08/04/2009
Dear Mr. President:
First, happy birthday. I do hope today is an enjoyable day for you and your family. Coincidentally, I also will be celebrating this week the birth of someone dear to me, my beloved wife, Gena, whose birthday is Aug. 9.
Speaking of birthdays, I couldn’t help but hear and read all over the news this past week about the fresh attention to your constitutional eligibility and natural-born citizen status. I hardly can believe that individuals are offering bounties — one for $100,000 — for any personal witness or sufficient evidence to your American birth.
Believe it or not, I’m not writing you to challenge whether or not you were born in America, though I see nothing wrong with the American public’s voicing that constitutionally based grievance with someone in your esteemed position. As one blogger wrote, after all, “We aren’t talking about a 12-year-old qualifying to play Little League here.” Or as Ronald Reagan once said, “Trust but verify.”
I must admit that I find it a bit of a groundless stretch not to believe in the birth announcements in two major Hawaiian newspapers in August 1961, in which Hawaii’s Health Department would have been required to post information it received directly from hospitals: “Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama, 6085 Kalanianaole Hwy., son, Aug. 4.” Nevertheless, that proof doesn’t answer why you refuse to reveal your original birth certificate and end the growing tides of controversy.
I’m writing you because this is no longer a matter merely about proving you meet a presidential prerequisite in the Constitution. Refusing to post your original birth certificate is an unwise political and leadership decision that is enabling the “birther” controversy. The nation you are called to lead is experiencing a growing swell of conspirators who are convinced that you are covering up something. So why not just prove them wrong and shut them up?
I agree with CNN’s Lou Dobbs, who was chastised by his own media outlet for demanding the release of your original birth certificate. Why was that such a bad request? We certainly know why Jon Klein, the president of CNN/U.S., thought it was a bad idea. He previously declared that CNN researchers had determined that your 1961 birth certificate no longer exists.
But Hawaii officials confirmed again last week that they indeed have your original birth certificate on file. Dr. Chiyome Fukino, director of the Hawaii State Department of Health, repeated her October 2008 statement that she had seen with her own eyes the “original vital records.”
Some claim that even you cannot see or request your own personal birth certificate because Hawaii’s disclosure law (Hawaii Revised Statutes 338-18) states that “it shall be unlawful for any person to permit inspection of, or to disclose information contained in vital statistics records, or to copy or issue a copy of all or part of any such record.”
But the law further states that Hawaii’s Health Department “shall not permit inspection of public health statistics records, or issue a certified copy of any such record or part thereof, unless it is satisfied that the applicant has a direct and tangible interest in the record” (emphasis added).
Isn’t categorically satisfying constitutional requirements for a president or answering the First Amendment grievances of hundreds of thousands of Americans or ending a national debate or healing a country’s divisions enough “direct and tangible interest”?
Mr. President, as more and more people realize that you are refusing to release your original birth certificate, further questions will fuel the fires of debate or at least hinder the embers from ever being snuffed out. Questions such as, “Does it really contain the Hawaiian physician’s name?” “Does it disclose something other than his birthplace that he wishes others not to see?”
Of course, not every U.S. citizen has access to his original birth certificate, but you do, and yours is the only one under debate. As valuable as copies can be, textual critics know that nothing outweighs an original, especially when only it contains the information under question.
Again, why don’t you simply request, release and give permission to make public your original birth certificate?
Mr. President, you promised the American people that you are “committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.” In fact, in your July 23 prime-time news conference, you said that your administration has been more transparent than previous administrations: “I think that we have provided much greater transparency than existed prior to our administration coming in.”
So again, I ask: Why not live out that transparency promise by posting your original birth certificate and end the division and debate?
Well, I have a birthday to plan, so I had better get going.
Again, happy birthday, Mr. President.
Yours Truly,
Chuck Norris
July 31, 2009
Obama’s revealing body language
Thomas Lifson
This picture truly is worth at least a thousand words.
I am stunned that the official White House Blog published this picture and that it is in the public domain. The body language is most revealing.
Sergeant Crowley, the sole class act in this trio, helps the handicapped Professor Gates down the stairs, while Barack Obama, heedless of the infirmities of his friend and fellow victim of self-defined racial profiling, strides ahead on his own. So who is compassionate? And who is so self-involved and arrogant that he is oblivious?
In my own dealings with the wealthy and powerful, I have always found that the way to quickly capture the moral essence of a person is to watch how they treat those who are less powerful. Do they understand that the others are also human beings with feelings? Especially when they think nobody is looking.
Update from Thomas Lifson:
I think this photo constitutes another major Obama blunder.
As some AT commentators point out, this picture becomes a metaphor for ObamaCare. The elderly are left in the back, with only the kindness of the Crowleys of the world, the stand up guys, to depend on. The government has other priorities.
One of the major subtexts of the health care debate involves the public’s fear of indifferent, powerful bureaucrats ruling their lives. It is one thing to wait in line at the DMV to find out which other line you should wait in, in order to begin the process of waiting for multiple bureaucrats to go through the motions of processing your request. I have spent entire afternoons going through this process.
But when we get to health care, waiting often means enduring pain and dysfunction longer than necessary, sometimes a worsening of the condition, and sometimes death.
That’s why I think this image will have genuine resonance. It captures something that older Americans in particular can relate to. The President presses ahead with a program that will tell them to take painkillers instead of getting that artificial hip.
At every stage of the entire Gates affair, Obama has provided a revealing tell. The “acted stupidly” blunder revealed that he automatically blames the police and thinks they really are stupid to begin with. It didn’t trigger a single alarm bell in his mind as he figured out what to say.
Then, the non-apology apology revealed an arrogant man who cannot do what honest people do: admit it when they make a mistake.
Now at stage three, the beer photo op looked OK. It didn’t turn into a disaster.
But then in a small moment that nobody in the White House had the brains to understand, Obama goes and send a body language message like this.
I think he is going to get deeper and deeper into trouble. He is no longer repeating the familiar scripts dreamed up for the campaign. He was a master performer.
But when he goes improv, as a president must do, he lets his true character show. This helps widen the level of doubt that Obama is the same guy a majority voted for. Those doubts can only grow.
Andrew McCarthy has assembled an overwhelming case that Obama has lied about who he is. I predict that more and more Americans will become open to the argument that they have been had by a sophisticated and ruthless effort to foist a phony on America.
Update from Clarice Feldman
A nice comparison of the character of the two most recent presidents. George Bush with Senator Robert Byrd:
Update: We know the picture is really getting to the left. They avoid any actual facts or logic, instead retreating into insults. Soros-financed Media Matters calls me a “fringe blogger.”
Andrew Sullivan calls this blog “inane,”providing no analysis or examples, just a one word insult.
“We are the ‘change’ you have been waiting for.”
(Imagine this — and when do we get totally fed up?)
A Boeing 757 and a fleet of armored cars for Michelle’s sight seeing tour! On Sunday, President Obama flew back to the United States on Air Force One. His wife, two daughters and her mother did a bit of shopping in Paris before taking their own Boeing 757 (C-32) over to London to do some sight seeing.
We all remember Obama’s admonishment to corporate CEO’s in February: “You can’t get corporate jets, you can’t go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers dime.” Apparently that doesn’t apply to his wife.
The London Times <http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6466571.ece> opened it’s description of Michelle’s visit this way: Motorcycle outriders, armoured Chevrolets and bullet-headed men in raincoats criss-crossed London yesterday as Michelle Obama and her daughters spent a second day on an unofficial visit to the capital.
The Times went on to describe that when Michelle and the girls arrived at Westminster Abbey, the building was closed to tourists with people already in told to “wait against the wall. An American visiting the Abbey said “Right then I knew it was probably someone from our ‘royal Obama family’.”
Michelle’s motorcade shut down London streets as the First Lady of the World and her children went for Fish and Chips at a pub in Mayfair. The entourage inside the restaurant was 15 people while dozens more wait outside. Include the dozens of Air Force personnel to fly and service the plane, embassy personnel and other staff and we are talking about a serious expenditure of tax payer dollars.
Meanwhile, millions of Americans have lost their jobs and won’t be able to take their family on a summer holiday. Despite their circumstances they’ll still be expected to fork over the tax dollars to pay for Michelle’s trip.
Tell your friends about this — it’s their money being spent!!
Filed under: Obama and the Media, The Left, US Economics, US Politics, Who Is Obama?
In the sixth month of his presidency, Obama has turned an economic downturn into an economic disaster, taking over and trashing entire companies, and driving the nation deep into deficit spending expected to pass 10 trillion dollars.
Abroad, Obama seems to have no other mode except to continue on with his endless campaign, confusing speechmaking with diplomacy. It is natural enough that Obama, who built his entire campaign on high profile public speeches reported on by an adoring press, understands how to do nothing else but that.
While the press is still chewing over Obama’s Cairo speech, this celebrity style coverage ignores the fact that Obama’s endless world tour is not actually accomplishing anything. Instead his combination of ego driven photo op appearances and clueless treatment of foreign dignitaries have alienated many of America ’s traditional allies. Those who aren’t being quietly angry at Obama, like Brown, Merkel or Netanyahu, instead think of him as as absurdly lightweight, as Sarkozy, King Abdullah or Putin do.
While his officials carry out their dirty economic deeds, Obama responds to any and every crisis as if it were a Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland musical, with a cry of, “Let’s put on a show.” Thus far Obama has put on “shows” across America , Europe and the Middle East. And what the adoring media coverage neglects to cover, is that Obama’s shows have solved absolutely nothing. They have served only as high profile entertainment.
Neither alienating America ’s traditional allies, through a combination of arrogant bullying and ignorance, nor appeasing America ’s enemies, has yielded any actual results. Nor does it seem likely to. Islamic terrorism is not going anywhere, neither are the nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran. While Obama keeps smiling, the global situation keeps growing more grim.
At home, if Obama was elected as depression era entertainment, the charm of his smiles and his constant appearances on magazine covers appear to be wearing thin on the American public. Despite the shrill attacks on Rush Limbaugh or the Republican Enemy of the Weak– the Democratic party of 2009, is polling a lot like the Republican party of 2008. The Democrats have suddenly become the incumbents, and the only accomplishment they can point to is lavish deficit spending, often on behalf of the very same corporations and causes they once postured against.
The European Union Parliament’s swing to the right cannot be credited to Obama, though doubtlessly some European voters seeing socialist economic crisis management on display in the world’s richest country decided they wanted none of it, but it is part of a general turning against federalism. And Obama’s entire program is dependent on heavily entrenching federalism at the expense of individual and state’s rights. Yet that is precisely his achilles heel with independent voters who are polling against more taxes and expanded government. And no amount of speeches by Obama can wish away his 18 czars or the national debt he has foisted on generation after generation of the American people.
That leaves Obama with a choice between socialism and the independent voter. And thus far he has chosen socialism.
Obama’s tactic of hijacking Bush Administration era policies on the economy and the War on Terror, and exploiting them as trojan horses to promote his own agenda, have left him coping with a backlash from his own party, as well as general Republican opposition.
His Czars are meant to function as the bones in an executive infrastructure accountable to no one, but a lack of accountability isn’t just another word for tyranny, but for incompetence. A functional chain of command is accountable at multiple levels if it is to function effectively. Obama’s White House by contrast is in a state of over-organized chaos, the sort of organized disorganization that undisciplined egotistical leftists naturally create for themselves, complete with multiple overlapping levels of authority and no one in charge but the man at the top, who’s too busy doing other things to actually be in charge.
Dennis Blair as National Intelligence, who collaborated with the Muslim genocide of Christians in East Timor , trying to muscle out the CIA to create his own intelligence network, is typical of the kind of chaos being spawned by every chief in an expanding government bureaucracy working to make sure that all the Indians answer to him. Similarly the National Security Council wrestling with the State Department, highlighted by Samantha Power getting her own specially created NSC position to butt heads with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, illustrates the state of conflict and chaos in American foreign affairs. A state of chaos so pervasive that incompetence has now become commonplace, and no one can even be found to double check the spelling of a Russian word that is meant to be the theme of American’s diplomatic reconstruction with Russia , or to pick out a gift for the visiting British Prime Minister.
Meanwhile on the economy, Obama exploited the ongoing bailouts, transforming them from bailouts into takeovers meant to shift the balance of power in what had been a democracy and socially engineer not only corporations, but the lives of ordinary Americans. But the public’s patience with corporate bailouts is at an end, most Americans were never happy with them to begin with, and want them to end. The death of Chrysler at the hands of Fiat and the UAW might look like a victory in the union ranks, but it doesn’t play too well outside Detroit . And tacking on CAFE standards that will kill the pickup truck and the SUV will badly erode Obama in the swing states, if exploited properly in 2010 and 2012. Despite the constant media barrage, orchestrated out of the White House, the public is growing disenchanted with the performance of Obama and the Democrats.
With unemployment booming and the economy dropping, the jobs aren’t there and the spending is out of control. Republicans today are polling better on ethics and the economy, than the Democrats are. That shows a trend which is likely to register in the mid-term elections in 2010, in the same way that the EU parliamentary elections served as a shock to the system.
In the opposition, Republicans are free to embrace the rhetoric of change, to champion reform and push libertarian ideas about the size and scope of government. In turn all Obama has is his celebrity fueled media spectacle world tour. A charade now serving as a parallel to the depression era entertainment that functioned as escapism in a dour time. But before long, it may be Obama that the American public will want to escape from.
Obama has tried to play Lincoln, Reagan, JFK and FDR– but in the end he can only play himself, a shallow, manipulative and egotistical amateur who is in over his head, and trying to drag the country down with him. Obama’s White House is falling down and while the flashbulbs are still glittering and the parties are going on in D.C. and around the world, Obama and the Democratic Congress may be headed for a recession of their own.
By Daniel Greenfield Thursday, June 11, 2009
At the top right hand corner of Page 17 of the New York Post of January 24th, 2009, was a short column entitled “Replacing Michelle” in the National Review “The Week” column. Here it is, word for word, as it appeared:
Some employees are simply irreplaceable. Take Michelle Obama: The University of Chicago Medical center hired her in 2002 to run “programs for community relations, neighborhood outreach, volunteer recruitment, staff diversity and minority contracting”.
In 2005, the hospital raised her salary from $120,000 to $317, 000 nearly twice what her husband made as a Senator.
Oh, did we mention that her husband had just become a US Senator? He sure had. Requested a $1 million earmark for the UC Medical Center, in fact. Way to network Michelle!
But now that Mrs. Obama has resigned, the hospital says her position will remain unfilled. How can that be, if the work she did was vital enough to be worth $317,000?
We can think of only one explanation: Senator Roland Burris’s wife wasn’t interested. Let me add that Michelle’s position was a half time, 20 hour a week job. And to think they were critical of Blagoyovich’s wife for taking $100,000 in fuzzy real estate commission.
Question: How did this bit of quid pro quo corruption escape the sharp reporters that dug through Sarah Palin’s garbage and kindergarten files?
Filed under: Conservative Perspective, Obama and the Media, The Left, US Economics
And it came to pass in the Age of Insanity that the people of the land called America, having lost their morals, their initiative, and their will to defend their liberties, chose as their Supreme Leader that person known as “The One.” He emerged from the vapors with a message that had no meaning; but He hypnotized the people telling them, “I am sent to save you. My lack of experience, my questionable ethics, my monstrous ego, and my association with evil doers are of no consequence. For I shall save you with Hope and Change. Go, therefore, and proclaim throughout the land that he who preceded me is evil, that he has defiled the nation, and that all he has built must be destroyed.”
And the people rejoiced, for even though they knew not what The One” would do, he had promised that it was good; and they believed.
And The One said, “We live in the greatest country in the world. Help me change everything about it!”
And the people said, “Hallelujah!! Change is good!”
Then He said, “We are going to tax the rich fat-cats.”
And the people said, “Sock it to them! And redistribute their wealth. Show us the money!”
And then He said, “Redistribution of wealth is good for everybody.”
And Joe the plumber asked, “Are you kidding me? You’re going to steal my money and give it to the deadbeats??”
And The One ridiculed and taunted him, and Joe’s personal records were hacked and publicized.
One lone reporter asked, “Isn’t that Marxist policy?” And she was banished from the kingdom!
Then a citizen asked, “With no foreign relations experience and having zero military experience or knowledge, how will you deal with radical terrorists?”
And The One said, “Simple. I shall sit with them and talk with them and show them how nice we really are; and they will forget that they ever wanted to kill us all!”
And the people said, “Hallelujah!! We are safe at last, and we can beat our weapons into free cars for the people!”
Then The One said, “I shall give 95% of you lower taxes.”
And one, lone voice said, “But 40% of us don’t pay ANY taxes.”
So The One said, “Then I shall give you some of the taxes the fat-cats pay!”
And the people said, “Hallelujah!! Show us the money!”
Then The One said, “I shall tax your Capital Gains when you sell your homes!”
And the people yawned and the slumping housing market collapsed.
And He said, “I shall mandate employer-funded health care for EVERY worker and raise the minimum wage. And I shall give every person unlimited healthcare and medicine and transportation to the clinics.”
And the people said, “Give me some of that!”
Then he said, “I shall penalize employers who ship jobs overseas.”
And the people said, “Where’s my rebate check?”
Then The One said, “I shall bankrupt the coal industry and electricity rates will skyrocket!”
And the people said, “Coal is dirty, coal is evil, no more coal! But we don’t care for that part about higher electric rates.”
So The One said, “Not to worry. If your rebate isn’t enough to cover your expenses, we shall bail you out. Just sign up with ACORN and your troubles are over!”
Then He said, “Illegal immigrants feel scorned and slighted. Let’s grant them amnesty, Social Security, free education, free lunches, free medical care, bilingual signs and guaranteed housing…”
And the people said, “Hallelujah!!” And they made him King!
And so it came to pass that employers, facing spiraling costs and ever-higher taxes, raised their prices and laid off workers. Others simply gave up and went out of business and the economy sank as a rock dropped from a cliff. The banking industry was destroyed.
Manufacturing slowed to a crawl. And more of the people were without a means of support.
Then The One said, “I am the The One – The Messiah – and I’m here to save you! We shall just print more money so everyone will have enough!”
But our foreign trading partners said unto Him, “Wait a minute. Your dollar is not worth a pile of camel dung! You will have to pay more…”
And the people said, “Wait a minute. That is unfair!!”
And the world said, “Neither are these other idiotic programs you have embraced. Lo, you have become a Socialist state and a second-rate power. Now you shall play by our rules!”
And the people cried out, “Alas, alas!! What have we done?”
But yea verily, it was too late. The people set upon The One and spat upon him and stoned him, and his name was dung. And the once mighty nation was no more; and the once proud people were without sustenance or shelter or hope. And the Change The One had given them was as a poison that had destroyed them and like a whirlwind that consumed all that they had built.
And the people beat their chests in despair and cried out in anguish, “Give us back our nation and our pride and our hope!!”
But it was too late, and their homeland was no more.
Story of a Successful Rescue (and the Obama Adminstration¹s Attempt to Claim Credit) Despite efforts to spin the pirate tale as evidence of bold leadership by an inexperienced president, the reality was clearly nothing of the sort.
Posted By Jeff Emanuel On April 13, 2009 @ 12:24 am In
After four days of floating at sea on a raft shared with four Somali gunmen, Richard Philips took matters into his own hands for a second time. With the small inflatable lifeboat in which he was being held captive being towed by the American missile destroyer USS Bainbridge, and Navy Special Warfare (NSWC) snipers on the fantail in position to take their shots at his captors as soon as the command was given, the captive captain of the M.V. Maersk Alabama took his second leap in three days into the shark infested waters of the Indian Ocean.
This diversion gave the Navy Special Warfare operators all the opening they needed. Snipers immediately took down the three Somali pirates still on board the life raft, SEAL operators hustled down the tow line connecting the two craft to confirm the kills, and a Navy RIB plucked Philips from the water and sped him to safety aboard the Bainbridge, thus ending the four day and counting hostage situation.
Philips’ first leap into the warm, dark water of the Indian Ocean hadn’t worked out as well. With the Bainbridge in range and a rescue by his country,s Navy possible, Philips threw himself off of his lifeboat prison, enabling Navy shooters onboard the destroyer a clear shot at his captors < and none was taken. The guidance from National Command Authority < the president of the United States, Barack Obama < had been clear: a peaceful solution was the only acceptable outcome to this standoff unless the hostage¹s life was in clear, extreme danger.
The next day, a small Navy boat approaching the floating raft was fired on by the Somali pirates < and again no fire was returned and no pirates killed. This was again due to the cautious stance assumed by Navy personnel thanks to the combination of a lack of clear guidance from Washington and a mandate from the commander in chief¹s staff not to act until Obama, a man with no background of dealing with such issues and no track record of decisiveness, decided that any outcome other than a ‘peaceful solution’ would be acceptable.
After taking fire from the Somali kidnappers again Saturday night, the onscenecommander decided he’d had enough. Keeping his authority to act in the case of a clear and present danger to the hostage¹s life and having heard nothing from Washington since yet another request to mount a rescue operation had been denied the day before, the Navy officer < unnamed in all media reports to date < decided the AK47 one captor had leveled at Philips’ back was a threat to the hostage¹s life and ordered the NSWC team to take their shots.
Three rounds downrange later, all three brigands became enemy KIA and Philips was safe.
There is upside, downside, and spinside to the series of events over the last week that culminated in yesterday¹s dramatic rescue of an American hostage.
Almost immediately following word of the rescue, the Obama administration and its supporters claimed victory against pirates in the Indian Ocean and [1] declared that the dramatic end to the standoff put paid to questions of the inexperienced president¹s toughness and decisiveness.
Despite the Obama administration’s (and its sycophants’) attempt to spin yesterday¹s success as a result of bold, decisive leadership by the inexperienced president, the reality is nothing of the sort. What should have been a standoff lasting only hours < as long as it took the USS Bainbridge and its team of NSWC operators to steam to the location < became an embarrassing four day and counting standoff between a ragtag handful of criminals with rifles and a U.S. Navy warship.
On Friday, April 9, as the standoff reached the end of its third day, I called on President Obama to take action to free the American hostage from his Somali captors. I [2] outlined three possible operational tactics that could be used to do so; number 1 was the following:
(1) 2 helos, 2 snipers each: pop the [pirates] in their heads, then drop a rescue swimmer to escort the hostage up to one of the choppers. This works best if the hostage is aware of what is happening and can help without getting in the way < say, by hopping overboard as the gunships near, to divert attention and get out of the line of fire.
(This was written before the USS Bainbridge tethered the life raft to its stern, an action which eliminated the need for helicopters.)
However, instead of taking direct, decisive action against the ragtag group of gunmen, the Obama administration dillydallied, dawdled, and eschewed any decisiveness whatsoever, even in the face of enemy fire, in hopes that the situation would somehow resolve itself without violence. Thus, the administration sent a clear message to all who would threaten U.S. interests abroad that the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has no idea how to respond to such situations < and no real willingness to use military force to resolve them. Any who think they weren¹t watching every minute of this are guilty < at best < of greatly underestimating our enemies.
Like the crew of the Alabama, which took swift and decisive action to take back their own ship rather than wait for help from Washington that they knew could not be counted on, Captain Philips took matters into his own hands for the second time in three days, leaping into the water to create a diversion and allowing the NSWC team to eliminate his captors. The result, of course, was the best that could possibly be expected: three pirates dead, the captain unharmed, and a fourth Somali man who had surrendered late Saturday night in custody.
One thing that will bear watching will be what the Obama DOJ attempts to do with the captive pirate. My money is on a life of welfare checks, a plot of land (in a red state, naturally), and voting rights in Chicago, New York, and Seattle.
In all seriousness, though, who knows? Obama could decide to get tough on the last surviving participant in the first pirating of an American ship since Thomas Jefferson sent the U.S. Marine Corps to root out and destroy the Barbary pirates.However, given the administration’s track record to date, I won’t be holding my breath on that one.
A victory for the hysterical Oprah Winfrey, the mad racist preacher Jeremiah Wright, the US mainstream media who abandoned any sense of objectivity long ago, Europeans who despise America largely because they depend on her, comics who claim to be dangerous and fearless but would not dare attack genuinely powerful special interest groups. A victory for Obama-worshippers everywhere. A victory for the cult of the cult. A man who has done little with his life but has written about his achievements as if he had found the cure for cancer in between winning a marathon and building a nuclear reactor with his teeth. Victory for style over substance, hyperbole over history, rabble-raising over reality.
A victory for Hollywood, the most dysfunctional community in the world. Victory for Streisand, Spielberg, Soros, Moore, and Sarandon. Victory for those who prefer welfare to will and interference to independence. For those who settle for group think and herd mentality rather than those who fight for individual initiative and the right to be out of step with meager political fashion.
Victory for a man who is no friend of freedom. He and his people have already stated that media has to be controlled so as to be balanced, without realizing the extraordinary irony within that statement. Like most liberal zealots, the Obama worshippers constantly speak of Fox and Limbaugh, when the vast bulk of television stations and newspapers are drastically liberal and anti-conservative. Senior Democrat Chuck Schumer said that just as pornography should be censored, so should talk radio. In other words, one of the few free and open means of popular expression may well be cornered and beaten by bullies who even in triumph cannot tolerate any criticism and opposition.
A victory for those who believe the state is better qualified to raise children than the family, for those who prefer teachers’ unions to teaching and for those who are naively convinced that if the West is sufficiently weak towards its enemies, war and terror will dissolve as quickly as the tears on the face of a leftist celebrity.
A victory for social democracy even after most of Europe has come to the painful conclusion that social democracy leads to mediocrity, failure, unemployment, inflation, higher taxes and economic stagnation. A victory for intrusive lawyers, banal sentimentalists, social extremists and urban snobs.
Congratulations America ! Your funeral will be sooner than you think!
The Daily Mail ( UK ) wrote this editorial about Obama on 1/6/2009
Someone once said that, for every rookie you have on your starting team in the National Football League, you will lose a game. Somewhere, at some time during the season, a rookie will make a mistake that will cost you a game.
We now have a rookie President of the United States and, in the dangerous world we live in, with terrorist nations going nuclear, just one rookie mistake can bring disaster down on this generation and generations yet to come.
Barack Obama is a rookie in a sense that few other presidents in American history have ever been. It is not just that he has never been president before. He has never had any position of major executive responsibility in any kind of organization where he was personally responsible for the outcome.
Other first-term Presidents have been governors, generals, cabinet members or others in positions of personal responsibility. A few have been senators, like Barack Obama, but usually for longer than Obama, and had not spent half their few years in the Senate running for president.
What is even worse than making mistakes is having sycophants telling you that you are doing fine when you are not. In addition to all the usual hangers-on and supplicants for government favors that every president has, Barack Obama has a media that will see no evil, hear no evil and certainly speak no evil. (Read ‘A deafening, partisan silence‘)
They will cheer him on, no matter what he does, short of first-degree murder — and they would make excuses for that. Even former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan has gushed over President Obama, and even crusty Bill O’Reilly has been impressed by Obama’s demeanor.
There is no sign that President Obama has impressed the Russians, the Iranians, or the North Koreans, except by his rookie mistakes — and that is a dangerous way to impress dangerous people.
What did his televised overture to the Iranians accomplish, except to reassure them that he was not going to do a thing to stop them from getting a nuclear bomb? It is a mistake that can go ringing down the corridors of history.
Future generations who live in the shadow of that nuclear threat may wonder what we were thinking about, putting our lives — and theirs — in the hands of a rookie because we liked his style and symbolism?
In the name of “change,” Barack Obama is following policies so old that this generation has never heard of them — certainly not in most of our educational institutions, where history has been replaced by “social studies” or other politically correct courses.
Seeking deals with our adversaries, behind the backs of our allies? France did that at Munich back in 1938. They threw Czechoslovakia to the wolves and, less than two years later, Hitler gobbled up France anyway.
This year, President Obama’s attempt to make a backdoor deal with the Russians, behind the backs of the NATO countries, was not only rejected but made public by the Russians — a sign of contempt and a warning to our allies not to put too much trust in the United States.
Barack Obama is following a long practice among those on the left of being hard on our allies and soft on our enemies. One of our few allies in the Middle East, the Shah of Iran, was a whipping boy for many in the American media, who vented their indignation at his regime — which now, in retrospect, seems almost benign compared to the hate-filled fanatics and international terrorism sponsors who now rule that country.
However much Barack Obama has proclaimed his support for Israel, his first phone call as President of the United States was to Hamas, to whom he has given hundreds of millions of dollars, which can buy a lot of rockets to fire into Israel.
Our oldest and staunchest ally, Britain, has been downgraded by President Obama’s visibly less impressive reception of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, compared to the way that previous presidents over the past two generations have received British prime ministers. President Obama’s sending the bust of Winston Churchill in the White House back to the British embassy at about the same time was either a rookie mistake or another snub.
We can lose some very big games with this rookie.
“Promote then as an object of primary importance, Institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should be enlightened.”
George Washington, Farewell Address, September 19, 1796
On November 4th, 2008 millions of Americans were shocked that a man of Barack Obama’s limited experience, extreme liberal positions and radical political alliances could be elected President of the United States. For many of these Americans, the explanation was rather simple… the news media, completely enamored with Obama, simply refused to do their job.
On Election day twelve Obama voters were interviewed extensively right after they voted to learn how the news media impacted their knowledge of what occurred during the campaign. These voters were chosen for their apparent intelligence/verbal abilities and willingness to express their opinions to a large audience. The rather shocking video below seeks to provide some insight into which information broke through the news media clutter and which did not.
In the best tradition of Bill Clinton’s famous declaration that the answer to the question of whether or not he was having an affair with Monica depended on “what the definition of ‘is’ is,” Barack Obama was clearly splitting hairs and concealing the truth when he said that William Ayers was “just a guy who lives in my neighborhood.”
The records of the administration of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), released last week by the University of Illinois, show that the Ayers-Obama connection was, in fact, an intimate collaboration and that it led to the only executive or administrative experience in Obama’s life.
After Walter Annenberg’s foundation offered several hundred million dollars to American public schools in the mid-’90s, William Ayers applied for $50 million for Chicago. The purpose of his application was to secure funds to “raise political consciousness” in Chicago’s public schools. After he won the grant, Ayers’s group chose Barack Obama to distribute the money. Between 1995 and 1999, Obama distributed the $50 million and raised another $60 million from other civic groups to augment it. In doing so, he was following Ayers’s admonition to grant the funds to “external” organizations, like American Community Organizations for Reform
Now (ACORN) to pair with schools and conduct programs to radicalize the students and politicize them.
Reading, math and science achievement tests counted for little in the CAC grants, but the school’s success in preaching a radical political agenda determined how much money they got.
Barack Obama should have run screaming at the sight of William Ayers and his wife, Bernadette Dohrn. Ayers has admitted bombing the U.S. Capitol building and the Pentagon, and his wife was sent to prison for failing to cooperate in solving the robbery of a Brink’s armored car in which two police officers were killed. Far from remorse, Ayers told The New York Times in September 2001 that he “wished he could have done more.”
Ayers only avoided conviction when the evidence against him turned out to be contained in illegally obtained wiretaps by the FBI. He was, in fact, guilty as sin.
That Obama should ally himself with Ayers is almost beyond understanding. The former terrorist had not repented of his views and the education grants he got were expressly designed to further them.
So let’s sum up Obama’s Chicago connections. His chief financial supporter was Tony Rezko, now on his way to federal prison. His spiritual adviser and mentor was the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, of “God damn America” fame. And the guy who got him his only administrative job and put him in charge of doling out $50 million is William Ayers, a terrorist who was a domestic Osama bin Laden in his youth.
Even apart from the details of the Obama/Ayers connection, two key points emerge:
a) Obama lied and misled the American people in his description of his relationship with Ayers as casual and arm’s-length; and
b) Obama was consciously guided by Ayers’s radical philosophy, rooted in the teachings of leftist Saul Alinksy, in his distribution of CAC grant funds.
Since Obama is asking us to let him direct education spending by the federal government and wants us to trust his veracity, these are difficulties he will have to explain in order to get the votes to win.
Now that Obama is comfortably ahead in the polls, attention will understandably shift to him. We will want to know what kind of president he would make. The fact that, within the past 10 years, he participated in a radical program of political education conceptualized by an admitted radical terrorist offers no reassurance.
Why did Obama put up with Ayers? Because he got a big job and $50 million of patronage to distribute to his friends and supporters in Chicago. Why did he hang out with Jeremiah Wright? Because he was new in town, having grown up in Hawaii and Indonesia and having been educated at Columbia and Harvard, and needed all the local introductions he could get to jump-start his political career. Why was he so close to Rezko?
Because he funded Obama’s campaigns and helped him buy a house for $300,000 less than he otherwise would have had to pay.
Not a good recommendation for a president.
Morris, a former adviser to Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and President Bill Clinton, is the author of Outrage. To get all of Dick Morris’s and Eileen McGann’s columns for free by email, go to www.dickmorris.com. To order a signed copy of their new best-selling book, Fleeced, go to dickmorris.com.
Sarah Palin’s reputation survived her interview with ABC News’ Charlie Gibson.
The same cannot be said for Charlie Gibson.
On my radio show last week, I twice defended Barack Obama. Once, against those conservatives who took a comment made by Obama in an interview with George Stephanopoulos out of context and suggested that Obama had inadvertently admitted he was a Muslim. And again, when I contended that Obama did not imply that Palin was a pig in his now famous “lipstick on a pig” reference.
I mention this only because I want to assume that people of good will on both sides can still be honest about what transpires politically. And in this instance what transpired was that Gibson intended to humiliate Palin.
It wasn’t even subtle. Virtually everything Gibson did and virtually every question he posed was designed to trap, or trick, or demean Gov. Palin. There are views of his face that so reek of contempt that anyone shown photos of his look would immediately identify it as contemptuous.
But one series of questions, in particular, blew any cover of impartiality and revealed Gibson’s aim to humiliate Palin.
GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine?
PALIN: In what respect, Charlie?
GIBSON: The Bush — well, what do you — what do you interpret it to be?
PALIN: His worldview?
GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war.
When he asked Palin whether she agreed with the Bush Doctrine without defining it, he gave the game away. He lost any pretense of fairness. Asking the same unanswerable question three times had one purpose — to humiliate the woman. That was not merely partisan. It was mean.
I couldn’t answer it — and I have been steeped in international affairs since I was a Fellow at the Columbia University School of International Affairs in the 1970s. I have since been to 82 countries, and have lectured in Russian in Russia and in Hebrew in Israel. Most Americans would consider a candidate for national office who had such a resume qualified as regards international relations. Yet I had no clue how to answer Gibson’s question.
I had no clue because there is no right answer. There are at least four doctrines that are called “Bush Doctrine,” which means that there is no “Bush Doctrine.” It is a term bereft of meaning, as became abundantly clear when Gibson finally explained what he was referring to:
GIBSON: The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that — the right to preemptive attack of a country that was planning an attack on America?
That’s the Bush Doctrine? “The right to preemptive attack of a country that was planning an attack on America?”
Isn’t that just common sense? What country in history has thought it did not have the right to attack those planning to attack it? I learned the “Bush Doctrine” when I was a student at yeshiva in the fourth grade, when I was taught a famous Talmudic dictum from about 1,800 years ago: “If someone is coming to kill you, rise early and kill him.”
And preemptive attack is exactly what happened in June 1967, when Israel attacked Egypt and Syria because those countries were planning to attack Israel. Would any American president before George W. Bush have acted differently than Israel did? Of course not. Did they all believe in the Bush Doctrine?
That is how Gibson added foolishness to his meanness.
All the interview did was reconfirm that Republicans running for office run against both their Democratic opponent and the mainstream news media.
This year it is more obvious than ever. The press’s beatification of Obama is so obvious, so constant (how many covers of Newsweek and Time has Obama been on?) that media credibility even among many non-conservatives has been hurt.
Let me put this another way. Charlie Gibson showed far greater hostility toward the Republican vice-presidential candidate than Dan Rather did in his interview with Saddam Hussein or Mike Wallace did in his interview with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Which reminds me of another Talmudic dictum: “Those who are merciful to the cruel will be cruel to the merciful.”
We might call it the media’s Gibson Doctrine: Confront Republicans, act obsequious toward tyrants.
Dennis Prager
Here is a report about Obama from a black columnist. He definitely brings a different light to this newly minted politician.
It’s an amazing time to be alive in America . We’re in a year of firsts in this presidential election: the first viable woman candidate; the first viable African-American candidate; and, a candidate who is the first front-running freedom fighter over 70. The next president of America will be a first.
We won’t truly be in an election of firsts, however, until we judge every candidate by where they stand. We won’t arrive where we should be until we no longer talk about skin color or gender.
Now that Barack Obama steps to the front of the Democratic field, we need to stop talking about his race, and start talking about his policies and his politics.
Some pundits are calling him the next John F. Kennedy. He’s not. He’s the next George McGovern. And it’s time people learned the facts. Because the truth is that Mr. Obama is the single most liberal senator in the entire U.S. Senate. He is more liberal than Ted Kennedy, Bernie Sanders, or Mrs. Clinton. Never in my life have I seen a presidential frontrunner whose rhetoric is so far removed from his record. Walter Mondale promised to raise our taxes, and he lost. George McGovern promised military weakness, and he lost. Michael Dukakis promised a liberal domestic agenda, and he lost.
Yet Mr. Obama is promising all those things, and he’s not behind in the polls. Why? Because the press has dealt with him as if he were in a beauty pageant.
Mr. Obama talks about getting past party, getting past red and blue, to lead the United States of America . But let’s look at the more defined strokes of who he is underneath this superficial ‘beauty.’
Start with national security, since the president’s most important duties are as commander-in-chief. Over the summer, Mr. Obama talked about invading Pakistan, a nation armed with nuclear weapons; meeting without preconditions with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who vows to destroy Israel and create another Holocaust; and Kim Jong II, who is murdering and starving his people, but emphasized that the nuclear option was off the table against terrorists – something no president has ever taken off the table since we created nuclear weapons in the 1940s. Even Democrats who have worked in national security condemned all of those remarks. Mr. Obama is a foreign-policy novice who would put our national security at risk.
Next, consider economic policy. For all its faults, our health care system is the strongest in the world. And free trade agreements, created by Bill Clinton as well as President Bush, have made more goods more affordable so that even people of modest means can live a life that no one imagined a generation ago. Yet Mr. Obama promises to raise taxes on ‘the rich.’ How to fix Social Security? Raise taxes. How to fix Medicare? Raise taxes. Prescription drugs? Raise taxes. Free college? Raise taxes. Socialize medicine? Raise taxes. His solution to everything is to have government take it over. Big Brother on steroids, funded by your paycheck.
Finally, look at the social issues. Mr. Obama had the audacity to open a stadium rally by saying, ‘All praise and glory to God!’ but says that Christian leaders speaking for life and marriage have ‘hijacked’ – hijacked – Christianity. He is pro-partial birth abortion, and promises to appoint Supreme Court justices who will rule any restriction on it unconstitutional. He espouses the abortion views of Margaret Sanger, one of the early advocates of racial cleansing. His spiritual leaders endorse homosexual marriage, and he is moving in that direction. In Illinois , he refused to vote against a statewide ban – ban – on all handguns in the state. These are radical left, Hollywood, and San Francisco values, not Middle America values.
The real Mr. Obama is an easy target for the general election. But Mr. Obama could win if people don’t start looking behind his veneer and flowery speeches. His vision of ‘bringing America together’ means saying that those who disagree with his agenda for America are hijackers or warmongers. Uniting the country means adopting his liberal agenda and abandoning any conflicting beliefs.
But right now everyone is talking about how eloquent of a speaker he is and – yes – they’re talking about his race. Those should never be the factors on which we base our choice for president. Mr. Obama’s radical agenda sets him far outside the American mainstream.
It’s time to talk about the real Barack Obama. In an election of firsts, let’s first make sure we elect the person who is qualified to be our president in a nuclear age during a global civilization war.
Kind of scary, wouldn’t you think—
Ken Blackwell – Columnist for the New York Sun
EXCLUSIVE: Interview with David Freddoso, Author of ‘The Case Against Barack Obama’ 08/04/2008
Michelle Oddis: Dave, you’re a reporter, not a columnist. You’ve worked very hard to dig into the Obama story. You’ve said that you started reporting on Barack Obama in 2004. After all this research, what do you think is the most important thing people should know about Sen. Obama?
David Freddoso: The main lesson is that Barack Obama’s record, throughout his career, demonstrates conclusively that he has never been a reformer, that this image of “change and hope” that he projects is really a great lie. In fact there’s never been a single time in Senator Obama’s political career where he did something that was difficult and would cost him politically for the sake of needed reforms and change.
MO: Your book focuses a lot on the “Chicago Machine.” Not everyone knows about Chicago’s political corruption. In short, how does it work? And how has Sen. Obama been a part of it?
DF: Just to give a few examples from my book, chapter one discusses at length Sen. Obama’s support for and alliances with Chicago machine politicians, that’s chapters one and two.
The “political machine” is all about using the apparatus of the government treasury, using the taxpayer’s money to keep yourself in power permanently. You put your political cronies on the payroll to help yourself get elected and re-elected and then when you’re in power you get to do things like steer pension funds and investment to benefit your pals. All of this stuff was going on.
Liberals and conservatives had come together and had the Cook County, Illinois machine on the ropes but Sen. Obama did not help them. In fact, he ended up endorsing the machine candidate that year in the competitive general election and called him a good progressive Democrat. In this case he didn’t support the reformer, because to support the reformer in that election, he would have upset all the allies of the machine politician. That would have been against the interests of now-convicted developer Tony Rezko, who was tied closely to the Stroger family. He would have upset Mayor Daley, he would have to upset Emil Jones. So he played along like a good machine politician.
Obama was denounced by a lot of liberals including some big people who were still big fans of his at the time.
Obama’s very much about the old politics, and he’s very much not a reformer. It shouldn’t be a surprise except the only surprise is that he has managed to project this reformer image.
MO: Why do you think the mainstream media hasn’t reported on these stories of Obama’s career in Chicago? Your book references many stories from the Chicago Sun-Times. Why does the national media ignore it?
DF: Well, unfortunately, I think the national media — which resides largely in New York and Washington and perhaps out West in Los Angeles — doesn’t look at or read the Chicago papers nearly as much as they should.
Part of the problem is that Chicago’s politics are so dirty that it’s almost hard to believe it’s true. Who would think that a guy who was convicted of stealing $4 million in quarters from Chicago area toll booths would then be given a city job with responsibilities where he could shake down city contractors for hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and campaign contributions?
MO: That’s true!?!
DF: Yes, that’s absolutely true. The man earned the nickname “Quarters” because of his earlier conviction. He came out of prison and went right on to the city payroll shortly thereafter. He was part of one of Daley’s political organizations — the Coalition for better Government — so he got the job.
This is the way Chicago politics works and Sen. Obama can’t do or say anything to change it because Sen. Obama’s allies, the people who got him where he is today and the people who are going to help him become president of the United States — they all started the problems.
He can’t speak out against the problems because his friends are the problem.
MO: Lets talk Tony Rezko. Not everyone knows the details of the Rezko-Obama connection. They know it has to do with a land deal and that’s about it…
DF: The problem with it is everyone is focused on this land deal but they haven’t focused on the really big question — which is why would Sen. Barack Obama end up in a situation where he engaged in any sort of deal like this with a guy who’s entire career has consisted of legally or illegal sponging off of tax payers and corrupting public officials –officials like Barack Obama?
When Tony Rezko wanted something done legally — say grants from the state and subsidies and cheap loans and that sort of thing — he knew he could always count on Barack Obama to support those things — to support legislation that would increase demand for subsidized housing in the Chicago area. Legislation that would make his costs lower, giving him tax breaks and tax breaks for stuff that he was already doing already.
So, their 17 year friendship goes a long way back and it was working relationship where Obama did a lot of stuff in Springfield to help Tony Rezko. And that’s why the two could be close enough friends that they would dine together and spend weekends together at Rezko’s vacation home and why they would happen to buy properties right next door to each other.
Very few people who have been looking at this angle and that’s the real issue with the Tony Rezko business — what did Obama do for him? Obama said “I did him no favors” but he did do favors for Tony Rezko. In fact, in 1998 — I believe it’s in Chapter 11 of the book — in 1998 Senator Obama wrote a couple of letters on Senate letter head specifically asking that the state give grants to Tony Rezko and another developer he is very close with, his former law firm boss. That’s a favor.
MO: Why did you want to write this book?
DF: I wanted to write this book because I was watching several major media figures and respected columnists and journalists just fawn over this guy. It just seems a little bit overboard to me.
I haven’t been in Washington a terribly long time. I’ve been here since 2001 and from what I’ve seen you can’t buy into this idea of politicians as heroes. What exactly has Sen. Obama done that would support this argument as an “agent of positive change?”
If you actually look at Obama’s record the incongruity is actually more obvious because he doesn’t have a record of being a reformer. Reformers don’t vote for the bridge to nowhere and they don’t vote for ethanol and they don’t vote for the farm bill… they don’t consistently support corrupt systemic arrangements in every public office they’ve ever held.
As I was writing this, there were several things I came to know about Sen. Obama that I figured just about everybody else did. One of them was the fact that he first won election to the state in Illinois by getting all of his opponents, including his sitting state senator, thrown off the ballot. And I thought everyone knew this! And as I spoke to more and more very experienced Washington people I discovered practically nobody has heard this even though it’s been in so many newspapers
I felt like a lot of those stories should be told again with as much detail as possible and that I could also find some new things about Sen. Obama that some people just didn’t know regarding his record in Springfield, in Washington and what he’s done in Chicago.
So, that’s why I set out to do this and I think it makes for a good read. I mean, I’ll admit I wrote it myself… I’m not exactly unbiased.
———
There are many, many more detailed revelations about Barack Obama — the stealth liberal, his lack of knowledge of the world and his plans to bankrupt America — that David Freddoso writes in “The Case Against Barack Obama” Every American voter needs to know the facts about Obama, and this is the best book to read and study to learn those facts.
GrassTopsUSA Exclusive Commentary By Don Feder
07-07-08
On June 30, Barack Obama gives a speech in Independence, Missouri proclaiming his “deep and abiding love for this country,” and daring anyone to question his patriotism.
The July 7 issue of “Time” Magazine has a cover story (“The New Patriotism”) asserting, “And no matter how they define patriotism, Americans should tremble before insisting that any fellow citizen lacks it.” If the mainstream media got talking-points from the Democratic National Committee, they could hardly be more on-message.
The “Time” story was written by Richard Stengel, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Taking instruction on patriotism from “Time” and the CFR is like getting lessons in decorum from Madonna or hearing a sobriety lecture by Lindsay Lohan.
Among other fanciful interpretations of electoral history, Stengel writes that Nixon was reelected in 1972 because his cabinet wore American flag lapel pins and McGovern’s entourage did not. Couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that the New Left icon ran on a platform of socialism at home and surrender in Vietnam, could it?
The CFR fellow also thinks Mike Dukakis lost in 1988 because, as governor of Massachusetts, he had refused to sign a bill requiring teachers to lead students in the Pledge of Allegiance. Defending furloughs for rapists and murders apparently had nothing to do with Dukakis’ defeat that year — any more than his freezing like a deer in the headlights when asked if he’d still oppose capital punishment if his wife was raped and murdered.
It’s all about the refusal of noble Democrats to wrap themselves in the flag, while crass, opportunistic Republicans act like George M. Cohan at a 4th of July picnic, according to “Time.”
The essay also informed us, “American patriotism wears two faces: a patriotism of affirmation, which appeals more to conservatives, and a patriotism of dissent, particularly cherished by liberals.”
I don’t know any true patriot who questions the right of Americans to dissent on any issue, whether we agree with them or not.
The left’s patriotism-deficit has less to do with dissent than a very real and ingrained hostility toward America.
Its recitation of our national saga runs from slavery to Wounded Knee, to the wartime internment of Japanese Americans, to segregation to My Lai and Abu Ghraib — excluding everything else. Liberals love America; they just can’t find anything positive to say about it, other than Susan B. Anthony and Rosa Parks.
The article also discloses, “The American who volunteers to fight in Iraq and the American who protests the war both express a truer patriotism than the American who treats it as a distant spectacle with no claim on his talents or conscience.”
This is a truly weird moral equivalency — one which equates the young Marine who loses a limb in a Baghdad bombing with the moron Marxist who claims the Marines are the equivalent of the Waffen S.S. and the Iraq war is really about “blood for oil.”
In trying to rationalize how the left can hate our history and heritage while still claiming the mantle of patriotism, Stengel explains: “For liberals, America is less a common culture than a set of ideals about democracy, equality and the rule of law.” Toward the end of his Independence speech, Obama informed us: “Patriotism is always more than just loyalty to a place on a map or a certain kind of people. Instead, it is loyalty to America’s idea. …”
In other words, the left’s loyalty isn’t to America as it is, but to an ideal America reflected in certain principles. The problem with this proposition is that liberals have betrayed both America and the ideals on which it was founded.
“Democracy”? The left stands for the rule of judges, not representative government. What’s democratic about Obama insisting that the people of California should not have a vote on marriage — that instead the definition should be determined by the one-vote majority of an unelected body?
How do you reconcile “equality before the law” with racial quotas or affirmative action? Martin Luther King believed a man should be judged by the content of his character, not the color of his skin. The left believes in privileges based on race, gender, ethnicity or, increasingly, what it calls sexual orientation.
What could be more American than the freedom to speak one’s mind, especially in a political context?
Liberals will defend to the death your right to agree with them. When it comes to dissent from political correctness, they are censors nonpareil. The left controls higher education more completely than any other aspect of American life. Not only is anti-Americanism rampant on the college campus, so too is a uniformity of opinion enforced with an iron hand.
Campus speech codes are based on the fascist notion that the expression of certain ideas must be punished. A recent example of the academic totalitarian mindset was the firing of an African-American administrator at the University of Toledo for writing a letter to the editor objecting to homosexuals being compared to blacks.
The left believes in a “patriotism of dissent” for itself, and itself alone — not on the college campus, not in front of an abortion clinic (which, thanks to the likes of Ted Kennedy, are insulated from protest by speech-suppression, buffer zones), and definitely not when the opinions expressed are alleged to be offensive to certain minorities. Hate crimes laws are the left’s most daring adventure in censorship.
Before “Time” was gracious enough to explain patriotism to those of us who cling to our guns or religion or anti-(illegal) immigrant sentiment when we feel bitter, Barack Obama put on his own star-spangled extravaganza.
At the Independence rally, standing in front of not one but four American flags, lapel pin firmly in place, hand over heart — all that was missing was John Philip Sousa and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir — Barack Hussein Obama “tried to reassure voters about his patriotism” (in the words of ABC News).
When was the last time a presidential candidate had to reassure voters that he actually liked his country? Do you wonder, then, that the Democrats consider patriotism Obama’s Achilles heel?
Just because he refused to wear an American flag lapel pin last year, just because he wouldn’t hold his hand anywhere near his heart while the National Anthem played, just because Frau Obama suggested that she never had a reason to feel pride in America until her husband’s presidential campaign, just because his minister of 20 years regularly reviled the United States from the pulpit, is that any reason to question Obama’s patriotism? That’s a rhetorical question.
“At certain times over the last 16 months, I have found, for the first time, my patriotism challenged,” Obama disclosed to gasps of astonished outrage from the audience.
But he wasn’t about to take it in a supine position. “I will never question the patriotism of others in this campaign,” the Democrat promised. “And I will not stand idly by when others question mine.” Yeah, like anybody’s going to question the patriotism of the candidate with the crippled arm, the result of six years of torture as a POW.
Obama went further, charging that the “question of who is — or is not — a patriot all too often poisons our political debate” — the flag-waving equivalent of the politics of personal destruction.
You can see why liberals get antsy when the discussion turns to love of country.
Treason permeates the left. Its bastions — Hollywood, academia, the establishment media and the mainline churches — are nests of treason.
In a world where America fights for its survival against a jihadist threat dedicated to ushering in a new Dark Ages — in an era when 3,000 Americans died in the bloodiest attack on the continental U.S., another 4,000 died in Iraq and more than 30,000 were wounded in that conflict — it’s not hard to see why the left is frantic to avoid a candid discussion of patriotism.
Well, permit me to inject a bit of what Obama calls poison into our political debate. Start trembling, Richard Stengel, I’m about to suggest that some of my fellow citizens are lacking in patriotic ardor.
Filmmaker Michael Moore, ayatollah of the anti-American documentary, who compares the Iraqi terrorists to the Minutemen, is less than patriotic. Moore has devoted his career to depicting America as a nation of gun nuts and greedy bastards.
Cindy (Bush-killed-my-son) Sheehan, who claims “America has been killing people on this continent since it was started. This country is not worth dying for,” will never be mistaken for Betsy Ross.
Columbia Professor Nicholas De Genova told a 2003 teach-in: “U.S. flags are the emblem of the invading war machine in Iraq today. … The only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military.” De Genova, who also called for “a million Mogadishus” (in reference to the 1993 Somali ambush, where 18 American soldiers died), doesn’t wear a flag lapel pin — unless it’s the flag of Cuba or North Korea.
Ersatz American Indian Ward Churchill, formerly a professor at the University of Colorado, called the Americans who died on 9/11 “little Eichmanns,” and says he doesn’t just want the U.S. out of the Persian Gulf, but “out of North America” and “off the planet.” Sorry, Stengel and Senator, but I gotta go out on a limb here and question this guy’s patriotism — not to mention his sanity.
Speaking of the inhabitants of another planet, in January, the City Council of Berkeley, California (liberalism’s home town) resolved that the Marines weren’t welcome in the city limits, said that the good people of Berkeley should shun Marine Corps recruiters like other “violent influences” and called on anti-war elements like Code Pink to disrupt the work of recruiting offices. Can anyone call this patriotic dissent, with a straight face?
What does any of this have to do with newly minted super-patriot George Lincoln Obama? Look homeward, Hussein.
On May 25, Father Michael Pfleger preached a sermon at Chicago’s Trinity United Church in Christ (Barack’s house of worship for 19 years), in which he earnestly declared, “I also believe that America is the greatest sin against God.” Now, how exactly is calling America a “sin against God” an expression of your love for this country?
Pfleger also believes “America has been raping people of color” throughout our history. Am I wrong, or is rape not a good thing?
Obama and Pfleger have been friends since the late 1980s. Between 1995 and 2001, Pfleger contributed a total of $1,500 to various Obama campaigns. As a Senator, Obama directed $225,000 in grants to Pfleger’s Chicago church, St Sabina. Like Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor for almost 20 years, Pfleger has a crush on Minister Louis Farrakhan. He calls the Nazi of Islam leader “a prophetic voice” and a “mentor.”
But when it comes to hating America, Pfleger can’t hold a candle to the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., the man Obama formerly described as “like an uncle to me” (the kind of uncle families used to keep locked in the attic).
Wright refers to America as the “U.S. of K.K.K,” says “America is the No. 1 killer in the world,” claims the U.S. government invented the AIDS virus as a “means of genocide against people of color,” and urged parishioners to say “God damn America.”
Of course, Barack O-Baloney would have us believe that he sat in a pew of the Trinity United Church of Christ for two decades and never heard a word of Wright’s acid anti-Americanism. After World War II, there were probably Germans who claimed they never heard Hitler say anything bad about Jews at a Nuremberg rally.
Patriotism is one of those concepts that’s difficult to define in 25 words or less.
But I can tell you what it’s not. It’s not “America has been killing people on this continent since it was started.” It’s not “The only true heroes are those who find ways to defeat the U.S. military.” It’s not “America is the greatest sin against God.” It’s not “America is the No. 1 killer in the world” and “God damn America.”
Given the company Obama has been keeping, I’m surprised Jane Fonda (another profile in the “patriotism of dissent”) didn’t join him at his Independence rally. The Hollywood traitor did endorse the Senator before the Georgia primary.
Coincidentally, in 1972, while Hanoi Jane was posing with a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft battery, John McCain was being tortured in the same city. (Fonda later said returning POWs who told us of torture at communist hands were liars.) Or aren’t we allowed to question her “patriotism” either?
Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer who is now a political/communications consultant.
