“More Americans See Democratic Party as "Too Liberal"”

Gallup reports that more Americans see Democratic Party as “too liberal”. The rest of the poll results aren’t that encouraging.

See it all here.

Victor Davis Hanson on “Obama and the “Noble Lie””

Along with Michael Barone’s instant classic labeling the Obama administration as “gangster government”, Victor Davis Hanson’s analysis of Obama and the philosophy of the “Noble Lie” is essential reading.

  Read it all here.

Some fun to brighten your day

  I’m too lazy to post the image, but this cartoon is funny enough to link.

Comrade Union Members are on top in Obama’s proletarian revolution

The best chance for compromise legislation on health care may be a plan under construction in the Senate Finance Committee that would pay for a public plan in part by taxing some worker health benefits.

But the union workers who helped Democrats win Congress and the White House and whose support will be key in getting a health bill signed into law would not pay the tax.

  Good old fashioned Soviet/Nazi fascism is coming to the United States with the creation of privileged classes.

  Read it all here.

Claudia Rosett asks where the UN has been on Iran

“People are being killed in Iran. Where is the U.N.? What institution could be better positioned to relieve President Obama of his worries about America standing up unilaterally for freedom in Iran? The U.N. is the self-styled overlord of the international community, committed in its charter to promote peace, freedom and "reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights."

Iran's regime is already in gross violation of a series of U.N. sanctions over a nuclear program the U.N. Security Council deems a threat to international peace. The same regime has now loosed its security apparatus of trained thugs and snipers on Iranians who have been, in huge numbers, demanding their basic rights. Surely top U.N. officials such as Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon should be leading the charge for liberty and justice, with the strongest possible criticism and measures against the Iranian regime.

But that's not happening. While Iranian protesters have been risking their necks to try to rid their country of a malignant despotism, the U.N. has hardly even qualified as voting "present."”

  You want to read all of this – and then ask why more than $4 billion US taxpayer dollars are given to the UN annually.

Obama trades live terrorists for dead hostages.

  The genius of Obama is simply breathtaking. No one this stupid has ever before occupied the White House.

  The man actually traded live terrorists for dead hostages.

  The sane, rational policy of not negotiating for the release of hostages has been shredded without a peep from Congress or the major media.

  Read the whole frightening story here.

Remember when Iraq and Afghanistan were “news”?

  Was it just last year that the media were still clamoring about Iraq and Afghanistan? How awful those wars were. how expensive, how the evil Bush was doing so poorly?

  That was yesterday. Today, the in-the-tank for Obama media couldn’t care less:

A couple of surprising words were missing from President Barack Obama's 55-minute news conference on Wednesday: "Iraq" — and "Afghanistan."

Also MIA: "Korea," "Pakistan," "soldiers," "surge" and "war" — as well as the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines.

  Read it here.

Caroline Glick indicts the media

  Caroline Glick is capable of deep analysis and very clear writing. Here she indicts the American media in general, Obama and his handlers in particular.

This media behavior has been noted by the likes of Fox News and the handful of other US news outlets that are not in the tank for Obama. But the repercussions of the Obama effect on US politics and world affairs have been largely ignored.

THE MOST IMPORTANT repercussion of the US media's propagandistic reporting is that the American public is denied the ability to understand events as they unfold. Take for instance The New York Times*' write-up of Khamenei's sermon this past Friday in which he effectively declared war on the protesters. As Russell Berman pointed out in the Telos blog on Saturday, the Times' write-up was misleadingly selective.

The Times did not mention that Khamenei ascribed world events to a Zionist conspiracy which he believes controls the US. It similarly failed to mention his long rant against the US for the FBI's 1993 raid on David Koresh's Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.

Had the Times - and other major media outlets - properly reported Khamenei's speech, they would have made clear to their readers that he is not a rational thinker. His view of world events is deeply distorted by his hatreds and prejudices and paranoia.

But then, if Times readers were permitted to know just how demented Khamenei's views of the world are, they might come to the conclusion that
Obama's intense desire to sit down with him, and his constant pandering to Iran's "supreme leader" are ill-advised and counterproductive. They might
come to the conclusion that it is impossible to achieve a meeting of the minds with a man who calls Americans "morons" and leads his subordinate
government officials in chants of "Death to America," "Death to Britain" and "Death to Israel."

And if they came to these conclusions, how could Obama be expected to affect anything?

Sunday, Cooper argued that Obama has changed the course of history in Iran simply by being the US president. In her words, unnamed Obama supporters
claim that "the mere election of Barack Obama in the United States had galvanized reformers in Iran to demand change."

And Obama's power as president to change the world is not limited to Iran. As far as his media servants are concerned, his "mere election" is
responsible for everything positive that has occurred in the US and throughout the world since last November.

  I consider this column a must-read.

Michael Barone expands on the “gangster government”

  Michael Barone has a take no prisoners style. He coined the term “gangster government” to describe Obama’s running roughshod over established law.

  Now Barone takes a broader look at the Obama style, dubs it “Chicago-style” and comes down hard.

Third, he does business Chicago-style. His first political ambition was to be mayor of Chicago, the boss of all he surveyed; he has had to settle for the broader but less complete hegemony of the presidency. From Chicago he brings the assumption that there will always be a bounteous private sector that can be plundered endlessly on behalf of political favorites. Hence the government takeover of General Motors and Chrysler to bail out the United Auto Workers, the proposal for channeling money from the private nonprofits to the government by limiting the charitable deduction for high earners, the plan for expanding government (and public employee union rolls) by instituting universal pre-kindergarten.

Chicago-style, he has kept the Republicans out of serious policy negotiations but has allowed left-wing Democrats to veto a measure upholding his own decision not to release interrogation photos. While promising a politics of mutual respect, he peppers both his speeches and impromptu responses with jabs at his predecessor. Basking in the adulation of nearly the entire press corps, he whines about his coverage on Fox News. Those who stand in the way, like the Chrysler secured creditors, are told that their reputations will be destroyed; those who expose wrongdoing by political allies, like the AmeriCorps inspector general, are fired.

Obama entered the presidency with what seemed like supreme self-confidence. He had, after all, advanced from the Illinois state Senate to the presidency of the United States in just four years — a steeper and more rapid ascent than any president since Woodrow Wilson. The success of his long-range campaign strategy seems to have made him confident that his long-range policy strategies would work as well.

  Read it all here.

Obama to Iranian protestors: drop dead.

  Many may be too young to remember the classic New York tabloid headline when President Gerald Ford refused to bail New York City out of its financial crisis in the 1970s.

  Now we have the example of Iranian citizens protesting an honest vote in choosing their dictators and Obama refuses to lend them any support.

“In a perverse irony, we are witnessing the most serious threat to the Islamic Republic since its establishment, at the same time the first American president explicitly to accept the regime's legitimacy happens to be in office. Whatever credibility the mullahs have lost in the street, they have picked up in the Oval Office, where the president bizarrely seems less enthusiastic about a change in dispensation in Iran than much of Tehran's population.”

  Obama’s cowardice and weaknesses is summed up:

“Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei gets a rhetorical pass that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn't. As hundreds of thousands of Iranian protesters march for democracy, in defiance of a government that is our committed enemy, Pres. Barack Obama resorts to lawyerly equivocations. He labors to avoid saying anything denoting untoward disapproval of the baton-wielding shock troops of Iran's theocracy.”

  Read it all here – while you’re enjoying a frozen custard as the people of Iran are being clubbed and shot in the streets of Tehran.

Obama stabs Israel in the back (again)?

  Obama appears to be stabbing Israel in the back (again) by using Jimmy Carter as a secret liaison to Hamas and secretly telling the terrorist group they don’t have to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

  There’s no way yet to verify the story, but it people concerned with the fate of Israel – which Obama seems to want destroyed – should demand a clear answer to the relationship between Carter, Obama and Hamas.

Former President Jimmy Carter presented Hamas with a written initiative intended to open talks between the Islamist group and the U.S. without Hamas having to accept all conditions previously laid out for dialogue by the American government
, top Hamas officials told WND.

Those conditions, expressed twice by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, are Hamas' renouncement of violence, recognition of Israel and agreement to abide by previous PLO commitments. The conditions were adopted by the Mideast Quartet, which consists of the U.S., United Nations, Russia and the European Union.

Carter, however, handed Hamas last week a letter "that aims to open dialogue between Hamas and U.S.," Mushir al-Masri, a member of Hamas' parliament and a spokesman for the Islamist group, told WND today.

Two top Hamas sources told WND Carter's initiative bypasses Clinton's conditions and instead asks Hamas to recognize the so-called two-state solution as well as the Arab Peace Initiative.

Read the whole story here.

Obama appoints yet another tax cheat

“President Obama's choice as chief of protocol for the State Department, a position that carries the status of an ambassadorship, did not file tax returns for 2005 and 2006, errors she corrected last November.

The nominee, Capricia Penavic Marshall, has placed blame for the problem on the Postal Service and on miscommunication between her husband and their accountant.”

Is there no end? Where is the mainstream media outrage? Read it here.

Why Obama’s economic policies are failing

“Obama took a tremendous economic and political gamble last January. The new president had the option of putting forward a stimulus plan that would attempt to reverse or significantly dampen America's terrible economic downturn ASAP. The quickest and most effective approach would have been a big cut in payroll taxes. For $800 billion, combined Social Security and Medicare taxes could have been slashed by 6 percentage points, or 40 percent. That would have put $1,500 in worker paychecks and, according to one credible study, increased employment by 4 million jobs in 2009.”

An excellent discussion of the whys and wherefores of Obama’s economic policy failures. Read it all here.