Obama the Whiner

Obama should man up. Enough whining, complaining, and blaming. Act like the leader of the Freeworld.

So Much For Transparency

"I'm going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.” --Barack Obama, August, 2008

So much for Obama's promises. Then again, Afghanistan was a war of necessity back in March when Obama chose his general (McChrystal), announced his strategy, and took ownership of the war. Now, he's revising again and still blaming Bush. How pathetic.

On health, Obama has made a deal with 'Big Pharma' to get them onside. And, why wouldn't they, now the government will pay for drugs for millions of people just like they do now for seniors thanks to Bush's idiotic Prescription Drug Plan.

America needs a new entitlement program like it needs a hole in the head. The fact is, America is spending it's way towards implosion and the destruction of its democratic institutions by straying far from the wisdom of the Founding Fathers who set up a system for limited government to prevent tyranny. Remove the foundation and the house will eventually collapse.

Newt Gingrich: "President Obama has failed to deliver on his repeated promises of transparency and openness.
But that doesn’t mean that we have to silently accept a government health care bill that was negotiated in secret and paid for with deals cut with special interests using our tax dollars.
Please sign the Center for Health Transformation’s (CHT) petition here, to tell Washington that We The People demand that all bills be publicly available, including legislative language and accurate budget analysis, at least 72 hours prior to any vote by Congress or committees in Congress."

Thomas Jefferson said: "The two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first."

Blacklisting Conservatives

The left wing of the political spectrum sometimes appears to look back at the years of McCarthyism with a bizarre sense of nostalgia. Perhaps, it is that it was a time of victimization for which they recall with twisted fondness or perhaps it is mere historical revisionism. While Senator McCarthy may have over stepped in his pursuit of Soviet infiltrators and collaborators, he was undoubtedly correct that the Soviets were attempting to infiltrate American society and one of their key avenues was through the media. While communism is no longer the threat it once was, the threat of “statism” through unchecked government expansion remains real. Indeed, as long as humanity inhabits this Earth, the threat of central planning through authoritarian control under the arm of government will always exist.

However, the shoe is now on the other foot, or so it seems. Instead of “the right” going overboard in their attack on “the left” and the punishment (or criminalization) of ideas, it is now the media in cooperation with the political elite on the left using the power of the government, tactics of intimidation, defamation, distortion, and ostracism to de-legitimize conservatives in America. This shift has been especially noticeable since the Democratic Party’s takeover of the Congress in 2006 and has amplified since Barack Obama took control of the White House.

This past summer, average Americans from across the country took to the streets, town hall meetings, and marches in opposition to the Obama administration’s health care reform plans. Regardless of how you feel about the Administration’s plan, the protests expressed legitimate grievances and ideological opposition to an overt desire to expand the government’s role in health care. The media, denigrated these protests, labelling them “tea baggers”, a disgusting sexual reference most notably aired by CNN’s Anderson Cooper. The perverse label has continued to be used by the media as recently as this past Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” by E.J. Dionne and Paul Krugman. Cooper and others have been incapable of concealing their disdain for these protesters and were joined by senior members of the Democratic Party’s leadership. Nancy Pelosi falsely accused the protesters of having swastikas and dismissing them as an “AstroTurf” movement. At the same time the health care company Humana was effectively censored by the White House for exercising their first amendment rights in issuing warnings to their customers about what the potential consequences of the proposed reforms might entail.

Now, in true Nixonian fashion, the Obama administration has made a concerted effort to marginalize and ostracize Fox News because of its rightward bent in its prime time line up. Fox makes no apologies for this, just as MSNBC and CNN don’t apologize for their leftward bent. It is a free country after all, and news organizations are free to push an agenda if they so wish. However, the Obama administration has gone a step further in targeting Fox News in verbal attacks by senior members of the administration such as Rahm Emmanuel and David Axelrod. It is now less surprising that Obama has been unwilling to take a hard line against Hugo Chavez, he may be borrowing some of the same techniques used against Globovision TV.

And, as usual, the left has chosen to once again target conservative radio hosts Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Agree or disagree with either of them, their programs are examples of the first amendment in action. Rush Limbaugh’s association with a group attempting to buy the St. Louis Ram’s was opposed by race-baiters Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, enabled by the spineless NFL Commissioner Robert Goodell in an apparent bargaining chip for upcoming collective bargaining agreements with the NFL players union. Even if you hate Limbaugh, you should agree that in a democracy one’s legitimate political views should not affect your ability to participate in legal commercial activity. Limbaugh was defamed and slandered, enabled by CNN and other news outlets that shamelessly aired quotes that had no basis whatsoever (fact checks for critical SNL skits only). And as usual, Rush was forced to re-live his unwise (but not racist) comments concerning Donovan McNabb from his brief stint on ESPN years ago.

I’m not a huge Glenn Beck fan. His views are paranoid at times and he’s prone to emotional roller-coasters which can be hard to take after a day’s work when you just want to put your feet up. That said, he’s done an excellent job exposing a vein of extremism running through the administration. First, he exposed the Marxist Van Jones as radical with troubling views from his past statements. The White House either did a horrible job vetting him, or simply didn’t have any major disagreements with his left wing extremist views. He’s also pointed out another Marxist strain in Anita Dunn’s praise of Mao Tse Tung during a speech to high school students. She can attempt to spin it any way she wants, and the media can ignore it for the time being, but her comments on Mao are nothing short of sickening. Having Mao as her favourite philosopher, a man who killed between 30 and 70 million people, is no better than heaping praise on Joseph Stalin, Kim Jong Il, or, dare I say it, Adolf Hitler. It is disgusting, unjustifiable, and shameful.

The Obama administration should be wary of playing this card against Fox News. President Nixon further complicated matters for himself when he made an enemy of the media. While CNN and MSNBC may smugly enjoy the attacks from the White House for now, they may become envious of still higher ratings for Fox News that have resulted from the controversy and adopt similar tactics of opposition to the Obama administration. Many other commentators have already observed that the White House demeans itself by stooping to such petty attacks, but if the attacks garner attention, others might be tempted to grab some attention for themselves.

The tragedy for the country is that it is being disserved by a media so complicit in the attempt to marginalize conservative views while unapologetically cheerleading the Obama administration. If the American experiment is to continue, it must be a bustling marketplace of ideas from the left and right. This attempt to blacklist conservatives seems a concerted attempt to distract the public and the media from the real issue at hand: the expansion of government. No news agency is asking the direct question that must be asked of the Obama administration and the Congress: at what point is government too big? The state cannot continue to expand without the endangerment of the continuation of democracy and liberty. Thank goodness for Fox News and responsible journalism.

This article is also available at: Family Security Matters

American Decline is not Inevitable, It's a Choice

Charles Krauthammer delivers one of his best columns ever in the Weekly Standard this week. Krauthammer recognizes that American decline is not a new theory and that foreign affairs is a zero sum, and deadly, game. The Soviets saw weakness in JFK and acted which spawned the Cuban Missile Crisis. They saw it again in Carter and invaded Afghanistan, stirred up trouble in Nicaragua, Angola, and Ethiopia.

The topic of American decline seems to arise whenever the Democrats control Washington, unsurprisingly. American decline is not inevitable, and the rise of India and China does not necessarily mean that the power of America has been diminished.

The corollary to unchosen European collapse was unchosen American ascendancy. We--whom Lincoln once called God's "almost chosen people"--did not save Europe twice in order to emerge from the ashes as the world's co-hegemon. We went in to defend ourselves and save civilization. Our dominance after World War II was not sought. Nor was the even more remarkable dominance after the Soviet collapse. We are the rarest of geopolitical phenomena: the accidental hegemon and, given our history of isolationism and lack of instinctive imperial ambition, the reluctant hegemon--and now, after a near-decade of strenuous post-9/11 exertion, more reluctant than ever.

Which leads to my second proposition: Facing the choice of whether to maintain our dominance or to gradually, deliberately, willingly, and indeed relievedly give it up, we are currently on a course towards the latter. The current liberal ascendancy in the United States--controlling the executive and both houses of Congress, dominating the media and elite culture--has set us on a course for decline. And this is true for both foreign and domestic policies. Indeed, they work synergistically to ensure that outcome.

The Democrats seem to prize multilateralism above victory in war, security at home, or stability around the world. This is why the UN is given such preeminence by the left. Krauthammer ridicules such naive idealism in international institutions riddled with corruption:

The president then denounced the idea of elevating any group of nations above others--which takes care, I suppose, of the Security Council, the G-20, and the Western alliance. And just to make the point unmistakable, he denounced "alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War" as making "no sense in an interconnected world." What does that say about NATO? Of our alliances with Japan and South Korea? Or even of the European Union?

This is nonsense. But it is not harmless nonsense. It's nonsense with a point. It reflects a fundamental view that the only legitimate authority in the international system is that which emanates from "the community of nations" as a whole. Which means, I suppose, acting through its most universal organs such as, again I suppose, the U.N. and its various agencies. Which is why when Obama said that those who doubt "the character and cause" of his own country should see what this new America--the America of the liberal ascendancy--had done in the last nine months, he listed among these restorative and relegitimizing initiatives paying up U.N. dues, renewing actions on various wholly vacuous universalist declarations and agreements, and joining such Orwellian U.N. bodies as the Human Rights Council.

Reagan on Socialist Healthcare

Its amazing, the same arguments that applied in 1961 apply today. Government control leads to coercion, corruption, waste, and a loss of freedom for individuals. Freedom is choice, government involvement reduces choices. Always.

Obama Has No Shame

Even liberals are scoffing at the decision to award Obama the Nobel Peace Prize. While the decision as to who will earn the "prestigious" award has always been political, the whale slaughtering Norwegians have taken it to a new level.

If Obama had any honor whatsoever, he would have refused to accept the award flat out. He did promise to donate the money to charity so let's see if Greenpeace, ACORN, or some other radical group becomes the recipient. That said, the colossal ego of Obama will actually travel to Oslo (despite the massive carbon footprint that will result) to accept the award and bask in the glow of adoring Euro-statists. One day... America will look like Norway too.

Obama practically admitted he didn't deserve the damn prize today, but still accepted it. I mean, where the hell is Kanye West when you need him...

Polanski Taken to School

Pedophiles are okay to Hollywood liberals, unless of course, they're Catholic Priests. I have to say, even I was surprised by the moral relativism displayed by Whoopi Goldberg, Woody Allen, and others of Polanski's rape of a 13 year old girl. If only Jack Webb was still around...

There Are Alternatives to Obamacare

Run Newt run!

Go Ahead Make My Day, Iggy

Clint Eastwood's words must be running through Stephen Harper's mind after seeing the latest poll from CTV. "A new Strategic Counsel survey, conducted Oct. 2-4 for CTV and the Globe and Mail, found that Tory support has surged to 41 per cent nationally, up six percentage points from September."

While many on the right aren't happy with the $40 billion hole in the budget, it can't be denied that Canada has weathered the world-wide recession better than most, and certainly better than our southern neighbours.

The Tories remain weak in Quebec, running third, but have widened their lead in ever-important Ontario with 46% to the Liberals 30%. In the west, as usual, the Conservatives are dominant and seem to be increasing their support further.

Now if only we can be free to choose a private option to get medical treatment when our lives are in danger because a government bureaucrat has deemed your care too costly to be covered by OHIP. Yes, death panels do become reality when the government takes over.

Obama Doesn't Want to Stimulate the Economy

It is increasingly clear that President Obama has no intention of doing anything to stimulate economic growth and start bringing the unemployment numbers down. Those unemployment numbers are the highest since Jimmy the Peanut Carter. After all, central planners and statists thrive on crisis to achieve ends they would not otherwise be able to accomplish. Obama's chief of staff summed it up perfectly when he said, "This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."

Why have the crisis end if it means slowing or ending your far left agenda? The absurd part is that media continues to refuse to do its job in providing that essential part of democracy: criticism of the president's policies. Criticism doesn't have to be negative, it just has to be there. There must be some healthy questioning. The first question they should be asking is: when is government too big?

Most conservatives, like myself, would say it is already too big and bloated. With each new bureaucracy and agency, individuals lose their ability to make decisions for themselves. With each choice lost, an element of freedom is lost. We cannot be so naive as to think that we are immune from oppression and tyranny if we allow government to grow unchecked forever. After all, few dictators in history have ever seized power without the initial consent of the people to "make things right" so to speak.

Jay Nordlinger has an excellent piece in the National Review exposing the hypocrisy of the media by contrasting their treatments of virile Bush hatred to the supposed "hate" directed at President Obama. Hatred is wrong by any account, and Obama should not be subject to it any more than Bush or other American president. Imagine, however, if Rush Limbaugh had said, "SNIPERS WANTED" after President Obama was elected? Yet, that's just what Craig Kilborne did after Bush's election.

Imagine if John Boehner said, "I hate the Democrats and everything they stand for." But, that's precisely what Howard Dean said about Republicans.

In 2006, Bill Maher had a conversation with John Kerry. He asked Kerry what he’d gotten his wife for her birthday. Kerry said he had treated her to a vacation in Vermont. Maher said, “You could have went to New Hampshire and killed two birds with one stone.” Kerry replied, “Or I could have gone to 1600 Pennsylvania and killed the real bird with one stone.”

These aren't fringe protesters, these are "mainstream" Democrats spewing hate without any repercussions. Yet, conservatives voice legitimate concerns and fears about Obama's radical health care plan that will surely lead to socialist health care, and they are accused of hate.

The fact is, the stimulus packages, the health care plan, the cap and tax (trade), and talk of another bailout are efforts to entrench the Democratic party bureaucratically. So the "stimulus" money that was supposed to create or save jobs, isn't and is being withheld until next year, an election year to be undoubtedly spent in a fast and loose fashion to help Democrats win re-election. Why else would only 12% of the stimulus money have been spent as of August 2009?

The claims by the administration to create thousands of jobs through "green jobs" or "health care reform" are laughable. The only way such job creation will take place is with massive new agencies filled with lazy government workers, who will, of course, be unionized. The government cannot create new industries; it never has. Just look at the disasters that Medicare, Social Security, Cash for Clunkers, and welfare have been in terms of management and efficiency. Waste is an epidemic in government and Obama is not some magician who will finally solve the problem. As government expands, so will waste.

But then again, this creates yet another crisis and thus, opportunity for the far left administration bent on reforming America into a pseudo-Euro socialist state. Obama is weakening America's defences, betraying allies, and leaving even the French frustrated by the endless dithering over Iran.

Fortunately, the American people are strong enough to endure the destructive tendencies of the Obama administration that work in direct opposition to the values that the republic was founded upon: limited government, individual freedom, the rule of law, and equality of opportunity (not result).