Trump Wins – Sic Transit Gloria Obama

The country is now digesting the stunning electoral victory of Donald Trump and the Republican Party.  To be sure, the GOP did not win every election across this great country, but the Party is arguably as strong as it has been in many generations.  Although losing a few seats in the House and Senate, Republicans retain majorities in each, and they gained three governorships to bring their total to 33, the most since 1922.  And Republicans became even more dominant in state and local governments across the country.   

Some despondent Democrats have taken to the streets, shouting and smashing like spoiled brats in a temper tantrum.  The liberal media warned us about violence from those who would not accept the results of this election, and for once it was right.  As Wikileaks documents have confirmed in similar past outbreaks, the rioters are no doubt organized and egged on by shadowy Democrat Party operatives deep behind the scenes who seek to profit from the political and market reactions to their disruptions.

After eight years of Obama-era Democrat arrogance, corruption, and over-reach, the Republican Party has emerged stronger than it has been in memory, in seats and in spine and in will.  Trump, almost single-handedly, has vanquished the feckless and hapless Bush gang to the wilderness, and has consigned the malign Clintons and their disgraceful, corrupt profiteering cartel to the dustbin in the ignominy they deserve.

When Republicans sought some input and compromise in the years, not so long ago, when the Democrats had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a large majority in the House, Democrat Obama scoffed, famously saying I won, you lost, so get out of the way.   He also said elections have consequences.  Now that the shoe’s on the other foot, he’s about to get a taste of his own medicine.

R Balsamo

The Democrat’s War on Cheap-Energy Coal Claims Another Scalp

It is now apparent that many of Obama’s promises were lies he never intended to keep, or didn’t care if he would keep.  Most have come with an expiration date, as Glenn Reynolds quips.  Consider, for example, “if you like your health care plan you can keep it.  Period;” or “One of the first things I’ll do as president is close the Guantanamo detention camp for terrorists;” or, “my administration will be the most transparent in history.”  But here’s one promise he’s keeping that I wish he wasn’t – putting the American coal companies out of business.

Obama’s plan to destroy the coal companies took a step forward yesterday when the largest American coal producer, Peabody Energy, filed for reorganization bankruptcy.  It’s just the latest coal company to do so.    

The United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal.  True, some coal is relatively more polluting than natural gas or oil, but when burned with emission pollution scrubbers, already commonplace, the pollution is almost entirely eliminated.  So why the hate on coal from Obama and the Democrats?  It’s because it represents the cheapest source of energy for Americans.  The world-wide condemnation of coal is a tactic by global authoritarian elites, operating under the ruse of socialistic benevolence, to redistribute wealth from the Unites States to the Third World by making American energy more expensive.  But what people everywhere need, especially those in underdeveloped countries, is cheaper energy, and coal, burned with pollution scrubbers, can provide lots of that.   

Meanwhile, as they also harass the frackers who are making America oil-independent, Obama and the Democrats have poured taxpayer money into “green” energy companies, often run by connected, big Obama money-men and other Democrat cronies; some of those outfits, like Solyndra, have turned out to be over-hyped scams for profit.  And remember that not too long ago Al Gore, on the surface the anti-fossil-fuel crusader, sold his never-profitable, short-lived small cable TV operation for hundreds of millions to Saudi oil interests; the Saudis ran it a while as a show, then recently closed it down.  Well, who has a greater interest than the Saudis (and other Third-World oil producers like Obama’s socialist pals in Venezuela) in seeing the use of cheap coal in the US shut down?  As wise men and women know, whether looking at Al Gore or the Clinton Foundation, which rakes in scores of millions from dark-moneyed interests around the world – just follow the money. 

It’s all one big ruse, and a lot of rubes are still fooled.  

R Balsamo

Obama's General Motors To Import Chinese Cars

Not long ago, American automaker General Motors (and Chrysler as well) was effectively bankrupt.  Fearing a standard restructuring bankruptcy legal process that would have preserved the company while negating all of its existing contracts, including those with labor unions, Obama and the liberals shouted the lie that a restructuring bankruptcy would spell the end of GM and all its factories and would open a void that would be filled by more foreign-made cars.  Instead, in the early heady days of his presidency, Obama strong-armed GM into a pre-packaged essentially fake bankruptcy process that preserved all the unreasonably rich and dysfunctional union labor contracts and effectively gave a piece of the company to the unions for free.  By the time the confiscation issue, specifically involving Chrysler, reached the Supreme Court years later, the Court effectively said that he process was wrong and illegal, but nevertheless accepted it as a fait accompli, just as Obama and the Democrats knew they would.  GM, now once again a public company, is still burdened with those union contracts.

Now the Wall Street Journal reports today:  "General Motors, fresh off agreeing to a new union contract that is expected to drive up its U.S. labor costs, plans to become the first major auto maker to sell Chinese-made cars in the U.S."

Schadenfreude:  "Pleasure derived from someone else's misfortune."  

R Balsamo

Click on the "Automobile Companies and Politics" link below to see all posts on this subject and previous commentary on Obama's confiscation of GM for benefit of the Democrat-controlled unions.

Peggy Noonan Strikes at Ted Cruz, But Wounds Herself; Again

The dreamily erratic, mellifluous, and oft-duped Peggy Noonan is at it again.  In 2008, she utterly destroyed whatever credibility and reputation she had with her notoriously delusional and pathetic school-girl crush on Barack Obama (how’d that work out Peggy?), that at an age when people should know better.   

In 2008 she became infatuated with a rookie senator with an almost negligible resume as an Alinskyite (i.e., radical socialist) community organizer, a part-time Illinois state politician famous for setting a world record in voting “present”, and part-time lecturer (nota bene: not professor) of one course on the 14^thAmendment and blacks at the UChicago Law School.  Obama was president (nota bene: not editor) of the Harvard Law Review, apparently a ceremonial post often used to promote diversity; he wrote nary a single word for it.  Looking at this man, she said this:  “His victory would provide a fresh start in a nation in which a fresh start would come as a national relief....  He rose with guts and gifts.  He is steady, calm, and, in terms of the execution of his political ascent, still the primary and almost only area in which his executive abilities can be discerned, he shows good judgment in terms of whom to hire and consult, what steps to take and moves to make.”  While sensible, grounded people saw Obama for what he was based on his past actions and words, a man who never held a real job before the presidency, fake conservatives like Noonan and David Brooks (who infamously swooned over the “crease” of Obama’s pant leg) saw what they wanted to see.     

Now Noonan, not having learned to distrust her instincts, delivers a hit piece on Ted Cruz.  Noonan is the George Costanza contrary indicator here.  Cruz scares the beejessus out of liberals, socialists, fake conservatives, and go-along, get-along Republicans because he is smart, charismatic, and committed to principles of liberty rather than authoritarian big government.  She now says of Cruz in the Wall Street Journal in a post titled “The Too Smooth Cruz”:  “He is 44 and a first-term senator. He entered the national stage less than three years ago, though it seems like longer because he made himself so famous so fast.  He talks about Reagan, but Reagan in 1980 had been a union president, two-term governor of a huge state, candidate for the GOP nomination in 1976, and longtime leader of modern conservatism. He had been an executive; he had run things; his accomplishments could be measured.”

Though Noonan was enthralled with Obama in 2008 despite a wafer-thin resume, now the following apparently doesn’t count for Cruz, who actually has done lots of stuff at ages when Obama was smoking dope with his choom gang, working as a “community organizer” for a socialist organization, and flitting around the Illinois statehouse avoiding a voting record: 

·        Editor – a working, productive editor – of the Harvard Law Review, unlike Obama’s ceremonial affirmative-action post of “president”.

·        Clerk to the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

·        Solicitor General of the State of Texas, where he argued and won cases before the US Supreme Court.

·        Associate Deputy Attorney General in the U.S. Justice Department.

·        Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

·        Real-world experience in the private practice of law.

I’d say Cruz stacks up a world better than Barack Obama did then, and does now.

R Balsamo

Barack Obama on Religious Identification

I say that I am a Christian, so everyone must accept that and proclaim agreement with that if asked (this especially goes for Republicans): Barack Obama.

Despite the fact that thousands of men, women, and imams of the murderous, terrorist Islamic State movement say they are good Muslims, and claim to be acting in accordance with the directives of the Muslim faith, I, Barack Obama, a Christian, proclaim that in no way are these people Muslim, regardless of what they say they are: Barack Obama.

Obama: Mission Unaccomplished Against Muslim Terror

“Thanks to sacrifice and service of our brave men and women in uniform, the war in Iraq is over, the war in Afghanistan is winding down, al Qaeda has been decimated, Osama bin Laden is dead.” –President Obama, November 1, 2012

“This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years.” –President Obama, September 10, 2014

“The United States has evacuated its remaining personnel, including about 100 special operations forces, from Yemen because of the deteriorating security situation there, U.S. officials said on Saturday. The U.S. pullout…  marked a further setback in U.S. counterterrorism efforts against a powerful al Qaeda branch in the country.” –Reuters, March 21, 2015

Thanks to Max Boot at Commentary

Descent Into Farce – Obama Sends the French a Song and a Hug To Help Fight Muslim Terrorism

John Kerry

When I saw the headline and read the first paragraph I was sure it was a spoof.  How ridiculously funny!  What clever satire!  Then that sinking feeling set in.  It was real. 

After being blasted by even ultraliberals for not sending a senior American official to the recent Paris anti-Islamic terror rally, Obama sent his buffoonish Secretary of State John Kerry to help bolster the French morale.  France needs a new backbone and a division of Marines.  So what were brought to Paris by Kerry of the Democrats, who made a name for himself during the Vietnam War by sonorously accusing American soldiers of widespread war crimes just before jetting off to Europe to meet surreptitiously with the enemy?

Well, we’ve heard about strong power, and during the Obama years about soft power, and now there’s song power.  Kerry offered a song and then gave a hug to the socialist French President Hollande.  A song and a hug.  They’re sure to help defeat Muslim fanaticism.

Osama bin Laden is said to have remarked that when people see a strong horse (presumably Islam) and a weak horse (that would be Western Culture), they are naturally drawn to the former.  I agree in principle though not in reference.  Well, now Obama has introduced a third choice – the gelded horse.  Gelded horse power. 

Well, was the song at least as rousing to the spirit as the French anthem La Marseillaise?  A song that would finally buck them up for the long struggle ahead against fanatical Muslim murderers?  Nope.  He brought in the old American liberal icon of touchy-feely treacle, James Taylor, to sing “You’ve Got a Friend,” a sappy song much loved by 13 year-old girls and saccharine enough to induce a diabetic coma.  And that hug.  As a teenage girl would say – awkward!   Word is that Obama’s first choices were Barney the Purple Dinosaur and Beyonce, but they were booked, so he sent Kerry and Taylor instead.  I imagine the French muttering to themselves at this insulting display like the French police inspector in an old Inspector Clouseau movie – “I-di-ots, i-di-ots!”

A sappy song and a cringe-inducing hug.  How embarrassing and pathetic.  The Obama presidency has descended into absolute farce, not that it had far to fall. 

R Balsamo

The Paris Anti-Muslim Terror Rally – Will It Be All Show and No Go? And Where’s Obama?

The big rally in Paris against Muslim terrorism was an encouraging gesture, but I have very mixed feelings about these symbolic displays, having observed from afar the many, periodic “take back the street” marches through black neighborhoods of Chicago whenever there’s a spike in the already high baseline level of murder and mayhem.  So far it’s been all for show – politicians use them to distract the public from realizing nothing is being done to address the root problems.  After 50 years, the dangerous areas are little changed.  So will European leaders actually change their appeasement of radical and violent Muslims and now take concrete steps to kill Islamic terror?  I’m skeptical.  I note that prominent in the front row among the world politicians was the head of the Muslim terrorism-supporting Palestine Liberation Organization.  And the head of the French “right wing” organization, right wing in the sense that a socialist is to the right of a communist, was pointedly banned from the rally, presumably because the group was a mite too frank about Islam’s role in terrorism. 

Stateside, the American media is abuzz as to why Obama did not appear or at least send a high-ranking US official to the rally.  It seems simple – because Obama and his team deny that Muslim terrorism exists.  His public position is that all this killing is a criminal matter, by those who misuse the Muslim label but who kill despite their religion, not because of it.  Of course deep down he doesn’t really believe this nonsense.  He knows full well the violence-drenched history of Islam since its founding, and its spread through murderous conquest.  He understands the religious directive to violent jihad.  But he will not publicly admit any of this.  His posture is to deny the connection between Islam and violence.  After all, in the face of a clear example of Muslim murderous jihad in the attack on the soldiers at Ft. Hood, Obama and his people denied Islam was a factor and called it “workplace violence.”  This charade would be hilarious if not so tragic.  So why would Obama, raised a Muslim, join a march against Muslim mass murder jihad when he has denied the existence of that very thing in the United States? 

R Balsamo 

Democrat Howard Dean Decides Who Is Muslim and Who Is Not

Many European and world leaders marched in Paris today to show solidarity against barbarism as they condemned the recent brutal mass murder of a magazine’s staff by Muslim fanatics.  The American president Barack Hussein Obama, raised a Muslim but who has professed in adulthood not to be one, was a no show, for he was reportedly occupied stateside watching an important football game, perhaps hoping to squeeze in a round of golf afterwards.

Prominent American Democrat Party politician Howard Dean weighed in on events, making the assertion, not uncommonly heard among Democrats, that the murderers were not Muslims.  This came as a surprise not only to the French police and to the surviving hostages who had to listen to the blather about avenging Muhammad and to shouts of "God is great" in Arabic, but also to Muslims everywhere, some of whom celebrated the mass murder of perceived infidels by men who were lifelong Muslims and who professed to be acting in accordance with the Muslim directive for jihad.  Dr Dean, a somewhat indifferent and nominal Protestant, recent head of the national Democrat Party, and former Democrat candidate for the Presidency of the United States, believes he is empowered to decide among all the self-professed Muslims of the world exactly who is and who is not really Muslim.  Dr Dean has insisted that all Muslims are peaceful and that anyone who commits murder or mayhem is not peaceful and is therefore not a Muslim, notwithstanding any and all evidence to the contrary.  Lest anyone think Dr Dean is timid and non-judgmental in his opinions, it should be recalled that Dr Dean once said, now famously, that he “hates Republicans and everything they stand for.” 

R Balsamo

Rampaging Islam & Barack Hussein Obama

Muslim murderers some hours ago killed at least 12 people in Paris at the office of a magazine that had published satirical material critical of the excesses of Islam.  The murderers reportedly went searching for specific individuals by name.  They were heard shouting "God is great" in Arabic, the de rigueur exclamation of Muslim murderers across the globe.  They were also heard to say they were avenging Muhammad.

Not long ago, the American president Barack Hussein Obama, raised a Muslim but later a long-time follower of a radical, hateful black-supremacist pseudo-Christian preacher, said that "the future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam."

In a statement released today, Obama criticized the murders but made no reference whatsoever to Islam.

R Balsamo

Obama – The Man Who Would Be Caesar

Obama’s lawless immigration decree is outrageous and ominous, but, sadly, entirely predictable given the distain shown the Constitution and proper legal process by Obama and his supporters.  Obama is also, as he often does, testing limits, to see what he and his fellow control masters can get away with. 

A de facto amnesty affecting millions of illegal aliens, contrary to established law and the will of elected federal representatives, is far beyond anything this Republic has yet seen on this subject.  There are existing immigration laws that, like all laws, should be enforced until they are changed.  If they need to be changed they should be changed, but until such time they are the laws of the land.  The doctrine of prosecutorial discretion, heretofore a limited, practical prioritization of cases by prosecutors with limited resources, is now being used to justify a sweeping executive action involving many millions.  Furthermore, however tenuous the Obama rationalization is in invoking prosecutorial discretion on a massive scale, what he cannot do, but has said he will do, is confer on those he is essentially pardoning positive legal rights such as work permits not permitted under existing law.     

Despite repeated previous announcements that he was not the “Emperor of the United States” and “could not legally” issue the dictate that he just in fact did, once all federal elections during his presidency were over this former ersatz lecturer in Constitutional law decided to go ahead and make the decree anyway, Constitution be damned.  Quite predictably, the gaggle of lawyers working for him quickly patched together a legal justification, chock full of hair-splitting and analogizing that voilà! discovered that everything in Obama’s edict is all hunky dory with the US Constitution, legal precedents (real or imagined), the Articles of Confederation, the Magna Carta, and the Ten Commandments.  Indeed, time and again without fail ultraliberal lawyers through their patented legalistic legerdemain, their semantic razzmatazz, can justify legally any action taken by any Democrat president, any time, anywhere.
 

The supporters of this dictate gleefully argue that it’s a good idea, a very good idea indeed according to their self-regarded superior and virtuous minds, and therefore it should be done, and can be done, by whatever means necessary.  The puppet-masters of the Democrat Party are manipulating their gullible and malleable dependents and acolytes by essentially declaring that there is an unwritten “Gridlock Clause” lurking somewhere in the penumbras and emanations of the United States Constitution that makes the President a dictator if “Congress doesn’t act” in a way he sees fit on any law he himself deems "broken".  As Benjamin Franklin said to the American people, you have a Republic – if you can keep it.

Impeachment and removal is the simple Constitutional remedy for Presidential lawlessness, though certainly the Republicans will not muster up for that fight.  And even if they tried, the vice-like grip that radical liberals have on the levers of culture and media will thwart with vicious force the undoubtedly hesitant, bumbling, and contradictory moves Republicans would make.  Patriots who seek to preserve this system of government, this Great Experiment, will seek other avenues of action – through the purse and through the courts.    

Obama’s latest outrage is consistent with the strategic principles of the modern Democrat Party, which are: (1) remember that the ends justify the means; (2) collapse the system upon itself and grab more power in the disarray; (3) distract and fool the foolable by relentlessly smearing any and all opponents as racist, sexist, homophobic, and selfish dimwits; and (4) ever expand the mass of people dependent on government for welfare and for jobs, creating these modern-day serfs who will faithfully vote for the Democrat party puppet masters (who, as one wag has put it, regard illegal aliens as “undocumented Democrats”) no matter what is happening to the fabric of the Republic.     

This Republic, which few at the beginning thought could last this long, exists on a shared set of values and beliefs.  When it ends, if it ends, it will not likely end in one fell blow, but rather will die of many cuts, over time, until there is no blood left to sustain its life.  This cut was deep.  The American body politic has shown great healing powers, so we shall see what comes of this latest gash.

R Balsamo

Obama’s Obamacare "Fix" – He Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Legal Basis

Once again, as he did with the Obamacare employer mandate, Obama has personally decreed that he will not enforce, for as long as it suits him to do so, certain requirements that are the law of the land under Obamacare.  There is some uncertainty whether all such requirements stem entirely from the Obamacare law itself, which cannot be changed without new legislation, or whether some stem from his regulations, which are legally changeable only once a certain lengthy administrative process has been followed (for example, a public notice and comment period).  Either way, neither the law itself nor the regulations pursuant to it have been legally changed and so remain in full effect.  Obama cannot change either with a speech.

Regardless, despite being Constitutionally required to enforce the laws of the land and having taken an oath to do so (on Lincoln’s Bible no less), Obama now asserts that he will not enforce certain parts of the law and legally-established regulations, without bothering to go through the long and arduous process of legally changing either, and will look the other way if insurance companies follow his suggestion to willfully break the law in renewing policies that violate the new law.  If the companies break the law and later get sued over a dispute under an illegal policy, well that’s the insurance companies’ problem since they’re bad guys anyways.  If such insurance companies decide not to break federal law and decline to re-establish  illegal policies, Obama says only they, the insurance companies, will be to blame for this mess. 

When asked about the legal basis for his highly selective non-enforcement of laws he is sworn to uphold and for his public encouragement to insurance companies to willfully break federal law, Obama, parroting the bandit leader’s crafty legal opinion voiced to the skeptical Humphrey Bogart in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, said “Legal basis?! You want to see the legal basis?!  I don’t have no legal basis, I don’t need no stinkin’ legal basis!”

Experts Jump the Shark on New One World Trade Center Height – 70% Building & 30% Mast; the Clintons & Obama Comment

Obama assures Chicagoans that if they like the tallest building designation for the Willis Tower, they can keep it.  Period. 

As Abraham Lincoln said, even if you call a tail a leg a dog still has only four legs.

Willis Tower (per Wikipedia)

The height committee of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat, an international body based at Chicago’s Illinois Institute of Technology (that very underappreciated university that should be much better known), determined (link) that the big mast rising up from the top of the new One World Trade Center in New York City qualifies as a “spire”, and is not an “antenna” even though it looks exactly like one, because it is a permanent feature and thus counts in their estimation as part of the building’s height.  Despite the fact the spire accounts for a ridiculous 30% of the building’s now “official” height of a very symbolic 1,776 feet, the new structure is now designated by them as the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere.  Such designation could of course add to the building’s attraction as a target for Islamic terrorists, and the structure will now be defended by the administration of the city’s newly elected mayor, a socialist no less, whose main promise is to compromise the city’s increasingly successful police protection methods. 

The Willis (formerly Sears) Tower in Chicago, once the world’s tallest building, is 1,451 feet tall and doesn’t have a mast as part of its official height, while the roof of the new One World Trade Center is (only) 1,368 feet tall.  Normal people, rather than experts who sometimes, like here, get twisted up into non-sensical positions, would regard a building’s height as closely related to the tallest occupiable space on which a human could stand.  By that definition, as I understand it the Willis Tower remains the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere and taller than many other “officially” higher buildings around the globe which have increasingly resorted to longer and longer “spires” in what amounts to a spire race to one-up competitors.  I think everyone would agree, though, that Willis Tower still has the highest toilets in the Western Hemisphere.

Reaction was swift.  Former President Bill Clinton, apparently an architectural buff since he's often overheard using the term “tall mast” on overnights in Chicago, said that whether the mast is a spire or an antenna depends on what the definition of “is” is.  Chicagoland native Hillary Clinton, also a prominent Democrat politician, mastermind of the Benghazi Betrayal, and noted cattle futures expert, also weighed in, saying “At this point, what difference does it make?”  Former Chicago resident Barack Obama, whose only significant adult job and therefore main qualification for the presidency of the United States was the “street cred” he garnered as a local community organizer for a socialist organization, assured Chicagoans that if they liked the tallest building designation for the Willis Tower, they could keep it.  Period. 

Obama Pulls Out the Big Lie Tactic on Obamacare

Just when it seemed Obama and his lying couldn’t get any worse, Obama has just blamed the health insurance companies for complying with Obamacare.  Really.  Really.  His lying has come to this.

Using the “Big Lie” (link) tactic made famous by such authoritarian luminaries as National Socialist mass murder Goebbels and Soviet Communist mass murder Stalin, Obama today in a speech blamed “bad apple” health insurance companies for all the policy cancellations flooding the news reports.  Everyone knows that insurance companies are cancelling policies because they are required to under the Obamacare law.  It would be illegal for them to continue to offer those policies. 

Not only is the lying by Obama and his minions continuing, but this one today from Obama is a whopper.  Obama clearly believes in the Big Lie principle – that the bigger the lie the more people will believe it.  

As I recently wrote (link), “All the promises about Obamacare have vaporized, promises like ‘if you like your health benefit plan and your doctor you will be able to keep them’ ....  All lies known to be lies by those who uttered them.” 

Want Medical Privacy with Obamacare? Fuggedaboutit

Compared to the Obama worshipers' image of Himself as the hippest thing in the universe, Mark Steyn writes (link) that “Obamacare wound up somewhat less hipper and, in fact, not even HIPAA [pronounced "hip'-uh"] — the unpersuasively groovy acronym for federally mandated medical privacy in America. Appearing before Congress ... the magicians of Obamacare eventually conceded that ... “You have no reasonable expectation of privacy regarding any communication of any data transmitted or stored on this [Obamacare] information system.”

Really, why would Obama and his followers, who have turned the IRS and the Justice Department into personal, partisan tools for use against their political adversaries, and who, since the day they took over the federal government have been illegally and immorally spying not only on Americans but even on foreign leaders – why would they care about the privacy of us plebs or have the slightest hesitation in using whatever information they can to control us while helping their friends and hurting their opponents? 

But that’s really nothing to worry about.  Once Obamacare is fully up and running and the medical care Rationing Board gets to rationing, in your suffering and anxiety while you’re waiting years for your knee arthroscopy or your heart valve repair privacy of your medical and financial records will be the last thing on your mind. 

Obama’s Syrian War as a Designed Distraction

Obama, who rose to prominence and finally defeated Hillary Clinton for the Democrat Party nomination in 2008 as the anti-war candidate, now wants to drop a few bombs on Syria in an operation his Secretary of State John Kerry, the archetypal anti-war guy, said would be “incredibly small”.  Nobel Peace Prize awardee Obama’s reasons for this war with Syria are not clear to anyone, including, seemingly, Obama himself.  Obama’s people have said, though, that they just intend to drop a few bombs so that Obama won't look bad on the world stage, so it won't be really a "war war", to borrow Obamaphile Whoopi Goldberg's idiotic and depraved formulation of "rape rape".  

Some brave Democratic politicians have come out to oppose this threatened war, but as expected all the major Obama-loving, previously rabidly anti-war celebrities have been absolutely silent – obviously they’re anti-war only when a Republican is president so it’s really not at all war that they care anything about.  In fact, super-liberal Ed Asner has admitted publicly that the erstwhile anti-war Democrat celebrities are staying silent because they don't want to appear racist in criticizing Obama; of course this is a big concern for them because up until now they themselves have smeared as racist anyone who dared oppose Obama.  

To contribute their fair share to the ridiculousness of this bad theater, some Republicans have come out to support Obama’s proposed little war; for example, Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard, the editors of National Review, and even talk show host Hugh Hewitt, as well as a plethora of Republican politicians who never met an air strike they didn't like (e.g., the dopey Bobbsey Twins John McCain and Lindsey Graham).  Even Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner and House number two man Eric Cantor are giving Obama political cover for his proposed little adventure – not for nothing are they leaders in the Stupid Party.

Of course the Syrians in power have been killing, and allegedly even gassing, some of their people for a long time, so why attack them now?  Why now?  Well, one credible reason is to distract attention from Obama's growing domestic scandals.  Just as Clinton started lobbing bombs when the White House sex scandal was heating up, now it's Obama's turn to explode some people so that Republicans will stop talking about all the other bad stuff he's been doing.  Other bad stuff like the disgraceful IRS scandal wherein Democrat employees of the IRS and other federal agencies have been harassing, with non-approvals and audits, conservative organizations for years, a scandal that has so far reached as far as the top Obama appointee at the Agency.  A scandal like the Benghazi debacle, in which Obama and his team clearly failed to provide adequate security in advance, despicably failed to allow the military to support and rescue the besieged Americans being attacked on the ground in Benghazi (a battle that went on for about 12 hours in which four Americans died), and then disgracefully suppressed the truth about it all ever since. 

The final absurdity about this proposed attack on Syria is that it would be attacking the current government in support of Al Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood-led rebels who are even more hostile to the United States and Christians living in Syria than those now in power there.  It makes absolutely no sense, but then Obama's purpose is not to make sense, is not to seek justice -- it is to distract and mess with the minds of dopey Republicans.  If Obama is so easy with the use of military force, why did he order the United States military to step down and stop their rapidly developing support and rescue of the besieged Americans under attack in Benghazi? If military force to rescue Americans is unacceptable, why is military force to help Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood in Syria now a moral imperative? 

If one thing is clear about Obama and his core cadre of red diaper baby Alinskyites who are rabidly hostile to traditional American values, it is that you can never listen to what they say but always must watch what they do with open eyes and a clear head.  And as for those confused and misguided Republicans and “conservatives” who now are joining forces with and supporting Obama, Axelrod, Hillary Clinton and the others in the Alinskyite gang, to borrow a phrase, not even do they not know who the marks are they don’t even realize they’re playing in a game.  

Obama Fiddles While Egyptian Christians Murdered

J. Christian Adams at PJ Media comments (link) on the toxic mix of the moral bankruptcy of Obama and his liberal media lapdogs enraptured by their demigod and their shared self-loathing hostility to Western civilization, in light of the recent antics of Obama's allies The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt -- the title captures it all:

"Christians Murdered All Over Egypt, New Puppy at White House"

See:  Roger L Simon's Obama’s Strange Love Affair with the Muslim Brotherhood

The Boston Marathon Bombings – Obama, Democrats, & Muslim Terrorism

As if we needed any more evidence that Obama, his team, and his acolytes are soft, very soft, on Muslim terrorism, one only needs to look at the case of the Boston Marathon Bombers.  Despite apparently repeated warnings from the Russians, the Russians no less, about the older brother’s escalating radicalism and growing ties to known Muslim terrorists, Obama’s crack team did nothing.  Nothing.  Their focus is on those dangerous, let’s-live-within-our-means white grandmothers in the Tea Party, otherwise known as Republicans.

Obama actually has some terrorist friends – after moving to Chicago, among the many ultraliberals he befriended was one Bill Ayers, who, along with his wife, are unrepentant murderous terrorists embraced by Obama and his kind (Columbia, Northwestern, and the University of Illinois at Chicago, inter alia, have such people on their faculties).  In fact, there’s a new movie out by ultraliberal Robert Redford that lionizes left-wing terrorism – that is, the good kind, like Muslim terrorism, that, though regrettably excessive at times, is nevertheless seen to be an understandable and righteous response by those feeling aggrieved by the power of Judeo-Christian Western culture.  It’s not about the murdering, it’s about whether the killers have the correct grievances against the correct oppressors.

Obama’s minions have created a hostile work environment for any government official interested in protecting Americans from Islamic extremism, from the Army General who bemoaned the effect the Fort Hood Muslim murdering terrorist might have on the military’s efforts at “diversity”, from nitwit Homeland Security boss Janice Napolitano’s refusal to call the Fort Hood massacre an act of terrorism, ridiculously labeling it as “workplace violence”, to the FBI’s downplaying Islamic terrorism in its training manual.

We now learn that the brothers were living off taxpayer money in Massachusetts, long a Democrat utopia.  On welfare, the older brother, who was supposed to be a political refugee, had enough money to return to the place in which his life was supposedly threatened, Russia, for six months.  Back in the States, on welfare he’s driving a Mercedes.   

Here’s the defining Rorschach test illustrating the divide in attitudes toward Muslim terrorism.  State the following:  most Muslims are not terrorists, but most terrorists are Muslim.  If a head explodes, it’s a liberal, and not one who was going to keep us safe.

Michael Walsh (link):  “I’ve long said that the relationship between the American Left and Islam is that of masochist and sadist; the perfect Suicide Cult meets the Death Cult of its dreams. No wonder [in Boston] they got along so well together, right up to the moment when they didn’t.”

 

John M Greco

Obama Seeks to Seed Credit Crash 2.0

They're baaaaack.......

Obama, in his community "organizer" days, along with similarly-minded Democrats, led the fight, starting with the Community Reinvestment Act, to force banks to give mortgage loans to potential borrowers with bad credit.  Well, some would say that ended very badly, in , oh, about 2008.  Since then lending standards have returned to the time-tested, rational way of doing such things.

However, if one takes the view that the true goal of some politicians is to bring the system down upon itself, expecting then that the "people" will clamor to give more power to those who seek to control the proletariat, then this comes as no surprise:

Headline from the very-liberal, no less, Washington Post (link):

"Obama administration pushes banks to make home loans to people with weaker credit"

When at first you don't succeed, ....

John M Greco

Democrat SequesterMania

Legendary liberal journalist Bob Woodward, of Watergate fame, apparently maintains a shred of integrity and so broke with the liberal media palace guard protecting the Democrat president and called Obama’s dishonest rabble rousing behavior on the sequester “madness”.  Of course, we all now know, thanks in part to Woodward himself, that the so-called sequester, or automatic budget cuts, was Obama’s idea.

The Democrats are wailing about cutting about 2.4% from the federal budget, or as it seems, as it usually is, cutting 2.4% off the rate of growth of the federal budget.  That’s cutting just a bit off a federal budget that’s already mushroomed beyond recognition under Obama.  Larry Kudlow writes (link):  “The White House and the CBO are predicting a 0.5 percent to 0.7 percent decline in GDP, post-sequester, and a loss of 750,000 jobs. All this from a spending reduction of roughly 2.4 percent over the next ten years, in which Uncle Sam’s spending growth will be $44.8 trillion rather than $46 trillion.”  And while Obama and his minions and acolytes have been wailing, new US Secretary of defense Long John Kerry just promised $250 million more to the Islamist government of Egypt.  Can’t possibly cut there!     

To listen to Obama and Democrats, 2.4% less spending will cut the federal government to the bone and will impact countless essential services.  Democrats are of course claiming that they can’t possibly find even 2% of fat to cut, or even 2% of non-essential services.  Not a penny is there to cut.  On local Chicago CBS news radio, a woman identified as chief economist for Mesirow Financial, apparently a money management firm, talked about some seniors losing their government subsidized housing and being forced out onto the street in the cold of late winter.  It seems Mesirow is on board with the Obama agenda.

Mark Steyn writes (link): “Can you pierce the mists of time and go back all the way to the year 2007? Back then, federal spending was 40 percent lower than it is today. In a mere half-decade, has all that 40 percent gravy become so indispensable to the general welfare that not even a teensy-weensy sliver of it can be cut?”

 

Obama is not trying to find a negotiated settlement with Republicans – far from it.  For the Obama Democrats, this whole debate is really not about trying to find a budget solution to the massive deficit.  It’s really about a radical position to spend, spend, and spend, borrowing all the way, until the system breaks down, until it collapses upon itself, and in the ensuing crisis of their own making, Democrats think they will be able to expand and solidify their centralized control over a bigger piece of America and every person in it. 

John M Greco