You CANNOT Make This Stuff Up.

If you needed further proof that it's amateur hour in the White House, here it is. Take a look, and feel a strange twinge of pain that can only be described as surreal. Michelle Malkin asks if you can imagine the reaction if this happened under President Bush.



What kind of imbeciles are running this country? As I await Obama's feigned indignation, I realize that this truly is a photo-op Presidency in 24/7/365 campaign mode, and with Arlen Specter about to jump ship, and Al Franken coming on board, there will be no checks on this mad President.

YOU may be next....

...the next defacto "leader" of the Republican Party, that is. The Dems and the MSM are done focusing on Rush and Newt; currently they're gnawing on the bones of Dick Cheney in an attempt to divert the focus from the hijacking of America by the Obama administration.

While the United States constitution is sacrificed on the alter of globalism, the Democrat Party is sending out solicitations. The most recent one asks contributors for $202, the cost of a one-way ticket to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. "We need to help him [Cheney] off the national stage and back home to Wyoming. Please take a look at the itinerary we put together and then chip in to get him on a Greyhound bus out of town."

With the able assistance of the MSM, Obama is rapidly pursuing the change that he promised. Slow-witted as I am, I have finally come to realize that he makes no policy "mistakes" that might threaten his re-election - all his policy decisions are calculated to usher in a new era of American socialism. The constitution be damned; he knows that if he gets more than 50% of the voting population to be government-dependent, his party will never lose another election.

However, for the time being, it helps to "pick a target, isolate it, paralyze it and destroy it," as he learned from Saul Alinsky. This is the equivalent of the gladiatorial games used so effectively by the Roman emporers to distract the masses. The flavor-du-jour is Cheney.

Hypocrisy, thy name is DEMOCRAT!

I think there are probably very few people in this [Congressional hearing] room or in America who would say that torture should never, ever be used, particularly if thousands of lives are at stake. Take the hypothetical: if we knew that there was a nuclear bomb hidden in an American city and we believe that some kind of torture, fairly severe maybe, would give us a chance of finding that bomb before it went off, my guess is most Americans and most Senators, maybe all, would do what you have to do. So it’s easy to sit back in the armchair and say that torture can never be used. But when you’re in the fox hole, it’s a very different deal. And I respect, I think we all respect the fact that the President’s in the fox-hole every day. So he can hardly be blamed for asking you, or his White House counsel or the Department of Defense, to figure out when it comes to torture, what the law allows and when the law allows it, and what there is permission to do.

So who do you think uttered these eminently logical words? Don Rumsfeld? John Bolton? No, no. These are the words of Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY) during a 2004 hearing on the subject of torture. Yes, that Senator Schumer. It just points up what many of us have suspected all along - Democrats are capable of logical thinking, but only when it suits them.

Obama's release of memos and photos accomplishes nothing, and is, of course, designed to demonize the previous administration - horns that the Republican Party and former administration officials would be foolish to wear. Somewhere along the line the definition of torture, when applied to the United States during the Bush administration, has been dumbed down to a level close to that of a frat-boy hazing; none of the techniques used so effectively rose to the level of REAL torture - like cutting the heads off kidnapped Western journalists with serrated scimitars. Is waterboarding frightening? Oh, yes. But torture? Oh, no. By now, I'm sure you all know that thousands of our military personnal undergo waterboarding as part of their training.

If you want proof that waterboarding was and is not torture, look no further than the fact that Christopher Hitchens, journalist, volunteered to undergo the procedure. True torture, in the sense that you and I understand it, is not something for which you volunteer in pursuit of a sidebar, but, having undergone it, Hitchens declared that waterboarding was, indeed, torture. It is possible that later that same day he went out for Chinese food with his wife, and I suspect he railed at the immorality of the United States somewhere between the wonton soup and the eggroll.

Torture, or in the case of the actions our country employed, enhanced interrogation techniques, cannot be viewed in a vacuum, but rather as an important cog in our entire intelligence apparatus. We are all aware of the "ticking time bomb" scenario, and those who would tell us that even if torture was necessary to defuse a nuclear weapon in an American city it should not be used, are guilty of a far, far greater level moral turpitude than those of whom they accuse it. There is a certain morality in protecting the lives of tens of thousands of innocent civilians, even it it means the temporary discomfort of a mass-murdering jihadist, don't you think? I do.

One could even make a case for moral turpitude if the practice was used arbitrarily, overly-often, or against low-level operatives with little or no intelligence value - but htis was never the case. we know now that, out of the thousands of enemy combatants that were detained, it was used against fewer than a handful, three, to be exact. And it was used succesfully: "“High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding [of al Qaeda]." The speaker of these words? Dennis Blair, Obama's national intelligence director. According to former National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, “We have people walking around in this country that are alive today because this process happened.”

All of this means nothing to the Democrats who are pushing for prosecutions, and that fact should forever paint them with shame, were they capable of feeling such an emotion.

Democrats have been guilty of these sorts of mentals hiccups for about 6 or 7 years now, forgetting that what they so roundly condemn today, they ardently supported when they actually thought, you know, that the security of the country they supposedly serve was paramount.

One can only wonder how many weapons that were previously at our disposal, and effectively used, BHO is going to proscribe. But here's a certainty - there is a tipping point beyond which our enemies will strike us with impunity, and thousands of Americans will pay for this recklessness with their lives.

The Clear Thinking of VDH.

VDH is, of course, Victor Davis Hanson: farmer, author, classicist, military historian, Democrat - and the clearest thinker and writer on the American political scene.

Mr. Hanson is also a self-described "contrarian."

I. I am not on the Obama bus

I followed the Obama senatorial campaign and even his early career in Chicago, and confess I was not impressed. I think on any occasion he announces a moral standard it is reactive—not proactive—and we can be sure it serves as cover for something of questionable morality. So when he says he won’t do something, it usually means he already has. Let us count the ways:

a) “Highest ethical standards” are proof we will get Richardson, Geithner, Daschle, Solis, etc. nominated who cannot or do not pay all their taxes—among other things. There will be only praise for, not silence about, tax-cheats and unethical players in Congress like Chris Dodd, John Murtha, or Charles Rangel. To suggest otherwise is to be cynical, sharp, partisan; most on the Left who preach about the Wall-Street/DC nexus and the “big guys” at the trough are silent on this disturbing new big money/Democrat connection.

b) Christian, Sermon-on-the-Mount declarations about forgiveness and ‘moving forward, not backward’ indicate that “Bush did it” is the now the standard throat-clearing before every speech abroad. Suggesting that we do not wish to drudge up the past is assurance that we will try to humiliate lawyers in the Justice Department who years ago gave opinions at a time of national crisis. Do we try federal judges whose opinions we don’t like?

c) Talking about “financial sobriety” and “halving the deficit” guarantee that we will triple the annual deficit, and add more to the national debt in eight years than we did in aggregate since the founding of the republic.

d) Soaring rhetoric about the reset button, a new softness, more listening, a new page, etc. assure us that we will have no moral compass, and treat Venezuela like Columbia, Georgia like Russia, Iran like Iraq—the more we hear of a new morality, the more we know there will be no moral distinctions.

e) The demonized percentile who makes over $250,000 who alone will be taxed—won’t be alone to see new taxes. Confiscate all their cash and you still cannot pay off debts piling up at $1.7 trillion per year. So gas, cigarette, alcohol, taxes will climb and soon even that will not be enough. The more we do not hear that, the more it is coming

f) The more Bush gave us “false choices” and shredded the constitution, the more Obama will adopt FISA, email intercepts, wiretaps, renditions, Bush’s Iraq plan, the same old in Afghanistan, etc. Let us see whether Guantanamo closes within a year: watch especially the reaction to the poor teen-aged Somali pirate and ask yourself whether this administration wishes to repeat that again and again—or whether other countries wish to have their framed, railroaded, tortured, and misunderstood pseudo-terrorists back on the streets of Berlin, Paris, or Cairo. Again, when one on Team Obama trashes Bush the law shredder, then assume that we have already adopted his security protocols.

g) We are postracial, transracial, multicultural, etc. and rightfully so don’t talk about ‘Hussein,’ or one’s ethnic background, etc. But abroad? All that qualification simply means YOU don’t dare do it, but HE does, all the time, everywhere, both to sway world opinion and ever so gently to distance himself from America’s past when convenient : so the first thing on the Latin American summit table is “race.” Arabs are told to be comfortable because of Barack’s names, first and second and third, his Muslim father, his non-traditional background. In other words, anytime anyone in the US is told that racism is lurking its ugly head around every corner, be assured that Obama will broadcast his race and heritage to Europeans, Turks, Arabs, and Latin Americans. The two behaviors are joined at the hip. The warning always follows its antithesis.

II. I do not understand the morality of the Left. Let me get this straight: catching the beheader and architect of mass murder Khalid Sheik Mohammed and waterboarding him in Guantanamo at the zenith of worry about more 9/11s, anthrax attacks, and the European bombings is outright torture, an horrendous stain on the US (cf. what FDR did to saboteurs caught on the east coast during WWII). But blowing up the heads of two Somali pirates during negotiations or incinerating houses of suspects in Waziristan (lots of “collateral” as they say in Hollywood) is ok? Did I miss the habeas corpus, Miranda rights, Army Field Manual rules, appeals, etc. that were followed in the nano-second between the trigger pulling and the heads exploding?

More of this brilliant essay 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.

New YouTube Video

This great piece of artistry is so far beyond MY puny computer abilities that I feel it's almost unnecessary to tell you that I had no hand in putting it together. I did, however, have the chutzpah to ask my talented compatriot Luke to do it for me. As you will see, Luke came through with flying colors. You can visit his site at http://lukeamerica2020.wordpress.com/

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.

First Ever Interview by Yours Truly...

Please be kind - I was very nervous.

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.

Barney Frank Springs Into Action, Spits on Constitution

My Dear Fellow Patriots;

A new proposal in Congress would “prohibit unreasonable and excessive compensation and compensation not based on performance standards...”

Well, there it is. It's called the "Pay for Performance Act of 2009," and if you haven't heard of it, that's because, well, not very many folks have been talking about it. This piece of stealth Marxism is brought to us by the lovely and vivacious Barney Frank and his backup band, the House Financial Services Committee.

In short, this measure would permit the government to impose controls on the pay of all employees of a company that has received bailout money, a.k.a. "a capital investment by the U.S. government." And not just top execs, either; in this case "all" means all, even the rank and file employees. The bill directs the Treasury Department, a.k.a. Tim Geithner, to evaluate “the performance of the individual executive or employee to whom the payment relates.”

Wouldn't you know that this little dandy would be retroactive, too, meaning that employment contracts in place wouldn't be worth the paper upon which they're written. Destruction of the sanctity of the contract seems to be an Obama Administration forte.

If you're thinking to yourself that this cannot possibly be constitutional, I'd say you're on target. If you're looking around to find the outrage, I'd say keep looking, even though you're not likely to find it.

Where is the outrage, indeed. Where are the Republican press conferences about this usurpation of power? Where is the Republican media blitz condemning this headlong dive into Marxism? Sadly, nowhere to be found.

I'm Sorry. I Would Rather Strike First.

Check out this link and be very afraid...and then be determined not to strike back - but to strike FIRST!

A British MP Gets It. Completely.

" ...you cannot carry on forever squeezing the productive bit of the economy in order to fund an unprecedented engorgement of the unproductive bit. You cannot spend your way out of recession or borrow your way out of debt."
-Daniel Hannan, MEP



I don't have to tell you what to do; if you're politically plugged in you're doing it automatically. You're exchanging the words "Prime Minister" for "Mr. President," the words "United Kingdom" and "Great Britian" for "United States," and "British" for "American."

You Just Can't Make This Stuff Up.

There was an album that I used to love as a kid. It was the first-ever release by the Mamas and the Papas, entitled If You Can Believe Your Eyes and Ears, and as I peruse the political landscape these days, that phrase just keeps popping into my head.

The latest foray into insanity by this bizarre Congress comes to us today courtesy of Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D.-Md.

You see, Senator Cardin has figured out a way to staunch the flow of red ink that has been afflicting most major, left-leaning newspapers throughout the country, all long-time allies of the Liberal establishment that they are loath to see lose further ground to the blogosphere.

The crux of his proposal is that he wants to allow newspapers, if they so desire, to choose to become non-profit organizations, thereby avoiding the burden of paying taxes. Liberals are so good at avoiding that particular heavy load, aren't they?

After all, newspapers perform a public service for democracy and should be allowed to operate as tax-exempt non-profits! Right? RIGHT? His bill would explicitly include newspapers as an eligible organization for 501 (c) (3) status, the same status as public radio and public television.

I will pause here for a moment to allow you to catch your breath if you are doubled over with laughter, or to resume breathing if you were momentarily struck dumb at the horror of it all.

The business-ownership model under which these non-profits would operate is called L3C, short for Low-profit, Limited Liability Company. Under the legislation proposed by Cardin, newspaper revenues would be tax-exempt and conversely, those who purchase newpapers could declare their "contributions" as tax deductions.

"We are losing our newspaper industry," Cardin said in a statement. "The economy has caused an immediate problem, but the business model for newspapers, based on circulation and advertising revenue, is broken, and that is a real tragedy for communities across the nation and for our democracy."

Now here's the onion: In order to maintain its tax-exempt status, the non-profit newspaper would not be allowed to endorse political candidates. But DO NOT panic - they would still be able to report political news. Because, y'know, the way they report a story doesn't carry any built-in political proclivities, or any kind of agenda or anything. Nope. No siree.

Fair. Balanced. Tax-free.

Something Is Brewing In America...

Tea Parties are taking place all across the nation...
...and the movement continues to grow.