Thursday, October 7, 2010

Was Obama’s Oil Spill Response ‘Not Fully Competent’ or ‘Not Fully Candid’?

Heritage  "Instead of rolling up his sleeves and fighting the disaster head on, President Obama used the disaster for political gain to push his existing environmental agenda. He used the spill to push his stalled energy tax bill in the Senate and then instituted an all out ban on deep water oil development. Then when a federal judge threw out his original ban because it was “arbitrary and capricious,” President Obama doubled-down expanding the ban even wider."

Administration's response to gulf spill ill-managed, report says  "The commission's analysis raises questions about two key promises of the Obama administration - that its response to the spill would reflect its commitments to rigorous science and to government transparency."

Oil spill cover-up confirmed  "These are the findings of the government's own commission on the spill:"...



GOP Must Be Wary of Overconfidence and Terror

Matt Towery  "Usually the trailing candidate and their backers will savagely attack the accuracy of the poll. What they often fail to realize is that being shown to be behind can be a gift. If the race looks over before Election Day, the motivation of the supporters for the frontrunner can dissipate. And this year the entire political landscape rests on voter intensity." Via Townhall

The Gift of Obama’s Foreign Policy

Victor Davis Hanson "In the end, Obama’s Carteresque sermonizing over the past two years has achieved the opposite of its intended result. The preaching, confessionals, and outreach, from the ridiculous bowing to Saudi princes to the supposedly sublime Cairo mythmaking, have reminded the world that anti-Americanism transcends alike the unfair caricatures of George Bush and the hokey apotheosis of Barack Obama. If we can avoid the wages of this naïveté — and not suffer another annus horribilis in the fashion of 1979 — then Obama’s inadvertent primer on unchanging human nature will have been worth it." Via  NRO.

The Obama Rope-a-Dope*   Another by the incomparable Victor Davis Hanson: "Jimmy Carter stuck to his liberal agenda after suffering a modest rebuke in the 1978 midterms amid sky-high inflation, interest rates, and unemployment. He didn’t take the voters’ hint and went on to get clobbered two years later by Ronald Reagan. In contrast, after the Democratic party was slaughtered in the 1994 midterms (losing 52 House and nine Senate seats), a triangulating Bill Clinton moved to the center and handily won reelection in 1996.
"So what will Obama do if he loses the Democratic majority in the House and quite possibly the Senate, as his approval ratings tank to 40 percent?"
Rope-a-dope: "...refers to any strategy that involves "playing the loser" to "come out the winner." Rope-a-dope strategy implies the need for sharp technical skills to "take the hits" on the downside, and shrewd timing to break through at the proper moment to claim victory. Political strategists, pundits, politicians, business men and even combat tacticians use the phrase to refer to risky maneuvers that take one from a position of the seeming underdog to one of victor."  

THE RACE CARD

Neal Boortz  "Here we are .. down to the wire. Just 26 days until the elections and what do we have emerging from the Democrat camp? The race card. It was bound to happen. When in doubt, use the race card, and the Democrats have some serious doubts ... or at least, the people have some serious doubts about them."

Blacks and whites far less optimistic about race relations under Obama  "Of course, once in office he proved to be the most divisive Presidents in American history. And it shows."  American Thinker

Voters Are Much Less Optimistic About Black-White Relations  "Twenty-seven percent (27%) now say black-white relations are getting worse, up 10 points from July 2009, while 33% think they’re staying about the same. (To see survey question wording, click here.) " Rasmussen Reports

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Not Your Average Joe

Ann Coulter "-- On Clinton: "Once again, his defenders, furiously attacking the prosecution and equating opposition with 'conspiracy,' don't dare mount the best defense: 'He's not that sort of man.' It's because Clinton is, supremely, 'that sort of man' that this whole thing has happened. He's a lying lecher, a prevaricating pervert, an utterly slimy crook, without a trace of honor or loyalty, desperately trying to save his own skin one last time." " Quoting Joe Sobran, a writer who died this week. See if you recognize some of his memorable lines.

Why Patriotism Is Indispensable for Democracies

Bruce S. Thornton "In short, democracies have been able to overcome their weaknesses in times of crisis because of political virtue: courage, self-sacrifice, duty, and patriotism. For many today, however, patriotism has been discredited, tarred with the brush of a xenophobic and bigoted nationalism allegedly responsible for the great slaughter of the two World Wars. A naive internationalism and fealty to some fantasy “global community” is supposed to be our true object of affection. Worse yet, we have institutionalized in our popular culture, schools, and media the historical guilt and self-loathing that for decades has comprised left-wing intellectual fashion, and that legitimizes distaste for one’s own country. For how can anyone love such a global villain, the font of all suffering, war, exploitation, poverty, and environmental degradation, let alone kill and die for her?"

President Obama lacks the will to fight in Afghanistan.

Charles Krauthammer  "First, isn’t this the party that in two consecutive presidential campaigns — John Kerry’s and then Obama’s — argued vociferously that Afghanistan was the good war, the right war, the war of necessity, the central front in the War on Terror? Now, after acceding to power and being given charge of that very war, Obama confides that he must retreat lest that very same party abandon him. What happened in the interim? Did it suddenly develop a faint heart? Or was the party disingenuous about the Afghan war all along, using it as a convenient club with which to attack George W. Bush over Iraq, while protecting Democrats from the charge of being reflexively antiwar?"
National Review Online

It's Time to Fight Back Against Death Threats by Islamic Extremists "...The "warning" included the names, photos and work address of "South Park's" creators, a graphic image of Van Gogh's mutilated body and pictures of other targets of Muslim extremists. Overlaying this was audio of Awlaki preaching about assassinating anyone who defamed the prophet. Panicked, Comedy Central heavily censored the episode.
"This rather obvious threat could not be prosecuted. New York Police Department officials explained it did not rise to a crime. Were the FACE Act applicable here, a civil suit would have been available, and precedent suggests it would have been successful." Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Daniel Huff,  LA Times. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former member of the Dutch parliament, is a resident scholar with the American Enterprise Institute and the author of "Nomad: From Islam to America." Daniel Huff is director of the Middle East Forum's Legal Project.

Obama believes your paycheck is not your own

Keith Riler  "The President clearly believes differently, that my paycheck does not begin its life as mine, from which taxes are taken. Rather, he believes that my paycheck begins life as his, from which residual amounts are beneficently granted to me for living expenses. He clearly believes that the yet untaxed portion of my paycheck is still his, to be "spent" on me at his discretion."   American Thinker

Fighting Back Against Arbitrary Government Rule

Heritage  "By the end of 2007, the U.S. Code included more than 4,450 federal crimes, with an estimated tens of thousands more located in the federal regulatory code. Civil liberties attorney Harvey Silvergate estimates that the average working American unknowingly commits Three Felonies a Day. Heritage Foundation Senior Legal Research Fellow Brian Walsh explained to last week’s Judiciary Committee hearing why this is happening:"...

Obamanomics

Chuck Asay, Townhall

Eric Allie, Townhall


Rep. Loretta Sanchez and the Bathos of Race

Victor Davis Hanson  "...most of the president’s “like a dog” recent petulance understandably arises from his furor that skeptical voters are not push-over Harvard deans. Therefore he must for the first time in his life perform and be judged as Barack Obama, a working president — and not as Barack Obama, an image to be manipulated for careerist purposes."