Obama's Surrogate Anti-Colonial Father

Via-The American Spectator


By Paul Kengor

My friend and colleague, Dinesh D'Souza, has advanced an intriguing thesis regarding the roots of Barack Obama, arguing, in short, that to understand Obama, we must understand the anti-colonialism of his African father. Predictably, D'Souza's thoughts have brought the wrath of the liberal choir.

I'm not going to dissect D'Souza's argument. But I would like to add some important information: If Obama is indeed motivated by anti-colonialism, the source may be Frank Marshall Davis as much as, if not more than, Obama's father.

I come to this via a different route from D'Souza. My new book -- released the same day as D'Souza's, coincidentally -- examined the communist movement in the 20th century, and specifically how communists duped progressives and liberals. I determined, definitively, that Frank Marshall Davis was not a duped liberal but a duping communist. I show this at length, quoting Davis's weekly columns from the CPUSA organ, the Honolulu Record, and reprinting pages from Congressional investigations and from Davis's declassified FBI file, including a document that lists his Communist Party number: 47544.

As to their relationship, Davis was introduced to a teenage Obama in the 1970s by Obama's leftist grandfather, Stanley Dunham, who sought a father figure for Obama. Of all people to pick, Dunham chose someone summoned before the Senate in 1956 to testify to Communist Party associations.

In Dreams from My Father, Obama recalled fondly how Davis advised him on women, on race, on college, on life. He shared with Obama his "hard-earned knowledge." Numerous biographical accounts (from the left, and highly sympathetic) describe Davis as a "mentor," a "father" figure, and an "important influence" on Obama.

Those accounts avoid like the plague the fact that Davis was blatantly pro-Soviet and pro-Stalin. This is painfully evident in Davis's Honolulu Record columns. So shocking are those columns that they generated the longest chapter in my book. Davis, befitting CPUSA's disgusting position at the time, demonized the Democratic administration of Harry Truman. Davis took that position because it was Moscow's. As George Kennan described American communists, they "obeyed" the "master's voice" in the Kremlin.

That brings me back to D'Souza's thesis. I did not address Obama's father's anti-colonialism, but I can attest to its dominance in Davis's writings.

Consider a May 19, 1949 column, "How Our Democracy Looks To Oppressed Peoples," where Davis excoriated the Marshall Plan. Yes, the Marshall Plan.

"For a nation that calls itself the champion of democracy, our stupendous stupidity is equaled only by our mountainous ego," Davis complained. "Our actions at home and abroad are making American democracy synonymous with oppression." He added: "I have watched with growing shame for my America as our leaders have used our golden riches to re-enslave the yellow and brown and black peoples of the world."

Davis characterized the Marshall Plan as a "device" to maintain "white imperialism." This nefarious "oppression of non-white peoples everywhere" was purchased via Secretary of State George Marshall's "billions of U.S. dollars … to bolster the tottering empires of England, France, Belgium, Holland and the other western exploiters of teeming millions of humans."

In another column a few weeks later, on August 18, Davis stepped up the communist attack on "the double-talking Truman administration with its program for World War III." "The Truman doctrine in Greece and Turkey and then the Marshall Plan," were, claimed Davis, "based upon the continuation of colonial slavery by the ruling classes of Western Europe."

In his next column, Davis protested: "I shall not help England and France keep millions of my colored brothers in Africa and Asia in colonial slavery. Yet that is what our dividend diplomats ask of you and me when they demand our support of the bi-partisan Marshall plan."

Bad as this was, it's the tip of the iceberg.

Yet, there's a more sinister element, as suggested by a July 1935 document held in Comintern Archives in Moscow. That document ordered American comrades (like Davis, who, at that point, lived in Chicago), to go to Hawaii to agitate against Hawaii becoming part of the United States. The Soviets wanted the territory as a base of operations. What would be the party line? The document ordered American communists to claim there was a "growing discontent of the masses of the population in the Hawaiian Islands," resulting from "the regime of colonial oppression and the exploitation of American imperialism with its policy of militarisation of the Hawaiian Islands."

That was precisely Davis's position when he relocated to Hawaii, whether by orders, by personal beliefs, or both. And it isn't unreasonable to expect he might have shared such thinking with a bright teenager named Barack Obama. Bear in mind, Obama admitted to learning from Davis, including college advice -- his very next step. Obama describes his first days at college as hanging out with "Marxist professors," attending "socialist conferences," and "discuss[ing] neocolonialism."

Rather than heralding the American exceptionalism that sought freedom for the people of the USSR and Eastern Europe, Davis would have passed to Obama a very different narrative about America's place in the world, beginning with its alleged imperial-colonial sins.

This was the wrong side of history, but it was the side of Frank Marshall Davis. The remaining question is to what extent this affected Obama, then and still today.

Obama’s Biggest Lies

Via-Human Events

by Donald Lambro

President Obama loves to make up things that are patently untrue, like every economist agrees his $800 billion economic stimulus “has done its job,” the economy “is moving in the right direction,” and the Bush tax cuts caused the trillion dollar deficits.

The facts say otherwise, but he is never challenged by the news media for his repeatedly dishonest myth-making. Here are some of his worst offenses.

Myth 1: President George W. Bush’s 2001-2003 across-the-board income tax cuts are responsible for the higher deficits and $13 trillion national debt we have today.

Fact: The Congressional Budget Office, using static analysis that does not account for growth incentives, says the Bush tax cuts were responsible for only 14% of the deficits. A dynamic analysis factoring higher economic growth would have shown that the tax cuts account for even less than that, says the Heritage Foundation’s chief budget analyst Brian Riedl.

Myth 2: Bush’s tax cuts and spending policies are to blame for the unbroken line of trillion-dollar-plus budget deficits we have under the Obama Administration.

Fact: “Bush should not get the blame for [Obama’s] trillion dollar deficits. After all, the year before the recession hit [in 2007], the deficit was only $161 billion,” Riedl told HUMAN EVENTS.

“Today’s massive deficits are the result of the recession, as well as the stimulus and other failed attempts to spend our way out of the recession,” Riedl said.

Besides, if the Bush tax cuts are so bad, why does Obama want to keep 98% of them?

Myth 3: Obama says “every economist who’s looked at it says that the Recovery Act has done its job” and turned the economy around.

Fact: “That’s nonsense. Opinions differ widely and many leading economists believe that its impact has been small,” says Stanford economist Michael J. Boskin. Before the recession, the economy was growing at a 3% clip in 2007, created 1.33 million jobs and unemployment was just 4.6%.

In 2009, Obama and his economic advisers predicted his stimulus spending scheme would keep the nation’s rising unemployment rate below 8%. But the jobless rate has climbed to nearly 10% this year, nearly 100,000 jobs were lost last month and economic growth was a feeble 1.6 % in the second quarter.

Myth 4: Obama keeps repeating that if the Bush tax cuts for the two highest-income brackets, due to expire at the end of December, are extended, they will enrich billionaires and millionaires.

Fact: That’s pure demagoguery. According to Forbes magazine, there were only 469 billionaires in the U.S. and 2.2 million whose net worth was at least $1 million (this includes home values). But the higher taxes will fall on millions more small business employers who earn over $200,000 and who provide most of the jobs in our country.

Myth 5: Obama repeatedly claims that letting the top tax rates climb back to pre-Bush tax levels (up to nearly 40%) will not hurt the economy.

Fact: His own economic advisers have publically disagreed with him. Christine Romer, his recently departed chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, wrote in the most recent issue of the American Economic Review that “tax increases are highly contractionary.”

Former White House budget director Peter Orszag, a member of Obama’s team of economic advisers, wrote an op-ed column in the New York Times last month, urging him to keep the tax rates where they are until the economy recovers. Raising taxes would severely hurt job creation, Orszag said.

Myth 6: Obama and the Democrats attacked the GOP’s midterm election agenda Pledge to America as “nothing new,” charging that it would return the country to the Bush Administration policies. “It’s the same stuff they’ve been peddling for years,” Obama said last week at a Chicago fundraiser.

Fact: But there are new ideas in the Pledge, including letting small businesses deduct up to 20% of their business income. That would help struggling enterprises expand and keep their employees on payroll. Obama, if he gets his way, will raise their tax rates, which will either put many of them out of business or put their employees in the unemployment line.

The Pledge also contains a number of old ideas that haven’t been tried, such as repealing Obamacare and replacing it with a scaled-down plan to slow the growth in healthcare costs, expand access to lower-cost healthcare plans and roll back non-security, discretionary spending to 2008 levels—cutting $1 trillion from the national debt.

Myth 7: Perhaps Obama’s most outrageous myth has been his oft-repeated charge that Bush’s policies were responsible for the subprime mortgage collapse and the subsequent recession.

Fact: It was two powerful Democratic committee chairmen, Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who pushed government mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae hard for these subprime loans that have cost taxpayers billions.

“A President’s most valuable asset—with voters, Congress, allies and enemies—is credibility,” writes Boskin. “So it is unfortunate when extreme exaggeration emanates from the White House.”

But if you expect Obama to change his deviously dishonest ways anytime soon, don’t hold your breath. He believes in getting even.

In recent remarks about his religious values, he meant to say he believes in the biblical teaching, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

But what came out was “treating others as they would treat me.”

Does President Obama Think Our Rights Come from Our Creator?

Via-Weekly Standard

BY Jeffrey H. Anderson

The most famous words in the Declaration of Independence — and almost surely the most famous words ever written by an American — read, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

On Friday evening, when President Obama addressed the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, he quoted that passage as follows (on the clip at 22:30): “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal [pause], endowed with certain unalienable rights: life and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

In Obama’s version, there is no “Creator.”

Only two plausible explanations spring to mind. One is that President Obama isn’t very familiar with the most famous passage in the document that founded this nation; that even when plainly reading from a teleprompter, he wasn’t able to quote it correctly. The other is that President Obama doesn’t subscribe to the Declaration’s rather central claim that our rights come from our “Creator” (also referred to in the Declaration as “Nature’s God” and “the Supreme Judge of the World”).

Only the president likely knows for certain which of these two explanations is true, or whether perhaps there is another. His nearly 4-second pause before he omits reference to our Creator, however, is peculiar. He stares at the teleprompter, purses his lips, blinks several times — as if confused, disturbed, and/or in the process of making a decision — and then proceeds to use his alternate wording

Worse Than Carter

Via-The American Spectator


By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.

WASHINGTON -- It is becoming apparent for all to see, that a man who made his name as a community organizer does not have the skills to be President of these United States. Maybe he could develop the requisite skills as a governor. Possibly, he could develop such skills were he to sit in the Senate for a couple of terms. Yet there are delicate sensitivities, the ability to listen, to stick by your guns, occasionally to remain reticent. These are the fundamentals of a leader, and President Barack Obama has demonstrated that he lacks all of them, most notably reticence. I now think it is clear even to Official Washington that President Obama is the worst president of modern times. President Jimmy Carter is redeemed.

The other night at a White House dinner solemnizing the opening of Ramadan he leaped right in to endorse the building a mosque at Ground Zero. He -- a man who has shown no religious fervor during his time in the White House -- let out a ringing defense of religious liberty and tolerance. Of a sudden, he was at the center of a national controversy that was growing. It put me in mind of his inability to defuse the controversy over healthcare. Any sensible president would have relented, as opposition to healthcare grew to the majority position. He would have settled for some sort of compromise, but not the community-organizer-turned-president. He wanted it all. He lunged on and created among the electorate a row over national healthcare that divided the nation, and put some of us in mind of a civil war that continues to rage. What is more, he imperiled his party's margins in both houses.

Notwithstanding his apparent personal insouciance toward religion, he made it clear that the mosque should be built. Who cares about the sensibilities of the loved ones of the 3,000 victims? Or for that matter, of the 68% of the American people who according to a CNN poll oppose the mosque? It took him less than a day to make things worse. While on a swing through Florida, he claimed that he was not speaking "on the wisdom" of building the mosque. He was merely commenting on the Constitutional right to build the mosque and to practice one's religion. A right "that dates back," the prof allowed, "to our founding. That's what our country is about." Blah, blah, blah -- the community organizer turned-lecturer at the University of Chicago could not resist.

Now he has a red hot national controversy on his hands. It is somewhat like the controversy he created over Professor Henry Louis Gates when he pronounced the Cambridge police's reaction to Gates's truculence "stupid." Or when Mr. Obama barged into the Arizona immigration pother. He cannot resist showing the world how smart he is, but at what cost? Every Democrat battling a tight race will be called to answer questions about the mosque. It will become an issues even in remote places such as Nevada. There the Senate leader, Harry Reid, fighting for his seat against a Tea Partyer, Sharron Angle, has come out against the President. He announced that it is not a question of right but a question of prudence. He says the mosque should be built elsewhere. How many other Democrats will join him? This could develop into a major rebellion against President Obama's leadership. It could be the beginning of the end of his presidency.

President Obama represents the leadership of a sterile elite. His weird lectures play at the University of Chicago or in the communities he has organized in Chicago, but not among the mainstream of the American electorate. He has brought it together and it is against this idiocy. As I said in this space two weeks ago, he represents the leadership of the Ruling Class. It is not the leadership of the consensus of the American people. Only the most extreme voices in this debate are speaking intolerantly about Islam and its right to build a mosque. Most of the American people are siding with the dread Sarah Palin who was quick to say, "Mr. President, should they or should they not build a mosque steps away from where the radicals killed 3,000 people? Please tell us your position. We all know that they have a right to do it, but should they? And no, this isn't above your pay grade."

Yet it is. It is above the pay grade of a community organizer. That is what our president is. Increasingly, it is clear that the Democrats brought down on the country a community organizer as president. Maybe in the future they will consider experience a qualification for the presidency. Possibly the age of charisma is behind us. Possibly Mr. Obama even lacks that dubious quality

Of Course Obama's a Socialist

Via-American Thinker

By Christopher Chantrill

Thomas Frank, the Wall Street Journal's quota liberal, is shocked that people are calling President Obama a socialist. Last week, a poll announced that 55 percent of people think he's just that. Not at all, retorts Frank:

If the president were actually a socialist in the Western European sense, he would certainly have pushed for single-payer health care, he would surely have gotten tough with the banks during the financial crisis, and he would undoubtedly have launched a massive program of public works instead of last year's halfhearted stimulus package.

...To which any half-alive conservative would retort: What about the Fabian socialists? Remember, they were Brit socialists who took their name from Quintus Fabius Maximus Cunctator, famous for his delaying tactics in the Second Punic War.

President Barack Obama Cunctator may not have pushed for single-payer health care, but he believes in it and has been recorded on video saying so. The banks? Maybe you don't understand, Mr. Frank, how banks contribute to the socialists' plans. You can nationalize credit and funnel it into the projects of the educated elite, as in Fannie and Freddie and the Dodd-Frank bill, and still have nominally privately-owned banks. And as for the stimulus package, let's give the president credit for the biggest package he could get out of Congress.

This week, the educated elite doesn't want Americans to call its program socialist. No doubt that is because "socialism" has come to be connected with utter economic failure and top-down crony corruption by and for a national nomenklatura. But what of that? A hundred-odd years ago, everyone in the educated class from Boston Transcendentalists in the east to hard-drinking Jack London in the west wanted to be called socialists. Then they decided they wanted to be called Progressives.

When "Progressive" became a dirty word, then the educated class wanted to be called liberals. Of course, after a generation of liberal programs, liberal corruption, and liberal failure, "liberal" became a dirty word. So liberals renamed themselves back to "progressive."

In the Vietnam War, liberals were proud to sneer at patriotism. Now they throw a fit at anyone who questions their patriotism.

It really doesn't matter what the educated elite calls itself; eventually, that word becomes a pejorative. On the other hand, the latest pejorative that the educated elite pastes on conservatives often becomes a badge of honor. Pretty soon, the word "racist," which seems to be the pejorative-du-jour amongst the fashion-conscious, will in its turn become a badge of honor on the college campus, as in: "Like, so this guy called me, like, a racist? Like, you think he likes me?"

The name isn't important. What is important is the political agenda of the ruling class behind all the shape-shifting. Angelo M. Codevilla from The American Spectator:

Today's ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits. These amount to a social canon of judgments about good and evil, complete with secular sacred history, sins (against minorities and the environment), and saints ...

Our ruling class's agenda is power for itself. While it stakes its claim through intellectual-moral pretense, it holds power by one of the oldest and most prosaic of means: patronage and promises thereof. Like left-wing parties always and everywhere, it is a "machine," that is, based on providing tangible rewards to its members.

This ruling class, even in benighted Europe, realized a couple of decades ago that it didn't need to openly nationalize the means of production to achieve its aim of ruling the economy and the culture from the political sector. It discovered that it didn't need to expropriate the proprietors. It could rule through the courts and through administrative regulation of the private sector. That is why Frank's argument about "single-payer" is so meaningless. Members of the ruling class understand that the actual institutional form of health care is not the critical factor. The critical factor is that power in health policy centers upon them. They will get to decide who lives or dies; they will decide who pays and who benefits. Of course, down in the fever swamps of the Angry Left, they don't understand this sophisticated truth; all they know are the slogans that their leaders taught them half a century ago.

You can call Obama a socialist, a progressive, a liberal, a black liberationist. The choice of words doesn't matter. What matters is that President Obama is a card-carrying member of the ruling class, and every act of this president aims to concentrate more power in the government or distribute favors to his supporters.

America was not founded for this. The 600,000 did not die in the Civil War for this. The GIs did not crush Nazism and Communism for this. And that is why it shall not stand.

I wonder what liberals won't want us to call them next week

The New Racial Mess

America has largely moved beyond race. Tragically, our president has not.

Via-NRO

Victor Davis Hanson

Weren’t we supposed to enter a new age of tolerance with the election of Pres. Barack Obama?

His half-black, half-white ancestry and broad support across racial lines suggested that at last Americans judged each other on the content of our characters — not the color of our skin or our tribal affiliations.

Instead, in just 18 months of the Obama administration, racial discord is growing and relations seem to have been set back a generation.

Black voters are galvanizing behind Obama at a time of rapidly falling support. White independents, in contrast, are leaving Obama in droves.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People has claimed that the loosely organized tea parties include “racist elements.” The National Council of La Raza has ripped the state of Arizona for its new anti–illegal alien legislation. Jesse Jackson characterized aspects of the multi-million-dollar bidding war to acquire basketball superstar LeBron James in terms of masters and slaves. Pundits are arguing whether the extremist, racist New Black Panther Party is analogous to the Klan.

In turn, a number of Americans want to know why — nearly a half-century after the Civil Rights Act, affirmative action, and Great Society programs — some national lobbying organizations still identify themselves by archaic tribal terms such as “colored people” or “La Raza” (“the race”) when it would be taboo for other groups to adopt such racial nomenclature.

Indeed, race seems to be the subtext of almost every contemporary issue, from the soaring deficit and government spending to recent presidential appointments and the enforcement of existing immigration law. In times of growing deficits, white people are stereotyped as being angry over supposedly paying higher taxes to subsidize minorities, while minorities are stereotyped as being mostly on the receiving end of entitlements.

Why the escalation of racial tension in the supposedly post-racial age of Obama?

First, Obama’s reputation as a racial healer was largely the creation of the media. In fact, the Obama campaign had a number of racially polarizing incidents that probably would have disqualified any other presidential candidate of the past 30 years.

His two-decade apprenticeship at Trinity United Church of Christ under the racist and anti-Semitic Rev. Jeremiah Wright has never been adequately explained. Obama indulged in racial stereotyping himself when he wrote off the white lower-middle class of Pennsylvania as clueless zealots clinging to their guns, religion, and xenophobia.

Obama also characterized his grandmother as a “typical white person” when he implied that her supposed fear of young black males symbolizes the prejudices of the entire white community. Michelle Obama did not help things when, in clumsy fashion, she indicted America as “just downright mean” — a nation she had not been proud of in her adult life until it embraced the hope and change represented by her husband’s candidacy.

Such campaign trash talk did not stop during the first 18 months of the Obama presidency. The race-baiting Van Jones — the short-lived presidential adviser on “green jobs” — should never have been appointed. Then, the president himself criticized Cambridge, Mass., police for acting “stupidly” when they arrested his friend, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates.

Then there was the outburst of Attorney General Eric Holder, who blasted America as “a nation of cowards” for not talking more about race on his terms. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was almost obsessive in referring to herself as a “Latina.” She also suggested that her racial background and experiences made her “wise” in a way white male colleagues could never be.

Recently, Obama appealed to voters along exclusionary race and gender lines — not traditional political allegiances — when he called upon “the young people, African-Americans, Latinos and women, who powered our victory in 2008.”

Yet the country passed the old white/black divide years ago. We are a racially diverse society of Asians, blacks, Hispanics, whites, and mixtures of all that and more. In a world of conservative Cubans and liberal whites, race is no longer necessarily a guide to politics.

Who now, exactly, is the racial “Other” deserving of special consideration in hiring and education? A half-Punjabi immigrant whose father owns 500 acres? A three-quarters Puerto Rican who just arrived in New York? A Korean-American son of an orthodontist? The African-American children of a Cabinet official?

The more the president appeals to his base in racial terms, the more his appointees identify themselves as members of a particular tribe, and the more political issues are framed by racial divisions, so all the more such racial obsession creates a backlash among the racially diverse American people.

America has largely moved beyond race. Tragically, our president and a host of his supportive special interests have not.

Race Card Fraud

Via-Townhall

Thomas Sowell

Credit card fraud is a serious problem. But race card fraud is an even bigger problem.

Playing the race card takes many forms. Judge Charles Pickering, a federal judge in Mississippi who defended the civil rights of blacks for years and defied the Ku Klux Klan back when that was dangerous, was depicted as a racist when he was nominated for a federal appellate judgeship.

No one even mistakenly thought he was a racist. The point was simply to discredit him for political reasons-- and it worked.

This year's target is the Tea Party. When leading Democrats, led by a smirking Nancy Pelosi, made their triumphant walk on Capitol Hill, celebrating their passage of a bill in defiance of public opinion, Tea Party members on the scene protested.

All this was captured on camera and the scene was played on television. What was not captured on any of the cameras and other recording devices on the scene was anybody using racist language, as has been charged by those playing the race card.

When you realize how many media people were there, and how many ordinary citizens carry around recording devices of one sort or another, it is remarkable-- indeed, unbelievable-- that racist remarks were made and yet were not captured by anybody.

The latest attack on the Tea Party movement, by Ben Jealous of the NAACP, has once again played the race card. Like the proverbial lawyer who knows his case is weak, he shouts louder.

This is not the first time that an organization with an honorable and historic mission has eventually degenerated into a tawdry racket. But that an organization like the NAACP, after years of fighting against genuine racism, should now be playing the game of race card fraud is especially painful to see.

Some critics of the Tea Party have seized upon banners carried at one of its rallies that compared Obama with Hitler and Stalin. Extreme? Yes. But there was nothing racist about it, since extreme comparisons have been made about politicians of every race, color, creed, nationality, ideology and sexual preference.

Some Obama supporters have long regarded any criticism of him as racism. But that they should have to resort to such a banner to bolster their case shows how desperate they are for any evidence.

Among people who voted for Barack Obama in 2008, those who are likely to be most disappointed are those who thought that they were voting for a new post-racial era. There was absolutely nothing in Obama's past to lead to any such expectation, and much to suggest the exact opposite. But the man's rhetoric and demeanor during the election campaign enabled this and many other illusions to flourish.

Still, it was an honest mistake of the kind that decent people have often made when dealing with people whose agendas are not constrained by decency, but only by what they think they can get away with.

On race, as on other issues, different people have radically different views of Barack Obama, depending on whether they judge him by what he says or by what he does.

As Obama's own books point out, he has for years cultivated a talent for saying things that people will find congenial.

You want bipartisanship and an end to bickering in Washington? He will say that he wants bipartisanship and an end to bickering in Washington. Then he will shut Republicans out of the decision-making process and respond to their suggestions by reminding them that he won the election. A famous writer-- Ring Lardner, I believe-- once wrote: "'Shut up,' he explained."

You want a government that is open instead of secretive? He will say that. He will promise to post proposed legislation on the Internet long enough for everyone to read it and know what is in it before there is a vote. In practice, however, he has rushed massive bills through Congress too fast for anybody-- even the members of Congress-- to know what was in those bills.

Racial issues are more of the same. You want a government where all citizens are treated alike, regardless of race or ethnicity? Obama will say that. Then he will advocate appointing judges with "empathy" for particular segments of the population, such as racial minorities. "Empathy" is just a pretty word for the ugly reality of bias.

Obama's first nomination of a Supreme Court justice was a classic example of someone with "empathy" for some racial groups, but not others. As a Circuit Court judge, Sonia Sotomayor voted to dismiss a case involving white firefighters who had been denied the promotions for which they qualified, because not enough blacks or Hispanics passed the same test that they did.

A fellow Hispanic judge protested the way the white firefighters' case was dismissed, rather than adjudicated. Moreover, the Supreme Court not only took the case, it ruled in favor of the firefighters.

Obama's injecting himself into a local police matter in Massachusetts, despite admitting that he didn't know the facts, to say that a white policeman was in the wrong in arresting a black professor who was a friend of Obama, was more of the same. So is Obama's Justice Department overlooking blatant voter intimidation by thugs who happen to be black.

There is not now, nor has there ever been, anything post-racial about Barack Obama, except for the people who voted for him in the mistaken belief that he shared their desire to be post-racial. When he leaves office, especially if it is after one term, he will leave this country more racially polarized than before.

Hopefully, he may also leave the voters wiser, though sadder, after they learn from painful experience that you can't judge politicians by their rhetoric, or ignore their past because of your hopes for the future. Voters may even wise up to race card fraud.

Ban on deep-water drilling adds insult to injury

Via-WAPO

By Bobby Jindal

By now, everyone no doubt realizes that I am not a fan of the pace at which the federal government has worked to contain the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Sadly, federal officials were slow to act and overly bureaucratic. They have never really understood the urgency of the situation down here. I'm not raising a question of motive; it's simply a function of the federal government being a slow-moving albatross. The only way to attack a crisis like this is with the urgency of a military mind-set.

Even after the well is finally capped, the damage done to our environment, to the Gulf of Mexico, and to our marshes, wetlands and beaches will take years to repair. There is another type of damage from this spill: its human impact. Thousands of lives, businesses and families are reeling.

Against this backdrop, the federal government unwisely chose to add insult to injury by decreeing a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the gulf. This ill-advised and ill-considered moratorium, which a federal judge called "arbitrary" and "capricious," creates a second disaster for our economy, throwing thousands of hardworking folks out of their jobs and causing real damage to many families. Now this federal policy risks killing 20,000 more jobs and will result in a loss of $65 million to $135 million in wages each month.

To ensure that such a disaster does not happen again, should the federal government increase oversight, or require additional and better equipment or on-site federal inspectors, or even temporarily pause drilling at specific rigs for additional reviews? Of course. Could it? Of course. But by simply stopping all deepwater drilling, federal officials appear more interested in ideology and scoring political points -- as they have done with the misguided cap-and-trade legislation -- at the expense of Americans who derive their livelihood from the energy industry.

Let's be clear: This moratorium will do nothing to clean up the Gulf of Mexico, and it is already doing great harm to many hardworking citizens. The effects will extend well beyond Louisiana. Since the moratorium was announced, America has already lost two rigs to foreign countries. More drilling companies are negotiating right now to work elsewhere. Every time we decrease our level of production, we make America more dependent on foreign sources of energy.

On those few occasions when our country suffers a commercial airline tragedy, we do not respond by stopping all air travel for six months. Rather, we get to work figuring out the root cause and set about trying to make air travel safer. We don't grind everything to a halt and put tens of thousands of people out of work, jeopardizing our economy.

So, my state joined a lawsuit against the moratorium. We pointed out that a majority of the experts the federal government consulted before the ban, including representatives from the National Academy of Engineering, have stated publicly that they do not agree with the six-month blanket moratorium.
The court sided with the people of Louisiana in this matter. Consider the judge's statements: that the federal moratorium would result in the loss of jobs and livelihoods, that the government's action "does not seem to be fact-specific" and that the "government's hair-splitting explanation abuses reason and common sense."

One might assume that the federal government would back down, lift the moratorium and get on with the business of ensuring that nothing like this ever happens again in federal waters.

Nope.

Our federal government chose to fight on in court, and lost a second time.

Surely now, many of us thought, the federal government would stop its efforts to halt all drilling and instead get serious about more rigorous oversight and inspections.

Nope.

Instead, the federal government drafted a new moratorium. This seems to be a cynical ploy. It will take time to again take federal officials to court. If Washington loses, officials can issue a third moratorium and play this game out as long as they want. Such is the power of the federal government.

Louisianans, of all people, don't want to see another drop of oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico. It is our land and our way of life that are being harmed. Yet the administration tells our people to simply file a claim with BP or file for unemployment. Our people want to work, not collect unemployment checks.

We don't want to see the federal government create a second disaster, an economic disaster, for the people of our state thanks to its "capricious" and "arbitrary" actions. The bottom line is this: Thousands of Louisianans shouldn't have to lose their jobs just because the federal government can't do its job.

The writer, a Republican, is governor of Louisiana.

Obama's Backwardness

Via-American Thinker

By Greg Reese

Barack Obama is leading our nation backwards into chaos parallel to the early years of 20th-century Russia. In the early 20th century, Bolshevik revolutionaries led by Vladimir Lenin pieced together a bureaucratic authority that quickly developed into a totalitarian government.

Barack Obama is laying the foundation step by step for a superstructure not unlike the apparatus by which the Soviet Union functioned. The bureaucratization of America is an attack on capitalism, the free market, the private sector, and ultimately private property ownership.

Obama, like Lenin, imposed government on the people and will systematically dismantle personal freedom. As more and more of the private sector is regulated and controlled by big government, all categories of society will fall under the umbrella of one central authority.

Lenin imposed upon Russia a Decree on the Suppression of Hostile Newspapers justifying a series of measures to stop all of the press that spoke out against the revolution.

Obama, once inaugurated into office, commenced a campaign to silence opposition opinion. White House staff and the president singled out private citizens, groups, and news agencies as illegitimate.

Vladimir Lenin, in establishing the young USSR, assigned a Control Commission to oversee the government departments for the sake of imposing authority and policing rumors or insinuations that are critical of the party.

Parallel to Lenin's actions, Obama categorically assigned czars throughout the many departments of government. Many of these czars wield managing power and are not bound by constitutional checks and balances or congressional oversight.

Obama is replacing every facet of our society with bureaucracy. Once our system of private sector and individual freedom is subverted, then we will find ourselves dominated by a dictating government from of which we cannot break free.

Marxism did not collapse with the fall of the USSR. Obama shares the same philosophical dream as Vladimir Lenin. Marxism is the faith and religion of the ultra-left. Barack Obama is an evangelical Marxist. The American people have not recognized Obama's Marxism because Marxism has changed its vocabulary.

In his trademark chameleon-speak, Obama deliberately articulates his language, delivering rhetoric open to interpretation -- he speaks in code.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s it was very fashionable to be a Marxist, and no one dared critique Karl Marx, while in 2008-2009 it is cool to vote for Barack Obama and politically incorrect and unpopular to criticize him.

Lenin studied revolutionary Chernyshevsky, while Obama studied socialist-activist Saul Alinsky. Lenin was a collective agitator, while Obama was a community organizer. Lenin, like Obama, believed the public is no more than an instrument of the party, and both emphasize the importance of seizing power and getting things done, whatever the cost.

Obama is setting up the network and laying a foundation for egregious misuse of power. Obama is laying the foundation for dictatorship. He is deliberately bypassing checks and balances, using exclusive executive order to govern.

When the government becomes one central authority, it becomes vulnerable to dictatorship. The American people have already witnessed the intolerant traits of the president. All it takes to misuse power is a ruthless, selfish personality.

Obama, like Vladimir Lenin, has waged his war against capitalism. It is wrong-minded, blaming capitalism as the cause of corruption. It is not Wall Street, big banks, big oil, or the free market that causes corruption. It is men who choose to be selfish. Corruption comes from sin and the evil nature of men.

Barack Obama does not recognize sin or evil -- only government systems. This is why Obama is wrong-minded. He is unable to recognize his own tunnel-vision. Although he preaches "change," he himself is unable to change and unable to recognize that he does not care about people. His fixation on government systems is ultimately heartless.

Government bureaucracy is lifeless and insensitive and will lead only to mass confusion, abuse, dependency, and atheism. There can be no idyllic utopia -- Obama and his ideological kind long for a false reality, and they are prisoners to an intolerant, one-sided, materialistic view of life. Obama cannot bring progress because his thinking is old and fatally rigid.

It is not time to fall prey to lies and deception of the 20th-century past. America is drifting and losing its identity and origin. We must return to our roots -- to God and country.

America is exceptional because it is a nation founded like no other nation -- on the idea of individual freedom and a limited government.

Whatever It Takes: Obama Sidesteps Law to Halt Domestic Energy Production. Twice.

Via-Pajamas Media

The administration has shown no deference to the rule of law while trying to close Yucca Mountain and halt deepwater drilling.

by Clarice Feldman

It is disturbing, to say the least, how little deference the president and the administration give to the strictures of the Constitution and existing law. Whatever suits Obama’s partisan political interests takes precedence, regardless of the cost to us. However, it is heartening that judges are increasingly unwilling to let this rampage continue.

The most recent example involves the planned nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

Almost everyone acknowledges that nuclear power is clean and safe, even though there has been a decades-long campaign against it by ill-informed advocacy groups. The remaining concern about nuclear energy in this country, for some decades, has been how to dispose of the spent fuel created in the electrical generation process. In Europe, they have largely dealt with this problem by reprocessing that fuel and reusing it to create more energy. In this country, that option was discarded years ago in favor of long-term geological storage. Decades of expensive studies zeroed in on Yucca Mountain as the best site for such storage.

Presently, the nuclear waste generated by energy and weapons production is being stored in vulnerable storage facilities throughout the country, waiting for transfer to Yucca Mountain. The cost of that facility has been borne largely by electricity consumers paying into a nuclear-waste fund — already, $10 billion has been spent on developing Yucca.

Obama Must Rethink His Immigration Position

Via-RCP

By Ed Koch

President Obama does not believe that our borders can be protected against illegal entry. He also does not believe that efforts by Arizona to clamp down on illegal immigration are proper. As reported in Politico on July 2nd, President Obama said in a speech he gave at The American University in Washington, "...it's not just that the law Arizona passed is divisive -- although it has fanned the flames of an already contentious debate. Laws like Arizona's put huge pressures on local law enforcement to enforce rules that ultimately are unenforceable. It puts pressure on already hard-strapped state and local budgets."

The President went on to say, "These laws also have the potential of violating the rights of innocent American citizens and legal residents, making them subject to possible stops or questioning because of what they look like or how they sound."

The President appears to be telling the American public that the U.S. government can't keep our borders safe from illegal entry. But if the feds really wanted to prevent illegal entry, they would send the National Guard to the borders with the mission of preventing illegals from entering, which is what most Americans believe they could and should do. How do other countries protect their borders? Mexico does not open its southern border to illegals from Central and South America. It arrests, detains and sends them back to their home countries, as President Felipe Calderon admitted in a recent interview on CNN. Is the U.S.A. less competent than Mexico in the matter of border security?

President Obama says the Arizona law has "the potential of violating the rights [of the immigrants] ...because of what they look like or how they sound." Is the President saying because the illegals crossing the Mexican-American border are brown skinned and speak Spanish, they have a right to cross? Doesn't the Arizona police force have a right to arrest someone committing both a federal and state crime? Mexican illegal immigrants are economic refugees. Is the President saying that we now are obliged to accept economic refugees in addition to political refugees who fear for their lives? Is he saying to the citizens of Haiti, most of whom would qualify as economic refugees, that we will accord them refugee status and take them in?

The Justice Department recently filed a complaint against Arizona challenging the legality of Arizona's illegal immigration law. The New York Times editorial of July 8th states, "As the Justice Department points out in its complaint, the Arizona law will divert resources from the government's pursuit of dangerous aliens, including terrorists, spies and violent criminals."

Is the Justice Department saying the federal government is unable to keep our borders safe, not only from the criminals seeking to cross, but also from the economic refugee seeking a safe haven to get a job, medical care and a public education for his family, all costing, in this case, Arizona, billions of dollars? Is that acceptable?

The President has stated, according to The Times editorial of July 2nd, "Our nation has the right and obligation to control its borders," he said, but sealing off that vast space with troops and fences is a fantasy. And no amount of security at the border does anything about the undocumented 11 million who have already crossed it."

The President glosses over the fact that if we are not able to police our borders, as soon as the current 11 million illegals are given amnesty, a new crop of illegals will be walking across our borders. Is the President saying that once the 11 million are given amnesty, we will find a way to stop a new wave of illegals? If so, why not find and impose that way now?

The same Times editorial states, "Mr. Obama should not suspend all enforcement against illegal immigrants. But he can reset the administration's enforcement priorities to focus on dangerous and convicted criminals and rein in the operations that his Department of Homeland Security has promoted that enable local law enforcement to engage in the racial profiling he rightly denounces."

The only way the feds can focus "on dangerous and convicted criminals" is to arrest anyone illegally crossing the border, interviewing them and checking them against records. Expel them all when they are apprehended illegally crossing the border. American employers who knowingly hire illegal aliens should be prosecuted criminally and, on conviction, appropriately imprisoned.

Apparently, six Mexican governors of states along our border and two American governors - Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and Bill Richardson of New Mexico -- have threatened to boycott the next meeting of Mexican and American governors if the meeting is held in Phoenix, as now scheduled. Let them boycott. When it comes to boycotting on this issue, California and New Mexico are far more vulnerable, since, according to The Times of July 7th, "[p]olls in the United States may show that a majority of Americans support the Arizona law." Indeed, a recent Washington Post/ABC poll shows that 58 percent of Americans support the law.

The Obama administration knows that the American public is against the reforms that President Obama is proposing as they were against them when President George W. Bush proposed them, and the American public defeated two efforts by the Bush administration and Congress to implement those so-called reforms. Why is President Obama losing political popularity, and why is the Congress held in such low regard? The contempt of the public on this issue towards the efforts of both the President and the Congress to impose their will on an unwilling public has added strength to the coming November debacle for the Democratic Party. The Times of July 12th reports, "In a private meeting with White House officials this weekend, Democratic governors voiced deep anxiety about the Obama administration's suit against Arizona's new immigration law, worrying that it could cost a vulnerable Democratic Party in the fall elections."

President Obama, please rethink your policy toward the Arizona law and all issues related to illegal immigration. It is not too late to step away from the abyss.

Appeals Court Rejects U.S. Bid to Keep Drilling Moratorium

Via-FOX

NEW ORLEANS -- A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected the federal government's effort to restore an offshore deepwater drilling moratorium, opening the door to resumed drilling in the Gulf while the legal fight continues.

The ruling is not the final word on the Obama administration's fight to suspend new drilling projects so it can study the risks revealed by the disastrous BP oil spill.

The same appeals court is expected to hear arguments on the merits of the moratorium case in late August or early September.

While it's possible that 33 exploratory wells suspended by the moratorium could resume drilling, companies might not bother with the expense while the ultimate future of the projects hangs in the balance.

Catherine Wannamaker, a lawyer for several environmental groups that support the moratorium, said she was disappointed by the ruling but expressed confidence that the Obama administration ultimately will win its appeal.

Wannamaker said it's unclear whether any offshore companies would resume drilling because Thursday's ruling doesn't resolve the case.

"Clearly, it's legally allowed," he said. "The question is, practically speaking, will anybody do it given the uncertainty? It's hard to know what will happen."

The CEO of one of the companies that sued to stop the moratorium, Covington-based Hornbeck Offshore Services, said he didn't know if any of the companies involved planned to resume drilling.

"We need to get back to work," Todd Hornbeck said of his company, which provides vessels that serve the offshore industry. "We can't work without any drilling units working."

The moratorium, which prompted a lawsuit from oil and gas service companies, was first rejected June 22 by U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman.

The Interior Department appealed, asking the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to let the temporary ban stand until it ruled on the merits of the case.

Justice Department lawyer Michael Gray argued Feldman abused his discretion when he overturned the moratorium, which halted the approval of any new permits for deepwater projects and suspended drilling on the 33 exploratory wells.

Lawyers for the several oilfield service companies argued the administration failed to show that "irreparable harm" would take place if the drilling ban was lifted.

A three-judge panel rejected the government's arguments less than two hours after a hearing on Thursday afternoon.

Two of the 5th Circuit judges seemed to disagree about who should be shown more deference: the lower-court judge or Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who imposed the moratorium.

Judge Jerry E. Smith leaned toward the judge, while Judge James L. Dennis said Salazar "is entitled to a lot of deference." Dennis partially dissented in the ruling, saying that he would have let the moratorium remain in place.

"Why are we in a position to second-guess the secretary on whether or not there's a threat of irreparable harm?" Dennis asked at the hearing.

After Feldman overturned the moratorium in June, Salazar announced he would issued a new, refined moratorium that reflects offshore conditions. Gray, the Justice lawyer, said Salazar was still considering crafting a new moratorium.

Hornbeck said he can only "wait and see" whether the Interior Department tries to impose a new moratorium.

"It's not solving any problems. It's creating new problems," he said. "There are better solutions than that."

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, a vocal critic of the moratorium, observed the hearing from the courtroom gallery. Outside, he said a second moratorium would further chill plans for drilling in the Gulf and cost thousands of jobs.

"The federal government not being able to do its job is not a reason for thousands of Louisianians to lose their jobs," Jindal said.

Former NASA chief: Muslim outreach is ‘perversion’ of NASA’s mission

Via-Washington Examiner

By: Byron York

Michael Griffin, who headed NASA during the last four years of the Bush administration, says the space agency’s new goal to improve relations with the Islamic world and boost Muslim self-esteem is a “perversion” of NASA’s original mission to explore space. “NASA was chartered by the 1958 Space Act to develop the arts and sciences of flight in the atmosphere and in space and to go where those technologies will allow us to go,” Griffin says. “That’s what NASA does for the country. It is a perversion of NASA’s purpose to conduct activities in order to make the Muslim world feel good about its contributions to science and mathematics.”

Griffin calls NASA’s new mission, outlined by space agency administrator Charles Bolden in an interview with the al-Jazeera news agency, “very bad policy for NASA.” As for NASA’s core mission of space exploration, Griffin points out that it has been reaffirmed many times over the years, most recently in 2005, when a Republican Congress passed authorizing legislation, and in 2008, when a Democratic Congress did the same thing.

“NASA has been for 50 years above politics, and for 50 years, NASA has been focused by one president or another on space exploration,” Griffin says. “Some presidents have championed it more strongly than others, and it is regrettable that none have championed it as strongly as President Kennedy. But no president has thought to take NASA’s focus off of anything but space exploration until now, and it is deeply regrettable.”

Griffin says NASA has always played an important, but indirect, role in diplomacy. “I have championed the use of NASA as a powerful diplomatic and inspirational tool for U.S. policy writ large,” Griffin says. “But the way NASA achieves those goals is by doing great things. NASA does those things that make people all over the world say, ‘Wow.’ If NASA is making people say, ‘Wow,’ then they want to be part of what we do. That’s NASA’s role — it’s to do those things that make other people want to join us.”

For all his unhappiness with the new policy, Griffin says blame for the situation does not belong with NASA administrator Charles Bolden, whom Griffin calls “one of the best human beings you will find.” “When I see reports in the media excoriating Charlie for this position, that blame is misplaced,” Griffin says. “It belongs with the administration. That is where policy for NASA is set. The NASA administrator does not set policy for NASA, the administrator carries it out.”

“This is not about personalities,” Griffin concludes. “It is about the intellectual content of the policy, which I find to be bankrupt.

Judges rule Obama can't close Yucca Mountain nuclear dump

Whether he likes it or not Obama is learning that we are a nation of laws. But like the Net Neutrality and the oil drilling moratorium ruling he will probably just go around the judges rulings. At some point a judge is going to slap a contempt order on them...can't wait.

Via-McClatchy

By James Rosen

WASHINGTON — Democratic Rep. John Spratt and Republican Rep. Joe Wilson don't agree on much, yet the South Carolina congressmen are cheering a new ruling that denied the bid by the U.S. Energy Department to withdraw its application for a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada.

Three administrative judges within the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ruled last week that Congress had designated Yucca Mountain in 1987 to receive highly toxic waste from the Savannah River Site on the S.C.-Georgia border and other complexes that built atom bombs during the Cold War.

The panel found that President Barack Obama and Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, a nuclear physicist, lacked the power to close the Yucca repository unilaterally; doing so, it ruled, would require another act of Congress.

"Unless Congress directs otherwise, DOE may not single-handedly derail the legislated decision-making process by withdrawing the (Yucca repository) application. DOE's motion must therefore be denied," the judges wrote, adding that the DOE had weakened its arguments by "conceding that the application is not flawed nor the (Yucca) site unsafe."

"Given the stated purposes of the Nuclear Waste Policy Act and the detailed structure of that legislation, it would be illogical to allow DOE to withdraw the application without any examination of the merits," the judges found.

Obama’s new mission for NASA: Reach out to Muslim world

Via-Washington Examiner

By: Byron York


In a far-reaching restatement of goals for the nation’s space agency, NASA administrator Charles Bolden says President Obama has ordered him to pursue three new objectives: to “re-inspire children” to study science and math, to “expand our international relationships,” and to “reach out to the Muslim world.” Of those three goals, Bolden said in a recent interview with al-Jazeera, the mission to reach out to Muslims is “perhaps foremost,” because it will help Islamic nations “feel good” about their scientific accomplishments.

In the same interview, Bolden also said the United States, which first sent men to the moon in 1969, is no longer capable of reaching beyond low earth orbit without help from other nations.

Bolden made the statements during a recent trip to the Middle East. He told al-Jazeera that in the wake of the president’s speech in Cairo last year, the American space agency is now pursuing “a new beginning of the relationship between the United States and the Muslim world.” Then:

When I became the NASA Administrator — before I became the NASA Administrator — [Obama] charged me with three things: One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.

Later in the interview, Bolden discussed NASA’s goal of greater international cooperation in space exploration. He said the United States, more than 40 years after the first moon mission, cannot reach beyond earth’s orbit today without assistance from abroad:

In his message in Cairo, [Obama] talked about expanding our international outreach, expanding our international involvement. We’re not going to go anywhere beyond low earth orbit as a single entity. The United States can’t do it, China can’t do it — no single nation is going to go to a place like Mars alone.

Bolden’s trip included a June 15 speech at the American University in Cairo. In that speech, he said in the past NASA worked mostly with countries that are capable of space exploration. But that, too, has changed in light of Obama’s Cairo initiative. “He asked NASA to change…by reaching out to ‘non-traditional’ partners and strengthening our cooperation in the Middle East, North Africa, Southeast Asia and in particular in Muslim-majority nations,” Bolden said. “NASA has embraced this charge.”

“NASA is not only a space exploration agency,” Bolden concluded, “but also an earth improvement agency.”

Saving Obama From Himself

Via-Tribune Media Services

by Victor Davis Hanson

Do you remember candidate Barack Obama offering his hope-and-change platitudes in front of the fake Greek columns during the Democratic convention? Or earlier pontificating at the Victory Monument in Berlin?

Why didn't an old cigar-chomping Democratic pro take him aside and warn him about offending Nemesis? She is the dreaded goddess who brings divine retribution in ironic fashion to overweening arrogance.

Or maybe a friend could have whispered to Senator Obama to tone it down when he was merciless in damning the Bush administration for its supposedly slow response to Hurricane Katrina.

Obama railed that Bush showed "unconscionable ineptitude." Obama further charged that Bush's response was "achingly slow," a result of "passive indifference," and that his team was rife with "corruption and cronyism."

Those adjectives now apply to Obama himself, as he seems lost amid his own disaster — eerily in about the same Gulf environs. Adding insult to injury, a recent poll revealed that Louisiana residents thought Bush had done a better job with Katrina than Obama has with BP.

Couldn't one of Obama's many handlers have warned him to ignore the media's tingling-leg gaga worship, or their nonsense that Obama is "a god"?

Didn't Team Obama ever suspect that such an unhinged press, in the manner of a Greek chorus, could just as easily sour on their prophet once his poll ratings fell as quickly as they had soared?

Couldn't David Axelrod or Rahm Emanuel have admonished their candidate to cut out the creepy stuff about himself and his throng being "the ones we've been waiting for"? Why was there a need for all that megalomaniac hocus-pocus about slowing the "rise of the oceans" and healing the planet? Sure enough, Nemesis ensured that instead of Lord Poseidon lowering the seas, Obama is now a smoky Hephaestus fouling them up.

Did the Nobel Committee members really think they were doing their postnational, postracial heartthrob any good by giving him a peace prize without any record of foreign-policy accomplishment? Didn't his Scandinavian admirers grasp that prophets suffer the wages of hypocrisy far more readily than mere mortals when things go badly, as they inevitably do? Jay Leno is now more likely to use the phrase "Nobel Laureate Obama" than a serious diplomat.

For nearly two years, senator, candidate and freshman President Obama ridiculed his predecessor — as if running the United States were as easy a job as community organizing, serving a couple of years in the Senate or campaigning for president.

But now the once-enthralled electorate is starting to tire of the hope-and-change platitudes, and even of the easy blame-gaming of his predecessor, mostly because almost everything Obama once demagogued in weird fashion is coming back to haunt him.

Obama easily damned everything from Guantanamo Bay to Predator drone attacks in Afghanistan to the war in Iraq, only to adopt those policies and more from Bush.

He sermonized about the morals of a corrupt Republican Congress, only to keep quiet about earmarks, lobbyists and the sins of Democratic cronies such as Sen. Chris Dodd and Rep. Charles Rangel.

Deficits were once supposed proof of Bush's out-of-control spending. What does far greater red ink say about Obama?

If only swaggering George W. Bush could have been smart enough to reach out to Cuba, Iran and Syria. Then Obama did just that, only to make bad things even worse.

And remember the Obama comment about an arrogant Bush turning off our allies? Why, then, does an aloof Obama seem to alienate them even more?

The reality of Barack Obama is that he was an inexperienced community organizer with an undistinguished record as a Senate newcomer. A perfect storm of popular anger at eight years of George Bush, a lackluster John McCain campaign, Obama's landmark candidacy as an African-American, a disingenuous campaign promising centrist and bipartisan governance, and the financial meltdown in 2008 got the relatively untried and unknown Obama elected.

Most mortals in Obama's position would have treaded lightly. They would have kept promises, steered a moderate course and listened more than lectured until they won over the public with concrete achievement.

But headstrong tragic figures do not do that. They neither welcome in critics nor would listen to them if they did. They impute their unforeseen temporary success to their own brilliance — and expect it to continue forever. So would-be gods set themselves up for a fall far harder than what happens to the rest of us.

That's about where we are now, with our president playing a character right out of Greek tragedy, who, true to form, is railing about the unfairness of it all.

Stealth ban on Gulf drilling

Via-CNN

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The offshore drilling ban imposed after the BP disaster is only supposed to hit operations in deep water -- 500 feet or more.

But drillers in shallow water say they haven't been issued permits since the April 20 explosion. The delay has already forced hundreds of layoffs, and many more could be on the way.

"I'm almost out of business over here," said Paul Butler, president of Spartan Offshore, a small drilling company in Metairie, La.

Butler said that only one of his four drill rigs are operating; all four were drilling before the spill. Spartan has six contracts that would put his entire fleet back to work, but he can't get going until the permits come through, he added.

The week before last, Butler said he had to lay off 72 employees. Come Tuesday he'll have to let another 140 go.

"That's 140 families, is how I look at it," Butler said.

Same is true at Hercules Offshore, the largest shallow water driller in the Gulf.

"The Department of Interior isn't issuing permits," said Jim Noe, a Hercules executive. "By mid July all of our rigs will be on the beach, and the workers without a job."

That could be a lot of jobs.

Jobs on the line: Deep water drilling, which is currently banned while an investigation into the Deepwater Horizon accident is underway, is estimated to employ at least 35,000 people on both the rigs and in jobs that support them.

Nearly that many jobs could also be at stake over shallow water drilling. While shallow water rigs are smaller and employ only about half as many people, there are almost twice as many of them in the Gulf, according to the Louisiana Mid-Continent Oil & Gas Association.

"Do not close down Louisiana's economy with this ill-conceived freeze," Lt. Gov. Scott Angelle said in a recent statement on the deep water ban. "Louisiana's offshore industry is critical to the economic survival of this nation."

Angelle is leading an effort to prod the administration into issuing shallow water permits as well, and is on a twice-weekly briefing call with federal officials on the matter.

"Every time he asks them how many permits they've issued, and each time the answer is zero," said Hercules' Noe.

Safety first: An Interior Department spokeswoman said there is no freeze on shallow water drilling. However, she said, new safety procedures were put in place following the Deepwater Horizon spill.

"Companies have to comply before we can issue them permits," the spokeswoman said. "No one has fully complied."

Spartan's Butler said there was a long delay between when Interior stopped issuing permits and when the new safety guidelines came out. Indeed, the first Interior Department notification to oil companies about the new requirements was dated June 8, nearly two months after the disaster.

Butler said he has been scrambling to get his paperwork in order and hopes that permits will be issued soon.

Drilling ban: The jobs at stake
Shallow water drillers feel their operations are safer than the deep water operations like BP's.

The drillers say that an oil leak is easier to stop in shallow water, because the safety equipment is mounted right under the rig -- not a mile under the ocean surface. The geology is also better known and the water pressure is less. In addition, oil is easier to corral in shallow areas.

'System is broken': But others say that's not true, and believe the new safety requirements are reasonable. The massive Gulf oil leak, so far unstoppable, is one of the worst environmental disasters in American history. And it appears that a series of faulty industry procedures and shoddy government oversight are to blame.

"The system regulating offshore drilling operations is broken," Regan Nelson, senior oceans advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, wrote in a recent blog post. "A broken system could lead to additional failures, regardless of the depth of water."

Nelson noted that two bad oil spills -- one in Mexico in the late 1970s and one recently off the coast of Australia -- both occurred in shallow water.

"Until we have a better handle on what it takes to drill safely, the president's moratorium should cover all new drilling activities," she said.

David Limbaugh: What would Saul Alinsky do?

Via-Washington Examiner

By: David Limbaugh

Remember the popular motto "What would Jesus do?" which was invoked by many Christians as a moral guidepost for daily living? President Barack Obama more likely adheres to "What would Saul Alinsky do?" as most recently evidenced by his apparent defiance of a federal court order on his moratorium on offshore drilling.

Politico reports that the drilling companies who secured the court order blocking the moratorium say the administration indeed is going to defy the court order. I'm quite sure that Alinsky would applaud this move: If at first you don't succeed through proper legal channels, proceed anyway, because nothing is more important than the radical ends you seek, including the means that must be trampled in the process.

Of course, shrewd Alinskyites like Obama will always have a plausible excuse for their deceitful tactics. In this case, they are alleging newly discovered facts. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said he intends to reimpose the drilling moratorium based on information that wasn't "fully developed" in May, when the six-month moratorium was imposed. Quite convenient.

The administration is also sending mixed signals, probably to introduce sufficient confusion to cover its disobedience. The government's brief filed with the court insisted, "Of course, until a further order of this Court or the Court of Appeals granting relief from this Court's Preliminary Injunction Order, Defendants will comply with the Court's Order." But attorneys for the drilling companies warn that "Secretary Salazar's comments have the obvious effect of chilling the resumption of (outer continental shelf) activities, which is precisely the wrong this Court sought to redress through its Preliminary Injunction Order."

The companies' point, notes Politico, is that Salazar's public announcement that the administration will reinstitute the moratorium will have the same practical effect as actually doing it because companies are not about to prepare rigs for drilling when they might be shut down in a few days. The administration predictably pooh-poohs the companies' concerns and says these new "facts" present an entirely different scenario. How convenient. Whenever you can't advance the football, just move the goal posts your way.

Can't you just hear an irate Alinsky-schooled Obama behind closed doors learning of the court order audaciously purporting to limit his plenary executive authority? "Just find the damn loophole -- or say you did -- and I don't want to see you again in this office until it's done."

Defying court orders is just one of many ways Obama abuses his authority. When Congress failed with its initial efforts to impose cap-and-tax legislation designed to suppress traditional energy production and consumption in the United States for the ostensible purpose of reducing global temperature an imperceptible amount over the next century, Obama's Environmental Protection Agency just issued ultra vires regulations to accomplish similar results. It didn't matter that every literate and intellectually honest person had to concede that the EPA had no statutory (or any other) authority to issue such sweeping regulations. What mattered were the administration's radical environmental goals.

When Obama wanted to secure for his favored unions a stake in his new General Motors far exceeding their actual ownership interest and rob secured creditors of their preferred-creditor status and the value of their investment, he used the power of his office to strong-arm a restructuring of the company to accomplish his aims. When Democratic Party donor and super-lawyer Tom Lauria opposed this plan on behalf of his client, the White House, according to Lauria, threatened to destroy his client's reputation. One unnamed source described the White House as the most shocking "end justifies the means" group he had ever encountered. Another attributed Obama's negotiating tactics to a "madman theory of the presidency," saying Obama wants to be feared as someone who is willing to do anything to get his way. In return for standing up for their legal rights as secured creditors and not bending to Obama's horrendously unfair demand, er, offer, Obama maligned the recalcitrant creditors as "a small group of speculators."

When inspector general Gerald Walpin blew the whistle on the corruption of an Obama friend and supporter, Obama fired Walpin and sought to discredit him as a senile misfit -- a charge wholly unsupported by the facts.

And I won't begin to recite the many ways (e.g., reconciliation) Obama sought to circumvent the legislative process en route to Obamacare.

Alinsky is surely beaming from the other side.

Amid crises, Obama declares war -- on Arizona

Via-Washington Examiner

By: Byron York

The Obama administration has a lot of fights on its hands. Putting aside real wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, there's the battle against leaking oil in the Gulf, the struggle against 9.7 percent unemployment across the country, and clashes over the president's agenda on Capitol Hill. Despite all that, the White House has found time to issue a new declaration of war, this time against an unlikely enemy: the state of Arizona.

The Justice Department is preparing to sue Arizona over its new immigration law. The president has stiffed Gov. Jan Brewer's call for meaningful assistance in efforts to secure the border. And the White House has accused Arizona's junior senator, Republican Jon Kyl, of lying about an Oval Office discussion with the president over comprehensive immigration reform. Put them all together, and you have an ugly state of affairs that's getting uglier by the day.

First, the lawsuit. Last week, Brewer was appalled to learn the Justice Department's intentions not from the Justice Department but from an interview done by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with an Ecuadorian TV outlet. "It would seem to me that if they were going to file suit against us," Brewer told Fox News' Greta van Susteren last week, "they definitely would have contacted us first and informed us before they informed citizens ... of another nation."

But they didn't.

"There certainly seems to be an underlying disrespect for the state of Arizona," says Kris Kobach, the law professor and former Bush administration Justice Department official who helped draft the Arizona law. Kobach points out that during the Bush years, several states openly flouted federal immigration law on issues like sanctuary cities and in-state tuition for illegal immigrants. Respecting the doctrines of comity and federalism, the Bush administration didn't sue. Now, when Arizona passes a measure that is fully consistent with federal law, the Obama administration, says Kobach, "goes sprinting to the courthouse door."

Then there is the matter of the White House's assistance, or nonassistance, in Arizona's border-security efforts. On June 3, the president, under criticism for refusing to meet or even talk to Brewer, reluctantly granted her an audience in the Oval Office. After the meeting, Brewer told reporters Obama pledged that administration officials would come to Arizona within two weeks with details of plans to secure the border.

June 17 marked two weeks, and there were no administration officials and no plans. There still aren't. "What a disappointment," Brewer told van Susteren. "You know, when you hear from the president of the United States and he gives you a commitment, you would think that they would stand up and stand by their word. It is totally disappointing."

And now, there's the Kyl controversy. On June 18, Kyl told a town meeting in North Phoenix that Obama personally told him the administration will not secure the U.S.-Mexico border because doing so would make it politically difficult to pass comprehensive immigration reform. "I met with the president in the Oval Office, just the two of us," Kyl said. "Here's what the president said. The problem is, he said, if we secure the border, then you all won't have any reason to support comprehensive immigration reform."

"In other words," Kyl continued, "they're holding it hostage. They don't want to secure the border unless and until it is combined with comprehensive immigration reform."

After Kyl's statement went viral on the Internet, the White House issued a sharp denial. "The president didn't say that and Senator Kyl knows it," communications director Dan Pfeiffer wrote on the White House blog. "There are more resources dedicated toward border security today than ever before, but, as the president has made clear, truly securing the border will require a comprehensive solution to our broken immigration system."

Kyl is not backing down. "What I said occurred, did occur," he told an Arizona radio station. "Some spokesman down at the White House said no, that isn't what happened at all, and then proceeded to say we need comprehensive immigration reform to secure the border. That is their position, and all I was doing was explaining why, from a conversation with the president, why it appears that that's their position."

Even if it didn't have so many other fights on its hands, it would be unusual for an administration to align itself against an American state. But that's precisely what has happened. Soon it will be up to the courts and voters to decide whether Obama's campaign against Arizona will succeed or fail.

Has the President Lost His Bearings?

Via-Pajamas Media

Kyle-Anne Shiver

That Hey Jude sing-along was pretty strong evidence that the president is no longer in touch with reality.

There was a moment during the campaign, when candidate Obama was still keenly feeling his superlative oats, where he declared about his older opponent: “McCain is losing his bearings.” At issue then was a McCain comment that Hamas, the terrorist organization shelling Israel from Gaza, was “clearly supporting” Obama’s election.

Of course, in retrospect, it’s not hard to see which candidate was off-kilter upstairs, especially in regards to the Middle East.

The slo-mo implosion of Obama’s presidency is the topic du jour among just about everyone these days. From the yuppie-occupied tables at the neighborhood Starbucks to every main street beer joint and pool hall, in every golf club tavern and even at ladies’ luncheons, the question of what went wrong and why is foremost in every American mind and on their lips.

It’s a rare citizen these days who is not asking that very question — has he lost his bearings? — about the president. And as the days tick by on the government’s feckless response to the BP oil spill, a spill that occurred squarely in federal waters in a federally regulated industry, one image stands out and may go down as marking when we all knew Barack Obama had clearly lost not only his bearings, but his presidency.

The image, which ought to be branded in every voter’s mind right now, is this one — nicely captured by video — where the president leads the entire first family up on stage to join Paul McCartney and his raucous band of musicians in a momentous rendition of Hey Jude. The affair? Another in-poor-taste White House gala, which ought to, by now, be billed by the press as tawdry let-them-eat-cake displays of President Obama’s royal-laden, out-of-touch disposition towards all things real-life. The president’s Hey Jude moment occurred on June 3, day 44 of the man-caused catastrophe in the Gulf.

The whole thing sadly reminded me of my teeny-bopper excitement upon seeing the Beatles perform live on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. I was 13-years-old and went around singing I Want to Hold Your Hand in a silly girl, fawning trance for a week afterwards. So did all my girlfriends. We outgrew it in less time than it took for our hair to grow out from those awful Beatles’ haircuts we just had to have. To see my president thus grossly enthralled — and up on the stage, no less — was enough to put me nearly round the bend myself from embarrassment. What was he thinking? This seems too mild a question for the enormity of the statement Barack Obama made about his own transparently disordered character.

Any president who fails to see the vulgar implications of partying hearty while millions of American citizens are seeing their already-imperiled livelihoods go completely kaput with every day of gushing crude has lost touch with reality.

Like everyone else, I’ve hated — just hated — seeing those gorgeous pelicans drenched in rust-colored slime. I’ve cried over the devastation of such a beautiful, pristine coast. The beaches and the marshes and the nature preserves, all hideously disfigured for what some experts say may be a decade.

But even worse, in my view, is the decimation of the fishing and tourism industries which have barely just recovered from Katrina. These industries represent the livelihoods of millions of our fellow Americans. Hard-working from-the-bootstraps-up people, who do their jobs, pay their taxes, raise their families, and help keep our country strong.

As citizens, we must ask why our federal government has grown too big to succeed at anything much at all. That’s not all this president’s fault, of course. Our federal government has been outgrowing its constitutionally set boundaries for decades now. But anyone who has the temerity to put his name on the ballot as presidential material without having ever run anything more than an election campaign with an infatuated press in tow ought to know that he just might be getting in a bit over his own head. And when a president doesn’t even have the good sense or the backbone to have a face-to-face meeting with the BP CEO he is entrusting to fix a national disaster, then he’s not only in over his head, he is drowning.

Anyone still in charge of his faculties would know he was drowning.

Barack Obama holds, I think, the distinction of having been the presidential candidate with the highest self-esteem of any in American history. There was that moment in July 2008, when Lara Logan of CBS asked candidate Obama whether he ever had any doubts concerning his utter lack of foreign policy experience. The beyond-audacious candidate gave the one-word answer “Never.” An answer that pretty much says it all about this president’s inability to gauge reality.

Here we are less than two years into a presidency which appears more and more by the day as though it were some cosmic cruel joke. Americans are learning the hard way that political indoctrination parades as education, with grave national peril as its handmaid. An Ivy League degree ain’t what it used to be, in other words. At the very least, one would think that higher education ought to impart some sense of reality, some ability to prioritize problems, some idea how the real world works. If Barack Obama is any example, then one would need to conclude that the Ivies are long overdue for a bubble-burst, too.

This president loves the word “empathy,” yet he doesn’t give even the slightest indication that he’s ever had any of his own off-teleprompter. When pushed to the wall last weekend by his own base voters, when told by his pal, Spike Lee, to just “go off,” the president dodged into the very last refuge of incompetent cowards throughout history: profanity. Using the A-word on a morning broadcast — when the kiddies are watching — was as unpresidential as it was contrived. More evidence that something vital is missing from Obama’s bearings.

When I see a president with enough leisure time on his hands to party (not on his own dime, lest we forget) chime in on a baseball umpire’s call, and never miss a beat on the Democrat fundraising circuit or a chance to shave one more point from his golf score while crises explode unfettered from here to kingdom come, I see a president so out of touch with reality that it would take a complete nitwit not to assume the man has simply lost all his bearings. Flipped out. Gone ‘round the bend. Is so out to lunch that he doesn’t even have the good sense to pretend he’s hard at work so as to quell the public’s growing-more-frantic-by-the-day concern.

And when all is said and done, I shall always remember the Hey Jude sing-along as the most clarifying image of the whole unseemly mess we refer to as the Obama presidency. He’s done. Some will call this a premature judgment, I’m certain. But the sad truth is that this handwriting has been on the wall ever since Barack Obama, the not-even-through-his-first-term senator, announced his candidacy with a resume containing little more of substance than a memorable speech from 2004.

Experience? I don’t need no stinkin’ experience. I’m me.

Hopefully, the next time a charismatic candidate makes such vainglorious claims, the public will be healthily weary, vigilantly skeptical, and not in a false-god worshiping mood.