The old Obama in new clothing

Charles Krauthammer  "The November election sent a clear message to Washington: less government, less debt, less spending. President Obama certainly heard it, but judging from his State of the Union address, he doesn't believe a word of it. The people say they want cuts? Sure they do - in the abstract. But any party that actually dares carry them out will be punished severely. On that, Obama stakes his reelection. "

Who Is Charles Krauthammer?  "Charles Krauthammer has long been recognized as one of America’s most astute and authoritative political columnists, acknowledged as a cut above the majority of his scrivening colleagues. And yet there is something cryptic and elusive about him, like the coy Waldo in the famous puzzle. Perhaps he resents being put in boxes and wishes to preserve his independence of judgment, or his unpredictability."

 Krauthammer Correcting Krauthammer  "So — how long does it take a wise columnist to recognize a mistake and call an ideologue and ideologue? Six weeks. Here’s Krauthammer today:"

Mike Ramirez on Obama's vision of America

http://www.nationalreview.com/

At filthy clinic, babies met an inhumane end, grand jury says

http://townhall.com/cartoons/glennmccoy

IN HIS SQUALID West Philadelphia abortion clinic, Kermit Gosnell had a surefire way of dealing with the unwelcome complication of a live birth: He'd allegedly plunge scissors into the squirming newborn's neck, killing it by severing the spinal cord.

Turmoil in Egypt

STRATFOR reports:  Dispatch: Egyptian Unrest Continues "Middle East analyst Kamran Bokhari discusses the Mubarak government’s potential vulnerability as a result of the street protests, which may exacerbate the country’s leadership succession troubles." Via stratfor.com

Sources in Egypt and West: US secretly backed protest "It would also explain the steadfast insistence of President Barack Obama and all his spokesmen on forcing Mubarak to do the virtually impossible, i.e. to refrain from force against the opposition movement and introduce immediate reforms by means of national dialogue. His successors would be waiting in the wings to move in when they could expect to be embraced by the opposition."

Israelis fear unwinding of political stability  "But the lack of Israeli enthusiasm for democratic change in the Arab world also reflects a specific experience: the 2006 elections in the Palestinian territories, which ended in a triumph for the Islamist Hamas movement at the expense of the pro-western Fatah party."
Via The Financial Times   Related: BUSH DEMOCRACY POLICIES HELPED BRING ISLAMIST DICTATORSHIPS TO GAZA AND LEBANON.

Egypt's riots make Israel uneasy  "Israel doesn’t have the luxury of the United States, trying to measure its reaction to unfolding events by balancing support for human rights and democracy against loyalty to an old and important ally. For Israel peace with a stable and reliable Egypt is a vital necessity, and Hosni Mubarak has withstood the test of time. But unlike the United States, Israel is not called upon to make a stand vis-a-vis Murbarak versus the demonstrators. Israel knows that its silence is what the situation requires, that to voice support for one side or the other would be counterproductive." 

Egypt, what's at stake? Just a short bullet list...

Walid Phares On President Hosni Mubarak Video.

Carter Redux? "Like Carter, Obama has made overtures to the Islamists. 1n 1978 Jimmy Carter was on the side of "human rights" and eagerly embraced Ayatollah Khomeini. Carter's UN Ambassador Andrew Young went so far as to call him "some kind of saint"."
Liberals cannot be trusted to handle international crises.

Foreign policy establishment of two minds on Egypt "The world is about to change and the administration is unable to decide what to do to help shape the future to the benefit of US interests. Is it the nature of the crisis that this is so? Or is it that Obama and his State Department are like a deer in the headlights when it comes to proposing options?"

Nobel Peace Winner Returns to Egypt to Lead Anti-Government Protest Movement  "Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, Egypt's top democracy advocate and a key challenger to President Hosni Mubarak, returned to the country Thursday night after declaring he was ready to lead the grass-roots protest movement to a regime change."

National Review Online posts on Middle East riots

So why is it all right for women to be sexist about MEN?

UK Mail  "For make no mistake: sexism is alive and well in this country and applauded in all quarters — as long as it is practised by women. And they are allowed to say the most terrible, terrible things.
"Only last week, for example, Jo Brand, the newly crowned Best Female TV Comic at the British Comedy Awards, was on Have I Got News For You and replied to the question ‘What’s your favourite kind of man, Jo?’ by saying: ‘A dead one.’ Oh, how the audience fell about. And the other contestants, all male, chortled away too."

Refer to our comments in a related post here:

The Criminal Intent Report: Congress Is Eroding the Mens Rea Requirement in Federal Criminal Law

Heritage via  Overcriminalized.com    "The “guilty mind” requirement (what lawyers call mens rea) historically restricted criminal punishment to those who were truly blameworthy and helped ensure Americans had fair notice of the law’s requirements. No one could be convicted of a crime without the government having proved that he acted with a guilty mind. In a sharp break with this tradition, recent Congresses have crafted scores of new federal criminal laws that lack adequate guilty-mind requirements and define the conduct that they criminalize in vague, overbroad terms."

Download full PDF report here.

U.S. Faces New Reality As Old Order Dies

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON   "In response to this topsy-turvy world, the traditional media, tenured professors, well-paid public employees, rigid ethnic and racial lobbies, unions, organized retirees, open-borders advocates and entrenched politicians all are understandably claiming that we live in an uncivil age.
"We well may, but we also are seeing the waning of an established order. And the resulting furor suggests the old beneficiaries are not going quietly into that good night." Via Investors.com

Free Men Have Free Tongues

Bruce Thornton  "No progressive frets over “hate speech” directed at Republicans, white males, CEO’s, heterosexuals, or Christians."

Propagandists at Time Magazine put Reagan and Obama together on cover

Rick Moran   In fact, the irony escapes the propagandists at Time. Reagan's largeness of spirit in granting that his political foes were wrong, and not evil, only makes The Gipper look that much better compared to his arrogant, incompetent successor. Obama's weapon of choice is belittlement of his opponents. It is not attractive, and reveals a pettiness that shrinks the stature of Obama and the presidency - especially when compared to a man who understood all Americans; even those who disagreed with him.

Victor Davis Hanson: Obama’s rhetoric has swung from hard-left to moderate to hard-left to conciliatory. The problem is, his policies were real, not rhetorical.  "...Obama waged psychosocial warfare against private enterprise. In the space of just two years we learned from the president himself that we were two countries: Those who made above $250,000 were greedy and deserving of higher taxes; those below were okay for now and should receive rather than pay out. Traveling to Vegas or the Super Bowl (but not Martha’s Vineyard or Costa del Sol) was inexcusably self-indulgent. The president alone knew at what point we should cease making money. Doctors were limb-loppers. And so on. When an employer believes his efforts are considered unimportant or perhaps even nefarious, he is not going to be bold and risk-taking."

Iranian Regime Hails New Islamic Middle East Taking Shape

Gateway Pundit  "The Iranian prayer leader today Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami hailed the new Islamic Middle East that is taking shape. The radical prayer leader said the recent developments in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, and other Arab states echo the 1979 Islamic Revolution."
These things happen under presidents like Carter.

And now, from HOLLYWOOD...

Now That Obama’s President, Richard Gere Silent on Tibet  "The 2009 Nobel Peace Prize winner recently hosted a dinner for the man who’s holding the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner in prison. The Hollywood community and their human rights lobby were oddly silent on this event. Could it be because Hope and Change has been placed over all those “Free Tibet” bumper stickers in Hollywood?"

Danny Glover Blames Conservatives for Tucson Tragedy  "You know what I miss most about being a Lefty? Being able to say whatever the hell I want. Reason, truth, facts be damned… It’s so 1984-ish. In your fevered, unreasonable, little, angry mind you carefully affix brown pieces of paper over what’s inconvenient, rewrite it a bit, and then memory-hole the rest.  I really do miss that. There’s no effort, no time wasted on Google, none of that pesky self-awareness. Cold weather is proof of Global Warming — stuff like that."

'Entertainment' Media Join Chorus Blaming Conservatives for Shooting  "Whenever a tragedy or important issue occurs, someone inevitably seeks out the opinions of left-wing singers and actors."

Fathers aren't TV dunces  "The NFI has also taken a particular interest in the way fathers are being portrayed on entertainment television, which regularly present dads as laughingstocks and lamebrains. There is reason for concern, too. Hollywood has taken the typical image of Dad from Ozzie Nelson to Ozzy Osbourne. As NFI's Roland Warren puts it, "Too many TV shows today tag fathers with the '3-D' image -- dumb, dangerous and disaffected. Such images must be reversed to demonstrate to viewers that fathers are there for their children and/or need to be.""

Allow me to express my personal opinion here:  PC rule: Female characters must always dominate males and make them look like fools; they must be smarter and more confident. Males must always be helpless, confused and clueless. After every encounter with a female -in which she, of course dominates-there must be an "I showed you" expression on her face. When male and female children compete in anything, she must be the winner. If not, then there is sexism.
If this inequity is addressed by women's right activists, they are crusaders; when men make these claims, they are whiners.
The Tunnel Dweller.

Did Obama administration stretch health care stat?

AP  "The higher number includes people with common health conditions such as asthma and obesity listed by insurers in their own coverage guidelines as warranting higher premiums, exclusion of coverage for a particular illness or denial, HHS said."