Keep Powder Dry When It Comes To Obama-Chavez

Hugo Chavez is harmless. At least comparatively so. He poses no real threat to the United States, militarily or economically. American animosity towards the Venezuelan president stems not from any fear of his power, but instead from his clownish antics and his use of “Imperialist America” as a straw man with which to sell his socialist agenda to his largely poor and uneducated population. He has lowered himself to amateurish name calling on multiple occasions and is using democracy to acquire permanent and unchallenged power in a fashion similar to Adolph Hitler. However, Hitler he is not.

This is why the cordial meeting between Chavez and Barack Obama this weekend doesn’t bother me all that much. He shook Obama’s hand and gave him some crazy left-wing literature about how all of the poverty and corruption inherent in South American society is the fault of the United States. I’m guessing that Obama might already own the book and agrees with the bile contained within its pages so the net effect of the meeting itself was probably a wash. Chavez will now go back to his own country and once again begin badmouthing America in order to continue leading his nation down the road to pure socialism. In a fashion eerily similar to recent statements by Joe Biden, Chavez will brag about how he looked the American president in the eye and told him the truth about all the injustices that America has brought upon the people of South America in the last two centuries. Whatever. American has more dangerous dictators to worry about.

For example. This weekend Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at a United Nations forum on racism. Of course public enemy number one at this event-–appropriately boycotted by The United States-–was Israel, a nation that Ahmadinejad has vowed to destroy.

It is one thing for Obama to shake the hand of a harmless jester like Chavez for whom the ultimate goal is securing and advancing his own political power. It is far different for him to sit down with an individual who appears intent on eradicating an ally of the United States.

The Obama administration used Iran's rhetoric at the U.N. meeting as justification for backtracking on its recent promise to meet for talks with the Islamic Republic. It seems Obama has finally found a pre-condition that he believes in.

Add the fact that Iran shows no signs of ending its nuclear program to its Holocaust denial and you have complete justification for keeping Iran cut off from the civilized world.

In continuing to promote feel-good policies of engagement with the worst governments that the world has to offer, Obama is essentially saying that these governments can do what they want without fear of repercussions from the United States. The situation should provide both sides of the American political spectrum an opportunity to reassess their ideas about diplomacy.

Those on the Left who voted for Obama need to do some soul searching and ask themselves if they really believe that a nation as irrational in their actions and rhetoric as Iran can be negotiated into doing anything, especially into ending its quest for nuclear weapons.

Those of us on the Right need to consider saving our powder when criticizing the President for providing little more than a smile and a handshake to a comical goon such as Hugo Chavez and reserving our outrage for matters of life and death such as Obama’s promise to diplomatically engage Ahmadinejad and the Mullahs.

Furthermore, all Americans, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum, need take a good hard look at the world community and decide whether their good will and respect is something that should carry weight in our own political calculations.




We need to keep in mind that anti-Semitism is not limited to the streets of the Middle East. The U.N. leadership is completely backward on matters such as these. It is the U.N. that should be condemned for expressing its dissappointment in those nations that walked out of the Iranian leader's speech. There is a reason we call it “American Exceptionalism”. The rest of the world simply does not share our moral compass or our value for human life.

Obama’s apologies for America over the past few weeks to anyone who will listen is a sign of the president’s weakness and naivete in regards to how the world works and proof of his low opinion of the country that he leads. These feelings have been nurtured in the communities and circles in which he has resided his entire life, from the pews of Reverend Wright’s Trinity United, to the home of Bill Ayers to the primary caucuses of the Democratic party. They should come as no surprise to anyone who paid close attention to the election of 2008. That a U.S President holds views such as these is unfortunate.

It is when these apologies turn into concessions however, that they become dangerous. Those of us who understand this need to keep it in perspective and be careful not to equivocate a clown such as Chavez with a legitimate threat to peace such as Ahmadinejad

- Dan Joseph

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Beavis and Boy Cut

In another sign that the political discourse in this nation has sunk to a new low since the left-wing blogs became a political force, here MSNBC's David Schuster and Affirmative Action hire Rachael Maddow sink to new lows in order to mock the anti-tax and spend rallies held on the 15th.




I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when the MSNBC executive actually explained to Maddow what "teabagging" is. I can't imagine that she would have known.

I'm not going to explain it. This is a classy blog. However, there is no excuse for a major news organization, even one mired in third place, to use vulgar, sexual innuendo in order to denigrate other people's political views.

To those folks who thought that Bill Clinton did nothing wrong, that the shoe-thrower was a hero and that "Buck Fush" was a political statement worthy of being plastered on the back of their Hybrid, this kind of stuff is hilarious.

To most of us, this shows how that even with their guy in The White House, the left is still as nasty and vitriolic as ever towards their political opponents.

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Obama's Words Imply Muslim Ignorance

This past week Barack Obama made two important moves regarding the Middle East. As usual, both were rhetorical in nature and relied heavily on Obama’s own personal appeal in order to distract Americans from the actual implications of the President's words.

First, the President and his administration essentially signaled that they will no longer be using the term “War On Terror” in order to define the struggle between the United States and murderous fanatics who kill civilians. This implies one of two things. Either Obama does not consider what we’re currently doing in Afghanistan and Iraq to be a “war” or he does not consider those who we are fighting to be “terrorists”.

Next, Obama took a page from George W. Bush and emphatically declared that the Unites States is not at war with Islam.

Well, Duh Barry!

All Americans should hope that the change in nomenclature from the “War On Terror “ to “Overseas Contingency Operations” is simply an indication that Obama views the battle against Islamic extremism as a matter of law enforcement as opposed to a war. If this is the case, then we can at least be assured that while the Democrats may be incredibly ignorant as to the motivations of Islamic extremists and the best way to battle them, at least they are not delusional enough to believe that these “criminals” are anything other that ideology-driven soldiers engaged in a “crime spree” against the West as opposed to “freedom fighters” as many on the extreme left like to call them.

Let’s face it. If Obama is implying that those who attacked us on 9/11 are something other than “terrorists” or if his administration is afraid that the word “terrorism” will offend someone who is rational enough for America to negotiate with, then we might as well just put up a big sign at customs that says: “Welcome to The United States. Open to The Idea of Sharia Law Since 2009”.

The President’s declaration of the United States not being at “war with Islam” is different.

At this point, after the Bush Administration bent over backwards in the days and years following 9/11 to convince the world that Islam was a “religion of peace” it is hard to believe that there is still anyone in the world who sincerely believes that the U.S. government is at war with all of Islam.

But through his statement Obama has conceded that there is still a large portion of the Muslim world that believes that America is at war with all of Islam. The only reason for this belief, which is widespread in the Muslim world, is pure ignorance among Islam’s practitioners.

The causes behind this incredible misunderstanding are complex and speak to the dangers that the governments that these naive individuals live under pose to the world in general. Muslims in nations such as Iran and Syria as well as those living under the Palestinian authority and other tyrannical regimes have constantly been told that America is fighting in the region with the goal of eradicating Islam and permanently occupying Muslim lands. This myth is perpetuated through government-run media, a theology-based education system and word-of-mouth on Middle Eastern streets in which the citizens have little access to accurate information regarding anything, not simply in matters of foreign policy. In this country, even those who are adamantly opposed to our actions in the region over the last five decades understand that the issues and goals which have driven our actions do not stem from a desire to destroy the Islamic faith. Obama is correct in reiterating this fact. However there is no reason to believe that those who disseminate the information in the Islamic world will spin the President’s words to our nation’s benefit.

Of course, only the expansion of American-style democracy will completely correct this situation. However, the combination of the unfortunate mishandling of the war in Iraq as well as the knee-jerk opposition that the American left has to pro-freedom foreign policy tactics has severely limited our options for correcting the situation in the Arab world.

The unfortunate reality is that a huge portion of the Islamic world either lacks the capacity or the access to information that would allow them to truly understand the current conflict.

While President Obama is correct in reiterating George W. Bush’s insistence that the United States harbors no ill will towards Islam as a religion or Muslims as a people, the reality is that the Islamic world will only gain the needed perspective once the people of the region are given access to information that accurately portrays the reality of the situation.

Too many in the Middle East still seem oblivious to the fact that the vast majority of Muslims killed in recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan were murdered by fellow Muslims and not at the hands of crusading Westerners.

While I do not wish to give the impression that I believe everyone in the Islamic world is ignorant of the complexity of U.S. actions and goals in the region, clearly a significant portion is. Why else would Obama feel the need to say what he did? Furthermore, the unfortunate reality is that no matter how many times an American president tells the Muslim world that we are not at war with Islam, the leadership of Islamic regimes seem to be hell-bent on making sure that the message does not reach the populace or that if it does, they are made to doubt the sincerity of the statement

-Dan Joseph

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False Choices Driving Obama's Agenda

It's so bittersweet when someone writes a published article that mirrors something that I've been saying for weeks. Just knowing that this writer is getting paid for coming to a conclusion that I arrived at 20 days into Obama's administration is kind of discouraging for my unemployed ego. But it makes me feel less lonely in my thinking. THIS ARTICLE HITS THE NAIL ON THE HEAD! Thus far, and even during the campaign, Obama has guided the political debate by using false choices to frame his policy initiatives. This tactic relies on the naiveté of Americans who support him in order to succeed. So far, it's working like magic.

April 01, 2009
Obama’s Childish Vision of Politics
By Ben Shapiro

“In the words of Scripture,” Barack Obama announced at his inauguration, “the time has come to set aside childish things.”

So why does the President of the United States embrace the most childish interpretation of political discourse ever put forward on a national stage?

Politics is about making choices. We either cut spending or we grow spending. We either have less regulation or more regulation. We either strengthen defense or we weaken it. Obama seemingly understands this. He has repeatedly referred to the “hard choices” we face as a nation.

Yet despite his “hard choices” rhetoric, Barack Obama’s favorite political tactic is to claim that no choices need be made at all; all political differences of opinion, he says, can be chalked up to misunderstanding rather than conflicting fundamental values. All choices are “false choices” if we just think deeply enough. Or rather, if Obama thinks deeply enough.

And so Obama claimed in the Chicago Tribune that Americans “need not choose between a chaotic and unforgiving capitalism and an oppressive government-run economy.” That choice, he said, is a “false choice.” It is a false choice as he phrases it -- capitalism isn’t chaotic and unforgiving. But the simple choice between capitalism and a government-managed economy is a real choice -- and it’s the most important choice Americans have faced in half a century. Obscuring the need to make that choice by glossing over it with happy talk does a profound disservice to the American people.

According to Obama, “false choices” aren’t restricted to the economy -- they’re also present with regard to stem cell research. While Obama paid lip service to the moral qualms of the anti-embryonic stem cell research advocates, he then dismissed their intelligence. “Our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values,” he announced while restoring unfettered federal funding to embryonic stem cell research. Those moral thinkers who struggle with the implications of destroying potential human life in order to embark upon decades-long research projects are idiots, according to the president.

We’ve all been suckered by “false choices” on national defense, too, Obama tells us. Determining the future of Guantanamo Bay is easy, he smiles; we shut it down, thereby ending the “false choice between our safety and our ideals.” Again, this is nonsensical: Ask the Sept. 11 victims’ families whether releasing terrorists onto U.S. soil for civil liberties purposes presents a conflict between safety and ideals. American presidents from Washington to Lincoln to FDR to Bush have struggled with the balance between security and civil liberties. But apparently, according to Obama, they were a bunch of dummies -- that choice is “false.”

Obama’s not done with the “false choices.” There are “false choices” with regard to the environment, too. “Throughout our history,” Obama recently stated, “there's been a tension between those who have sought to conserve our natural resources for the benefit of future generations, and those who have sought to profit from these resources. But I’m here to tell you this is a false choice.” Really? Then why do Democrats insist on blocking drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve? After all, the choice between allowing oil companies to profit from resources and conserving natural resources is a false one.

In reality, of course, all of these choices are hard choices. Do we choose the warm feeling of a low-growth, government-managed economy over the dynamism and creativity of capitalism? Do we choose to destroy potential human beings in order to potentially save human beings? Do we stop law enforcement measures to preserve civil liberties or do we fight the threat of terrorism with every tool at our disposal? Do we choose green living over the continued expansion of our economy?

These are the questions around which American politics revolve. These are questions that reflect our fundamental values. And these are the questions President Obama hates, because they strip away the shallow, puerile rhetoric of hope, change, and unity, and instead ask Americans to think more deeply.

And so Obama labels such questions “false choices.” By doing so, he assumes the role of all-knowing prophet, able to solve all political conflicts by declaring them fictitious. While we mortals debate the issues, Obama stands far above them, handing down his judgment from on high, bringing unity where once there was conflict.

This is dangerous stuff. America’s greatness lies in its willingness to argue tough questions in the public square. Presenting such questions as easy calls to be handled by a wise aristocracy is fundamentally destructive of the very basis of self-government. But then again, according to Obama, the choice between rule of administrative aristocrats and the rule of the people is probably just another “false choice.”

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Picture Friday IV

"I find the gavel to be much more effective when you hold it this way."

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Obama's Insane Budget

Obama’s Budget: It’s Absolutely Insane!
By Peter Ferrara
Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy, Institute for Policy Innovation

At his press conference last night, President Obama insisted once again that he inherited the budget deficit, and “we’re doing everything we can to reduce that deficit.”

But the deficits over the next 10 years that Obama proposed in his budget are not George Bush’s deficits. They are the deficits that Obama has proposed, resulting from the $1 trillion in increased spending he adopted in the no-stimulus stimulus bill, and the $400 billion supplemental spending bill he supported and also adopted the following week, and the $275 billion housing bailout he proposed the next week, and the $1 trillion bank bailout plan his Treasury Secretary just proposed this week, and the $638 billion he has proposed as a “downpayment” on a new national health insurance entitlement. The health insurance plan will be the most expensive entitlement of all — serious estimates are that it will cost at least $1.2 trillion or more. Does this sound like he is “doing everything we can to reduce that deficit?”

The budget Obama proposes for this year increases federal spending by a fiscally insane 34% over the budget adopted for last year, with a total of $4 trillion in federal spending, the highest EVER.


Under the Obama budget, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the national debt will more than double over the next 10 years from 40% of GDP today to a shocking 82%! Ronald Reagan left office with the national debt at 42% of GDP. At the end of World War II, the national debt was just under 114% of GDP. If the economy does not recover permanently next year, as even the Congressional Budget Office (now controlled entirely by Democrats) assumes, Obama could even top that World War II record — spending mostly on welfare and entitlements rather than on fighting the Nazis and Imperial Japan.

Does this sound like we’re “moving from an era of borrow-and-spend to one where we save and invest,” as Obama also said last night?

In fact, there is not one item in Obama’s budget that promotes actual saving and investment. Quite to the contrary, the tax rate increases he proposes for the top income tax brackets, for capital gains, and for dividends will all reduce saving and investment.

The budget Obama proposes for this year increases federal spending by a fiscally insane 34% over the budget adopted for last year, with a total of $4 trillion in federal spending, the highest ever. That spending would equal 28.5% of GDP, an increase in the size of the federal government in Obama’s first year of 42% compared to the postwar average relative to GDP.

The deficit would reach a $1.845 trillion this year, according to the CBO — the highest ever except for World War II. That would be more than 4 times Reagan’s largest deficit, which caused so much howling among liberals and Democrats.

The CBO further estimates that this Obama budget deficit will total an astounding 13.1% of GDP, more than one-eighth of the entire U.S. economy, for the federal deficit alone! That is again the largest in U.S. history except for World War II and more than twice Reagan’s highest deficit as a percent of GDP.

Reagan adopted budget cuts soon after he entered office equal to close to 5% of the federal budget at the time. Even with his defense buildup — which won the Cold War without firing a shot — total federal spending declined from a high of 23.5% of GDP in 1983 to 21.3% in 1988 and 21.2% in 1989. That’s a real reduction in the size of government relative to the economy of 10%.

Obama last night also taunted Republican critics of his budget, saying, “we haven’t seen an alternative budget out of them.” But next week when Congress starts debating the budget, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, will present precisely such an alternative budget. Then we will see what we could have had if we hadn’t elected left-wing extremists to the White House and to run the Congress.

Peter Ferrara is Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy for the Institute for Policy Innovation, among other posts. He served in President Reagan’s White House Office of Policy Development, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under the first President Bush. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

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What To Do If Jeremy Bird Shows Up At Your Door

If one of the Obamabots shows up at your door, here's what you do. Debate them until they realize that they don't know anything and be sure to take up enough of their time so that they can't push the President's snake oil to your less attuned neighbors.

Here's Some stuff From Michelle Malkin:

Too funny. The Obama Message Machine doesn’t want the Tea Party movement showing them up. So, they’ve sent out a mass e-mail and YouTube video link urging their cultists to go out and gather pledge signatures to support the president’s economic plan. Yep, a top-down, “grass-roots movement” directed by the DNC/Team Obama “because we can’t leave this important debate up to a Washington establishment that doesn’t welcome change.”

Snort.

Well, this will really fire up the Obama-tic troops:

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TOTUS

Thanks To: Michelle Malkin

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Obama Responsible For AIG Bonus Debacle

Set aside your outrage over the actual bonuses for a second. If I didn’t hear you screaming and wailing over the millions in wasteful pork contained in the stimulus and omnibus packages then you have absolutely no right to complain about this comparatively miniscule amount of taxpayer money going to a few AIG employees. Chuck Schumer I’m looking in your direction

The real significance of this particular mess is that it’s the first Obama screw up where he won’t be able to get away with blaming George W. Bush. This is entirely on him.

Connecticut Democratic Senator and friend of Angelo Chris Dodd has now taken responsibility for adding the loophole into the stimulus package that permitted AIG and other companies that received bailout funds to pay bonuses. But only after lying about it the day before.

Dodd claimed that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner ordered him to add the provision. We can’t be sure why, but it’s important to note that Obama and Dodd were the two biggest recipients of AIG contributions during the 2008 election cycle.
Angry yet?

This is why it’s so infuriating watching Obama feign indignation over the bonuses when all indicators point to the fact that he allowed them to go through in the first place. Now, maybe Obama was ignorant of the loophole. Maybe his anger is genuine. Perhaps, the language that allowed the AIG bonuses to occur, wouldn’t have gotten through had Obama actually READ THE STIMULUS BILL!!! Maybe someone would have caught it had he given Congress and the public TIME TO READ THE BILL!!!!

At this point Barack Obama has a lower approval rating than George W. Bush did at this point in his first term. It’s good to know that Americans are finally using their deductive reasoning abilities and waking up from the rhetoric induced coma of the last six months.

It’s a good thing that it happened now, before other Obama ideas were allowed to be put into place without debate. Such as his short lived plan to drop severely injured veterans from the public health care roles in order to free up cash for God knows what.

I wonder if Leno will ask him about that one tomorrow night?

-Dan

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Lily Eskelsen: Standing Between Poor Kids and A Quality Education Since 2008

It’s nearly impossible for your average citizen to differentiate between “teachers” and “teacher’s unions”.

When Republicans attack teachers' unions the response we get usually comes from some middle aged house frau, who voted for Obama because he was a “dreamboat”, and who counters our policy ideas by saying something like:

“Don’t attack the teachers! They teach our children! Children are the future! Teachers, Children, Future! Why do you hate children?!!”

This is why teacher's unions tend to get a free pass from the American public, despite the fact that they are among the most greedy and self-serving institutions in the country.

Not only do they routinely advocate rewarding incompetence, supporting tenure without regard to ability and opposing merit pay, but folks like National Education Association Vice-President Lily Eskelsen have been the nation’s staunchest defenders of the status–quo in our public education system.

Now if you think that our public school system is perfect and is not in need of reform then you can stop reading here.

Truthfully, the vast majority of our nation’s public schools are just fine. The problem lies in the fact that the public schools in America’s poorest communities are a complete mess.

President Bush attempted to address this problem through No Child Left Behind and it worked to a certain extent. If nothing else, NCLB put a magnifying glass over our country’s worst schools and forced them to adopt a structured test-based curriculum which has resulted in vast improvements across the board in the reading comprehension and math skills of kids who would otherwise be looking forward to a future of handling the mayonnaise applicator at their local Hardee's.

It would be understandable if Ms. Eskelsen opposed NCLB because it’s uniformly applied to a state’s schools without regard to demographics or the cultural and economic differences of the given area. Or due to the fact that the tests vary from state to state making accurate, nationwide, comparative analysis impossible. But, that’s not her beef. The problem Eskelsen has with NCLB is that it hampers the teacher’s ability to use “creative” teaching methods. I assume that these are the same “creative” methods that made sweeping education reform a necessity in the first place, but I digress.

To Eskelsen the happiness of the teachers trumps the progress of the students. To her and her ilk the fact that Billy can’t read isn’t nearly as important as the method by which teachers attempt to teach him how to read, regardless of how well those methods work.

Eskelsen is an equally enthusiastic cheerleader for the status quo when it comes to school choice. She’s against it.

With school choice, a student who is attending a gang-infested school inhabited by teachers who are themselves hooked on phonics, would be given a voucher which they could put towards the tuition at a private school. This gives more power to parents who care deeply about their child’s education but who can’t afford to send them to a school where the principal doesn’t moonlight as a stripper.

On its surface, it would appear that only an individual with the conscience of say…Bernie Madoff could oppose such an idea. But in a fashion similar to a Wall Street short seller, Eskelsen has put greed ahead of poor students.

You see, public schools get their funding based on how many students they have, but obviously they don’t spend every penny of the allotted money that they get per student on the student himself. They buy other things with it, like dodge balls and computers and a cappucino machine for the teacher’s lounge. So if Billy takes his voucher and goes to a public school, they can kiss their cappucino machine goodbye. I’m exaggerating of course, but the point I’m trying to make is that the only reason for Eskelsen’s opposition to vouchers is that it forces the public schools to actually earn their government money rather than automatically receiving it, even if Billy is sixteen years old and spells his name with a “K”. No questions asked.

Eskelsen’s solution? Go back to the way things used to be. The good old days when the less academic prowess a school’s students exhibited, the more cash was thrown at the school in hopes that Billy would magically learn his state capitals despite the fact that he was dodging bullets in the lunchroom.

Eskelsen and her teachers' union cronies have enjoyed the naive good-will of the American public for far too long. It is time that folks woke up and realized that unions such as the NEA and people like Eskelsen are the primary obstacle to meaningful school reform in this country. However, as long as politicians like Barack Obama an Ted Kennedy are having their campaign coffers filled by folks like Eskelsen the status quo will remain.

I’ll leave you with one last example of the double standard that is keeping our nation’s poorest children from receiving a chance at a real education.

Here in D.C. we have what is widely considered to be one of the nation’s worst public school systems. Recently two siblings, Sarah and James Parker used an experimental voucher program and escaped a school that was rotting from the inside. With the voucher they began attending The Sidwell Friends School, one of D.C.’s best.

But because of pressure put on Barack Obama by folks like Lily Eskelsen and others at the NEA, these kids are going to be forced back into their decrepit D.C. public school regardless of the sub-par education they will be receiving in D.C.’s violent and decaying system.

President Obama’s daughters are now matriculating at Sidwell Friends. I wonder if he considered placing the First Daughters in a D.C. public school before making the move from Chicago? I’m guessing not. After all he wouldn’t want Sasha and Malia associating with public school riff raff like Sarah, James and Billy.

So Sarah. James. If you are reading this, just remember: when you’re flipping burgers and scrubbing toilets twenty years from now, you have Lily Eskelsen to thank.
-Dan Joseph

"I Could have been president if Lily Eskelsen hadn't taken away my voucher. Oh well, guess I'll go rape some tourists."

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Picture Friday 3

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Obama, Limbaugh and Failure

Let me be perfectly honest here. I hope with every fiber of my being that 95% of President Obama’s agenda fails to become law.

Do I want the stock market to continue its slide and the economy to remain in the gutter? Of course not.

Am I hoping for another attack on the homeland? God no.

I simply don’t want to see America adopt policies such as Obama’s, which punish success, squash entrepreneurial spirit and force responsible folks to pay for some mother of seven’s mortgage because she lied on her loan application.

You see, all this talk of Rush Limbaugh and “failure” is being used as a straw man by the administration right now, in order to obfuscate the fact that Geitner and Obama have absolutely no clue how to stop the economic bleeding. It also serves as a distraction allowing Obama to push though items, without debate, that have absolutely nothing to due with the current crisis. Things such as health care reform and “cap and trade”.

The fact that Obama and his advisors are spending so much time talking about a radio talk show host, shows us that Obama is running a far more politically charged administration than his predecessor. But then again, he is a Democrat. Let’s look back to 2006 when Democrats were polled about George W. Bush.

A FOX News/ Opinion dynamics poll asked:

“Regardless of how you voted in the presidential election, would you say you want President Bush to succeed or not?”

51% of Democrats answered “no” to that question. Keep in mind what the central issue at the time was. Iraq. Essentially what 51% of Democrats were saying was that they wanted enough American soldiers to die in Iraq to force a premature withdrawal, set American foreign policy in the Middle East back to pre-9/11 times and all in order to damage the president politically. Petty enough for you?

The difference between Limbaugh and the majority of Democrats, as well as other Dem operatives such as James Carville who professed that he wanted President Bush to “fail” as far back as 2001, is that while the hopes of Limbaugh and myself are based on the desire to avoid policies that hurt us in the long term, the hopes of the left were simply to destroy a president that they didn’t like. Remember, liberalism is almost exclusively an emotional pursuit. This explains why outrage, hatred and dreams of harm befalling their political opponents are par for the course in Democratic circles. It also explains why Obama is president right now.

The first 50 days of this administration have been very messy, but have been primarily defined by the fact that Obama has been exposed as an individual who will say he’s going to do something and then either not do it or do the opposite. This is the ultimate dog and pony show presidency. One where Obama has falsely framed choices such as : a massive spending package to stimulate the economy vs. “doing nothing” or science vs. ignorance (stem cells). Now he hopes to frame the choice as being between his own political successes vs. the failure of the nation as a whole. This is why politicians who are this charismatic and who garner an almost messianic, albeit politically naïve following are so dangerous.

This poses yet another reason that all concerned Americans should hope for failure on Obama’s part. Perhaps it will lead to a change in this administration’s tactics and in turn give American’s a chance to take a breath, get beyond the fancy rhetoric and actually think about the actual effect that the president’s policies will have on the nation.

But please, no more sanctimonious whining from the left about how we on the right want the country to fail. You know it’s untrue and now you also know how incredibly hypocritical it is.

-Dan

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Rachel Maddow Decieves Viewers On "Employee Free Choice Act"

I've always considered Ms. Maddow to be little more than an MSNBC Affirmative Action hire. Now we know she's a dishonest Affirmative Action hire as well.

As you can see here, like all supporters of Big Labor's latest power grab, she obfuscates--either intentionally or due to ignorance--what's actually in this monstrosity of a bill.

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Deja-Vu With The Chinese

The fact that the Chinese did almost exactly the same thing to the Bush Administration eight springs ago begs the question as to whether this is a coincidence or the second instance in what is becoming a pattern of the Chinese government testing new American presidents early in their administrations.

China says US navy ship was breaking law-HK website
Tue Mar 10, 2009 12:35am

BEIJING, March 10 (Reuters) - China said a U.S. naval vessel was conducting illegal surveying activities off its southern island of Hainan, a Hong Kong television website reported on Tuesday, after the Pentagon said Chinese ships had harassed the vessel in international waters.

"The U.S. navy vessel concerned has been in China's special economic zone conducting illegal surveying activities," said a statement from the Chinese embassy in Washington, reported by the website of Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television (news.ifeng.com).

"China cannot accept these baseless accusations. China demands that the United States halt all illegal surveying activities," said the statement

OK China. Whatever you say.

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Picture Friday. Volume 2.

URKLENOMICS.






I HAVE NO CLUE!

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Obama's Double Standard on School Vouchers

Obama is planning on screwing over two of his daughter's classmates by siding with the teacher's unions on school vouchers instead of with the poor families who care about their child's education.

If he's going to force these kids back into the DC public school system he should have the courage to send his daughters there as well.

By William McGurn
Dick Durbin has a nasty surprise for two of Sasha and Malia Obama's new schoolmates. And it puts the president in an awkward position.

The children are Sarah and James Parker. Like the Obama girls, Sarah and James attend the Sidwell Friends School in our nation's capital. Unlike the Obama girls, they could not afford the school without the $7,500 voucher they receive from the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program. Unfortunately, a spending bill the Senate takes up this week includes a poison pill that would kill this program -- and with it perhaps the Parker children's hopes for a Sidwell diploma.


Deborah Parker
Sarah and James Parker attend Sidwell Friends School with the president's daughters, thanks to a voucher program Sen. Dick Durbin wants to end.
Known as the "Durbin language" after the Illinois Democrat who came up with it last year, the provision mandates that the scholarship program ends after the next school year unless Congress reauthorizes it and the District of Columbia approves. The beauty of this language is that it allows opponents to kill the program simply by doing nothing. Just the sort of sneaky maneuver that's so handy when you don't want inner-city moms and dads to catch on that you are cutting one of their lifelines.

Deborah Parker says such a move would be devastating for her kids. "I once took Sarah to Roosevelt High School to see its metal detectors and security guards," she says. "I wanted to scare her into appreciation for what she has at Sidwell." It's not just safety, either. According to the latest test scores, fewer than half of Roosevelt's students are proficient in reading or math.

That's the reality that the Parkers and 1,700 other low-income students face if Sen. Durbin and his allies get their way. And it points to perhaps the most odious of double standards in American life today: the way some of our loudest champions of public education vote to keep other people's children -- mostly inner-city blacks and Latinos -- trapped in schools where they'd never let their own kids set foot.

This double standard is largely unchallenged by either the teachers' unions or the press corps. For the teachers' unions, it's a fairly cold-blooded calculation. They're willing to look the other way at lawmakers who chose private or parochial schools for their own kids -- so long as these lawmakers vote in ways that keep the union grip on the public schools intact and an escape hatch like vouchers bolted.

As for the press, complaints tend to be limited to the odd column or editorial. That's one reason it was so startling back in 2000 when Time magazine's Tamala Edwards, during a live televised debate at Harlem's Apollo Theater, asked Al Gore about the propriety of sending his own son to private school while opposing any effort to extend the same choice to African-Americans without his financial wherewithal. As CNN's Jeff Greenfield would note later in the same debate, Mr. Gore "bristled" when Ms. Edward's put the question to him.

Virginia Walden-Ford, executive director of D.C. Parents for School Choice, wouldn't mind making a few more politicians bristle. "I'd like to see a reporter stand up at one of those nationally televised press conferences and ask President Obama what he thinks about what his own party is doing to keep two innocent kids from attending the same school where he sends his?"

As for Sidwell, the school has welcomed the Opportunity Scholarship program. Though headmaster Bruce Stewart declines to get into either politics or the Obamas, he says that a program that gives parents more educational options for their children is not only good for their kids, it's good for the community. Plainly he's not doing it for the money: Even the full D.C. voucher covers only a small fraction of Sidwell's actual costs.

All of which leaves the First Parent with a decision to make: Will he stand up for those like his own children's schoolmates -- or stand in front of the Sidwell door with Mr. Durbin? It's hard to imagine white congressional Democrats going up against him if he called them out on an issue where they have put him in this embarrassing position. This, after all, is a man who has written of the "anger" he felt as a community organizer, when his attempts to improve things for Chicago school kids ran up against an "uncomfortable fact."

"The biggest source of resistance [to reform]," he said, "was rarely talked about . . . namely, the uncomfortable fact that every one of our churches was filled with teachers, principals, and district superintendents. Few of these educators sent their own children to public schools; they knew too much for that. But they would defend the status quo with the same skill and vigor as their white counterparts of two decades before."

Let's just say that Sarah and James Parker -- and thousands just like them -- could use some of that same Obama anger right about now.

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So Offensible

Clearly this WaPO cartoon is implying that Barack Obama is going to steal our white women away from us. Where's Al Sharpton when you need him?

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Picture Friday

MY PRECIOUSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!

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Pork In The Budget

Ok. So we’ve already established that Obama was pulling a fast one on us when he campaigned on the whole “Hope Over Fear” thing.

We also found out that the ‘transparency in government’ stuff was BS, when instead of being put up online for five days as we were promised, the stimulus bill was shoved through congress without a single member being allowed time to read the actual bill.

Now we find out that Obama really didn’t mean what he's been saying about pork for the last year either.

I’m not even referring to the laughable statement that the president made in Tuesday’s address when he said that the stimulus package was passed without a single earmark. That was a fib. What I’m referring to is the President’s budget proposal, which was released today. Remember when Mr. Change said this on the campaign trail:

“We need earmark reform. And when I’m president, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely.”

...or not.

Here are a few of the 9000 earmark goodies that your tax dollars are going to and which the president hasn’t indicated that he has any problem with:

$1.7 million for a honey bee laboratory in Texas

$1.5 million for work on grapes and grape products — including wine

$1.8 million to research “swine odor and manure management” in Iowa

$200,000 for Gang Tattoo Removal Violence Prevention Outreach. What?

Unspecified amount for Lobster Farmers in Maine

$185,000 for coral reef research and preservation in Maui County, Hawaii

$55,000 in meteorological equipment for Pierce College in Woodland Hills, Calif.

$9.9 million for science enhancement at historically black colleges in South Carolina.

$9.9 million for South Carolina's historically black colleges and universities.

$473,000 for La Raza

$24,000 A+ for Abstinence program in PA.

$300,000 for the Montana World Trade Center.

$950,000 for the Myrtle Beach International Trade and Convention Center.

$190,000 for the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, WY for digitizing and editing the Cody collection.

$143,000 for the Las Vegas Natural History Museum. Sponsored by Harry Reid

$238,000 for the Polynesian Voyaging Society, i.e – canoe trips
$381,000 for Jazz at Lincoln Center, New York, NY for music education programs

A $950,000 nature education center in Moss Point, Miss.

$142,500 for a museum honoring the late House speaker Sam Rayburn

$300,000 for a science camp curriculum in West Virginia

$150,000 for renovations to the Westwood Theater in Rexburg, Idaho

Now, if President Obama doesn’t put up a fight and send this bill back to congress, demanding that all this junk be removed, I think any reasonable person has to conclude that the guy has broken yet another major promise to the American people.

And while breaking this promise he is at the same time talking about implementing job killing tax increases on entrpenuers and small bussiness owners who already pay the lion’s share of taxes in this country.

I know that these earmarks make up a relatively small percentage of the massive budget that Obama is proposing, and some of them were even proposed by GOP members of congress. But you all know that John McCain would never let this slide. Especially during an time of such econmoic uncertainty.

Spending money is the easiest thing for a politician to do. So forgive me if I’m not impressed by Mr. Obama’s ability to do so. I’m pretty sure that this was not what 52% of Americans voted for last Novemeber. And here's the real kicker. This bill actually contains earmarks put there by Obama an Biden when they were still Senators, but Obama cleverly took his name off of his earmark earlier this afternoon. How's that for transparency?

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The GOP's Charisma Deficit

Last night Barack Obama gave a typical Democratic State Of The Union address in which he promised America the moon and stars. He told us he was going to cure cancer, pay for the college education of America’s children and halve the federal deficit. Amazingly, the only people who are going to have their taxes increased in order to pay for these things are the richest 2% of the population. Obama may as well have called for a permanent end to rain and crying babies.

Now, I know that Obama apologists are never going to second guess their hero, especially not this early into his first term, but for the rest of us, don’t you think it’s time for a little soul searching? The lesson Republicans should be learning as they are viewing the Obama love fest is that a lot of folks don’t care what’s being said as long as they like the guy who’s saying it and the style in which it’s being delivered.


Last night his supporters and much of the mainstream media continued to swoon, and didn’t bat an eye when the President had the audacity to tell them that the stimulus didn’t contain a single “earmark”. Apparently Obama has done to the term “earmark” what Bill Clinton attempted to do to the word “is”.

Of course after Obama’s speech the G.O.P followed him with Governor Bobby Jindal. Jindal is intelligent, young, has a story as unique and as interesting as Obama’s. His speech was a thoughtful, well laid out counter to the big government principles that Obama had spent the last hour talking about. Unfortunately, it was quickly evident, even to Republicans that the man who some Republicans were touting as “our party’s Obama” just a few hours ago, wasn’t even close. Jindal wasn’t just up against the pomp and fanfare of a Presidential address to a joint session of Congress, he was also up against the inevitable comparisons between his style of speaking to that of the president who was carried into office primarily because of his charisma and ability to connect with voters through rhetoric. There was no way Jindal was going to win that battle. Ten seconds into Jindal’s speech I turned to my father and said “This guy’s kind of a dork”.

Ten seconds after Jindal had finished; no one was talking about what the young Louisiana governor had said. Instead they were commenting on his strange, sing-songy delivery, his deer in headlights appearance and the fact that it was difficult to take him seriously after the rhetorical flourish and applause filled Obama stem-winder.

This leads us to an important question. Does the G.O.P have any chance of winning future elections, especially presidential ones, or even having people pay attention to our message over the next four years, without a charismatic, well-spoken individual out in front? I say no.

Since the Reagan years our presidential candidates have all had a certain type of charisma that appeals to a certain subset of Americans, but none of them possessed that natural charm or that aura of modern cool or the manipulation of easy to swallow talking points, that appeals to a broad spectrum of the American Idol viewing public.

George H.W. Bush was certainly a smart guy who knew just about everything there was to know about the inner workings of the federal government, but he was an exceptionally dull communicator. Robert Dole had a similar problem. He was qualified for the office of the presidency, but folks didn’t want to watch him on TV for the next four to eight years.

George W. Bush had certain type of straightforward Texas charm that was refreshing to a lot of folks after eight years of slick-Willy, however he was never able to effectively communicate on his feet and therefore couldn’t adequately defend his administration’s actions when defense was necessary. It also helped Bush immensely that he ran against two of the most obnoxious politicians of the age in Al Gore and John Kerry.

John McCain came across as being hot tempered and was clearly uncomfortable with talking points. He did not give off an aura of calm, especially when compared to his opponent.

What the party needs to do right now is to look at who we have waiting in the wings and make a certain amount of charisma and oratorical skill a prerequisite for our party’s nomination in 2012 and beyond. It doesn’t matter what wing of the party this individual comes from, be it the intellectual, country-club side (Mitt Romney) or the populist, social conservative side (Mike Huckabee), we have to come to terms with the fact that the last two times a Democratic president has been elected, they have had a huge advantage in the charisma column. Their nomination and subsequent election was made possible by the fact that most Democrats don’t care about experience. Their candidates agree on almost every major issue, so in the end the only difference between the candidates is their personal appeal to the Democratic primary voters.

G.O.P voters think a bit differently. There are several wings of the party and our voters have varied criteria on their checklist when choosing a presidential nominee. Unfortunately, in this environment we can’t trust the rest of the electorate to think as we do and vote for candidates because of their values, ideas, experience and vision. A Bobby Jindal simply won’t cut it anymore; despite the depth and salience of the message he’s delivering.

2012 will be a test for our party and depending on Barack Obama’s popularity it may be a test that we are destined to fail. However we must, as a party, begin to present likeable, well-spoken, cool, charismatic faces to the American public, who are ready for prime time. If this doesn’t not happen, young voters will never give us a chance and voters who are apolitical until they enter the voting booth will have no reason to pull the Republican lever.

I believe that Barack Obama is talented and intelligent, however I don’t buy into the description of him as “brilliant”. Some of his more enthusiastic supporters have begun describing him as such, but I am yet to see any real evidence that he is more than an incredibly well spoken guy who has thus far led a charmed existence in national politics. I don’t believe he’s any smarter than a Bobby Jindal, a Newt Gingrich, a Mark Sanford or a Tim Pawlenty. However if we fail to find a personality as intriguing and pleasing to the ear as Obama is, no amount of policy genius or time in office will make a lick of difference.

If Republicans want to win elections we should not, as some suggest, become more like the Democrats in terms of our policies. Instead we should emulate their recent ability to pick candidates with enough charm to make an otherwise uninterested electorate take notice and start really paying attention to what we have to say.

-Dan Joseph

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Bill Maher: Obama's Secretary Of Dumb

Despite the fact that they don't have George W. Bush to kick around any more, the pathological need that comedians and other celebrities have to put their ignorance on display clearly hasn't taken a hiatus.

Bill Maher can be a funny guy, but he really knows very little about politics or policy. So it's absolutely infuriating when this guy gets an hour on Larry King Live to pretend he's a pundit. That must be what he's doing because in this interview he's not funny at all. He's just angry.

For God's sake, this is the guy who says he's a "Libertarian"! Does he not know what that word means?

Here are some of the dumber things the HBO talk host said in his last venting session with King.

On the Stimulus:

"He offered what they wanted -- the tax cuts, which really are not stimulus. And he should have said from the beginning, look, I won the election, OK? We're going do it my way now. We tried that idea -- that tax cuts solve every problem. We had that. And that's what got us into this mess."

First off, anyone who still can't admit that tax cuts stimulate the economy is living in a partisan dream world. It's been proven time and time again that tax cuts, especially those which are targeted toward the people who pay the lion's share of the taxes, have a stimulative effect. It was true when Kennedy did it. It was true when Reagan did it and it was true when George W. Bush did it. Hopefully these smaller tax cuts will have a similar effect, but don't tell me that tax cuts don't work. If anything, it is yet to be proven that the heavily Keynesian approach that Obama is taking, works. So on this front Maher doesn't know what he's talking about.

In addition the idea that Republicans believe that tax cuts "solve everything" as well as the idea that that tax cuts are what got us "into this mess" are little more than Democratic talking points aimed at the folks that don't understand how the current financial crisis came about. No one thinks that tax-cuts "solve everything" but don't put up a false choice in order to help Obama push through his agenda. I thought Maher was above that.

On Judd Gregg:
"I guess his Republican friends got to him -- you know, like the mob."

Right. You see this statement shows us that Maher believes that Gregg had no political convictions. I would be interested to see what Maher thinks about Obama's decision to completely politicize the census. This was the real reason Gregg left and will have sweeping ramifications in regard to....


Political demographics:

"You know, I hope that they're looking at what he's doing, because he's going to Republican areas. He went to Indiana -- a Republican district. He went to Florida. When he read that onstage: "The stimulus package passed," they all cheered."

Just because Obama was in a Republican district doesn't mean that their are no Democratic Obama worshipers in that particular place. Every Democrat in the county is going to come out for the chosen one. And of course folks like Julio are going to cheer for Obama. That's his base. A guy like Julio would cheer for Obama if Obama told him that the government was going to provide him with a helper monkey to organize his bong collection. Why was Maher surprised by this?

"You know, the people, I think, are on his page. And, you know, I think we need one more election to get rid of some of these mossbacks who just don't get it. I mean they're taking their orders -- their marching orders from Rush Limbaugh. He is effectively the head of the Republican Party right now.....I think they're absolutely following Rush. And that's how clueless that party is. They looked to find the future, and they found radio."

The word "mossback" has two definitions. I think Maher was using it in order to infer that the G.O.P is old-fashioned and reactionary. Unless he was calling us all large sluggish fish.

It's incredibly ironic that any celebrity who suddenly became a political expert during the Bush years, would lecture the G.O.P. on being "reactionary". This is especially true in the case of Maher who once discussed the benefits of having Dick Cheney killed with his crack panel which generally consists of Krauthammer like intellects such as Eve Ensler, author of "The Vagina Monologues" and Mos Def, who penned the classic political anthem "Ms. Fat Booty".

Now, it's true. I do believe that Rush Limbaugh is the most powerful guy in the party at the moment, and Liberals keep telling us that this is a bad thing. (Me thinks they doth protest too much.) I'm not sure how they're arriving at this conclusion since like tax cuts, talk radio has proven time and time again to be a very effective G.O.P stimulus, which is exactly what our party needs right now. For all of you who think that Limbaugh is just some dope with a microphone and that Maher is somehow more enlightened or thoughtful, I encourage you to listen to the two of them opine back to back. Listen to them for five minutes and it's obvious that Limbaugh is far more well-read on matters political. It's analysis (if not always incredibly deep) vs. talking point generated laugh lines aimed at Republicans.

For a long time I thought Maher was a bit more like John Stewart and that his constant mockery of George Bush was just a comedian being a comedian. If figured that when the next president rode into to town he wouldn't give that guy the benefit of the doubt either, in the name of laughter. However it's now clear that not only is Maher a liberal, but that he's also a shill for President Obama.

The media got what they wanted in President Obama. It's now time for them to stop giving ignorant, partisan celebrities a platform to play pundit. If Maher wants to discuss silly, unimportant, liberal favorites such as his contention that organized religion is the root of all evil let him do it. But don't encourage him to start spewing nonsense when it comes to important issues like the economy and foreign policy. Someone might actually take him seriously and there is far too much at stake right now to give Maher any real power.

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ABSENT

How Barney Frank was left off of Time magazines List of the 25 people to Blame For The Economic Crisis Is Beyond Me. At least the left-leaning weekly was honest enough to give Bill Clinton some of the blame. However leaving off Frank, one of the top apologists for Fannie and Freddie as well as a chief proponent of The Community Reinvestment Act is a glaring omission.

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Paging Dr. Stupid

Dumb Daschle Idea Snuck In With Stimulus

Have you ever seen the movie Saw III? I know, I know just hear me out. Throughout the movie the bad guy sets up elaborate “tests” for his victims and they must overcome both psychological and physical torture in order to live.

Well, at the end of part III, the bad guy is killed, however I turns out that he’s placed more traps to be activated post-mortem and manages to continue to lead his victims into them even after he dies, by way of tape recorders placed all over the city.

Scary and realistic!

Well, as it turns out the vanquished Tom Daschle has done pretty much the same thing. Before being asked to drop out of consideration for HHS secretary due to a failure to pay taxes, he convinced Barack Obama to sneak something into the stimulus bill.

While most of the non-stimulus items in Obama’s massive pork-package are wasteful, but only harmful when added up, i.e. millions for Frisbee golf courses, honeybee insurance, etc. This one is incredibly dangerous on its own. Here’s what it is:

The Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research or FCCCER, which is the perfect acronym for this, starts off as a fairly decent idea. It would put all medical records into a big federal database. This is terrific because it eliminates all of the administrative costs associated with paper records, which are staggering, and it will allow for the easier transfer of records from hospital to hospital.

Then it gets bad. SAW III bad.

First there would be a new bureaucracy. This government bureaucracy will monitor each time you go to the doctor and if these bureaucracy think that the treatment that your doctor is giving you is too expensive then they will “guide” your doctor into taking some other course of action. If your doctor doesn’t do what the feds recommend, either due to a disagreement with their ideas of what procedures would be most “appropriate and cost effective” they would be punished. So now Uncle Sam is basically limiting your personal doctor who knows you far better than Tom Daschle does (I’m guessing) to procedures that Uncle Sam endorses.

Now here’s where it gets creepy. Doctors who go along with the plan will be known as “meaningful users”. This title is not defined, but if you’re not considered a “meaningful user” of the system you will face penalties. And in a quote directly from the bill that could have come out of an Orwell novel, the HHS secretary will be empowered to impose “more stringent measures of meaningful use over time”. So eventually, one guy in Washington DC will be able to add to the list of procedures your doctor can’t perform whenever he gets the urge. To me “Meaningful Users” sounds like robot-talk. And not friendly robot’s either.

Why would they do this you ask? Well it’s quite simple. In order to bring down health care costs Obama and Daschle want the government to discourage doctors from using expensive new medications and new technologies. They also want Americans to become more accepting of “hopeless diagnoses” and of “forgoing experimental treatments”. Sorry Grandma, you’re gonna’ die! Deal with it.

And the more reliant on the government we become for our health care, the fewer options that are open to sick people. The article that exposed this smelly little nugget that was being slipped into the stimulus at the last minute, explains that this FCCCER, was modeled after a similar program in the UK.

“This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.

In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye. It took almost three years of public protests before the board reversed its decision. “

The introduction of FCCCER into the stimulus bill is sneaky and manipulative on Obama’s part. He is taking advantage of taxpayers during a time when Americans have become so fearful of economic collapse that Obama has been able to convince them that even debating his trillion-dollar stimulus plan is counterproductive. Not only is this a bad way to govern, but the long-term ramifications FCCCER itself are horrendous.

You see, if the federal government is going to tell doctors what equipment they can use, and what medications are allowed to be given to sick patients and the government will take pains to fall on the more cost-effective side, this eliminates the private sector’s incentives to create newer, better drugs and life saving technologies. The guy who stands to make a fortune by building a better MRI isn’t going to build it if doctors wont use it out of fear of being punished by the government. So while in the short term, health care cost will go down, important medical advances will take longer to realize and in many case stagnate far longer than necessary.

It’s a real life horror movie that none of us need to live through. The only thing that can save us now is the good sense of two senators from Maine and one former cancer patient from Pennsylvania, who might not be with us now if the government had told him that his advanced case of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma was a “hopeless diagnosis” and one which he should simply “accept”.

-Dan Joseph

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No Middle Ground

More fear. Less Hope. But what I really, really want to hear is the President's explanation as to how the Bush tax cuts, "helped lead us into this crisis." Anyone? Bueller?

Monday, February 09, 2009
Pratfall
Posted by: Hugh Hewitt at 8:31 PM

The president's press conference was a huge mistake, not because he made a partisan case for his massive spending plan. Nothing else could be expected.

But when he distorted the GOP opposition as wanting to do nothing he lost the game. The American people are tuned into this debate and know very well that the GOP is committed to a large but balanced stimulus plan that puts tax relief and immediate infrastructure spending to work to immediately surge the economy. They have listened closely to the arguments made on the Senate floor and know that the president's bald mischaracterization of those positions is just false.

Combine that bit of theater with the deeply disturbing answer on Iran --looking for Iran to reach out to us after two weeks of "diplomacy"-- and his incoherent explanatuion of the origins of the financial crisis, and the president left millions cold and worried tonight. He may get his porkapalooza, but the campaign rhetoric tonight is not up to the job, and voters know it.

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Really, Really, Really Good News

I'll reitorate. This is by far the most important upcoming election for the GOP. We must win this one.

From Rassmussen Reports:
Feb, 6

Republican Attorney General Robert F. McDonnell has a three-to-nine point lead against three hopefuls for the Democratic nomination in this year’s closely-watched Virginia gubernatorial contest.

McDonnell, who announced this week that he will step down from his post on February 20 to campaign full-time for governor, bested only one of the three Democrats in early December.

Now, the latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey shows the lone Republican gubernatorial candidate topping his best-known opponent, Terry McAuliffe, by seven points, 42% to 35%. In December, he held a five-point edge over McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton confidant, major Democratic fund-raiser and former national party chairman.

McDonnell is even further ahead of Rep. R. Creigh Deeds of Bath County – 39% to 30%. The two men were tied two months ago.

Brian J. Moran, a former state delegate from Alexandria, led McDonnell by four points in the earlier survey but now trails by three, 39% to 36%

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