Michael Barone: Prudence Is Key to Reversing Obama's 'Soft Despotism'

Michael Barone  "We have a House of Representatives 100 percent of whose members were elected in a historic Republican year, a president elected in a historic Democratic year, and a Senate two-thirds of whose members were elected in historic Democratic years and one-third in a historic Republican year.
"It should not be surprising that they cannot agree on policy. Most of the high-minded folk who decry "gridlock" would like the Republican House to say uncle. The Republicans bemoaning their leaders' lack of boldness imagine that if they force confrontation they can somehow prevail."

...."That is what House Republicans are fighting to reverse. With their presidential candidates at odds, with mainstream media disparaging them at every turn, they need to exercise prudence and not give in to passion that could defeat their purpose."

Rush Limbaugh: Tocqueville Foresaw the Obama Years  Quoting Tocqueville: 

"Thus, taking each individual by turns in its powerful hands and kneading him as it likes, the sovereign extends its arms over society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of small, complicated, painstaking, uniform rules through which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot clear a way to surpass the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting."

Obama, protector of the free world vs. Iran (That "little country" Obama referred to)

Victor Davis Hanson: Nuclear Realities  "In other words, if the Obama administration were to take us down to a few hundred bombs, it might send a signal to our allies that we could not possibly deter all their enemies simultaneously — and that they would be wiser to fend for themselves by obtaining their own nuclear arsenals. For each dozen bombs we retired, our allies might feel it necessary to make up the difference on their own."

...."The danger is not the bomb per se, but rather who has it. Most of us do not worry about a democratic Britain, France, India, or Israel possessing nuclear weapons. The fright instead is over a Communist authoritarian China, an unhinged North Korea, an Islamist Pakistan, or an unstable Russia having nuclear weapons. "

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/2012/02/20/96584

DEBKAfile: Tehran steps into US-Israel Iran row with threat of pre-emptive strike  "Iran’s Armed Forces Gen. Mohammad Hejazi issued a new threat Tuesday, Feb. 21: “Our strategy now is that if we feel our enemies want to endanger Iran’s national interests… we will act without waiting for their actions.” "

Weekly Standard: The Obama Way of War  "...an anonymous administration official described Obama’s strategy as “spoiling” any second-war act of aggression while fighting the first. And the defense guidance goes on at length about “reversibility” as a “key part of our decision calculus” when defense cuts have to be made. In other words, the Obama Pentagon knows this is a very bad idea to begin with.  Hat tip to Keep America Safe

On Rick Santorum

Neal Boortz : Democrats rip Santorum "If you want just a small taste of what it would be like to run Rick Santorum as your GOP nominee, look no further than a DNC email released over the weekend.  One part read …

donkeyhotey

"Rather than focusing on jobs, the economy, or any of the issues that matter most to Americans, he discussed man's 'dominion over' the earth, repeated his patently false claim that prenatal health care is a plot to force more abortions, and questioned the need for public education.”

"I received a lot of flak for my comments yesterday about Rick Santorum, yet not one person could explain to me how Rick Santorum would appeal to moderate or independent voters...."  

....There is only ONE  question you should be considering as you select from these four .. and that is which one of these candidates has the best chance of beating Obama.  That’s the focus of your decision … nothing else.   (Emphasis added)

Mr. Boortz writes this on his issue with Rick Santorum: 

Can you try to put yourself into the shoes of an independent voter for a second here?  You know obama(sp) is a failure, but you’re not sure the Republicans could be doing all that much better right now.  You’re willing, though, to take a good look at the GOP candidate to see if that is someone you might be able to support.

WSJ:  Sex, Lies and Rick Santorum; The politics of the double standard on social issues.   "There is, however, one area where Mr. Santorum needs to demonstrate a discipline it's not yet clear he has. That is the ability to resist the efforts to drag him out of the public questions into the weeds of theological debate."
...."Mr. Santorum cannot change the double standard. With a little discipline, however, he need not let himself be defined by it". (As happens in  the Neal Boortz article posted above.)

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/2012/02/16/96337

Procon.org has this on Mr. Santorum's political statements  This site lists what they consider to be "Positions are categorized as Pro, Con, Not Clearly Pro or Con, or None Found."


Rich Lowry: The Effrontery of Rick Santorum "The media has unleashed the hounds on Rick Santorum."

We have liked Sen. Santorum very much, but our research on who can get Obama out of the White House goes on. Nothing is more important than keeping Obama from another four years at the helm of this nation and we have yet to find a candidate who can tell America how he is to be preferred to Obama. It will be hard; the Republican will have to run against a celebrity who is on magazine covers and daytime talk shows and who promises to give us anything we want for free.

I'm beginning to lose confidence in the American electorate's wisdom, and this next video doesn't help much. TD

What We Get For Our Education Dollars

But these "skulls full of mush" will happily vote for any whomever is endorsed by their favorite celebrity.

The New Commandments on the Barn Wall

Victor Davis Hanson   ..."8) Neanderthals need nerds. The cool gang banger who is knifed on Saturday night suddenly in extremis worships the surgeon who stiches up his liver and kidneys — a target whom he would otherwise have robbed earlier that Saturday afternoon. The thug who strips the copper wire from our streetlights nonetheless assumes a nerdish engineer will keep designing the wiring scheme that runs his car’s CD. For the good life to go on, each illiterate punk demands one corresponding graduate student at MIT to take care of him. When the former outnumber the latter, then civilization usually winds down."
....
"I keep these commandments in mind daily. That way what would have seemed absurd in my youth is now as natural as the sun rising."

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/2012/02/16/96531

The wedges Obama is driving into America

The Catholic Betrayal of Religious Freedom; Liberal Catholics abandon their crown jewel.
"Thus “liberal Catholics” who refuse to grasp the threats to religious freedom posed by the Obama administration on so many fronts — the HHS mandate, the EEOC’s recently rejected attempt to strip the “ministerial exemption” from employment law, the State Department’s dumbing-down of religious freedom to a mere “freedom of worship” — are betraying the best of their own heritage." Also: Religious liberty versus ‘women’s health.’


Victor Davis Hanson: Are You ‘Them!’? "My God, man, how did Barack Obama & Co. conjure up so many demons?....
"This is proving to be a Manichean administration. It sees the world in terms dark and light, of us/them, and then must create the necessary binaries to divide and demonize — so strange given this was the narrative of the Obama campaign against Bush, not so strange given the Chicago origins."


Obama, the Great Divider:  "President Obama’s appearance, and the mixed reaction he received, illustrates a broader ideological divide not only in the Orange County community but perhaps nationally. As one protester said “He was billed as the great ‘uniter’ but he has become the great divider.” 

http://www.ocregister.com/articles/great-340813-nukes-homeowners.html?pic=1

Obama 2008 v. Obama 2012: An Amateur v. a Failure

Big Government "Gas prices are up over 80% on Obama’s watch, yet his approach to gasoline remains unchanged. Which means we continue to buy our gasoline from many of the same countries that can’t wait to see a nuclear weapon detonated in an American city. "
...."we’ve been shamed on the battlefield, where Obama pulled our soldiers out as a result of his election year promises to the 21st century counter culture."
...."The bottom line: Obama has been a disaster and he is beatable. Anything his campaign publishes to the contrary is just a facade."

Multi-Millionaire One-Percenter Bruce Springsteen Says Occupy Wall Street Inspiration For New Album…

Weasel Zippers

"Bruce Springsteen said this week that his new albumWrecking Ball was inspired by an “angry patriotism” that drew fuel from the Occupy movement.

Speaking to a group of journalists at the Theatre Marigny in Paris, Springsteen described how the financial crisis, income inequality, and other hot-button political issues informed Wrecking Ball, which paints a picture of an America that has failed the working class."

BS gets big tax breaks  "Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen have been making hit music for years and its no surprise that they've earned enough money to buy big mansions with acres of property, but what might surprise you is the huge tax breaks they, and others, are getting."

Farm Tax Breaks for N.J. Celebrities

Now we go from Springsteen's money to his music:  (And his good buddy, Pete Seeger)  "The politicization of American pop dates from the 1960s, but it grew out of a patient leftist political strategy that began in the mid-1930s with the Communist Party’s “Popular Front” effort to use popular culture to advance its cause."

...."Happily, some have embraced the Popular Front’s legacy in ways that Seeger probably didn’t anticipate and wouldn’t likely approve. In March, a crowd in Taipei, several hundred thousand–strong, sang “We Shall Overcome” and “Blowin’ in the Wind” as part of a protest against forcible annexation by mainland China—and the prospect of Communist Party rule."

Stupid Democrat Tricks

What happens when you invest people who have poor judgment with absolute authority? All this:


Daily Mail: Permission slips for school cookies  "Now Democratic Delegate Ralph Rodighiero of Logan County wants to regulate Christmas cookies at school — along with Halloween candy and peeps at Easter."  Via Boortz


POLITICO: Dems on Keystone pipeline: Only in America  ""This is a political ploy that they're making, it's a red herring, it's a red meat issue," Energy and Power Subcommittee Chairman Ed Whitfield told POLITICO, pointing to an Energy Department analysis noting that very little, if any, of the oil would be exported." Via Boortz

 TheGatewayPundit:  #Occupy Goons Booted From CPAC After Interrupting Sarah Palin With Their Declaration of the Occupy Movement
"#Occupy goons interrupted Sarah Palin’s speech at CPAC yesterday to read their socialist declaration of the #Occupy movement. They were very impressed with themselves as they were booted from the hotel. The left must be very proud of their young brown shirts."

Feds shut down Amish farm for selling fresh milk  " "In Maryland, they force taxpayers to pay for abortions, but God forbid we want the same milk our grandparents drank." "
Terrorism of this sort will not be condoned.


Legal Insurrection:   More “fatuous, preening, liberal self-righteousness”
"And of course, a Prius is the epitome of simple living, with its high price tag and increased insurance costs."

When today's liberals run the armed forces, this is what you get.

Soldiers don fake belly, breasts to better understand pregnant troops' exercise concerns  "The Army is ordering its hardened combat veterans to wear fake breasts and empathy bellies so they can better understand how pregnant soldiers feel during physical training.

"This week, 14 noncommissioned(sp) officers at Camp Zama took turns wearing the “pregnancy simulators” as they stretched, twisted and exercised during a three-day class that teaches them to serve as fitness instructors for pregnant soldiers and new mothers."  Hat tip to This Ain't Hell.

Note that this began in 2008.  No matter who is in office, liberal changes will never be rolled back, only maintained till the next group of leftists push everything even further to the left.

Jeremy Lin: The Wrong Kind of Guy

Richard Fernandez: "Some months ago, in the wake of all the media hype about so-called Asian values and Tiger-mother upbringing, one old gentleman remarked to me: “Why should the media think that sort of thing is Chinese? A few generations ago, those values were accepted as the way things ought to be. It is only recently that believing in these things has become suspect.”

Maybe the real reason for the media’s discomfort is that Lin’s story uncomfortably suggests that these things still matter. The deep secret is that those attributes are still pluses, not minuses that afflict only the uncool and bigoted few."

This should get Lin on the press and celebrity blacklist


ESPN apologizes for "offensive" headline on Jeremy Lin
"The headline -- "Chink in the Armor" -- accompanied an online analysis that blamed Lin, a Chinese-American, for the Knick's surprising 89-85 loss to the New Orleans Hornets at a sold-out Madison Square Garden on Friday night."
Oh boy.

Just what you want to hear: Planned Parenthood works around the clock to hook your kids on sex

Hot Air  " The video included clips and images from PP educational materials — cartoons and the like — and the gist of the clips was that teens should learn to pleasure themselves and each other as soon as possible."
"At the time, I was so disgusted that I couldn’t bring myself to post it. Now, I wish I had. Because of a copyright claim, YouTube pulled the video. No worries, though: You can read more about its contents here. As the smallest of samplings, here’s a screenshot:"
"The cartoon in the corner speaks for itself."

"But what angers me most about Planned Parenthood’s perpetual attempts to perpetuate knowledge about every last perversion that plagues the human race is that it robs marriage and sex of mystery and romance. If everybody’s business is everybody’s business, then nothing is private. How ironic that the “right to privacy” has made public in a huge way what was once between just two people.

More here: American Life League unveils tool to stop Planned Parenthood's pornographic assault on children

Obama's Syria Policy: Shameful, Humiliating, Embarrassing

Michael Ledeen: Freedom and Tyranny "This president, who so vigorously asserts and imposes state power against Americans, is much more comfortable supporting dissident movements against American friends than against American enemies."
...."And then there’s central issue, which we all know:  Khamenei kills Americans all the time, as has his regime for 33 years, but when the Iranian people rise up against him, the American president assures Khamenei that we still want to make a deal with him.

"Remember that this president is presenting himself as a tough guy, because he killed bin Laden, smashed al-Qaeda, and toppled Qadaffi.  Actually the defeat of AQ in Iraq was Bush’s fault, but no matter.  The important point is that this president isn’t interested in bringing American power to bear on the state sponsors of the terrorists who kill our guys.  Obama kills terrorists, the tail of the snake.  He doesn’t go for the head, or rather the heads, which feed in Damascus and Tehran."

http://townhall.com/political-cartoons/2012/02/17/96482

...."This president doesn’t talk about that.  He is obsessed with nukes, as if Iran would only be a real threat to us if the mullahs had atomic warheads.  Let him come with us to Bethesda Naval Hospital some day, and we’ll introduce him to some wounded warriors who can tell him how evil, how menacing, and how lethal the Islamic Republic is right here and now.  Even though it’s nukeless."

10 Questions and Answers: What the U.S. Should Do About Syria  "As the violent government crackdown continues in Syria, the United States is faced with a series of questions about what role it should play in the international response. Here are ten questions and answers about the road forward:..."

Occupiers for Obama