The Community Organizer Who Would be King

I really have to stop reading MayBee's sarcastic comments   just  before bedtime. She was making fun of Michelle Obama's teleprompter speech to some lady donors: 

"It's also pretty funny to picture them, actually sitting on a sofa in the WH residence, her in a designer dress with her Jimmy Choos kicked off in the corner, him with his WH brewed honey ale, reading the 10 letters for the day and saying, 'Michelle, it just isn't right, what people are going through.'  'Why, what do you mean Barack?'  'We have to fix it. I am tired, but I can't rest until this is fixed!'"

The next thing I knew I couldn't get the image of Kipling's The Man Who Would be King out of my head. You might remember it. It's the story of two men who travel to a place called "Kafiristan" (actually Afghanistan)  where they offer themselves up as military advisers and trainers to the locals.
After helping them defeat their most hated enemy, one of the men (Danny) is treated as a god, a reincarnation of Sikander (Alexander the Great) by monks who mistake his Masonic Jewel for one worn by Alexander when he passed through the land centuries earlier.  He's treated to treasures which once belonged to Alexander.
Then, he loses touch with reality and develops delusions of grandeur. By chance his intended bride, fearful of  being wed to a god, punctures the myth by biting him and making him bleed. Since gods don't bleed, the Kafiristan denizens realize he is human and, angry at being misled, kill him.
I think we've reached a similar turning point in this presidency where  (a) Obama's(and Michelle's) delusions of grandeur have become objects of ridicule; b) Obama's feet of clay are obvious. He may be the only person left in Washington who has not yet realized how inadequate he is to the tasks before him; (c) the people and the press are beginning to turn on him, and as his failures become even more obvious with each passing day, more people will feel free to attack him and his policies and their attacks will become ever more savage as the gap between the promise and reality grow ever more stark.
Obama entered office on a groundswell of a disconcerting mania, a mania in which voters imagined on this blank slate of a candidate all sorts of truly fantastic abilities and policies, none of which were warranted in his paltry, truly shabby history.
The man with no available school records, for example, was painted as a genius and his brief time as a University of Chicago adjunct (basically teaching assistant) puffed up to a professorship in constitutional law. The guy who cannot speak a logical, coherent, grammatical sentence on his own was pawned off as a literary genius to unsuspecting, foolish voters. It was inevitable that the reality of his time in office could never match the dream. It was unfortunately equally inevitable that he would prove inadequate to the difficult job of the presidency.
Still, which of those who voted for him could have envisioned the hash he's made of things in every respect? Unemployment far exceeds what he warned it would reach if we didn't pass his stimulus package; the housing market shows no sign of lift off; the dollar sinks more each day; manufacturing is at a virtual standstill, and Americans grow more pessimistic about the economy each day. The landmark legislation of his first (and I hope final) term, ObamaCare, is so badly conceived and drafted that Americans are likely to see the best medical service in the world destroyed unless it is soon repealed or ruled unconstitutional.  In the meantime, as uncertainty about its future grows, more and more businesses are paralyzed and unable to plan for their futures.
Internationally, we keep alienating our allies and boosting our enemies. Like the Duke of York* in the nursery school rhyme, he had "10,000 men marched them up the hill and then marched them down again." He ordered a surge in Afghanistan, the place he argued in 2008 we really should be instead of Iraq, and then order pulling them out before the job is done, and in a manner sure to increase the danger to them.  Without Congressional authorization, he's committed our troops and weaponry to a rather pointless fight in Libya; pushed Mubarak out of office in favor of heaven knows what successors; failed to do a thing to prevent Iran from going nuclear; done nothing to stop Syria's Assad from daily slaughtering his own people; and each and every day puts the life and welfare of our staunch ally Israel at risk.
This week's press conference revealed him as a man desperately clinging to the same rhetorical devices that have long worn thin: demagogic false choices, class warfare and a preposterous description of himself as the reasonable adult in the legislative process.
Fill in the blanks here, for this is the same speech we have been hearing for his entire term:
Republican leaders need to ask their constituents if they are willing to sacrifice the [ health, safety, welfare, future ]of their children for [you name it].

Rand Paul to Filibuster a Debt Limit Deal?

Senator Rand Paul is saying no debt limit increase without sending a constitutional amendment to balance the federal budget to the states.  Paul is threatening to filibuster a debt deal that lacks a balanced budget proposal.  The Kentucky senator is adding his voice to that of Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) and other leading congressional conservatives.  
DeMint is raising the stakes in the high stakes game on the debt limit.  DeMint is declaring that congressional Republicans who support a debt deal minus a balanced budget amendment could face primary opposition from the right in next year's elections.
Reports are that Democrats and Republicans are currently deadlocked in their debt limit negotiations.  There's an August 2 deadline for increasing the national debt limit. 
Some reports suggest that some congressional Republicans may be open to a "mini-debt limit" deal, one that increases the federal debt limit for one and a half years.  Such a bargain, these Republicans hope, would take the debt limit off the table until 2013, when, presumably, a new Republican president occupies the White House.
But, of course, there's no guarantee that the Republicans will win the White House in 2012, despite Mr. Obama's current woes.  Should Mr. Obama manage re-election, he's a lame duck -- meaning he's free from re-election concerns.  Mr. Obama has proven to be stubbornly ideological in pushing his domestic  agenda in his first term.  He has willingly incurred public disapproval over his mammoth health care reform and his reckless spending schemes.  An Obama second term could prove all the more disastrous for the nation.  It's imperative that congressional Republicans aggressively position the party now to help the eventual GOP nominee defeat Mr. Obama next year.     
Wavering congressional Republicans would be well advised to stand with Paul, DeMint, and other conservative stalwarts in pushing for a balanced budget amendment and strict spending caps.  Voters need to see the GOP lay down clear markers on one of the chief issues facing the nation: government debt and spending. 
Defeating Mr. Obama next year means Republicans need to define issues and demonstrate commitment.  Playing big ball on the debt limit is a critical way of doing so.  Paul and DeMint are right to expect big, tangible results from a debt limit agreement.  Messers Boehner and McConnell should listen up.   

The Color Purple Author Calls America and Israel Terrorists

Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple says she's on board with the anti-Israel flotilla reportedly heading to Gaza at the end of June. The American ship, Greek-owned and registered in Delaware named "The Audacity of Hope" plans to join other vessels in what Ms. Walker describes as the "freedom ride of this era."

Shurat HaDin, an Israeli Legal Center, is trying to stop the Gaza flotilla. After sending a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder citing violations of Section 962 of Title 18 of U.S. Code, the Center filed a civil suit on June 16.

The international initiative was launched last July by a group calling itself the U.S. Boat to Gaza which is backed by the Obamas' friend Rashid Khalidi. The Columbia University professor helped to raise $370,000 for the 50 or so activists ready to transport thousands of letters, postcards and emails to the men, women and children of Gaza. Walker, along with CODEPINK co-founder Medea Benjamin, were among the first to express interest in the flotilla.

Walker and Benjamin are no strangers to Hamas-controlled Gaza. They gained access back in March 2009 via Egyptian First Lady Suzanne Mubarak in honor of International Women's Day. The CODEPINK delegation "sang peace songs both in front of the border gate and inside." This was the same "peaceful" bunch whose members were caught on video last February calling for Clarence Thomas to go "back to the fields," then "string him up" and "cut off his fingers."

The racist language makes sense. The pro-Palestinian Walker often compares freedom riders of the civil rights movement to 21st century anti-Israel radicals. In response to Noam Katz, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy in Washington, told the New York Times that "Hamas is a terror organization...we have a blockade and we will enforce the blockade."  Ms.Walker told Michael Archer of Guernica  that "The Audacity of Hope" will not be deterred.

I am reminded of something Bernice Johnson Reagon of SNNC said once: that the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee participants (of the 1960s) understood that the white supremacists of the south had a job, which might include abuse and murder of the students. But that the students had a job as well; which was to dismantle segregation and break the chain of fear that bound all people of color. The racists would do their job as they understood it; we would do ours.

From the 60's to the Middle East, Walker tells Archer who the real terrorists are.

I had never seen much blatant terrorism as I witnessed in Gaza. Israeli-made; American-made. It is unfortunate that officials of Israel appear to know so little about what their government is doing in the terrorism department.

In fact, Israel has a long history of terrorism as does the United States. Both countries were founded on acts of terrorism against the indigenous populations.... No one else on the planet is as well armed as Americans and Israelis.  Or as vicious in the widespread use of arms.

It's no small detail that the Pulitzer prize-winning, anti-Israel, anti-American's books have been on high school and college reading lists for decades. Walker's literary skills have made her a wealthy woman and an influential one.

The 67-year old activist champions "oppressed people everywhere" with the notable exceptions of Jews and conservative Americans. Walker's fame has helped fund her causes, not the least of which are her trips to Palestine. The writer just returned from the West Bank in April and told Archer in the Guernica interview that she's not worried about any legal obstacles stopping the June flotilla. "Any boat that leaves the shore in order to help others has already landed, whether it ever docks or not."

Walker needs to hold that thought. "The Audacity of Hope," despite its name, may not get the chance to expend all that fuel just to deliver "humanitarian" letters supposedly representing a wide cross-section of Americans. On Friday the Washington Post reported a Turkish charity funding the same ship which refused to surrender to Israeli authorities in May, 2010 and suffered deadly consequences, has backed out.

TSA Now Storming Public Places 8,000 Times a Year

Americans must to decide if, in the name of homeland security, they are willing to allow TSA operatives to storm public places in their communities with no warning, pat them down, and search their bags.  And they better decide quickly.
Bus travelers were shocked when jackbooted TSA officers in black SWAT-style uniforms descended unannounced upon the Tampa Greyhound bus station in April with local, state and federal law enforcement agencies and federal bureaucrats in tow.
A news report by ABC Action News in Tampa showed passengers being given the signature pat downs Americans are used to watching the Transportation Security Administration screeners perform at our airports. Canine teams sniffed their bags and the buses they rode. Immigration officials hunted for large sums of cash as part of an anti-smuggling initiative.
The TSA clearly intends for these out-of-nowhere swarms by its officers at community transit centers, bus stops and public events to become a routine and accepted part of American life.
The TSA has conducted 8,000 of these security sweeps across the country in the past year alone, TSA chief John Pistole told a Senate committee June 14.  They are part of its VIPR (Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response) program, which targets public transit related places.
All of which is enough to make you wonder if we are watching the formation of the "civilian national security force" President Obama called for on the campaign trail "that is just as powerful, just as strong and just as well funded" as the military.
The VIPR swarm on Wednesday, the TSA's largest so far, was such a shocking display of the agency's power that it set the blogosphere abuzz.
In a massive flex of muscle most people didn't know the TSA had, the agency led dozens of federal and state law enforcement agencies in a VIPR exercise that covered three states and 5,000 square miles. According to the Marietta Times, the sweep used reconnaissance aircraft and "multiple airborne assets, including Blackhawk helicopters and fixed wing aircraft as well as waterborne and surface teams."
When did the TSA get this powerful? Last year, Pistole told USA Today he wanted to "take the TSA to the next level," building it into a "national-security, counterterrorism organization, fully integrated into U.S. government efforts."
What few people realize is how far Pistole has already come in his quest. This is apparently what that next level looks like. More than 300 law enforcement and military personnel swept through a 100-mile stretch of the Ohio Valley alone, examining the area's industrial infrastructure, the Charleston Gazette reported.
Federal air marshals, the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Coast Guard, the FBI, the Office of Homeland Security and two dozen other federal, state and local agencies teamed up to scour the state's roads, bridges, water supply and transit centers under the TSA's leadership.
What is remarkable about these security swarms is that they don't just involve federal, state and local law enforcement officials. The TSA brings in squads of bureaucrats from state and federal agencies as well, everything from transportation departments to departments of natural resources.
The TSA had received no specific threats about the Tampa bus station before the April sweep, reporters were told.
They were there "to sort of invent the wheel in advance in case we have to if there ever is specific intelligence requiring us to be here," said Gary Milano with the Department of Homeland Security in an ABC News Action television report. "This way us and our partners are ready to move in at a moment's notice."
Federal immigration officials from Customs and Border Patrol swept the station with the TSA, looking for "immigration violations, threats to national security" and "bulk cash smuggling." (How the bulk cash smuggling investigation related to national security was never explained.)
"We'll be back," Milano told reporters. "We won't say when we'll be back. This way the bad guys are on notice we'll be back."
The TSA gave the same vague answers when asked about the three-state sweep this week. That sweep wasn't in response to any specific security threat, either.
The purpose was to "have a visible presence and let people know we're out here," Michael Cleveland, federal security director for TSA operations in West Virginia told the Gazette. "It can be a deterrent."
It might be -- if Americans are willing to live this way.

Why Obama's hometown has the highest gas prices in America

Think California has the highest gas prices in America? Think again. Chicago: the one party town wears that crown.
What are the consequences of living in the last of the one-party machine towns, a town that has hosted the Daley family as well as being the hometown of Barack Obama and the cronies he put in power (including Bill Daley, his Chief of Staff)?  Politicians who have no problem imposing the highest gas prices in America on their citizens.
From the Chicago Tribune:

Chicago-area gas prices have been running about 50 cents per gallon more than the national average. Fifty cents doesn't sound like much until you consider a two-car family might buy 1,400 gallons of gas a year, which siphons some $700 more from their pockets than other Americans.

The clipping of the wallet causes damage throughout the economy, as consumers have that much less money to spend on retail purchases, save for their future, invest in their children.


The main cause of the high prices? Taxes and regulations-the Democrats solution to all our problems. There is a "mind-boggling array of tax levies that get tacked on gasoline's retail price."
There are excise taxes (both federal and state -- and actually the Illinois state tax is in-line with other states); but also taxes that are charged to fill the underground storage tank fund and environmental impact fees. But together these last two only amount to a penny a gallon.
The killer is the sales tax.  Illinois is only one of seven states to charge a sales tax on gas. What makes it worse is that these taxes are not a fixed number of cents per gallon but fluctuate as a percentage of the sale. This is a recipe for compounding the damage to the consumers; as oil prices rise, so does the amount taken from Illinois drivers -- at a faster rate than for others across America. The state sales tax is 6.25 percent, so the take per gallon rises as the total bill at the gas station rises.
Illinois is also unusual in that it allows counties and municipalities to also get in the action.


In Chicago, city, county and Regional Transportation Authority (for our government-run trains and buses) sales tax add a few more percent. Thank you, Democrats.
But wait..there's more.

When you buy gas in Chicago, you pay a couple more flat taxes. The city of Chicago and Cook County not only levy sales taxes but also flat taxes of 5 cents and 6 cents, respectively. Illinois is the only state to allow all these different taxes to be levied in concert, Sykuta said.

Worsening the problem is that some sales taxes are applied on top of flat taxes, charging motorists tax on tax, which only accelerates the total cost.

"One reason for higher prices is because of the multiple layers of taxes in Chicago," said John Felmy, chief economist at the American Petroleum Institute.

The grand total? Taxes add an average of 69 cents to every gallon of gas in Illinois, and far more in high tax areas such as Chicago. That places Illinois up with the highest gas-taxing states in the nation, along with Connecticut, 70.3 cents, and New York, 69.1 cents, according to an analysis by petroleum institute. The national average is about 50 cents.

Taxing taxes -- a Democratic dream.
But wait ...there are even more costs, courtesy of politicians.  Chicago is required by the Environmental Protection Agency, as are most cities, to use pricier reformulated gasoline in the summer. Chicago formulated a toxic brew so unaffordable that the rest of Illinois gets to use a cheaper blend.
This boutique blend is pricier. What adds to the costs, is that the cocktail of summer gas must include a heavy dose of corn-based ethanol. Only a few refineries make this unique blend, adding more to the costs.  No wonder Obama supported the ethanol industry: Illinois is the second-largest producer of corn. So this government-imposed rule was yet another sop to the ethanol industry.  Since there are so few refineries in America (thanks to rules and regulations, and the NIMBY problem) an outage in any of the very few refineries that produce Chicago gasoline can cause prices to spike even when crude oil pricing is stable.
Chicago is a microcosm of what Democratic policies lead to: sky-high prices and the ever-present risk of government caused-shortages.
Obama sees benefits in high energy prices (he and his minions have repeatedly said so) --especially those that transfer money from motorists into the hands of Democratic politicians.
America, welcome to the world of Cook ("Crook") County politics.

Boehner threatens to cut off funds for Libya

The speaker doesn't think that President Obama answered the questions put to him in a House resolution passed 2 weeks ago. In fact, John Boehner has apparently had it with the president's game playing with regards to our Libyan involvement:

The White House says there are no hostilities taking place, yet we've got drone attacks under way, we're spending $10 million a day, [and] part of the mission is to drop bombs on [Libyan dictator Moammar] Gadhafi's compound," Boehner said. "That doesn't pass the straight-face test, in my view, that we're not in the midst of hostilities."
The Speaker said the White House did not answer one of his questions - outlined in a letter he sent this week - as to whether the Office of Legal Counsel, an advisory entity within the Justice Department, agrees with its analysis of the 1973 War Powers Resolution. He said he wanted an answer to that query by Friday.
White House press secretary Jay Carney said that the president "absolutely respects" Congress's desire to be consulted on Libya, but Carney said that the report should suffice.
"I don't anticipate further elucidation of our legal reasoning because I think it was quite clear," Carney said.
[...]
The "ultimate option," Boehner said, is that "Congress has the power of the purse" and could cut off funding for the mission. "Certainly that is an option as well," he said.

This would be more symbolic than tangible if the House were to take such a nearly unprecedented step:

Actually forcing the president's hand could be difficult, however, because any House-passed funding restriction would have to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate and be signed by Obama himself. And any Libya-related amendment would likely be attached to an appropriations bill that may not move through the Senate for months.

Still, it would be an embarrassment for the president - and for the US - if the House were to take this route. But it is clear that President Obama has no intention of explaining himself to the House or the American people and will continue to participate in a war - limited hostilities or not - without the authorization of congress.

Barack O'Bully Wants to End Israel

"Racism" is a killing hatred for an ethnos, a people or nation.  It could be cold hatred, where you just want all those people to disappear from the face of the earth, or red-hot hatred, where you're just itching to bring out your Turkish scimitar and start chopping innocent men, women and children. It doesn't matter if racism is cold or hot. It's the "final solution" that defines it.
Obama just demanded that seven million Jews in Israel abandon their homes to live inside the cease-fire lines of their War of Independence. Those cease-fire lines are not borders, and were never meant to be borders. They are so weirdly drawn that Israel becomes nine miles wide at the waist. For Israel to withdraw to those lines is to "commit suicide" as a nation, as Newt Gingrich has just said.  Gingrich is right.  This is what radical Islamists keep shouting about, in one, vast industrialized stream of oil-fueled hate propaganda.
And now, ten years after 9/11/01, Obama has joined them.
I don't think Americans really understand that yet. It's obvious that many American Jews don't understand it either. There's a kind of culture shock when radicals express their real beliefs. Nobody wants to believe it.
I can't read minds, and I don't know if Obama has a visceral hatred for Israel. It's not even the right question to ask. The real, practical question is whether Obama is trying to sabotage and ultimately destroy that country. It's "practical racism" that's the issue. 
The Left is always trying to draw an imaginary line between Israel hatred and Jew hatred. But it's a distinction without a difference. It's like saying that you love Americans -- but the country named "America" has to be destroyed. 
Barack Hussein Obama is therefore a practical racist -- he can proclaim all the lovely sentiments he wants to, finely tuned to whichever audience he wants to sucker, but his stated, practical goal is to shrink Israel into the tiniest and least defensible borders possible. It's like telling America to go back to the original thirteen colonies.
In a world of reality, not high-flown rhetoric, Obama wants to terminate a viable Jewish State in Israel, just as, deep down, he wants to terminate a viable nation  of America.  That's the program of the Left, and has been since Karl Marx. It's a utopian, one-world fantasy, that always sounds better than anything real. So Barack Hussein Obama, the President of the United States, has come out against the existence of a viable State of Israel. That would be Progress, he seems to think.
 If you haven't understood that, your eyes are closed. Consider lifting your eyelids.
The word "racist" has become a word of abuse without real meaning, like the ancient word "bastard." It used to mean something, and then it became just a fuzzy thing meaning "really bad."  The Left makes use of race to smear people it wants to oppress and control. It's a verbal club for beating people over the head.  But there really are practical racists, people who dream of actually destroying an entire ethnos, a people. The other word for that is "genocide."
We now hear that Hillary Clinton and the Administration have again repeated that demand to commit national suicide. This is what O'Bully did to Hosni Mubarak during the phony "Egyptian Spring." He demanded that Mubarak must resign, and "Now means Now!!" But Mubarak had been our ally for almost 30 years, the man who kept the Egypt-Israel peace treaty alive. O'Bully humiliated Mubarak in public, a tremendous loss of face for an Arab leader, and he resigned.
Now the Muslim Brotherhood is making a grab for power in Egypt.
We've seen this totalitarian movie before. The last time it cost 100 million people their lives. Like Communists during the Soviet Union, Obama never talks about those 100 million victims of Marxist regimes in the 20th century.
Obama has apologized for America on numerous occasions, but he has never deplored the murderous record of Marxist-Leninism. That is significant.
Twenty years ago the Berlin Wall came down, after Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, John Paul II, and a host of freedom activists like Poland's Solidarity fought for human freedom.
Today Barack O'Bully is trying to reverse history by empowering the reactionary Muslim Brotherhood -- which now controls Turkey, Gaza, and maybe Egypt. The other brand of radical Islam is now in control of Iran, Syria and Lebanon.
Iran is getting nukes, and Obama is doing nothing to stop them. Some reports say it's a matter of weeks or months. The Syrians have been revealed as building two more nuclear sites, beside the one the Israelis identified and smashed several years ago. The Saudis, who are radical Sunnis, are due to buy their own nukes from Pakistan (where they helped to finance Pakistan's nukes).
It's happening right in front of our eyes. The facts are no longer in dispute. 
They are what they are.