A President Who Has Learned Nothing

Jonathan S. Tobin "The address was a clarion call for the country to get behind the liberal agenda he supports. Fair enough. But, like much of what has come from the White House since November, it illustrated that this president was not interested in compromise or listening to any views but his own. If this speech is to be treated as sign of what will come, the next four years will be filled with more bitter partisan argument and ideological intransigence from the president. Even as many Americans were reveling in the feelings of unity that this ceremony engenders in all patriots, President Obama was throwing down a gauntlet to his foes and saying that he will redouble his efforts to demonize Republicans".  Via Lucianne,

A flat, partisan and pedestrian speech   "The only voice that really soared at midday was Beyonce’s, while singing the national anthem. President Barack Obama’s second inaugural address, by contrast, was flat, partisan and surprisingly pedestrian—more a laundry list of preferred political programs than a vision for a divided America and disoriented world. Congressional Republicans are acting as if the 2012 campaign is continuing, so perhaps it isn’t surprising that the president followed suit. He gave a progressive speech that Democrats will like"....

 

Against Swedenization

NRO  "Since the end of the Cold War, conservatives have warned against the “Swedenization” of America. These warnings are, most directly, about a policy regime wherein government spending accounts for more than half of gross domestic product and government regulation is the biggest factor affecting the generation of the rest.   

"Data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development show that, in 2010, all government spending in Sweden equaled 53 percent of GDP. The same figure was 55 percent in Finland, 56 percent in France, and 58 percent in Denmark.... In 2000, government spending in the U.S. accounted for 34 percent of GDP.
""Well, what are a few percentage points of GDP among friends? By this rudimentary measure of government outlays as a proportion of national income, America already differs from Scandinavia in degree rather than in kind. If conservatives want to avert the Swedenization of America, they need to explain, more comprehensively than they have done so far, the deplorability of that outcome, since Western European social democracy appears benign where Eastern European Communism was manifestly grotesque.

Obama's Perfect Second Inauguration

American Thinker "Maybe the general public is really as excited about today's festivities as the cable news coverage would suggest, but somehow I doubt it. Idle pageantry, combined with the visible diminishing of enthusiasm from 2009's levels in terms of crowd size, are omens. It is inevitable that more and more people will figure out in his second term that he is not the person he has been portrayed as in the dominant media. It remains taboo to examine the problems with the documentation of his public biography, but providence has brought a kickoff to his second term that is the perfect symbol of the man."

 

A Gun Ban That Misfired; "What I saw as a prosecutor in Washington, D.C., makes me wary of strict firearms laws.

Wall Street Journal
The D.C. gun ban, enacted in 1976, prohibited anyone other than law-enforcement officers from carrying a firearm in the city. Residents were even barred from keeping guns in their homes for self-defense.n Washington who owned firearms before the ban were allowed to keep them as long as the weapons were disassembled or trigger-locked at all times. According to the law, trigger locks could not be removed for self-defense even if the owner was being robbed at gunpoint. The only way anyone could legally possess a firearm in the District without a trigger lock was to obtain written permission from the D.C. police. The granting of such permission was rare.
....
The gun ban had an unintended effect: It emboldened criminals because they knew that law-abiding District residents were unarmed and powerless to defend themselves. Violent crime increased after the law was enacted, with homicides rising to 369 in 1988, from 188 in 1976 when the ban started. By 1993, annual homicides had reached 454.

What are you doing tomorrow?

Legal Insurrection "I can’t imagine why GWB would want to miss Obama’s 2nd Inauguration. Really, it’s hard to understand."

McCain’s Mideast Blunders

Andrew McCarthy at NRO  "No, no: The problem was that we sided with Qaddafi, giving the dictator — at the insistence of, well, McCain and the State Department — foreign aid, military assistance, and international legitimacy. If we just threw Qaddafi under the bus, the rebels would surely become our grand democratic allies.
"This, of course, was a much more sophisticated theory than you’d get from lunatics like Michele Bachmann. Sit down for this, because I know it’s hard to believe anyone could spout such nutter stuff, but Bachmann actually opposed U.S. intervention in Libya. She claimed — stop cackling! — that many of McCain’s heroes might actually be jihadists ideologically hostile to the U.S. and linked to groups such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the terror enterprise’s North African franchise. She even thought — yeah, I know, crazy — that if Qaddafi were deposed, the heroes would get their hands on his arsenal, ship a lot of it to AQIM havens in places such as Mali and Algeria, and maybe even turn rebel strongholds such as Benghazi into death traps for Americans.
Good thing we listened to McCain, no?
 

Alan Caruba; Comparing Two Inaugural Speeches, Reagan's and Obama's

Warning Signs

"The challenges in 1981 were not that unlike those in 2009. History records that Reagan met those challenges, lifted our spirits, and did his best to reduce the size of government. It also records that Obama has exacerbated our problems and done his best to increase the size of government and its intrusion into our lives.

"Obama’s legacy thus far has been a polarized society based on class warfare; a society in which millions more Americans are purchasing guns in anticipation of an attack on the Second Amendment, and a government that menaces the Constitution. His second inaugural speech will be as filled with false promises and failed policies as his first."

Victor Davis Hanson; Second-Term Reckonings
...."In short, this is the time when a careful Obama should be calling for bipartisan implementation of the recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles commission, redoing a Gingrich-Clinton compromise, seeking non-polarizing appointments of the Panetta/Gates sort, and cooling his presidential partisan rhetoric.
"Unfortunately, he had done the opposite, and so a reckoning is on the near horizon. Let us pray it does not take us all down with his administration."

http://www.usnews.com/cartoons/barack-obama-cartoons

CBS advises Obama to go for the Republican's throats

Newsbusters  "The president who came into office speaking in lofty terms about bipartisanship and cooperation can only cement his legacy if he destroys the GOP. If he wants to transform American politics, he must go for the throat."
So astonishingly wrote CBS News political director John Dickerson at Slate Friday evening in a piece astonishingly titled "Go for the Throat! Why if he wants to transform American politics, Obama must declare war on the Republican Party."
....
"Obama’s only remaining option is to pulverize," Dickerson wrote. "Whether he succeeds in passing legislation or not, given his ambitions, his goal should be to delegitimize his opponents.
....Did I mention this man was the political director for CBS News?  Read more:
Is CBS your main source of news? With everything including the mainstream media stacked against Republicans, the 2012 popular vote was still close. But what difference will it make if the party does get a candidate that can make the case for conservative principles but the MSM will not carry the message?
 

Has all common sense disappeared from those who govern our lives?

'Zero Tolerance'  "Kindergarteners in Pennsylvania are being dragged into the nightmare of the liberal progressive paradigm, to control a lawless society they helped create. A five-year-old girl was suspended for 10 days and her sentence reduced to two for threatening another girl at the bus stop. Get this, with a Hello Kitty toy gun that blows soapy bubbles, her crime: issuing a "terroristic threat." "

25 Examples Of What America Would Be Like If Everyone Was A Liberal One sample:
17) Activists would be able to sue on behalf of individual plants and animals in court.

http://blogs.courant.com/bob_englehart/2010/03/march-12-2010.html

Obama´s Greatest Legacy Might Be Destroying the Media...."NBC News accidentally did some actual reporting. In a First Read article that opened with the question, "Is the nation better off than it was four years ago," senior political director, Mark Murray, did something that neither he, nor NBC News, nor the mainstream media was willing to do during this last presidential campaign: report on Obama's record.

"But there it finally was: The Truth -- and from NBC News, no less."....

J.R. Dunn asks How Stupid is Obama?  "What kind of mentality deliberately arranges a brawl over government finances in the midst of a sensitive and fragile recovery?  Obama was obviously out to steal an issue from the GOP and wreck their 2012 campaign plans.  But at what cost?  Wrecking the national economy?  This isn't thinking of any description -- it's the mentality of a street punk who spots somebody in another gang and decides to take him down at no matter what happens to passersby or himself."

“The Usual Sex, Diversity, and Nutty Profs” Week at College Insurrection (Plus Guns!)  Just a small sampling from this article:

A List of American College Courses for Radical Leftists

Report confirms American History courses now contain more diversity than facts

Academic-victimology complex infects college prep curriculum

Justice Sotomayor Unaware of Affirmative Action’s Impact on Her Career?

Wisconsin ‘American Diversity’ Course Teaches ‘White Guilt’

Conde Nast

 WSJ; A Gun Ban That Misfired   "Some in Washington who owned firearms before the ban were allowed to keep them as long as the weapons were disassembled or trigger-locked at all times. According to the law, trigger locks could not be removed for self-defense even if the owner was being robbed at gunpoint. The only way anyone could legally possess a firearm in the District without a trigger lock was to obtain written permission from the D.C. police. The granting of such permission was rare."   But wait! There's more!

The gun ban had an unintended effect: It emboldened criminals because they knew that law-abiding District residents were unarmed and powerless to defend themselves. Violent crime increased after the law was enacted, with homicides rising to 369 in 1988, from 188 in 1976 when the ban started. By 1993, annual homicides had reached 454.

Obama's human shields

http://www.wnd.com/2013/01/obamas-new-hiding-place/

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2925860/posts

 

Krauthammer: A new strategy for the GOP

Charles Krauthammer  "Can you shrink government, restrain spending, bring a modicum of fiscal sanity to the country when the president and a blocking Senate have no intention of doing so?
'"One faction feels committed to try. It wishes to carry out its small-government electoral promises and will cast no vote inconsistent with that philosophy. These are the House Republicans who voted no on the “fiscal cliff” deal because it raised taxes without touching spending. Indeed, it increased spending with its crazy-quilt crony-capitalist tax ”credits” — for wind power and other indulgences.'"
Dr. Krauthammer points out the obvious:

 Obama’s postelection arrogance and intransigence can put you in a fighting mood. I sympathize. But I’m tending toward the realist view: Don’t force the issue when you don’t have the power.

Here is his tactic, which looks like a solid one and one which a Republican has since proposed:

"The more prudent course would be to find some offer that cannot be refused, a short-term trade-off utterly unassailable and straightforward. For example, offer to extend the debt ceiling through, say, May 1, in exchange for the Senate delivering a budget by that date — after four years of lawlessly refusing to produce one.
"Not much. But it would (a) highlight the Democrats’ fiscal recklessness, (b) force Senate Democrats to make public their fiscal choices and (c) keep the debt ceiling alive as an ongoing pressure point for future incremental demands."
 

Science must drive government policy, but under Democrat Obama, policy drives science

From Towhall  Hat tip to Americans for Prosperity; "Something’s amiss at the Department of Interior. Eight government scientists were recently fired or reassigned after voicing concerns to their superiors about faulty environmental science used for policy decisions. Which [prompts] the question, “Are some government agencies manipulating science to advance political agendas?” "....

...."The government’s use of fictional science in the Klamath dam removal project should concern every American. Our public servants at DOI are brazenly advancing their own agendas at the expense of the truth and regardless of adverse impacts on the environment, humans, and on rural communities. Environment and human interests are not incompatible. We have to find solutions that work to the benefit of both. That requires agendas be put aside and allow complete science to determine policy.
"DOI Secretary Ken Salazar is stepping down in March. His replacement needs to be someone who can be trusted to end the culture of fictional science as a means to advance environmental agendas." Emphasis added.

David Spady is President of Media and Public Affairs Strategy based in Camarillo, California. He serves as Director of Government Affairs for Salem Communication Corp., and as State Director of Americans for Prosperity in California, a national grassroots organization focused on economic issues, free-markets, and limited government. ....

This article Facts and fiction on the Klamath River Settlement Process and dam removal appears at first glance to be unbiased, but is written by a member of the Hoopa Valley Tribal Council, which wants the dams removed.

I find this interesting: Talking Points on Klamath Dam Removal.
Have you ever wondered how advocates for positions get their information when they write letters to the editor or speak in public? Have you noticed when they are challenged, they are accused of speaking in "talking points"? Here is just what they are talking about and principled, informed journalists know to follow up each statement made from these to test the knowledge of the speaker. Media advocates of the speaker's cause will let these points go unchallenged, unlike true journalists with integrity such as Chris Wallace, Jake Tapper and the late Tim Russert.
This article begins with: "Talking Points on Klamath Dam Removal
Use the talking points below then click here to send a letter to the editor to newspapers."

The above explains how young skulls get filled with mush

 

More on the debate:It’s unlikely Congress will fund and implement Klamath River water and dam removal agreements this year. But what if it never does? What happens then?

"The company chose the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement because it put a $200 million cost cap on dam removal and removed the company’s liability if there are issues when the dams are removed, said Tom Gravely, PacifiCorp spokesman.
"But to renew the licenses without dam removal, the company would likely have to install fish ladders, which would cost more than the $200 million cost cap put on dam removal."

The dams provide electric power that is "green" energy and way more efficient than wind and solar; Disagreeing on dam removal: Klamath River Basin split on removal issue "Siskiyou County Supervisor Jim Cook said he and his four fellow supervisors oppose dam removal.
" "My personal stance as an individual is that I don't want to see that kind of green energy go away - not when fish ladders work," he said".