When liberals elect a US world leader, what can possibly go wrong? Well, a whole reading list for starters.

Obama's Impotent Middle East Policy  "A self-interview by Barry Rubin and Barry Rubin"
" First, I want to apologize that I have often used intemperate language to describe U.S. policy and the people making it in the last 4.5 years. Perhaps I have put off some of you who would otherwise have been persuaded that something is very wrong. Therefore, I have tried to do another version of this approach. Remember, I'm not responsible for the way the questions are phrased here."  Hat tip to Jeffrey Dunetz

France Shows Its Lack of Class At U.S. Embassy 4th of July Party   "Real Classy! If Mr. Valls wanted to make a statement about the American spying program he should have stayed and told his hosts he didn't feel he could show up based on the revelation, that would have been the honorable thing to do."
Now go away or I will taunt you a second time! 

Who Lost the Middle East?  Both of these developments were reported last evening: Al Arabiya published the article “Saudi king congratulates Egypt’s new interim president”; Time magazine reported that ”Obama expresses ‘concern’ over Morsi ouster, orders review in military aid to Egypt.”

Obama Chides Egypt to Quickly Elect Government, Respect Muslim Brotherhood  "The resulting statement tried to be equally critical of each side, reflecting the administration’s continuing refusal to take a stand while the Egyptian protesters decried the U.S. president for propping up the Muslim Brotherhood regime."

 A small, irrelevant America   "From the perspective of Obama, however, our reduction to smallness and irrelevance represents a great success."

Caroline Glick; Israelis watched in shock and horror as their American friends followed the Pied Piper of the phony Arab Spring over the policy cliff

Where’s America?  ...." America might act to shape the course of events; it could, at this moment where the outcome is up for grabs, perhaps have a decisive effect."
 
Egypt: Little U.S. influence, few good choices    "Unfortunately, it is hard to have much confidence in the Obama team to figure it all out. Obama went way too far in bolstering Morsi and not making aid contingent on improved political and economic conditions. So now we see an emboldened Morsi, an aggrieved populace, an economy near collapse and secular opposition leaders who mistrust the U.S. government. We are, as has been the case for so much of the Obama administration, a bystander."

Neat NSA cartoon

I just can't get too worked up about the government keeping track of postal addresses and phone calls that they are not listening to. For years-and you have seen this referred to in police dramas- checking telephone "LUDS" helps in police work ( though it has become less controlled than it once was).
This is the reason you see few cartoons and articles on the subject in the Tunnel Wall. However a relative posted this on his Facebook page and I thought it too funny not to use:

Having said all that, phone tracking can be a dangerous weapon in the hands of those who advocate a strong central government and who have no qualms about using it to stay in power.
Obama and Democrats have demonstrated that they are sophisticated in the use of electronic means to win elections; we have certainly seen how powerful government agencies such as the IRS will be used against Obama's political enemies and that his supporters are his willing, compliant enablers..
Hat tip to Don Standlee Jr., Arlington, TX 

Satire that is too close to the real truth: Obama to College Students: Do Not Celebrate Fourth of July

The Liberty Paper  Satire, yes, but close to what he told Joe the Plumber.

America is a great country. There is no denying this. However, I caution you all as you step forward in your careers. Peer back into history and ask yourselves- Was a revolution truly necessary? Great Britain may not have had it completely right, but they had many things right. Take taxes for example. If your neighbor makes $1 Million a year, but you and your family can barely keep the heat on should he not help your family? God instructs us to help our neighbors. He does not instruct us to look down upon them though the windows of capitalism. Why then on the Fourth of July should you celebrate such a radical break from what is Godly and just? No doubt there are many voices warning you of the harm of big government. They are wrong. Government can provide you with what family and friends cannot. If this is gone what will you have?” 

 Hat tip to Rich Cutter Avallone 

Krauthammer: Obama’s Global-Warming Folly; No, Mr. President, we don’t need a war on coal.

 

Charles Krauthammer   "The economy stagnates. Syria burns. Scandals lap at his feet. China and Russia mock him, even as a “29-year-old hacker” revealed his nation’s spy secrets to the world. How does President Obama respond? With a grandiloquent speech on climate change.

 

"Climate change? It lies at the very bottom of a list of Americans’ concerns (last of 21 — Pew poll). Which means that Obama’s declaration of unilateral American war on global warming, whatever the cost — and it will be heavy — is either highly visionary or hopelessly solipsistic. You decide:"

....there is no point in America’s committing economic suicide to no effect on climate change, the reversing of which, after all, is the alleged point of the exercise.

Unemployment Stays at 7.6% Under-Employment JUMPS By Half/Percentage Point   "There is a long way to an economic recovery and look for the unemployment rate to rise in September when some of these summer jobs go away."

How's this for an apology? Wall Street Journal apologizes for being too easy on ObamaCare!

Obama decides not to enforce the heart of his health-care law.
"This is more than a typical government snafu. It relates directly to the design of the law, which was thoughtlessly written and rammed through Congress with instructions for the bureaucracy to figure it all out."
....

 "The Administration's media cheerleaders are nonetheless portraying this as a stroke of political genius to push all the pain past the 2014 elections. But if that's the goal, it is too clever by half. If Republicans have any sense, they will move immediately to delay the rest of the bill for at least a year too. They should start with the individual mandate to buy insurance or pay a tax."
....

"ObamaCare has become a rolling "train wreck," in Senator Max Baucus's memorable phrase, and it gets worse the more of it the public sees. The employer mandate is terrible policy, as the law's critics said before it passed. Now the Administration is all but admitting it can't implement it properly, and the task for opponents is to press the concession and begin to delay the rest of the law and dismantle it piece by piece."
Too good not to use again:

Could these two stories be related?

Story 1: Gallup: Republicans more proud to be American than Democrats

...."Ninety-three percent of Republicans indicate that they are “extremely/very proud” to be American while only 85 percent of Democrats feel the same way.
Eighty-one percent of political Independents indicate they are “extremely/very proud.”
"Likewise, 89 percent of poll respondents who identified themselves as conservative are “extremely/very proud,” to be American compared to 76 percent of liberals."

Story 2:  American Flags Ripped Down Day Before Turlock Fourth Of July Parade

"A stunning act of vandalism right before the Fourth of July had Turlock residents and workers scrambling to fix American flags.

"It’s almost inconceivable and it is certainly extremely disrespectful.

Vandals damaged about a dozen flags put up in downtown for Turlock’s big parade, jumping to pull the stars and stripes down with their weight, severely bending the poles."

 

Tocqueville's Warning to America: The Dangers of Despotism

First off, who was Alexis de Tocqueville, and how do this Frenchman's words relate to America, of which he was writing?
"His most famous work, Democracy in America (1835), continues to be regarded as the premier commentary on American government and society written by a foreigner."

Tocqueville's insights into what made the United States successful have proved informative to the general public and to scholars alike. His observations represented the excitement of sociological discovery, made by, and for (for he wrote for his French compatriots) the eyes of those for whom this style of democracy was entirely novel. ....

Big Government

"As Americans gather to celebrate the anniversary of our nation's freedom, we contemplate, on the one hand, the revolution in Egypt, where people crying out for freedom could only appeal to the military, having lost any power of self-government; and, on the other, the slow imposition of Obamacare in the United States, delayed only so that it might never be defeated, creeping gradually into every aspect of life, administered by agencies already shown to be hostile to freedom. We have much for which to be grateful--and much about which to be warned."
Quoting Tocqueville's conclusion:

A constitution which should be republican in its head, and ultra-monarchical in all its other parts, has ever appeared to me to be a short-lived monster. The vices of rulers and the inaptitude of the people would speedily bring about its ruin; and the nation, weary of its representatives and of itself, would create freer institutions, or soon return to stretch itself at the feet of a single master.

 

ralphandchuck.

Hat tip to Christy Waters at Conservative Bloggers on Facebook

Americans Who Don't Know WHY We Celebrate the 4th of July or WHAT COUNTRY We Declared Independence From!

"Mark Dice talks with California beach goers about the 4th of July and finds that many Americans simply don't know WHY we celebrate the 4th of July or what country we declared independence."

Hat tip to Clinton Brownell

Should you wonder what Westboro Baptist church plans to do next, here's your source

Westboro Baptist Church Picket Schedule

Photos from godhatesfags.com

Where Do People Hate Westboro Baptist Church the Most?

"Where people signed petitions to name the church a hate group."

"A new GIF from the White House shows the Westboro Baptist Church is most resented in its home state of Kansas and in Newtown, Conn., where it threatened to picket the funerals of children killed in the December massacre. The map, which comes from a White House response to several petitions to classify the group as a hate group, shades ZIP codes by the number of people who signed those petitions."....

 

While I find this info of interest and this church to be reprehensible, does it bother you just a teensy bit that the map comes from the White House?

Coulter: "I Got 30 Million Reasons"

Ann Coulter  "We keep hearing insistent claims that if Republicans don't pass amnesty yesterday it will be the end of the party.

"Can I see the math on that? I can see why bringing in 30 million new Democratic voters would be good for the Democrats, but how does it help Republicans? Maybe conservatives shouldn't blindly trust the calculations of the guy who graduated fifth from the bottom of his class at the U.S. Naval Academy.

"If I were a Democrat, I would have tried to sneak this bill past Republicans by proposing amnesty only after reaching some easily rigged benchmarks. But, apparently, Chuck Schumer knows elected Republicans better than I do."

Here comes the math Ann Coulter uses:
...."Step One: Everyone's amnestied. Step Two: After they're amnestied, they can bring in all their relatives."....

 

http://hopenchangecartoons.blogspot.com/

Bill Whittle on "Dependence Day"

PJTV  "Bill Whittle thinks that the Freedom of Speech is in peril, and so is the Freedom of Religion. Hear why on this Afterburner as Whittle reminds you of the importance of our most important civil liberties, and how each is threatened by the expanding welfare state."

A comment to this video:

The sad truth is Bill, that while I loved my father (who passed away last year), he and many in his generation that fought for freedom in WWII are the authors of the problem we face today.

After the war, he finished school, eventually obtaining a Masters in physics, and after achieving Lt. in the reserves post-war, went on to a long civil service career working as a civilian arms researcher. Sounds ok to that point.

However, my father was a Democrat. He has never till his dying day, seen or had a problem with the shenanigans perpetrated by the liberals in the country up to and including Hussein. Paradoxically, he was very religious having tight moral standards (didn't drink, smoke etc).

Now being raised in that house, I wound up supporting Democrats from 18 to roughly 30 when I'd been gone long enough to get dose of real world and see what was afoot, it was 2nd Amendment issues that really first caused me to examine my political leanings instead of accept the crap I was spoon fed.

My father listened sympathetically to the hysterical insane rants of Cindy Sheehan against Bush, ignored that his own party supported going into Iraq, that the WMDs were found in some quantity and convoys were seen going into Syria while we came into Iraq. Of course he's gone to see the end result with Assad using those same WMDs on his people now. But my father couldn't bat an eyelash with the government takeovers of industry, finance and medical services much like the Nazis he fought 60 some years ago.

The Greatest Generation sacrificed and fought a lot, but they failed afterward to preserve what they fought for. They got soft, and allowed the enemy to creep in and subvert them with promises of ass-wiping for life when they got old. As young men they fought tyranny; as old men they voted it into power. 

Pickett's charge at Gettysburg in the American Civil War

Crossing the Emmitsburg Road 

The 1922 anniversary re-enactment

A better view from the Ziegler’s Grove/Cemetery Ridge Observation Tower of the Pickett’s Charge Fields. The Codori Farm is in the right background along the Emmitsburg Road. Webb Avenue (no longer existing) circles towards the “Angle” of the stone wall. Hancock Avenue is in the foreground. This view was taken facing southwest in 1903.

Fight for the colors

Union Counterattacks Part 7    "In today’s Union Counterattacks’ post, Licensed Battlefield Guide Rich Goedkoop shows us the area where the 106th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment charged from Cemetery Ridge to the area of the Codori Farm on July 2, 1863."

Panorama of The Angle

 First Minnesota - July 2, 1863
"Overlooking the battlefield at Gettysburg the First Minnesota Volunteer Infantry could see their lines crumbling under Confederate attack. At that moment, Union Second Corps Commander Winfield Scott Hancock galloped up, and in desperation ordered the Minnesotans forward."

The Gettysburg cyclorama and other art.