Obama Retreats from Russia

President Obama has shown how not to conduct statesmanship. He retreated from our allies the Poles and Czechs for no reason other than Russia was upset that they were now under the umbrella of liberty and American security. Ralph Peters accurately sums up Obama's disastrous decision: "And Obama got nothing in return. No Russian commitments on Iran's nuclear program. No sovereignty guarantees for Georgia. No restrictions on arms sales to Venezuela. Not even a bearhug. "

Sounds a little like Jimmy Carter, the peanut-farming race baiter in chief, who gave up the Panama Canal for: you guessed it, nothing in return. Peters goes on to say, "Putin, Russia's new czar, sees this as a triumph of his will over Obama's weak, retreating US. And he's right."

Donald Rumsfeld once observed that weakness is destabilizing. He was right, and Iran, Venezuela, Russia, and others will test how weak Obama really is.

Obama's Right on This One

Kanye West is a jackass for the stunt he pulled and the classless, disrespectful way he treated Taylor Swift. President Obama called Kanye West a jackass for his little stunt at the VMA's.

You can listen to the audio here. Notice the poll results on TMZ too.

Bravo Mr. President, although you're still dead wrong on health care, energy, and the stimulus.

Could it be said that Kanye is racist against white people? It wasn't the first time he insulted a white person on stage; recall his rant against George Bush after Hurricane Katrina. Hey, fair is fair.

If every criticism of Obama is labelled racist, then the same should be true going the other way. After all, Kanye's father was a Black Panther, so it's possible that anti-white views were instilled in Kanye when he was growing up.

Now for the record, I don't believe any of that, but those are the kind of arguments moon-bat leftists make against anyone who criticizes Obama. I love the fact that there is a black President of the US of A, I just happen to strongly disagree with his politics. That said, it is a remarkable thing that such progress has been made from William Wilberforce's push for the abolition of slavery, to the Emancipation Proclamation and the friendship that developed between to Abe Lincoln and Fredrick Douglas, to the Civil Rights Act and Rev. Martin Luther King, to Obama winning the White House with strong support from middle, white America (if there is such a thing).

Conclusion: Kanye West is a jackass.

A Disingenuous President

[This article is also available at Family Security Matters.]

The debate on health care has been diverted from the substance of the proposed bill to two syllables uttered by an, until yesterday, unknown Congressman from South Carolina. But in all fairness, Joe Wilson had a point. Obama supports amnesty for illegal immigrants, so if amnesty occurs, those illegals will undoubtedly be eligible for his health care plan in the future.

President Obama has said, “We have talked this issue to death, year after year, decade after decade, and the time for talk is winding down, the time for bickering has passed.” And despite the talk, no one really knows how exactly Obama plans to pay for a massive takeover of the health care industry while the media continues to ignore when and why Obama changed his views for support of a single payer system.

To believe that the government can save money through Obama’s reform of Medicare is naive at best and, more realistically, dangerous thinking. Consider Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it is reasonable to think that a health care regulator would be just as easily corruptible, mismanaged, and indebted as these disastrous Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSE). Even the Obama media cheerleader the LA Times isn’t buying Obama’s money savings promises. If John Stewart starts asking hard questions, all hope for Obama may be lost.

But it is worth discovering what the President’s true views on health care are and when they changed (assuming they have). In the past Obama has signalled his clear support for a single payer, universal system that other countries like Canada and Britain maintain. Not only that, Obama laid out his plan to move from the current, mostly free market model to a single payer system through the incremental growth of government not so long ago on TV. The plan he is now proposing is entirely geared towards moving the country towards socialist (universal) health care. Thus, it is entirely reasonable to believe that Obama does believe in eliminating private companies from the arena of health care.

It is difficult to recall any President speaking so disdainfully of the free market. While the president may have used the words “competition”, he continually spoke of profits as if they were something to be sneered at rather than celebrated. The President made his opposition to free markets clear when he said, “The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud, as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies - subsidies that do everything to pad their profits and nothing to improve your care.” If anyone is guilty of waste, fraud, and unwanted subsidies, it is the government itself. Profits are the fruits of success, they are something to be proud of and not denigrated. The government bailouts do lead to the logical conclusion that the government rewards failure, but that’s another issue altogether.

If there’s one thing we can be guaranteed that government will not do is eliminate waste and fraud. Consider that between $70 and $120 billion (that’s with a “b”) per year is stolen through fraudulent Medicaid and Medicare transactions now! Can we even entertain the notion that a government program will somehow be more efficient or well administered as a private corporation could do? This is where the profit motive is essential, and something that the government lacks completely. The government can only encourage competition by removing itself from a market, not injecting itself. Once the government forces itself into a market to regulate or takeover, competition is hamstrung or eliminated.

The “transcendent” President has been anything but on health care. He has complained that Republicans have nothing to offer but opposition. This is an absolute falsehood. In fact, it is President Obama that has not met with Republican leaders since April on the issue. Instead, the President has attempted to ram through an entirely partisan, bloated, and wasteful bill. A bill that will further benefit unions and government workers just as the bailouts and automotive takeovers did.

If Obama was so concerned about “insuring the uninsured” he could use the unspent stimulus money to cover every uninsured American. So why isn’t he? Well, the Democrats are likely holding on to it so that it can be spent in bulk for vulnerable Democratic seats in the run up to the 2010 Congressional elections. And Obama calls his critics cynical?

Obama can deny death panels all he wants, but the fact remains that they exist in Britain and elsewhere. Britain even has the Orwellian institution “NICE”, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. This bureaucracy decides which people are worth spending health care dollars on to save their lives and which people aren’t worth it.

It’s incredible how the left can say “keep your laws off my body” when it comes to abortion, and yet they’re willing to play God with government health care by forcing laws on people’s decisions and bodies through the coercive hand of government.

Obama frequently complained that his opponents are using scare tactics to oppose any kind of reform, this from the President who then said, “more will die as a result” if his plan is not passed. If any scare mongering is taking place, the President is guilty of it. Moreover, it is also patently untrue that more government involvement will lead to less death. Forget that we’re all going to die eventually, the fact is that Americans have significantly higher survival rates for many diseases than countries like Britain and Canada who have single payer systems. How exactly Obamacare will save lives was a detail that wasn’t explained.

Investor’s Business Daily has reported, “breast cancer in America has a 25% mortality rate, in Britain it's almost double at 46%. Prostate cancer is fatal to 19% of American men who get it. In Britain it kills 57% of those it strikes.” This reality flies in the face of Obama’s scare tactics.

Beyond the untruths, Obama demonstrated an incredible lack of class by invoking Ted Kennedy’s death as some kind of sick (pardon the pun) motivation for reforming the entire system of health care. The Democrats have used death for political advantage in the past as when Paul Wellstone tragically died. Kennedy may have had a soft spot for the “disadvantaged” but his life was also a record of self gratification, narcissism, running roughshod over the lives of others, debauchery, the arrogant belief that he was above the law, and material excess.

There are numerous ways to reform health care without a government takeover or even government expansion. Many Republicans and private individuals like Newt Gingrich have proposed innovative solutions to make health care affordable, accessible, and efficient. The President was disingenuous in his Congressional address to the American people. He has been secretive of his true beliefs on whether he supports a single payer system, and if he no longer does, he should explain what made him change his mind.

The American people deserve far better than the current bill floating around the halls of Congress. America already has the best system in the world, it now must focus on making that system more efficient and more affordable.

Eight Years Later

For the baby boomers, the assassination of JFK was a moment they will always remember. They know where they were, what they were doing, the kind of day it was… For those who remember September 11, 2001, it is the same. I recall preparing for my criminal law class when a news story broke showing a smoking tower in New York City.

When the news anchor announced that a plan had struck the tower, I figured it was a Cessna, probably a plane used to relay traffic news to some radio station. But, things changed.

I walked over to a friend’s so we could walk to class together. By the time I had left my dorm room to walk down a few flights of stairs, a second plane had struck the other tower. Now, everything had changed.

We arrived in class to find a television set up and the news on. My criminal law professor, normally so composed and rigid, looked positively scared as she handed out copies of the federal terrorism statute. She knew. We all knew.

Moments later, another plane struck the Pentagon. People began to cry, frantic phone calls were made, class was adjourned. We would not return to class for several days as the entire world was glued to televisions and the Internet for the latest news.

Anger, hatred, disbelief, sadness, grief… everyone felt different emotions that clear September day and would struggle with their feelings as anthrax and the hollow sense of not knowing what was next enveloped every day life.

And here we are, 8 years hence. The memory of 9/11 is a distant one. Many have declared the War on Terror over. Saddam Hussein was vanquished, the Taliban overrun, and Osama Bid Laden remains uncaught to the frustration of the military, the CIA, and the taxpayers.

Are we ready for the next one? I’m talking about the next attack, because there will be one. There always is. Wars will always be. The natural state of affairs is violence, not peace. This is true even in the natural world. Conflict is in our nature. It is easy to hate, hard to love. It is easy to lash out and hard to hold back.

Our boys are dying in Afghanistan for a country that infested with corruption and strife. The Taliban are gathering strength, the threats to freedom are on the rise from states and non-states. The number of nuclear armed nations is rising, not decreasing.

The Psalmist wrote:
“Deliver me, O Lord, from evil men;
preserve me from violent men,
who plan evil things in their heart and stir up wars continually.
They make their tongue sharp as a serpent's,
and under their lips is the venom of asps.

"Guard me, O Lord, from the hands of the wicked;
preserve me from violent men,
who have planned to trip up my feet.
The arrogant have hidden a trap for me,
and with cords they have spread a net;
beside the way they have set snares for me.

"…I know that the Lord will maintain the cause of the afflicted,
and will execute justice for the needy.
Surely the righteous shall give thanks to your name;
the upright shall dwell in your presence."

Protect us Lord, heal our wounds, and help us to love our enemies.

Obama Math

Cash for Clunkers Review:

A vehicle at 15 mpg and 12,000 miles per year uses 800 gallons a year of gasoline.

A vehicle at 25 mpg and 12,000 miles per year uses 480 gallons a year.

So, the average clunker transaction will reduce US gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year.

They claim 700,000 vehicles – so that's 224 million gallons / year.

That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil. 5 million barrels of oil is about ¼ of one day's US consumption.

And, 5 million barrels of oil costs about $350 million dollars at $75/bbl.

So, we all contributed to spending $3 billion to save $350 million.How good a deal was that???

They'll probably do a great job with health care though!! The government can't even give away money properly.

Celebrity Stupidity

If the logical end if this way of thinking wasn't so frightening, it might be easier to laugh off Kutcher and Moore's utter stupidity.



As Mark Steyn noted, the question of a citizen "serving" a President was settled in 1776. Government workers, of which Obama is one, are called public servants for a reason. Obama is employed by the American people at their pleasure and not the other way around. Government should fear the people, the people should never fear the government. When they do, tyranny has arrived.