Are these reporters or palace guards?

Asking Rahm Emanuel tough questions is not what the Chicago media is going to tolerate.  Some of the thugs in the media threaten to deck a reporter who persists in askin Emanuel tough questions.

In the video you see them physically move to shield Emmanuel from Kelly’s questioning, as though their backs alone would deflect the questions. Kelly is berated and shoved by mainstream media journalists, but the scene stealer is when CBS2’s Jay Levine (who has not responded to my requests for comment) screams at Kelly, “Let him finish or I’m gonna deck you!”

After challenging Emanuel on-camera about questions on his residency and the failed $800 billion stimulus he spearheaded as White House Chief of Staff, CBS2’s reporter Jay Levine told Kelly he was going “to deck him”[...] ABC7 political reporter Charles Thomas told Kelly to “go away.” “This is the problem. Journalists have lost their objectivity,” said Kelly. “How can we rely on them to report the facts? People have lost faith in the media and with the actions of reporters like these, it’s not hard to see why.”

Just Admit it, Newspapers: You're Scared of Muslims

Not onlyare images of Mohammad verboten in the "brave" "free" press, but the noticable ABSENCE of the image of Mohammad is deleted because the members of the news media shit their pants in fear of offending Muslims.

Obama just threw Congress under the bus.

Obama’s interview in the NY Times Magazine is being described as a retrospective on his first two years in office. In it he talks about being seen as a “tax-and-spend” liberal and explains his failure to understand that there are no “shovel ready projects.”

And now you know why the politician who mostly votes “present” when it comes time to make controversial decisions continues in to blame others. Because ObamaCare – thanks to the Obama propaganda machine – is going to rapidly morph into Pelosi-Reed-Care. And the stimulus bill with its Not-Quite-Shovel-Ready-Jobs-Bill is going to be transformed into the Runaway-Democrats-In-Congress spending fiasco. He has already hinted that he wished that he had talked the Democrats in Congress into compromising with Republicans.

During the last two years, Obama has been the cheerleader-in-chief for the Crazy-Left Democrats in Congress; or that’s what the narrative the MFM if going to be creating as the revisionist history of the last two years.

Think it can’t happen? Watch how his grandmother became the “typical white woman” and how Jeremiah Wright, his “spiritual mentor,” was transformed for the man he could not disown to the man he had to disown.

The Obama camp and the media know that they have to revive the Obama coalition before the 2012 elections to achieve their vision of the America they want to be born. And if the shrunken band of Democrats on Congress have to be made the scapegoats, well, that’s what scapegoats are for.

Obama: There's no such thing as shovel ready jobs.

From the NY Slimes (referring to an interview that he gave to Peter Baker): 

In the magazine article, Mr. Obama reflects on his presidency, admitting that he let himself look too much like “the same old tax-and-spend Democrat,” realized too late that “there’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects” and perhaps should have “let the Republicans insist on the tax cuts” in the stimulus.

Sue in Frederick, MD comments: 

The $800,000B stimulus package was sold, repeatedly, as money that would provide private sector "shovel-ready jobs" to rebuild roads, bridges and "infrastucture". That morphed into "jobs created or saved" across the board in public and private. Morphing again into "saved jobs of teachers, police and firefighters" and "creating" new public sector jobs. Now after 20 months we need another stimulus to repair roads and bridges and to create construction jobs because there really is no such thing as "shovel-ready". Is it any wonder that the economy is floundering?

I told you that. 
Sue knows it. 
The question is: did Team Obama know it? 
If not, they were dumber than rocks. 
If yes, they lied. 
Pick one.

Here is what I said on June 12th. 

Note that most of the “stimulus” money has gone to public employees with the result that the public sector has actually grown while employment in the private sector has risen to devastating heights. This is not an accident. The concept of “shovel ready” public works projects has been long forgotten and was a bad joke even as it was being sold to the American public as the rationale for the various stimulus packages. In the modern bureaucratic world, there are virtually no “shovel ready” jobs that have not been funded years ago.

The rest of that post (Obama: Alien or Incompetent. Krauthammer vs. Rabinowitz.) is worth reading because none of it is dated, or has been proved incorrect.

The good news is that it's apparently not racist to call Obama arrogant anymore.

Jonah Goldberg in an LA Times op-ed on Obama's ego: 

There's an irony to occupying the Oval Office. When presidents think they're bigger than the job they hold, they shrink in office. When they think they're smaller than the honor they've been temporarily bestowed, they grow into it. Obama has done nothing but shrink.

Last week, the president of the United States attacked Karl Rove by name — twice! — in a speech. He recently begged a crowd of black supporters not to "make me look bad" by staying home from the polls. In an interview with Rolling Stone, he scolded young voters that if they don't vote, it will be proof they "weren't serious in the first place."

It never dawns on him that were it not for the unseriousness of those voters, he might still be a one-term junior senator from Illinois.

"You know, I actually believe my own [bull]," Obama told the author of "Renegade," Richard Wolffe.

Exactly. And that why he's gotten into this mess.

It's all about him.

Is it possible to find a way of punishing the people who were taken in by this ego-blimp?

New evidence that gunshots were fired at Kent State before the Guardsmen fired.

From the Washington Times:

The tape captures one voice saying: "They got somebody," and a few seconds later, male voices shout: "Kill him!" Kill him!" There is then the sound of a .38 caliber revolver shot, followed by a female voice: "Whack that [expletive]!" Three more handgun shots ring out at about five-second intervals, and soon thereafter - in just 13 tragic seconds - 29 of the 77 guardsmen fire a total of 67 rifle shots that are to help seal the fate of the non-communist people of Indochina.

Two Politicians in One: Joe Manchin

Vet "Swift Boat" Blumenthal on his Viet Nam story

Obama's Stimulator 3000

Stock trading on inside information is legal for members of Congress.

I’m in the financial services business and I know that trading on non-public information is illegal.  I assumed this was a general rule so I was surprised to find out that Congress had exempted itself.

Here's Veronique de Rugy at NRO making the startling claim that it's perfectly legal for memebers of Congress and their staffs to trade on inside information.

This is really crazy. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal had this front page story about how congressional staffers are allowed to use information about policies about to be implemented to invest in stocks and make money.

At least 72 aides on both sides of the aisle traded shares of companies that their bosses help oversee, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of more than 3,000 disclosure forms covering trading activity by Capitol Hill staffers for 2008 and 2009.

The Journal analysis showed that an aide to a Republican member of the Senate Banking Committee bought Bank of America Corp. stock before results of last year’s government stress tests eased investor concerns about the health of the banking industry. A top aide to the House Speaker profited by trading shares of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in a brokerage account with her husband two days before the government authorized emergency funding for the companies.

Now, this is called insider trading in the private sector, and people are going to jail for it. Now, whether one thinks that insider trading is a crime that deserves punishment is not even the issue here. What is stunning is that while insider trading is illegal in the private sector, it is totally legal for government employees to do it, because insider-trading laws don’t apply to Congress. Basically, Congress passed a law making insider trading illegal for the private sector and exempted itself.

This special exemption is bipartisan.

Some lawmakers find the double standard shocking, and a few years back, a few of them proposed a bill that would prevent members and employees of Congress from trading securities based on nonpublic information they obtain. That bill went nowhere. Here is the interesting part — according to the Journal:

When the bill was introduced nearly five years ago, just 14 other lawmakers endorsed it. The current version of the bill has fared worse: Only nine lawmakers support it. There is no companion legislation in the Senate.

What is especially troubling about this is that the government and business are becoming more closely intertwined.  It becomes more important to know if the government is going to award a contract or if it’s going to bail someone out that if there is a takeover or a surprise earnings report (the usual “illegal” reasons for insider trading).  Government employees have access to much more valuable information.

Obama Losing Supporters in Poll as Joblessness Prompts Voters' Discontent

From Bloomberg news

Hope has turned to doubt and disenchantment for almost half of President Barack Obama’s supporters.

More than 4 of 10 likely voters who say they once considered themselves Obama backers now are either less supportive or say they no longer support him at all, according to a Bloomberg National Poll conducted Oct. 7-10.

I don’t know whether Obama has gotten more toxic or if the MFM sees the writing on the wall and is jumping off the Good Ship Obama.

Anger About the Economy Fuels Republican Advantage

From ABC: 

This national survey finds that Republicans are markedly more likely than other Americans to describe themselves as "angry" about the economy. And angry people, by a wide margin, are more apt to blame the Democratic Party than the GOP for the problem.

Mexican investigator in Falcon Lake case is beheaded, officials say

(CNN) -- The lead Mexican investigator in the Falcon Lake case, Rolando Armando Flores Villegas, has been killed, his severed head delivered Tuesday in a suitcase to the Mexican military, officials told CNN.

Starshine

The universe seems infinite ... stars whose light takes millions of years to reach our eyes ... yet God is both greater and more infinite ... totally beyond the comprehension of our human minds. The best we can do is make Him seem human … so God gave us his Son so that we could see an aspect of him with our limited human senses.

The Tea Party as a money machine

The guys at Powerline make note of something about the Tea Party that is at least as important as its grass roots rallies and networking, and that is its ability to raise money.

In the past I have rarely given to candidates or political parties. Why? Let’s face it, you don’t know who the party you’re giving to is going to support; it could be RHINO like X-Senator X-Republican Arlen Specter. You also know you’re going to received dozens of solicitations to give more money, the cost of which eats up all or most of your contribution. I’m persuaded that the biggest beneficiaries of political contributions are direct mail companies.

And, let’s face it, thanks to gerrymandered districts, how many of us live in districts where the outcome is not for-ordained?

Thanks to the Tea party movement we can now send our contributions to upstart challengers who may be able to make a real difference in the political composition of Congress.

So last weekend I did an unusual thing. I went online and made modest contributions to several candidates throughout the country; candidates who have the ability to upset the entrenched power brokers in Congress. If several million people only gave $5 to each of 5 candidates who are running to unseat Harry Reid, Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Boxer, Patti Murray, or any one of the other horrible waste of human breath currently roaming the halls of congress, your total contribution may only be $25, but these candidates would collect millions without having to spend a penny asking for contributions; it could go right into their campaigns.

John Hinderaker:

Over the years, I have contributed to many political campaigns and have also given politicians the benefit of my advice and counsel. Pretty consistently, no matter how sound my advice may have been, the cash has been more appreciated.

This observation is prompted by today's revelation that Sharron Angle raised the astonishing sum of $14 million during the third quarter. Chris Cillizza describes Angle's $14 million as "a stunning number that far eclipses the cash-collection totals of other prominent candidates seeking Senate seats next month."

If you can only afford to give $25, here are the websites for some people who should be in the next Congress:

Sharron Angle running against Harry "The War Is Lost" Reid.

Sean Bielat running against Barney "There's no housing bubble, Fannie and Freddie are fine" Frank

Carly Fiorina running against Barbara "Call me Senator" Boxer

Dino Rossi running against Patti "Osama bin laden is loved because he's building schools" Murray

Christine O'Donnell running against Chris "the tax man" Coons.

I especially include Christine O'Donnell because she has been the recipient of the kind of Liberal assault that almost destroyed Sarah Palin.  If she can be elected this year, it would be huge.  Liberal heads throughout the wide, wide world would explode.  It is said that money is the mother's milk of politics. Let the milk flow!

Who else should be included?

UPDATE:  Even ABC is beginning to notice.  In South Dakota: Another Sarah Palin?

If money is any indication, the hottest Republican House candidate in the country is Kristi Noem. The 38-year-old rancher has raised more campaign cash than any Republican house challenger in the country.

Noem has raised $1.1 million over the past three months, about twice as much as her opponent, Rep. Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin (D-SD). And that money will go a long way: South Dakota's media market is one of the least expensive in the country.

Don't Hate Me Because I'm Brilliant!

Anne Applebaum wonders why smart, witty people like her at not more admired. From "Best of the Web" a daily feature by James Taranto in the Wall Street Journal we learn that

Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum takes note of the rise of the cognitive elite. As top universities have relied on standardized test scores for admissions decisions, the country has become more stratified by intelligence, with power and wealth more tied to IQ than ever before:

The result . . . is now with us: Barack Obama, brought up by a single mother, graduate of Columbia and Harvard Law School, is president. Michelle Obama, daughter of a black municipal employee, graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School, is first lady. They brought with them to Washington dozens more people, also from modest backgrounds, mostly not with inherited wealth, who have entered high government office thanks in part to their education.

All this influx of high IQ talent should have the people praising their new masters for making their lives better in every way.  For some reason, that's not how it's working out.  People are responding to "the ones we have been waiting for" with a great big raspberry.

And it's not because we resent the "elites" for getting to the top.  What's missing in Applebaum's analysis is how much they have screwed up.

This is an interesting idea, or at least it was 16 years ago, when Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray put it forth in "The Bell Curve." But Applebaum is perplexed that not all Americans welcome their new overlords:

Despite pushing aside the old WASP establishment--not a single member of it remains on the Supreme Court--these modern meritocrats are clearly not admired, or at least not for their upward mobility, by many Americans. On the contrary . . . they are resented as "elitist." Which is at some level strange: To study hard, to do well, to improve yourself--isn't that the American dream? . . .

In America, the end of the meritocracy will probably come about slowly: If working hard, climbing the education ladder and graduating from a good university only wins you opprobrium, then you might not bother. Or if you do bother, then you certainly won't go into politics, where your kind is no longer welcome

This is entertainingly clueless. In fact, no one resents President Obama and other members of the cognitive elite for their fancy degrees or their personal success. What is vexing about the liberal cognitive elite is two particular forms of hubris to which highly intelligent people are especially prone.

The first is the idea that because they're smarter than you, they're more qualified to run your life. This is the presumption at the root of ObamaCare and pretty much all socialist economic policies.

The second is the disparagement of common sense because it is common. Think of Obama's infamous comment about the bitter clingers of Western Pennsylvania, or the liberal elite's vicious attacks on anyone who opposes the Ground Zero mosque.

A high IQ may constitute "merit" for the purpose of deciding who gets into a university, but there's much more to life than higher education. We have no doubt Barack Obama was a good student, but that doesn't make him a good president.

And that's the problem.  Applebaum never asks how well out new technocratic elite is doing as they have taken over for the "old aristocracy."  The primary characteristics of the people inhabiting Washington today is a glibness, the reflexive desire to shift blame, arrogance, the desire to gain more and more control, all the while screwing up - big time.

The Tea Party Philosophy

Democrat Fail Video

Includes these memorable lines:

Barney Frank: [speaking of home prices] "You're not going to see a collapse that you see when people talk about a bubble."

Pete Stark: "There are very few constitutional limits that would prevent the federal government from rules that could affect your private life....The federal government can do just about anything."

John Conyers: "What good is reading the bill if it's a thousand pages and your don't have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill."

You show us your birth certificate and we'll show you our donors...deal?

This is actually funny.  Jake Tapper talks to David Axlerod who demands that the Chamber of Commerce disclose its funding sources.  Then comes this exhange: 

AXELROD: It is a insidious, dangerous thing when people can contribute huge sums of money to run negative ads in campaigns and never confess or allow to their participation. It opens the door to all kinds of chicanery. And when the next Congress meets if there are people who are standing there who are beneficiaries of their campaigns, you’ll know in whose interest they are going to act.

TAPPER: But what do you say to people who argue you are demonizing an organization for a charge that nobody knows if it's true or not?

AXELROD: Well I’m not demonizing the Chamber of Commerce. I’m simply suggesting to them that they disclose the source of the $75 million that they are spending in campaigns and put to rest, put to rest the questions that have been, that have been raised.

TAPPER: Isn't that like the whackjobs that tell the president he needs to show them his full long-form birth certificate so he can put to rest the questions that have been raised?

AXELROD: The president’s birth certificate has been available to people.

TAPPER: The long form?

AXELROD: Someone once in the course of this debate about whether we should have a law to force these organizations to disclose where they’re money is coming from in the campaigns, someone said, and I think they’re right – “the only people who want to keep things secret are folks who have something to hide.” If the Chamber doesn’t have anything to hide about these contributions, and I take them at their word that they don’t, then why not disclose? Why not let people see where their money is coming from?

Why Obama Is Losing the Political War

Mark Halperin in Time, a magazine that has not yet been sold for $1.

With the exception of core Obama Administration loyalists, most politically engaged elites have reached the same conclusions: the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters.

But none of this is really Obama's fault:

• It's really George Bush's fault.
• The man who was hailed as the greatest orator since Cicero and has spent more time on the tube than Oprah Winfrey "failed to get his message out."
• He's attacking the wrong villains.
• He's too "brave and bold" for the unemployed.

But don't worry; after the November elections Obama will get better because he won't have a Democrat controlled congress.

Even when they try to distance themselves from this train wreck, their are fascinated by the view.

Greek Health System Opts for Amputation as Money-Saver

When the government sets the rules of medical care, what can go wrong?

This Saturday, one of Greece’s most respected newspapers, To Vima, reported that the nation’s largest government health insurance provider would no longer pay for special footwear for diabetes patients. Amputation is cheaper, says the Benefits Division of the state insurance provider.

The new policy was announced in a letter to the Pan-Hellenic Federation of People with Diabetes. The Federation disputes the science behind the decision of the Benefits Division. In a statement, the group argues that the decision is contrary to evidence as presented in the international scientific literature.

Greece’s National Healthcare System was created in the early 1980s, during the tenure of Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou. Papandreou, an academic, won election under the slogan, Αλλαγή, which is the Greek word for Change.

Death panels - one limb at a time.

Billboard trucks urge ABC, CBS, NBC to 'tell the truth' in news

L. Brent Bozell of the Media Research Center is increasing the pressure on the MFM

If Obama is so Gung-Ho About Fixing Education, Why the Hell Won't He do the Smallest Goddamn Thing to Change the Status Quo?

From Reason Magazine. 

This is getting annoying! Obama continues to make a play to be the edjumication president, yet he won't do a goddamn thing to actually shake up the ineffective, over-spending status quo. Here is the proud papa of two honor students at the exclusive and hugely expensive Sidwell Friends school of Washington, D.C. delivering yet another speech about how important education is:

"At a time when most of the new jobs being created will require some kind of higher education -- when countries that out-educate us today will outcompete us tomorrow -- giving our kids the best education possible is an economic imperative," Obama said.

Here's an interesting fact from the video: the largest teacher's union, the NEA (National Education Association) spends more on campaign contributions than Exxon Mobil, Microsoft, Wal Mart and the AFL-CIO ... combined. And 95% goes to Democrats. That's why under Obama, or any other Democrat there will never be meaningful education reform.

Sharron Angle surge unnerving Nevada Democrats

Via Politico:

Within hours of the release of a Thursday Rasmussen Reports poll showing Angle up 50 percent to 46 percent, the Republican’s campaign had blasted out a fundraising appeal seeking more donations “now that we’ve got all the momentum.”

Why would you re-elect the Senator who has led the country to 10% unemployment and 18% underemployment when the state he represents has the highest unemployment rate in the country at over 14%. 

Oh, have your heard about his support of Viagra for sex offenders?

Obama plays golf for 52nd day

I wonder if his game has improved? 

The upside of this is that he's spending less time screwing over the American people.

Send him some free balls.

Was Barack Obama's campaign financed with foreign money?

Obama used the specter of foreign money being used in campaigns when he accused the Chamber of Commerce of funding campaign ads using foreign money. The US Chamber gets less than $100,000 from foreign member affiliates in a budget of over $200 million and keeps this money carefully segregated.

Unlike the Obama campaign which accepted vast amounts of money via untraceable donations using a system which could detect illegal contributions but which they deliberately disabled so as to be able to accept foreign contributions.

I blogged about this here, here and here.

Glenn Reynolds has the story and the links.

NEW YORK TIMES: Obama’s “foreign money” claims are bogus. They’re also pretty rich, considering how his 2008 campaign handled foreign credit cards. From that National Journal story: “The lack of a computerized address-verification system would allow the Obama campaign’s computers to accept online donations from U.S. citizens above legal limits, and to accept donations from foreigners who are barred by law from contributing at all.” Perhaps its time to remind people of that issue again. Oh, wait, I just did!

Here’s more on that from 2008: “A breakdown of controls has enabled foreign and other unaccountable funds to pour into the Obama campaign — and it’s not an accident.”

Plus, from the Washington Post: Obama Accepting Untraceable Donations. “Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign is allowing donors to use largely untraceable prepaid credit cards that could potentially be used to evade limits on how much an individual is legally allowed to give or to mask a contributor’s identity, campaign officials confirmed. Faced with a huge influx of donations over the Internet, the campaign has also chosen not to use basic security measures to prevent potentially illegal or anonymous contributions from flowing into its accounts, aides acknowledged.”

More here. “Then there’s the question of whether foreign nationals are contributing to the Obama campaign. There is more than enough evidence to warrant a full-scale investigation by the Federal Election Commission, including the $32,332.19 that appears to have come from two brothers living in a Hamas-controlled Palestinian refugee camp in Rafah, GA (that’s Gaza, not Georgia). The brothers’ cash is part of a flood of illegal foreign contributions accepted by the Obama campaign.”

Read the rest.

The Coming of the Fourth American Republic

An excellent article by James DeLong and brought to my attention by Glenn Reynolds.

Excerpt:

The United States has been called the oldest nation in the world, in the sense that it has operated the longest without a major upheaval in its basic institutional structure.

From one perspective, this characterization is fair. The nation still rests on the Constitution of 1787, and no other government can trace its current charter back so far. Since then, France has had a monarchy, two empires, and five republics. England fudges by never writing down its constitutional arrangements, but the polity of Gordon I is remote from that of George III. China’s political convolutions defy summary.

Shift the angle of vision and the continuity is less clear, because we have had two upheavals so sweeping that the institutional arrangements under which we now operate can fairly be classified as the Third American Republic. Furthermore, this Third Republic is teetering (these things seem to run in cycles of about 70 years) and is on the edge of giving way to a revised Fourth Republic with arrangements as yet murky to our present-bound perceptions.

I continued my discussion on The Volokh Conspiracy with this:

Stonestool, you should not be amazed by those who believe that the text of the constitution means what it says. The legitimacy of any regime depends on the willingness of the people to accept that it is acting according to the rules that have been established – the constitution, Mandate of Heaven, the firstborn of a king – whatever the rules are. I would rather have a constitutional argument about the legitimate existence of an Air Force than the chain of reasoning that says that my failure to buy an insurance policy is impinges on the government’s powers to regulate commerce with foreign nations, among the several states and with Indian tribes. The rest of your comments are of a similar nature. You really don’t persuade people by insulting their intelligence.

The fact is that the current regime is in the process of suffering a crisis of legitimacy and I’m not talking only of the Obama administration but of the entire sweep of legislation and law since the “New Deal.” Meanwhile the law clerks are having arguments about the applicability of Wickard and Raich when the roof is on fire. Those people marching in the streets are animated by fairly big ideas about the size and scope of government. They came out before the health care mandates were passed. The passage of that law simply fed fuel to the fire.

Dilan Esper is arguing that failing to uphold the present course would be too destabilizing. Talking about letting prisoners free, a raft of state regulating, I’m waiting for predictions of plagues and locusts. The Federal government just spent somewhere between $1 and $2 trillion dollars that it did not have on various schemes to stimulate the economy without affecting the 10% unemployed and 18% underemployed. That wasn’t the deal that the people were promised. They had started to question the rules of the game, now they are becoming convinced that the bozos running the bus are not only corrupt but inept. And, oh, by the way, please note that foreclosures are stopping. If you think that’s good news for the economy, you are very mistaken. All those banks that you thought were solvent suddenly are not.

There is an interesting article by James V. DeLong entitled The Coming of the Fourth American Republic. It’s long, but worth a read.

As the government has grown in size and reach, it has justified its claims to power by accepting ever more responsibility for the economy and society. Failure will result in rapid loss of legitimacy and great anger. It is amusing to read pundits’ pronouncements that the Chinese government must deliver economic stability and growth or suffer social unrest; what do these pundits think will be the fate of an American government that fails in these tasks? And as the government’s reach extends, any chance that it will meet its self-proclaimed responsibilities declines.

Law professors may want to begin thinking about what happens to American jurisprudence of the current trajectory of the law is changed. I think it was Herb Stein who said: “Things that can’t go on forever don’t.”

The courts and the Tea Party

If you want to know one of the reasons the Tea Party has managed to bring a lot of middle aged, middle American, heretofore a-political people out into the streets, read this posting, and especially the comment thread on The Volokh Conspiracy.

For people not familiar with this blog, it’s the creation of a group of Libertarian law professors. The Libertarian means that they are philosophically pro-individual freedom. Law professors mean that they focus on the legal precedents rather than the actual text of the Constitution.  For many people who teach the law, the Constitution is what the judges say it is. There is seldom a reference to the text of the actual constitution, but many references to court decisions.

The problem with this approach is illustrated by a story I was told years ago by a marketing manager for a soup company. By far their most popular product was mushroom soup. The company decided to improve its profit margin and determined that the most expensive ingredient was mushrooms. So they adjusted the machines that cut the mushrooms into slices – just slightly - to cut the mushroom a little thinner. The trial was so successful that the next year the slices were made a little thinner. So it went, year after year until the company found that their mushroom soup sales had dropped dramatically. They could not figure out why until they realized that the mushroom slices were now so thin that the soup was not really very good. You can only slice the mushroom so thin before people turn away.

That’s really the problem with lawyers and law professors. They have gotten so far into the weeds that they have completely lost track of the reason that people once gave great reverence to the courts. The problem for the courts is that the US Constitution is a fairly short, easy to read document that organizations like the Cato Institute have distributed by the millions. I have one on my desk that has both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

There is one other factor at work that makes people compare court decisions to the text of the Constitution: the rise of alternative voices. When America had three TV networks and these networks and all the dailies took their cue from the NY Times and the AP, there was very little dissent among Middle America. The dissenters were on the Left, animated by hatred of capitalism and inspired by communism. They affected academia, the MSM and Hollywood. They had a net negative affect on Middle American adults although not some of their children who like the idea of adolescent rebellion and free sex.

Today we have The Godfather – Rush Limbaugh – who has made his name and fortune ridiculing the absurdities of the Left. He has been followed by Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck who broadcasts a daily class on the founding fathers, the original constitution and the conservative literature that was once consigned to the “ash heap of history” by the Progressives.

And unfortunately for the constitutional scholars arguing that forcing people to buy health insurance is a legitimate role of government - and constitutional to boot - because not buying insurance interferes with interstate commerce makes people say “huh?” How did we get to the point where not doing something can get you fined big bucks based on the Commerce Clause of the constitution?

Here is the Commerce Clause in full: (article 1, section 8, US Constitution)

[The Congress shall have Power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.

By reading the comments following the post by Ilya Somin you will read some very learned – and some very snarky – comments defending the law that the Democrats passed, Obama signed and a judge in Michigan upheld. The trail from article 1, section 8 of the Constitution to the government forcing you to buy health insurance is a Rube Goldberg contraption in law that was built over time. The relationship between the Constitution and the law is now so tenuous, the link so weak, that it takes the kind of scholarship once reserved for defining how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.  Like the soup company that kept slicing the mushroom thinner, the public has finally turned away.

I don’t really care how elegant a chain of decisions can be cited to justify the judicial torture of the Constitution to make it confess to anything.  The people who really make up the bulk of the country are willing to take to the streets and flock to the polling booths this fall. The thread between reality and casuistry has snapped and people have had enough.

Harry Reid's Viagra Sex Predator Program!

H/T: American Power

What do Liberals think of the South?

Liberal academics want to remake "The South." What do they think is the trouble with this region of the country?

[Connie Fowler and Diane Roberts, two academics]... expounded on the troubles and “isms” that the South faces, all of which were blamed on the conservative population, its guns and its religion

“We’ve been using this word all day long – sustainable,” said Fowler. “What is sustainable in the South. Hateness is not sustainable. Raping the earth is not sustainable. Classism is not sustainable. Stupidity is not sustainable."

So there you have it, you people (and you know who you are) clinging bitterly to your guns and religion. You are haters, rapists, class conscious destroyers of the earth ... and stupid.

But don't worry, the people who know better are going to change all that:

This new South will be a place where the diversity is as diverse as the food and culture are good. A place where “tricky” religion is in its place, “nutty right-wing talk radio” is replaced by Keb’Mo’s greatest hits, and the only “ism” one will find is “eco-tourism.”

For those who don't agree, well, perhaps they can be strangled by Joe Biden or dealt with in other ways: No Pressure.

 

Brown camp calls Meg Whiteman a whore

In a private conversation captured on audiotape, California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown or one of his aides can be heard referring to Republican rival Meg Whitman as a “whore” ...

Is Jerry Brown a pimp or a gigolo?  We report, you decide.

H/T: Daily Caller

Rules for Radical Conservatives: Know Your Opponent and the Constitution

Click on the link for the video with Glenn Reynolds and David Walsh.

Rule of law repealed

Earlier this year Congress passed and the President signed the law known as ObamaCare.  Today we learn that the law has been suspended by a bureaucrat for about 1 million people.

The question Americans face is: Are we a country ruled by law or by bureaucrat?

No one knows today whether the law will apply to him or her.  Is this what we mean when we say that we re ruled by laws, not the whims of individuals who rule over us?

The Founders understood that there are two fundamental ways in which government can exercise its authority. The first is a system of arbitrary rule, where the government decides how to act on an ad hoc basis, leaving decisions up to the whim of whatever official or officials happen to be in charge; the second way is to implement a system grounded in the rule of law, where legal rules are made in advance and published, binding both government and citizens and allowing the latter to know exactly what they have to do or not to do in order to avoid the coercive authority of the former.

Congress recently passed a law that changes the structure of the investment industry.  Should I try to get a federal official to change the rules for me?  Is that why we pass laws and then build in authority for others in government to fold, staple or mutilate them?

The Cost Of Moslem Intolerance

One of the many tragedies of the war in Iraq was the expulsion of the native Christian population. Before 2003, there were 1.5 million Christians in Iraq. Now there are fewer than 800,000.

But it's not new ...

Alas, throughout the Moslem world, there is an ancient antipathy against non-Moslems, or Moslems who are different than you. The infidels (non-Moslems) are seen as potentially disloyal, and what happened in Iraq over the last century just confirms that attitude. Currently you find Moslems attacking Buddhists in Thailand, Jews everywhere, Baha'is in Iran and Christians in Egypt, Iraq, the Philippines, Pakistan, Malaysia and elsewhere. This is not a sudden and unexpected outburst of Moslem violence against non-Moslems. It is normal, and at the root of Islamic terrorism. While this violent behavior represents only a small number of Moslems, it is a large minority (from a few percent of a population, to over half, according to opinion polls). Moreover, the majority of Moslems has not been willing, or able, to confront and suppress the Islamic radicals that not only spread death and destruction, but also besmirch all Moslems. This reveals a fundamental problem in the Islamic world, the belief that combining righteousness with murderous tactics, is often the road to power and spiritual salvation.

Where Moslems live, it's not healthy to be different.  Read the whole thing.

Black Judge Rejects Plea Deal for ‘White Boy’

From the Blaze

Nice.

A black judge from western Pennsylvania rejected a plea agreement for a man accused of fighting with police during a traffic stop saying it was “a ridiculous plea that only goes to white boys.”

Who's sleazier the print media or the Internet?

Bob Herbert is a nasty piece of work. I was going to comment that as Democrats look to an ever more gloomy election forecast, their adherents and advocates in the MFM are getting shriller, but that’s not really true. They have always been shrill. They have always lied and called names. They have always gone for the cheap ad hominem argument. They have always demonized their opponents while defending the felonies of their allies.

Which gets me to the Internet, which has been accused of taking political discourse to a new, lower level. No, the internet has simply fallen to the level that reptiles like Bob Herbert have always held in their commentary.

On any one day you get a much higher level of political discourse on one of the most popular websites – Instapundit – than you get on this – typical – column by Herbert.

When he’s not calling John Boehner “especially sleazy,” he’s claiming that Republicans have “lost their minds” - that they’re “peddling a fantasy” - refers to current levels of defense spending “insane” - claims that “G.O.P. operatives …have spent years frantically looting the U.S. Treasury on behalf of their corporate masters” – and joins the rest of the Democrats in their attempt to do a Saul Alinsky on John Boehner by referring to him as a “ring leader” as if the Republicans in congress were a criminal gang.

In between this frothing rage, we get some unsubstantiated assertions and unfounded predictions along with the evergreen demand for higher taxes that is sure to be found as a macro on their computers (CTRL-Alt-TAX for a paragraph on the absolute need to raise taxes).

Bob Herbert set the bar for character assassination pretty low and it’s hard for the Internet to Limbo below it. Kos did when he celebrated the death of Americans whose bodies were hung on a Baghdad bridge by commenting “screw them.” But for more civil discourse, avoid the NT Times and read the Internet. You won’t have to take a bath to wash the filth off afterward.

UPDATE:  Glenn Reynolds e-mails me to remind me that it was Markos Moulitsas who said "screw them."  For those who inhabit the blogosphere, he's the guiding light behind the Daily Kos (he goes by the nickname "Kos").  Thanks for giving me an opportunity to explain.

Trucks Encircle ABC, CBS, NBC, Challenge ‘Liberal’ Media to ‘Tell The Truth’

The effect on the people that work there will be apparent after a while.

Obama: "I have done a terrific job."

You have to be a "jackass" to claim that we are moving in the right direction.

The nation’s preeminent conservative talk radio host referred to Mr. Obama as a “jackass,” an “economic illiterate” and an “idiot, where capitalism is concerned.”

The rough stuff came during a monologue on the president’s position on extending the Bush tax cuts to all but the top two percent of wage earners.

Obama, Limbaugh says, is an "economic ignoramus" for not understanding how a "tax increase" on the wealthy won't stimulate growth.

Quoting an AP article from yesterday, Limbaugh pointed out Obama’s remarks at a meeting of his Economic Recovery Advisory Board that the wealthy would “take our ball and go home” if their tax cuts aren’t extended.

Limbaugh then addressed the following line to the president directly:

“Mr. Obama, our imam-child, they have already taken their trillion dollar ball home, and they’re sitting on it, you jackass.”

Hiding in plain sight just got a lot harder.

Eugene Robinson goes inveighing against what he calls the “shadowy” people behind the independent expenditures supporting Republicans.

The Republican grab for Congress is being funded by a pack of wolves masquerading as a herd of sheep.

 That seems to be a fault of Democracy, where speech is free, and people can band together to make their voices heard without the approval of people like Eugene Robinson and his allies in government. And if they want to keep their identities secret because of fear of political reprisals, they are accused of being in the pocket of "Big Oil" or "Big Casino" or - in Robinson's word:

gazillionaires who want to keep George W. Bush's tax breaks

Reprisals have become amazingly physical.

And reprisals include depriving someone of a job if they contribute to a cause that friends of Eugene Robinson don’t approve of.

You see, Eugene Robinson and his pals have not had much to fear when they beat up their opponents or have them fired. These events can take place in broad daylight, be videotaped and airbrushed out of existence by the same media that gives Eugene Robinson a prominent platform to label people who are afraid of him and his allies in the media, government and culture. Afraid of being beaten, kicked, slapped, prosecuted or fired for daring to agree with the majority of people in the country. To disagree with the Ruling Class is dangerous. They can take out their wrath on you in public and their actions will be hidden in plain sight.

Recently Robinson said that Christine O'Donnell: 

“looks like she might be a witch,”

Nice huh?

  

Thanks to the Internet and an Army of Davids, the MFM are not the ironclad gatekeepers of what people are allowed to know any longer. Hiding in plain sight has become a little harder for haters like Eugene Robinson.

UPDATE:  Instalanche:  Thanks, Glenn.

Race and Presidential Approval

At NRO Daniel Foster remarks on the apparent fact that Obama remains overwhelmingly popular with the black community. 

The L.A. Times highlights the latest Gallup numbers on President Obama, leading with Obama’s rock solid 91 percent approval among African Americans even as his broader approval rating is stuck at 44-45 percent.

I recall last year, when the president’s ratings were still north of 50 percent, some fuss on the Right was made about his approval among blacks being out of whack wit his overall numbers, and the usual charges of racism were slung around with typical carelessness. But this is a difficult issue. The suggestion that Obama wasn’t really popular in 2009 if you took black approval out of the equation at least sounded dangerously like the suggestion that Obama wouldn’t be as popular if there simply were no black people. And that’s not cool.

But I do think it is a perfectly legitimate question to ask where Obama’s approval numbers would be if his approval among blacks changed in the same way his overall approval has — in other words, to ask, what if black approval for Obama responded to Obama’s policies the same way overall approval has?

Racial solidarity is a fact. It was the basis for black slavery in America (as opposed to slavery in other countries where people of all races were enslaved). It was the basis for segregation and all of the injustices that black people experienced at the hands of the white population.

But anyone who has studied sociology knows that racial and ethnic solidarity is a phenomenon of all people. When Hutus slaughtered Tutsis, when Nazis slaughtered Jews, when Latino gangs and black gangs clash in the US we are experiencing examples of racial solidarity expressed in violence.

Why should it surprise us then that the majority of blacks in America should stand by "their" man no matter what his policies? It may take several more generations before skin color becomes as meaningless (or meaningful) to black people as it is to white people. That is not to say that whites in America are color blind, but they elected a black man as President and that says something very powerful to those who study race.

Liberal protestor assaults Human Events reporter at "One nation" rally.

Via Protein Wisdom

Meanwhile from the bowels of MFM:

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank on Sunday said conservative commentator Glenn Beck is dangerous.

For some odd reason, the MFM always accuse the Right of being violent but it's always the Left that is violent.

Comment:

Warning about the dangers of socialism, national socialism, Nazism and Hitlerism is dangerous?

Tell you what, with talk like that it's Millbank who sounds crazy.

Actually Beck sounds more like Churchill on those topics.

Sir Winston spent the 1930s warning Britain (and America) against the Nazis. And Churchill was marginalized by the ruling elites and the broadcast media monopoly of the BBC.

Is Milbank nuts?  No, he's just a journalistic hack and smear merchant.

A speech in Berlin by Geert Wilders

Powerline: A Warning From London, A Speech In Berlin

Germany's national identity, its democracy and economic prosperity, is being threatened by the political ideology of Islam. In 1848, Karl Marx began his Communist Manifesto with the famous words: "A specter is haunting Europe - the specter of communism." Today, another specter is haunting Europe. It is the specter of Islam. This danger, too, is political. Islam is not merely a religion, as many people seem to think: Islam is mainly a political ideology. ...

[T]he renowned Oxford historian J.M. Roberts wrote in 1985: "Although we carelessly speak of Islam as a 'religion'; that word carries many overtones of the special history of western Europe. The Muslim is primarily a member of a community, the follower of a certain way, an adherent to a system of law, rather than someone holding particular theological views." The Flemish Professor Urbain Vermeulen, the former president of the European Union of Arabists and Islamicists, too, points out that "Islam is primarily a legal system, a law," rather than a religion. ...

These are not just statements by opponents of Islam. Islamic scholars say the same thing. ... Abul Ala Maududi, the influential 20th century Pakistani Islamic thinker, wrote - I quote, emphasizing that these are not my words but those of a leading Islamic scholar - "Islam is not merely a religious creed [but] a revolutionary ideology and jihad refers to that revolutionary struggle ... to destroy all states and governments anywhere on the face of the earth, which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam." ...

After Muhammad's death, based upon his words and deeds, Islam developed Sharia, an elaborate legal system which justified the repressive governance of the world by divine right - including rules for jihad and for the absolute control of believers and non-believers. Sharia is the law of Saudi Arabia and Iran, among other Islamic states. It is also central to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which in article 24 of its Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam, proclaims that "all rights and freedoms are subject to the Islamic Sharia." The OIC is not a religious institution; it is a political body. It constitutes the largest voting block in the United Nations and writes reports on so-called "Islamophobia" in Western Countries which accuse us of human rights violations. To speak in biblical terms: They look for a speck in our eye, but deny the beam in their own.

Under Sharia law people in the conquered territories have no legal rights, not even the right to life and to own property, unless they convert to Islam. ...

Politicians from almost all establishment [parties] today are facilitating Islamization. They are cheering for every new Islamic school, Islamic bank, Islamic court. They regard Islam as being equal to our own culture. Islam or freedom? It does not really matter to them. But it does matter to us. The entire establisment elite - universities, churches, trade unions, the media, politicians - are putting our hard-earned liberties at risk. They talk about equality, but amazingly fail to see how in Islam women have fewer rights than men and infidels have fewer rights than adherents of Islam. ...

As you know, I am standing trial in the Netherlands. On Monday, I have to go to court again and I will have to spend most of the coming month there. I have been brought to court because of my opinions on Islam and because I have voiced these opinions in speeches, articles and in my documentary film Fitna. I live under constant police protection because Islamic extremists want to assassinate me, and I am in court because the Dutch establishment - most of them non-Muslims - wants to silence me.

Click on the link to Powerline or the text of the while speech HERE.  Wilders is one of a number of Westerners who is under sentence of death pronounced by Islam.  How long will this go on?  How long will we allow it to go on?

The Global Warming Hoax: A Summary

From Powerline: 

This week's SEPP newsletter includes an excellent piece by Dr. Harrison "Jack" Schmitt, a former United States Senator from New Mexico as well as a geologist and former Apollo astronaut who currently is an aerospace consultant. Dr. Schmitt reviews some of the basic evidence that the alarmists try to wish away.

There has been an absolute natural increase in global surface temperature of half a degree Centigrade per 100 years (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) over the last three and a half centuries. Observational climate data and objective interpretations of those data strongly indicate that nature, not human activity, exerts the primary influence on this current long term warming and on all global climate variations. Human influence through use of fossil fuels has been and remains minor if even detectable. Claims to the contrary only find support in highly questionable climate models that fail repeatedly against the reality of nature. What, then, stimulates historically and geologically observed, sometimes slow and sometimes radical, changes in climate?

The primary alternative hypothesis to human-caused global warming is natural climate change driven by the Sun.

Imagine: the main factor influencing the Earth's temperature is the sun.  Who would have imagined it?

911 Callers Are a Joke in Broward County

Want to know what people are using the emergency number "911" for around Miami? 

According to the Broward Sheriff's Office call center, nearly half the 911 calls they receive are for things not quite a life or death situation - unless you consider a fast food order an emergency.

...

"My toilet's overflowing, what do I do? That's my personal favorite," BSO Sheriff Al Lamberti said.

While it's a stretch, a busted toilet at least could, conceivably, be considered an emergency. But there is no rationale for the number calls that sound something like this:

"I ordered chicken nuggets and they don't have chicken nuggets," one woman called 911 to report.

The fast food offenses are usually the most common and often the most annoying because people think it's really an emergency worthy of 911, one operator said.

Al Gore carried Broward County by 67% in 2000 if that tells you anything.

Apple may surpass Exxon as most valuable company

Let's see: Exxon makes a commodity that the world can't live without.  Apple makes electronic toys; pretty electronic toys ... but if every Apple product disappeared today, the world would go on with barely a ripple.

This is a very clear warning bell for owners of Apple stock.

Obama's teleprompters are 'idiot boards

Mondale calls Obama's teleprompters "idiot boards."  Well, yes ...

What is the rule of law?

A writer for the NY Times apparently has no clue what the rule of law is. The rule of law basically means that we are governed by law, that everyone is under the law, and that we are not subject to capricious and arbitrary punishment or reward based on the whims of a ruler.

Here is the definition of Kate Zernike, a reporter for the NY Times:

“the rule of law,” Hayek’s term for the unwritten code that prohibits the government from interfering with the pursuit of “personal ends and desires.”

It is hard to imagine that someone in the Times proofreading staff or oneof the editors would let that be printed .... unless, no one on the payroll of the NY Times knows that we are supposed to be governed by laws rather than by dictators who make it up as they go along.

Mainstream Pakistani Jihadism and the Times Square Bomb Plot

If mainstream leaders of Islam embrace terror as a legitimate aim and aggressive Jihad as a legitimate method, what reason is there to believe that Islam is peaceful?

Andrew G. Bostom concludes:

For Mr Usmani, “the question is whether aggressive battle is by itself commendable or not.” “If it is, why should the Muslims stop simply because territorial expansion in these days is regarded as bad? And if it is not commendable, but deplorable, why did Islam not stop it in the past?” He answers his own question as follows: “Even in those days . . . aggressive jihads were waged . . . because it was truly commendable for establishing the grandeur of the religion of Allah.”Usmani argues that Muslims should live peacefully in countries such as Britain, where they have the freedom to practice Islam, only until they gain enough power to engage in battle.

Usmani explodes the myths that the creed of offensive, expansionist jihad represents a distortion of traditional Islamic thinking, or that this living institution is somehow irrelevant to our era. More ominously, mainstream Islamic legists like Mr. Usmani, mainstream Islamic military theorists, epitomized by Brigadier S.K. Malik, and mainstream Islamic government advisory groups such as Paksitan’s Council of Islamic Ideology motivate and validate the murderous acts of jihadism committed (or attempted) by pious Muslims, including Faisal Abbasi and Faisal Shahzad.

Read the whole thing.

Compare the rallies

The Glenn Bech rally vs. Obama's "One Nation" rally.

Even with paid supporters, the Left could not come close to Glenn Beck's crowd.

Photos from the "One Nation" Rally

Go to Doug Ross

“Gloria, this is almost delusional!”

Greta Van Susteren shred's Gloria Allred's credibility


I think this will help Meg Whitman. This election season, the voters are more than a little fed up with dirty politics.

Democrats: the party of plutocrats.

Victor Davis Hanson on the uber-wealthy now running the Democrat Party:

I cannot fathom how the Democratic Party became run by those who live lives nothing remotely similar to what they profess. Yes, I know the Roosevelt-Kennedy tradition of limousine liberals, but today’s chasm between word and deed is stunning — and never remarked on. Are we to believe that prep-schooled and Ivy Leagued millionaire Barack Obama is the blue-collar face of the Democratic Party, while one of twelve children John Boehner is some sort of J.P. Morgan insider rich man? No wonder that Obama must fake his cadences, bowl, and try to eat cabbage instead of arugula.


The Al Gore, John Kerry, Nancy Pelosi, George Soros phenomenon is baffling. The best I can make of it goes something like this. Once someone makes enough money truly to be exempt from worries over taxation (but even Kerry proved that $1 billion does not quite end the impulse to dodge sales taxes), or is deeply burrowed within government so that almost everything is free or subsidized, then some sort of human desire to help the “other” kicks in as a sort of penance for the enjoyment of privilege.


How could Barack Obama, community organizer par excellence, send his kids to Sidwell Friends? How does Bill Gates, Sr. tour the country, hectoring to re-impose inheritance taxes? Did Al Gore need the extra Montecito home or John Kerry the $7 million yacht...


I cannot quite believe how quietly and without audit America’s moneyed and cognitive elites became such hectoring populists — with the constant assumption they could still live, school, work, and marry largely among like kind — oh so distant from the objects of their concern.

To Liberals, having Congress worry about the constitutionality of laws they pass is "weird," "wacky" and "dangerous"

Dahlia Lithwick found Christine O'Donnell's view that she should consider whether a law she voted on as a Senator was constitutional was "weird."

Jonah Goldberg, and lots of other people who opined on this subject thought Lithwick's comments not only weird but dangerous.

Before we get to the historical niceties, a question:


Does anyone, anywhere, think legislators should vote for legislation they think is unconstitutional? Anyone? Anyone?


How about presidents? Should they sign such legislation into law?


Yet, according to this creepy logic, there's no reason for congressmen to pass, obey or even consider the supreme law of the land. Re-impose slavery? Sure! Let's see if we can catch the Supreme Court asleep at the switch. Nationalize the TV stations? Establish a king? Kill every first-born child? Why not? It ain't unconstitutional until the Supreme Court says so!


And of course, that means the president can't veto legislation because it's unconstitutional, because that's apparently not his job. Wouldn't want to "encroach" on the judiciary!


Of course, reasonable people understand how absurd all of this is.

We have long gone past the point where reasonable people understand that Liberals are absurd.

No Pressure 2010

The Is What a Radical Republican Looks Like

The real slaves that were freed were Republican. The ones who enslaved them were Democrats.

And they did it again.

Frederick Douglass should be as much the face of the Republican party as Reagan and Goldwater.

Kevin Williamson reminds us the it was Republicans that ended slavery, and it took more than time, it took a Civil War.

“Yes, it took time to free the slaves. Time and a Republican president. One who had the courage of his convictions.”

What Do We Do With Barack Obama?

Michael Wolff:

How did everybody get it so wrong is a question many people seem to be asking themselves—not least of all these people slinking out of the White House.


It is not just that he has turned out to be something different. In fact, reasonably, he isn’t that different. The more powerful sense of remorse or at least sheepishness may come from people now asking themselves how and why they came to think of him as different than he was. More confounding, they may not really now be able to remember just who exactly they thought he was.


So to refocus the story: Some mass misperception put Barack Obama in the White House and now nobody knows what to do with him.

We have a problem and it was created by the MFM and the Liberals: how do you fire an affirmative action hire?  And who is this "everybody" who got it so wrong, Kemo Sabe?

Eco-fascism jumps the shark: massive, epic fail!

ObamaNomics: Failing both politically and economically.

Phil Gramm, in a scholarly op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Echoes of the Great Depression makes several irrefutable points:

 

• Under the Obama administration, the US is recovering much more slowly than Europe.
• The Obama administration resemble to policies of FDR, with equally dismal results.
• The Obama administration is aping FDR in demonizing business with equally negative results.
• The Roosevelt administration remained popular while the Obama administration is not.

Some telling quotes:

The chart nearby compares total 2007 employment levels in the United States, the United Kingdom, the 16 euro zone countries, the G-7 countries and all OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries with those of the second quarter of 2010. There are 4.6% fewer people employed in the U.S. today than at the start of the recession. Euro zone countries have lost 1.7% of their jobs. Total employment in the U.K. is down 0.6%, G-7 average employment is down 2.4%, and OECD employment has fallen 1.9%.

Winston Churchill could say exactly the same thing today as he did in the 1930s:

Winston Churchill gave a contemporary evaluation of the Roosevelt policy by observing, in the April 24, 1935, Daily Mail, "Nearly two thousand millions Sterling have been poured out to prime the pump of prosperity; but prosperity has not begun to flow."
...
Churchill, who was generally guarded when criticizing New Deal policies, could not hold back. "The disposition to hunt down rich men as if they were noxious beasts," he noted in "Great Contemporaries" (1939), is "a very attractive sport." But "confidence is shaken and enterprise chilled, and the unemployed queue up at the soup kitchens or march out to the public works with ever growing expense to the taxpayer and nothing more appetizing to take home to their families than the leg or wing of what was once a millionaire. . . It is indispensable to the wealth of nations and to the wage and life standards of labour, that capital and credit should be honoured and cherished partners in the economic system. . . ."

Read the whole thing!

Democrats for Death Panels

Via Powerline we see how prominent Democrats like Robert Reich and Gary McDowell are frankly addressing the issues of just letting older people die when they could live longer - because it just costs too much.


They won't be called Death Panels, of course.  They will be called by a more humane sounding name.  But their function will be to tell the older patient that his or her life is just not worth saving; that he's costing "society" too much.  And from their death sentence there will be no appeal.

Death Panels: thank you Sarah Palin for telling it like it is.