Fair To Whom, Mr. President?

It’s becoming abundantly clear, and incredibly sad, that the sympathies and concerns of the President of the United States far too often lie with our enemies.

Witness his incredible statements regarding the self-defense measures recently passed by the duly-elected legislature of the state of Arizona. The day after the measure was signed into law by Governor Jan Brewer (who would have deserved impeachment had she not signed it) the President said that the law “threatens to undermine basic notions of fairness that we cherish as Americans.”

It seems to me odd that the man sworn to protect and defend our nation has such an magnanimous sense of fairness when it comes to criminals and enemies, but seems little concerned with the plight of the good citizens of Arizona.

In making this statement, he slanders, seemingly without concern or even an awareness that he is doing so, the peace officers of an entire state. In a clearly-worded sixteen page bill, which is much more restrictive in its structure than the law which guides federal agents in the same circumstances, the officers are instructed that they may not stop anyone without clear probable cause, and then must have reason to believe that the person is undocumented before even asking for proof of citizenship.

It is a cumbersome two-step burden, neither of which federal agents would be forced to bear - should they actually be sent to the border in sufficient numbers to get the job done.

Apparently, to our President, peace officers are not to be trusted with these basic instructions, and so, employing a twisted and misguided logic, he stands in defense of the lawbreaker and smears the defenders of peaceful citizens.

The new law expressly states that race or ethnicity cannot be the sole reason for stopping a person and questioning the legality of his presence here, yet the President demagogues the law as racial profiling, and ponders a court challenge. Any sane American must wonder exactly whose side he is on.

Mr. President, the federal government was not instituted to rule over the populace, it was instituted to govern by the consent of the governed. Its primary purpose is to protect its citizenry, not to uphold the mythical “rights” of foreign nationals who sneak onto our soil, knowing that the instant they do they are here in violation of federal law.

When the principle raison d’etre for the federal government is security, and a fundamental requirement of security is the defense of our borders, federal agents need no warrant or probable cause to stop and search, or demand documentation from, anyone entering the country. Yet the Arizona law insists upon it, making it less prone to abuse than the federal law.

But never let it be said that common sense plays a role in this administration.

Tell me, sir, what the good people of the state of Arizona are to think when their neighbors are murdered or kidnapped by what are essentially foreign invaders, while their federal government cannot take time out from systematically encroaching on their individual liberties to perform the most basic function of a government?

The President does this time and time again – and now we have come to expect it from him. His sense of fairness seems to have been seriously warped by his leftist upbringing and influences, as he continues to heap indignity upon indignity on the citizens of his own nation during this most divisive Presidential term in the history of our United States.

I am struck by the number of Americans that now look upon Barack Obama as a PINO: President In Name Only. For many of us, his brief time in office has been an almost unbearable litany of apologies and appeasement coupled with harangues against decent American citizens who dare to speak out against him or his radical Congress.

The President has called the Arizona law “misguided” and “irresponsible.” One can only wonder when he will deliver the lecture on responsibility to those who purchased homes they couldn’t afford with mortgages they were unable to pay. But that’s for a different discussion.

It sickens me to suspect that the President of the United States does not have the best interest of the citizens he has sworn to defend at heart - but what else are we to think?

Do you want to know what sickens me even more? Thinking of the men who, to protect our sovereignty, gave their last full measure of devotion at Bunker Hill, Yorktown and on filthy prison ships anchored in the East River; at Gettysburg and Sharpsburg and in Andersonville prison; on the decks of the Maine and on San Juan Hill; in the Ardennes Forest and at Verdun; on the beaches of Normandy and Iwo Jima, in Bastogne, in Sicily, on Okinawa, in Leyte Gulf; in Inchon and Seoul, at Ia Drang, the Mekong Delta and in pestilent, stinking pits in Hanoi; on dusty roadsides in Iraq and on bleak mountains in Afghanistan and in countless other slices of hell around the globe.

Dead because they believed in this nation and its Constitution; dead so that they would endure. They believed, and we believe, in the goodness of America and the greatness of America, and before this is over we will have set things right again or we will go to our graves trying.

Barack Obama. God? Or Idiot...

Evan Thomas of Newsweek blew out all the stops this week in an appearance on MSNBC. Try not to read this after eating:

Reagan was all about America, and you talked about it. Obama is ‘we are above that now.’ We’re not just parochial, we’re not just chauvinistic, we’re not just provincial. We stand for something – I mean in a way Obama’s standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God. He’s...going to bring all different sides together.

Now contrast this view with some reality - an unteleprompted, unscripted attempt at answering a DIRECT question on a DIRECT issue. He takes more than 3 minutes to say, essentially, nothing - fumbling, bumbling and obfuscating in a way that would have had the media convulsed with alternating fits of laughter and outrage had it been George Bush:

Two Presidents. Two Speeches. One Damned Shame.

The evening of 6 June, 1944. D-Day. The President addresses the nation:

And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest -- until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war.

For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and goodwill among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.

Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

And for us at home -- fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas, whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them -- help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.

Many people have urged that I call the nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.

Give us strength, too -- strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.
And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.

And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade. Let not the keeness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment -- let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.

With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace -- a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God.

The afternoon of 3 April, 2009. The President, speaking in France:

In America, there is a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world.

Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.

America's Last Mistake?

Edmund Burke said "Constitute government how you please, infinitely the greater part of it must depend upon the exercise of the powers which are left at large to the prudence and uprightness of ministers of state."

Simply put, our government is really no better than the men we elect to run it. And now, we have elected a usurper.

That the American public has made a mistake in electing a man that has never run any organization, and about whom we actually know very little, is something that can be chalked up to happenstance. However, having already assumed extra-constitutional powers in a way never dreamed of by any of his predecessors, having busted the budget in a way that has led to the greatest national debt in our history, with no end in sight and with nationalized healthcare looming, Obama’s popularity seems to show little sign of abating.

We peasants should be storming the gates. We should be gathering in Washington, torches ablaze and pitchforks aloft, by the tens of millions. The government is not only stealing our money, they are stealing our liberty. But instead, whatever is left of the American spirit threatens our President with only this: a "decline" in approval ratings to the low 60’s, and a Strongly Approve/Disapprove differential of 10%, making Obama still hugely popular.

With blind media complicity, the government has twisted, contorted and then finally simply shredded the constitution; "delineated powers" meaning whatever a particular branch of government decides it should mean on that particular day in order to accomplish its policy goals. Rule of law is lost – examples abound everywhere, from GM’s boardroom to a Supreme Court chair being readied for a Justice who promises to rule with “empathy.”

We like to think that the American public is made of sterner stuff – indeed, it used to be so. It wasn't too long ago that voters took Bill Clinton out behind the woodshed in his first mid-term election, giving us the Gingrich Congress and the Contract With America, a Congress that ultimately dragged Clinton kicking and screaming into economic prosperity, a prosperity for which Democrats take credit even to this day.

I would like to believe that the day of reckoning is coming for Barack Obama, too. I would like to believe that the current Congress will be swept from power in 2010, replaced with men who possess more…sanity. I would like to believe that the American people will embrace rugged individualism once again, that we will yearn to take care of ourselves and our families, and reject the government’s offer to be the milk-engorged mother of us all.

I’m just not sure I can believe it. And I wonder, when will that "offer" become an insistence?

Cheney v. Obama on National Security: No Contest

Yesterday, in a stunning display of contrasts so vivid that it was practically blinding, Barack Obama and Richard Cheney squared off on the ways and means of fighting the War on Terror. Obama, as he so often does, revealed a lack of depth and an alarming naiveté – proving once again that he is effective only when he is in campaign mode or mouthing platitudes. As a leader? Not so much. In fact, not at all.

In the Obama White House, where political gain is the coin of the realm, national security is merely one more chip to be tossed into the pot.

Employing (because it is all he knows how to do) warmed-over, left-wing talking points, Obama repeated the hackneyed old mantra that the policies which kept America safe for 7 years after the tragic attacks of 9/11 have actually made America, well, less safe.

The logic is tortured, tired, and was best left on the campaign trail, where he fed it to the Kos crowd on a daily basis, and where they ate it up like a crunchy granola bar laced with hashish. In other words, it met all of their minimum daily requirements for Bush/Cheney bashing, got them high on America-hatred, and left them ravenously hungry for more.

Speaking from notes at the American Enterprise Institute, shortly after the President's teleprompter winked off, former Vice President Cheney simply took Barack to school.

Exposing Obama’s stump-speech rhetoric as a not-so-veiled partisan attempt to yet again demonize the former administration, Cheney laid out in clear and concise terms the thinking and strategy behind the Bush Administration’s response to the attacks on 9/11. In doing so, he exposed the mortal danger into which Obama puts the citizens of this country, the citizens he has sworn to protect.

Cheney:

In 1993, they bombed the World Trade Center, hoping to bring down the towers with a blast from below. The attacks continued in 1995, with the bombing of U.S. facilities in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; the killing of servicemen at Khobar Towers in 1996; the attack on our embassies in East Africa in 1998; the murder of American sailors on the USS Cole in 2000; and then the hijackings of 9/11, and all the grief and loss we suffered on that day.

Nine-eleven caused everyone to take a serious second look at threats that had been gathering for a while, and enemies whose plans were getting bolder and more sophisticated. Throughout the 90s, America had responded to these attacks, if at all, on an ad hoc basis. The first attack on the World Trade Center was treated as a law enforcement problem, with everything handled after the fact - crime scene, arrests, indictments, convictions, prison sentences, case closed.

That's how it seemed from a law enforcement perspective, at least - but for the terrorists the case was not closed. For them, it was another offensive strike in their ongoing war against the United States. And it turned their minds to even harder strikes with higher casualties. [snip]

To make certain our nation country never again faced such a day of horror, we developed a comprehensive strategy, beginning with far greater homeland security to make the United States a harder target. But since wars cannot be won on the defensive, we moved decisively against the terrorists in their hideouts and sanctuaries, and committed to using every asset to take down their networks. We decided, as well, to confront the regimes that sponsored terrorists, and to go after those who provide sanctuary, funding, and weapons to enemies of the United States. We turned special attention to regimes that had the capacity to build weapons of mass destruction, and might transfer such weapons to terrorists.

We did all of these things, and with bipartisan support put all these policies in place. It has resulted in serious blows against enemy operations ... the take-down of the A.Q. Khan network ... and the dismantling of Libya's nuclear program. It's required the commitment of many thousands of troops in two theaters of war, with high points and some low points in both Iraq and Afghanistan - and at every turn, the people of our military carried the heaviest burden. Well over seven years into the effort, one thing we know is that the enemy has spent most of this time on the defensive - and every attempt to strike inside the United States has failed. [snip]

In the years after 9/11, our government also understood that the safety of the country required collecting information known only to the worst of the terrorists. And in a few cases, that information could be gained only through tough interrogations.

In top secret meetings about enhanced interrogations, I made my own beliefs clear. I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program. The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed. They were legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do. The intelligence officers who questioned the terrorists can be proud of their work and proud of the results, because they prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people.

Our successors in office have their own views on all of these matters.
By presidential decision, last month we saw the selective release of documents relating to enhanced interrogations. This is held up as a bold exercise in open government, honoring the public's right to know. We're informed, as well, that there was much agonizing over this decision.

Yet somehow, when the soul-searching was done and the veil was lifted on the policies of the Bush administration, the public was given less than half the truth. The released memos were carefully redacted to leave out references to what our government learned through the methods in question. Other memos, laying out specific terrorist plots that were averted, apparently were not even considered for release. For reasons the administration has yet to explain, they believe the public has a right to know the method of the questions, but not the content of the answers.[snip]

...we promised an all-out effort to protect this country. We said we would marshal all elements of our nation's power to fight this war and to win it. We said we would never forget what had happened on 9/11, even if the day came when many others did forget. We spoke of a war that would "include dramatic strikes, visible on TV, and covert operations, secret even in success." We followed through on all of this, and we stayed true to our word.

To the very end of our administration, we kept al-Qaeda terrorists busy with other problems. We focused on getting their secrets, instead of sharing ours with them. And on our watch, they never hit this country again. After the most lethal and devastating terrorist attack ever, seven and a half years without a repeat is not a record to be rebuked and scorned, much less criminalized. It is a record to be continued until the danger has passed.

Along the way there were some hard calls. No decision of national security was ever made lightly, and certainly never made in haste. As in all warfare, there have been costs - none higher than the sacrifices of those killed and wounded in our country's service. And even the most decisive victories can never take away the sorrow of losing so many of our own - all those innocent victims of 9/11, and the heroic souls who died trying to save them.

For all that we've lost in this conflict, the United States has never lost its moral bearings. And when the moral reckoning turns to the men known as high-value terrorists, I can assure you they were neither innocent nor victims. As for those who asked them questions and got answers: they did the right thing, they made our country safer, and a lot of Americans are alive today because of them.

This is clear-thinking, honest leadership - something that is sickeningly absent in Washington these days. Richard Cheney has laid out in a clear and concise manner the dangers we face not only from Islamic terrorists, but from the halls of power in our own country. Many of us have taken heed, many have not. What remains to be seen is whether or not the voting public has the intelligence and courage to do something about it.

Indeed, I often wonder now if the majority of Americans even want to.

If you have not yet done so, I urge you all to watch this speech in its entirety; here is the link to the first part, the rest of the links are on the target page:

Part 1

In Obamaland, Getting Sick Could Be The Death Of You

The Thug-in-Chief had a sitdown this week with the bigwigs from the healthcare industry, both the insurers and providers. Can you picture Obama walking around the room with a Louisville Slugger in his hands, a la Al Capone? I can.

Needless to say, the meeting went well for the Pres, but not so good for me and you.

What came out of this little get-together was a pledge by the healthcare industry to save $2 trillion over the next ten years. Savings are good. Eliminating wasteful spending is good, too. Of course, what remains unspoken could kill you - and that is the methods that will be employed to save this $2 trillion. Here's a quick rundown on the most likely scenarios:

1. CUTS IN PHYSICIAN'S COMPENSATION. As the universe of those that require health care expands with the aging of the baby-boom generation, the incentives for students to enter the field will diminish as the potential compensation diminishes. Without the expectation of a big payday at the end of those long, hard years of study and self-deprivation, more and more of our best and brightest will finds other areas of interest. Fewer, and less qualified, doctors will be treating more and more patients - just the thought of it is enough to makes you sick.

2. LIMITED AVAILABILITY OF THE BEST DRUGS. It comes as no surptrise to learn that the newest drugs are often the best drugs, and the best drugs are the most expensive drugs. Well, if we are going to cut costs, perhaps the older, less effective drug might save us a few bucks. More people in Canada die of cancer than in the United States, and coincidentally, 44% of all new drugs to hit the market are priced out of Canada's healthcare system. The linkage is inescapable and real.

3. PREVENTIVE CARE WILL DECREASE - NOT INCREASE. It will be one of the first things to go under the rationing system that will have to be imposed to make the cuts a reality. Routine colonoscopies? Look in the rear view mirror and you might get a glimpse.

Dick Morris writes:

Obama's pretension that nobody will find changes in their current health insurance plans except for a magical reduction in their cost by $2,500 a year is a fool's proposition. Private health insurers will be no more private than TARP-funded banks or government-subsidized car companies are in Obama's America. They will be controlled by government health care planners who will approve treatments, limit drug use, hold down medical incomes and bring their cost-cutting programs to bear. Inevitably, their axe will fall on the oldest and the sickest among us, those least "deserving" of our newly limited and, under Obama's program, diminishing, health-care resources.


The other radical changes Obama is bringing about in our nation can always be reversed. New taxes can be repealed or lowered. That which was nationalized can be privatized. Government that has grown can be cut. But once the health care system is extended to cover everyone, with no commensurate increase in the resources available, the change will be forever. The vicious cycle of cuts in medical resources and cuts in the number of doctors and nurses will doom health care in this country. This wanton destruction will not be reversible by any bill or program. A crucial part of our quality of life — the best health care in the world — will be gone forever.

Mr. Obama, Your Job Is to Ruthlessly Protect the People

An excerpt from the remarkable pen of Nicholas Guariglia:

Obama's remarks at this week's press conference cast grave doubts on his understanding of a president's most important responsibility.

Let’s play devil’s advocate and grant Obama all of his pretenses and premises: waterboarding is torture and the United States should never torture. Fine. But Obama still does not seem to understand the point of the American presidency. It is not to go abroad and apologize for our 150-year-old sins. It is not to ingratiate yourself to tyrants. It is not to run private industry. It is not to be on our television screens every waking hour. It is not to pose shirtless for magazines. It is not to dance with Ellen DeGeneres. It is not to serve one man’s narcissism. It is not to remind us to wash our hands before supper.

It is to protect the populace and pose as a vanguard for the citizenry, during the four or eight years that the office is temporarily in your hands. To do whatever it takes — even if it means Obama himself risks violating his own conscience and subjects himself to the possible whims of a foreign war crimes court. His solemn responsibility and obligation is to sacrifice his reputation, his career, his job, his political ambitions, his values, his preferences, his inclinations — even his life — to protect the American people. That is what we trusted him to do. That is what we elected him to do.

That is not what he is prepared to do.

One must wonder: how far would Mr. Obama go to save Sasha and Malia? What if, by some devastating travesty, President Obama’s daughters were to fall captive to al-Qaeda neck-slicers and an operative already in our custody knew the precise location of the two little girls? How far would Barack Obama — the man himself, as a terrified father — go to extract information from the detainee before him? Would he play loud music in his cell? Would he put him into an uncomfortable yoga position for a few hours? Would he pour water down his nose? And more importantly, wouldn’t he want to know the content of the memos that described which methods effectively worked against this particular detainee?

For if President Obama applies a different moral code to saving the lives of his loved ones than he does to protecting the country, he is undermining both the rationale for which the executive branch exists as well as his own intellectual honesty.

People of all political persuasions should be able to agree on three irrefutable geopolitical realities: 1) there are tens of thousands of people across this world who consider it a theological duty to destroy American cities; 2) these people are not going away soon and cannot be deterred, dissuaded, or bought off; 3) one way or another, these people will soon have the means to achieve their ends — probably within the decade, certainly within our lifetimes. This isn’t merely a possibility. It’s a probability. The only thing stopping this outcome is extracting information and quickly responding to actionable intelligence.

Let’s get serious, please. We cannot have a sincere discussion about what we should and should not be doing until we can weigh the pros and cons of a particular technique’s effectiveness. President Obama should allow the public to see what methods worked and then look into the camera and promise never to replicate those methods under any circumstances.

Only then will Obama’s pledge of being “judged as commander-in-chief on how safe [he is] keeping the American people” consist of political courage and backbone.

The entire article is here.

Obama Dithered While SEALs Burned.

News is leaking that the Obama administration delayed permission to use lethal force to end the hostage standoff with Somali pirates. Decisive he was NOT, as the Navy SEAL team was ordered to operate under strict, non-lethal rules of engagement.

Military sources close to the scene accused the President of actually hampering the rescue effort. According to Jospeh Farah of World Net Daily:

Multiple opportunities to free the captain of the Maersk Alabama from three young pirates were missed, these sources say – all because a Navy SEAL team was not immediately ordered to the scene and then forced to operate under strict, non-lethal rules of engagement.

They say the response duty office at the Pentagon was initially unwilling to grant an order to use lethal force to rescue Phillips. They also report the White House refused to authorize deployment of a Navy SEAL team to the location for 36 hours, despite the recommendation of the on-scene commander.

The White House also turned down two rescue plans offered up by the Seal commander on the scene and the captain of the USS Bainbridge.

The SEAL team operated under rules of engagement that required them to do nothing unless the hostage's life was in "imminent' danger.

Eventually, the commander of the Bainbridge decided to take matters into his own hands when it came to interpreting his instructions not to fire unless there was "imminent danger," giving the President a plausible back door should things have gone wrong.

In fact, when the USS Bainbridge dispatched a rigid-hull inflatable boat to bring supplies to the Maersk Alabama, it came under fire that could not be returned even though the SEAL team had the pirates in their sights.

Many hours before the fatal shots were fired, taking out the three young pirates, Phillips jumped into the Indian Ocean with the idea of giving the snipers a clear target. However, the SEAL team was still under orders not to shoot.

Hours later, frustrated by the missed opportunities to resolve the standoff, the commander of the Bainbridge and the captain of the Navy SEAL team determined they had operational authority to evaluate the risk to the hostage, and took out the pirates at the first opportunity – finally freeing Phillips.

Administration Deals American Public a Left Hook, a Right Cross and an Uppercut.

If you’ve been scratching your head wondering just what the hell this administration is doing, I think you had better start wearing a hat before you give yourself brain damage.

In a week of stunning cluelessness, our government has strung together three haymakers, once again utterly baffling right-thinking Americans across the fruited plain. Right-thinking Americans who want to stay alive, that is.

Let’s do this in no particular order. First the left hook: The President and his crew have decided that a symbol synonomous with the name of Jesus needed to be hidden when Obama spoke at Georgetown University, which, for those of you who have not picked up on this, is a Catholic university. Having taken away the risk of offending atheists everywhere, Obama has managed to offend Christians everywhere.

But, really, from this man did you expect anything different? If Obama is at the podium, his handlers certainly don’t want the public reminded that there may be someone greater than he. MAY be. They’re not sure.

Here comes the right cross: In a memo to the nation’s law enforcement agencies that would qualify as the most damaging, divisive, derisive, demeaning and never-to-be-topped-were-it-not-for-the-fact-that-we-still-have-almost-four-years-to-go, Obama’s Homeland Security czar has smeared the military, Christians, anti-immigrationists, states-righters, pro-lifers and those that “are antagonistic towards the new presidential administration.”

The report, entitled Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment pretty much paints you as apotential domestic terrorist if you hold views that are not in line with the administrations. Dangerous stuff, to be sure. Great way to thank the active military, too - pointing them out as potential recruits for extremist nut-jobs. Extremist nut-jobs being, of course, those who disagree with Obama's policies.

And finally, the uppercut. The Justice Department is releasing never-before-published documents describing “harsh” interrogation procedures used by the CIA when questioning terrorist madmen who think the only thing better than massacring a thousand Americans is massacring ten thousand Americans.

I’m not making this up. I wish that I were.

The JD promises no prosecutions. Big deal. In one of the most disgusting acts of political grandstanding it has ever been my misfortune to comprehend, the demonization of America, by Americans, becomes more important than protecting the lives of American citizens. If you’re not sick, I mean really sick, to be reading this, I don’t know what to tell you.

Obama Springs Into Action. Never Mind.

A 28 foot-boat bobs serenely in the Indian Ocean, carrying 4 armed Somali pirates and an American merchant ship's Captain. With the arsenal of democracy at his fingertips, the President of the United States has acted exactly as we might have predicted: he's talking to them.

The United States of America, the world's lone superpower, is negotiating with pirates; pirates who had earlier hijacked a ship flying the flag of the United States, and pirates who would still have that ship today if the American crew had not retaken it - a band of a few men with more raw courage than exists in this entire amateur endeavor we call an "Administration." America the weak sister: this is change we can believe in?

This humiliating standoff comes on the heels of a hectic week of bowing and scraping for our President, taking time out to flex his muscles on the international stage: Obama practically dared North Korea to launch a missile in defiance of United Nation Charter Chapter 7, which prohibits such an action.

Of course, in the face of this paper tiger, North Korea launched. Obama sprang into action. "Rules must be binding," he said. "Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response."

Was the violation punished? No. Did we prepare a strong international response? Umm, no, in fact, we could not even get a Security Council condemnation, what with the Russians and Chinese blocking even the most modest statement of disapproval.

So, since words must mean something, and the hoax known as the international community refused to act, President Obama boldly and unilaterally took action the day after the launch: he had his defense secretary announce draconian cuts to the defense budget. He discontinued deployment of the very interceptors which were designed to shoot down North Korean missiles.

Quite a week, Mr. President. Apologize for and denigrate the actions of your own country. Show the world continued weakness. Joe Biden was right when he predicted that the new President - and by extension, the American public - would be tested early and often. What he did not predict was the way our President would abjectly fail those tests.

Charles Krauthammer: Genius

What can I say? In a moment, I'm going to paste the first paragraph of Mr. Krauhammer's latest column; it is a breathtaking observation, which highlights in just a few succinct words what is happening in our country. And what is happening is this: Our constitution is being shredded on a daily basis by a radical executive branch, a criminally compliant Congress and a divided Supreme Court. (I mean, face it. If the second amendment is upheld by only A SINGLE VOTE, what safety net does this court really provide us? But I digress.)

Anyway, here is the paragraph:

Five minutes of explanation to James Madison, and he'll have a pretty good idea what a motorcar is (basically a steamboat on wheels; the internal combustion engine might take a few minutes more). Then try to explain to Madison how the Constitution he fathered allows the president to unilaterally guarantee the repair or replacement of every component of millions of such contraptions sold in the several states, and you will leave him slack-jawed.

Aren't all thinking Americans walking around a little "slack-jawed" these days? It seems impossible to me that any Administration could be this incompetent, which leaves us to draw an infinitely more frightening conclusion: this is not incompetence, it is a deliberate razing of the pricipals that made America, in words first uttered by Lincoln and later echoed by Reagan, "the last best hope of man on earth."

Make no mistake: this radical Administration has taken us on a forced March to Marxism. Ending this madness must be a bi-partisan effort. Ending this madness requires the people raising their voices to their elected representatives. We are not "anti" Congressman Michael McMahon, we are his supplicants.

Fight for us, Mike. No, not for a million bucks here or a million bucks there, or even for a few jobs - fight to preserve our country, our freedom and our way of life.

If Only We Had Known...

Victor Davis Hanson reminds us that Barack Obama was, well, less then honest with the American people during the campaign. However, Congressman McMahon, totally nonplussed by all the slippin' and slidin', has managed to help facilitate this radical agenda with amazing consistency, thumbing his nose at a constituency which voted heavily against Barack Obama.

Setting aside for the moment the puzzling inconsistency that our borough could soundly reject Barack Obama but soundly elect McMahon, let's take a moment to examine just what President Obama has done since his $170 million (what recession?) inauguration this past January, less than three months ago. In that short time, this administration has proposed or passed legislation, with Congressman McMahon's assistance, that:

- Borrowed $787 Billion (over a trillion with debt servicing) for a stimulus package that contained precious little actual "stimulus."

- Pushed a $3.6 trillion budget with over 8,500 earmarks.

- Procured $634 billion as a "down payment" on what is essentially socialized medicine - the worst that money can buy.

- Augmented the wasted $700 billion Bush bailout of failing banks with an additional $750 billion, promulgating the liberal theory that no problem is so thorny that it cannot be solved by flinging huge amounts of taxpayer dollars at it. Like the War on Poverty.

- Promised to HALVE the federal deficit by upping the income tax burden to 40% on the "rich" 5% of Americans who currently pay 60% of our income taxes. Got that? And in addition to the tax hike, the filthy will see their Social Security limits raised and some of their deductions disappear or shrink.

- Ignored the fact that some Americans, when they add in state and local taxes, will pay over 60% of their income in taxes. No problem, even though 40% of Americans pay no income taxes at all. Can you say "redistribution?"

We could go on, but you get the point. Was there ever a more dangerous time for Americans? We cannot afford to wait. We must speak out against the travesty inflicted upon our country by this immature, inexperienced and downright dangerous Administration.

Atlas is shrugging.

"No Pork On my Watch..." Yeah. Right.