptitude for leadership that prevails (or is absent) at the White House.

Les Gelb wrote of Obama, “He is so self-confident that he believes he can make decisions on the most complicated of issues after only hours of discussion.  Strategic decisions go well beyond being smart, which Obama certainly is.  They must be based on experience that discerns what works, what doesn’t — and why.  This requires experienced staffing, which Obama and his top appointees simply do not seem to have.”  Mr. Obama is beginning to look to more and more of the people who were dazzled by his meteoric rise and who were looking for the political equivalent of a messiah, as a growing disappointment.  It turns out that Mr. Obama cannot by his charm, his gift-of-gab, his oratorical skills and his considerable intelligence will into reality policies that the people won’t accept and that many across the political spectrum here and abroad seriously question.  

Which brings us full circle back to where we began… the growing fiasco that continues to assault the gulf coast.  “What could the President have done to avoid the blowout at the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform?” the Administration’s defenders indignantly ask.  Nothing.  But that is the wrong question.  The more telling question would be “what could the President have done to mitigate the damage?”  And the answer to that seems to be, “plenty.”

He had the authority to waive the ridiculous and long-outdated, protectionist Jones Act that would have allowed significant expertise and siphoning capacity to be on location in the Gulf weeks ago mitigating the damage that now seems unstoppable.  But, so as not to offend labor unions or domestic shipping interests, he turned down the offers.  He could have immediately authorized Governor Bobby Jindal to begin deploying barriers parallel to the gulf coast as the governor was begging for permission to do (and for which he was still begging last week).  He could, and should, have immediately designated the most operationally competent person he could find to take charge of containment operations and to report progress to him on a daily basis.

Instead, seven weeks into this debacle, when discussing why safety precautions were not in place, Mr. Obama assured the American people “that he wants to know why.”  Of course, the answer he will soon provide is quite predictable since we have heard it many times before.  The problem, we will be told, rests with the previous Administration.  Blaming Bush, or industry or political opposition seems to be his answer for every problem.  “I inherited this mess,” he often tells us. In short, the President is not providing the leadership one would expect from a chief executive running the country.  Instead, he has responded as one would expect from a chief executive running a think tank.

Enough curtain up…light the lights.  The curtain has been up and the lights have been lighted since January 20^th, 2009.  Show us you got it, Mr. President. Not that you ain’t.

By Hal Gershowitz and Stephen Porter

Earlier this month, I posted a piece documenting Barack Obama’s incapacity as an executive. I followed up with a brief examination of Bobby Jindal’s record as Governor of Louisiana and, then, with a short discussion of a display of vigor and dispatch on the part of Chris Christie, Governor of New Jersey – both of whom nicely illustrate what Alexander Hamilton had in mind when he wrote in The Federalist that “energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.” Today, I will take a brief look at Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana.

Daniels is an accomplished man with considerable and varied experience in both the public and the private sectors.

On his father’s side, Daniel’s grandparents were Syrian Christians, and he has been honored by the Arab-American Institute for the work that he has done on behalf of Arab community in this country. He was himself born in Monangahela, Pennsylvania, where his paternal grandfather ran a pool hall and, on the sly, reportedly made book. As a child, he lived not only in Pennsylvania, but in Georgia, Tennessee, and Indiana, where his parents settled when he was ten. After graduating from a public high school in Indianapolis, he attended Princeton University. There, for a time, this straight arrow appears to have succumbed to the Zeitgeist In 1970, he spent two nights in a New Jersey jail after being arrested for marijuana possession. Nine years later, however, he was awarded a law degree by the Georgetown University Law Center in DC.

Daniels got his start in politics working for Richard Lugar – initially when Lugar was mayor in Indianapolis and later when that worthy was elected to the U.S. Senate. For a long time, Daniels was Lugar’s right-hand man. He ran the latter’s first three senatorial campaigns; and, from 1977 to 1982, he served as his chief of staff. In 1983, when Lugar was elected chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Daniels became its executive director.

In 1985, Daniels left Lugar to join the presidential administration of Ronald Reagan, where in time he succeeded Haley Barbour as chief political advisor and liaison. When he returned to Indiana in 1987, Daniels did so as chief operating officer of the Hudson Institute, a conservative think-tank then in financial trouble; and three years later, after having put Hudson on a sound footing, he went to work for Eli Lilly, where he soon became President of North American Operations and eventually Senior Vice-President for Corporate Strategy and Policy.

In January, 2001, Daniels went back to Washington, DC to become George W. Bush’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, which made him an ex officio member of the National Security Council and, when it was set up, of the Homeland Security Council. At the time, he was known as an advocate of fiscal restraint, and Bush, who was not as profligate at first as he later became, described Daniels in public as “The Blade” and referred to him in private as “My Man Mitch.”

Daniels’ resume up to this point is impressive, but it would not be of paramount interest had he not returned to Indiana in the summer of 2003 to launch a gubernatorial campaign aimed at ousting the Democratic incumbent. Indiana’s budget at the time was deep in the red, and Daniels, who was elected in November 2004 with 53% of the vote, vowed to bring it into balance.

This “The Blade” accomplished in short order. Upon election, he created an Office of Management and Budget for the state, and then, under his direction, the men with the green eyeshades went to work. Within a year, they had turned a $600 million deficit into a $300 million surplus, and Daniels had begun paying down Indiana’s enormous debt. Four years later, the state was running surplus of $1.3 billion; and, in 2008, Indiana’s Governor ushered through the legislature a bill cutting property taxes on the average house by more than 30%.

Along the way, Daniels decertified the public service unions, reduced the number of those employed by the state by 14% to a level last seen in 1982, shifted most state employees to health savings accounts, introduced a pay-for-performance plan within the bureaucracy, reorganized the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, brought an end to social promotion within Indiana schools, and sold the interstate turnpike stretching across the northern reaches of the state between Ohio and Illinois to outside investors for a cool $3.9 billion, which was immediately sequestered in an escrow account, where it is used for road construction elsewhere in the state (and nothing else).

In November 2008 – when Barack Obama defeated John McCain and the Democrats took the state house and senate in Indiana – Daniels bucked the trend and was re-elected Governor by an 18% margin. In the process, he picked up 20% of the African American vote, and he won a majority among younger voters.

These days, Daniels’ approval rating oscillates between 60 and 70% – which is remarkable given that he is a balding, mild-mannered, unassuming man inclined to travel through the state on a Harley, stop at a diner, and sit down to chat with the patrons. His political success may have something to do with Daniels’ mastery of the technology of communications. His personal version of Reality TV – which is called MitchTV – is a local hit. But his popularity has even more to do with his achievements.

Mitch Daniels may have the demeanor of a staffer, and he has, indeed, done a great deal of work in that capacity. But – like Bobby Jindal, who is 39, and Chris Christie, who is 47 – “The Blade,” who is 61, is a man of executive temperament ready, willing, and able to take charge. Thanks to his stewardship, Indiana is solvent, and it is one of the nine American states with a triple-A bond rating. Moreover, it has begun attracting venture capital; for the first time in decades, people are moving into state; and, though it has only 2% of the national population, Indiana can boast that it garnered 7% of the new jobs created in the United States in the last year.

I cannot say whether any of the governors I have looked at in the last two weeks would make a suitable presidential candidate. But this much is clear. In the great crisis we now face, we are saddled with a President more inclined to dither, play golf, party with celebrities, and punt than to take charge and display energy, vigor, and dispatch when confronted with emergencies requiring decisions on his part. Whatever defects they may possess – and each is no doubt defective in some way – Jindal, Christie, and Daniels would not dither or punt. Each in his way exemplifies responsibility – the virtue singled out in The Federalist as distinctively American — which is no small thing.

In the first (and still best) “Austin Powers” film, a United Nations representative makes a faux pas and calls the film’s villain “Mr. Evil.”

“It’s Dr. Evil,” he huffs. “I didn’t spend six years in Evil Medical School to be called ‘mister,’ thank you very much.”

This is how I feel when I’m referred to as a “blogger,” sometimes with a political qualifier like “liberal” or “conservative” attached. I’m a reporter. I’ve been a reporter since high school. Like a lot of other people, I lucked into some reporting jobs that took advantage of the speed of the web — thus, I blogged. And I left the Washington Post because I was intoxicated by this medium by and the privileges of reporting. The leak of my private e-mails wouldn’t have been possible 10 years ago; but then, neither would have my career been possible.

Let’s go back to the start. I started in journalism in a fairly typical manner, by discovering how much I liked writing articles and doing interviews at my high school paper. I chose to go to Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. It was there that I became editor of the campus’s weekly conservative paper, and became plugged into the campus conservative journalism network.

Was I really that conservative? Yes.

I interned at the libertarian Center for Individual Rights in the summer of 2001. I supported the Iraq War and crashed an anti-war protest on my campus. I voted in Republican primaries in 2002 and 2004. (Since I was in Illinois, I voted in 2004 for Jack Ryan to get the GOP’s nomination for Senate, to oppose Barack Obama. I’m better off than one of those guys.)

But I was never combative against liberals. Reporting in a close-knit campus community made it impossible and untenable to pick political fights every day. I was more interested in covering politics than in advocating for a political stance (outside of columns I wrote for my paper and later the daily campus paper). I cared more about finding out stories first than about advocating positions — those stories would get me the jobs I wanted, not the opinions I had. And I knew that I didn’t want to be pigeonholed.

In 2004, when I was graduating, I was offered two jobs — an editing role at the libertarian magazine Liberty and a fellowship at USA Today, sponsored by the conservative Collegiate Network. I chose the USA Today job, but kept freelancing, mostly for magazines like The American Spectator and Reason.

A few months after my USA Today gig ended, I was offered a full-time job at Reason. For the first time I had a byline at a national media outlet, and part of my job was to feed a blog with reporting and takes on the news. It became clear that two things were rewarded with traffic and respect — original reporting, and arguments with other blogs.

This was the start of my success, and it was the start of my problems. Remember how I said it was “impossible and untenable to pick political fights every day?” When I started doing real reporting, I realized that political fights happened every nanosecond. It was just a matter of managing them, and picking them. As I got to find out about gossip and news, I’d banter about it privately and publicly. That’s what everyone did. Let’s let David Brooks explain this:

So every few weeks I find myself on the receiving end of little burst of off-the-record trash talk. Senators privately moan about other senators. Administration officials gripe about other administration officials. People in the White House complain about the idiots in Congress, and the idiots in Congress complain about the idiots in the White House — especially if they’re in the same party. Washington floats on a river of aspersion.

To use a phrase that I’m rolling my eyes at even as I type it: Nobody told me this in journalism school. Seriously, though, nobody did! The fact that one part of journalism in Washington was a give-and-take of gossip, and that sources learned to trust one another by bitching about people and projects they didn’t like, was a total mindfuck. Put me in a room with a 9/11 conspiracy theorist and I ask about where his “controlled demolitions” theory comes from. Put me in a room with a union organizer and I push him about how depressed he is about card check. Put me in a room with a GOP strategist and I tell him, in confidence, what the people I know on the left are saying about his candidate’s chances. How do I get people to tell me what they don’t want people to know?

Being at Reason allowed me to do this while broadcasting a clear opinion. Rep. Ron Paul (R, Tex.) knew that I liked him, and that I was voting for him — although that didn’t stop me from co-writing a story about the history of racist comments in newsletters he published. Bob Barr knew that I liked him, and trusted me enough to tell me, off-the-record, what he thought of people. I kept that trust with people, and people kept it with me. In this business you have to keep that trust or no one will talk to you, and then you can only learn what people want you to know.

Here’s an example from a bit later in my career. In September 2009, Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Creigh Deeds, bumbled and fumbled his way through an impromptu press event, utterly unable to explain whether or not he would raise taxes, and at one point calling a reporter “young lady.” I was at the Values Voter summit at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, where I pulled Rep. Eric Cantor (R, Va.) aside for an interview.

“Fair warning,” I said, framing him with my iPhone’s video camera. “I’m going to tape this. So let’s not have a Creigh Deeds moment.”

Did that comment make it unfair for me to write about Deeds? (His communications director, who appeared in the video wincing as his candidate imploded, was a college friend.) But can we assume no reporters joked about Deeds after the implosion? “The opinionless man,” as Jeff Jarvis put it in a post on my current adventures, does not exist. (Here I’d make a reference to the perfect-but-boring human prototypes that survive the end of civilization in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, but that would just be showing off.)

You’ve read this far, so you must think I’m trying to explain away the emails leaked this week. I’m not. Here’s what happened.

After the 2008 election, I drove up from Atlanta to D.C. and was greeted by my editor, Matt Welch, with surprising news. It would be better, he said, if I worked somewhere else. I’d voted for the Obama-Biden ticket (having joked, semi-seriously, that I was honor-bound to vote for a ticket with a fellow Delawarean on it) and wasn’t fully on board with the magazine’s upcoming, wonky focus on picking apart the new administration. My friend, Spencer Ackerman, immediately bought me Ethiopian food and suggested I come to work at his magazine, The Washington Independent. I was dicey about the suggestion, partly because I was already doing some work for The Economist. At Reason, I’d become a little less favorable to Republicans, and I’d never been shy about the fact that I was pro-gay marriage and pro-open borders. But could I do the same work if I jumped to a left-leaning web magazine? I figured that I could, largely because I wouldn’t change at all.

A few weeks later, Ezra Klein invited me to join Journolist — which I’d known about for a year. I don’t know why he did, but I think it was an assist to a friend trying out a new job, and a way to build my list of sources. I was dazzled by the sudden, immediate access I had to more than a hundred journalists and academics, mostly on the left, some without an ideology I could discern. And I was encouraged that they were so blunt about what they were thinking about and working on. My first big contribution to the list, in response to a question about which conservatives “mattered,” was sent out on January 26, 2009.

Hugh Hewitt, as buffoonish as he can seem, is incredibly well-used by Republicans. Check out the guest list for a week of his show – plenty of governors and congressmen show up. If you count Newt Gingrich as a pundit (I do and I’d be stunned if his yearly rumblings about political comebacks were anything more than book promotion stunts) I’d rank him near the top of this list, if not at the top. Hill Republicans who weren’t actually there for his screwed-up tenure speak of him as a prophet. Gingrich had a LOT to do with the drilling obsession and messaging that hit the GOP conference last summer. Finally, I’d nominate the very young Rob Bluey of Heritage for a place near the bottom of this list. He’s done a lot work convincing Republicans that they need to copy Democrats on internet outreach/YouTube/Twitter, and of course now they’re all obsessed with that stuff as the path back to victory.

One thing I’m watching is whether insulting Sarah Palin or occasionally praising Barack Obama is enough to drum someone out of the conservative movement in a real way – being disinvited from dinners, for example, as David Brock was after his Hillary book. I haven’t seen that yet, although conservative blogs are trying to write David Brooks, Kathleen Parker, etc out of the movement. This is a reason why President Obama scored more of a direct hit telling the GOP conference to “stop listening to Rush Limbaugh.” They really do stop and listen to talk radio, or their talk radio-massaged constituent mail/phone calls, before they take big steps.

This would become typical of what I sent to the list. I was talking, largely, to liberals who didn’t really know conservatives. So I assumed they thought Hugh Hewitt was “buffoonish.” I said Gingrich had a “screwed-up tenture” because Republicans I admired, like Sen. Tom Coburn (R, Ok.) and Dick Armey, had serious problems with how Gingrich ran the House.

But I was cocky, and I got worse. I treated the list like a dive bar, swaggering in and popping off about what was “really” happening out there, and snarking at conservatives. Why did I want these people to like me so much? Why did I assume that I needed to crack wise and rant about people who, usually for no more than five minutes were getting on my nerves? Because I was stupid and arrogant, and needlessly mean. Yes, I’d trash-talk liberals to Republicans sometimes. And I’d tell them which liberals “mattered,” who was a hack, who was coming after them. Did I suggest which strategies might and might not work for liberals, Democrats, and the president? Yes, although I do the same to conservatives — in February, for example, I told many of them that Scott Brown’s election hadn’t killed health care reform, and they needed to avoid dancing in the endzone, because I was aware of what liberals were saying about how to come back.

Still, this was hubris. It was the hubris of someone who rose — objectively speaking — a bit too fast, and someone who misunderstood a few things about his trade. It was also the hubris of someone who thought the best way to be annoyed about something was to do it publicly. This is the reason I’m surprised at commentary accusing me of misrepresenting myself. One other part of my career that wouldn’t have been possible a decade ago is my Twitter account, which has been popular — I’m assuming — because I’m sarcastic and don’t hide my biases. That Twitter account has echoed the way, described above, that I talk to liberals and conservatives in private. And it’s flashed like Drudge’s siren with every take I have on Republican politicians, on Democratic politicians, on fringe movements — everything. When I tweeted that Van Jones needed to resign, I was also e-mailing this to Journolist:

Jones had five years to distance himself from this bullshit. Five years. He didn’t do it. And I can’t believe that a man who spoke at basically every left/liberal event in 2007 and 2008 did not see what the Truthers were up to.

Yes, as [Charles] Johnson points out, they’re liars who try and suck everyone into their orbit. One year ago I was backstage at a Ron Paul event with Kevin Barrett, the lunatic University of Wisconsin professor, who deliriously informed me of all these famous people he’d gotten on board with the Truth movement. He was full of shit–they were people who’d been accosted by Truthers and said nice things to blow them off. Here’s an example of a Truther baiting Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand into indulging his nonsense.

But there was nothing preventing people like Paul, or like Jones, from brushing aside people like Barrett from releasing clear statements that they didn’t believe in these conspiracy theories.

I’m talking to a few media companies about what I’ll do next. Anyone who wanted to force me out of this business will have to settle for the consolation prize of me having to tediously inform sources of a new e-mail address. No serious journalist has defended the leak of my private e-mails; no one who works in politics or journalism would accept a situation where the things they said off the record could immediately become public. (Side note: On a conservative listserv, there is, apparently, an internal debate going on about leaks, after I learned of its existence and content. These conservatives have not opted to publish their private e-mails, and they shouldn’t.) But no serious journalist — as I want to be, as I am — should be so rude about the people he covers.

In his recent cover story for The Weekly Standard, Matthew Continetti praises CNBC’s Rick Santelli effusively for erupting against Barack Obama’s redistributionist policies on 19 February 2009 in such a fashion as to inspire the Tea Party Movement. Then, he blasts Fox News commentator Glenn Beck for seizing upon the current crisis as an opportunity for urging on the part of his fellow Americans a serious reconsideration of the country’s first principles.

“What distinguishes Beck from Santelli is,” Continetti writes, “the breadth and depth of his critique.”

In his broadcasts, books, and stage performances, Beck provides his audiences with a dark vision of American life. In this bleak tableaux, rich, highly educated, radical elites are using the instruments of power to control the common man and indoctrinate his children. The elites, Beck says, seized on the 2008 financial crisis to shape America according to their socialist, fascist, globalist vision. The only remaining obstacle to the elitist agenda is the pro-freedom movement that wants to return to America’s founding principles. The elitists fight the patriots by calling them racists and extremists.

Beck is not simply an entertainer. He and his audience love American history. They are hungry for new ways to interpret current events. And Beck is creating, in Amity Shlaes’s words, “a competing canon” of texts and authorities. This competing canon is not content to assault contemporary liberalism, but rather deconstructs the very foundations of the New Deal and the Progressive Era. Among the books Beck regularly cites on his programs are Shlaes’s Forgotten Man, Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism, Larry Schweickart and Michael Allen’s Patriot’s History of the United States, and Burt Folsom Jr.’s New Deal or Raw Deal? And books like Matthew Spalding’s We Still Hold These Truths, Seth Lipsky’s Citizen’s Constitution, and William J. Bennett and John Cribb’s American Patriot’s Almanac all belong on the list as well.

This intellectual journey has led Beck to some disturbing conclusions. Whereas Rick Santelli says the housing plan and the stimulus aren’t sensible, Beck says the Obama administration is the culmination of 100 years of unconstitutional governance. On the “We Surround Them” episode, Beck said, “The system has been perverted and it has to be restored.” In between bouts of weeping, he asked, “What happened to the country that loved the underdog and stood up for the little guy?” That country, he implied, is vanishing before our eyes. In Beck’s world, politics is less about issues than it is about “us” versus “them.” We may have them surrounded. But “we can’t trust anyone.”

The reason no one can be trusted, Beck says, is that the political system is compromised by the ideology of progressivism. At his keynote speech to the 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference, Beck wrote the word “progressivism” on a chalkboard and said, “This is the disease. This is the disease in America.” He said again, “Progressivism is the cancer in America and it is eating our Constitution.”

When he refers to progressivism, Beck is not only highlighting the liberals’ latest name for liberalism. He is referring to the ideas of John Dewey, Herbert Croly, and Walter Lippmann. According to Beck (and many others), these early 20th-century thinkers believed that there is no such thing as natural right. The Constitution, in their view, was not equipped to deal with the complexities of modern society. They argued that government should do more to protect free competition by busting trusts, and also promote equality and individual development through redistribution. The progressive tendency found political expression in Theodore Roosevelt’s “New Nationalism” speech of 1910 and in Woodrow Wilson’s presidency from 1913-1921. It became the foundation for FDR’s New Deal.

Continetti believes that Beck is “engaging in a line of inquiry that – interesting though it may sometimes be – is tangential to the political realities of our day.” Where Beck claims that the “communism and progressivism” are at odds with regard to “means not ends,” contending that “‘there is no difference except [that] one requires a gun and the other does it slowly,’” Continetti retorts that “progressivism is a distinctly American tradition that partly came into being as a way to prevent ideologies like communism and fascism from taking root in the United States,” adding, “Not even the stupidest American liberal shares the morality of the totalitarian monsters whom Beck analogizes to American politics so flippantly.”

Who is more nearly right? Matthew Continetti or Glenn Beck? Do our problems arise from over-reaching on the part of Barack Obama? Or do they have deeper roots?

I know of no clearer testimony pertinent to this matter than that of Walter Lippmann. As followers of Glenn Beck’s television show presumably know, Lippmann was the prince of the progressives. At Harvard College, he dabbled in socialism. Some four years after his graduation, he joined Herbert Croly and Walter Weyl in founding The New Republic. In 1914, he published the influential progressive tract Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest. For a brief time, during the First World War, Lippmann served as an advisor to Woodrow Wilson. Among other things, he drafted Wilson’s Fourteen-Points Speech

After that war, however, having witnessed the effectiveness of propaganda, Lippmann began to harbor doubts about the progressive conviction that popular sovereignty and governance by experts can easily be reconciled. In Public Opinion, published in 1922, he called into question the capacity of ordinary citizens to discern what was going on; and, in The Phantom Public, published five years later, he expressed doubts as to whether it made any sense at all to speak of the public interest in the manner in which the progressives did: as something radically distinct from and in tension with individual rights and the diverse private interests of the citizens.

In 1932, thinking that there was no alternative, Lippmann voted for Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But by 1937, when the shape of the Second New Deal had become clear, he had come to entertain grave misgivings. And at that point, in a book entitled An Inquiry into the Principles of the Good Society, he issued a damning judgment – which I quoted at length in my book Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift, and which , I believe, we should all take to heart:

Although the partisans who are now fighting for the mastery of the modern world wear shirts of different colors, their weapons are drawn from the same armory, their doctrines are variations of the same theme, and they go forth to battle singing the same tune with slightly different words. Their weapons are the coercive direction of the life and labor of mankind. Their doctrine is that disorder and misery can be overcome only by more and more compulsory organization. Their promise is that through the power of the state men can be made happy.

Throughout the world, in the name of progress, men who call themselves communists, socialists, fascists, nationalists, progressives, and even liberals, are unanimous in holding that government with its instruments of coercion must by commanding the people how they shall live, direct the course of civilization and fix the shape of things to come. They believe in what Mr. Stuart Chase accurately describes as “the overhead planning and control of economic activity.” This is the dogma which all the prevailing dogmas presuppose. This is the mold in which are cast the thought and action of the epoch. No other approach to the regulation of human affairs is seriously considered, or is even conceived as possible. The recently enfranchised masses and the leaders of thought who supply their ideas are almost completely under the spell of this dogma. Only a handful here and there, groups without influence, isolated and disregarded thinkers, continue to challenge it. For the premises of authoritarian collectivism have become the working beliefs, the self-evident assumptions, the unquestioned axioms, not only of all the revolutionary regimes, but of nearly every effort which lays claim to being enlightened, humane, and progressive.

So universal is the dominion of this dogma over the minds of contemporary men that no one is taken seriously as a statesman or a theorist who does not come forward with proposals to magnify the power of public officials and to extend and multiply their intervention in human affairs. Unless he is authoritarian and collectivist, he is a mossback, a reactionary, at best an amiable eccentric swimming hopelessly against the tide. It is a strong tide. Though despotism is no novelty in human affairs, it is probably true that at no time in twenty-five hundred years has any western government claimed for itself a jurisdiction over men’s lives comparable with that which is officially attempted in totalitarian states.

But it is even more significant that in other lands where men shrink from the ruthless policy of these regimes, it is commonly assumed that the movement of events must be in the same direction. Nearly everywhere the mark of a progressive is that he relies at last upon the increased power of officials to improve the condition of men. Though the progressives prefer to move gradually and with consideration, by persuading majorities to consent, the only instrument of progress in which they have faith is the coercive agency of government. They can, it would seem, imagine no alternative, nor can they remember how much of what they cherish as progressive has come by emancipation from political dominion, by the limitation of power, by the release of personal energy from authority and collective coercion. For virtually all that now passes for progressivism in countries like England and the United States calls for increasing ascendancy of the state: always the cry is for more officials with more power over more and more of the activities of men.

Yet the assumptions of this whole movement are not so self-evident as they seem. They are, in fact, contrary to the assumptions bred in men by the whole long struggle to extricate conscience, intellect, labor, and personality from the bondage of prerogative, privilege, monopoly, authority. For more than two thousand years, since western men first began to think about the social order, the main preoccupation of political thinking has been to find a law which would be superior to arbitrary power. Men have sought it in custom, in the dictates of reason, in religious revelation, endeavoring always to set up some check upon the exercise of force. This is the meaning of the long debate about Natural Law. This is the meaning of a thousand years of struggle to bring the sovereign under a constitution, to establish for the individual and for voluntary associations of men rights which they can enforce against kings, barons, magnates, majorities, and mobs. This it eh meaning of the struggle to separate the church from the state, to emancipate conscience, learning, the arts, education, and commerce from the inquisitor, the censor, the monopolist, the policeman, and the hangman.

Conceivably the lessons of this history no longer have a meaning for us. Conceivably there has come into the world during this generation some new element which makes it necessary for us to undo the work of emancipation, to retrace the steps men have taken to limit the power of rulers, which compels us to believe that the way of enlightenment in affairs is now to be found by intensifying authority and enlarging its scope. But the burden of proof is upon those who reject the oecumenical tradition of the western world. It is for them to show that their cult of the Providential State is in truth the new revelation they think it is, and that it is not, as a few still believe, the gigantic heresy of an apostate generation.

This is a passage that should be read and re-read time and again. The present discontents may be a function of over-reaching on the part of Barack Obama, as Matthew Continetti implies. But the difficulties we now face are also deeply rooted in the prevalence within this country of a political doctrine that has been around for some time; and, as one repentant progressive testified three-quarters of a century ago, the difference between the communists and the progressives turns on means and pace – and not on ends.

I do not have a functioning television set. I have watched Glenn Beck’s show elsewhere only twice. On both occasions, he handled himself well. He may sometimes go overboard. I do not know. But this I can say: the inquiry that he is pursuing is by no means “tangential to the political realities of our day.” It goes to the heart of the matter. If we continue to temporize with progressivism, as we have in the past, there can be no question that we are cooked.

Joe Biden traveled to Wisconsin yesterday to campaign with far left Progressive Russ Feingold (D-WI). Smokin Joe ordered a custard at a popular custard stand in Glendale during one of their stops. When Biden asked Kopp’s Frozen Custard stand owner how much he owed him, the owner responded,

“Nothing, just lower our taxes.”

Fat chance.

An embarrassed Joe Biden ignored him and walked away.

WISN 12 News reported:

A spokesman for the GOP responded to the VP’s visit:

“Vice President Biden probably decided not to take questions today because he didn’t want to fess up as to why Wisconsin has lost over 73,000 jobs since the stimulus was enacted.”

Ouch.

Barack Obama and Angela Merkel are the two main characters in what is being portrayed as a fight between American “stimulus” and European “austerity” at the G-20 summit meeting in Canada. My immediate instinct is to cheer for the Europeans. After all, “austerity” presumably means cutting back on wasteful government spending. Obama’s definition of “stimulus,” by contrast, is borrowing money from China and distributing it to various Democratic-leaning special-interest groups.

But appearances can be deceiving. Austerity, in the European context, means budget balance rather than spending reduction. As such, David Cameron’s proposal to boost the U.K.’s value-added tax from 17.5 percent to 20 percent is supposedly a sign of austerity even though his Chancellor of the Exchequer said a higher tax burden would generate “13 billion pounds we don’t have to find from extra spending cuts.”

Raising taxes to finance a bloated government, to be sure, is not the same as Obama’s strategy of borrowing money to finance a bloated government. But proponents of limited government and economic freedom understandably are underwhelmed by the choice of two big-government approaches.

What matters most, from a fiscal policy perspective, is shrinking the burden of government spending relative to economic output. Europe needs smaller government, not budget balance. According to OECD data, government spending in eurozone nations consumes nearly 51 percent of gross domestic product, almost 10 percentage points higher than the burden of government spending in the United States.

Unfortunately, I suspect that the “austerity” plans of Merkel, Cameron, Sarkozy, et al, will leave the overall burden of government relatively unchanged. That may be good news if the alternative is for government budgets to consume even-larger shares of economic output, but it is far from what is needed.

Unfortunately, the United States no longer offers a competing vision to the European welfare state. Under the big-government policies of Bush and Obama, the share of GDP consumed by government spending has jumped by nearly 8-percentage points in the past 10 years. And with Obama proposing and/or implementing higher income taxes, higher death taxes, higher capital gains taxes, higher payroll taxes, higher dividend taxes, higher business taxes, and a value-added tax, it appears that American-style big-government “stimulus” will soon be matched by European-style big-government “austerity.”

Here’s a blurb from the Christian Science Monitor about the Potemkin Village fiscal fight in Canada:

This weekend’s G-20 summit is shaping up as an economic clash of civilizations – or at least a clash of EU and US economic views. EU officials led by German chancellor Angela Merkel are on a national “austerity” budget cutting offensive as the wisest policy for economic health, ahead of the Toronto summit of 20 large-economy nations. Ms. Merkel Thursday said Germany will continue with $100 billion in cuts that will join similar giant ax strokes in the UK, Italy, France, Spain, and Greece. EU officials say budget austerity promotes the stability and market confidence that are prerequisites for their role in overall recovery. Yet EU pro-austerity statements in the past 48 hours are also defensive – a reaction to public statements from US President Barack Obama and G-20 chairman Lee Myung-bak, South Korea’s president, that the overall effect of national austerity in the EU will harm recovery. They are joined by US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, investor George Soros, and Nobel laureate and columnist Paul Krugman, among others, arguing that austerity works against growth, and may lead to a recessionary spiral.

Click to Play

Afghanistan and McChrystal top the conversation this week as Rob Long and Peter Robinson are joined this week by columnist James Lileks, John Yoo, and Victor Davis Hanson. Well, not all the time. Peter does manange to wedge in some discussion of soccer too. Questions? Comments? Join the conversation at Ricochet.com or write us at podcast@ricochet.com.
Run Down:

5:04 — James Lileks
25:55 — John Yoo
30:15 — Victor Davis Hanson
1:07:15 — Close

Kids placed in schools their parents chose for them – not the ones the government chose – graduate at a higher rate and are safer at school.  Who would have guessed?

According to an evaluation released yesterday by the US Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences, the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP) has “significantly improved students’ chances of graduating from high school.”  The same study finds that “parents had higher satisfaction and rated schools as safer if their child was offered or used an OSP scholarship.”

With these dramatic success indicators, it must be no surprise that DC OSP is the only federal education program that the Obama Administration is intent on killing.

Dr. Matt Ladner, vice president of research at the Goldwater Institute reports:

“…students who were randomly selected to receive vouchers had an 82% graduation rate.  That’s 12 percentage points higher than the students who didn’t receive vouchers.  Students who actually used their vouchers had graduation rates that were 21% higher.  Even better, the subgroup of students who received vouchers and came from designated Schools in Need of Improvement (SINI schools) had graduation rates that were 13 percentage points higher than the same subgroup of students who weren’t offered vouchers–and the effect was 20 percentage points higher for the SINI students who used their vouchers!”

That’s right.  Students who used their voucher to attend a school of their parents’ choice had a 21 percent higher graduation rate than those who were eligible for a voucher but were not offered one in the lottery process.  DC OSP is a federally-funded program that provides scholarships up to $7,500 to low-income families in Washington, DC – a pittance compared to DC Public School spending.

With these undeniable effects on graduation rates for low-income kids, why did Congress vote to kill DC OSP last year?  Why can parents no longer choose a school that they find to be safer and offer a better environment for their children?

DC kids and parents have been begging President Obama – who himself attended private school on scholarship – to support them since he took office.  But so far, the Obama Administration has cut the program by millions of dollars and disallowed new students to enter the program.

As common sense – and every study ever completed– tells us, high school graduation is a key indicator to success.  Students who do not graduate are significantly more likely to become single parents at young ages, rely upon public assistance, and go to prison.

No other federally-funded program that has had such a remarkable effect on graduation rates, nor has another federally-funded program met such high demand from parents firsthand.  Between 2004 and 2009, 5,500 students applied to participate in the program, and 3,700 received scholarships.

By opposing the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program, the Obama Administration is actively barring students from pathways to programs that have proven successful in increasing their chance to graduate college. This position is unconscionable.

From today’s Politico:

An all-night House-Senate conference committee delivered President Barack Obama and Democrats a far-reaching and historic achievement Friday – a realignment of the rules that govern Wall Street and a second victory toward Obama’s legislative triple crown.

The compromise bill now goes to the House and Senate for approval. For all the messiness of the process, financial reform and March’s health care reform win cumulatively make clear Obama and Democrats are governing in consequential ways – and once again Friday, without a single Republican vote. The results make clear the argument over Obama is no longer whether he’s effective or not, but whether voters will like the results.

The agreement came at 5:39 a.m., after 20 straight hours of work in the committee, a marathon session that tested the negotiating skills, patience and endurance of several dozen lawmakers tasked with reconciling two competing approaches to reining in Wall Street.

But it left no doubt about the mark Obama has left on his twin Democratic majorities in Congress – reluctant, even recalcitrant at times, but in the end, doing his bidding to remake two of the most important sectors of the U.S. economy.

His hoped-for third act – a wide-ranging climate change and energy bill – is next on Obama’s docket, and absent these successes, it would be easy to believe there was simply no way he could bend Congress to his will yet again, with midterms looming, poll numbers sagging and the nation’s financial coffers tapped out.

But Obama plans to press his advantage – to try to salvage one more legislative win out of the depths of the BP oil spill tragedy. He’s invited what amounts to the bipartisan Senate climate caucus to the White House Tuesday to plot out a way ahead.

Continue reading here.

The House Financial Services Committee voted Wednesday to launch an investigation of the ShoreBank bailout, a scandal that was first revealed here at BigGovernment.com. Of the dozens of banks that have failed this year, only ShoreBank received help from Washington and Wall Street. The reasons: its connections to the White House, its close relationship with Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), and its importance to the radical left.

After I broke the story in January, other bloggers, notably the Central Illinois 9/12 project, connected more of the dots. Soon, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, and even the New York Times began following the story. Two weeks ago, my campaign joined Rev. Isaac Hayes (who is challenging Jesse Jackson, Jr. in IL-2) and the Illinois Tea Party in a spirited protest outside ShoreBank’s offices on LaSalle Street in downtown Chicago.

Representatives Judy Biggert (R-IL) and Darrell Issa (R-CA) took up the cause and demanded answers about the White House’s role. Suddenly, the Treasury and the Federal Reserve began backing away from the bailout. That triggered a public attack on Treasury secretary Tim Geithner by the Illinois Finance Authority. Finally, Rep. Biggert succeeded in inserting an investigation of ShoreBank into the financial reform bill.

The financial reform bill is still a job-killer.  But if it does pass, the consolation is that Congress will investigate the ShoreBank bailout. The fact that a bipartisan committee managed to agree on the investigation shows how important the allegations are.

Meanwhile, the ShoreBank bailout is still on hold. Thanks to bloggers, the much-maligned Tea Party, and bold leadership on Capitol Hill, we have stopped a corrupt bailout, against overwhelming odds!

Aside from breaking her word to the AMA and physicians across the country, Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has effectively demolished doctor reimbursements for most of the healthcare industry.  The 21.2% Medicare fee schedule cut has taken effect, but what most do not realize is that the Medicare fee schedule is the gold standard for provider reimbursement fee schedules across the nation.

Essentially, where Medicare goes, insurers follow for the guidelines in covered services and baseline physician fee schedules for private payers as well as worker’s compensation and automobile insurance companies in most states, as well as Medicaid and Medicare itself.

What Pelosi has effectively done is saved the insurance companies who use the Medicare fee schedule millions of dollars of payouts to physicians on their claims–regardless if the patient is a Medicare patient.  I’m not seeing the insurance lobby out there right now, are you?  However, on the provider side, the doctor’s lobby groups are outraged at Pelosi’s failure and the damage this inaction will cause physicians–especially private–and force them to layoff employees to make up for the loss in reimbursements to cover their enormous monthly overhead costs.

Pelosi is completely ignorant of the doctor’s fee schedules and how their reimbursements are calculated.  In a multilayered approach and working with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the AMA Resource-Based Relative Value Scale (RBRVS) is used and the AMA/Specialty Society Relative Value Scale Update Committee (RUC) makes annual recommendations regarding new and revised physician services to CMS and performs broad reviews of the RBRVS every five years.  These values have not been adjusted since the 21% fee schedule reduction took effect and for Pelosi to ignore the fact that the doc fix will actually cost doctors to see their patients because their fees will be reduced, but the cost of providing the services and the supplies needed have not gone down and in some cases, continue to rise.  Additionally, student loan payments have not been decreased by 21% for doctors, have they?

The only business segment to ultimately win is the insurance industry.

Real-world exit questions:  If you own a company and your revenue just got nicked by 21%, but your supplies and cost of services has remained the same, how long before you will have to layoff employees to cover your monthly costs?

Do people understand that private practice physicians take most, if not all, of their salaries on assignment?  Physicians must do this because of provider contracts and other variables, but their fees are not a guarantee of payment; claims can be denied in part or in full.  (Some lawyers take their fees on assignment, but it is their choice.)  And now, doctors are being used as political pawns by the Democrats.

Is it possible that the Democrats are attempting to push doctors into the union, say the SEIU?  Only those doctors who are in private practices, not employed by hospitals cannot unionize, so what’s next for them?

Nothing like having a bunch of bureaucrats who have no idea about healthcare, costs of providing services,  running a business, covering overhead, etc. in charge of your salary, covered services, and future.

Finally, this is clearly a Democrat problem, after all, “You won.”  And by that, Americans now understand that to mean that the Democrats are clearly the party of cry-babies, finger-pointers, and blame-shifters.  And job killers, because if your more than $800 billion stimulus and jobs bills actually provided jobs, we wouldn’t need unemployment extenders in current legislation.  Americans would actually be back to work, wouldn’t they, Nan?

Organizing for America (formerly known as Obama for America) is the new organized group that President Obama is using to push his agenda on America. This group is so well organized it makes you wonder if President Obama should have hired the people who run it to take care of the BP oil spill.

This group has two functions:  First is to push and promote Obama’s political agendas and bills from DC by delivering talking points through various mediums (My Barack Obama, Fight The Smears, and twitter.com/barackobama).  The second is to create a pool of volunteers for the DNC to use to influence local and national elections in November.

The latest string of emails sent out by OFA have been talking points about renewable energy and the BP oils pill. The latest of these solicitations had a video address embedded in an email from the President specifically asking for OFA’s support to “rebuild our nation’s economy on a new foundation” of renewable energy.  He tells OFA members that we must “seize this moment,” to pass comprehensive energy reform or we will “miss our chance.”  It appears that President Obama would never say something like this in a Presidential address from the oval office but when it’s “just us,” he has no problem divulging his true agenda.

OFA started this election season with a 2010 online livestream strategy session.  It was a 40-minute webcast hosted by young adults in front of a live audience talking about what the President expected from activists this election cycle.  During the live webcast, users watching were put in a forum that was specific to their state and, in real time, were able to discuss strategies for local elections.

For those who didn’t want to watch the full-video, below is an email sent out following the webcast which includes the talking points:

After that, meetings in local neighborhoods were organized and OFA members received emails from organizers detailing the specifics as to time and place.  These meetings were meant to be local strategy sessions to discuss local elections and deliver talking points on national issues.  In the emails promoting these local events (some sent out by the local event coordinator), one was highly encouraged to bring friends and assured that an OFA member would be on hand to answer any questions:

OFA is doing much more than just organizing for local elections; they are organizing for national issues, too.  For instance, OFA held a “Wall Street Reform Day of Action” where members not only made phone calls and knocked doors but attended or organized protests in their communities.  One week later a similar “day of action” organized by SEIU was held on the front steps of a Bank of America executive’s home.  An email sent out after the day of the event gives just a taste of what OFA was doing:

OFA members are encouraged to do “something” to promote the agenda of the President every week.  Emails with the subject, “What are you doing this weekend?” and, “What did you do this week?” are routine.

If you are on the mailing list for the RNC or any conservative movement, compare the kind of outreach you receive from them to the effort made by OFA.  Does it even come close?  Are their web sites anywhere as effective and full of organizing tools as My Barack Obama is?

These guys make AMWAY sales leaders look like kindergarten teachers.  They are organized, they are motivated, and they have the tools and resources to make a huge impact.

If you think this is just a normal political action committee or run-of-the-mill political activist organization, you’re wrong. This group is not only highly mobilized, they are fanatical and engaged. Hundreds and possibly thousands in YOUR state are meeting and getting these emails with these talking points. They are being encouraged to contact their friends, neighbors, and first time voters about these issues as well as find new voters every week.

Don’t be fooled by the rampant “anti-incumbent” atmosphere in today’s political climate. The elections in November of this year are going to be hard races and a large and dedicated group of people are already engaged in the battle.  Are you?

WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama ousted Gen. Stanley McChrystal as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan on Wednesday, saying that his scathing published remarks about administration officials undermine civilian control of the military and erode the needed trust on the president’s war team.

Obama named McChrystal’s direct boss—Gen. David Petraeus—to take over the troubled 9-year-old war in Afghanistan. He asked the Senate to confirm Petraeus for the new post “as swiftly as possible.”

The president said he did not make the decision to accept McChrystal’s resignation over any disagreement in policy or “out of any sense of personal insult.” Flanked by Vice President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the Rose Garden, he said: “I believe it is the right decision for our national security.”

Obama hit several gracious notes about McChrystal and his service, saying that he made the decision to sack him “with considerable regret.” And yet, said he said that the job in Afghanistan cannot be done now under McChrystal’s leadership, asserting that the critical remarks from the general and his inner circle in the Rolling Stone magazine article displayed conduct that doesn’t live up to the necessary standards for a command-level officer.

Obama seemed to suggest that McChrystal’s military career is over, including in his praise of the general that the nation should be grateful “for his remarkable career in uniform.”

McChrystal left the White House following his Oval Office call to accounts, and returned to his military quarters at Washington’s Fort McNair. A senior military official said there is no immediate decision about whether he would retire from the Army, which has been his entire career. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

With the controversy have the effect of refueling debate over his Afghanistan policy, Obama took pains to emphasize that the strategy was not shifting with McChrystal’s outster.

Read the full article here.

A federal judge has, for the moment, spared already-suffering Gulf state residents from the brunt of President Obama’s most recent anti-energy Power Grab. It has enjoined the administration from implementing its moratorium on deepwater drilling. The Order is here, and the Opinion here.

The administration has vowed to appeal. Regardless of the outcome, this victory is temporary. As I detail in Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America, Obama and his administration are committed to strangling domestic energy production. At the same time they promise to also clamp down on the cost of consumption, all in a way that makes our last energy-poverty president, Jimmy Carter, appear a free-market pioneer.

This was telegraphed immediately after Obama’s inauguration by his by administration revoking massive tracts of public land from possible lease for domestic energy production, even to the point of suspending lease agreements already struck.

None of this is either accident or coincidence, but affirmed as a deliberate plan by Obama’s concurrent clamp-down on families’ access to energy with a cap-and-trade scheme he vowed would cause energy prices to “necessarily skyrocket”. Though he dared not speak the scheme’s name, Obama renewed his support for it in his Oval Office speech last Tuesday by praising the House-passed bill.

Then, he also restated his threat of imposing central planning in the guise of the state engineering a “green economy”. Although last week he also suddenly dropped reference to his specific European models – because those countries like Spain have now admitted the devastation they caused, after his praise brought scrutiny – we know that even Europe has refused to ban production of domestic energy resources.

From the moratorium blocked by a federal judge today, pending appeal by Obama, to the planned “lame-duck” Congress-wide passage of the “cap-and-trade” energy tax, Obama is affirming all that he telegraphed and which is laid out in detail in Power Grab.

The longest days of summer are proving to be even longer days for Obama.  His approval ratings are mired in the mid 40s, primaries herald losses for Democrats and the Gulf Oil spill is turning out to be more slippery for Obama than BP.  All in all, Obama is failing both Alinsky and Michael Dukakis and the Democrats are headed toward losing the House.

In 2009, Obama chose confrontational politics.  He appointed Rahm Emanuel, known more for his hard ball tactics than his diplomacy, for his Chief of Staff.  Out of the gate, he pushed through a “stimulus” bill along partisan lines instead of seeking a bi-partisan solution, i.e. a mixture of tax cuts, regulatory relief and federal spending in lieu of pure deficit spending.  Obama then proceeded to push Cap and Trade and Health Care – again along strictly partisan lines.  In doing so, his administration spoke more than disparagingly of those opposing his policies.  To many, Obama was outright demonizing his opponents much like Saul Alinksy would advocate.

As the calendar turned onward, and the economy predictably failed to turn upward, the Democrats and the Obama Administration received the shock of a Kennedy lifetime when the otherwise barely known Scott Brown pulled off a stunning victory by taking the “Kennedy seat” away from the Democrats and giving it back to the people.  Unbowed by such political tea leaves, and warnings from prognosticators, Obama pushed the Health Care Bill through along partisan lines and with the promise that people will be able to keep their existing health care.  Now nearly 60% of Americans want that bill repealed and that is before the emerging stories about not being able to keep their existing health care, based on the regulations being written, have begun to take hold.

Then came the Gulf Oil spill.  At first, Obama nearly ignored the emerging problem.  Since then, he “sued” BP and alternatively claimed he was in control but that there was nothing he could really do.  It is rather known, at this point however, that he could have easily waived the Jones Act to allow non-union remediation efforts and he could have accepted foreign help that would have reduced to scope of the spill.  So bad is his performance that even his most staunch supporters on the far Left have questioned his ability to command.

All of which bring us back to Alinksy and Dukakis.

Alinksy’s methodology is meant for an insurgency and is dependent on ideological confrontation.  It is not one that fares well with half measures.  Yet over the last year Obama has drawn derision on the Left for being able to achieve only half measures even though the Democrats control the House, the Senate and the White House.

As for Dukakis, he famously campaigned for the Presidency asserting that that election was about “competency not ideology.”  While the Country never had to endure Dukakis’ brand of competency back in the late 1980s, they have seen Obama’s failures first hand.

The Presidency, however, is not about an insurgency, it is about building consensus.  It is also non-ideological to the extent that it requires its Commander in Chief to effectively deal to crises and day-today problems – competently.  Obama is demonstrating his lack of experience and ability along with his lack of historical understanding and ability to learn about the Presidency.  In the final analysis, likely to be made this fall and in 2012, it is those failures that will define Obama and the Democrats.

While the White House really, really wants you believe that they have their boot on the neck of BP, it turns out that a key Administration official had his head inserted somewhere else just three short years ago. Do you think NOBEL LAUREATE (and Secretary of Energy) Steven Chu still thinks BP is going to help save the world?

This is one of the ironies of the disaster in the Gulf. From all available evidence, BP is as committed as anyone to the “comprehensive energy reform” agenda of the White House. No doubt this reflects both political realism and market opportunism on their part, but BP’s 2009 “Road Map for America’s Energy Future” could have been written by John Kerry. Higher energy prices, cap and trade? Bring it on, says BP.

And this isn’t a recent shift on BP’s part. Here’s embattled BP Chairman Tony Hayward back in June 2007:

From BP’s perspective, the evidence that climate change is happening, and that it is manmade, is mounting all the time. As the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found, the evidence is almost overwhelming. We could wait until the science is 100% certain, but BP believes that, as an energy company, it has a duty to act pre-emptively. When you balance the likely impacts of not taking action against the real opportunities that exist to take action, it is difficult to believe that humanity will not move towards a solution to climate change…

We need to ensure that the costs of emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are included in the price we pay for everything – whether it be a television, a train journey, or switching on a light – all should reflect the cost of emissions in their price.

This can be achieved through a Cap and Trade system, taxation, or regulation.

So it makes perfect sense that back in 2007 Steven Chu and UC Berkeley would be more than happy to accept a $500 million investment from BP to form the Energy BioSciences Institute. The relationship between Chu and BP was so cozy in fact that Chu subsequently brought on BP’s Chief Scientist Steve Koonin as an undersecretary at the Department of Energy.

My guess is that this history – and these relationships – played a part in the Administration’s initial confusion over whether BP was a “partner” in the effort to resolve the Gulf spill. Because for many within the Administration BP had been one of the good guys.

This also explains why BP has been so willing to prostrate themselves in front of their Democratic overlords in Congress and the White House. Here they thought they were trusted partners in saving the world from impending climate disaster. It turns out that their allies in the Obama Administration might soon be the only thing saving BP from the anger of a raging public…and insolvency.

Shortly after President Obama assumed the Commander-in-Chief duties, he retired the existing commanding general in Afghanistan and hand-picked his successor: General Stanley McChrystal.  McChrystal was always known as a brash and outspoken military man, an expert in counterinsurgency, greatly respected by the troops under his command, and as having little patience for fools.

His requirement to have to answer to Obama, then, was a trainwreck waiting to happen.

Last year, McChrystal made no secret of his desire to have as many as 80,000 additional troops to press the fight in Afghanistan.  He went to the press to state that objective and to dismiss those, like VP Joe Biden, who opposed any kind of surge.

That outspokenness got him into trouble: Obama summoned him aboard Air Force One in Europe and dressed him down a bit.  And while McChrystal was right on policy (never commit militarily to an operation without committing overwhelming force and having a clear plan), he was wrong to go public with his troop level requests, and his concerns and reservations.

Today we’ve got another trainwreck smash-up.

McChrystal is being recalled to the White House to meet with Obama tomorrow to explain disrespectful comments he and his aides made to Rolling Stone magazine about Obama, Biden, other top national security officials, and the war strategy.  Once again, McChrystal is right on policy (Obama is a destructive, disengaged, uninterested fool whose withdrawal timetable and
ridiculous hamstringing rules of engaement are costing us lives and progress), but he was wrong to go public with that criticism.

Obama will decide if he’s Harry Truman and McChrystal is Douglas MacArthur.

But there are 2 big points to consider as this story unfolds:

1.  McChyrstal is a four star general, graduate of West Point, has extensive combat experience and a chest full of medals.  In other words, he knows what he’s doing.  This was NOT a mistake.  These comments were not “off the cuff” or limited to just one or two flippant remarks.  And the interview was deliberately given to far-Left, anti-war Rolling Stone.  None of this was a
coincidence.

That can only mean one thing:  that McChrystal is playing a game of chicken with Obama.  He was daring Obama to respond.  Obama runs a huge risk if he fires him.  If the war goes under, it’ll be Obama’s fault for firing an insubordinate and prickly but effective general.  If he doesn’t fire him, he may look weak and McChrystal will likely feel freer to do what he needs to do to win on the battlefield.  Either way: McChrystal has made his point.

2.  Many are asking today:  Does Obama still have the necessary trust and confidence in McChrystal?  I think the more appropriate and important question is:  Does McChrystal have ANY trust and confidence in the Commander-in-Chief?

You may have missed President Obama’s euphemism for massive wealth transfers involved in his “green economy” — central planning rebranded — that he said last week he will seek to use the Gulf oil spill to impose. That euphemism was:

“When I was a candidate for this office, I laid out a set of principles that would move our country towards energy independence. Last year, the House of Representatives acted on these principles by passing a strong and comprehensive energy and climate bill –- a bill that finally makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy for America’s businesses.”

This is his fourth high-profile use of the phrase “finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy”, most recently his State of the Union speech. I addressed this in Chapter 6, “Green Eggs and Scam: The Wholesale Fraud of ‘Green Jobs’” from Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America:

That is the objective of various “green jobs” schemes: make everything else so expensive as to give life to the uneconomical. But that is incredibly economically harmful.

Also, note what President Obama said in his September 2009 UN “global warming” speech, a comment that should strike anyone who ever took an economics course or simply possessed the capacity for critical thought:

“Most importantly, the House of Representatives passed an energy and climate bill in June that would finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy for American businesses and dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

The key word there is that lawmakers passed a scheme to make inefficient projects “profitable”, not “cost-effective”. That’s corporate welfare. These mandates and subsidies would , however, add value to the investment portfolios of many leading lights among Obama’s allies, such as George Soros who, by chance, soon revealed plans to sink one billion dollars into “green jobs” schemes. Lo and behold, another of his investments, the Center for American Progress, furiously pushes “green jobs” schemes.

Recall the sage from Team Soros, Mr. [Andrew] Light, who assures us that these mandates are “gonna spur new innovation, which is gonna reward smart investment, and which is gonna make alternative energy sources competitive” with things that actually work. No. The laws of physics remain undefeated. All they will do is impose the agenda admitted to by Van Jones and his Blue-Green allies, and seize your wealth to reward the purely speculative among Obama’s Wall Street supporters underwriting the green campaign.

You knew this was coming. From the Associated Press:

The White House announcement comes as administration officials meet privately with state insurance commissioners, and CEOs of major insurance companies, amid concerns over continued premium hikes. Obama was expected to attend at least part of the session, and is scheduled to make a speech later.

Consumers who buy their policies directly faced increases averaging 20 percent this year, according to a survey released Monday by the Kaiser Family Foundation. Although most Americans are covered on the job, about 14 million purchase insurance on the individual market and have the least bargaining power when it comes to costs.

It’s still unclear how insurance companies will price the new guaranteed coverage for children. If premiums are too high, families may still be unable to get health insurance.

Entire article here.

___

Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse…

Last week Barack Obama told Politico that the BP oil spill was like 9-11–
But, it’s been over 60 days since the Deepwater Horizon rig explosion and he’s only sent 20 of 2,000 US oil skimmer boats to the coast of Florida.

Senator George LeMieux of Florida told the Shark Tank that there are only 20 skimmer boats off the coast of Florida out of 2,000 available skimmer boats in the United States. Lemieux says that Obama is afraid to move them to Florida because there won’t be any in place in case there is an oil leak somewhere else.

…That sounds like Obama.

Via the Shark Tank:

Senator Lemieux is keeping a count on the number of skimmer boats the adminstration has working off the Florida coast on his website:

Yesterday, Senator Lemieux requested a daily skimmer count update from the adminstration.

There have been calls to bring in more skimmer boats for at least two weeks but they have been ignored.

22 Countires have also offered to bring in their skimmer boats.
Florida News Capital reported:

Florida has a new point man to help speed up the response efforts to the BP oil leak. U.S. Coast Guard Commander Joe Boudrow (Boo-Dro –oh) will work to secure more equipment and help organize beach clean up efforts for the state. As Whitney Ray tells us, his first marching orders… bring more skimmers to Florida.

I extend my sincerest apology for this profile. It was a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never have happened. Throughout my career, I have lived by the principles of personal honor and professional integrity. What is reflected in this article falls far short of that standard. I have enormous respect and admiration for President Obama and his national security team, and for the civilian leaders and troops fighting this war and I remain committed to ensuring its successful outcome.”
-General Stanley McChrystal, 6/22/2010

The interview of General McChrystal and his in Rolling Stone was not an accident, it’s a perfect  example of suicide by interview.  The General knew that every criticism would be “on the record.”  He also knew that the President will have no choice but to relieve the General of his command after their meeting tomorrow. The Military Code of Justice  provides that a General does not criticize the Commander-in-Chief publicly however,  the General criticized  Obama in a major way and even picked the perfect vehicle to do it in the most visible of ways.

McChrystal’s statements clearly point to the fact that he believes the war cannot be won under the President’s parameters, a tepid escalation to protect the president from his political supports. McChrystal  is clearly frustrated by  Barack Obama and his administration and finds it necessary to protect his men. He finds himself having to take radical steps to protect his troops in the face of an administration trying to fight a war on a half-assed basis.

According to Fox, Some of the highlights of the up-coming article include:

• Although McChrystal voted for Obama, the two failed to connect from the start. Obama called McChrystal on the carpet last fall for speaking too bluntly about his desire for more troops. The President did not want to hear his advice. “I found that time painful,” McChrystal said in the article, on newsstands Friday. “I was selling an unsellable position.”

• It quoted an adviser to McChrystal dismissing the early meeting with Obama as a “10-minute photo op.Obama clearly didn’t know anything about him, who he was. The boss was pretty disappointed,” the adviser told the magazine.

• The military is clearly unhappy about Obama’s arbitrary deadline of July of next year. The White House’s troop commitment was toed a pledge to begin bringing them home in July 2011. Counterinsurgency strategists advising McChrystal regarded as an arbitrary deadline.

• The article list of administration figures said to back McChrystal, including Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and puts the SCHMOTUS (Schmo of the United States), Vice President Joe Biden at the top of a list of those who don’t. The article says McChrystal has seized control of the war “by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House.”

• Asked by the Rolling Stone reporter about what he now feels of the war strategy advocated by the SHMOTUS  last fall (fewer troops, more drone attacks), McChrystal and his aides attempted to come up with a good one-liner to dismiss the question. “Are you asking about Vice President Biden?” McChrystal  joked. “Who’s that?” “Biden?” one aide was quoted as saying. “Did you say: Bite me?”

• Another aide called White House National Security Adviser Jim Jones, a retired four star general, a “clown” who was “stuck in 1985.

• Some of the strongest criticism, however, was reserved for Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. “The boss says he’s like a wounded animal,” one of the general’s aides was quoted as saying. “Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he’s going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous.”

• If Eikenberry had doubts about the troop buildup, McChrystal said he never expressed them until a leaked internal document threw a wild card into the debate over whether to add more troops last November. In the document, Eikenberry said Afghan President Hamid Karzai was not a reliable partner for the counterinsurgency strategy McChrystal was hired to execute. McChrystal said he felt “betrayed” and accused the ambassador of giving himself cover. Here’s one that covers his flank for the history books,” McChrystal told the magazine. “Now, if we fail, they can say ‘I told you so.”‘

McChrystal is a Four-Star General, a position you do not achieve by being an idiot. Today’s military leadership is well schooled not only in war-making but in diplomacy.  He knew what the content of the article would be. He also knew that the article would lead his own dismissal (or the proverbial resignation letter where he says he’s quitting to spend more time with his family).

The Rolling Stone interview highlights the difference in the leadership styles of the President and the General. When this President faces a crisis,  he looks for someone either internally or externally to blame. On the other hand, the General sees the War in Afghanistan reaching a crisis point because of the way it is being waged, rather than looking to find a scapegoat in his ranks as Obama would do, McChrystal found a way to let the country know what is really happening, while at the same time redirect any criticism for the war effort, away from his men and on to his own wide shoulders.

Notice that even in his apology above,the General does not take back the comments, he simply apologizes for making the comments. The Military commander was sending his troops and the administration a message.  To the troops he was saying ” I have your backs even to the point of hurting my own career.” The message for the administration was, “Your way isn’t working,  let us do what is necessary to win this war.  Even though this was a violation of the Code of Honor, the General’s statements were a service to America and to his men by confirming what we all suspected, the President and his administration does not have a clue.

Bad news today for President Obama, his Counterterrorism and Homeland Security Advisor, John Brennan, and other proponents of the idea that the United States can safely reach out to “moderate” elements within terrorist organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban.  In a 6-3 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court found that no distinction can be made between violent and non-violent wings of such groups and that the former will be beneficiaries of whatever “material support” is given them.

As Stephen Landman of the indispensable Investigative Project on Terrorism’s IPT News reported in a post Monday:

“The court roundly rejected the claims that there’s a distinction between aid to a terrorist group’s “social” wing, as opposed to its military wing….:

Material support meant to “promote peaceable, lawful conduct” can further terrorism by foreign groups in multiple ways. Material support is a valuable resource by definition. Such support frees up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends. It also importantly helps lend legitimacy to foreign terrorist groups – legitimacy that makes it easier for those groups to persist, to recruit members, and to raise funds – all of which facilitate more terrorist attacks.

As a result of this ruling upholding the material support statute, it remains illegal to provide to designated terrorist groups “any property, tangible or intangible, or service, including currency or monetary instrument or financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel (one or more individuals who may be or include oneself), and transportation, except medicine or religious materials.”

The Court found:  “Whether foreign terrorist organizations meaningfully segregate support of their legitimate activities from support of terrorism is an empirical question. When it enacted section 2339B in 1996, Congress made specific findings regarding the serious threat posed by international terrorism. One of those findings explicitly rejects plaintiffs’ contention that their support would not further the terrorist activities of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) and the Tamil Tigers (LTTE): ‘Foreign organizations that engage in terrorist activity are so tainted by their criminal conduct that any contribution to such an organization facilitates that conduct.’”

The ruling in Holder v. The Humanitarian Law Project also determined that: “Material support meant to ‘promote peaceable, lawful conduct’ can further terrorism by foreign groups in multiple ways. Material support is a valuable resource by definition. Such support frees up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends. It also importantly helps lend legitimacy to foreign terrorist groups – legitimacy that makes it easier for those groups to persist, to recruit members, and to raise funds – all of which facilitate more terrorist attacks.”

The logic of the Supreme Court’s decision on material support suggests that it would be illegal to provide $400 million via the so-called “moderates” of the Palestinian Authority to the designated terrorist organization (DTO) Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip – something President Obama has announced he intends to do.  It should also preclude the sort of “outreach” to the so-called “moderates” of another DTO, Hezbollah, as presidential advisor Brennan has twice indicated he thinks is in order.  Ditto negotiations with “moderate” members of the Taliban, at least to the extent such a process entails what amounts to material support to that terrorist organization in the form of financial or other substantial inducements to their cooperation.

What is more, the Supremes’ ruling in this case essentially upholds a landmark en banc opinion issued last year by the 7th Circuit in Boim v. Holy Land Foundation.  The latter decision written for the majority by highly esteemed Judge Richard Posner found that a contribution made to an organization embracing a doctrine like Shariah that calls on its adherents to engage in jihad amounts to material support.  This outcome was particularly gratifying for the Center for Security Policy as it filed an amicus brief in the case making precisely that argument.

Particularly noteworthy is the fact that the Supreme Court actually endorsed a broad interpretation of the material support statute.  Solicitor General Elena Kagan espoused the view that the law regulates conduct only, not speech per se. The Court found that the statute does indeed regulate speech and that Congress can criminalize speech on behalf of a known terrorist organization – even if such speech is for legal ends, as long as that speech also provides material support to said organization.

Accordingly, it appears that, for example, if an imam were to issue a Shariah fatwa “to, under the direction of, or in coordination with foreign groups that the speaker knows to be terrorist organizations,” he would be guilty of violation of the material support statute.  This could constitute a powerful new tool for countering the stealth jihad inside the United States.

By the same token, the Supreme Court ruling would apply to overseas activities as well, such as the so-called “humanitarian flotilla” that sought to break Israel’s naval blockade of Hamastan in Gaza.  Any U.S. organization that coordinated their support for this affair with Hamas in any way would be guilty of providing material support in violation of the statute.

In short, the top court in a federal judiciary that has in recent years handed a succession of victories to America’s terrorist foes – dare we call it “material support? – has rendered a decision in Holder v. the Humanitarian Law Project of signal importance.  It now behooves the Obama administration to conform its own policies and behavior to the letter and spirit of this sensible ruling, even as it enforces the law vigorously.

Barack Obama’s problem with top Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McCrystal is one of his own making.

McCrystal and his staff – in a much-ballyhooed article in Rolling Stone set to be published on Friday – are reportedly disdainful and disrespectful to the White House, Afghanistan envoy retired Gen. Karl Eikenberry and Vice President Biden.  That they were cannot be an accident.  McCrystal (and his boss, Gen. David Petraeus) were uncharacteristically vocal in the months Obama pondered his Afghanistan strategy.  They didn’t trust Obama then, and don’t now.

Obama chose McCrystal to command the counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan (read “nation-building” for “counterinsurgency”).  Both McCrystal and Petraeus (who helped draft the plan) agreed with President Obama’s July 2011 deadline for the campaign.

But it was – and is metaphysically impossible for the plan to work, as Petraeus and McCrystal both knew.  A counterinsurgency can succeed, but only with an open-ended commitment to it, and a decisive action to end the involvement of out-of-country allies of the insurgents.

Simply put, basing a strategy on nation-building is the catastrophic mistake that George W. Bush made in Iraq that Obama is now compounding in Afghanistan.

First, you cannot defeat an insurgency without providing both long-term security and offering a form of government more attractive to the populace than the insurgent offers.  Neither in Iraq nor in Afghanistan is there such a form of government offered – far less credibly offered – to the population.  And in neither place can we offer security for any length of time past the moment the last US trooper climbs into a truck to head to the airport for a flight home.

Second, neither Bush in Iraq or Afghanistan nor Obama in the latter has been willing to even admit that Iran and other nations’ intervention in support of the insurgents in both countries is the deciding factor in the insurgents’ campaigns.  So long as the outside support pours in, the insurgents stay on the attack.  And so they will in Afghanistan, long past the July 2011 deadline.

So as Stanley McCrystal comes back to Washington this week for a proper scolding by the president, what choice does Obama have?

He can’t fire McCrystal without giving McCrystal’s successor more time to accomplish the mission.  If McCrystal is fired this week, how can anyone replace him and be expected to win in the next twelve months?

I predict McCrystal won’t be fired for that reason alone.  It’s vastly more important to Obama to maintain the July 2011 withdrawal date than it is to succeed.  McCrystal will be scolded, maybe even publicly, by Obama and sent back to do what the general and his military superiors must know is an impossible mission.

There’s an old joke about a Transylvanian cookbook. The recipe for an omelet starts off with this: “First, steal two eggs.” If that note really appeared in some country’s cookbook, don’t look for constitutional government or a free market system to arise there anytime soon. That’s because democracy is not something you can just plant, like shaking seeds out of an envelope.

Americans were blessed to have extensive experience of self-government when we made our bid for independence in the 1770s. And Americans at that time–all the most thoughtful ones at least–recognized the profound contradiction that human bondage represented. It was difficult to assert on the one hand that all government “derives its just powers from the consent of the governed” while holding millions of human beings as slaves. Amid many blessings, slavery was held to be a curse. It took another eighty years and fratricidal Civil War before those contradictions were resolved.

A free market can do many things efficiently and justly, but the free market is perverted when it treats humans as objects. Thus, almost all people recognize that slavery and international sex trafficking are wrong. Our laws protect artistic expression, but we demand strict enforcement of laws against child pornography. Such illicit trade cannot be honored as a part of legitimate commerce.

We already know something of the unusual ideas of human rights and commerce held by U.S. Solicitor General, Elena Kagan. Kagan has been nominated by President Obama to succeed the retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. Kagan also served in the Clinton White House, where she left an extensive paper trail of documented opinions.

Most interesting, perhaps, is Kagan’s support for cloning human beings. Clinton Library documents show that she opposed any effort by Congress to prevent human beings from being cloned specifically to create embryos that would be experimented upon, then killed. Gallup recently reported that 88% of Americans oppose cloning human beings. Kagan does not.

We also know, from her record as Solicitor General in the Obama administration, that there are circumstances in which Elena Kagan would vote to ban political books. President Obama famously attacked the Supreme Court–while its members sat robed before him–during his first State of the Union Address last January. He attacked the Court for its ruling in the case of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. The President said, incorrectly, that that ruling permitted corporations to contribute directly to political campaigns and would allow foreigners to come in and influence our elections.

What the Citizens United case did say was that unions and companies, and non-profit associations, do not lose their First Amendment rights to speak on public issues just because an election is less than sixty days away. In fact, the Supreme Court found, during election campaigns was the very time when political communication among citizens was most important.

At issue was a film produced by Citizens United that attacked the public record of Hillary Clinton. The McCain-Feingold law says that such communications are unlawful contributions.

Kagan was asked if, instead of making a movie, Citizens United had published a book criticizing Hillary Clinton and it hit the stands less than sixty days before an election? Could the government ban that book? Yes, she said, representing the Obama administration. Ed Whelan, writing for National Review Online, pointed to the bizarre consequences of Kagan’s reasoning:

As Chief Justice Roberts pointed out, the theory of the First Amendment advocated by Kagan on behalf of the Obama administration “would empower the Government to prohibit newspapers from running editorials or opinion pieces supporting or opposing candidates for office, so long as the newspapers were owned by corporations—as the major ones are.”

Here we can clearly see that the kind of disregard for human rights Kagan denied in her advocacy of cloning human beings extends to property rights and to suppression of free speech. All our Bill of Rights guarantees–including freedom of speech and assembly–can only be safe in a constitutional order that respects human life. We must stand for free markets, but those free markets themselves are supported by respect for those inalienable rights with which we are endowed by our Creator. When those rights are denied by government, destructive forces are unleashed against free markets as well.

On his first day in office, January 20, 2009, President Barack Obama issued a statement on the White House Web site promising Gulf Coast residents that his administration would not fail them like he accused his predecessor President George W. Bush.

Eighteen months later, those arrogant words are coming back to haunt Obama as the Gulf Coast is facing the third month of failure by Obama to marshall sufficient resources to protect the region from the massive BP oil spill.

“President Obama will keep the broken promises made by President Bush to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He and Vice President Biden will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur.”

Politico reported the statement the day it was posted to a White House page titled “Additional Issues.”

Since then, the White House has edited the comment to remove the personal insult to President Bush so that it now reads:

“President Obama will keep the broken promises to rebuild New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. He and Vice President Biden will take steps to ensure that the federal government will never again allow such catastrophic failures in emergency planning and response to occur. Within weeks of his inauguration, he made a renewed commitment to partner with the people of the Gulf Coast to rebuild now, stronger than ever.”

Based on the Politico report, the White House also edited out verbiage bragging about Obama’s post-Katrina trips to the region:

The site also points out that Obama “visited thousands of Hurricane survivors in the Houston Convention Center and later took three more trips to the region” and worked with the Congressional Black Caucus to help rebuild in the aftermath of Katrina.

The Obama administration has left a destructive trail of catastrophic failures in its wake over the BP oil spill, beginning with its failure to ensure that an adequate disaster plan was in place for BP’s Deepwater Horizon well to its failure to secure enough skimmers and booms to prevent the spill from reaching the shores of the Gulf states.

Obama had to be shamed into making his first overnight trip to the Gulf states last week. It took nearly two months for him to speak directly with BP executives. It wasn’t until last week that he acted like he was engaged, but even then he only spent half the week on the spill. The other half he spent on the golf course and at a ball game.

Obama’s response has been called “lackadaisical” by RNC Chairman Michael Steele who called on Obama to rein in his leisurely lifestyle until the leaking oil well is plugged.

Since the oil well blew on April 28, Obama has taken two vacations, played seven rounds of golf, entertained the pop star Bono and been entertained by Paul McCartney. He has also attended the theater several times, a Major League basball game, political fundraisers and has hosted several White House parties and barbeques.

Yet Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel ripped BP CEO Tony Hayward this weekend for taking one day off for a yacht race in Britain.

Team Obama is putting the word out to the media they think they’ve done enough on the oil spill with last week’s half-week effort and the resulting $20 billion shakedown of BP and are ready to move on. The Atlantic’s White House stenographer Marc Ambinder previewed the Obama administration’s attitude last night:

MOVING ON?: The White House hoped Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s appearance on Meet the Press would be seen as a pivot away from the debate about Obama’s crisis management. But with four visits to the Gulf and the BP escrow deal on the books, whether the administration can successfully turn to non-BP subjects remains to be seen. The variables: if the administration can begin to contain the oil, people will start to focus on other things as well.

The Washington Post picked up the ball for Team Obama this morning with an article titled “Turning the Corner on the Gulf Spill?:

Has the president turned the corner on the oil drilling crisis?

This week’s schedule for President Obama suggests that the White House believes he has. After dominating the conversation in Washington all last week, the environmental crisis in the Gulf of Mexico does not appear front and center on the White House calendar.

…the administration is clearly expecting — maybe hoping — that the intense public attention on the spill fades a bit, starting with this week, giving them a chance to turn to other subjects.

…Is it logical to expect that those subjects will replace the seemingly endless cable news chatter about the oil spill? Perhaps not. There is, after all, the never-ending video of the oil that continues to gush out of the bottom of the sea.

Is The Post channeling the White House view that that the oil spill has now been reduced to “cable news chatter” and a Web cam of the leak so the administration can now turn its attention away from the millions of Americans on the Gulf Coast whose lives and businesses have been ruined?

It would appear so.

“Never again,” promised Obama on his first day in office.  Never again.

Amidst all the political jockeying over the BP catastrophe, the main players are missing what is really uppermost on America’s mind: It’s the spill rate, stupid. It’s jobs, stupid. It’s the economy, stupid. And none of it is happening.

All eyes in Washington, Wall Street, and Main Street were turned this week to the congressional show trial featuring beleaguered BP CEO Tony Hayward. Hayward was a disaster. He played dumb. He stonewalled. And he never got honest about the colossal failure of human judgment at BP that caused this catastrophe.

But folks, seriously, what did you expect? Before this thing is said and done, Hayward and others at BP may very well be criminally indicted by the Justice Department. Hayward could eventually do hard time for all I know. So, of course, he stonewalled. Thank Eric Holder.

What Hayward should at least have done is talk about the progress being made in capping the spill rate, which is gradually going down. To most Americans, and especially those in the Gulf, it’s the spill rate of capture that matters most. Hayward also should have talked about the new BP relief well, which could be up and running in less than a month, to end this disaster. That would be great news for America, and her economy and stock market. Plus, he could have mentioned that BP is hiring thousands of workers to fill new jobs in the cleanup effort.

But Hayward was lawyered to the gills, which doesn’t make anyone happy, including me. And that’s precisely why these congressional show trials leave me bored, tired, and depressed.

And oh, by the way, what’s the role of Congress in this catastrophe? What exactly is it doing besides presiding over these show trials? Doesn’t it have oversight authority when it comes to the Minerals Management Service that utterly failed to regulate the safety of BP’s deep-water drilling operations? Why aren’t more people talking about this?

And why in the world hasn’t Congress suspended the Jones Act, thereby allowing foreign-flag tankers into the Gulf area? What is it waiting for? We’re basically two months into this never-ending disaster. The Gulf cleanup could have been greatly aided by at least 15 foreign countries that were instead spurned after offering their tankers and other equipment. Why aren’t we accepting these offers of help?

And where, really, is the president in all this? Speaking to the nation from the Oval Office earlier in the week, he failed to declare a Jones Act waiver, and he made no call for a task force of hands-on oilmen from the likes of ExxonMobil and other big oil sisters who actually know what they are doing.

Another problem with Obama’s address was his arrogant announcement that he would inform BP’s CEO “that he is to set aside” an asset amount ($20 billion) for the government-run escrow fund to pay for the spill damages. Trouble is, there are no laws to permit our government to force such financial retribution. Not even a new TARP, at least not yet. Did someone say nationalization?

The government has no right interfering with the financial decisions of a private, shareholder-owned corporation. This sounds like GM and Chrysler all over again. Or maybe health insurers, pharmaceuticals, private investment funds, and multinational corporations. And it could end up having a serious and chilling effect on corporate investment.

Look, at least BP already agreed to pony up. Why should the government control this? Isn’t this another case of the Obama administration bullying, taxing, and regulating business as part of a social agenda to redistribute income and power from private enterprise to government? It’s a war on profits and capital.

Consider this: American companies are sitting on an astonishing pile of $1.5 trillion in unused cash. Why aren’t they investing to create new jobs? Well, it’s because massive tax and regulatory threats coming out of Washington have created a tall barrier of disincentives and uncertainty that is blocking the normal efficiency of the free-market capitalist system.

The instincts of our free economy are to promote growth. But when government blunts these instincts, the system ceases to work efficiently.

Americans do not want a cap-and-trade system. What they do want is a full-throated and comprehensive energy plan conducted on all fronts — carbon and non-carbon — that would unleash energy entrepreneurs and existing businesses to create more power and more jobs and more economic growth. Besides stopping the spill, this is the key point that Obama misses.

So, if BP is dirty, and if BP is incompetent, then so is Congress. And so is the White House, as far as I’m concerned.

The BP story is a total outrage. Once again America is not getting what it needs.

Like a relentlessly advancing cancer, the news about the US fiscal deficit and the accumulated debt, which is its result, keeps getting worse.  Every week the press discloses some supposedly “new” information about either the federal budget, economic failure, projections of economic growth, the effects of the so-called “doc fix” (about which we have written several times), the sorry fiscal condition of state and municipal finances, or some further jobs stimulus proposal, all of which pile more costs on this nation that, if it were a private business, would be considered broke.

Before looking at the most recent spate of deficit and debt related news, let us start with the CBO’s updated March 2010 report which estimated that the cumulative effects of the Administration’s budget proposals would add $9.7 trillion to our current deficit of $14 trillion (an amount equal to approximately ninety percent of our annual GDP and clearly approaching the danger zone).  This amount does not include any spending for enacting climate legislation or the effect of rising interest rates to service our debt or spending for contingencies from unplanned events which will inevitably occur.

Moreover, it projects economic growth every year at four percent when we have had only two quarters of growth at four percent or higher in the past five years and, at least since 1982, have never had four consecutive years of growth as high as four percent per annum.  That overly optimistic CBO assumption if not realized will raise the deficit and the accumulated debt, perhaps by trillions of dollars.

In recent days we see once again the fantasy of the most recent budget the president presented.  After just a few months it is outdated.  Mr. Obama has just asked Congress for an additional $50 billion in aid to state governments.  It is uncontested that state and local governments are in terrible fiscal condition and, of course, they can’t print money to inflate away their accumulated debts.  Cumulative state shortfalls in 2009 and 2010 alone are approximately $310 billion and projections for 2011 and 2012 combined are for an additional $300 billion.

State governments have in the past few years either borrowed with abandon or resorted to accounting gimmickry to approach balancing their budgets.  They have consistently looked for new sources of tax revenue or raised taxes on existing sources, making a reality of Ronald Reagan’s statement about government: “if it moves, tax it.”

The figures are appalling.  California alone projects a $9 billion shortfall in 2011 but when the unsolved 2010 budget gap is added in, the total shortfall would be $19.1 billion (22.6 percent of the one year budget).  This hall of shame also includes Illinois where the shortfall projected for 2011 is a whopping 30.1 percent of the budget, New Jersey at 37.4 percent, Maine at 32.1 percent, Michigan at 26.4 percent, Vermont at 31.1 percent and Wisconsin at 25.3 percent.

How did we get to this state (no pun intended) where services now need to be drastically cut, employees laid off, contracts cancelled and previously negotiated benefit packages renegotiated?  Simple.  Politicians love to promise and spend and at the state and local level, unions have organized state employees and have demanded pay and benefit packages way beyond what is paid for like work in the private sector.  With union representatives sitting on pension boards or having its employee members negotiating on behalf of government, the unions are, in effect, on both sides of the table.  These devastating numbers are even more stark and depressing when we consider that over the past two years the federal government has provided $140 billion in state budgetary assistance…approximately thirty to forty percent of state shortfalls.  The effect of this assistance seems only to have postponed the day of reckoning and allowed states to increase hiring and avoid necessary fiscal discipline.  Since 2007 public payrolls have increased while the private sector went through the worst downturn since the Great Depression with unemployment, even with a nascent and fragile economic recovery underway, still hovering just below ten percent.

After that depressing digression, let us return to the president’s proposal for a new $50 billion aid package for the states.  The president has written Congressional leaders to say that the package is essential to avoid “massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters.”  As reported in the Washington Post the president calls this a request for “targeted investments.”  The president also wants to extend unemployment benefits which raises the cost of his package to $80 billion.  And while no one wants to be heartless to the jobless who are in great economic distress, these benefits have been extended several times already and cannot (nor should not) be extended indefinitely.

Wasn’t this all known in the White House when the president first sent his budget to Congress?  Why did this request dribble out later packaged as it always is in a wrapper of being necessary to avoid layoffs affecting our children or the public’s safety.  What about the swollen bureaucracies of other state agencies?  Why doesn’t the president mention the incredible cradle to grave benefit packages that allow some workers to retire at age 50 at high percentages of their final year’s salary, with health benefits for the rest of their lives.  Doesn’t this answer become more and more apparent with every additional request for money?  It is because that is the kind of America Mr. Obama wants…. an America that takes more and more resources out of the productive growth producing private sector and pays it over to the non-productive public sector.  Even France, the poster child for excessive public spending, seems to be getting the message that this kind of model doesn’t work but Mr. Obama is imposing, in step by step increments, France’s failed statist approach on the unwitting taxpayers of the United States.

We might also note, as we did in some detail in earlier essays, that the functions the federal government has been funding to defray these state costs have been, since the founding of our republic, the responsibility of the several states.  This raises the obvious question of why the citizens of those states who have lived within their means should have their federal tax dollars used to pay for the unbridled profligacy to which the spendthrift states listed above have obligated their own taxpayers.

The other bit of recent bad budget news which the president recently announced was the so-called doc fix to reverse the 21 percent pay cut scheduled to take place for doctors who treat Medicare patients.  Surprise, surprise.  This fix, as Mr. Obama noted, has passed Congress every year since 2003.  However, he is now complaining that Republicans are using budget austerity (demanding commensurate cuts in spending elsewhere in the bloated federal budget)  as an excuse to prevent a long-term solution to this problem.  How he dissembles.

Just a few short months ago the doc fix was part of the president’s healthcare reform legislation but Congressional leaders removed it from the bill so the CBO could certify that the legislation was revenue neutral and did not “add one dime to the deficit” as the president intoned daily.  So in a most disingenuous piece of fiscal trickery Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid separated the doc fix from the overall healthcare reform legislation and put it in a separate bill, claiming it was a totally separate issue.  Voila; the CBO could now certify the ten-year cost of the healthcare legislation as not increasing the deficit but the very same costs are now to be incurred in a separate law.

So there we have it; the costs of the annual fix which, if included in the healthcare reform bill, might have prevented its passage, is later acknowledged to cause an increase in the deficit by the same amount. This Pelosi-Reid grand-scale shell game, to which the President acquiesced, fooled no one except, seemingly, the CBO, which actually did know under which shell “the fix” was in. Yes, of course, the CBO knew, the White House knew, the Congressional Democrats knew, the compliant main-stream press knew, we knew (and loudly complained at the time), and now everyone knows.  How stupid do these politicians think the American people are?

Make no mistake about it; all of this is not an accident.  Every incremental piece of legislation involving further federal spending is designed to disguise the further centralization of power in Washington.  The inescapable conclusion is that the strategy of Mr. Obama and the Democratic left which holds majority power in Congress is to irreversibly and fundamentally change America by putting in place policies, programs and funding mechanisms that will be difficult, if not impossible, to reverse without devastating costs to the ties that bind us as a nation, and which raise the possibility of terrible social upheaval.

On Wednesday last, I posted a piece documenting Barack Obama’s incapacity as an executive. I followed up on the following day with a brief examination of Bobby Jindal’s record as Governor of Louisiana – which illustrates admirably what Alexander Hamilton had in mind when he wrote that “energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.” Today, I will take a brief look at Chris Christie, Governor of New Jersey.

Chris Christie is an original. He is the first Republican to have won statewide office in New Jersey in a dozen years, and he did so on 3 November 2009 by ousting from office an immensely wealthy sitting Governor who had previously served five years as United States Senator from that state.

In certain respects, Christie, who is 47, is quite unlike Bobby Jindal. He did not become a freshman at Brown when he was 20, win a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford when he was 23, and serve as a cabinet secretary in state government when he was 25. He was not a boy wonder, and his rise has not been meteoric. Had you learned about him when he was 39 (as Jindal is now), you might well have concluded that he was a pretty ordinary guy.

Born in Newark, New Jersey, Christie grew in Livingston. In later years, he attended the University of Delaware, took a law degree at Seton Hall, and gained admission to the bar. After serving as an associate for six years, he became a partner in a law firm in Cranford, New Jersey, where he specialized in securities law, appellate practice, election law, and government affairs.

It is true that Christie did a brief stint as a member of the Board of Chosen Freeholders for Morris County, and while in office he saw to it that the county procured three competitive bids for all contracts, that county officials were barred from receiving gifts from individuals and firms with which the county did business, and that expenditures and taxes were cut. But when he sought the nomination of the Republican Party for a seat in the New Jersey Assembly, his opponent in the primary won handily, and, even more telling, the same thing happened when he sought re-election to the Board of Chosen Freeholders. In his first foray into politics, Christie had evidently ruffled feathers within his own party. Ten years ago, it looked as if his political career was over, and he was working as a lobbyist for his old law firm.

This would probably have been the end of the story had Christie not gone all-out in raising money for the presidential campaign of George W. Bush in 2000 – which won him the attention and gratitude, some say, of Karl Rove and an appointment in December, 2001 as U. S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey. It was in that office that he first distinguished himself.

When Christie received the appointment, there was grumbling in the New Jersey law establishment. He had no experience in criminal law, and he was not one of the more prominent lawyers in the state. But Christie quickly silenced his critics. In his seven years as U. S. Attorney, he and the 137 lawyers working under his direction managed to convict or elicit guilty pleas from 130 public officials, drawn from both parties at every level of government, without losing a single case. For the first time in his life, Christie had the opportunity to show what he could do, and the toughness, impatience, and intolerance for corruption that had so annoyed the Republican establishment in Morris County served him well in his new post.

In hindsight, it is probably a good thing that Christie was not elected to the New Jersey Assembly. He is not your run-of-the-mill team player. One cannot imagine him joining a church for political reasons, marrying a woman connected to a political machine, voting present in the assembly on controversial bills, and sucking up to his party’s leader in that body in the hope of having his name put on a series of bills designed to make him look good to the public statewide.

In ordinary circumstances, Chris Christie would not have been elected Governor. To begin with, the state of New Jersey is a Democratic stronghold. But, more to the point, Christie is anything but smooth, and his demeanor is not comforting. He is big. Let’s face it: he is fat. He is loud, and he is combative, and the Republicans would not, in any ordinary year, have nominated the man. A patrician like Christie Whitman he is not.

In the circumstances, however, these qualities served him well – for, in 2009, New Jersey, like Louisiana before Bobby Jindal took over, was a godawful mess: profoundly corrupt, inefficient, overtaxed, and on the verge of bankruptcy. Moreover, the incumbent was in bed (and not just metaphorically) with the public service unions responsible for bringing the state to the edge of an abyss

Furthermore, New Jerseyans are not by and large smoothies. There is a blue-collar feel to much of the state; the Italians, the Irish, and the Greeks are everywhere to be seen; and they have not forgotten whence they came. After four years of being governed by a slick sleazeball from Goldman Sachs, New Jerseyans regarded a rough customer like Christie as a breath of fresh air.

Under the terms of the various state constitutions in this country, the governorships vary considerably. In some states – Arkansas and Texas come to mind– the governor has very little leverage. In others, the governor has a great deal of patronage to dispense and considerable legal authority. When he became Governor of New Jersey on 19 January, Christie inherited what may be the strongest gubernatorial office under any state constitution in America, and from day one he demonstrated that he was more than willing to use the power that was his to the fullest.

New Jersey is what the United States threatens to become – a failed state. It is wealthy; the public-sector unions are powerful; and the taxes are so high that wealthy individuals have begun moving elsewhere in large numbers and the tax base has begun eroding. Christie grasps the significance of this and from the outset he made no bones of the fact that he intended to cut expenses, balance the budget, lower taxes, and make the state once again a desirable place in which to set up and operate a business. He has shown vigor, energy, and dispatch, and in speeches throughout the state (such as the one he gave at Perth Amboy embedded in this post) he has talked turkey to the people of New Jersey.

In a country presided over by a proficient liar, there is nothing like being told the unvarnished truth. Go to YouTube. Look at all the videos Christie has posted there; review the speech President Obama gave from the Oval Office last Monday regarding the oil spill in the Gulf; and you will see the difference between a genuine executive and someone temperamentally unfit for the job.

I cannot say whether Chris Christie is presidential timber. The jury is still out on his tenure as Governor of New Jersey. But I can say one thing. The qualities that he has demonstrated in his short time as Governor are qualities that will be required of the next President of the United States.

Alexander Litvinenko was a hero in the mold of Mosab Hassan Yossef, the so-called “Son of Hamas,” who the US is sickeningly threatening to deport.  In fact, their fates may be quite similar if this is to happen, as in 2006 Litvinenko as you may recall was poisoned with Polonium-210, an extremely rare radioactive substance, and essential ingredient to early nuclear bombs.

Why was he poisoned?  Litvinenko, a former KGB/FSB agent who left the service and defected to London was a staunch critic of the Putin regime, and apparently knew too much for the Kremlin to bare.  For Litvinenko implicated the Russian government in a variety of terrorist attacks, abroad for example through their training of Al-Qaeda #2 Ayman al-Zawahiri in 1998, and disgustingly at home through an attempted bombing of an apartment complex in 1999, and the infamous 2002 Moscow theater and 2004 Beslan school attacks.

I recently read his book Allegations, which in light of recent events is proving quite prescient.

One argument he makes that should resonate with all of us regards political resistance to the criminal Russian government:

There is no need to break any law, even most cruel one, in order to remain humans and citizens.  All we need to do is to take a civic stance, to demand that the authorities strictly obey the constitution.  Putin and his propaganda team know this, so they try to divide us, to set us against each other.  In doing so, the Kremlin strategists appeal to the lowest instincts, using every ethnic, religious or property differences we may have.  That is exactly why we must understand that our common enemy now is Putin’s regime (Allegations, 100).

Is this not precisely what we are witnessing today?  Our citizens are peacefully demanding a return to the Constitution, while our Progressive Putins try to spark racial and class warfare to divide and conquer us.

Much like the great Russian novelists who observe and depict the human soul with unparalleled clarity, too Litvinenko has great insight with regard to the souls of our pols.  Speaking of the lack of a will in the West to defend Eastern European states from Russian provocations, he argues in the case of Lithuania that:

It would be very naive to expect the West to protect you.  You should count on your own forces rather than anything else.  Western politicians are pragmatics, and are not prepared to fight for the freedom of Lithuania against Russia, with its nuclear and bacteriological arsenals.  Unfortunately, the major Western leaders seem to have forgotten world history.  They live from an election to an election and do not even try to see further than the next four years.  They try to play with Putin like they played with his Nazi predecessors on 1930s’ Germany.  They sacrifice the democratic principles for the short-term tactical interests.  Indeed, they may get some tactical benefits, but they are losing strategically (168).

Could not we replace Lithuania with Israel?  And have not our Western leaders forgotten history and sacrificed long-term survival for short-term victories in every political sphere?  Are we not making serious strategic errors when it comes to the Iranians, the Chinese, the Russians and other rogue states and their terrorist allies?  Are we not slowly but surely sacrificing Western civilization to Sharia?  Are we not blinded in devising policy based on multiculturalism and specifically the belief that all peoples are the same and share the same goals and aspirations?

One of the more refreshingly pointed parts of Litvinenko’s work lies in his criticism of the UN.  He argues (with my emphasis added):

First of all, we should remember that the UN is an outdated and wasteful organization, which only discredits the international law, values of humanity, and basic moral principles.  It was created after the Second World War by Stalin and Roosevelt. The difference between the two founders’ political ideals was not so big: if Stalin was a Bolshevik, Roosevelt was a Menshevik.  Mensheviks disagreed with Bolsheviks on some tactical issues, such as how money should be collected from party members, but their ultimate goals were the same: to take away our property, to share it ‘justly’, and to force all of us into one socialist prison camp.

The UN founders’ idea was that the organization would solve international conflicts and restrain the aggressive states such as Nazi Gemany.  In reality, it could play such a role only for a few years, until the Cold War started.  Ever since then, the USSR and then Russia [and we might insert any other enemy powers here] skillfully manipulated the UN, to use it only against the United States and the West in general – against precisely those countries which abide by international law.

If the Soviet Union and later Russia wanted to start a war, they would just do that, without asking UN permission.  If the US or the UK wanted to much as to introduce sanctions against some fascist dictator, they had to spend years pleading for the UN to pass a resolution allowing that.

It has never happened in history that the UN effectively opposed a dictatorship or a dictator. The only exception was the 1949 Korean War, where the Western armies fought against communism under the UN flag, and that happened only by chance.  The Soviets, still experienced in manipulating international organizations, made a tactical mistake – walked out of a meeting, — so an anti-communist resolution was passed.  But ever since then, the UN always ignored human rights abuses in North Korea and Cuba, USSR and China and now Russia and Chechnya.

Being a predominantly US-financed organization, the UN however has become a cover for a great many of spies from Russia and other tyrannies and dictatorships.  Whenever the Soviet regime or its Russian successors [or again, most any other hostile regimes] were in trouble, they simply manipulated the UN into passing or rejecting a respective resolution.  So, they would get authoritative judgments saying that there was nothing wrong in their actions, while all their opponents were real war criminals (169-70).

Yet our President believes that our allies should be subject to show trials at the hands of this this morally bankrupt, hypocritical, illegitimate and dangerous institution.  John Bolton, we need you now more than ever.

Meanwhile, today President Obama maintains a cozy relationship with Russia, as reflected in a recent White House press release on the upcoming June 22-24 meeting between Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.  The statement reads:

Over the last eighteen months, the United States and Russia have made significant strides in resetting relations between our two countries in ways that advance our mutual interests. Since first meeting in London in April 2009, President Obama and President Medvedev have collaborated closely to enhance the security and well-being of the American and Russian people, including the expansion of the Northern Distribution Network, which supplies our troops in Afghanistan; the signing of the New START Treaty, which reduces our nuclear arsenals, enhances transparency about our strategic forces, and demonstrates U.S. and Russian leadership in support of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty; new sanctions against North Korea, designed to compel North Korea to adhere to its international obligations; the full and active pursuit of the dual track strategy that seeks Iran’s compliance with its international obligations regarding its nuclear program, including most recently UN Security Council Resolution 1929; and the creation of a Bilateral President Commission, which has expanded dramatically the interactions among Americans and Russians on a whole range of issues, including emergency disaster response, space, counternarcotics, counterterrorism, energy efficiency, and trade and investment, among others.

Politico notes further:

In a separate statement marking Russia Day, President Obama stressed the two nation’s “strong partnership”:

“On behalf of the American people, I extend my best wishes to all those who observe Russia Day. On June 12, 1992, the first Congress of the Russian Federation declared a new sovereign nation. But the relationship between our peoples goes back much further. This year, we celebrated the 65th Anniversary of the end of World War II, and it was the joint Allied forces that defeated fascism. Today, our two nations continue in our strong partnership, mutual respect and friendship, and I am proud of the new START Treaty and our joint efforts to reduce our nuclear arsenals. Beyond that, our two nations continue to expand our commercial and economic ties. Here in America, many Americans can trace their origins to Russia, and all of them are an important part of our national identity.“

What would Litvinenko say of this newfound love based on “mutual respect and friendship,” with a Russia that is a cesspool of corruption, graft and violence run by former KGB leaders?  Juxtapose the White House’s glowing statements with Alexander’s (again, my emphasis added):

Indeed, the greatest real threat to world civilization today is the Russian Mafia orchestrated by special services.  Covertly, without drawing much attention, it spreads its tentacles all over the world.

Russian Mafia, along with its Western accomplices like former German Chancellor Schroeder, presents a real threat to Western democracy…Western police agencies, obsessed with the so-called war on terrorism, resort to collaborating with the Russian Mafia, represented by people like Putin, Patrushev, Ivanov and their likes.  The problem is that it is natural for Mafia to corrupt the statehood, like the rust which eats metal away.  If Western democracies collaborate with the KGB regime long enough, they are at risk of degrading to the level of backward and corrupt Russia. Western countries can simply lose their democratic statehoods to the Mafia, leaving their citizens defenceless in front of that mortal danger (204).

In an interview with the Chechen press, note as well the following exchange:

Chechenpress: What can you say about the terrorist attacks in London?  Which forces have masterminded these attacks?  From which part of the world are they?

Litvinenko: There is only one thing I know for certain.  The centre of the world terrorism today is not in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan or Chechen Republic.  The terrorist threat which spreads all over the world originates from the Kremlin and Lubyanka offices.  Terrorism will not end, more bombs will explode and more blood will shed, unless the Russian special services are dissolved, banned and condemned.  There are no statutes of limitation for terrorism.  We must pursue and prosecute all those involved in it as long as they are alive, not award them Nobel Peace Prizes and erect monuments to them.  I must say it again: the leaders of Soviet and Russian special services, such as Yuri Andropov, Vladimir Putin and Nikolai Patrushev, were (and in some cases still are) behind all the terrorists I named.  These people are the world’s chief terrorists, and their place is not among the leaders of civilized nations, but in the dock.  Unless they are condemned like the Nazi Gestapo, there will be no end to the terrorism in the world (218).

For background, Litvinenko in Allegations refers not just to al-Zawahiri, but also Carlos the Jackal, Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein and numerous others as trained KGB agents or at a minimum close allies, and many of these ties have been corroborated as information has seeped out of Russia over the years.

It is clear throughout his writings that Litvinenko had an axe to grind when it came to the Russian regime that commanded him to commit murder, an order that led him to resign.  Nevertheless, even if we assume that he exaggerates and Russia is not a mortal threat to us, there still seems to be value beyond particular allegations.

Litvinenko provides another potential layer of evidence of the alliance between the leftists, in this case of the ruthless Eastern garden variety and the militant Muslim world.  Also, based upon his scathing critique of the Putin government, even leaving aside the necessarily conspiratorial aspect to his arguments, Litvinenko gives us serious pause, in light of an Obama administration that nixes plans for defense shields, reduces nuclear stockpiles, deepens economic ties and palls around with Russian leaders; the Russians who in addition to allegedly sponsoring terrorism and shepherding in all sorts of criminality ally with the the likes of the Iranians, the Turks and the Venezuelans.

In closing, while Russia in particular may represent only one threat among many to the Western world today, Alexander Litvinenko’s warnings and wisdom appear valuable more generally.  For their must have been more than a grain of truth in his words, given his horrific assassination.

Most importantly, his was a clarion call that we must stop the madness of our foreign policy in which our Progressive Putins ally themselves with the forces of evil and thumb their noses at the forces of good, lest we become the evil ourselves.

The Constitution of the United States of America is a remarkable document.  It is eloquent in its simplicity, clarity and in its power.  It revolutionized (first in America, and then throughout most of the western world) the relationship between those who are governed and those who govern.  It has served as a governing template for much of the democratic western world.

Every federal office holder swears allegiance to the Constitution, not to any leader, not to any party, not to any political philosophy—only to this document, which is the foundation upon which our form of government is based and against which all legislation and judicial actions are measured.  The President vows to do his job faithfully and, to the best of his ability, to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

And while there is no way of divining what today’s crop of leaders would have thought of the Constitution had they been present at the founding when it was first circulated prior to ratification, we have our doubts whether many of today’s ruling class, including President Obama, would have found common cause with Washington, Adams (John), Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton or Jay, all of whom loomed so large on the emerging American landscape.

This speculation is not intended as criticism of our political leadership or of the president.  Many great American patriots who were present at the founding opposed ratification of the Constitution.  Indeed, such American icons as Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, George Mason and James Monroe, were resolutely opposed to ratification of the Constitution, so wary were they of concentrated federal power. Time has, of course, demonstrated the remarkable wisdom of those who fought for ratification and the value of the gift they bequeathed to us all.  The question raised by this essay, however, is posed as the basis for discussion of whether a document written so long ago, which lays out with simplicity certain fundamental rules and relationships, can truly guide this nation 221 years later.

And while we can’t know for sure how any politician holding office today would have voted had they been in a position to support or to oppose ratification of the constitution, we pretty well can determine whether the political views they hold today are consistent with the views of those founders whose genius produced it.  Let us, again, reiterate that support of, or opposition to, the Constitution at the time of its ratification was not an indication of one’s patriotism or love of country.   Those who drafted it also anticipated that it might have to be changed from time to time and provided an elaborate, albeit cumbersome, procedure for doing just that and, in fact, it has been amended twenty-seven times, with the first ten amendments literally a condition of ratification.

George Washington, who was a strong proponent of ratification and without whose support, ratification would have been impossible, nonetheless, faced severe constitutional crises during his very first administration.  One would think that determining the intent of its original drafters would have been pretty easy back then.  After all, the original drafters were all right there. All one needed to do was just ask.  Not so.  While they were all there, they didn’t all necessarily agree on what each of them intended in each sentence, section or Article.  They, of course, anticipated that there would be constitutional disputes and thus they constructed an independent and co-equal judicial branch, the pinnacle of which is our Supreme Court.

However, even the Article establishing the judiciary was not universally accepted by all the founders as giving the judicial branch the power to be arbiter of the meaning of the Constitution.  It wasn’t until the landmark case of Marbury v. Madison in which the concept of judicial review was established, or the Supreme Court labeled a Congressional act to be “unconstitutional.”

Washington also faced Supreme Court contests over his right to remove cabinet officers, the Jay Treaty, which formally ended the war with Great Britain and, arguably, whether or not the federal government had the right to send federal troops to put down a domestic rebellion.  Yes, we had a rebellion within the United States during the first Washington administration (“The Whiskey Rebellion”) and we did, indeed, send in federal troops to quell the insurrectionists.  .

But there was one principle about which there were no controversies at the founding.   Americans would be the freest people on the face of the earth, free in particular of undue government interference in their lives.  They would live in the world’s first meritocracy and they would be free to make their own choices about their political preferences and their economic pursuits. And while it would take close to a century before the young country would finally throw off the yoke of slavery, an institution that had long predated the founding, American citizenship represented a bold new experiment in human progress.

What was it, exactly, that launched this new phenomenon…a nation of free men, free to choose their own destiny…this catalyst that transformed a confederation of varied individuals with varied interests, skills and intellect living in separate states that zealously guarded their individual sovereignty into the greatest engine for progress and wealth generation the world had (or has) ever seen? The question answers itself.  It was the Constitution and the fidelity to it of the founding generation and the generations of American leaders who have followed.  It is the great balancing of limited and enumerated central government power, with the rights of the individual states that comprised the United States of America and, most importantly, the rights of individuals to live their lives largely free from governmental intrusions by either the state or federal governments..

This raises a question well worth pondering.  Should America expect its political leaders to embrace the aspirations of the founders?  After over 200 years with our form of governance the world is greatly changed.  Forms of transportation, communication and commerce between and among citizens, the several states and foreign nations which, while commonplace now, were non-existent in 1789.  Is it reasonable to expect that a governing document written back then could be relevant to such dramatic changes in the lives of the citizens of successive generations or to inventions which the founders could not have imagined?  We are not referring to nuance or style or even interpretation but rather to the hard, elementary, substance of individual freedom and liberty and a government whose bedrock-governing instrument constrains it from interfering with those basic liberties in the face of such sea changes in the lives of the people who are, today, governed by that venerable document.  Personal freedom and liberty, with specific guarantees against government interference is, after all, the bedrock of American exceptionalism and the defining characteristic of the American experience, but in the 21^st century there are countervailing forces pushing not only for greater government regulation of our lives, but for a very substantial role for government to reallocate private wealth and property based on some nebulous concept of fairness.

Political leadership that is insensitive to this reality may be, we believe, at the root of so much of the dissension throughout the country today.  While we recognize that numerous issues divide the American body politic as they always have, we believe there is something much more fundamental antagonizing so much of the country today.  Contentious issues are nothing new or unique in America.  We have dealt with major issues about which the people often had strong and differing views throughout our history.  We believe, however, that we are dealing with something (or a confluence of something’s) that represents a growing concern for many, if not most, Americans.  A national healthcare program, which a substantial majority of the people do not want; a federal spending binge, which a substantial majority of the people do not condone; unprecedented deficits, of which a substantial number of the people are extremely wary; an emerging federal redistributive wealth philosophy about which many people feel a growing unease, and an unelected regulatory bureaucracy that seems to be expanding at warp speed to make rules which amount literally to an assignment of legislative powers to unelected officials, have all coalesced to confront the American electorate with a troubling question.  Is the fundamental transformation of America that candidate Obama promised and that President Obama certainly seems clearly to be delivering, a transformation that most Americans really want?  And does such a transformation square with the essential relationships of citizens with their government or even with the relationships between the branches of government envisioned by the founders?

This brings us full circle back to the question we posed in the headline to this essay.  Would President Obama have supported ratification of the Constitution of the United States had he been in that position?  We believe President Obama and many members of Congress would have voted “nay” and not because of the fears of the dissenters in 1789 that too much power was being assigned to a central authority, but, rather, because of the converse, e.g., not enough power was granted to the national government to regulate our lives.

Early in the president’s political career, when he was but a state senator from Illinois’ 13^th district, and while he was still a lecturer in the law school at the University of Chicago, he agreed to be interviewed on Odyssey, a public affairs program on Chicago’s WBEZ radio station.  The interview, portions of which are quoted below, is especially illuminating.  Mr. Obama seems to lament the fact that neither the Constitution nor the courts evidence support for a federal policy of redistributing wealth.  That is, the courts have found nothing in the Constitution that provides for such government intrusion.  In fact, it wasn’t until 1913 and the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution that Congress even had the authority to tax income at all.  We believe the interview excerpted below, while a few years old, nonetheless, provides meaningful insight into the political philosophy of the president.

OBAMA:” If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be okay”… But,” Obama continued, “the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as people tried to characterize the Warren court, it wasn’t that radical.  It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren court interpreted it in the same way…that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can’t do to you, it says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn’t shifted. One of the… tragedies of the civil rights movement”, he said, “was because the civil rights movement became so court focused. I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributed change (emphasis added) and in some ways we still suffer from that.”

In a subsequent interview Mr. Obama clearly expressed his opinion that once a certain level of income is achieved, that people then have enough (and presumably, thereafter, all of the balance should be taxed for redistribution or some other government purpose). And while that was Mr. Obama’s view, he did go on to say that it wasn’t the American way. Fair enough.  We’re sure there are many others who may feel the same way, but we’re equally sure that none of the drafters of the Constitution felt that way.  In fact, that was the very type of government power the founders were determined to avoid whether it be through the judicial or legislative branch of government.  We do not think the founders, any of them, would have condoned the appointment by future Presidents of a coterie of czars, all unconfirmed by the Congress, with broad, almost dictatorial powers, over entire swaths of the economic, social and business life of the new nation.  Certainly, they would have recoiled at empowering such overlords whose writings and public statements represented the very antithesis of what the founders had fought to create.

Had President Obama been a delegate voting on ratification of the Constitution, and had he held the same personal beliefs then that he expressed in the above-quoted interview, we believe he (and many others in today’s Congress) would have been in the opposition, and that he would not have found the Bill of Rights comprehensively responsive to his agenda for the new nation.  Moreover, many of those legislators who continue to pass legislation, the effect of which is to transfer wealth from the wealthy to the “underserved,” could not in good conscience have voted to ratify a document so clearly restrictive of such governmental power.

This is, of course, but speculation.  As we stated at the top of this essay, the founders anticipated that there would be need for change from time to time, and provided the means to affect such change. We also understand that dreams inform the thinking of leaders today just as dreams did 230 years ago.  We can only hope that the dreams that ultimately prevail in this generation mirror those dreams of the founders whose ideas made America the greatest engine for both liberty and prosperity in the history of humankind.  It would be folly to follow the illusory dreams so prevalent in those statist nations around the world whose policies are leading to out-of-control public debt, economic collapse, stagnation and will lead, ultimately, not to universal welfare, but, rather, to universal poverty and its all-too-frequent companion, repressive government.

By Hal Gershowitz and Stephen Porter

The Constitution of the United States of America is a remarkable document.  It is eloquent in its simplicity, clarity and in its power.  It revolutionized (first in America, and then throughout most of the western world) the relationship between those who are governed and those who govern.  It has served as a governing template for much of the democratic western world.

Every federal office holder swears allegiance to the Constitution, not to any leader, not to any party, not to any political philosophy—only to this document, which is the foundation upon which our form of government is based and against which all legislation and judicial actions are measured.  The President vows to do his job faithfully and, to the best of his ability, to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

And while there is no way of divining what today’s crop of leaders would have thought of the Constitution had they been present at the founding when it was first circulated prior to ratification, we have our doubts whether many of today’s ruling class, including President Obama, would have found common cause with Washington, Adams (John), Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Hamilton or Jay, all of whom loomed so large on the emerging American landscape.

This speculation is not intended as criticism of our political leadership or of the president.  Many great American patriots who were present at the founding opposed ratification of the Constitution.  Indeed, such American icons as Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, John Hancock, George Mason and James Monroe, were resolutely opposed to ratification of the Constitution, so wary were they of concentrated federal power. Time has, of course, demonstrated the remarkable wisdom of those who fought for ratification and the value of the gift they bequeathed to us all.  The question raised by this essay, however, is posed as the basis for discussion of whether a document written so long ago, which lays out with simplicity certain fundamental rules and relationships, can truly guide this nation 221 years later.

And while we can’t know for sure how any politician holding office today would have voted had they been in a position to support or to oppose ratification of the constitution, we pretty well can determine whether the political views they hold today are consistent with the views of those founders whose genius produced it.  Let us, again, reiterate that support of, or opposition to, the Constitution at the time of its ratification was not an indication of one’s patriotism or love of country.   Those who drafted it also anticipated that it might have to be changed from time to time and provided an elaborate, albeit cumbersome, procedure for doing just that and, in fact, it has been amended twenty-seven times, with the first ten amendments literally a condition of ratification.

George Washington, who was a strong proponent of ratification and without whose support, ratification would have been impossible, nonetheless, faced severe constitutional crises during his very first administration.  One would think that determining the intent of its original drafters would have been pretty easy back then.  After all, the original drafters were all right there. All one needed to do was just ask.  Not so.  While they were all there, they didn’t all necessarily agree on what each of them intended in each sentence, section or Article.  They, of course, anticipated that there would be constitutional disputes and thus they constructed an independent and co-equal judicial branch, the pinnacle of which is our Supreme Court.

However, even the Article establishing the judiciary was not universally accepted by all the founders as giving the judicial branch the power to be arbiter of the meaning of the Constitution.  It wasn’t until the landmark case of Marbury v. Madison in which the concept of judicial review was established, or the Supreme Court labeled a Congressional act to be “unconstitutional.”

Washington also faced Supreme Court contests over his right to remove cabinet officers, the Jay Treaty, which formally ended the war with Great Britain and, arguably, whether or not the federal government had the right to send federal troops to put down a domestic rebellion.  Yes, we had a rebellion within the United States during the first Washington administration (“The Whiskey Rebellion”) and we did, indeed, send in federal troops to quell the insurrectionists.  .

But there was one principle about which there were no controversies at the founding.   Americans would be the freest people on the face of the earth, free in particular of undue government interference in their lives.  They would live in the world’s first meritocracy and they would be free to make their own choices about their political preferences and their economic pursuits. And while it would take close to a century before the young country would finally throw off the yoke of slavery, an institution that had long predated the founding, American citizenship represented a bold new experiment in human progress.

What was it, exactly, that launched this new phenomenon…a nation of free men, free to choose their own destiny…this catalyst that transformed a confederation of varied individuals with varied interests, skills and intellect living in separate states that zealously guarded their individual sovereignty into the greatest engine for progress and wealth generation the world had (or has) ever seen? The question answers itself.  It was the Constitution and the fidelity to it of the founding generation and the generations of American leaders who have followed.  It is the great balancing of limited and enumerated central government power, with the rights of the individual states that comprised the United States of America and, most importantly, the rights of individuals to live their lives largely free from governmental intrusions by either the state or federal governments..

This raises a question well worth pondering.  Should America expect its political leaders to embrace the aspirations of the founders?  After over 200 years with our form of governance the world is greatly changed.  Forms of transportation, communication and commerce between and among citizens, the several states and foreign nations which, while commonplace now, were non-existent in 1789.  Is it reasonable to expect that a governing document written back then could be relevant to such dramatic changes in the lives of the citizens of successive generations or to inventions which the founders could not have imagined?  We are not referring to nuance or style or even interpretation but rather to the hard, elementary, substance of individual freedom and liberty and a government whose bedrock-governing instrument constrains it from interfering with those basic liberties in the face of such sea changes in the lives of the people who are, today, governed by that venerable document.  Personal freedom and liberty, with specific guarantees against government interference is, after all, the bedrock of American exceptionalism and the defining characteristic of the American experience, but in the 21^st century there are countervailing forces pushing not only for greater government regulation of our lives, but for a very substantial role for government to reallocate private wealth and property based on some nebulous concept of fairness.

Political leadership that is insensitive to this reality may be, we believe, at the root of so much of the dissension throughout the country today.  While we recognize that numerous issues divide the American body politic as they always have, we believe there is something much more fundamental antagonizing so much of the country today.  Contentious issues are nothing new or unique in America.  We have dealt with major issues about which the people often had strong and differing views throughout our history.  We believe, however, that we are dealing with something (or a confluence of something’s) that represents a growing concern for many, if not most, Americans.  A national healthcare program, which a substantial majority of the people do not want; a federal spending binge, which a substantial majority of the people do not condone; unprecedented deficits, of which a substantial number of the people are extremely wary; an emerging federal redistributive wealth philosophy about which many people feel a growing unease, and an unelected regulatory bureaucracy that seems to be expanding at warp speed to make rules which amount literally to an assignment of legislative powers to unelected officials, have all coalesced to confront the American electorate with a troubling question.  Is the fundamental transformation of America that candidate Obama promised and that President Obama certainly seems clearly to be delivering, a transformation that most Americans really want?  And does such a transformation square with the essential relationships of citizens with their government or even with the relationships between the branches of government envisioned by the founders?

This brings us full circle back to the question we posed in the headline to this essay.  Would President Obama have supported ratification of the Constitution of the United States had he been in that position?  We believe President Obama and many members of Congress would have voted “nay” and not because of the fears of the dissenters in 1789 that too much power was being assigned to a central authority, but, rather, because of the converse, e.g., not enough power was granted to the national government to regulate our lives.

Early in the president’s political career, when he was but a state senator from Illinois’ 13^th district, and while he was still a lecturer in the law school at the University of Chicago, he agreed to be interviewed on Odyssey, a public affairs program on Chicago’s WBEZ radio station.  The interview, portions of which are quoted below, is especially illuminating.  Mr. Obama seems to lament the fact that neither the Constitution nor the courts evidence support for a federal policy of redistributing wealth.  That is, the courts have found nothing in the Constitution that provides for such government intrusion.  In fact, it wasn’t until 1913 and the passage of the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution that Congress even had the authority to tax income at all.  We believe the interview excerpted below, while a few years old, nonetheless, provides meaningful insight into the political philosophy of the president.

OBAMA:” If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be okay”… But,” Obama continued, “the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society. And to that extent as radical as people tried to characterize the Warren court, it wasn’t that radical.  It didn’t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the founding fathers in the Constitution, at least as it’s been interpreted, and the Warren court interpreted it in the same way…that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. It says what the states can’t do to you, it says what the federal government can’t do to you, but it doesn’t say what the federal government or the state government must do on your behalf. And that hasn’t shifted. One of the… tragedies of the civil rights movement”, he said, “was because the civil rights movement became so court focused. I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributed change (emphasis added) and in some ways we still suffer from that.”

In a subsequent interview Mr. Obama clearly expressed his opinion that once a certain level of income is achieved, that people then have enough (and presumably, thereafter, all of the balance should be taxed for redistribution or some other government purpose). And while that was Mr. Obama’s view, he did go on to say that it wasn’t the American way. Fair enough.  We’re sure there are many others who may feel the same way, but we’re equally sure that none of the drafters of the Constitution felt that way.  In fact, that was the very type of government power the founders were determined to avoid whether it be through the judicial or legislative branch of government.  We do not think the founders, any of them, would have condoned the appointment by future Presidents of a coterie of czars, all unconfirmed by the Congress, with broad, almost dictatorial powers, over entire swaths of the economic, social and business life of the new nation.  Certainly, they would have recoiled at empowering such overlords whose writings and public statements represented the very antithesis of what the founders had fought to create.

Had President Obama been a delegate voting on ratification of the Constitution, and had he held the same personal beliefs then that he expressed in the above-quoted interview, we believe he (and many others in today’s Congress) would have been in the opposition, and that he would not have found the Bill of Rights comprehensively responsive to his agenda for the new nation.  Moreover, many of those legislators who continue to pass legislation, the effect of which is to transfer wealth from the wealthy to the “underserved,” could not in good conscience have voted to ratify a document so clearly restrictive of such governmental power.

This is, of course, but speculation.  As we stated at the top of this essay, the founders anticipated that there would be need for change from time to time, and provided the means to affect such change. We also understand that dreams inform the thinking of leaders today just as dreams did 230 years ago.  We can only hope that the dreams that ultimately prevail in this generation mirror those dreams of the founders whose ideas made America the greatest engine for both liberty and prosperity in the history of humankind.  It would be folly to follow the illusory dreams so prevalent in those statist nations around the world whose policies are leading to out-of-control public debt, economic collapse, stagnation and will lead, ultimately, not to universal welfare, but, rather, to universal poverty and its all-too-frequent companion, repressive government.

By Hal Gershowitz and Stephen Porter

The former communists running Russia apparently understand tax policy better than the crowd in charge of U.S. tax policy. Not only does Russia have a 13 percent flat tax, but the government has just announced it will eliminate the capital gains tax (which shouldn’t exist in a pure flat tax anyhow).

Here’s a passage from the BBC report:

Russia will scrap capital gains tax on long-term direct investment from 2011, President Dmitry Medvedev has said. …Mr Medvedev told the St Petersburg International Economic Forum that long-term direct investment was “necessary for modernisation”. …Its oil revenues fund, which has been financing the deficit, is expected to end next year, and the government wants to attract more foreign investment to boost the economy.

Sounds like President Medvedev has watched the Center for Freedom and Prosperity’s video explaining why there should be no capital gains tax. Now we just need to get American politicians to pay attention.

In a June 14th editorial entitled “Politicizing the Fed,” the Wall Street Journal sheds light on one of the dubious regulations of the upcoming financial reform bill.  The Journal states:

The biggest underreported threat comes from Subtitle I, Section 1801 of the House financial reform bill titled “Inclusion of Minorities and Women; Diversity in Agency Workforce.” Sponsored by California Democrat Maxine Waters, the provision requires each federal financial agency, the Fed Board of Governors and the 12 regional Fed banks to “establish an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion.”

So what else is new, you say? Don’t the feds already dictate racial and gender hiring? Yes, they do, through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and assorted other federal laws. As a matter of racial and gender diversity, the Waters provision is at best redundant.

But Ms. Waters and the House are hunting bigger game—to wit, the political allocation of credit.

[...]

The House provision makes that very clear by making each diversity officer a Presidential appointee who must be confirmed by the Senate.The post, says the bill, will be “comparable to that of other senior level staff.”  The post, says the bill, will be “comparable to that of other senior level staff.”

The law says this diversity czar will “ensure equal employment opportunity and the racial, ethnic and gender diversity” of the work force and senior management of these institutions. More ominously, this creature of Congress and the White House will also be charged with “increas[ing] the participation of minority-owned and women-owned businesses in the programs and contracts” of each agency and conducting “an assessment” of stated inclusion goals.

Mull over that one for a minute. Having recently lived through a financial mania and panic caused in part by political pressure for “affordable housing,” Congress will now order regulators to allocate credit by race and gender.

In an article I wrote on February 28th entitled “Fiscal Death by Welfare,” I argued: “I believe that as the downturn goes on the government will blame the banks for the lack of economic growth and force them to allocate credit to chosen political entrepreneurs and other bad credit risks…”  I truly wish I had been wrong in my assessment.

Note that this is not to say that minorities or women are bad credit risks, but that based upon prior social engineering experiments in which government has intervened to force lending, we have seen that the worst credit risks are the ones who most benefited at the outset, to the detriment of themselves and all taxpayers at the day of reckoning.

Too, any government forcing of credit necessarily reflects a bad credit risk, because in lieu of government intervention, market actors would already properly allocate credit to anyone, regardless of their race, gender or ethnicity, at an interest rate reflective of their risk profile.  If lenders were to discriminate on the basis of non-economic reasons, than other competitors would see this void and fill it.  This principle is reflected for example in the old days when in response to the so-called WASP investment banks, Jews built their own ones to fill the vacuum of talent being ignored by white-shoe firms.  Private self-interest works in the face of discrimination.  Public self-interest creates discrimination.

Why is forced allocation of credit to certain sectors of society harmful?  Forced allocation of credit means mispricing of credit which leads to market distortions that manifest into bubbles and crashes.

Interest rates are supposed to reflect the risk profile of the borrower.  Lenders assess the ability of a borrower to pay back a loan and determine a proper compensatory rate based upon the opportunity cost and risk involved with leaving the cash with such a borrower over a period of time.  The government by forcing the allocation of credit will not only distort the market mechanism which best coordinates lending and borrowing activity in all sectors of the economy, largely to the detriment of the most creditworthy debtors, but also artificially cheapen the cost of credit for the least creditworthy of debtors by increasing the supply of available credit to them.

In effect, the government will seek to deny the truth reflected in higher interest rates for more risky borrowers by dropping their rates by fiat.  Since better credit risks will have to pay higher interest rates due to such diversion of capital, this will have a doubly negative effect on the worse credit risks who would benefit from the likely more successful economic activity of the more creditworthy borrowers.

The notion that interest rates must be kept low — that we should lie by suppressing the price of credit because it reflects truths we do not want to acknowledge is not limited to the central planning writers of the financial reform bill.

In Ben Bernanke, the chief financial central planner’s most recent performance in front of the House Budget Committee, he echoed this argument, noting that we must keep interest rates low — that we must stop the price of interest from reflecting reality or we will risk facing the consequences of reality.  This of course is how he arrives at the supposed panacea of an interest rate of 0-.25%.

We have government at every level that is bankrupt, hundreds of under-capitalized banks with toxic assets on their books and an economy that is being hyper-regulated to death and facing increasing onerous taxes direct and indirect, and yet the benchmark cost of borrowing money, to which all other interest rates are connected is 0%.  Utter insanity.  Almost as insane as giving a body like the Fed the ability to fix such a price, as if a single human being or board of human beings could pick the price of anything, be it credit or bananas.  Obama, Bernanke & Co. would rather wage a war on truth and centrally plan than go home and let prices reflect reality.

Another aspect to the denial of truth in the economy deals with the abandonment of “mark-to-market” pricing.  If banks were to have to price assets on their books based upon what they could reasonably expect to obtain in the market for those assets, many of them would be in serious trouble.  Yet instead, because we have suspended mark-to-market pricing, and forced taxpayers to pump capital into our banks, their balance sheets appear to be healthy.  Hence the new normal in our economy of “extend and pretend,” where we throw lifelines at banks and failing enterprises by providing them with cheap capital, and pray that their now hidden underlying problems will go away, knowing that they will not only not go away but grow larger until some unknown dark point in the future when the cancer kills the host.

When it comes to unemployment too, we see an administration not only denying truth but flat out lying, laughably arguing that we are creating jobs.  Leave aside the fact that the more honest measure of unemployment, U6 shows unemployment at much closer to Depression levels.  The bottom line is that a government job, the only kind we are creating, is not an economically beneficial job, the caveat being the jobs of those who defend us and keep us safe who are necessary to maintain the peace that allows our economy to function.  Even there, I doubt anyone would argue that in a world without foreign enemies, maintaining a military would be anything more than a diversion of funds.

In any event, the private sector creates jobs in response to the demand of consumers.  Sovereign individuals dictate what sectors should grow and what sectors should contract based upon their needs.  Government does not meet any such demand.  It can only take resources away from the private sector and allocate land, labor and capital based upon political, not economic factors that in a capitalist economy, individuals would make to drive economic activity.  The government in depriving individuals and enterprises of such economic resources will only stifle recovery, immorally attempting to play the role of the omnipotent master of consumers and producers.  The government will destroy jobs by “creating jobs.”

Note too that the underlying argument that people are not consuming enough, and that thus we need such boondoggles as cash-for-clunkers and HAMP further denies truth.  How is a government to know what is the proper amount of consumption?  Why is the government to stop individuals from choosing to consume less?  Why is government to take resources from people and consume more if individuals choose to consume less?

We overconsumed (as reflected in the unjustified rise and subsequent crash in asset prices) precisely because we were misled by gobs of artificially cheap credit, so now we need to force people to consume even more and make credit even cheaper?  NO!  Now we need to contract — consume less and save and invest more.  Saving and investment means foregoing consumption today to consume more tomorrow.  But if interest rates are artificially suppressed, disincentivizing saving, all we will do is perpetuate existing stagnancy.

Most recently, with regard to BP, President Obama is trying to use the disaster to argue that drilling for oil is bad, and that thus we need to use public money to push all sorts of green initiatives like windmills and solar energy.  Forget that BP was forced to drill so deep underwater because of all of the environmental regulations we have in place that prevent us from tapping much more easily usable sources of oil.  Forget that the baby-killers at BP are losing billions of dollars, again as a result of this policy, while you demonize them as if they intentionally caused this disaster.  Forget that alternative sources of energy are nowhere near being perfected, nor are they yet economical, which is why the private sector is not pushing all of its resources toward such development.

When you are the central-planner-in-chief you know better than your serfs.  You can deny all truth and continue to push your intentionally destructive policies, claiming that existing notions of individual liberty, property rights and true equality before the law are antiquated and immoral.

But in reality, President Obama’s economic policy of denying truth merely divides and favors certain classes of people over others and compounds and prolongs our problems.  Obama seeks to supplant with the decisions of divine bureaucrats the decisions of millions of individuals partaking in mutually beneficial actions to the good of the whole world.

This administration completely perverts truth, justice and morality in their grab for greater control over you and I.  Most importantly, this administration forgets the fundamental truth that man is flawed and thus cannot be G-d.  What could be more dangerous and immoral than a policy which stems from such a hubristic and fallacious principle?

In a June 14th editorial entitled “Politicizing the Fed,” the Wall Street Journal sheds light on one of the dubious regulations of the upcoming financial reform bill.  The Journal states:

The biggest underreported threat comes from Subtitle I, Section 1801 of the House financial reform bill titled “Inclusion of Minorities and Women; Diversity in Agency Workforce.” Sponsored by California Democrat Maxine Waters, the provision requires each federal financial agency, the Fed Board of Governors and the 12 regional Fed banks to “establish an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion.”

So what else is new, you say? Don’t the feds already dictate racial and gender hiring? Yes, they do, through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and assorted other federal laws. As a matter of racial and gender diversity, the Waters provision is at best redundant.

But Ms. Waters and the House are hunting bigger game—to wit, the political allocation of credit.

[...]

The House provision makes that very clear by making each diversity officer a Presidential appointee who must be confirmed by the Senate.The post, says the bill, will be “comparable to that of other senior level staff.”  The post, says the bill, will be “comparable to that of other senior level staff.”

The law says this diversity czar will “ensure equal employment opportunity and the racial, ethnic and gender diversity” of the work force and senior management of these institutions. More ominously, this creature of Congress and the White House will also be charged with “increas[ing] the participation of minority-owned and women-owned businesses in the programs and contracts” of each agency and conducting “an assessment” of stated inclusion goals.

Mull over that one for a minute. Having recently lived through a financial mania and panic caused in part by political pressure for “affordable housing,” Congress will now order regulators to allocate credit by race and gender.

In an article I wrote on February 28th entitled “Fiscal Death by Welfare,” I argued: “I believe that as the downturn goes on the government will blame the banks for the lack of economic growth and force them to allocate credit to chosen political entrepreneurs and other bad credit risks…”  I truly wish I had been wrong in my assessment.

Note that this is not to say that minorities or women are bad credit risks, but that based upon prior social engineering experiments in which government has intervened to force lending, we have seen that the worst credit risks are the ones who most benefited at the outset, to the detriment of themselves and all taxpayers at the day of reckoning.

Too, any government forcing of credit necessarily reflects a bad credit risk, because in lieu of government intervention, market actors would already properly allocate credit to anyone, regardless of their race, gender or ethnicity, at an interest rate reflective of their risk profile.  If lenders were to discriminate on the basis of non-economic reasons, than other competitors would see this void and fill it.  This principle is reflected for example in the old days when in response to the so-called WASP investment banks, Jews built their own ones to fill the vacuum of talent being ignored by white-shoe firms.  Private self-interest works in the face of discrimination.  Public self-interest creates discrimination.

Why is forced allocation of credit to certain sectors of society harmful?  Forced allocation of credit means mispricing of credit which leads to market distortions that manifest into bubbles and crashes.

Interest rates are supposed to reflect the risk profile of the borrower.  Lenders assess the ability of a borrower to pay back a loan and determine a proper compensatory rate based upon the opportunity cost and risk involved with leaving the cash with such a borrower over a period of time.  The government by forcing the allocation of credit will not only distort the market mechanism which best coordinates lending and borrowing activity in all sectors of the economy, largely to the detriment of the most creditworthy debtors, but also artificially cheapen the cost of credit for the least creditworthy of debtors by increasing the supply of available credit to them.

In effect, the government will seek to deny the truth reflected in higher interest rates for more risky borrowers by dropping their rates by fiat.  Since better credit risks will have to pay higher interest rates due to such diversion of capital, this will have a doubly negative effect on the worse credit risks who would benefit from the likely more successful economic activity of the more creditworthy borrowers.

The notion that interest rates must be kept low — that we should lie by suppressing the price of credit because it reflects truths we do not want to acknowledge is not limited to the central planning writers of the financial reform bill.

In Ben Bernanke, the chief financial central planner’s most recent performance in front of the House Budget Committee, he echoed this argument, noting that we must keep interest rates low — that we must stop the price of interest from reflecting reality or we will risk facing the consequences of reality.  This of course is how he arrives at the supposed panacea of an interest rate of 0-.25%.

We have government at every level that is bankrupt, hundreds of under-capitalized banks with toxic assets on their books and an economy that is being hyper-regulated to death and facing increasing onerous taxes direct and indirect, and yet the benchmark cost of borrowing money, to which all other interest rates are connected is 0%.  Utter insanity.  Almost as insane as giving a body like the Fed the ability to fix such a price, as if a single human being or board of human beings could pick the price of anything, be it credit or bananas.  Obama, Bernanke & Co. would rather wage a war on truth and centrally plan than go home and let prices reflect reality.

Another aspect to the denial of truth in the economy deals with the abandonment of “mark-to-market” pricing.  If banks were to have to price assets on their books based upon what they could reasonably expect to obtain in the market for those assets, many of them would be in serious trouble.  Yet instead, because we have suspended mark-to-market pricing, and forced taxpayers to pump capital into our banks, their balance sheets appear to be healthy.  Hence the new normal in our economy of “extend and pretend,” where we throw lifelines at banks and failing enterprises by providing them with cheap capital, and pray that their now hidden underlying problems will go away, knowing that they will not only not go away but grow larger until some unknown dark point in the future when the cancer kills the host.

When it comes to unemployment too, we see an administration not only denying truth but flat out lying, laughably arguing that we are creating jobs.  Leave aside the fact that the more honest measure of unemployment, U6 shows unemployment at much closer to Depression levels.  The bottom line is that a government job, the only kind we are creating, is not an economically beneficial job, the caveat being the jobs of those who defend us and keep us safe who are necessary to maintain the peace that allows our economy to function.  Even there, I doubt anyone would argue that in a world without foreign enemies, maintaining a military would be anything more than a diversion of funds.

In any event, the private sector creates jobs in response to the demand of consumers.  Sovereign individuals dictate what sectors should grow and what sectors should contract based upon their needs.  Government does not meet any such demand.  It can only take resources away from the private sector and allocate land, labor and capital based upon political, not economic factors that in a capitalist economy, individuals would make to drive economic activity.  The government in depriving individuals and enterprises of such economic resources will only stifle recovery, immorally attempting to play the role of the omnipotent master of consumers and producers.  The government will destroy jobs by “creating jobs.”

Note too that the underlying argument that people are not consuming enough, and that thus we need such boondoggles as cash-for-clunkers and HAMP further denies truth.  How is a government to know what is the proper amount of consumption?  Why is the government to stop individuals from choosing to consume less?  Why is government to take resources from people and consume more if individuals choose to consume less?

We overconsumed (as reflected in the unjustified rise and subsequent crash in asset prices) precisely because we were misled by gobs of artificially cheap credit, so now we need to force people to consume even more and make credit even cheaper?  NO!  Now we need to contract — consume less and save and invest more.  Saving and investment means foregoing consumption today to consume more tomorrow.  But if interest rates are artificially suppressed, disincentivizing saving, all we will do is perpetuate existing stagnancy.

Most recently, with regard to BP, President Obama is trying to use the disaster to argue that drilling for oil is bad, and that thus we need to use public money to push all sorts of green initiatives like windmills and solar energy.  Forget that BP was forced to drill so deep underwater because of all of the environmental regulations we have in place that prevent us from tapping much more easily usable sources of oil.  Forget that the baby-killers at BP are losing billions of dollars, again as a result of this policy, while you demonize them as if they intentionally caused this disaster.  Forget that alternative sources of energy are nowhere near being perfected, nor are they yet economical, which is why the private sector is not pushing all of its resources toward such development.

When you are the central-planner-in-chief you know better than your serfs.  You can deny all truth and continue to push your intentionally destructive policies, claiming that existing notions of individual liberty, property rights and true equality before the law are antiquated and immoral.

But in reality, President Obama’s economic policy of denying truth merely divides and favors certain classes of people over others and compounds and prolongs our problems.  Obama seeks to supplant with the decisions of divine bureaucrats the decisions of millions of individuals partaking in mutually beneficial actions to the good of the whole world.

This administration completely perverts truth, justice and morality in their grab for greater control over you and I.  Most importantly, this administration forgets the fundamental truth that man is flawed and thus cannot be G-d.  What could be more dangerous and immoral than a policy which stems from such a hubristic and fallacious principle?

The other day President Obama gave BP an ultimatum, he met with BP executives for the first time, and squeezed $20 billion from the company.  He also made a prime-time bomb of a speech.  Moreover, in that short period, Tony Hayward has been demoted, a part-time czar has been appointed, and it is now reported that claimants are being turned away.

The success the Obama administration had in getting the oil spill live feeds off the front pages of websites and cable news stations and cause the change in the narrative from millions of gallons of oil gushing to a seemingly more proactive, authoritative, and administrative role in managing the devastating situation is remarkable.  At last, PR success.

There is, however, a major problem with all of this:  the oil is still gushing from the well and now there are large amounts of methane causing dead zones.  The “damn hole” is not plugged.

To review, BP confirmed that oil was gushing at a rate of 35,000 to 60,000 barrels a day, which would be equivalent to 1,470,000 to 2,520,000 (million) gallons per day (42 gallons equals 1 barrel).  Presently, the oil continues to flow, but the rate is unknown as reported by CNBC on June 11:

Under the current system, a containment cap placed atop the gushing well pipe a mile below the ocean surface is funneling some of the escaping oil and gas from the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico to the surface to be collected in ships.

An undetermined amount of oil continues to escape from the cap into the ocean.

Researchers say new figures for the blown-out well show the amount of oil gushing out may have been up to twice as much as previously thought. That could mean 42 million gallons to more than 100 million gallons of oil have already fouled the Gulf’s fragile waters.

It’s seems as though so many have forgotten that the well is still leaking profusely, even though some of the oil is being captured by BP.  The MSM has adopted the Obama narrative once administration officials were able to finalize the PR maneuvers.  There are two main factors that you must remember with this administration:  they are PR masters and they will never let any crisis go to waste.

So, let’s get one thing straight:  millions of gallons of oil continue to leak into the Gulf of Mexico.  The leak has not been contained and officials cannot say for sure how many gallons continue to flow.

And what was the reason we didn’t accept the Dutch’s help within the first three days of the oil spill?  Oh yes, windmills.

After the Israeli action against the Turkish jihad flotilla aroused more international condemnation of Israel, Iran is now sending two of its own Islamic jihad flotillas – Moetillas – to Gaza. The war ship convoy (which the media affectionately has called a “humanitarian flotilla” while the “aid workers” set out to slice and dice the Jews) operated by jihad gangs from thug countries is the new way to wage war in the twenty-first century, if you’re not already busy blowing up buildings, trains, planes and other civilian targets.

The jihad flotilla. It melds propaganda together with violence, usually conducted separately, to wage war. The “aid ship” is the face of this century’s warship, like lipstick on a pig.

Of course, all of this is possible because the world media is aligned with the terror force. So when the jihadists, with the help of their leftist whores, paint up their weapon-filled warships like $2 homicidal trollops and call them “aid ships,” the media laps it up like a dog returning to its vomit.

There is no humanitarian crisis in the terror statelet of Gaza, and there is no such thing as a “Palestinian.” It was historically just a geographical designation: there were Palestinian Jews and Palestinian Muslims before ‘48. But no state. No history. No nationality distinct from that of the other Arabs in the area. No flag of this fakestinian narrative. That land is Jewish land. That history is Jewish history. That flag is the star of King David.

The only humanitarian crisis in Gaza is the lack of humanity in Gaza. They elected Hamas, whose charter specifically demands in its first paragraph the destruction of the state of Israel.

Israel asked Egypt to block these warships, a.k.a. “aid ships,” but Egypt has refused. And so now Egypt, which also shares a border with that terror statelet of Gaza, and which has, I might add, strictly enforced that border — more gravely and more violently than has Israel — is throwing in with the killers.

What happened to the peace Israel and Egypt established more the 30 years ago? Israel gave Egypt all of the Sinai, which Israel had captured from the Egyptians not once but twice, in 1956 and 1967. But at the end of the day, it always goes back to the Koran and Islamic anti-Semitism.

Egypt is the third largest recipient of US foreign aid, which it receives as a direct result of its having signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979. But now Egypt feels free to do this because the world’s policeman, the United States, has walked off the beat.

Barack Obama refused to speak a word against the Islamic regime of Iran as it viciously put down the nationwide rebellion of its own people, Iranians from all walks of life, whose crime was to march for freedom in response to a corrupt and stolen election. Now I guess the Iranian mullahcracy has taken a breather from killing, raping, and imprisoning its own people, as it was missing out on all the barbaric fun the Jew-killing jihadis were having on their Islamic jihad Moetillas.

And so now Iran has gone back to its real love, the provocation of Jewish genocide as mandated by Koranic texts such as the ones that say that Jews are the Muslims’ worst enemies (5:82) and that they’re under Allah’s curse (2:89, 9:30). This Islamic anti-Semitism is the motivation of all of these Islamic countries against the tiny Jewish state.

The Muslims have always been waging war against the Jews – since the beginning of Islam, when Muhammad annihilated the Jews of Medina, the Qurayzah tribe, and then massacred the remaining Jews of Arabia at the Khaibar oasis. Why do you think the jihadis on the Turkish flotilla, the Mavi Marmara, were chanting, “Khaibar, Khaibar, O Jews, the army of Muhammad will return?” Islamic scholar Mark Durie explains:

The discriminatory shari’a regulations applying to non-Muslims, who are referred to in Islamic law as dhimmis, are based upon the precedent of Khaibar. Through a twist of history the defeat of the Jews of this little-known Arabian oasis helped determine the treatment of many millions of non-Muslims after Islamic conquest, including the once-vast Christian populations of the Middle East.

For this reason, the name of Khaibar has great significance for us all. For extremist Muslims like Amrozi, it stands for the defeat of infidel enemies, and their humiliation and subjugation under shari’a conditions, an enduring signpost to the hope of an Islamist victory.

And now, as those Iranian warships approach Gaza, they’re moving in for the kill again.

Like most people I didn’t expect a lot from the President during his oval office speech. What I got was a whole new look at the Candidate in Chief.

The first thing I noticed during the speech: I had never seen such an empty desk before., It was so clear, you could see all the dents in the desk, from where the previous presidents actually did some work.

Much has been made about how President Obama didn’t really seem comfortable in the speech, that he looked more like a visiting college student who got to sit in the big chair for a couple minutes. It could explain why his poll numbers have dropped faster than a bowling ball out a campaign bus window.

It was also only a one tele-prompter speech. Usually he has a two tele-prompter setup so his head moves back and forth, like he’s watching a beer pong game.

It was highly uncomfortable to watch. His eyes were locked on the teleprompter, and his hands never stopped moving. You weren’t even sure the guy reading, was the same guy who was moving the hands. It was almost like watching the cookie monster give an oval office address.

I look at it a different way: from a comedian’s perspective. I’ve played some fairly hostile crowds during my years on the road. But the one kind of crowd I cannot tolerate is a small one. I think most comics will agree that one of the most terrifying places you can perform is to an empty room. (Of course since I’ve become big and famous, that rarely happens to me anymore.)

Every  comic needs an audience. Those few minutes we’re on stage are the highlight of our week. It is the only time we feel alive, the only time we’re not consumed with self-doubt. Comics are narcissists. Comedy is much less a talent than a personality disorder. You wouldn’t see a lot of comics performing if there were a way that you could get self -worth out of a bottle—oh wait a minute, I think there is; and a lot of us do that as well.

The problem with the President’s speech, was that he doesn’t have any idea how to work without an audience. With no audience response, the timing of is left up to speculation. It’s why a lot of comics who destroy an audience, aren’t so good in acting the movies.  Tuesday Night, we were watching President Dane Cook.

Had you inserted the applause lines into his speech, it would have made a lot more sense. For instance, the confusing line from the speech: “…Even if we’re unsure exactly what that looks like.  Even if we don’t yet know precisely how to get there.  We know we’ll get there.”

Should have gone: “…Even if we’re unsure exactly what that looks like. (applause)  Even if we don’t yet know precisely how to get there.  (applause) We know we’ll get there (big applause)

Even if we don’t know how we’ll get there? Yeah, that’s a great idea, let’s go to the Grand Canyon this summer, kids. I hope we’re driving in the right direction…” But with the applause added in, nobody would have noticed how silly it sounded.

The need for applause is not a really good quality in an administrator. It’s the difference between a strong leader and a tyrant. A leader will make rational choices, a guy working for applause is just the head of a mob. It’s one thing when that mob is just out for a good laugh and a cocktail, it’s another when they want Tony Hayward’s head on the end of a pitch fork..

And  here’s the biggest problem with performers: We also cannot stand heckling. Most hecklers will be escorted out of the room. The performers expect that.

And right now, I’m heckling big time.

As a 2010 Census watchdog, I am extremely disturbed to learn that a man so deeply involved in the Blagojevich/Obama-Senate-seat-for-sale scandal is now employed in an upper level management position by the Census Bureau in Chicago.

Even if the man, Joseph Aramanda, has not been convicted (yet) of  a crime, his reputation for being involved in illegal activities seriously undermines the credibility of Census Bureau operations in Chicago. In a city with corruptionlinked to 2010 Census advertising, the public should not have to worry that upper management positions are being filled by individuals who are directly tied to government corruption and fraud.

Furthermore, Joseph Aramanda’s experiences as a pizza franchise owner (his job prior to the Census Bureau gig) don’t qualify him to be in charge of 1,000+ employees.

This is particularly troubling at a time when there are  many hardworking, educated individuals with office management experience in the Chicago area who can do the job just as efficiently. MyTwoCensus.com will be pressing the Census Bureau to fire this man immediately, as his association with the Census Bureau tarnishes the reputation of the 2010 Census. That the suits in Washington could let a man so deeply embroiled in scandal run the office of one of America’s largest LCO’s is extremely troubling and indicative of larger problems.

(And while Mr. Aramanda is spending days testifying at the Blago trial, is he still getting paid by the government?)

While the “March Madness” that resulted in the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordability Care Act of 2010 would lead you to believe that STAT change was needed in our health care system, the on-going delay in the “fix” to the SGR (sustainable growth rate) formula for Medicare invokes images of a long waiting list for a rationed medical procedure.

Medicare, the federal government’s health care insurance plan for the elderly and disabled established in 1965, is largely funded from payroll taxes and FICA, and supplemented with premiums paid by its beneficiaries. It is administered by the Department of Health and Human Services via the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and is the place to look to see how our government will administer a health care system.

Since 1998, the SGR has been a component of the formula used to calculate physician payments for providing services to Medicare patients. It is based on the GDP and not on actual health care practice costs (which have been rising faster than the GDP.) The SGR produced steep cuts in physician compensation for services to Medicare patients, in hopes that by paying individual physicians less, overall health care cost would decrease.

Unfortunately, this approach has failed.

Pay to physicians caring for Medicare patients has been stagnant, while health care costs have gone up. Many physicians report receiving little net income or are barely breaking even for their care of Medicare patients. Congress has stepped in nine times since 2002 to prevent or reverse increasingly larger Medicare physician payment cuts mandated by the SGR formula. As a contingent of its support for the health care reform passed in March, the American Medical Association demanded that the flawed SGR formula be abolished.

The doctors are still waiting.

Congress had chosen to delay the cuts three times this year, but voted Thursday to allow the 21% cut in physician reimbursement to take effect now. The impact of this will be dramatic. Medicare patients & those working in the medical field are already paying the price for Congress’ inaction. An AMA poll of over 9000 doctors last month revealed that delayed Medicare payments had already caused them to postpone or cancel scheduled services to Medicare patients, while 17% of these doctors report holding up paychecks or laying off their staff – with over 1500 workers affected by this. Physicians also report limiting the numbers of Medicare patients they will see, and some have opted out of Medicare altogether.

One might consider Congress’ inability to resolve the SGR predicament as the “anti-health, anti-stimulus bill.” The cost of using the flawed SGR formula was not factored into the cost of health care reform, and it is not going away. What will go away are doctors willing to care for Medicare patients, despite the promise “if you like your doctor, you can keep him.”

The SGR problem should have been solved before comprehensive health care reform was signed into law.

I had this movie fantasy about Obama. He would be whining to his closest associates like David Axelrod or Valerie Jarrett and there would be an open microphone. The American people would finally hear him express his utter disdain for them. Then everything would change!

My fantasy scene comes from “A Face in the Crowd” a 1957 drama starring Andy Griffith. Our future loveable Sheriff Andy Taylor played an entertainer from Arkansas, Lonesome Rhodes, who was in reality a mean-spirited, drunk. He was rescued from a jail cell with his guitar and charmed small town radio. Then he rose to national fame on the new miracle of TV. His public persona was crafted by others as an everyman who understood their hopes and dreams. People tuned in and bought the products he advertised even if every once in a while he went off script and betrayed his manipulative power. At first the public just laughed and bought more.

It was the beginning of the age of television and a cautionary tale about the power of mass media. One character realizes it potential for political power and calls TV ‘the greatest instrument of persuasion in the history of the world” Another more concerned character comments” you have to be a saint to stand all the power that little box can give you”

“A Face in the Crowd” may seem to be all about entertainment if it weren’t for the fact Lonesome Rhodes is persuaded to support a Presidential candidate and have him on his TV show. Lonesome understands what it could mean to join the powers of the mass media and politics. He tells his girlfriend” “Marcia you just wait and see. I’m gonna be the power behind the President… and you’ll be the power behind me” Of course later on he dumps Marcia for a teenage baton- twirler but that is another part of the plot.

Obama is a creation of the media. They loved him for giving a great speech in front of those fake columns. It was a TV set!

But he had never run a business or a state. He had never made an executive decision and voted “Present” a lot in the Illinois legislature. Of course these were the cautions raised by the Right. The mainstream media dismissed them. They claimed he was smart. He would gather the best minds around him. Who cares if he had not been an executive. That is just what business types care about. And of course, there is no one around Obama with business experience so it was not important to them. Oh did I mention he hasn’t fixed the economy yet. But of course that is not his thing. But the environment is. That is why the Gulf spill disaster is so disheartening to the Democrats.

As President Obama’s poll numbers are sinking in the oily ooze of the Gulf oil spill I think it is ironic that it was a prominent Democrat James Carville who began criticizing him first about his lack of attention to the disaster. The environment was the Democrats’ issue. Didn’t Obama tell them that the earth would begin to heal when he was elected? Surely a Republican president would have screwed this up but not a Green Democratic president. He would know what to do. It must have galled Obama when the mainstream media began asking if this was Obama’s Katrina. Dare I say it, but his incompetence was showing.

In the movie Lonesome Rhodes, like Obama had a meteoric rise to the top. Those around him became successful because of him. But we know in Hollywood that fame can be fleeting just like political power. People like to compare the two, and opine on why we are drawn to each other. Some say Washington is like high school with power and Hollywood is like high school with money. That one is probably from an east coast perspective. I remember when “West Wing” was on TV a D.C. type commented that the real West Wing was much more crowded and the real people that worked there were not that thin.

Political figures and stars both depend on the love of the public for their success. When they lose our love, they lose their power. Bill Clinton understood this. But with Obama it is striking that the most prominent emotion Obama is showing lately is annoyance…with us! He is annoyed that he is being criticized. I also suspect he is annoyed that he has to deal with any problems. As a matter of fact I saw this emotion (if you can call it that) when the Christmas underwear bomber was caught. Then when the Times Square bomb was discovered he seemed annoyed again. This pesky terrorism thing was taking him away from concentrating on being the star he was meant to be.

He doesn’t get the ‘fame is fleeting’ thing. He somehow thinks it is owed to him. In Hollywood we would say he believes his own press releases.

In the movie, Lonesome Rhodes goes on a rant about what he really thinks about the public and his onetime girlfriend, who he dumped for the teenage baton twirler, opens the microphone and his words go out over the air. What does the star think of the American people… “This whole country is just like my flock of sheep! …They’re mine! I own ‘em! They think like I do. Only there’re more stupid than I am so I gotta think for ‘em”

As Lonesome rides the elevator down after the show he doesn’t know yet he’s toast. It may be that Obama is on the elevator and does not yet realize what has happened to him. It is hard to recover from the charge of incompetence. Carter never recovered from the Iranian Hostage Crisis and the constant reminder in the media of “Day 212” etc. Every newscast now numbers the days of the spill on the screen. He will try to recover. Presidents can come back.

Even when Lonesome Rhodes was told he was finished he wouldn’t believe it. He yelled “Listen I’m not through yet” But he was told what would happen. It reminds me what happens to political figures that rise too fast and then fall.

“You’ll be back in television. Only it won’t be quite the same as before….. Then a couple of new fellas will come along…..and pretty soon a lot of your fans will be flocking around them. And then one day, somebody’ll ask: ‘Whatever happened to whatshisname? You know the one who was so big. The number-one fella a couple of years ago. He was famous. How can we forget a name like that?’

Lonesome is alone in his penthouse listening to his mechanical canned laugh machine as he ponders his fate.

I keep thinking of Obama alone in his room replaying the tape of his speech with the fake columns behind him. That was the high point. Maybe he saved the columns and he could set them up with his teleprompter and give the speech again. Then he could play a tape of the applause and cheers and he can listen to that too.

On Wednesday, I posted a piece, drawing attention to what is now obvious even to Maureen Dowd: that, as an executive, Barack Obama is woefully incompetent. In that piece, I noted the propensity of the American people for electing to the Presidency men with ample executive experience – as generals, governors, cabinet secretaries, and the like. I remarked as well on the poor performance of the four Presidents they elected who did not have prior executive experience; and I suggested that it is time for the Republicans to ask who, in their number, has demonstrated a willingness and an ability to take charge and assume what the authors of The Federalist called responsibility.

In the course of the next few days, I propose to say a word or two about three of these Republicans. I will not discuss Sarah Palin, who displayed the requisite vigor and dispatch in her brief stint as Governor of Alaska, and I will not discuss Tim Pawlenty, who, over the last seven years, has shown genuine capacity as Governor of Minnesota. That worthy task I will leave to others – who know more than I do. Today, I will look at Bobby Jindal, Governor of  Louisiana.

Jindal is a remarkable young man. Born in 1971 to parents who migrated to Baton Rouge from India, he entered the freshman class at Brown University when he was twenty, was admitted to Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School when he was twenty-three, and that same year was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at New College, Oxford – where he took an M. Litt. in political science and wrote a dissertation entitled “A Needs-Based Approach to Health Policy.”

Instead of studying medicine or law, Jindal returned from Oxford to Louisiana, became Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals when he was 25 and President of the University of Louisiana system when he was 28, then shifted to Washington, DC where he became Assistant Secretary of  Health and Human Services for Planning and Evaluation at the age of thirty.

Two years later, he was back in Louisiana – where, in 2003, he ran for Governor in the state’s open primary, led in the first round, and lost in the runoff; where, in 2004, he was elected to Congress with 78% of the vote; where in 2006, was re-elected with 88% of the vote; and where, in 2007, he was chosen Governor, the first non-white man to have been elected to the governorship in that state and the first non-incumbent ever to have made it to the top without a runoff.

Jindal took over in Louisiana two years after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and put on display the incompetence and corruption besetting the state government and the city government in New Orleans. With dispatch and vigor, he then set out to clean up Louisiana politics, streamline state government, and put the state’s budget in order, all of which, insofar as these things are possible in that state, he did.

In August, 2008, when Hurricane Gustav threatened New Orleans and the Louisiana coast, Jindal’s Louisiana was ready for the crisis, and he and his administration did what his predecessor had notably failed to do at the time of Katrina: arrange for an orderly evacuation of the city and the coastal areas.

In the wake of the oil spill occasioned by BP’s mismanagement of the Deepwater Horizon, he has moved heaven and earth in an heroic effort to protect the Louisiana coastlands. As I pointed out on Wednesday, a poll recently taken by Public Policy Polling shows that, in Louisiana, “63% of voters approve of the job he’s doing,” which is the highest approval rating that this left-liberal polling operation “has found for any Senator or Governor so far in 2010. There’s an even higher level of support, at 65%, for how he’s handled the aftermath of the spill.”

Alexander Hamilton once argued that “energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government.” Bobby Jindal is nothing if not energetic. He is, in fact, everything that a republican executive ought to be. Put bluntly, he is the sort of man that one would want to have next to one in a foxhole. He is smart as a whip, and he is inclined to take the initiative. If his response to President Obama’s first State of the Union Address left television viewers disappointed, we should keep in mind that, when 2012 comes around, Americans will be apt to pay more attention to demonstrated executive capacity than to eloquence in mouthing pious platitudes.

June 25th is fast approaching and I hope this year, given the international tensions all around us, we pause and consider that it is not just another day but the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War.

When the 300,000 troops of the North Korean People’s Army supported by tanks and artillery violently smashed across the 38th parallel to invade and overrun most of the South, they unleashed a conflagration that would grow to be a three year bloodbath pitting the forces of Communism and the Western Democracies against each other for the first time.  (It would also be the first time that the nascent United Nations would commit military forces to halt the aggression of one nation against another, showing that the UN must be backed by military will to be effective.)  After initial see-saw fighting down to Pusan, then up to the Yalu River after the Inchon landings, and then back down again after the massive Chinese intervention, the fighting settled into a brutal stalemate along a line that eventually would mimic the original pre-war border.  When the fighting finally ended in July 1953, the war left in its wake four million military and civilian casualties, including 37,000 American dead and another 100,000 wounded.  South Korea’s army would suffer almost 1 million casualties, the other UN nations’ a combined 17,000 as well. An estimated 520,000 North Koreans and another 900,000 Chinese were casualties.

One of the wounded from that war was a young Second Lieutenant Jack Schaeffer from the 1st US Marine Division, my father.   In his more reflective moments, usually after a pint or three, he would tell me bits and pieces of what he saw and did there.  Needless to say, they were disturbing.  And the one thing I believe always went through his mind was this: was the sacrifice made by him and his fellow soldiers worth it?

The answer lies in the contrast between the two nations six decades later.  The tragic fact is that every day 23 million North Koreans are forced to endure an horrific existence in what can justifiably be classified a slave state.  I will not get into the nitty-gritty of the starvation, exposure, poor health conditions, the physical and mental abuse, the forced labor camps, and general privations these isolated people suffer as this has been well-documented.

When you compare this dismal picture with the vibrant and modern South, the true value of the Allies’ intervention in 1950 reveals itself.   I could list all of South Korea’s accomplishments, including its economic prowess, its high standard of living, its relatively free and open society and juxtapose that against the hermit kingdom north of the DMZ but I think this famous satellite photo says it all:

Guess where South Korea ends and North Korea begins?

So here then in black-and-white is the legacy of the US-led military action to stave off flagrant communist aggression and protect a vibrant society so that it could develop unmolested by those in Pyongyang who would like nothing more than to bring the South under their control by force.  Like all conflicts, the Korean War had its ugly moments, but the overall value of our actions, and the service we performed for humanity,  cannot be denied. There are in fact 48 million people living in sunlight today thanks to men like my father.

The strangely underreported sinking of a South Korean naval ship Cheonan by a Northern vessel in March is but the latest in a series of bizarre tantrums on the part of Kim Jong-il to get noticed.  He wants something.  But what he wants, no one can say. After all, it’s hard to read the mind of a sexually deviant murdering lunatic.   And even if we could, we simply do not wield the military power (or the political will) in the region needed to contain him.  The sad reality is that with regards to North Korean affairs, the Chinese call the shots now.  And given that  Beijing likes having a buffer between Manchuria and the free nations, especially Japan — cynically condemning millions of innocents to hell on earth to protect their selfish aims — do not hold your breath waiting for them to sit on the lillipution miscreant in Pyongyang, or his son and heir, Kim Jong-un, any time soon.  So with North Korea, as with so many other rogue states, we find an example of where the rubber of Obama’s sense of his ability to use his charisma as a foreign policy tool, meets the road of the reality that it is a very dangerous world in which not all leaders want what we want… and in fact care little for our way or life or human rights as a whole.

The President seems to operate under an assumption that international conflicts are mere “misunderstandings” and that if we talk just it out, we’ll get back to a harmony that he believes is the natural state between nations.  Unfortunately, as the date June 25, 1950 reminds us, history teaches otherwise.

If Mr. Obama remains feckless in the face or Kim’s tiresome threats and provocations, if he fails to stifle their nuclear ambitions, he will join a long succession of ineffectual administrations that spans decades and both political parties.  Still I think it is time for the intellectual-in-chief to retire the “yes we can” teleprompter and instead seriously consider the nature of the despots he is trying to engage be they in Pyongyang, Caracas or Teheran.  And if he takes anything constructive away from his dealings with any of them, I hope it is a deeper appreciation of the misery that great swaths of the world’s populations would be subjected to without America’s imprint.  At least, I would like him to admit just once that no other nation in history has sacrificed so much for the benefit of others.

Maybe the next time he embarks on one of his Apologia Americana tours, Barack Obama might first fly at night over the sprawling city of Seoul with its skyscrapers, bright lights, vibrant colorful streets and teeming masses of free people – and then cast his eyes northward to peer into the dark void in the gloomy distance beyond the DMZ.  Perhaps then he may reflect upon the fact that the United States made this contrast possible.  That the country whose standard he now bears has done a lot of good in the world.  And that six decades ago, proud Americans like Lt. Jack Schaeffer, USMC, bestowed upon the South Koreans a precious gift of freedom and prosperity as their legacy, giving meaning to their grim suffering far from home, in a foreign land, for future generations they would never knew.

Clinton: President Obama has spoken out against the law because he thinks that the federal government should be determining immigration policy. And the Justice Department, under his direction, will be bringing a lawsuit against the act. But the more important commitment that President Obama has made is to try to introduce and pass comprehensive immigration reform. That is what we need. Everyone knows it, and the President is committed to doing it.

One way or the other, one of us is going to go down. President Obama, by insisting that he will go to the mat on his “green jobs” agenda, which is simply central planning with a coat of green paint, indicates he will risk his presidency on getting the cap-and-trade, gas tax and windmill mandate through the Senate (with a stranglehold on domestic energy production to boot), then through the House again on a conferenced bill.

If he succeeds he will have doomed us; if he fails, politically the effort will have finally, fully exposed him for what he is: a Power Grabbing Statist whose economics are recklessly dogmatic while at the same time ignoring those societies he claims are his model.

Obama reminded us how as a candidate he set out what he called a set of principles, which he acknowledged were passed by the House, in a vote almost precisely one year ago today.

Here is what he said then about cap-and-trade, which the House passed. This discussion occurred in the apparent context of how to mount his and his team’s big-ticket agenda items:

“The problem is, can you get the American people to say this is really important, and force their representatives to do the right thing. That requires mobilizing a citizenry…And climate change is a great example.”

You got it: this is the community organizer, refusing to allow a crisis to go to waste, but instead seeking to use it to do what he’s trying to do.

“Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

“Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal-powered plants, you know, natural ga — you name, it, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was — they will have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money, they will pass that money [sic] on to the consumer.”

That’s right. It’s a staggeringly large tax, which he acknowledged will be borne by consumers. This reflects two signs of economic literacy: the purpose and operation of cap-and-trade, and that businesses pass taxes on to consumers. Until they can’t, of course, then they move.

Oh, speaking of this being a tax, he added:

“This will also raise billions of dollars”.

Please note, that is not “some costs”. That is what Al Gore called a “wrenching transformation of society”.

First, a note about the lack of intellectual honesty in claiming that it was a lack of candor and political courage — both of which he was implicitly manifesting — that have left us relying on the most abundant reliable energy sources man has ever known. No. Physics and economics dictate from where we derive our energy. Not a lack of statism.

Further, we are not as he said running out of oil onshore, and in shallow water. We have generations of oil in oil shale and other “unconventional oil” sources, right beneath our soil. That he has to pretend we do not, and that he is not blocking it, tells you quite a bit of what you need to know about the sincerity of this seizure of a crisis to ensure it does not go to waste.

Which raises his claim that adopting his cap-and-trade statism will “grow the economy.” Absurd.

Consider the following excerpt from Chapter 6, “Green Eggs and Scam: The Wholesale Fraud of ‘Green Jobs’” from How Obama’s Green Policies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America: (citations are omitted)

CAN MAKE-WORK “GROW THE ECONOMY”?

Sadly, however, such impacts, whether “opportunity” costs or otherwise, are not pressing considerations in Washington. No, we are now told that by mandating that the American economy be driven by all manner of energy sources that cannot stand on their own, we will “grow the economy.” That is the new, favorite phrase of my young Democratic congressman, Tom Periello. Mr. Periello, like a host of lawmakers desperate to find cover for their 2009 vote in support of the disastrous Waxman-Markey “cap-and-trade” bill, has since dedicated countless hours on the House floor and elsewhere to spread this tawdry exposition of economic illiteracy to those masses he and his colleagues hope are desperate or inattentive enough to fall for it….

Sadly, the best case scenario for this claim would be that it is made out of disgraceful ignorance. …

The truth is that even inherently biased administration studies of the “green job” scheme cap-and-trade, by EPA, the Energy Information Administration (EIA), and the Congressional Budget Office, as well as the independent Brookings Institute, Heritage Foundation, American Council for Capital Formation, and CRA International, agree that these cap-and-trade bills must reduce overall employment and lead to lower incomes than can be had without them. EIA, for example, said that the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade bill destroys 2.3 million jobs on net when fully implemented (in 2030), 800,000 of them manufacturing jobs. Not one cap-and-trade scenario modeled by any of these entities produced net job or income growth from cap-and-trade.

Reckless and disingenuous though the claim is, agenda-driven whizzes in Washington insist that throwing away a billion dollars, confiscated from today’s and future generations, grows the economy—simply because they see a giant hamster wheel research facility go up in their district. But the claim that this will “grow the economy” is made up. These actions will do the opposite.

The government can give us nothing that it has not taken from us. The politics of envy, which underlies much of the “green jobs” hooey, have never been as strong in the United States as in Europe—and that fact gave us a chance for longer than the Europeans to stand firm against all of the promises of free ice cream. Now we are told to look to Europe, but ignore the actual lessons. Instead, accept a fairy tale.

Our German experts [at old-line and state-funded think tank RWI-Essen] summarized for us:

“German renewable energy policy, and in particular the adopted feed-in tariff scheme, has failed to harness the market incentives needed to ensure a viable and cost-effective introduction of renewable energies into the country’s energy portfolio. To the contrary, the government’s support mechanisms have in many respects subverted these incentives, resulting in massive expenditures that show little long-term promise for stimulating the economy, protecting the environment, or increasing energy security.”

I then discuss the doggerel, repeated by Obama, of Green Jobs in Red China, briefly excerpted here:

“What might be the most embarrassing aspect to this con is that the same policies supposedly ensuring that particular, politically desired goods will be produced here, because their use is mandated here, actually ensure they’ll be made somewhere else….

The lede in a November 5, 2009, Boston Globe story captured the situation well: “Little more than a year after cutting the ribbon at a new factory in Devens built with more than $58 million in state aid, Evergreen Solar said yesterday that it will shift its assembly of solar panels from there to China.” Ouch. It seems that “In exchange for receiving $58.6million in grants, loans, land, tax incentives, and other aid to build in Massachusetts, Evergreen pledged that it would add

350 new jobs,” which it did. Briefly, only to then “write off $40 million worth of equipment at Devens because of the production shift to China.” The company cited the cost of production here not faced if they build their machines elsewhere. No one told them it wasn’t polite to prove the president wrong, and send green jobs overseas, to make things for use back home in response to mandates making it more expensive to produce here, prompting others to move overseas.

Boy, Obamanomics can be exhausting.”

Tonight’s display, on substance, was sophomoric or uninformed. Politically, it was standard cynical fare.

It is difficult to be amazed by a politician but Obama’s rhetoric Tuesday night in fact betrayed a gobsmacking level of cynicism or ignorance: rationing is not a prescription for growth; the state cannot mandate defeat of the laws of physics. China is installing windmills because Western countries pay them to under Kyoto’s Clean Development Mechanism, simply because those nations get emission “reduction” crisis for doing so which they need as they’ve discovered they can’t actually reduce emissions without economic crisis driving it (like today) or resulting from it (like in Spain, cited by Obama as his model eight times). And China will stop building windmills the minute we abandon this fetish.

There is very little that can bring Republicans and Democrats together these days, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing considering the natural inclination of both over the last few years has been to spend money like it’s an Olympic event and they’re going for the gold. But every once in a while the two parties experience a sort of harmonic convergence and come together to do something that is actually based upon long-term thinking, not electoral advantage or political gamesmanship. Such is the case with the F-35 Strike Force Fighter, America’s next generation of fighter plane. But this wouldn’t be Washington, DC, were there not fight to be had somewhere, and in this case how best save money – in the short-term or the long-term. Therein lies where we join our story…

Normally the idea of Republican Leader John Boehner and liberal stalwart Dennis Kucinich agreeing on something would mean it would have to be about what time it is or from which direction the sun rises, but only sometimes. To say those two, and similarly aligned Members of Congress, regularly agree would be akin to saying the Washington Nationals have some room for improvement as a baseball team. But on this issue they are simpatico. Why?

Safe to say they didn’t lose a bet.  The real reason is quite simple – long-term savings potential.

The Government Accounting Office (GAO) estimates that if what Boehner, Kucinich and ideological brethren voted for were to become law, the F-35 project could see savings of up to 12 percent in the long-term.  While 12 percent may not be enough to get you off the couch for a TV priced at $500, we’re talking about significant savings when dealing with billions of dollars.

So what is this project? It is the decision of who is going to make the next generation engine for the F-35. While this doesn’t seem like it should be an issue inspiring any sort of controversy, it wouldn’t be Washington if it didn’t.

Seems there are two companies vying to make their engine the engine the choice for the F-35.

Generally speaking, competition is the lifeblood of innovation, inspires and without it there is little incentive to improve quality of decrease price.  But the company that currently has the contract to make the engine for the F-35, a company called Pratt and Whitney, doesn’t, as companies that have an advantage, don’t want the competition, which in this case is coming from General Electric and Rolls-Royce.

The House of Representatives, on a bipartisan basis, agreed with GE & RR, that competition is a good thing. According to a study by the Institute for Defense Analyses, aside from potential economic benefits, “Competition could be expected to bring nonfinancial benefits in the form of fleet readiness, contractor responsiveness, and an enhanced industrial base.”

But competition never makes sense for the company with most to lose, in this case Pratt and Whitney, so they’ve undertaken a public relations campaign to kill the competition.

There are many things that make strange bedfellows, but none are as strange as the bedfellows made in politics. This issue has seen groups as diverse as the Center for American Progress and Citizens Against Government Waste joining forces to oppose competition. Why?

It may well be principle, it may be, in the case of CAP, undying loyalty to President Obama, who has been on the side of Pratt and Whitney and is being urged to veto the Defense Appropriations Bill if the competitive provision remains. Erick Erickson at RedState has speculated on the motives of CAGW.

Whatever the case may be, the free-market position and the practical long-term solution to addressing our spending addiction is competition.

While this may seem like an insignificant squabble between two companies that has no impact on the day to day life of you and other Americans, but it has real world implications, and not just on matters of national security. If the government can’t take simple money saving measures like introducing competition its own accounting office says will save us money in the long-term, what hope do we have to address the more serious spending issues that run risk of bankrupting the country in the not too distant future?

As with every type of addict, the first step is admitting you have a problem, then taking steps everyday to avoid falling back into the old, self-destructive habits that led to your addiction in the first place. Since politicians are not known for admitting mistakes, even when obvious, let’s be happy with the passive acknowledgement of the former and move on to the latter by introducing competition in as many aspects of government contracting as possible, starting with the F-35.

The ACORN apologists over at Media Matters were hard at work last week as they took time to once again whitewash or ignore the truth in order to protect ACORN. Even though Media Matters claims that my article titled “Radical Judicial Nominee Jack McConnell’s Disturbing ACORN Connections” is “nothing new” and the connections I drew in the article “between ACORN and progressives” are “even weaker than previous conservative attacks,” Media Matters apparently felt a need to try to refute it. Why write about “nothing new”?

Unfortunately for Media Matters, its arguments only work as long as its readers are content with ignoring key facts about ACORN and its role in politics, elections and government itself.

As stated in my previous article posted at many websites, including BigGovernment.com, there are several disturbing connections involving Jack McConnell, the lead paint litigation, and ACORN. Keeping in mind that this is the same “news organization” that still insists that ACORN’s alter ego Project Vote was totally separate from ACORN when Barack Obama worked for them, I will let ACORN’s own words explain its involvement in the Sherwin-Williams California case. The excerpt below is from page 59 of an ACORN report available here (click to enlarge).

Why would Media Matters ignore ACORN’s own words?

For the same reason it tries to dismiss my article as a conservative attempt to use ACORN as the “boogeyman.” By omitting the fact that I worked for ACORN and testified against ACORN/Project Vote in 2008, Media Matters hopes to downplay the significance of my knowledge of ACORN’s inner workings and its relationships with others.

In fact, while in the DC office of ACORN/Project Vote I worked on projects that allowed me to discover that among the donors to Project Vote was the private law firm involved in the California lead paint case.

Court documents show that the petitioners, California counties and cities, had not only hired Jack McConnell’s firm, Motley Rice, but also “Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy” (and others) to represent them against the paint companies (interestingly, the Santa Clara County counsel who initiated the lead paint case was appointed by the Obama administration to the Justice Department last year).

Not only did Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy give over $10,000 to ACORN’s Project Vote,  they were ACORN’s own attorneys. The connection between Motley Rice, ACORN and Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy is crystal clear in a reference here from page 31 of a 2006 report by ACORN.

“Amy Schur, directing this effort, was vigilant, and having dogged them all year, has constructed a legal strategy with ALERT and the Cachet firm [sic Cotchett] that has now brought the cities of San Diego and Los Angeles into the lawsuit.”

ACORN founder Wade Rathke mentions donor/attorney Naill McCarthy by name and also explains the lead paint litigation strategy in his book Citizen Wealth.

Wade goes on to explain how organizations like ACORN use litigation to gain power.

To recap for the Media Matters readers who may be used to having their news filtered:

1. ACORN staged a NATIONWIDE campaign against paint company Sherwin Williams.
2. ACORN turned down settlements to clean up the damage because it wanted money.
3. ACORN and its attorneys were in the final stages of given ACORN a seat in the negotiation process in the California case.
4. Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy represented ACORN in similar cases against Household Finance and Wells Fargo.

Don’t be fooled by the misspelling in the ACORN report, Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy is the same law firm that successfully represented ACORN in the Wells Fargo case.

“Wells Fargo Financial, Inc., the consumer finance subsidiary of Wells Fargo & Company, and the law firms of Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy (Burlingame, Calif.) and Miner, Barnhill & Galland, P.C. (Madison, Wisc.) said they have agreed to settle a class action lawsuit…..

In the proposed settlement, Wells Fargo Financial commits to continue for three years several improvements it had already put into practice, which have further strengthened its nonprime real estate-secured lending practices, and to implement other practices to benefit its customers. It also agrees to enact a default relief program, earmarking $2.4 million to provide relief to qualifying class members whose loans have become delinquent by more than 60 days. Qualifying class members who submit claims may also be entitled to cash payments, which will be determined using a formula to disburse up to $4.4 million.

The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a party to the lawsuit, had alleged that Wells Fargo Financial failed to adequately disclose points and prepayment penalties and had inaccurately reported loan balances on some of its California customers to credit reporting agencies.”

ACORN involvement in the lead paint issue was tremendous. Besides releasing reports and, staging protests (both national and international), ACORN even dedicated a separate website to the cause.

ACORN demonstrations included:

A reasonable person would say that given ACORN’s relationship with former Rhode Island Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse and current United States Senator (an enthusiastic supporter of Jack McConnell’s nomination), and its work with Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy on settlements, does raise the question as whether Motley Rice’s agreement with DuPont paint deserves more scrutiny.

“It’s odd and I think unlawful that the Attorney General, in a sense, appropriated the DuPont settlement moneys for his own purposes. It’s curious part of the money went to his alma mater, another part w[ent] to pay off a pledge made by Motley Rice to a Boston hospital, then the rest of the money went to the Children’s Health Forum, which is not based in Rhode Island at all.”

The fact that ACORN Advisory Committee member and long time ACORN ally Henry Cisneros is on the board of the Children’s Health Forum could be considered a coincidence to the folks over at Media Matters, but what if I were to tell you that the Mayor of Los Angeles Antonio Villaraigosa was on the advisory committee of the Children’s Health Forum?

In 2009 Cisneros was honored for his commitment to ACORN while Villaraigosa engaged in crisis PR for the group. Side note:  Villaraigosa is also board members of the Institute for America’s Future, a group that goes out of its way to protect ACORN interests.

Either Jack McConnell’s law firm Motley Rice was totally oblivious to the FACT that Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy were in the FINAL stages of securing ACORN a seat next to them  at the negotiating table or McConnell lied during his confirmation hearing (see transcript below)

SEN. KYL: I understand. My five minutes is up. It’s kind of hard to have continuity in questioning when we have this kind of limitation. I understood the point you were originally trying to make, but if I can — and I have a couple more minutes’ worth of questions just as a follow up to this.

My point really was not only, is it right to seek this as a movement, but whether you actually encourage these lawsuits in other states — you or your law firm — did you?

MR. MCCONNELL: No, Senator, we did not.

SEN. KYL: Are you aware of any role by the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now — that’s ACORN — in how those cases might have come to be filed?

MR. MCCONNELL: No, neither I nor my firm have had any relationship with ACORN.

President Clinton said that his answer depended upon what the meaning of the word is is. McConnell might say that it depends upon what a relationship is. Apparently McConnell did not want to acknowledge any kind of relationship to ACORN by the time his confirmation hearing was held. Still, McConnell, his firm and ACORN are all connected. McConnell’s key role in the lead paint litigation in Rhode Island, where ACORN had a significant presence, and his law firm’s subsequent participation in the California lead paint case on the side of ACORN and its California law firm contradict his unqualified assurance that neither he nor his firm “had any relationship with ACORN.”

To quote from ACORN Report shown in the screen shots above:

p. 38: “Luck would have it that the major CA lawsuit against the paint industry is being handled by the same law firm handling our Wells Fargo case [Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy]–and they want to work together on the lead case. Over the last month we have been able to convince several major CA cities and school districts to join the lawsuit. In a potentially important precedent for our role in these types of cases, we are in the final stages of negotiating a seat for ALERT (ACORN Law for Education, Representation & Training) on the legal team for the case, which puts us at the table–and in the settlement negotiations.”

P. 59: December 2006–”ACORN gets 2 cities and 2 school districts in CA to join a lawsuit against paint companies”

The Center for Immigration Studies recently put out a study arguing that immigration has had negative effects on California. One of their measures was a comparison of how many people in the state were receiving some form of welfare compared to other states. I found that data (see Table 3 of the report) very interesting, but not because of the immigration debate (I’ll leave others to debate that topic). Instead, I wanted to get a better understanding of the variations in government dependency. Is there a greater willingness to sign up for income redistribution programs, all other things being equal, from one state to another? The “all other things being equal” caveat is very important, of course, since the comparison produced by CIS may simply be an indirect measure of the factors that determine welfare eligibility. One obvious (albeit crude) way of addressing this problem is to subtract each state’s poverty rate to get a measure of how many non-poor people are signed up for income-redistribution programs. Let’s call this the Moocher Index.

A few quick observations. Why is Vermont (by far) the state with the largest proportion of non-poor people signed up for welfare programs? I have no idea, but maybe this explains why they elect people like Bernie Sanders. But it’s not just Vermont. Four of the top five states on the Moocher Index are from the Northeast, as are six of the top nine. Mississippi also scores poorly, coming in second, but many other southern states do well. Indeed, if we reversed the ranking and did a Self-Reliance Index, Virginia, Florida, and Georgia would score in the top 10. Nevada, arguably the nation’s most libertarian state, is the state with the lowest number of non-poor people signed up for welfare.

Let’s now emphasize several caveats.

I’m not an expert on the mechanics of social welfare programs, but even I know that eligibility is not governed solely by the poverty rate. Indeed, some welfare programs are open to people with much higher levels of income. This means that a more thorough analysis at the very least would have to include some measure of income distribution by state. Moreover, states use different formulas for Medicaid eligibility, so this index ideally also would be adjusted for state-specific policies that make it easier or harder for people to become dependent. There also are some states (and even colleges) that actually try to lure people into signing up for welfare, which also might affect the results. And I’m sure there are many other factors that are important, including perhaps immigration. If anybody knows of most substantive research in this area, please don’t hesitate to share material.

For far too long, Americans have watched as the Democrat Majority in Washington has made promise after promise that they would responsibly manage the taxpayer’s dollars – but one promise we haven’t seen many members keep is to take action to reduce our ever exploding deficit by actually cutting wasteful spending.

Many Americans have lost their jobs or have seen their pay and benefits reduced. Our nation’s families and small business job providers are all tightening their belts – all while they look at what’s happening in Washington in disbelief.

Spending is out-of-control. We have a national debt over $13 trillion; an annual budget deficit of nearly $1.6 trillion; and within the first eight months of our current fiscal year, the federal government has accumulated $935 billion in deficit spending. Currently, we are right on track to meet last year’s annual deficit record of $1.4 trillion. American taxpayers want spending reduced.

That is why Republican Whip Eric Cantor and the House Republicans have launched the YouCut project – where we go over the heads of Nancy Pelosi and her allies in Congress to engage the American people in the effort to reduce the deficit and cut wasteful spending now.

YouCut gives Americans the opportunity to vote each week for one of five wasteful spending programs and Republicans will force a vote on the one receiving the most votes. As of this week, Americans have casted over 850,000 votes on YouCut programs.

So far, Americans have asked House Republicans to push for a vote on a proposal to sell excess federal property, saving taxpayers up to $15 billion; a vote to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which would generate over $30 billion in savings for taxpayers; a vote on a spending cut to eliminate the proposed federal employee pay raise that would have saved hard pressed American families $2 billion this year and nearly $30 billion over 10 years; and a spending cut that would have saved $2.5 billion a year and not undue reforms that will weaken our welfare program.

We can all agree that this is not too much to ask for our government to stop spending money that we do not have, while families across the nation are facing many financial challenges.

Since we started this effort the Democrat Majority has voted down each attempt to reduce spending, but we are forcing change. Democrat leaders in Congress are now scrambling to try and find cuts that they can support. If we force cuts, YouCut will have been a great success. But the Democrats will never cut spending if we don’t keep up the pressure.

I encourage every American citizen to go to the YouCut website and make your voice heard in Congress and help get some fiscal sanity back in Washington today.

We must focus on what we can do to cut spending today, because every day we wait billions of dollars in new debt are passed along to our children and grandchildren. YouCut gives the American people a chance to say enough is enough.

In politics, temperament matters – it matters a great deal, as Barack Obama has unwittingly shown us time and again.

Some women and men love to posture, talk, debate, and negotiate. Temperamentally, they are suited for a legislative role. It is said – only partly in jest– that, in Washington, DC, the most dangerous space to occupy is that which lies between a United States Senator and a microphone.

Other women and men – think of Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Ghandi, Golda Meir, and Ronald Reagan – were born to take charge. When Harry Truman put a sign on his desk, reading, “The buck stops here,” he knew what he was talking about. As Alexander Hamilton observed in The Federalist, it is vital that we have in our Constitution a unitary executive because, in human affairs, emergencies are commonplace; secrecy, vigor, and dispatch are often requisite; and, in such circumstances, there has to be someone in high office able, willing, and even eager to take responsibility for the conduct of affairs.

Americans have an instinctive understanding of what is at stake. Ordinarily, they choose as Presidents men with executive experience – men with a track record in directing affairs that can be judged. George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Ulysses S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower had been prominent generals before they were elected Presidents, and Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, and Theodore Roosevelt had also demonstrated an aptitude for leadership in war.

John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, the younger Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Nixon, and George H. W. Bush had held the vice-presidency. Jefferson and Van Buren had also been Secretary of State, and the same can be said for James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, and James Buchanan. Monroe had also been Secretary of War, and this was true was well for William Howard Taft. Herbert Hoover had managed relief efforts in Europe early in and after World War I; he had served as Food Administrator within the United States after we entered that war; and, from 1921 to 1928, he served as Secretary of Commerce.

Many of the others elected to the presidency had previously held gubernatorial office.

This was true for Jefferson, Monroe, Van Buren, the younger Roosevelt, and, if one counts his service as governor of the Philippines, for Taft as well. It applies also to James K. Polk, Rutherford B. Hayes, Grover Cleveland, William McKinley, Woodrow Wilson, Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, William Jefferson Clinton, and George H. Bush.

The only men ever elected to the presidency who had no executive experience of any sort were Franklin Pierce, Warren G. Harding, John F. Kennedy, and the hapless incumbent we have today.

No one – not even, in retrospect, his own political party – thought that Pierce did a decent job. It was during his administration (1853-1857) that the Union began to come apart. Harding is best remembered for the scandals that beset his short-lived administration (1921-1923). And although, thanks to the slavish devotion of his acolytes in the media and in the academy, JFK is in some circles revered, his actual performance in office prior to October, 1962 was deplorable. As Donald Kagan pointed out on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall Kennedy was so weak, so irresolute and indecisive, so feckless in his dealings with the Soviet Union that his conduct encouraged Nikita Khrushchev to think that he could get away with introducing missiles tipped with nuclear warheads into Castro’s Cuba and brought us thereby to the brink of nuclear war.

Executive experience does not guarantee wisdom and competence in office. Pierce, Harding, and Kennedy were by no means the only elected Presidents to fall short. But, as the American people generally appreciate, the lack of executive experience is a good indicator of fecklessness to come.

Witness Barack Obama. Leave aside his first year in office. As I pointed out in posts entitled “Barack Obama and the Exhausted Presidency” and “Obama’s First Year,” from the outset, he conducted himself in an irresponsible fashion that is highly unpresidential.

He forgot that, in the larger world, the President represents his country. Out of personal pique, he persistently insulted our friends abroad, displaying disdain for Gordon Brown, stiffing Nicholas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel, treating Benyamin Netanyahu with open contempt, and turning his back on the people of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Iran. At the same time, he embraced Hugo Chavez, sucked up to Vladimir Putin, and kowtowed to the rulers of Saudi Arabia and China – all to no avail.

With regard to domestic affairs, he seems not to have recognized that, under our Constitution, it is the President of the United States who represents the national interest; that Congressmen more often than not cater to particular interests; that, if legislation is left to the latter, principle tends to give way to patronage; and that the result can be a profound embarrassment. And so he stood idly by while Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the like drafted legislation – a so-called “stimulus bill” and healthcare reform, each more than a thousand pages in length, each embodying a multitude of corrupt bargains, each threatening to bankrupt the country. And, like a political hack, faithful to his party to the bitter end, he promoted and signed their handiwork.

All of this was obvious long ago, and it was evident as well that, if there were a real crisis, he would check out. This is what he did when Major Nidal Malik Hassan gunned down thirteen Americans at Fort Hood. This is what he did when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab nearly brought down a jetliner at Christmas time. And this is what he did when Faisal Shahzad was found to have planted a bomb in Times Square. All three cases revealed an egregious failure of our intelligence apparatus. In all three cases, the danger had its source in developments within Islam And, in the face of all of this, the President of the United States signaled that he could hardly bear to take a few minutes off from his vacation at the beach in Hawaii, cancel a party or two, or give up his golf game to acknowledge and address the failures of his administration, and at no time has he been willing to level with us about the source of our peril.

Maureen Dowd and those who think that politics is about play-acting – here is her latest column on this theme – lament that, like Spock in Star Trek, No-Drama Obama is simply incapable of displaying any sense of urgency. The real problem is much more serious, for our well-being is to a considerable degree in this man’s hands, and, when things go wrong, he seems not to feel any sense of urgency at all.

The oil spill that began in the Gulf of Mexico on 20 April is the latest example. Some say that President Obama is no more responsible for the spill than President Bush was for Hurricane Katrina. This claim is, in fact, untrue. Bush had nothing to do with Katrina. Barack Obama, as President, was responsible for insuring that the regulatory agencies overseeing the drilling operations did their job properly. While campaigning for the presidency, he charged that the Bush administration had, in effect, allowed the oil industry to regulate itself, and he promised that, if he were elected, he would set things right. During that campaign, he took a wad of cash from folks at BP (more than they had ever given any other candidate); and, when the time came to reform the Minerals Management Service, as Tim Dickinson has shown in fine detail in the latest issue of Rolling Stone, the new administration’s appointees did nothing of the sort.

Nor was the Obama administration quick off the mark in doing what could be done to contain the spill. Instead, while the govenors in the Gulf states clamored for action, the President played golf and partied and the bureaucracy dithered, delaying by weeks efforts to prevent the oil from coming ashore, from fouling beaches, and killing wildlife. Nearly two months have passed since the accident on the Deepwater Horizon, and to date President Obama has issued no waiver to the Jones Act, which stands in the way of foreign ships with foreign crews helping to contain and suck up the spill.

The environmentalists are reportedly giving the Obama adminstration a pass. By now, they are reliable partisans, and they have their eye on cap-and-trade. The people of Louisiana are much less happy. They recognize the deepwater drilling moratorium imposed by the Obama administration for what it is – a ploy designed to persuade those not in the know that something decisive is being done – and, according to the left-liberal outfit Public Policy Polling, more than three-quarters of the voters in that state still favor offshore drilling. Moreover, half of the voters polled “think George W. Bush did a better job with Katrina than Obama’s done dealing with the spill,” 31% of self-described Democrats agree, and only 35% of those polled give Obama higher marks.

Only one politician has gained ground in the course of this crisis, and that is Bobby Jindal, the Governor of Louisiana. The poll recently taken shows that “63% of voters approve of the job he’s doing,” which is the highest approval rating that Public Policy Polling “has found for any Senator or Governor so far in 2010. There’s an even higher level of support, at 65%, for how he’s handled the aftermath of the spill.” Jindal is evidently a man of executive temperament. He is not better placed to deal with the spill than is Barack Obama, but he has done as much to keep it off the beaches and out of the swamplands of southern Louisiana as lay within his power.

As the reports make abundantly clear, Barack Obama did not help himself at all with the speech he gave on Monday night from the Oval Office. As our President plays golf, parties, and pauses from time to time to bloviate and pose for photo-ops, his popularity steadily sinks under the weight of his evident indifference to our security and well-being.

It is high time that Republicans start asking the obvious question: who, in their number, is best prepared to do what this presidential incumbent has no desire to bother with: to take what the authors of The Federalist called responsibility. Governor Jindal may not be at the very top of the list of possible presidential contenders, but he is certainly high on it.

Judge Andrew Napolitano took the helm of the Glenn Beck Show and made a strong case against the Obama Administration’s handling of the oil disaster in the gulf. The Judge detailed how an incompetent government coupled with the crony capitalism of special interests laid the foundation for the current tragedy. Big Government’s Mike Flynn and the awesome pollster Pat Caddell joined in for the discussion.

Remember: The Gulf Oil Spill Is Like 9-11

Three days after the Gulf oil rig explosion, the Netherlands offered to send in oil skimmers to pump oil off of the surface of the ocean. The Obama Administration turned them down because they were not 100% efficient and small amounts of oil would be pumped back into the Gulf with the excess water. EPA regulations do not allow for residue water to contain any oil. So rather than use equipment that was not 100% efficient the Obama Administration chose to let all of the oil run into the Gulf.

This is not just bad policy, it is criminal.

Since the Obama Administration turned down assistance from The Netherlands at least 125 miles of Louisiana coastline has been ruined by the BP oil spill. Tar blobs began washing up on Florida’s white sand beaches near Pensacola days ago. And, crude oil has also been reported along barrier islands in Alabama and Mississippi.

Clean-up workers pick up blobs of oil in absorbent snare on Queen Bess Island at the mouth of Barataria Bay near the Gulf of Mexico in Plaquemines Parish, La., Friday, June 4, 2010. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

The Examiner reported, via Free Republic:

The U.S. Government has apparently reconsidered a Dutch offer to supply 4 oil skimmers. These are large arms that are attached to oil tankers that pump oil and water from the surface of the ocean into the tanker. Water pumped into the tanker will settle to the bottom of the tanker and is then pumped back into the ocean to make room for more oil. Each system will collect 5,000 tons of oil each day.

One ton of oil is about 7.3 barrels. 5,000 tons per day is 36,500 barrels per day. 4 skimmers have a capacity of 146,000 barrels per day. That is much greater than the high end estimate of the leak. The skimmers work best in calm water, which is the usual condition this time of year in the gulf.

These systems were developed by the Dutch as a safety system in case of oil spills from either wells or tankers. The Dutch have off shore oil development and also import oil in tankers. Their economy, just like ours, runs on oil. They understand that the production and use of oil has dangers and they wanted to be ready to cope with problems like spills. The Dutch system has been used successfully in Europe.

The Dutch offered to fly their skimmer arm systems to the Gulf 3 days after the oil spill started. The offer was apparently turned down because EPA regulations do not allow water with oil to be pumped back into the ocean. If all the oily water was retained in the tanker, the capacity of the system would be greatly diminished because most of what is pumped into the tanker is sea water.

As of June 8th, BP reported that they have collected 64,650 barrels of oil in the Gulf. That is only a fraction of the amount of oil spilled from the well. That is less than one day’s rated capacity of the Dutch oil skimmers.

Turning down the Dutch skimmers just shows a total lack of leadership in the oil spill.

The Obama Administration turned down offers to help clean up the spill from The Netherlands and the British Government just days after the explosion. They didn’t accept the British help because they didn’t have the proper paperwork. The administration still has not given the OK to allow emergency workers to use a Maine company’s oil boom even though they were made aware of the warehouse full of containment boom back on May 21.

Democrat Representative Bob Etheridge was recently asked if he fully supports the Obama agenda, provoking an angry and violent response from the Congressman.

We had no idea that this was such a provocative question – and we wanted to find out why it’s such a dangerous line of inquiry.  So at great risk to our own personal safety, we took our cameras to the underground walkways of Chicago, the epicenter of Obamamania, to see if the question was just as dangerous to ask here as it is in D.C.  What we discovered will shock you.  Viewer discretion is advised.

“Health overhaul to force changes in employer plans.” “Draft health rules set hurdles.” “Employer health care costs to jump 9% in 2011.” With headlines like these splashed across the nation’s newspapers, it’s no wonder the American public remains steadfastly opposed to the government takeover of health care signed into law by President Obama in March. Just this week, the Obama administration released bureaucratic new health care regulations that could change or eliminate more than half of all employer-provided health care plans, affecting tens of millions of Americans. Apparently, “If you like it, you can keep it” was an Obama promise too good to be true – one of many, as it is turning out.

Indeed, ObamaCare’s broken promises are piling up for America’s families, seniors, and job-creators and stifling the economic recovery we all hope to achieve. Bureaucratic mandates, higher taxes, and record deficit spending are proven job killers – yet these very principles lay at the heart of the Democrats’ government takeover of health care.

During the Blair House summit, Speaker Pelosi decreed the Democrats’ health care plan would “create four million jobs — 400,000 jobs almost immediately.” With a national unemployment rate stuck near 10 percent, and with 15 million Americans searching for work, Republicans and the American people continue to ask: Where are the jobs?

One of the lasting lessons of the health care debate is this: The American people will no longer accept a federal government that is tone-deaf to their concerns. Men and women who never before have spoken out about politics are now standing up and demanding to be heard. And Republicans are using every resource and seizing every opportunity to bring their voices to Washington D.C.

A central part of our effort is America Speaking Out, a bold new initiative designed to give the American people a voice in shaping a new governing agenda for Congress and the nation. Through AmericaSpeakingOut.com, Americans can post policy suggestions and vote or offer comments on the ideas shared by lawmakers and fellow citizens. It is truly an unprecedented dialogue between the people and their elected leaders.

In the weeks since it launched, ASO has been a powerful force on the internet and in town hall meetings in congressional districts from coast to coast. Tomorrow, the ingenuity of ASO comes to the halls of Congress thanks to the House GOP Health Care Solutions Group. For more than a year, House Republicans have studied the nation’s health care challenges and offered commonsense solutions to lower health care costs and protect jobs without growing the size of government.

Tomorrow’s forum will be the second in a series of meetings intended to shine a brighter light on the consequences of ObamaCare for America’s families and job creators. We have invited experts and individuals with real-world experience to discuss the chilling effect a government takeover of health care is having on job creators across the country. Already we know ObamaCare will penalize small businesses for raising wages or creating new jobs, and we know it will hit businesses – both large and small – with an estimated $87 billion in new penalties for failing to provide government-approved health care. The American people deserve to have these facts examined and they deserve an opportunity to chart a different course, one they support.

At America Speaking Out, citizens have a national platform to offer their ideas for reigning in government spending and advancing American prosperity. Chief to achieving those goals is the desire to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with reform the country can afford. Tomorrow’s health care forum will allow members of Congress and outside experts to discuss ideas posted to America Speaking Out, as well as suggest new ideas for the public to consider.

In his farewell from the Oval Office, President Reagan noted that while as a great nation our challenges seem complex, “as long as we remember our first principles and believe in ourselves, the future will always be ours.” Limited government, personal responsibility, and economic freedom will once again lead this nation to opportunity and prosperity. Democrats disregarded these basic principles in their pursuit of government-run health care. The consequences have proven devastating.

The American people realize the path to renewing our economic prosperity comes through courage and sacrifice, and they are demanding a renewed commitment to our oldest and most basic principles. The American people are speaking out, and Republicans are listening.

Putting aside for a second the fact that this speech was given about 50 days late, last night’s oval office speech proved that the President is not ready to be honest with the American people.  For the first 30 days of this crisis, President Obama was ignoring the fact that the crisis existed, and now when he uses the oval office to give the people confidence that he is on top of the problem  he spends more time trying to sell cap and trade than discussing capping the well. Essentially, he is still ignoring the crisis.

Lets take a look at the key points of the President’s speech. He begins by trying to convince America that he has been doing a great job at managing the disaster:

“… I assembled a team of our nation’s best scientists and engineers to tackle this challenge – a team led by Dr. Steven Chu, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and our nation’s Secretary of Energy. Scientists at our national labs and experts from academia and other oil companies have also provided ideas and advice.”

Nobel prizes have not been impressive since  Obama recived one for doing nothing and Al Gore got one for a hoax.  The key is how the ideas from those great minds are implemented. The President’s management of the crisis has been horrible.  Even the progressive bible  the NY Times trashed Obama’s  management of the crisis:

“The information is not flowing,” Senator Nelson said. “The decisions are not timely. The resources are not produced. And as a result, you have a big mess, with no command and control.”

In other words,  the leadership and management coming from the executive branch of the government has been a disaster.

“Because of our efforts, millions of gallons of oil have already been removed from the water through burning, skimming, and other collection methods. Over five and a half million feet of boom has been laid across the water to block and absorb the approaching oil. We have approved the construction of new barrier islands in Louisiana to try and stop the oil before it reaches the shore, and we are working with Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida to implement creative approaches to their unique coastlines.”

A little truth Mr. President?  Only after Bobby Jindal said he was going to build the barrier islands whether they were approved or not, was the barrier island  plan approved.

The  President might have come clean and told us  why the United States refused to accept skimmers from the Dutch, or help from any other country. Maybe he could have explained  why miles of oil boom remain in a Maine warehouse despite the fact that the administration was informed of the supply the third week of May.

“… Tomorrow, I will meet with the chairman of BP and inform him that he is to set aside whatever resources are required to compensate the workers and business owners who have been harmed as a result of his company’s recklessness. And this fund will not be controlled by BP. In order to ensure that all legitimate claims are paid out in a fair and timely manner, the account must and will be administered by an independent, third party.”

While most people would agree that  BP should be paying  for the damage it caused, (BP has promised that it will),  there is no place in the constitution saying that the President has the power to demand a company set aside money in an escrow account? Nor is there a place saying  the POTUS can demand that the account be administered by a third party.  To be honest that clause could be hiding  right next to the clause saying  the government can force citizens to purchase health insurance.

The  demand for BP to freeze money in an escrow account shows a lack of understanding of capitalism. Not allowing BP to spend those dollars on growing its business is limiting the company’s ability to generate the profits  necessary to pay its obligation to the victims of the disaster.

“… Already, I have issued a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling. I know this creates difficulty for the people who work on these rigs, but for the sake of their safety, and for the sake of the entire region, we need to know the facts before we allow deepwater drilling to continue.”

The drilling freeze is like closing down GM the first time one of its cars is involved in an accident.  Wood Mackenzie Research and Consulting published a report saying the six month moratorium will result in job losses of over 120,000 by 2014. The gulf region is already suffering, as is the American economy, the embargo does nothing but make it worse.

“One place we have already begun to take action is at the agency in charge of regulating drilling and issuing permits, known as the Minerals Management Service. Over the last decade, this agency has become emblematic of a failed philosophy that views all regulation with hostility – a philosophy that says corporations should be allowed to play by their own rules and police themselves. At this agency, industry insiders were put in charge of industry oversight. Oil companies showered regulators with gifts and favors, and were essentially allowed to conduct their own safety inspections and write their own regulations.

When Ken Salazar became my Secretary of the Interior, one of his very first acts was to clean up the worst of the corruption at this agency. But it’s now clear that the problems there ran much deeper, and the pace of reform was just too slow.”

The problem was much worse than the President described.  The Minerals Management Service scandal  broke in September 2008. This crisis did not happen at the beginning of Obama’s administration but  there was a sixteen month window between the inauguration and the oil spill. This was Obama’s problem not Bush’s.

... a larger lesson is that no matter how much we improve our regulation of the industry, drilling for oil these days entails greater risk. After all, oil is a finite resource. We consume more than 20% of the world’s oil, but have less than 2% of the world’s oil reserves. And that’s part of the reason oil companies are drilling a mile beneath the surface of the ocean – because we’re running out of places to drill on land and in shallow water.

Mr President you are lying. A report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service (CRS) dated October 2009 proves Obama is lying. The report shows the  amount of  recoverable oil in the U.S. to be 167 billion barrels of oil, not the 21 billion figure pushed by the Democrats.  If exploited that 167 billion barrels could replace America’s  imports from OPEC countries for more than 75 years.

That same report shows that America’s combined recoverable natural gas, oil, and coal supply is the largest on Earth. America’s recoverable resources are far larger than those of Saudi Arabia (3rd), China (4th), and Canada (6th) combined. Those estimates don’t include America’s  immense oil shale deposits.

“The consequences of our inaction are now in plain sight. Countries like China are investing in clean energy jobs and industries that should be here in America. Each day, we send nearly $1 billion of our wealth to foreign countries for their oil. And today, as we look to the Gulf, we see an entire way of life being threatened by a menacing cloud of black crude.”

That’s true. China is investing in clean energy, at the same time they are exploiting every possible opportunity to exploit their own resources.  The United States is funding part of their green job investment with the interest payments from the money that China is loaning us.

If the President and his progressive allies allowed the U.S. to exploit our own resources, there would be no need to  spend that $1 billion on foreign oil.

“...The transition away from fossil fuels will take some time, but over the last year and a half, we have already taken unprecedented action to jumpstart the clean energy industry. As we speak, old factories are reopening to produce wind turbines, people are going back to work installing energy-efficient windows, and small businesses are making solar panels. Consumers are buying more efficient cars and trucks, and families are making their homes more energy-efficient. Scientists and researchers are discovering clean energy technologies that will someday lead to entire new industries.”

Here is the  truth about alternate energy Obama forgets to mention. With the exception of  nuclear energy, no alternate energy has been developed that can run this nation as effectively or efficiently as fossil fuels. Nothing even in the same neighborhood. If the economy is “switched over” before a legitimate alternative is developed, the catastrophically higher prices will collapse the economy.

The President is a recent convert to nuclear power, but not a serious one. He has not allowed the approval process to be streamlined, or a way around the objections of his environmental buddies. So even the one real alternative energy cannot be exploited quickly.

“…Last year, the House of Representatives acted on these principles by passing a strong and comprehensive energy and climate bill – a bill that finally makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy for America’s businesses.

Now, there are costs associated with this transition. And some believe we can’t afford those costs right now. I say we can’t afford not to change how we produce and use energy – because the long-term costs to our economy, our national security, and our environment are far greater.”

The bill passed by the House represents the largest tax increase in American history. It also uses  government regulation  essentially  take over every industry that uses fossil fuel (wait, every industry uses fossil fuel).

More than Obamacare, cap and trade represents a takeover of the American economy, that will retard economic growth, and push the already bankrupt federal budget over the edge.

“Some have suggested raising efficiency standards in our buildings like we did in our cars and trucks. Some believe we should set standards to ensure that more of our electricity comes from wind and solar power. Others wonder why the energy industry only spends a fraction of what the high-tech industry does on research and development – and want to rapidly boost our investments in such research and development.”

And some just want to know where the government is going to get the money? It looks like China will get more US interest payments so they can invest in green energy.

“The same thing was said about our ability to harness the science and technology to land a man safely on the surface of the moon.”

Holy Cow, what an original thought!. “If we can land a man on the moon, why cant we find green energy?” Maybe I can use that line for a future post. I will  have to remember that one.  As I will remember the President’s entire speech.  Who knew that one Obama could fit so much bull into just eighteen minutes. The President may get a slight bump from this, but within a week, the stench of the rotting Presidential bull will drive Americans away from the lies he told tonight.

So President Obama is meeting in the White House tomorrow with BP’s chairman. The focus of public discussion of this event has been on it taking until the 57th day or so since the Deepwater Horizon rig caught fire following a well explosion, precipitating the ongoing oil leak.

The more relevant figure is 4,700. If my quick calculation has it right, that’s the number of days since the last time a BP CEO was in the Oval Office.

On that day, August 4, 1997, then-CEO, (then-Sir) John Browne, joined by Ken Lay, met in the Oval with President Clinton and Vice President Gore.

Their mission that day? As revealed in the August 1, 1997 Lay briefing memo whiih I was later provided — having left a brief dance with Enron after raising questions about this very issue — it was to demand that the White House ignore unanimous Senate instruction pursuant to Art. II, Sec. 2 of the Constitution (”advice”, of “advice and consent” fame), and to go to Kyoto and agree to the “global warming” treaty.

Oh, and to enact a cap-and-trade scheme.

Oddly, President Obama tonite will telegraph that he’s really going to stick it to BP tomorrow and give ‘em…the cap-and-trade scheme they concocted with Enron (spare me the hysterics, comrades, as I have detailed and explained in various ways here, here and here, I was in the room).

That is, Congress willing. Possibly you can let your thoughts on the matter, on not letting this crisis go to waste, be known as well?

The Gaza Flotilla incident, which would really be more aptly called the Hamas Flotilla incident, needs to be viewed from a wider perspective to be more fully understood and appreciated for what it represents – A Marxist-Progressive Jihad on Israel, and by proxy, the United States, wherein the American Progressive Left is engaged in an open and working relationship with Islamist radicals.

The Hamas Flotilla action was not an isolated event. It was but the latest in a carefully programmed series of actions that have been taking place since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in a violent coup in 2007, designed by community organizations that have been operating in the region since at least the mid-1990s.

The umbrella organization of this recent series of actions is called the Free Gaza Movement, and represents several international organizations, as well as many prominent American Progressive organizations.

The international organizations include George Galloway’s Viva Palestina, IHH, and the International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

The American Progressive community is organized against Israel under the banner of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.

The US Campaign to end the Israeli Occupation is a co-production of Global Exchange/CodePink/United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) (All founded by Medea Benjamin), and a group called the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR).

The Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) has been organizing on the ground in Palestinian territories since 1996.

One of the mainstream Progressive organizations that has pledged its support to this anti-Israel movement is the Progressive Democrats of America, a group organized by Rep. Maxine Waters, Rep. Lynn Woolsey, Rep. Barbara Lee, Rep. John Conyers, Rep. Donna Edwards, Tom Hayden (founder of SDS), and Medea Benjamin and Jodie Evans of Global Exchange/CodePink.

The Progressive Democrats of America are but one in a slew of mainstream American Progressive groups taking part in these actions against Israel on behalf of Hamas.

Another Progressive organization whose board members are helping Hamas with this program of actions is the Movement for a Democratic Society, or (MDS). Their members include a who’s who of 1960s domestic radicalism.

The full list of the November 2006 MDS board members is available here, but some names jump right off the page:

Bernardine Dohrn – Domestic Terrorist, Northwestern University Professor.
Rashid Khalidi – Very close friend of President Obama, (details at the link). Sits on the Advisory Board of the US Campaign To End The Israeli Occupation.
Carl Davidson – Former SDS. Co-organized the anti-war protest where Barack Obama came out against the Bush Administration.
Tom Hayden – Former leader of SDS, member of Progressive Democrats of America.
Alan Haber – First President of SDS

Below is a diagram of major Progressive groups responsible for the Free Gaza marches and flotillas (Click to view full size image):

These groups have attracted a great deal of public support from some very interesting people and organizations.

One very notable celebrity supporter and on-the-ground participant in these actions is Author Alice Walker (Color Purple). She’s so notable, in fact, that President Obama continues to prominently stream from his Presidential YouTube channel her impassioned and detailed 2008 presidential campaign endorsement-commercial. If you are a fan of irony, you will really love the 2:58 minute mark of the Alice Walker video below:

When America elected President Barack Obama, more than anything else, they were getting a community organizer. Given that he marketed himself on this particular credential, this is not at all a racist slander (as some have suggested of any criticism of his Presidency), but merely an empirical observation.

Until Barack Obama ran for the Presidency, most people didn’t have the faintest clue as to what a community organizer was, let alone the name of one of their groups. That made it very difficult for most people to understand the choice they were making when they pulled the lever for Barack Obama. It didn’t help that the mainstream media in this country had neither the will nor the skill to educate the American public about community organizing beyond an altruistic and sterilized fairytale of selfless volunteerism.

These are the days of Google, however, and with a little bit of time and curiosity (something absent in alleged news organizations like Tribune), anyone can answer for themselves such questions as: who organized the Gaza-Hamas flotilla? Or, who organized the bank protests? Or, who organized the violent protests during the 2008 Republican National Convention? Or, who organized the violent protests in Seattle during the 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organization? Or, who organized all those Jihad photo-ops of children throwing rocks at tanks?

In each and every single case mentioned above, the answers to those questions lead to the same core group of people in the American social organizing community. They are easy to identify and their motives are clear because they frequently write openly about what they are doing.

If the people of the United States are to understand the presidency of Barack Obama and today’s Progressive-controlled Democrat party, they can only do so by knowing and trying to understand the American/global community organizing industry. There are several community organizing mega-corporations in America, and they each have their key players.

This article will attempt, in very basic terms, to offer a foundational knowledge of these groups, their leaders, and their actions. Hopefully this information will aid people’s understanding of incidents like the Gaza Flotilla, as well as the actions and programs that have come before it – and that will surely follow.

GROUP: Global Exchange

CAMPAIGNS/ORGS: CodePink, United For Peace and Justice, US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, Global Citizen Center

BACKGROUND: Founded by Medea Benjamin and her husband Kevin Danaher, Global Exchange has launched several entities over the years, including CodePink, but more notably, United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ).

UFPJ was the umbrella organization for almost ALL of the large scale “anti-war” marches that unfolded in America. They are also responsible for the protests that took place in Denver and St. Paul during the Democrat and Republican conventions.

Among the members of the UFPJ steering committee is Marilyn Katz, former SDS head of “security” during the ‘68 Chicago riots. Katz is also a big money bundler for President Barack Obama, and a member of his National Finance Committee. Katz, along with former SDS Carl Davidson, organized the 2002 anti-Iraq war rally in Chicago where Barack Obama came out publicly against the War.

The US Campaign to End Israeli Occupation is the Grand Central Station of US Marxist Progressive community organizing directed against Israel. We shall return to that in a moment.

Through the US Campaign To End Israeli Occupation, Global Exchange and CodePink staged the Gaza Freedom March and the Flotilla. Many notable people and groups either supported or took part in this action. Among them, the Progressive Democrats of America, Author Alice Walker (Color Purple), Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn.

Medea Benjamin sits on the Advisory board of Progressive Democrats of America.

It is also worthwhile to mention that Van Jones, former Obama Green Jobs Czar, sits on the board of Global Citizen Center, Global Exchange’s environmental organization.

Global Exchange also has significant ties to Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. Read their detailed and gushing blog post describing their interactions with Hugo.

So let us take a moment to acquaint ourselves with the motive power behind these various entities. Here is a video of Medea Benjamin at a Gaza border check point. Be sure to catch the part at the front where she openly talks about her working relationship with the Hamas terrorist government of Gaza.

GROUP: Alliance of Community Trainers (ACT) & Root Activist Network Trainers (RANT)

CAMPAIGNS/ORGS: US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, 1999 Seattle WTO Protests, 2004 Republican Convention Protests in NYC, 2008 DNC/RNC Convention protests

BACKGROUND: Founded by Lisa Fithian, Starhawk, and Juniper.

Their specialty appears to be ‘direct action’ protests designed to cause significant confrontation. Together with UFPJ and the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), they organized the Anarchy movement and made it a key component of their street confrontations with police in Seattle, St. Paul, and elsewhere.

RANT has been a member of the UFPJ Steering Committee since its inception.

Co-founder Starhawk took part in CodePink’s Gaza actions in 2009/2010

Co-founder Starhawk is a board member of the radical Movement for a Democratic Society.

GROUP: International Solidarity Movement (ISM)

CAMPAIGNS/ORGS: UFPJ (Steering Committee), US Campaign To End Israeli Occupation.

BACKGROUND: Founded in 2001 by Huwaida Arraf and her husband Adam Shapiro as an international component to US Campaign To End Israeli Occupation, among ISM’s chief tasks is to organize Americans and other Westerners to go serve as human shields in places like Iraq and Israel.

Regarding Jihad terrorism, Arraf and Shapiro have written:

“Palestinian resistance must take on a variety of characteristics, both violent and nonviolent. But most importantly, it must develop a strategy involving both aspects. Nonviolent resistance is no less noble than carrying out a suicide operation.”

For a disturbing look inside the US recruiting program of the ISM, read the article at FrontPage Mag entitled Solidarity With Terror.

ISM gained notoriety back in 2003 when one of its organizers, Rachel Corrie, was killed by an Israeli bulldozer. According to Israel, she was accidentally killed while they were destroying smuggling tunnels leading from Egypt into Gaza. According to the Organizing Industry, the Israeli Bulldozer ran her over on purpose. Either way, Rachel Corrie is dead and now the ISM names their boats after her.

The sea vessel Rachel Corrie was last seen attempting to run Israel’s blockade of Hamastan, in the ISM-orchestrated Free Gaza Flotilla. The Flotilla was merely the latest in a series of Actions run under the Free Gaza program.

ISM Founder Huwaida Arraf Chairs the Free Gaza Movement.

ISM Founder Huwaida Arraf currently sits on the advisory board, and has served on the Steering Committee of the US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.

ISM Founder Huwaida Arraf is a member of Global Exchange’s Speakers bureau.

ISM also organized people on the ground at the Democrat and Republican party conventions in 2008.

GROUP: Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO)

CAMPAIGNS/ORGS: Organizing trips to Cuba, US Campaign To End Israeli Occupation

BACKGROUND: Founded in 1967, they have been dedicated to busting the US blockade/sanctions against Cuba. Their contemporary claim to fame is coordinating congressional visits to Cuba. From their website:

2000: Reps. Maxine Waters (D-CA) and Barbara Lee (D-CA) traveled to Cuba in a February delegation organized by IFCO. They cut the ribbon at the opening of the first-ever US-Cuba Medical Trade Fair. They dedicated the trade fair to Elián González and all the Cuban children who were deprived of medicines because of the US economic blockade.

The second official delegation of the Congressional Black Caucus, organized by IFCO, visited Cuba in May-June 2000.

Most recently, IFCO has coordinated funds for the American arm of Viva Palestina, the George Galloway component of the Free Gaza Movement.

GROUP: Center for Economic and Social Rights

CAMPAIGNS/ORGS: Research/Education (Propaganda) related to the Palestinian Territories. US Campaign To End Israeli Occupation.

BACKGROUND: Founded in 1993 by Roger Normand, Sarah Zaidi and Chris Jochnick, this group works with the Jihadis to produce research that they then use for propaganda educational tours in America and elsewhere. They also handle fundraising for the umbrella group US Campaign To End Israeli Occupation.

Since 2001, together with Global Exchange and their other partners under the US Campaign To End Israeli Occupation, they have organized many direct action campaigns against Israel, the latest being the Free Gaza Movement in all of its incarnations.

GROUP: USAction

CAMPAIGNS/ORGS: Health Care For America Now (HCAN), TrueMajority.org, Showdown in America

BACKGROUND: Founded by former 60s radicals Heather and Paul Booth as Illinois Public Action Council, it eventually grew into a national network called Citizen Action. The national organization folded after numerous scandals including Teamstergate, and a multi-million dollar embezzlement conviction against Obama campaign organizer Bob Creamer, then Citizen Action treasurer. Most of the locals renamed and reorganized under the new national banner of USAction.

In 2005 the president of USAction, William McNary, delivered a rousing keynote address to the CPUSA (Communist Party of the United States) that had the crowd roaring. President Obama worked for William McNary organizing a Get Out The Vote campaign, ostensibly for Sen. Carol Moseley Braun.

During the Clinton administration, Heather Booth was hired to coordinate organizing for the DNC.

President Obama’s now deceased Doctor Quentin Young (regarded as the godfather of Obamacare) was an important member of Illinois Citizen Action.

In 2008-2010, USAction used HCAN (Healthcare for America Now) to stage rallies to spearhead the successful effort to push the health care bill through congress.

Their most recent work includes co-organizing the Showdown in America protest actions, including the ones that terrorized a teenager alone in his home, and stormed into Federally-regulated bank buildings.

GROUP: Movement for a Democratic Society

CAMPAIGNS/ORGS: New SDS

BACKGROUND: Founded by former members of the original 1960s Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and their spin-off terrorist group, Weather Underground. Some of the more prominent ones are Bernardine Dohrn, Rashid Khalidi, Carl Davidson, Tom Hayden, Alan Haber, Bill Fletcher, Jr., Noam Chomsky, Mark Rudd, Jeff Jones, Bert Garskof, and Starhawk.

Bernadine Dohrn and her husband Bill Ayers have taken part in Free Gaza Movement Actions, and were members of the Weather Underground terrorist organization.

Tom Hayden is on the board of Progressive Democrats of America, and was a member of the Weather Underground terrorist organization.

Rashid Khalidi is on the Advisory Board of the US Campaign To End The Israeli Occupation.

Bill Fletcher is on the Advisory Board of the US Campaign To End The Israeli Occupation.

Noam Chomsky is on the board of advisers for the Free Gaza Movement, a sub-group of the US Campaign To End The Israeli Occupation.

Marc Rudd was a member of the Weather Underground terrorist organization.

Jeff Jones was a member of the Weather Underground terrorist organization.

Bert Garskof was a member of the Weather Underground terrorist organization.

GROUP: The New Party / Working Families Party

CAMPAIGNS/ORGS: Running 3rd party and fusion candidates in targeted races.

BACKGROUND: The Progressive movement – not unlike the Libertarian movement – felt locked out of a one party system masquerading as a 2 party system. They set out to take control of the Democrat party where they couldn’t defeat it outright.

The New Party collapsed in the 1990s when they lost a Supreme Court case involving the backbone of their strategy, fusion voting. They re-organized as the Working Families Party, and boast such prominent members as Hillary Clinton, Elliot Spitzer, and John Edwards.

An excellent background resource for the New Party can be found here, but for the purposes of this article, the pertinent point is that President Barack Obama was an important member of the New Party, and still is a member of the Working Families Party.

If you look at the list of New Party members, you will see that a large number of them are involved in the Gaza actions against Israel, as outlined above.

——————

From storming banks and personal property, to rioting in Seattle and St. Paul, to Palestinian children throwing stones at tanks in Israel, the groups listed above (among others) are the community organizers responsible for most of it.

Don’t like health care being pushed through? Too bad, that’s what community organizing looks like.

Don’t like protesters storming bank lobbies and private residential property? Too bad, that’s what community organizing looks like.

Don’t like anarchists rioting in Seattle or St. Paul? Too bad, that’s what community organizing looks like.

Don’t like CodePink organizing marches and flotillas in support of Hamas? Too bad, that’s what community organizing looks like.

These groups and their leaders are openly Marxist and virulently opposed to Capitalism.

Consistent with their worldview that all means are justified by their ends, they have intentionally organized Anarchists into their movements.

Consistent with their worldview that Capitalist America is the evil empire and Israel is her colony built on land stolen from indigenous peoples, they have organized the Jihadis. They hide behind the language of human rights and justice, but their bias is betrayed by the complete lack of honesty when it comes to representing the narrative of that region. Absent from their movement is any mention of the word Hamas. Search their English websites and you will be hard pressed to find a single mention of the Iran-supported terrorist government of Gaza, Hamastan. It is as if Hamas has gone missing. Come to think of it, there isn’t much mention of Jihad either. Or Sharia, Or Dhimmitude.

Their thin cloak of human rights legitimacy is torn to shreds when their tactics include weapon wielding ‘peace activists’ invoking ‘death to the Jews’:

The Marxists explain that the only reason the terrorist groups gain traction is because outside Western empire powers stole that land for the Jews, who have turned it into a militarized apartheid state. They fail to mention that within the concepts of Sharia and Dhimmitude, Jewish self-determination has been a non-starter for the Arabs since day one. Also, no mention of the repeated and relentless stream of Jihad terrorist attacks against innocent men, women, and children, guilty of nothing more than being Jews, and who were hoping only for the dignity of self-determination on one tiny shred of their ancestral homeland, among a sea of Sharia states demanding dhimmitude for ‘peace’. Also, no mention of the Palestinian involvement in the Holocaust. Nope. Just racist-evil-maniacal Israel – colony of America.

The Marxists and their Islamist clients like to say that it is all about the occupation. This has nothing to do with occupation. This decades-long Jihad against the Jews began long before the occupation. Long before the Holocaust.

The Jews, who by chronological logic were there first, are the tiniest minority in an ocean of Muslim countries. All they want is to have one small piece of their birthplace and to be safe there, but the bigotry of dhimmitude will not allow it. Never has, never will.

And the Marxists have fooled the world into thinking the Israelis are maniacal aggressors beating up on innocent defenseless Muslims.

Some of the President’s closest friends and financial supporters are admittedly working with and supporting Jihad terrorists in an effort to defeat the Little Satan – Israel. Are we supposed to assume that they will stop there? Or will they work together to also defeat the Great Satan?

Is it okay to question their patriotism yet?

Nearly every election year, a series of analysts and candidates suggest to American voters that the election that year may be the most important of its age.  In retrospect, few can argue that the election of Obama has not been momentous.  The midterm election of 2010 may be a turning point as well – especially for American business.

For decades, American business has wined, dined and lobbied the American politicians. Some have sought preferential tax benefits for themselves or their industries.  Others have sought preferential regulations or corporate welfare for the same reasons.  Still others feed the alligator that is government in hopes that it will be kind to them in the future while it consumes others today.

Perhaps no greater example of the latter mentality exists in California.   Year after year, business interests donate millions of dollars to Democrats in the hope that they will act reasonably.  The coup de grace of which was the 2002 election for Governor between then Governor Gray Davis and challenger, and business man, Bill Simon.  Under no uncertain terms, Simon campaigned on lower taxes and regulations.  Davis offered record deficits and coming tax increases – not to mention an ever increasing regulatory burden.  Incredibly, Big Business gave to Davis three to one over Simon.  They did so because they did not give Simon much of a chance and they wanted to curry favor with Davis – hoping he would be kind to them when he won.

Without a doubt there were two losers in that election.  Simon lost by less than 5 points (far closer than business imagined) and California businesses now face the highest combined tax and regulatory burdens in American history.  In other words, California businesses have received a very poor return on their investments into California Democrat politicians – so much so that California’s desert neighbor, Nevada, leads the nation in new business development.

The same story, of course, could be told nationally.  Businesses around the country have been feeding the giant alligator which is now our government for decades.  Until the 1960’s, government was less than a $100 billion enterprise ($600 billion or so in today’s dollars).  Today it is a $4 trillion dollar behemoth.   In this last year, despite funding Obama, the alligator has turned on them to an unprecedented degree with Obama policies that have included destroying bond holders rights in GM and appointing czars that determine their pay – not to mention adverse multinational taxation policies, unaffordable health care mandates, union empowering rules and much, much more.  In other words, business has not received a good return on its investment in Obama either.

Knowing all of that, and knowing that a Republican Congress is a distinct possibility, the question must be asked, as the 2010 election approaches:  Will American Business stop feeding the alligator that is our government?

All the way back in 1978, in his book A Time For Truth, Bill Simon’s father, former Secretary of the Treasury William E. Simon, warned us that “most of our politicians [were] careening toward more and more central planning and our society ruled by a small band of moral and economic depots.”  He decried the fact that American businessman of the time had been:

“more concerned with short-range respectability than with long range survival. Most appear morally afraid of antagonizing the egalitarian gurus of our society.  They do indeed seek to protect their enterprises, but with little understanding of the philosophy that justifies their actions.  Consequently, they do so secretively, and often guiltily, in the form of lobbying, financing politicians and, not infrequently, bribing them.  Even more disturbing, they also seek to protect their enterprises by endorsing the very values of their worst enemies and financing their causes.  If American business consciously wished to devise a formula for self-destruction, it could do no better than this.”

He exhorted business leaders to start a “countermovement” to not only preach but practice free enterprise.  Simon Sr., and his son, both understood what Thomas Jefferson warned us of long ago: that “Government can do something for the people only in proportion as it can do something to the people.”  The Obama Administration certainly should be the final lesson for American business on that important historical lesson.  2010 should be the seminal year they decide to learn that lesson once and for all before it is too late for us all.

Even though the Obama Administration claimed that squandering $800 billion on so-called stimulus would  keep the joblessness rate below 8 percent, the unemployment rate today is almost 10 percent. There are many reasons for the economy’s tepid performance, including a larger burden of government spending and the dampening effect of future tax rate increases (tax rates will jump significantly on January 1, 2011, when the 2003 tax cuts expire).

A closer look at the unemployment data, though , suggests that minimum wage laws also deserve a big share of the blame. In this Center for Freedom and Prosperity video, a former intern of mine at the Cato Institute (continuing a great tradition) explains that politicians destroyed jobs when they increased the minimum wage by more than 40 percent over a three-year period.

Mr. Divounguy is correct when he says businesses are not charities and that they only create jobs when they think a worker will generate net revenue. Higher minimum wages, needless to say, are especially destructive for people with poor work skills and limited work experience. This is why young people and minorities tend to suffer most – which is exactly what we see in the government data, with the teenage unemployment rates now at an astounding (and depressing) 26 percent level and blacks suffering from a joblessness rate of more than 15 percent.

Since the video is focused on economics, it does not examine why politicians would enact legislation that destroys jobs.

There are probably several factors involved, including economic ignorance, but a key factor is that politicians are responding to pressure from unions. This raises a separate question. Union members invariably make more than the minimum wage, so why do union bosses put so much muscle behind lobbying campaigns for higher minimum wages? The answer is simple. As Walter Williams has explained, unions want to make it more expensive for employers to hire other forms of labor. For all intents and purposes, the union bosses are throwing the less fortunate and more vulnerable members of society under the bus.

In a free society, there should be no minimum wage law. From a philosophical perspective, such requirements interfere with the freedom of contract. In the imperfect world of politics, thought, the best we can hope for is that politicians occasionally do the right thing. Sadly, the recent minimum wage increases that have done so much damage were signed into law by President Bush. It’s worth noting that President Obama’s hands also are dirty on this issue, since he supported the job-killing measure when it passed the Senate in 2007. When the stupid party and the evil party both agree on a certain policy, that’s known as bipartisanship. In the real world, however, it’s called unemployment.

From New Jersey’s Daily Record:

The Obama Administration handed out more than $400 million in awards to federal employees last year, up by more than $80 million from the prior year, according to new government data.

The biggest winners were air traffic controllers and top managers in Washington, a review of fiscal year 2009 salary reports from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management showed.

OPM’s data, obtained by the Asbury Park Press through a freedom of information request, account for 1.3 million employees, or about 65 percent of the federal civilian work force.

The $408 million given in awards excludes the departments of Defense and Treasury, security agencies such as the CIA and FBI, the White House, Congress and various independent commissions and agencies, such as the U.S. Postal Service.

The defense department paid $92.1 million in awards in 2008, the latest year available. Awards were given to 100,000 of its 687,000 employees.

Continue reading here.

Barack Obama’s infamous phrase “Just words.  Just speeches” keeps ringing in my ears.  While the U.S. economy crumbles and the world teeters toward war, the President busies himself with words and speeches (not to mention photo ops and vacations and parties).  Appalling, yes.  Surprising, no.  To quote Yogi Berra: “This is like deja vu all over again.”

Today’s leaders of the Democratic Party are not at all progressive.  In fact, their ideology is regressive – a throwback to an ideology popular in the 1920s and 30s and 40s.  Their vision is that people they consider the “ignorant many” should be governed by people who see themselves as the “enlightened few.”

At the core of this socialist outlook on life is what Friedrich Hayek called “the fatal conceit.”  That’s a person assuming that, if he were given unlimited power, then everything would be perfect.  He projects that government employees would act on his behalf.   He sees government employees as a proxy for his own egotistical fantasies.

A faceless bureaucracy is too impersonal, however, for some socialists, who prefer a proxy with a face.  These people prefer to focus their aspirations on a charismatic leader, who attracts hordes of followers, all dreaming that the great leader would, in fact, impose their own will on society, if only He were in charge of everything!

Relieved of the burden of having to think for themselves, these fanatics can easily find their political passions unrestrained by reason.  This fascist mentality can produce the thuggish brutality of a Benito Mussolini regime.

Nowadays, “fascism” is just an all-purpose insult.  Few of those who call people they don’t like “fascists” know what fascism is.  Fascism is an economic system.   The name comes from an ancient Roman symbol, the “fasces,” a bundle of sticks – referring to how all sectors of society would be tied together by the government.

Back in the day, many intellectuals and other so-called progressives hailed fascism as a “third way” between communism and capitalism.  Under fascism, private property does exist, but it is concentrated into big businesses, controlled by the government.  Workers are also concentrated, into huge unions, again, controlled by the government.

“Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

“All within the state.  Nothing outside the state.  Nothing against the state.”

–  Benito Mussolini

Young people, students, union members, environmentalists, minorities, scientists, retirees, celebrities, and so on – under fascism, each sector of society is “a stick” – bundled and tied together and controlled by the government.  And, at the head of the fascist state is the Leader, who struts as if onstage and mesmerizes crowds with speeches, lots of speeches.

Benito Mussolini is best remembered for his egotistical speechifying, but his background should be just as well known.  His father was a socialist who named him after a Mexican revolutionary icon, Benito Juarez.  His two middle names honored a pair of Italian socialists.  Mussolini rose to prominence as editor of a socialist magazine.

At the head of a black-shirted goon squad, he strutted and preened and wooed and threatened his way to power.  But, once in office, Mussolini showed little interest in the actual governance of Italy, leaving most administrative responsibilities to others.

Benito Mussolini was a very lazy guy.  He spent most of his time focused on showmanship and self-glorification.  In World War II, for example, spies in Rome told an astonishing tale, that during one major military crisis, Italy’s Leader idled away the afternoon chatting with his chauffeur.  Basically, his message to government officials was: “Call me if you need me.”

The analysis of socialism in this essay is adapted from Back to Basics for the Republican Party, cited by Clarence Thomas in a Supreme Court decision.  See www.grandoldpartisan.com for more information.

Even most native speakers of English don’t realize how many of our commonest clichés—phrases you hear verbatim in venues as diverse as a gabfest on The View, an Elvis Presley song, or a political debate in Wolf Blitzer’s urgently-named “The Situation Room”—were actually invented by 18^th and 19^th-century British poets.

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” Marv Albert on ESPN describing a triple play? Not exactly. It’s the justly famous first line of John Keats’ pastoral poem Endymion (1818) about a shepherd lad loved by the moon goddess Selene. “Fools rush in.” Elvis, right? The first three words, maybe. But the entire pearl—”Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”—actually hails from Alexander Pope’s brilliant 1711 poetic treatise An Essay on Criticism. And who first warned us “A little learning is a dangerous thing?” Einstein? George Washington? Sorry. Pope, once again. From the very same poem—and to think he was only 23 when he scribbled these sterling epigrams that stubbornly cling to our lips nearly 300 years later.

But what about that ubiquitous ornithological metaphor we all bandy about so freely? You know—the albatross, inextricably wrapped around some poor wretch’s hapless neck? Surely dead bird imagery is too macabre, too contemporary to have crawled out of some centuries-old British poem—right?

Not if the poet is the opium-addicted mystic Samuel Taylor Coleridge and the poem is The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798). With his surreal tale, Coleridge unwittingly gave us the perfect proxy for President Obama, entangled in his own personal albatross—the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare.

When Obama signed the bill into law on March 23, 2010, with the stroke of a pen he became the doomed sailor in Coleridge’s supernatural, foreboding poem. Little did the President know at the time that his pen was the equivalent of the cross-bow with which Coleridge’s mariner killed the fated albatross. (Word to the wise: be careful what you lobby for. Word to the foolish: ignore the word to the wise.)

Since its first publication, scholars have debated endlessly the symbolism and significance of Coleridge’s strange metaphysical bird poem.  Let’s leave those lofty academic indulgences to those who enjoy lofty academic indulgences. For our humbler terrestrial purposes, we’ll concentrate on the storyline of this saga of a man on a most unusual extended speaking tour.

The poem narrates how an old sailor—the eponymous mariner—newly returned from a long voyage, stops one of three guests just as they are about to enter a wedding reception for their next of kin. The “grey-beard loon” (as the apprehensive apprehended guest addresses the sailor) detains the guest, stopping him with his “skinny hand” and “glittering eye.” He then proceeds to recount a long twisted tale of a sea junket gone terribly wrong—in which the mariner kills an albatross with his cross-bow, sees all 200 of his shipmates mysteriously drop dead (“With heavy thump, a lifeless lump, They dropped down one by one.”), before his ship is ultimately ferried back to land by a phantom crew of spirits. Not your typical Carnival Cruise Line experience by a long shot.

Even though the guest is now late for the wedding ceremony and the ensuing festivities, he is either too transfixed or too terrified of upsetting his interlocutor not to heed the sailor’s expansive tale. What the wedding guest learns is that the mariner is compelled to repeat his somber story, passing “from land to land” to teach it “at an uncertain hour.” The mariner knows “the man who must hear me” as soon as he sees his face. The unfortunate recipient of the mariner’s loquacity this time just happened to be the poor wedding guest. One can only imagine how the bride and groom received his excuse for his tardiness. (“The sailor told you what?”)

In 2010 America, “the grey-beard loon” is President Obama. His doomed shipmates are the myriad Democrats who voted for Obamacare, many of whom are destined to go down with the ship this November “with heavy thump.” The albatross which Obama slew with his cross-bow was the will of the American people, who still by a great preponderance oppose this gargantuan, immorally-imposed orgy of entitlement spending.

Obama now wears the heavy bird of Obamacare around his neck, struggling mightily with cheap diaphanous $250 bribes to extricate himself—as he did in his latest June 8^th town hall in Wheaton Maryland.

It remains to be seen at what town hall and on whom our Mariner President next lays his “skinny hand.” But just like Coleridge’s mad sailor, Obama is now doomed to keep traversing the country in a valiant but vain delirium of words, repeating his ever-luster-losing fairy tale of the benefits of his Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—i.e., the large. white, rank and festering lifeless bird draped around his neck.

Coleridge said it much more eloquently:

Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns;
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.
I pass, like night, from land to land;

I have strange power of speech;
That moment that his face I see,
I know the man that must hear me:
To him my tale I teach.

Keep teaching us your tale, Mariner Obama. But be aware—just like Coleridge’s wedding guest—average Americans recognize the crazed eye of a grey-beard loon who’s been out at sea far, far too long. And they think your health care bill is–well–for the birds.

From today’s Politico:

As the greatest environmental catastrophe in U.S. history has played out on Obama’s watch, the environmental movement has essentially given him a pass — all but refusing to unleash any vocal criticism against the president even as the public has grown more frustrated by Obama’s performance.

About a dozen environmental groups took out a full page ad in the Washington Post Tuesday – not to fault Obama over the ecological catastrophe but to thank him for putting on hold an Alaska drilling project. “We deeply appreciate your decision. . .,” the ad says to Obama.

“President Obama is the best environmental president we’ve had since Teddy Roosevelt,” Sierra Club chairman Carl Pope told the Bangor Daily News last week. “He obviously did not take the crisis in the Minerals Management Service adequately seriously, that’s clear. But his agencies have done a phenomenally good job.”

Some say there’s little doubt that if a spill like the one in the Gulf took place on former President George W. Bush’s watch, environmental groups would have unleashed an unsparing fury on the Republican in the White House. For their liberal ally, Obama, they seem willing to hold their tongues.

“These guys have bet the farm on this administration,” said Ted Nordhaus, chairman of an environmental think tank, the Breakthrough Institute. “There has been a real hesitancy to criticize this administration out of a sense that they’re kind of the only game in town…..These guys are so beholden to this administration to move their agenda that I think they’re unwilling to criticize them.”

The most prominent voices of outrage have come not from mainstream environmental groups, but from the likes of political consultant James Carville, comedian Bill Maher and Plaquemines, La., Parish President Billy Nungesser.

Carville’s call for Obama to hold BP’s feet to the fire has penetrated the national consciousness in a way that comments from traditional environmental groups have not.

“ ‘Who’s your daddy?’ has become the talking point of the crisis so far,” observed Matt Nisbet, a professor of environmental communications at American University, referring to a comment by Carville. “It’s difficult for the national environmental groups to be critics of the administration—they’re working so closely with the administration…..They have reacted cautiously and softly.”

Continue reading here. The one silver lining of the Obama Administration is that it has exposed the blatant hypocrisy of huge swaths of the left. A host of issues that were alleged to have a moral urgency, are suddenly unimportant now that a Democrat is in the White House. The emphasis on these issues in the last few years was simply tactical, a device to help Obama win the Presidency. In the end, it really is all about power.

This week, I had the privilege to deliver the Weekly Republican Address.  In it, I talk about how Washington Democrats’ continued failure to end their out-of-control spending spree is scaring the hell out of the American people and hurting our economy.  The need for action could not be clearer: a $13 trillion debt, near-10 percent unemployment, and stagnant private sector growth.  Having run a small business, I can tell you that all this deficit spending, coupled with the new health care law’s burdensome mandates and tax hikes, is crushing these engines of our economy.

As bad as things are, Democrats don’t even intend to pass a budget, doing nothing instead of seizing this critical opportunity to provide the fiscal discipline that is sorely needed to create jobs and boost our economy.   Even after presenting President Obama with a statement signed by more than 100 economists that says just that, he still has not pressed leaders in his own party to take action.  Taxpayers have every right to be fed up with this stunning failure of leadership – the kind of leadership President Obama promised to provide.

These and other topics are discussed in the Weekly Republican Address:

“Hello – I’m John Boehner.  In these tough economic times, American families have done their level best to stay afloat – spending less and working more while trying to map out a financially sound future.  They deserve that same degree of discipline and vigilance from their government.

“But instead of bringing fiscal sanity to Washington like he promised, President Obama has spent taxpayer dollars with reckless abandon, refusing to make tough choices and pushing the burden on to future generations.  No price tag has been too high for Washington Democrats, and now we’re all paying the price.

“Unemployment is still close to 10 percent.  The private sector is at a near-standstill.  Our small businesses are still gasping for air.  And having run a small business, I can tell you that the new health care law, with its burdensome mandates and tax increases, is already stalling these engines of our economy.

“A new report from the Treasury Department shows that our fiscal situation is much worse than we thought.  Our record national debt – which now tops $13 trillion – is on pace to exceed the size of our entire economy by the middle of this decade.   Economists say that at these levels, our debt is draining enough resources from our country to cost us nearly one million jobs.

“We cannot go on like this.

“Real economic growth requires creating jobs in the private sector, and to do that we need to start reining in Washington’s out-of-control spending spree.  Less spending, more jobs – it’s that simple.

“Economists agree, and this week, I gave President Obama a statement signed by more than 100 of them urging both parties to take immediate, decisive action to cut federal spending.

“Unfortunately, Democrats in Congress are busy making backroom deals so that they don’t have to pass a budget this year.  They’d rather keep on spending than seize this critical opportunity to create jobs and boost our economy.  But every family knows that in tough times, passing a budget is more important – not less important.

“Just as troubling is the fact that President Obama hasn’t uttered a word in protest of Congressional Democrats’ failure to produce a budget.   Even after being presented with these economists’ pleas for fiscal discipline, he still won’t press leaders in his own party to fulfill their responsibility to the American people.

“This is a stunning failure of leadership – the kind of leadership President Obama promised to provide.

“Too many in Washington forget that we work for the people, not the other way around.  Taxpayers are just fed up, and they want us to stop spending their hard-earned money.

“That’s why, through the America Speaking Out project, Republicans are providing Americans with a megaphone to make their voices heard and help build a better, more responsive government.  If you have an idea to cut wasteful Washington spending, log on to AmericaSpeakingOut.com right now and start a discussion about it.

“Another interactive Republican initiative – YouCut – gives Americans a chance to vote on specific spending cuts that you want to see Congress implement.  And looking forward, Republicans have proposed common-sense solutions to reform the way Washington spends taxpayer dollars, starting with strict budget caps to limit federal spending on an annual basis.

“Waiting and hoping for the best is no longer an option, not when 43 cents of every dollar we spend this year is borrowed from our kids and grandkids.  Our posterity shouldn’t have to foot the bill because Washington Democrats can’t do what they were elected to do or summon the courage to say no to special interests with their hands out.

“So while I hope President Obama will work with us to stop this spending spree, if he won’t hold Congressional Democrats accountable, then the American people will.

“Thank you for listening.”

For long time Obama watchers this comes as no surprise. Bill Kristol is reporting  that the United States plans to abandon Israel at the UN Security Councel next week.  According to the Weekly Standard Editor, the Obama administration has been informing  foreign governments that it will support a resolution to set up an independent UN Commission to investigate Israeli actions in the guerrilla flotilla incident.

Apparently the President does not care

a) this is an extraordinary singling out of Israel, since all kinds of much worse incidents happen around the world without spurring UN investigations.

b) that the investigation will be one-sided, focusing entirely on Israeli behavior and not on Turkey or on Hamas.

c) that this sets a terrible precedent for outside investigations of incidents involving U.S. troops or intelligence operatives as we conduct our own war on terror.

The most recent  ’independent” investigation of Israel conducted by the UN, the Goldstone Report, threw any standards of investigation out the window. The report violated international standards for inquries, including UN rules on fact- finding. The Commission systematically favored witnesses and evidence put forward by anti-Israel advocates, and dismissed evidence and testimony that would undermine its case. The commission relied extensively on mediating agencies, especially UN and NGOs, which have a documented hostility to Israel; and reproduces earlier reports and claims from these agencies. And that’s just for a start. It is clear that Barack Obama is looking for the UN to create another anti-Israel Kangaroo court.

While UN Ambassador Susan Rice is reported to have played an important role in pushing for U.S. support of a UN investigation, the decision is, one official stressed, of course the president’s. The government of Israel has been consulting with the U.S. government on its own Israeli investigative panel, to be led by a retired supreme court justice, that would include respected international participants, including one from the U.S. But the Obama administration is reportedly saying that such a “kosher panel” is not good enough to satisfy the international community, or the Obama White House.

Remember, earlier this week Obama spoke about his desire for an international of inquiry. Also,  Ambassador Rice’s recommendation was foreshadowed when she remained mute during the UN’s Human Rights Council condemnation of Israel over the indecent.

There is the chance that this might all be a trail balloon leaked to Kristol. The White House may just want to check to seek if they can get away with this action without arousing the pro-Israel Democratic Party supporters in Congress. This group has been lacking the guts to confront the President since he began distance himself from Israel last year.

Its not an unusual move, in April the White House leaked a trial balloon about the US imposing a solution on Israel:

Reports in The Washington Post and The New York Times this week said former U.S. national security advisers Brent Scowcroft, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Sandy Berger met with Jones in the White House last month and recommended that the U.S. advance stalled peace talks by proposing its own peace proposal. President Barack Obama attended part of the meeting and listened to the proposal, the reports said.

When that report was leaked there was very little objection from the Democratic Party, while the GOP stood up to protect Israel from the will of the administration.

Beginning with his Cairo Speech, Barack Obama has been slowly distancing the  United States from Israel, while at the same time ingratiating  himself to the Muslim nations. If this action does indeed happen, it may be that Obama  is looking to accelerate the pace of that distancing.

President Barack Obama made news on The Today Show when he talked about kicking some ass over the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

If he is interested in punishing those responsible for what is shaping up as one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history, he should think about giving himself a boot.

While BP is ultimately responsible for the spill (and for cleaning it up), the federal government is a major player in the problem for at least three reasons:

1. It owns the property on which the oil well is located.

2. It regulates offshore drilling. And

3. In order to protect small players in the drilling industry, it capped economic damages from this sort of spill at just $75 million, a way-too-low cap that encourages risky behavior.

“3 Reason Why Obama Should Kick His Own Ass” is written and produced by Meredith Bragg and Nick Gillespie, who also hosts.

Approximately 2:30 minutes.

Go to Reason.tv for iPod, HD, and audio versions and more information.

Subscribe to Reason.tv’s YouTube channel for automatic notification when new material goes live.

The Obama Administration announced that it will urge government agencies to trim five percent from their budgets by reining in wasteful and duplicative programs – and redirect how that money is spent.  Less than 20 minutes later, the Administration’s Budget Chief Peter Orszag admitted that the initiative was as much about spending as it is deficit reduction.  To be clear, the Administration did not commit to use those cuts to pay down the deficits.

Look, trimming these budgets is a good thing – as Republicans have said repeatedly.  But is giving the heads of these agencies the ability to redirect money really an indication that Washington is prepared to bring our deficits under control before the European debt crisis migrates across the Atlantic?  Or is it simply posturing?

The good news is that the administration, at least on the surface, is finally getting the message that the American people are fed up with the reckless culture of spending prevailing over Washington.  America has soured on an agenda that sets out to double the debt in five years and triple it in 10.  That is why we launched YouCut, an effort to begin to transform the culture in Washington from one focused entirely on spending to one that forces measures to cut waste and save money.

Now, after more than 700,000 YouCut votes have been cast to remove specific wasteful spending items in the budget, and three House votes later (that would have saved $85 billion had enough Democrats supported them), the President is beginning to talk about finding ways to save taxpayer money.

To be sure, we welcome the administration’s calls for austerity in government agencies.  We also support the president’s request for new line-item veto authority so that he can remove needless discretionary spending. Yet it’s painfully obvious that these limited measures are woefully inadequate given the scale of our problems. But actions speak louder than words.

The problem with the administration’s “cost-cutting” strategies is that they settle for processes that only theoretically might someday save the taxpayers money. They are a convenient substitute for immediate, material spending cuts that could be implemented right now.  What is the President and his party willing to do TODAY to cut spending?

House Republicans have already brought to the floor roughly $85 billion in direct cuts that would take effect immediately. The savings were the product of the three spending cuts that received the most votes on YouCut during the last three weeks in which Congress met. They include terminating a new $25 billion welfare program that undermines the welfare reform effort of the mid 1990s; discarding a pay raise for federal employees that costs $30 billion; and implementing a reform of government-sponsored bailout behemoths Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that would return $30 billion to the taxpayers.  By the end of the year, we will have brought hundreds of billions – if not more than a trillion – dollars in spending cuts to the floor.  There will be a public record of who in the House wants to cut spending, and who is blocking it.

Note to President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Leader Reid:  The people are watching, actions speak louder than words.  Start cutting spending NOW.  To all of you – please take note of who is trying to cut spending and those who think you aren’t paying attention.

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is a rising star in the Republican Party, a true representative of the tea party spirit. She’s plainspoken, brilliant, and incisive. She’s running for re-election to the House in Minnesota. And today, I had the chance to pre-record an interview with Congresswoman Bachmann for my radio show, “The Ben Shapiro Show,” broadcast Sundays 1-4 PM EST on 810 AM in Orlando, FL. You can also listen live at big810am.com.

In the interview, Congresswoman Bachmann characterizes President Obama’s response to the BP spill as “infantile,” says he’s the worst president in American history, says he’s siding with the Islamic world against Israel. How’s that for guts! Take a listen:

Transcript highlights after the jump:

At 2:28:
BACHMANN: It’s an infantile response for the president to point blame at BP when the president has given over full authority to BP to deal with and manage the cleanup.  If the president wanted to, he could intervene and he clearly hasn’t.

SHAPIRO: Isn’t that a running theme with this presidency?  They’re all about blame, and not about doing anything?

BACHMANN: He’s not about taking responsibility, and that’s why I say it’s an infantile response to not take responsibility when your’e the president of the United States, and that is all we have seen, unfortunately, coming out of this president is an unwillingness to take responsibility.

At 4:27:
SHAPIRO: I want to ask you, speaking of his violent language, and he’s been brutal on BP, talking about putting his boot on the throat of BP, talking about how he wants to go down there and kick someone’s ass — frankly, Michele, I think you could take President Obama, off the record.

BACHMANN: Hey, I took karate when I was 17 years old, I am dangerous.

SHAPIRO: I do believe that.  That was not said facetiously.

At 5:05:
SHAPIRO: President Obama said in 2008 about his political enemies, who are never terrorists, by the way, but they’re members of the tea party — he said to his supporters, “I want you to argue with them and get in their faces … If they tell you, ‘Well he’s going to raise our taxes,’ you say, ‘No he’s not, he’s going to lower them.’

BACHMANN: In other words, go lie to people.

SHAPIRO: Is it fair to call him a liar at this point?

BACHMANN: It’s not a truthful statement.  That’s the elixir of the tea party movement.  People are telling the truth.

At 6:55:
SHAPIRO: Is President Obama better or worse than Jimmy Carter?

BACHMANN: Worse.  Easily worse.

SHAPIRO: I agree.  So far, you’d have to say he’s the worst president in United States history …

BACHMANN: No question.  No question.

SHAPIRO: … with the possible exception of James Buchanan.

BACHMANN: And the thing is, here we are, people can’t wait until November.  They’re practically lining up for polls now, they can’t wait to go out and vote.  The only thing is people wish Barack Obama was up for re-election right now, because they’d honestly love to have a chance to throw him out of office.  Everywhere I go, people ask me, “Michele, can we impeach the president?” They want a referendum on him.  I also had someone today say, “There’s no way he’ll run for a second term.  No way.  No one would vote for him.”  I don’t know if the White House understands how the floor has dropped out under support for this president.

At 8:15:
SHAPIRO: Has President Obama sided with the Islamic world against Israel at this point?

BACHMANN: It appears that way.  This was horrific.

Timing couldn’t be worse on this one, and frankly, we are broke.  Via the NYT:

President Obama promised a $400 million aid package for the West Bank and Gaza on Wednesday, as the United States scrambled to come up with a way out of the stalemate in the Middle East exacerbated by the Gaza flotilla incident last week.

Mr. Obama, meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House, said that the money would go to housing and schools. White House officials said that the money also would help increase access to drinking water and to help address health and infrastructure needs.

“While we work with our partners in the Palestinian Authority, Israel, Egypt, and the international community to put such a strategy in place, these projects represent a down payment on the United States’ commitment to Palestinians in Gaza, who deserve a better life and expanded opportunities, and the chance to take part in building a viable, independent state of Palestine, together with those who live in the West Bank.”

Is this Obama’s way of saying he agrees with Helen Thomas–by offering the Palestinians a huge payout of American tax dollars.  Nothing says ‘Sorry, I’m with you,’ like $400 million in US aid.

Aren’t the liberals out there tired of our money being sent overseas yet? That $400 million could be used for public schools, roads, bridges, and, of course, health care.

And in reality, did Helen’s remarks really differ that much from the administration’s position of standing with Palestine and rebuking Israel.  It just comes out better and much more diplomatic when speech writers prepare your remarks and you rehearse it, than when someone asks you out of the blue.

And, yes, you can equate Israel, stop building settlements/neighborhoods with “Get the hell out of Palestine.”

The question (because there is always the same question) is Why?  Why did Obama quickly throw Helen Thomas under the bus?  It really wasn’t a secret what Thomas thought , and it wasn’t a secret that Obama fully supported Palestine.

Now, it will be even more interesting to find out who takes Helen’s empty chair in the front row.

I just can’t help but hum “The Wheels on the Bus.”

One month ago we broke the exclusive story of Mullah Omar’s capture.

Additional confirmations have come from The Jawa Report, Oliver North, Milblogger Baba Tim, Blackfive.net, and even The Nation.

Then, two weeks ago, Newsweek published a report that the Taliban is in serious turmoil because Mullah Omar is MIA.

Today, Iranian State Television reports that the Pakistanis are indeed harboring Mullah Omar.

Mullah Abdul Salam Hanafi, a former senior member of the Taliban and governor of central Urozgan Province under the Taliban regime, is quoted as saying:

Pakistani security forces are harboring the fugitive Taliban leader, Mullah Omar in Karachi.

As the tempo of Omar stories increases, so does the pressure on Pakistan and its Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), as well as the Obama administration and the CIA to deal with the Omar issue.

My prognostication is that sooner, rather than later, we’ll hear that Omar was taken out in a successful drone strike. This will allow the Pakistanis to avoid having to admit they ever had him in the first place (thereby circumventing Taliban reprisals and large scale rioting across Pakistan) and it will also allow the Obama Administration to claim they were able to do something the Bush Administration couldn’t — kill Mullah Omar.

However it comes down, I don’t expect to ever see Mullah Omar alive again.

The violent left has attacked conservative activists protesting big government, big spending and big bailout scheme proposed by Congress.  Tea Party activists in Tampa and St. Louis were beaten by left wing activists earlier this year.  Add Greensboro to that list.  This week, a group of local citizens in North Carolina protesting the Financial Reform bill and the Durbin BP Bailout amendment were accosted and then physically attacked by a left-wing activist who blamed George Bush for America’s ills.  Here is the video:

Like a bad cold it can’t shake, the left continues to attempt to blame every ill on George W. Bush.  But as one activists in the video pointed out, its actually one Barack Obama and Senator Dick Durbin who are about to hand a massive check to the very company responsible for one of the worst environmental disasters in history.

The Durbin Amendment to the financial reform bill is the latest government policy proposal that will pad BP’s bottom line.  The amendment would create a government imposed price control scheme that would shift billions of dollars away from consumer to retailers (British Petroleum, Exxon, WalMart).  That’s why the Durbin Amendment is supported by the  big retailers like Walmart, Petroleum Marketers Association and other prominent lobbyist groups which are funded, in part, by British Petroleum.

Proponents cynically and falsely claim it would help consumers, but its hard to see many consumers feeling benefited by paying higher prices while mega corporations increase their profits.

Just look at who is pushing this amendment—oil Companies and giant retailers.

Tim Carney is one of the most astute observers of the Washington, DC K Street lobbying business.  He doesn’t fall for the pro-consumer rhetoric of politicians.  He looks behind the curtain of amendments and bills to see who benefits and who is paying the lobbyists to get the job done.  When it comes to British Petroleum Carney has found a trail of support for  big government policies that pad their bottom line. Carney writes, ” While BP has resisted some government interventions, it has lobbied for tax hikes, greenhouse gas restraints, the stimulus bill, the Wall Street bailout, and subsidies for oil pipelines, solar panels, natural gas and biofuels.”

Which gets us back to the Durbin Amendment being protested in North Carolina.  The Financial Reform bill is nothing short of an unmitigated disaster for our country.  Bailouts will be permanently enshrined into law.  The Federal Reserve will be empowered, not reformed.  Left wing and union activists will be encouraged to interfere with the operations of companies through the proxy access provisions.  The bill’s broad definiation of  ”nonbank financial company” that would mean that many Main Street companies would be hit with regulations, taxation and possibily nationalization by the Federal Rererve.  And of course, ground zero for the financial crisis — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — remain untouched and unchanged by the bill.

None of this seems to bother left wing activists and members of Congress.  Left wing activists are willing to beat conservatives who are speaking out against this monstrosity.  Unfortunately, the real damage will be done to our economy and free market system and will be injured for years to come.

The Obama administration’s response to the Israeli blockade of Gaza has been, to put it charitably, uncertain. Are the Israelis right to try to prevent ships of any kind bound for Gaza from bringing offensive weapons into the Hamas terror state? Gaza is not some remote location. Gaza abuts Israel. Four thousand rockets have been fired by Hamas from Gaza into Israel proper, into civilian areas, into Jewish homes, shops, and houses of worship. Hamas has declared war on Israel. Hamas is dedicated to eradicating “the Zionist entity.” They won’t even name the Jewish state.

After initially proclaiming, chest out, that there would not be “daylight” between the U.S. and Israel’s right of self-defense, the Obama administration began backtracking. Like Annie, unnamed officials began to sing: “The sun will come out tomorrow.” They could hardly admit, after all, that the administration’s Mideast policy is shambolic. (That’s a nice internationalist touch for you. “Shambolic” is Brit slang for chaotic, disorderly.)

What we need is clarity. The Israelis had no choice but to intercept the Turkish-sponsored “flotilla.” What ensued when Israeli commandos repelled onto the deck of a Turkish ferry boat was indeed shambolic. The “peace” activists who crowded the deck set upon the Israeli soldiers with their palm fronds. Or was it olive branches? Try lead pipes.

And the Israeli commandos, those aggressive brutes, fired back. The French would understand very well this aggressive behavior. They have a phrase: “This animal is very mechant (wicked). When you attack it, it defends itself.”

Compare today’s response of daylight not showing between us and our Israeli allies, then peeping through, with the clear, hard determination of President Kennedy when we were threatened by Soviet missiles in Cuba, or, “Cuber,” as our brave young leader pronounced it. Here’s how Kennedy described U.S. actions on 22 October 1962:

To halt this offensive buildup a strict quarantine on all offensive military equipment under shipment to Cuba is being initiated. All ships of any kind bound for Cuba from whatever nation or port will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back. This quarantine will be extended, if needed, to other types of cargo and carriers. We are not at this time, however, denying the necessities of life as the Soviets attempted to do in their Berlin blockade of 1948.

Is this not precisely what the Israelis were trying to do with Gaza? Cuba was 90 miles off our shores. Gaza is right there. What were the Israelis attempting to do other than to inspect “all ships of any kind?” Didn’t the U.S. plan to do precisely that with Soviet freighters approaching Cuba? And if one those Soviet ships had decided to defy the U.S. quarantine, we probably did not plan to send in boarding parties. Kennedy probably planned instead to send a shell through their pilot house. The Israelis are being blamed for not sinking the Turkish ferry.

The Israelis allow the “necessities of life” to get through to Gaza. But they join with Arab Egypt in a blockade that attempts to prevent weapons from going in to Gaza. In Gaza, “humanitarian” aid takes the form of ambulances that transport rockets and hospitals that store them.

Vice President Joe Biden warned us of this. He said the world would test our young leader. And he pleaded for patience and understanding when that test came. It would not be immediately apparent that the administration was pursuing the right course, Biden told Democratic party donors in Seattle, just before the `08 election. That’s why their support was especially crucial.

Well, Joe got that part right. It is not immediately clear that this administration’s Mideast policy is on the right course. We are in a military and diplomatic fog that is totally unnecessary. And it has all been brought about by confusion at the top. What we need is a profile in courage, like that shown by the young, untested President John F. Kennedy. What we are hearing is an uncertain trumpet. Who can respond to that?