Views on the News
May
15, 2010
Views on the News*
Before election, Barack Obama announced his intention to, “fundamentally transform the United States of
America,” taking us from a free-market economy to a government-controlled
economy, from a family-centered society to a government-centered society, and
from a national philosophy founded upon the primacy of the individual to one
founded upon the primacy of society’s “collective good.” President
Obama’s problem is that the Constitution of the United States stands in his way.
The Framers of the Constitution created
this nation with the understanding that government was dangerous, and thus
needed to be carefully controlled. They
also understood that rights are not grants from government; they are gifts from
God. So our Founding Fathers erected the
Constitution as a wall blocking the road to government expansion, designed to
stop any President from fundamentally transforming this country. The Constitution delineates what issues are
within the power of the federal government, and expressly reserves all other
matters to the states or the people through the Tenth Amendment. Within the realm of federal power, the
Constitution defines the role of each of the three branches of government (legislative,
executive, and judicial) and strictly limits the powers of each. Barack Obama is using a shadow government of
czars to evade Congressional oversight, using international law to get around
American law, and taking over key industries to make tens of millions of people
dependent on the government. To survive
the inevitable political backlash, he’s politicizing the Justice Department and
the Census Bureau to change how elections are conducted, altering the outcomes
of those elections, and attempting to turn 12 million illegal immigrants into
voting citizens beholden to him. Key
parts of the Obama agenda are unconstitutional. Even before Election Day even arrives, critical parts of Barack Obama’s blueprint can be
stopped in court. That’s why nothing is
more important than remaking the Supreme Court into a rubber stamp to uphold
his agenda. President Obama seeks to
stack the Supreme Court with judicial activists like Elena Kagan.
These liberal judges will “reinterpret” the Constitution in light
of the “evolving standards of decency in
society.” President Obama is
subverting the U.S. Constitution. He’s
building an imperial Presidency, seizing powers far beyond those granted to him
by the Constitution. The Constitution is on the side of the American people, and
“We, the People” must exercise our right to vote and return America back to its
original design.
(“Revealing Obama’s blueprint, and
how to stop him” by Ken Klukowski dated May 13,
2010 published by The Daily Caller at http://dailycaller.com/2010/05/13/revealing-obamas-blueprint-and-how-to-stop-him/
)
The United States Supreme Court has evolved into an incestuous
liberal clique of Ivy League lawyers who do not understand or represent
mainstream America. The newest nominee, Elena Kagan, is being touted as a “diversity” choice because she
is a woman, but her choice just reinforces a monolithic group of justices
almost exclusively from the Ivy League, either Catholic or Jewish, and residing
in a few northeastern states or California.
None of the Justices have held an elected office that would have
required an appeal to the common sense of voters. All have lived and worked in the hermetic
world of elite colleges, Ivy League law schools, and the federal bench. There are fine law schools in every state of
the union, many of which are highly rated even by Ivy League standards, and these
schools train the leaders of their respective states, yet the graduates of such
schools are nowhere represented on the Supreme Court. Kagan has no
judicial experience and hardly any experience practicing law, mainly working in
academia, believing that the court exists to protect the little guy against
evil corporate America, and not to interpret the Constitution and the law as
written. With the retirement of John
Paul Stevens, there are no longer any Protestants on the Court, even though 70%
of Americans are associated with Protestant churches of various kinds. If Kagan is
confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2% of the U.S. population, will have
33% of the Supreme Court seats. Aside from childhood
attachments, the vast interior of the country is unrepresented on the Court. The diversity on the Court always seems to
stop at considerations of race, gender, and ethnicity. The more diverse or egalitarian we claim to
be, the less diverse and representative we become in practice. The same trend that we observe on the Supreme
Court is evident as well among our recent Presidents and Presidential candidates,
all of whom seem to arise from common educational backgrounds among elite
undergraduate institutions or Ivy League law schools. The one qualification that Elena Kagan has is that ideologically, she is a kindred spirit of
Barack Obama, but she has been extraordinarily careful to hide her opinions. Obama has demonstrated very little knowledge
of, or respect for, the law and particularly the Constitution, so his selection
of a stealth leftist, like himself, is very predictable. In her 20’s, Kagan
lamented the decline of socialism in the country as "sad" for those who still hope to "change America." In her
clerking experience, she attached herself to people who saw the law as a tool
for controlling the people, and expanding government power at the expense of
the citizenry. As clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall, she was a longtime advocate of an
activism court believing “the
Constitution, as originally drafted and conceived, was ‘defective.’” One thing you won’t hear in the Mainstream
Media are the gay bloggers who are outing Elena Kagan
as a closet lesbian. So our obsession with diversity and difference has at length
produced a governing class of monolithic sameness whose members are
increasingly out of touch with the citizens for whom they propose to legislate.
(“The Diversity Scam and the
Supreme Court” by James Piereson dated May 10,
2010 published by The weekly Standard at http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/diversity-scam-and-supreme-court
“Missing: Kagan’s
Record of Impartiality” by Wendy Wright dated May 12, 2010 published by
Human Events at http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=36949
“Kagan The Unqualified” by Steven D. Laib dated May 13, 2010 published by Intellectual
Conservative at http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2010/05/13/kagan-the-unqualified/
)
The European Union's (EU) trillion-dollar bailout of Greece and
other troubled European welfare states is probably of little concern to
Americans, but most are unaware that we can ill afford, but are nevertheless
being committed to help pay for it. It might strike you as
strange that the EU would take advice from a country that now runs a deficit of
10% of GDP and whose total debt is verging on 90% of GDP, both of which would
disqualify it from membership in the EU.
At U.S. urging, the EU has decided to ignore its own constitution to
create an economic super-state to rule the continent's 450 million people and
its 27 members with little, if any, democratic input. Even the European Central Bank, long the
bastion of euro stability, had its arm twisted to accept a new role as
purchaser of last resort for failing nations' public debt. Not only is the U.S. behind this tragic mess,
we're going to pay for it too, making this EU plan smell a lot like their own
TARP. Remember, the U.S. just this year
approved $100 billion for the International Monetary Fund, which is helping pay
for the bailout. If Europe taps its IMF
credit line, we'll pony up $50 billion at least, but it doesn't end there. The Fed has made
available an unspecified amount of dollars to euro borrowers at low interest
rates. Social Security, Medicare
and the retirement of the baby boom generation wasn't enough of a burden for
the American taxpayer. We will now be
paying as well for the generous pensions of Greek bureaucrats retiring in the
warm Mediterranean sun at age 55, thanks to the foresighted leadership of our
very own international statesman, Barack Obama.
The problem is, if funding huge bailouts and creating a giant new
economic government for Europe is the wrong way to go, we might see a domino
effect. Greece already got $145 billion,
but Spain, Portugal and Italy aren't far behind in their fiscal laxity. If one of these much larger dominoes falls,
U.S. exposure to the crisis will explode, and we'll pay for it in higher interest
rates, soaring taxes and slower growth. What
the trillion dollar Euro bailout fund has done is to create the perverse
incentives of “Too
Big to Fail” for fiscally
irresponsible Eurostates. Europe has taken the wrong path toward big
government and an all-encompassing welfare state. Rather than give more poor advice, maybe the
U.S. should listen to the causes of the EU problems. Instead of more
bailouts, printed money and government coercion, the United States should
return to the free-market ideals that built our rich economy in the first
place.
(“Bailout Buddies” dated May
11, 2010 published by Investor’s Business Daily at http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=533722
“Who Will Bailout America?” by
Peter Ferrara dated May 12, 2010 published by The American Spectator at http://spectator.org/archives/2010/05/12/who-will-bail-out-america
)
American conservatives tend to hold up the European Union as a
model of irresponsible, big-spending economic policy, but according to E.U.
rules, member countries cannot maintain budget deficits above 3% of gross
domestic product; nor can their total debt rise above 60% of GDP, and unfortunately
the U.S. budget deficit in 2009 was three times the E.U.’s limit, and total
debt will zoom past the 60% threshold sometime this year. The
President's planned fiscal excesses beyond 2010 cannot plausibly be attributed
to the recession, blamed on George W. Bush or justified by economic principles,
Keynesian or otherwise. The public debt
will be at least an astronomical 91% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020, and
the gross debt will be at least 123% of GDP (compared with 125% in Greece) and
greatly in excess of the fatal "tipping
point" identified by recent academic research. Right now, about 42 cents out of every dollar
being spent by President Obama is borrowed and if he continues to stoke the
crisis, America's Triple A bond rating will be downgraded within a few years,
the Treasury's borrowing costs will skyrocket, and Washington will try to
inflate its way out of debt by printing lots of cheap new dollars, thereby
destroying people's savings and impairing lives and livelihoods for generations
to come. States, counties, and
municipalities, lacking the federal ability to print money, do not have the
luxury of “beginning now to develop a
credible plan” for the future, since they are flat out of money in the
present. Surveying the fiscal wreckage
at the end of 2009, BusinessWeek found that
the 50 states had cut their combined payrolls that year by a minuscule 0.25%,
and “Politicians everywhere are talking
about layoffs, of course. They have been talking about eliminating jobs, often
in threatening tones, since at least January. As the numbers show, for most,
it’s just talk.” Governors, that are
facing nearly $200 billion in budget deficits, are descending upon Washington
for another round of stimulus funding. At
least $4.3 trillion of this kind of additional spending for 2011-20 is buried
in his budget. Furthermore, going back
to 2009-10, there is another $1.2 trillion, and going forward, ObamaCare will add another $1 trillion to the accumulated
deficits. Obama is using public-sector
debt not only to pre-empt for his own ideological purposes the financial
capacity of future generations, he also is seeking to pre-empt the prerogatives
of voters and their elected representatives in Congress for the indefinite
future. All tax revenues will have been
pre-committed and all spending predetermined by the current Congress and President.
It is already the case that mandated
expenditures plus interest on debt are consuming all tax revenues and will soon
greatly exceed them. Obama's next step
is to commandeer the economy's capacity to pay taxes, and here again, the
cleverness of his debt maneuver is apparent. Insofar as Americans' jobs and prosperity are
concerned, another round of multitrillion-dollar tax increases (on top of the
$1 trillion he already has in the works) will break the economy's back. As long as there’s
still one greater (leftist) fool left willing to chase diminishing returns with
more cash, Democrat politicians can keep putting off the day of reckoning.
(“We Are Out of Money” by Matt Welch dated June 2010 published by
Reason Magazine at http://reason.com/archives/2010/05/07/we-are-out-of-money
“A choice for the condemned”
by Ernest S. Christian and Gary A. Robbins dated May 10, 2010 published by The
Washington Times at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/10/a-choice-for-the-condemned/
)
Both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae announced first quarter losses
and requested further taxpayer funds to keep them afloat, as one of the
financial world’s biggest wards of the state. Freddie
Mac, already propped up with $52 billion in taxpayer
funds used to rescue the company from its own mistakes, recorded a loss of $6.7
billion and said it would require an additional $10.6 billion from taxpayers to
shore up its financial position. Fannie
Mae likewise announced its 11th consecutive quarterly loss of $11.5
billion and asked for another $8.4 billion in taxpayer assistance. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have consumed a
combined $145 billion in taxpayer cash, and the end is nowhere in sight. Both companies warned of further losses triggering
more government assistance, which is now unlimited after a 2009 Treasury
decision. The losses are unlimited
because the companies are no longer intended to make money as a government run
business, by deliberately subsidizing housing.
Serious delinquencies in Freddie Mac’s single-family conventional loan
portfolio, those more than 90 days late, came in at 4.13%, up from 2.41% for
the period a year earlier. Delinquencies
in the company’s Alt-A book, one step up from subprime loans, totaled 12.84%, while
delinquencies on interest-only mortgages were 18.5%. Delinquencies on its small portfolio of
option-adjustable rate loans totaled 19.8%. The company’s inventory of foreclosed
properties rose from 29,145 units at the end of March 2009 to almost 54,000
units this year. Perhaps most troubling,
Freddie Mac’s nonperforming assets almost doubled, rising to $115 billion from
$62 billion. When Freddie Mac sells
properties, either before or after foreclosure, it generates losses of 39%, on
average. Freddie Mac said the main
reason for its disastrous quarter was an accounting change that required it to
bring back onto its books $1.5 trillion in assets and liabilities that it had
been keeping off of its balance sheet. Fannie
Mae also announced that most of the loans it modified in the first three
quarters of 2009 had gone delinquent again within six months. NONE of the grim numbers at Fannie Mae or Freddie
Mac are surprising, given that they have pretty much been the only games in
town of late for anyone interested in getting a mortgage. Among the reasons for this dour outlook was
the substantial number of borrowers that currently owe more on their mortgages
than their homes are worth. The biggest
issue is that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are nowhere to be seen in the various
financial reform efforts under discussion on Capitol Hill. A group of Republican
senators led by John McCain proposed to give the housing market giants five
years either to become self-sufficient or to go out of business. The proposal would also reduce the total
amount of losses that taxpayers would cover to $400 billion. Rather than debate the particulars of this
idea, Democrat leaders appear more interested in burying
any and all such changes. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
have been longstanding kingpins in the housing market, buying mortgages from
banks that issue them so the banks could turn around and lend even more. Fannie Mae’s and
Freddie Mac’s continued mortgage-buying is yet another backdoor bailout of the nation’s banks, and could explain the
government’s reluctance to include them in the reform efforts now being so
hotly debated in Washington.
(“Ignoring the Elephant in the Bailout” by Gretchen Morgenson dated May 7, 2010 published by The New York Times
at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/business/09gret.html?ref=business
“In bed with Fannie and Freddie”
dated May 10, 2010 published by The Washington Times at http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/may/10/in-bed-with-fannie-and-freddie/
“$145 Billion and Counting”
dated May 11, 2010 published by The Wall Street Journal at http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424052748703880304575236270385307174-lMyQjAxMTAwMDEwMDExNDAyWj.html
)
The Wall Street 1,000 point market plunge was a typical example
of pure market manipulation by unregulated hedge fund short sellers. The
same hedge fund short sellers were behind the financial crash of 2008 that
paved the way for Obama's election to the Presidency. Computerized hedge fund short selling has no
protection for the invested capital in the equity markets. There is no uptick rule, no circuit breakers
and no trading curbs, so our market is primed for manipulation. The financial reform bill being pushed by
Obama and liberal Democrats on Capitol Hill will do nothing to solve this
problem and regulate the hedge fund short sellers. Representatives and apologists for the hedge
fund short sellers, who operate as the Managed Funds Association (MFA), "go on TV and provide false explanations of
what happened." Diamond says
that the repeal of the safeguard regulations, such as the uptick rule,
circuit breakers and trading curbs, and the introduction of the short ETFs
(Exchange traded funds) has given the members of the MFA tremendous power and
influence. Any asset class that is
traded in the NYSE, CME, or EUREX exchanges "is susceptible to manipulation by the members of Managed Funds
Association and their strategic partners." They can now crash the market, panic
shareholders out of their stocks, buy to cover their short positions for
hefty shorting profits, and then buy back in at the bottom to open long
positions and then recover the whole market (indexes) to normal levels. These market manipulators, he notes, have the
ability to drive prices down and then drive them back up, all within a 15
minute period. The
market plunged and recovered, concealing the carnage and destruction of
investor's capital, and the evil of hedge fund short selling continues
unabated.
(“Manipulation, Not Error, Behind
Market Plunge” by Cliff Kincaid dated May 7, 2010 published by Accuracy in
Media at http://www.aim.org/aim-column/manipulation-not-error-behind-market-plunge/
)
Gas prices are marching steadily upwards deliberately as an
attempt to justify the leftist fantasy of renewable energy replacing
petrochemical energy. Part of the rise is seasonal
in nature: demand increases going into summer to fill up those cars going on
family vacations. As summer proceeds
into fall, refineries start refining more heating oil from crude and less
gasoline. Part of the rise can be
attributed to the lack of refineries in America -- government rules and
regulations have halted the building of American refineries. States have very arcane rules regarding the
blends of gasoline permissible to sell and that increases cost. Demand for energy is increasing around the
world as some signs of economic recovery take hold, especially in booming
China. Years of governmental obstruction
in tapping our offshore and onshore stores of black gold have played a
role. A little-mentioned cause is
the fact that our Federal Reserve and the Democrat-led government is printing
so much cash that our dollar is becoming is becoming Weimar Wallpaper -- an
increasingly worthless slip of paper that retains value against the Euro only
because the EU is farther along, for now, into socialism than we are. Democrats are silent about the gas rise
because Democrats may be blamed for bad policies that cause these bad things to
happen such as the ones that led to a weak dollar, or that shut off vast areas
of America to oil development and refinery building -- have created the
conditions that give rise to oil prices. There is one more factor at work - Democrats really like it when gas prices rise. Democrats have long advocated higher
taxes on gas to reduce demand and make "renewable energy" less foolish. Haven't we been told for years by the
nattering nabobs of the nanny nation that gasoline price rises are good for us?
Why are these powers-that-be also trying
to shut down the development of shale gas, a clean burning domestic resource
that our nation has in vast abundance? In
fact, Democrats do like high gas prices because it allows them to justify the
irrational and costly subsidies and tax breaks they give to their friends in
the "green movement" and
their cronies who benefit from the drip, drip, drip of tax dollars going from
the government IVs into their bank accounts. The Democrats' dream is to finally be able to
take advantage of gas price rise (that they have engineered) in order to force
radical changes upon the American way of life. This is the essence of liberal fascism:
Americans are too dumb, and don't know what is good for us. The only pumps the Obama team and their allies
in Congress like are the ones pumping our green tax dollars to their pals and
donors in the "renewable energy"
racket of the jolly Green Giant with the big carbon footprint: Al Gore. We have utopian leaders with very little
experience in the real world but plenty of experience in Ivy League classrooms,
where high minded platitudes substitute for empiricism and pragmatism. They may try to silence Americans as they
stuff policies down our windpipes-but Americans will not remain silent. Never
have; never will. Liberation is coming in the form of a ballot box, so “Drill,
Baby, Drill” may again be America’s strategy once the current
administration is booted out.
(“Welcome to the Era of Expensive
Energy” by Ed Lasky dated May 13, 2010 published
by American Thinker at http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/05/welcome_to_the_era_of_expensiv.html
)
Never letting an energy crisis go to waste, “Cap and Trade” is being resurrected
based on an environmental hoax, driving energy prices higher, and showering
immature technologies with investments while promising inconsequential
environmental impact. Senators John Kerry and Joe
Lieberman will introduce legislation designed to inflate the cost of energy,
strain family budgets, and decimate America's manufacturing sector, all in the
name of supposedly “saving” the
climate. Kerry and Lieberman have been
revamping legislation that narrowly passed the House of Representatives on a
party line vote last year. The goal of
17% reduction of greenhouse gases globally will simply not be achieved by
limiting CO2 within the United States. The
bill imposes oppressive limits on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and
establishes a complex cap-and-trade scheme in which the federal government
determines how much CO2 a business may emit. Scientific causation between CO2 emissions
and environmental impact has been disproven, undermining the fundamental
justification for any governmental action.
CO2 has been found to be a minor component of “greenhouse gases” and proposed actions will have negligible impact
on the global environment. Presently,
40% of CO2 emissions in the United States are derived from
electricity generation, 35% from transportation, and 25% from business,
industry, and natural gas to heat homes.
President Obama has employed a classic bait and switch strategy on
nuclear power: on one hand pledging to triple guarantees of $45 billion toward
construction of nuclear plants, while on the other hand cutting off money for
the only viable nuclear waste repository.
Further straining the family budget, a new set of fees and taxes will be
imposed on all sectors of the economy that produce greenhouse gases. This will include transportation, farming,
livestock production, even restaurants that cook barbecued chicken and ribs
over an open flame and bottling companies that sell fizzy drinks. To absorb the increased cost of doing business,
companies large and small will be forced to raise their prices. Finally the Kerry-Lieberman bill is also a
job-killer, since to meet the demands of the new emissions limits, the few
manufacturing businesses that remain in the United States will be further
shipped overseas. The bottom line is
that the temperature of the earth is not warming, carbon dioxide is not a
pollutant, and without the greenhouse effect, planet Earth would be a big ball
of ice. The
dirty little secret is that this “Hoax
and Tax” bill is just another stealth tax that is planned to generate
between roughly $1.3 trillion and $1.9 trillion of more money that government
can spend between fiscal years 2012 and 2019.
(“Cap and Trade is Back” by Brian Sussman
dated May 10, 2010 published by American Thinker at http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/05/capandtrade_is_back.html
)
Prior to the early twentieth century, immigrants to America were
typically poor when they arrived here, and they sought no unearned handouts as
they struggled to raise their standard of living and assimilate into their
newly adopted society. These early immigrants
achieved the life that they had worked for without violating anyone else's
rights, which is how it was when America was a free country. Now, the crippling burden of our massive
regulatory welfare state, along with the federal government's disregard for
crimes committed against citizens by violent foreign gangs and drug cartels,
has turned immigration into a problem. This
problem is the result not of innocent people seeking a better life, but of an
overbearing government that is too big not to fail. A century of progressive legislation
culminating in the money-hemorrhaging Obama administration has resulted in a
system of taxation by which approximately half of Americans pay no federal
income tax, and 40% actually receive payments from their fellow citizens via
the IRS. With this being the case, the
majority of new immigrants from poor countries fall into the category who pay
nothing and receive benefits that taxpayers are forced to provide.
Because illegal immigrants qualify for fewer benefits than legal immigrants,
granting them amnesty would cost American taxpayers an estimated half-trillion
dollars per year. The government will
spend over 10 trillion
taxpayer dollars on welfare programs over the next decade. ObamaCare, which forces taxpayers to subsidize even more of
their fellow citizens' health coverage, while paying higher premiums for their
own health care as costs are driven higher by the new legislation. The
addition of millions more citizens who are unable to support themselves will
only add to this burden of rising costs, rising taxes, and government-imposed
rationing of critical, life-saving health care. None of these injustices
is the fault of the immigrant community; these immoral policies are the fault
of an out-of-control government that is no longer limited to the protection of
individual rights, and instead actively violates these rights on a daily
basis. In addition to exploding the dependent population, our porous
borders have allowed violent gangs and drug cartels to advance north into the
American southwest. The recent passage
of the new law in Arizona is a cry for help from the citizens of a state made
desperate by the federal government’s shameful and flagrant dereliction of its
duty to control the nation’s borders and to enforce its laws. This is
manifestly a federal responsibility and the U. S. government has failed in its
responsibilities to its citizens under both Democratic and Republican
administrations. Even if we were to
adopt the most liberal immigration policies, it is imperative to have secure
borders; keeping its citizens safe is one of the most fundamental
responsibilities of a government, but ours is defaulting on this responsibility
for political reasons. As U.S. citizens
we have a right to expect the federal government to enforce the laws regarding
who may cross our borders. Border security is a question of national security,
domestic safety and tranquility and the federal government fulfilling its
divinely mandated responsibilities to enforce the law. A strong majority of Americans (61% of
Americans and 64% of registered voters) support Arizona's controversial new
immigration law and would back similar laws in their own states, a new
McClatchy-Ipsos poll found. A separate Pew Research Center poll on the
Arizona law released Wednesday found similar sentiments. The nonpartisan Pew survey found that 73% of
Americans approve of requiring people to verify their legal status and
two-thirds support police detaining people who can't. It is crucial that the nature of the present
immigration conflict be identified: It is not a conflict between whites and
Hispanics or between citizens and immigrants. In a free society,
immigration is beneficial to all and the immigration conflict is between those
who wish to live and be free and the emerging tyrannical regime that seeks to
control us.
(“If America Were a Free Country,
Immigration Would Not Be a Problem” by Deborah B. Sloan dated May 9, 2010
published by American Thinker at http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/05/if_america_were_a_free_country.html
“Americans back Arizona’s illegal immigrants law” by Margaret Talev
dated May 12, 2010 published by McClatchy Newspapers at http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/05/12/94050/most-americans-approve-of-arizonas.html
“A Moral and Just Response to the Immigration
Crisis” by Richard Land dated May 13, 2010 published by Town Hall at http://townhall.com/columnists/RichardLand/2010/05/13/a_moral_and_just_response_to_the_immigration_crisis
)
There’s no better way to summarize President Obama’s approach to
fighting the war against jihad than this: For the next three years, he’s
betting our safety on the proposition that Islamic thugs and terrorists will
prove to be more incompetent than his liberal administration. How
many “isolated incidents” have to pile
up before the President wakes up to the fact that there’s a pattern, one that
just might have something to do with a particular fundamentalist religious
outlook, and that the politically correct bunker mentality is not going to cut
it? Reluctantly, Attorney General Eric
Holder has conceded that it might be a good idea to adjust, not totally
eliminate mind you, the law with regards to reading a terror suspect their
Miranda rights, provided that it can be done within constitutional bounds, of
course. The idea that we should extend
constitutional protections to enemy combatants, particularly when that enemy is
not in uniform, is a concept that would have perplexed any other American
president in history, with the possible exception of James Earl Carter. In the aftermath of Times Square, with three
enemy infiltrations onto American soil in the space of six months, Senate
Homeland Security chair Joe Liebermann observed: “We were lucky. We did not prevent the attempted
attack. It’s hard to stop them every time, but that has to be our goal. … So
I’d say in terms of prevention, the system failed.” When you choose to go on the defensive, luck
is the only thing that keeps a shell from landing in the wrong place at the
wrong time and these particular shells have two legs and access to a bag of
tricks. Philosophically, Bush made it
clear that he would target the enemy where he lies, for as long as it took to
win. On the other hand, Obama makes it
increasingly obvious that he longs to disengage from the enemy, thus providing
them a host of targets over here, for as long as “isolated incidents” continue to occur. In a tough, cynical world, ruthless leaders
can smell weakness and this President reeks of it. A prime example is Iran’s Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad who said: “Mr. Obama, you are a newcomer to politics. Wait until your sweat dries
and get some experience…. American officials bigger than you,
more bullying than you, couldn’t do a damn thing, let alone you.”
George W. Bush may have been the devil to Ahmadinejad
and his ilk, but one would be foolish indeed not to fear the devil. Jihad regimes consider Obama no more than an
ineffectual, unimportant, low-grade, mildly demonic imp, far down on the west’s
satanic organizational chart. For jihadists, Obama is annoying but not really anything to
worry about, and mixing religious fanatics with weak,
appeasing leadership in the west makes for a very dangerous stew.
(“Luck Is Not a Strategy” by
Rich Trzupek dated May 10, 2010 published by Front
Page Magazine at http://frontpagemag.com/2010/05/10/luck-is-not-a-strategy/
)
* There is so much published each week that unless
you search for it, you will miss important breaking news. I try to package the best of this information
into my “Views on the News”
each Saturday morning. No updates this
week have been made to the issue sections.
David Coughlin
Hawthorne, NY