A Teenage President

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/i_was_a_teenage_president.html

February 09, 2010
I Was a Teenage President
By Greg Lewis

The Obama administration resembles nothing so much as a big house in the suburbs where the parents are away for the weekend. In the absence of any responsible person to take charge, the Teenager-in-Chief is letting the rest of the adolescents run wild.

They’ve maxed out their parents’ credit cards and have begun working on their overdraft lines in earnest, as the T-I-C’s budget, which proposes a $1.5-trillion deficit for the coming fiscal year, attests. With “what, me worry?” aplomb worthy of a Mad Magazine cover boy, Barack Obama delivered to Congress a bloated document which proposes that more than 40 percent of federal spending be done with borrowed money, and some of the rest courtesy of renewed taxes on America’s “rich” — those people and small businesses making unholy annual incomes greater than $250,000.

And although there are several carloads of bullies pulling into the driveway who are about to enter the premises, the partiers inside remain oblivious to potential threats. They’re wrecking the furniture, eating their parents out of house and home, and in general carrying on like there’s no tomorrow.

Fraternity Boy General Eric Holder insists, with teen-worthy logic, that trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in U.S. federal court will demonstrate to the world how wonderfully the impartial American justice system works — this after Holder himself arguably contaminated the pool of potential jurors by declaring that after the trial, the “suspect” would be executed. This claim — that KSM is virtually guaranteed to be convicted in an American court of law, and even if he isn’t we’ll detain him indefinitely anyway — was repeated by the Teenager-in-Chief himself and his Smokesperson, Robert Gates.

In the meantime, the head of Gangland Security, Janet Napolitano, was still tired from a pre-Spring Break European jaunt and decided not to appear before a House Committee hearing on the Christmas Day Skivvies-Bomber plot, upsetting even House Democrats. These are the same Democrats who are generally on board with the administration’s confiscate-and-squander policies, recently ratcheted up from previous tax-and-spend levels.

Under new laws governing parents’ rights with regard to their adolescent children, the Teenager-in-Chief’s academic records can’t be sent home without the student’s consent. That has led to a great deal of speculation about whether the T-I-C really did complete the requirements for his college degrees, and if he did so, whether he distinguished himself as a student. Even though we footed the bill for our adolescent’s education and are paying for the consequences thereof, we haven’t been afforded so much as a glimpse at the papers he wrote or the marks he received for them.

And though we had our doubts about some of the characters he’s hung out with, The New York Teens assured us that no permanent damage had been done by his association with the likes of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and political radical Bill Ayers. And no, the Teens added, Bill Ayers didn’t write Obama’s autobiography, and he certainly didn’t write his college papers. Heck, Ayers and Obama didn’t even meet each other until Obama was well on his way to the stunning success he achieved in his early career as a community organizer. How in the world could Ayers have written Obama’s college papers? Tell me that! And they surely wouldn’t have let Obama teach constitutional law — at the University of Chicago, no less — if he weren’t qualified, would they?

I mean, jeez, what more do you want? The T-I-C is already working harder than he ever thought he would have to. He barely has time for golf and pickup basketball games and date nights any more, and you know how important those are to any teen. So of course he’s angry.

He’s angry at the overwhelming problems he “inherited” from the previous administration. And he’s angry because despite the fact that he had bulletproof majorities in both houses of Congress, the American public was too stupid to understand his health care initiative and the wonderful things it would do for them, and so he couldn’t get that legislation pushed through.

Never mind that his is the anger of manufactured intellectual outrage unconnected to real-world experience. And never mind that it’s the anger of psychological pain born in the midst of privilege few generations in the history of our planet have ever enjoyed. It is ultimately an unpleasant and whiny anger, the anger of a rich kid bitching that his parents haven’t given him quite enough, the anger of a spoiled child who denigrates those who came before him for not being what he thinks they should have been. He’s the Teenager-in-Chief, and he’s not about to let you forget it.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/i_was_a_teenage_president.html at February 09, 2010 – 03:22:06 PM CST

Here’s the Tim Tebow pro-life Superbowl ad about which many Leftists were apoplectic

Keynes understood what the current administration doesn’t understand that the proper policy in a democracy recognizes that today’s increase in debt must be paid in the future.

From: http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/04/news/economy/meltzer_keynes.fortune/index.htm

If Keynes were alive today, what would he think of President Obama’s fiscal policies?

He would roll over in his grave if he could see the things being done in his name. Keynes was opposed to large structural deficits. He thought that they chilled rather than stimulated the economy. It’s true that we’re stuck with large deficits now. The goal should be to reduce them, not to take on new spending that makes them worse.

Today, deficits are getting bigger and bigger with no plan to significantly lower them. Keynes understood what the current administration doesn’t understand that the proper policy in a democracy recognizes that today’s increase in debt must be paid in the future.

How can the Left continue to pursue ever-expanding government?

http://townhall.com/Common/PrintPage.aspx?g=075ccb46-4bd8-41ce-bcf5-8e2c1fb9b578&t=c

What I Said to the Republican Members of Congress
Dennis Prager
Tuesday, February 02, 2010

This past weekend, after President Obama addressed the annual retreat of Republican Members of the House, I, along with my Salem Radio colleague Hugh Hewitt, and John Fund of the Wall Street Journal, were also invited to address them.

This is an abridged and edited version of my remarks.

Thank you for this honor.

I have never been as proud to be a Republican as I have this past year with your unanimity in opposing Obamacare and the other bills that would transform America. Please know — you need this feedback — that your having been able to stand together and do this has been a luminous moment in Republican Party history.

I would like show you some of the large themes involved in your present work.

First theme: It is harder to sell truths than to sell falsehoods.

It is very easy to say, “Vote for us and we will give you, we will give you, we will give you.” It is much harder to advocate what is right and to say, “Vote for us, but no, we won’t give you” — even though that is the more moral and the more American position. So you have the far more difficult task.

John Rosemond, who writes books on child rearing, says that the most important vitamin you can give to a child is Vitamin N, his term for the word “No.” You have given America Vitamin N.

America needs it terribly because of another way in which God has stacked the deck against the fight for goodness in human history: Every change for good must be constantly renewed, but changes for the worse are often permanent. Goodness must be fought for every day, over and over. That is why every American generation has to be inculcated with American values. But once the change for bad is made, it is close to irreversible. The Democratic attempt to vastly expand the state’s power would likely be a permanent change for the worse in American life. When they’re candid, they admit that the health care bill is their way to get to single-payer medicine and, more importantly, to a government takeover of another sixth of the American economy.

You have to know how important your work is, and how many of us know this.

Second theme: You are not fighting liberals. You are fighting the Left. Democrats were once liberals. But you are not fighting liberals any longer. You are fighting the Left. And as leftists, they do not like to confront reality, even if it means rewriting it.

I’ll give you two examples.

This Jew battled to keep the cross in the Los Angeles County seal. Liberals and leftists in California fought to remove the smallest image — a cross — from the county seal. Through my radio show, on a day’s notice, we gathered about a thousand people to demonstrate at the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors when the board voted. The vote went along ideological lines: three liberals to two conservatives, to remove the cross.

I remember testifying before the supervisors and telling them, “You are rewriting our county’s history. This county was founded by Christians. That’s why there’s a cross. Had it been founded by Wiccans, I would fight to keep a broom on the seal. But it wasn’t founded by Wiccans. It was founded by Christians. That’s why it’s named “Los Angeles.” It is not “Los Secularistos.” If it were “Los Secularistos,” I would expect an empty seal. But it is not empty. It was founded by Christians. It’s not even a religious issue. You’re rewriting my history. And it’s frightening to see you do that.”

The other example is what is now happening with Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts. Everybody knows why he was voted in. It was, after all, Scott “41″ Brown. We all knew why he was elected. But if you read left-wing commentators, this history is being rewritten. They say it had nothing to do with opposing Obamacare. Nothing to do with it! In the Soviet Union, it took 10 years to write Trotsky out of the Russian Revolution. But this is a rewrite of history in one week! Scott “41″ Brown’s victory was not about opposing Obamacare.

In fact, the Left argues that the Massachusetts voters were for the health care bill, but simply “wanted to send a message” to Washington. I must say the voters of Massachusetts are not only not bright, they must be truly stupid if they are for Obamacare and send the man who will undo Obamacare as a protest on behalf of Obamacare. This is what we are told by the Left.

Third theme: Most people on the Left are True Believers. This is critical to understand. They are willing to lose Congress; Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are prepared to lose both houses to get this through. Why? Because losing an election cycle means nothing compared to taking over more of the American economy.

I can give you an example from our side. There are many folks on our side who, if they could pass an amendment against abortion, would happily sacrifice both houses for a period of time. Understand that just as strongly as some are pro-life or religiously Christian or Jewish, that is how strongly many leftists believe in leftism. Leftism is a substitute religion. For the Left, the “health care” bill transcends politics. You are fighting people who will go down with the ship in order to transform this country to a leftist one. And an ever-expanding state is the Left’s central credo.

And finally, theme four: I have a motto that I offer to you because this is the ultimate moral case for us: “The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.”

We have to learn to make our complex beliefs simple — though never simplistic. And this is our powerful response to government doing more and more for people: “The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.”

And here’s how we explain it: The bigger the government, the less I do for myself, for my family and for my community. That is why we Americans give more charity and devote more time to volunteering than Europeans do. The European knows: The government, the state, will take care of me, my children, my parents, my neighbors and my community. I don’t have to do anything. The bigger question in many Europeans’ lives is, “How much vacation time will I have and where will I spend that vacation?”

That is what happens when the state gets bigger — you become smaller. The dream of America was that the individual was to be a giant. The state stays small so as to enable each of us to be as big as we can be. We are each created in God’s image. The state is not in God’s image, but it is vying to be that. This is the battle you’re fighting. You are fighting a cosmic battle because this is the most important society ever devised, the United States of America.

You can easily forget the big picture — how could you not? You’re there every day, battling. You are in dense jungle — excuse me, rainforest — you are in a rainforest/jungle, fighting, and I am, because of the nature of my work, in a little helicopter above the jungle telling you what it is you are fighting. America really is the last, best hope of mankind.

That is how important I consider the fights that are going on now, especially with regard to the takeover of health care. How can they, with a serious face, tell us that Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security are going bankrupt, and therefore the solution is to take over more of health care? How does one say that with a straight face? How does one look a fellow American in the eye and say, “Yes, we have failed in almost every way that government has significantly intruded, and that’s why we need more government intrusion”?

It is mind-boggling. But that is what has happened. People get smaller and pettier, as the government and state get bigger. That’s what you are fighting. And that’s why I came to tell you this is the proudest moment in my life as a Republican. Thank you for doing what you are doing.

Copyright © 2010 Salem Web Network. All Rights Reserved.

A Typical Leftist Media Personality: Gratuitously Hostile Toward Conservatives

According to Keith Olberman, “Massachusetts elected “a bad joke” in Senator Scott Brown, “an irresponsible, homophobic, racist, reactionary, ex-nude model, teabagging supporter of violence against woman and against politicians with whom he disagrees.”"

Even an MS-NBC colleague recognized Olbermann for what he has become — “sad and pathetic” — while New Yorker magazine, which sympathizes with his politics and whose executives participate in life at Trump Towers, headlined its profile of him “One Angry Man.”

In the end and in Olbermann’s eyes, life is what it has always been: hostile. The viewers are disappearing, and all that remains is a Krakatoa of rage, of poisons spewing forth from a shell of a man on a shriveled network into the homes of a shrinking audience.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/the_fat_lady_sings_for_keith_o.html

But if/when Peyton Manning goes down, clutching his knees or ankles in the Super Bowl, after taking late hit after late hit, will this defense finally be exposed as the cowardly group that it’s appearing to be?

From: http://nflsoup.com/?p=1603

First, is it okay to publicly admit that your intentions aren’t just to defeat a team (or a passer), or merely rattle them, but more, to send them out on a stretcher?

And secondly, that this mildly coined “overly aggressive” defense is basically a group of misfits orchestrated by a savage play-caller who is merely calling out the dogs on the league’s top quarterbacks.

And to that, I ask, why isn’t (or hasn’t) the NFL taking action?

Job losses since Obama’s “Stimulus”

Collins slams Obama administration on EunuchBomber handling

The Serious Lesson of an Affirmative Action President

Return to the Article

January 28, 2010

The Lesson of an Affirmative Action President

By James Lewis

You don’t pick brain surgeons by the color of their skin. You pick them by competence only. Same thing with airplane pilots. But we have allowed the profoundly irrational liberal media to persuade the American public that we are supposed to pick a U.S. president by affirmative action. Obama was elected to universal Hosannas because he is black. It wasn’t a secret. That’s why the Left around the world went into ecstasies when Obama ran and got elected.

We’ve been using affirmative action to hire and promote teachers and cops and to popularize movie stars and media heroes. We’ve had a generation of affirmative action agitprop, 24/7/365. Hillary Clinton was going to dictate racial and gender preferences for medical school admissions under HillaryCare. You can bet that reverse-racism is all over the 2,200 pages of ObamaCare. It’s reverse-racism forever!

In America today, competence is suspect, and incompetence gets all the attention. Yet competence is what keeps us alive.

Affirmative action was allowed by the Supreme Court as a temporary exception to the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution until blacks had the same
opportunities others did. It has now been about forty years, and the goal posts have just moved farther and farther Left. Today it’s not just blacks — it’s women, homosexuals, and illegal aliens. And it’s no longer equality of opportunity, but equality of outcome, which was the goal of Communism for seventy years in the Soviet Union, until the whole Soviet Empire crumbled as a result.

In the Soviet Union, everything was politicized. Incompetent people ran agriculture along Stalinist lines. Everything turned into a lie, and lies accelerated as they propagated through the system, in exactly the way the Climategate lies get worse and worse as they get passed along by politically correct bureaucrats and scientists. When political loyalty controls the outcomes, honesty and competence are driven out at every level of society. Nobody can point to Obama’s anti-terrorist policies and say that’s wildly incompetent — without fearing they will be accused of racism.

From a temporary policy to give black people a better chance in life, we have now arrived at a Marxist goal of universal equality for everyone — except for white, male, heterosexual, and excessively normal people. We have reversed racism, but guess what? Reverse-racism is still racism. As a direct result, corruption now pervades the big cities and Washington, D.C. That’s because race, gender, and victim status have taken over as the criteria for all the benefits society has to offer.

Obama’s election to the nation’s most powerful office is the direct outcome of racial reasoning. It was race that put him over the top against Hillary, in a thousand media endorsements, and finally, against John McCain, who was old, male and white. Three strikes against McCain, who for all his faults is vastly more experienced and knowledgeable than the Obamessiah.

Meanwhile, blacks are still suffering from the pervasive social pathology of the inner city — almost all self-inflicted, with the help of the welfare state. Europe shows exactly the same results, except that the victims of welfarism aren’t black, but mostly white and Muslim immigrants. American blacks today are more bitter and more racially enraged than ever before, after forty years of affirmative action. Affirmative action hasn’t helped women, who now have to work two jobs, one at home and one for income, especially because so many men have walked away from their families under liberal cultural values. Reverse-racism has actively hurt generations of children, who have grown up in broken homes as a direct result of pernicious social policies which Obama has actually tried to make worse. One of the first things he did was to reverse Clinton’s welfare reform so that social pathology in the black community can spread its poison even wider and deeper. Obama isn’t good for black people — but then, blacks consistently vote for those who do them the most harm.

Reverse-racism has hurt Asian-Americans, who don’t usually count as disadvantaged non-whites, but who by dint of talent and hard work are now among the largest ethnic groups in many colleges and universities and a majority at Berkeley and UCLA, where race engineering is banned by a California law passed by voters over the objection of the political establishment.

Any time a Muslim tries to explode a bomb on an airplane, Obama sticks his nose in the air and pretends he doesn’t know what’s up. But he knows, he knows. The next time an airplane blows up in flight, Obama will be history, but he will never blame himself for his own truly stupid and perverse policies. On the contrary, Obama will be around for the next forty years blaming White America for his own folly.

We’ve now been taught by the media to hire and elect people by the color of their skin, or by gender, or by sexual preferences — including, in the case of Kevin Jenkins, their ability to peddle gay sexuality to kids and teachers for the Queering of the Elementary Schools.

Is it any surprise that a president who ran as the historic first black — that is, on affirmative action grounds — is not just incompetent, but perverse, so that we deliberately don’t check the passenger lists for young Muslim males who were brought up in radicalized cultures, even if they are already in the terror database, even if they buy a one-way ticket with untraceable cash and don’t check any luggage at all on their one-way flights from Nigeria to Detroit?

Obama’s anti-terror policies are not just incompetent. They are suicidal.

They are exactly like all the other social policies that are supposed to help the poor, the disadvantaged, the black, females, homosexuals — all of which invariably end up punishing and degrading the very people they are supposed to help. Who do you suppose is in the teachers’ unions that are keeping black kids from escaping the inner city ghettos? Yes, it’s black and liberal teachers. Who do you suppose is actively importing Muslim radicals into Europe and the United States? Who do you suppose has done more to spread HIV? Yes, it is the very Leftists who are always telling us how much compassion they feel for those very people.

The vote in 2008 was even crazier than picking your brain surgeon by the color of his skin. If the knife slips in the surgeon’s hand, you might die, but the nation as a whole doesn’t. But if the president has a nervous breakdown in the Oval Office, the whole world is at risk. It’s a mad, mad, mad idea to elect people on the basis of race or gender.

We have been so PC-whipped as a nation that Obama’s election as a black man — not as a competent black man, not as an experienced and well-qualified black man — was celebrated by liberals and Leftists around the world. It is the victory of brain-dead ideology over common sense. The guy in the White House today is potentially the most dangerous, mentally fixated, and irresponsible demagogue we have ever known. Those wacky ideas are once again on the rise, not just in the schools and colleges, but even at the very centers of power. The election of Obama was by far the screwiest thing American voters have ever done. It throws doubt on the whole American experiment, because we have inflicted this disaster on ourselves.

The lesson of the Obama presidency is exactly the opposite of what our stuck-on-stupid media are telling us. It is that we must never, ever hire, promote, or elect somebody to a position of power and responsibility merely because of his race. Abraham Lincoln would not have been surprised. Neither would Martin Luther King, Jr. Even the editors of the New York Times choose schools for their kids not by race, but by educational competence. Somehow the American people have forgotten their common sense while Obama was rifling their wallets.

The captain is drunk in the deckhouse, and the ship of state is heading for the rocks. Our enemies are trying to take advantage of our failure to elect even sensible leadership. If you don’t think al-Qaeda, Ahmadinejad, and the Russians will try to screw us royally under this perverse and incompetent leadership, just wait a month or two. The Chinese have taken the measure of this guy. So have the other jackals prowling around the small campfire of civilization. They know he’s a pushover, and they will act accordingly. The only question is how badly we’ll get burned.

The Left have advocated suicidal policies, and now they have found their way to power. But ultimately this is a failure of the American people, of our pathetic excuse for a media, and of the anti-American hatred that pervades the Left.

Yes, God protects orphans, widows, and the United States. But you can rely on pure dumb luck for only a little while before the ship of state comes to grief on that unforgiving iceberg.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/01/the_lesson_of_an_affirmative_a.html at January 30, 2010 – 04:56:41 PM CST

High unemployment, the recession and a terrorist resurgence in Afghanistan are bad enough. But there are a number of problems on the horizon that could dwarf President Obama’s first-year trials.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/nov/28/we-aint-seen-nothing-yet//print/

Saturday, November 28, 2009
We ain’t seen nothing yet

Victor Davis Hanson

When it comes to the problems facing this country, an old slogan comes to mind: “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.”

High unemployment, the recession and a terrorist resurgence in Afghanistan are bad enough. But there are a number of problems on the horizon that could dwarf President Obama’s first-year trials.

Why the pessimism? In short, we are doing nothing to prepare for the crises to come.

A global recession has led to low oil prices. Yet in this window of opportunity, America has not decreased its foreign-oil dependence. We are not encouraging domestic exploration. And we are still ambivalent on nuclear power.

But as the world economy recovers, oil will probably surge back over $100 a barrel, increasing our oil import tab by 25 percent or more. The Obama administration, though, mostly is obsessed with subsidizing relatively small amounts of wind and solar power. It likely won’t be long before angry motorists at the pump are demanding to know why we have not pushed for more development at home of still-plentiful natural gas and oil fields.

Meanwhile, other economic bad news may be just around the corner. Today, interest rates on short-term Treasury bills still are less than 1 percent. But they, too, will climb as business picks up and worries over American inflation spread.

If we have to pay foreign lenders 5 percent to 7 percent interest on our debt, as in the past, the increased costs will gobble up additional billions from our annual budget. Yet sadly again, we are missing this rare opportunity of low interest to pay off cheaply the trillions that we already owe. Instead, we are borrowing even more!

The war on terror is also heating up again. Fairly or not, the Fort Hood massacre sent the message that the United States is more worried about appearing politically correct in matters of diversity than hunting down radical Islamists on its home soil. Those who seek to copy what happened at Fort Hood will be encouraged. And those charged with stopping them discouraged and confused.

Such uncertainty was reinforced by the attorney general’s optional decision to try the architects of the Sept. 11 attacks in federal courts in New York City. At best, the confessed mass-murderer Khalid Shaikh Mohammed will lecture the United States. At worst, one sympathetic juror could find the monster only 99 percent guilty, and therefore the court might fail to convict him of planning the murders of 3,000 innocent people.

After announcing a new strategy of counter-insurgency in March and appointing Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal the new supreme commander in Afghanistan, it looks as though Mr. Obama only now will commit more troops to Afghanistan. That will be a wise decision – but one coming three months after the general’s request.

We were given an unexpected reprieve through the defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq. We can now build on that victory by routing the Taliban in the way the Iraq surge stabilized democracy there.

Finally, there is an array of taxes on the horizon – increased federal income tax rates; promised hikes in health care surcharge taxes; and even rumors of value-added federal sales taxes. These increases are said to be aimed at the proverbial wealthy. But that could change – given that the top 5 percent of households already provide 60 percent of the nation’s income-tax revenue. And many are already paying 50 percent to 60 percent of their incomes in combined local, state, federal and payroll taxes.

Just consider: The price of gas will soon likely increase. The cost of servicing our profligate borrowing will, too. One more terrorist attack like at Fort Hood, or nightly sermons from a grandstanding Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, or a new Taliban offensive, and the momentum could shift to radical Islam in their decades-long war against the United States. Next year’s tax hikes will be real and large – and no longer just this year’s idle talk.

As these storm clouds gather, Congress bickers on Saturday nights about borrowing even more money for health care reform, yet another federal entitlement.

If you thought things have been rough so far, hang on, ’cause you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.