Abu Wabu

As I and others have long contended, it isn't just that Obama doesn't know how to prevent the economy from going down the tubes; it's that he wants it to go down the tubes. And as Rand Simberg contends, even if Obama suddenly decided he did not want to destroy the free market economy, he couldn't do anything to rescue it anyway. Not any more.

Why? Because his brand is shot. When it comes to jobs and the economy "Obama" means nothing but pain: unemployment, higher taxes, higher energy costs; less disposable income, insane spending, eternal deficits, a trillion this and a trillion that; zero stability and therefore zero opportunity.

In other words, Hopelessness. Think Michigan and California.

To borrow from an old joke, it's not us - it's him. Barack Obama is so obviously against the free market and economic recovery in America that businesses both big and small have decided to hunker down and ride out the mess created by his administration. No sense drawing too much attention when it could attract the covetous gaze of a totalitarian-minded czar who can decide you're making too much in the way of unnecessary capitalist perks like, say, a paycheck, or a profitable bottom line. Better to just lay low until the whole statist shitstorm blows over.

The problem is not that Obama doesn’t spend enough time on the economy — his philosophy isn’t capable of (or interested in?) stimulating growth anyway. . . .

He could also have promised to keep in place the Bush tax rate cuts, due to expire next year, providing more confidence in the future of the economy. He could have let his campaign promises about nationalizing health care and dramatically raising the costs of energy with cap ‘n’ tax expire, as all of his statements and promises eventually do.

But something he could have done — that would have cost nothing at all — would have been to not scare the bejesus out of business in the first place during his campaign.

Obama talked of increasing capital gains taxes for reasons of “fairness,” even if it actually hurt government revenue. He talked of “spreading the wealth around.” He gave soaring speeches exalting the glory of the state and public service, while the contributions of business and capitalism were ignored. He treated “profit” like a four-letter word and promised to “raise taxes on the rich.” He made economically insane and historically ignorant arguments blaming the meltdown of the financial system on “capitalists” and “deregulation.”

Obama persuaded many small business people to pull in their horns and make plans to keep a low profile (including laying people off) in order to avoid the wealth confiscation of the populist, socialist, economic storm they saw coming with his election.

And that's where the engines of the economy are in America today: hiding from Obama and the chaotic uncertainty he brings to an otherwise efficient and reliably self-correcting system.

Adding today to that prevailing sentiment is Emerson Electric Co. CEO David Farr, who wants nothing to do with Obama's appetite for gorging on American corporate flesh:

Emerson Electric Co. Chief Executive Officer David Farr said the U.S. government is hurting manufacturers with regulation and taxes and his company will continue to focus on growth overseas.

“Washington is doing everything in their manpower, capability, to destroy U.S. manufacturing,” Farr said today in Chicago at a Baird Industrial Outlook conference. “Cap and trade, medical reform, labor rules.”

...Emerson, which Farr said employs about 125,000 people worldwide, has eliminated more than 20,000 jobs since the end of 2008 to lower expenses.
“What do you think I am going to do?” Farr asked. “I’m not going to hire anybody in the United States. I’m moving. They are doing everything possible to destroy jobs.”

...“We as a company today are putting our best people, our best technology and our best investment in these marketplaces to grow,” he said. “My job is to grow that top line, grow my earnings, grow my cash flow and grow my returns to the shareholders. My job is not to shrink and roll over for the U.S. government.”

No sane man in Farr's position is going to take any other view than that dictated by the bottom line, a concept Obama and his confiscatory zealots will never understand. Unlike the Carter years, when the effects of such disastrous mismanagement did not immediately become manifest, it happens in today's wired world at the speed of light.

So the smart money heads offshore to friendlier climes, leaving Obama and his fellow travellers to eventually face an increasingly hostile and vengeful electorate in its wake.

The story of the SEC's case against Goldman Sachs is one of chicanery. Not by a bunch of Wall Street hustlers, but by the Obama regime to construct a premise for taking over that part of the economy that has so far escaped his statist grasp. Witness the NY Post's exposé of the Obama regime's campaign already in place and set to fire as soon as the SEC laid its charges against Goldman Sachs:

President Obama is bringing his war on Wall Street to the enemy's turf. He'll make his pitch for financial reform in the heart of lower Manhattan Thursday — even as his team make hay of the Goldman Sachs fiasco with a tech savvy appeal to Democratic donors.

Internet surfers who entered "Goldman Sachs SEC" into Google were directed to the president's campaign Web site via a sponsored link titled "Help Change Wall Street." The White House's political arm paid for the keywords — but would not say how much. The tactic provided the latest evidence of how Obama and the Democratic National Committee are using the Securities and Exchange Commission's bombshell fraud suit against the financial giant to push financial-reform legislation through Congress.

Rahm Emanuel and Robert Gibbs have belatedy denied any linkage between the two events, and only someone gullible enough to have voted for Obama would believe that lie, but this is not what the public should be focused on.

Americans should instead be focused on the fact that Obama is lying about his so-called "financial reform" bill, because it is not what he says it is.

In his Sunday radio address, Obama claimed the bill would "hold Wall Street accountable" and prevent any more taxpayer-funded bailouts of companies in trouble:

Never again will taxpayers be on the hook because a financial company is deemed 'too big to fail'."

In fact, and in keeping with standard Obama practice, the truth is the exact opposite of Obama's claim, as confirmed by Democrat House Financial Services Committee member Brad Sherman ("The bill contains permanent, unlimited bailout authority.") and this shocking summary of the bill's bailout provisions:

First, the bill contains a $50 billion fund for resolution of systemically risky institutions. The bill allows a 2/3 vote of the Financial Stability Oversight Council to deem any firm (financial or non-financial) as coming under its rubric and then authorizes the FDIC and Treasury Secretary to treat each of the firm's shareholders and creditors as they choose, without regard to bankruptcy law. Second, the bill gives the Treasury and the FDIC authority to grant an unlimited number of loan guarantees to systemically risky institutions. No Congressional authorization or appropriation is required. Third, the bill gives the Fed the authority to fund any "program" to assist these institutions accepting as collateral anything it deems appropriate.

Obama's totalitarian urge to "deem", most recently illustrated in the Obamacare fiasco but also the devil in such details as "deeming" into existence the fictional construct of an Office of the President-Elect, is still alive and well.

Obama's "financial reform" bill usurps the Legislative Branch's financial regulatory powers exclusively to the Executive Branch, without regard for established bankruptcy laws, Congressional powers and responsibilities, even Constitutional limitations. It establishes a taxpayer-funded government slush fund whose dual purpose is to enrich its corporate friends and dismantle its corporate enemies, a classic national socialist play if there ever was one.

And this legislation is not limited to financial firms; any commercial enterprise can be arbitrarily either rescued or dismantled at the behest of the Obama regime, meaning Obama can simply reach out and crush anyone, anywhere, any time.

This is Obama's biggest, most audacious power grab so far, and I cannot imagine a more destabilizing force on the American economy than this bill. It must be stopped.

This is not a fight between Goldman Sachs and the SEC; this is a full frontal attack by Obama on the Constitution and all its inconvenient restraints on Obama's power. The SEC case against GS is just the premise for that attack.

Writes Andy McCarthy with trademark clarity,

The statists who gave us the financial meltdown are making a wager more insidious than anything Paulson or Goldman ever came up with. They are betting that Americans will be duped into believing that something other than pandering — something other than the government’s scheme to use taxpayers’ dollars to purchase the loyalty of low-income and minority voters — is responsible for our current straits. Obama & Co. are constructing a narrative that says a near-depression was triggered by greedy Wall Street predators who dragged investors under water. If you buy that, they get a double boon: They escape blame, and they bolster their campaign to grab more control of the private sector under the guise of “regulation.”

There are so many different stories coming from the gigantic electoral ass-beatings laid on Obama by conservative voters in last night's elections that it would take more time than I have today to write about them all. Suffice it to say that, regardless of the nonsense Gibbs was spouting last night and today, last night was about Obama, and Obama got his ass beat.

The only Democrat victory was in the lone venue in which Obama did not campaign for one of His candidates, where the Republican candidate was actually a left-wing trojan horse, a Margaret Sanger Award winner with ties to ACORN, SEIU, the Working Families Party and other commie front orgs, was endorsed by Kos and eventually endorsed the Democrat.

In other words, a genuine left-wing idiot whom conservatives wanted nothing to do with. Bad choice by the local Republican powers-that-be, bad choice by Newt, bad choice by everyone involved in backing Scuzzafuzza, but one that proved conservatives are serious about taking back the party from the so-called zombies and the country from the radicals in Obama's White House. The Republicans screwed up badly in NY23, and still Hoffman almost won. That is historic, because the Republican elite has been put on notice: no more putting up RINOs, because conservatives will take them down.

Remember how Obama's 2008 Virginia win was touted by the MSM as a historic re-alignment? Uh, don't think so. Voters put paid to that fantasy with a sweep of the gubernatorial races and down-ticket as well, dumping incumbant Democrats across the state to reverse past gains and expose the party chair, outgoing governor Tim Kaine, as completely irrelevant to party fortunes.

Obama won New Jersey by 15 points in 2008; last night Chris Christie beat the deeply-entrenched John Corzine by 4 points. Idiots will say that ain't much, but the reality is that Corzine losing in NJ is akin to Ted Kennedy losing in Massachusetts; there's yer historic realignment right there. Obama threw Deeds under the bus in VA, but He poured vast resources into NJ, including half a dozen personal appearances with Corzine to tell NJers that a vote for Corzine was a way of paying homage to the Glory of The One. Finally, the White House even took over the Corzine campaign and sent Sherrif Joe Biden to babble at a couple hundred poor souls. And still, they came up snake-eyes.

Some of the best of last night's fun played out on cable news, where Rachel Maddow melted down over the course of the evening over Maine voters' repeal of the gay marriage law, Keef Olberdouch actually bailed on his viewers as the results struck home, and Drooler Matthews glommed onto the Owens win as the monumental event of the day.

But the best story of all was the revelation that the president, Mr. Cajonus Giganticus Hisself, did not watch the gigantic ass-beating; instead He cozied up inside His Cocoon of Awesomeness at the White House and avoided suffering the humiliation in real time.

The bottom line was the message imparted by voters to Obama, as described by Jim Geraghty:

The lesson is, pay attention to what's worrying voters the most. The vast majority of voters in both states said in exit polls last night that they're very worried about the economy.

The GOP message in the coming weeks, months, and probably year is going to be JOBS JOBS JOBS JOBS JOBS JOBS JOBS....

Unfortunately for Obama, he has been busy ruthlessly destroying the economy and jobs will, by His intentional design, be the last thing to result from any of His ruinous policies, especially Obamacare and Crap & Tax. That fact is dawning on all those self-congratulating idiots who voted for Hopeychanginess and in less than ten months now see their homes, savings and careers vanishing into thin air. It is dawning on them that Obama is robbing them not just of their prosperity but of its very possibility, and last night they took the first electoral opportunity since last November to show Obama and his fellow radicals what they think of that.

Oh, last night was about Obama all right. It was all about Obama, because Obama has made everything in America all about Him. It was the first ripple in the coming reckoning against all things Obama and "progressive", a reckoning that will culminate in the Gigantic Ass-Beating of all time.

Poli-sci gold. I am proud to spread Hugh Hewitt's message:

For the use of every Republican candidate for every House and Senate seat and every Governor's office.

Thank you for having me today. Let me blunt and to the point because so many of the Democrats are not.

The stimulus failed. Massive amounts of spending failed. A mountain of new regulations failed.

President Obama and his team promised that unemployment wouldn't go above 8% and it is at 9.5% and that number doesn't reflect the millions of Americans who have simply given up looking for a new job.

President Obama and all the Democrats want the biggest tax increase in history to kick in on January 1.

President Obama and all the Democrats want to add a crushing carbon tax on the economy, and many want higher taxes on many other sectors of the economy. Obamacare is full of hidden taxes and charges which will slowly strangle the life that is left in the economy.

We have to make a U-Turn, and we have to make that U-Turn on November 2.

President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid do not care what you think or how you are suffering.

They have a vision, a radical vision, a vision of a remade America in which the government makes all the decisions, takes all the wealth and picks winners and losers.

President Obama decided that the unions would win with GM so he wiped out the folks who had lent the company money and he wiped out thousands of dealers and he gave the UAW 50 billion in aid and he said, ta da, you win.

He has been picking winners and losers since he moved into the White House.

Doctors and patients lost in Obamacare. Bureaucrats won. Thousands and thousands of new government employees got new or bigger jobs because of Obamacare. Senior citizens with Medicare Advantage got screwed. And Medicare is closer still to utter bankruptcy.

Again and again government wins, and tax payers and ordinary workers and businesses lose.

President Obama doesn't care what you think on any subject.

He doesn't care that you have again and again voted that marriage remain between one woman and one man.

He doesn't care that you aren't bigots, that you aren't anti-gay, but that you believe marriage is a cornerstone institution that should not be changed on the whim of a single federal judge in San Francisco.

President Obama thinks you are bigots because you oppose the building of one mosque at one place, Ground Zero, even though you support religious freedom and believe that this nation is open to all faiths and creeds. President Obama and his friends in the elite media insult you every day by calling you bigots and hate mongers because you honor the dead at Ground Zero, and do not wish to see the hallowed ground exploited by any faith or creed.

President Obama thinks you are a bigot because you want the border secured and people in the country illegally to be penalized. You want a fence built across the border wherever it is passable, and for this President Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid call you bigots. President Obama has sued an entire state, Arizona, rather than admit his border policies have failed.

This is not the agenda President Obama and the Democrats campaigned on in 2008.

Those promises were thrown out in the first month of the new Administration, as was our historic commitment to Israel, and our policy of a strong defense. Even now the president is hollowing out the Department of Defense to pay for his absurd giveaways.

There has never been a more clear cut choice. Between now and November you will be called every name in the book. You will be insulted by the Manhattan-Beltway media elite for believing in American values, for believing in secure borders, and for honoring the dead of 9/11.

You want taxes to be low and spending lower still.

You want the private sector to grow, not the government.

You want solutions, not assaults on the average American's sense of fairness and generosity.

You want the courts back in their traditional place and not acting as super judges roving the country and making it over in their own vision.

You especially want government to return to the truth that it works for us and doesn't command us.

To make the U-Turn you will have to vote from top to bottom against Democrats. You have to turn them out of office at every level. You cannot say, "this Democrat is my friend, he or she is moderate, he or she is a blue dog."

Forgive my bluntness, but that is nonsense.

Every Democrat in the Congress voted for Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid.

Every Democratic candidate for governor is pledged to support the president.

To turn the country around the Democrats have to feel a massive political defeat, a shuddering, shattering "No" at every level, one they cannot deny, and one their friends in the media cannot spin or ignore.

If you believe we urgently need to change direction, that we need a U-Turn, then pick a race and get in the game, with your time and your talent and your dollars.

Thank you.

I hope Hugh doesn't mind, because this is the message that Americans have to get before November 2010.

Via NRO:

Thank you to Jay and to Scott for those generous introductions. Both these men have made real contributions to our nation. It’s good to be back at CPAC. I can’t think of an audience I’d rather be addressing today.

I spent the weekend in Vancouver. As always, the Olympic Games were inspiring. But in case you didn’t hear the late-breaking news, the gold medal in the downhill was taken away from American Lindsey Vonn. It was determined that President Obama is going downhill faster than she is.

I’m not telling you something you don’t know when I say that our conservative movement took a real hit in the 2008 elections. The victors were not exactly gracious in their big win: Media legs were tingling. Time Magazine’s cover pictured the Republican elephant and declared it an endangered species. The new president himself promised change of biblical proportion. And given his filibuster-proof Senate and lopsided House, he had everything he needed to deliver it.

They won, we lost. But you know, you learn a lot about people when you see how they react to losing. We didn’t serve up excuses or blame our fellow citizens. Instead, we listened to the American people, we sharpened our thinking and our arguments, we spoke with greater persuasiveness, we took our message to more journals and airwaves, and in the American tradition, some even brought attention to our cause with rallies and Tea parties.

I know that most of you have watched intently as the conservative comeback began in Virginia and exploded onto the scene in New Jersey. But as a Massachusetts man, who, like my fellow Bay-staters, has over the years, been understandably regarded somewhat suspiciously in gatherings like this, let me take just a moment to exalt in a Scott Brown victory!

For that victory that stopped Obama–care and turned back the Reid-Pelosi liberal tide, we have something to that you’d never think you’d hear at CPAC, “Thank you Massachusetts!”

2009 was the President’s turn to suffer losses, and not just at the ballot box, but also in bill after bill in Congress, and most importantly, in his failure to reignite the economy. In how he has responded to these defeats, too, we have learned a great about him and about his team.

He began by claiming that he had not failed at all. Remember the B+ grade he gave himself for his first year? Tell that to the 4 million Americans who lost their jobs last year, and to the millions more who stopped looking. Explain that to the world’s financial markets who gaped at trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. Square that with the absence of any meaningful sanctions against Iran even as it funds terror and races to become a nuclear nation. President Obama’s self-proclaimed B+ will go down in history as the biggest exaggeration since Al Gore’s invention of the internet!

Unable to convince us that his failure was a success, he turned to the second dodge of losing teams: try to pin the blame on someone else. Did you see his State of the Union address? First, he took on the one group in the room that was restrained from responding—the Supreme Court. The President found it inexplicable that the first amendment right of free speech should be guaranteed not just to labor union corporations and media corporations, but equally to all corporations, big and small. When it was all over, I think most Americans felt as I did: his noisy critique and bombast did not register as clear and convincingly as Justice Alito’s silent lips forming these words: “Not true!”

Next he blamed the Republicans in the room, condescending to lecture them on the workings of the budget process, a process many of them had in fact mastered while he was still at Harvard Law School. He blamed Republicans for the gridlock that has blocked his favorite legislation; but he knows as well as we do that he did not need one single solitary Republican vote in either house to pass his legislation. It was Democrats who blocked him, Democrats who said “no” to his liberal agenda after they had been home to their districts and heard from the American people. As Everett Dirksen used to say, “When they felt the heat, they saw the light.” God bless every American who said no!

Of course, the President accuses us of being the party of “no.” It’s as if he thinks that saying “no” is by definition a bad thing. In fact, it is right and praiseworthy to say no to bad things. It is right to say no to cap and trade, no to card check, no to government healthcare, and no to higher taxes. My party should never be a rubber stamp for rubber check spending.

But before we move away from this “no” epithet the Democrats are fond of applying to us, let’s ask the Obama folks why they say “no” —no to a balanced budget, no to reforming entitlements, no to malpractice reform, no to missile defense In Eastern Europe, no to prosecuting Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a military tribunal, and no to tax cuts that create new jobs. You see, we conservatives don’t have a corner on saying no; we’re just the ones who say it when that’s the right thing to do!

And that leads us to who he has most recently charged with culpability for his failures: the American people. It seems that we have failed to understand his wise plans for us. If he just slows down, he reasons, and makes a concerted effort to explain Obama-care in a way even we can understand, if we just listen better, then we will get it.

Actually, Americans have been listening quite attentively. And they have been watching. When he barred CSPAN from covering the healthcare deliberations, they saw President Obama break his promise of transparency. When the Democrat leadership was empowered to bribe Nebraska’s Senator Nelson, they saw President Obama break his promise of a new kind of politics in Washington. And when he cut a special and certainly unconstitutional healthcare deal with the unions, they saw him not just break his promise, they saw the most blatant and reprehensible manifestation of political payoff in modern memory. No, Mr. President, the American people didn’t hear and see too little, they saw too much!

Here again, with all due respect, President Obama fails to understand America. He said: “With all the lobbying and horse-trading, the process left most Americans wondering, ‘What’s in it for me?’” That’s not at all what they were asking. They were asking: “What’s in it for America?”

America will not endure government run healthcare, a new and expansive entitlement, an inexplicable and surely vanishing cut in Medicare and an even greater burden of taxes. Americans said no because Obama-care is bad care for America!

When it comes to shifting responsibility for failure, however, no one is a more frequent object of President Obama’s reproach than President Bush. It’s wearing so thin that even the late night shows make fun of it. I am convinced that history will judge President Bush far more kindly—he pulled us from a deepening recession following the attack of 9-11, he overcame teachers unions to test school children and evaluate schools, he took down the Taliban, waged a war against the jihadists and was not afraid to call it what it is—a war, and he kept us safe. I respect his silence even in the face of the assaults on his record that come from this administration. But at the same time, I also respect the loyalty and indefatigable defense of truth that comes from our “I don’t give a damn” Vice President Dick Cheney!

I’m afraid that after all the finger pointing is finished, it has become clear who is responsible for President Obama’s lost year, the 10% unemployment year—President Obama and his fellow Democrats. So when it comes to pinning blame, pin the tail on the donkeys.

There’s a good deal of conjecture about the cause of President Obama’s failures. As he frequently reminds us, he assumed the presidency at a difficult time. That’s the reason we argued during the campaign that these were not the times for on the job training. Had he or his advisors spent even a few years in the real economy, they would have learned that the number one cause of failure in the private sector is lack of focus, and that the first rule of turning around any troubled enterprise is focus, focus, focus. And so, when he assumed the presidency, his energy should have been focused on fixing the economy and creating jobs, and to succeeding in our fight against radical violent jihad in Iraq and Afghanistan. Instead, he applied his time and political capital to his ill-conceived healthcare takeover and to building his personal popularity in foreign countries. He failed to focus, and so he failed.

But there was an even bigger problem than lack of focus. Ronald Reagan used to say this about liberals: “It’s not that they’re ignorant, it’s that what they know is wrong.” Too often, when it came to what President Obama knew, he was wrong.

He correctly acknowledged that the government doesn’t create jobs, that only the private sector can do that. He said that the government can create the conditions, the environment, which leads the private sector to add employment. But consider not what he said, but what he did last year, and ask whether it helped or hurt the environment for investment, growth, and new jobs.

Announcing 2011 tax increases for individuals and businesses and for capital gains, hurt.

Passing cap and trade, hurt.

Giving trial lawyers a free pass, hurt.

Proposing card check to eliminate secret ballots in union elections, hurt.

Holding on to GM stock and insisting on calling the shots there, hurt.

Making a grab for healthcare, almost 1/5th of our economy, hurt.

Budgeting government deficits in the trillions, hurt.

And scapegoating and demonizing businesspeople, hurt.

President Obama instituted the most anti-growth, anti-investment, anti-jobs measures we’ve seen in our lifetimes. He called his agenda ambitious. I call it reckless. He scared employers, so jobs were scarce. His nearly trillion dollar stimulus created not one net new job in the private sector, but it saved and grew jobs in the government sector— the one place we should have shed jobs. And even today, because he has been unwilling or unable to define the road ahead, uncertainty and lack of predictability permeate the private economy, and prolongs its stall. America is not better off than it was 1.8 trillion dollars ago.

Will the economy and unemployment recover? Of course. Thanks to a vibrant and innovative citizenry, they always do. But this president will not deserve the credit he will undoubtedly claim. He has prolonged the recession, expanded the pain of unemployment, and added to the burden of debt we will leave future generations. President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and their team have failed the American people, and that is why their majority will be out the door. Isn’t it fitting that so many of those who have contempt for the private sector will soon find themselves back in it?

The people of America are looking to conservatives for leadership, and we must not fail them.

Conservatism has had from its inception a vigorously positive, intellectually rigorous agenda. That agenda should have three pillars: strengthen the economy, strengthen our security, and strengthen our families.

We will strengthen the economy by simplifying and lowering taxes, by replacing outmoded regulation with modern, dynamic regulation, by opening markets to American goods, by strengthening our currency and our capital markets, and by investing in research and basic science. Instead of leading the world in how much we borrow, we will make sure that we lead the world in how much we build and create and invest.

We will strengthen our security by building missile defense, restoring our military might, and standing-by and strengthening our intelligence officers. And conservatives believe in providing constitutional rights to our citizens, not to enemy combatants like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed!

On our watch, the conversation with a would-be suicide bomber will not begin with the words, “You have the right to remain silent!”

Our conservative agenda strengthens our families in part by putting our schools on track to be the best in the world. Because great schools start with great teachers, we will insist on hiring teachers from the top third of college graduates, and we will give better teachers better pay. School accountability, school choice and cyber schools will be priorities. We will put parents and teachers back in charge of education, not the fat cat CEO’s of the teachers unions!

Strong families will have excellent healthcare. Getting healthcare coverage for the uninsured should be accomplished at the state level, not a one-size-fits all Pelosi plan. The right way to rein-in healthcare cost is not by making it more like the Post Office, it’s by making it more like a consumer-driven market. The answer for healthcare is market incentives not healthcare by a Godzilla-size government bureaucracy!

When it comes to our role in the world, our conservative agenda hews to the principles that have defined our nation’s foreign policy for over six decades: we will promote and defend the American ideals of political freedom, free enterprise, and human rights. We will stand with our allies, and confront those who threaten peace and destroy liberty.

There’s much more on our positive, intellectually rigorous conservative agenda. Not all of it is popular. But the American people have shown that they are ready for truth to trump hope. The truth is that government is not the solution to all our problems.

This year, I have taken the time to write a book that tells the truth about the challenges our nation faces, and about the conservative solutions needed to overcome them. I have titled it: No Apology: The Case for American Greatness. I’ve set up a booth outside so that you can buy a few hundred copies each. Well, maybe one or two.

Sometimes I wonder whether Washington’s liberal politicians understand the greatness of America. Let me explain why I say that.

At Christmas-time, I was in Wal-Mart to buy some toys for my grandkids. As I waited in the check-out line, I took a good look around the store. I thought to myself of the impact Sam Walton had on his company. Sam Walton was all about good value on everything the customer might want. And so is Wal-Mart: rock bottom prices and tens of thousands of items.

The impact that founders like Sam Walton have on their enterprises is actually quite remarkable. In many ways, Microsoft is a reflection of Bill Gates, just as Apple is of Steve Jobs. Disneyland is a permanent tribute to Walt Disney himself—imaginative and whimsical. Virgin Airlines is as irreverent and edgy as its founder. As you look around you, you see that people shape enterprises, sometimes for many years even after they are gone.

People shape businesses.

People shape countries.

America reflects the values of the people who first landed here, those who founded the nation, those who won our freedom, and those who made America the leader of the world.

America was discovered and settled by pioneers. Later, the founders launched an entirely new concept of nation, one where the people would be sovereign, not the king, not the state. And this would apply not just to government, but also to the American economy: the individual would pursue his or her happiness in freedom, independent from government dictate. Every American was free to be an inventor, an innovator, a founder. America became the land of opportunity and a nation of pioneers.

We attracted people of pioneering spirit from around the world. They came here for freedom and opportunity, knowing that the cost was incredibly high: leaving behind family and the familiar, learning a new language, often living at first in poverty, sometimes facing prejudice, working long and hard hours.

All of these pioneers built a nation of incomparable prosperity and unrivaled security.

After its founding, our national economy grew thanks to more pioneers—people like Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, William Procter and Robert Wood Johnson, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard and Thomas Watson. These are names we know—but the less well known are just as vital American innovators, and they number in the millions.

That American pioneering spirit is what propelled us to master the industrial age just as today we marshal the information age.

This course for America, chosen by the founders, has been settled for over 200 years. Ours is the creed of the pioneers, the innovators, the strivers who expect no guarantee of success, but ask only to live and work in freedom. This creed is under assault in Washington today. Liberals are convinced that government knows better than the people how to run our businesses, how to choose winning technologies, how to manage healthcare, how to grow an economy, and how to order our very lives. They want to gain through government takeover what they could never achieve in the competitive economy—power and control over the people of America. If these liberal neo-monarchists succeed, they will kill the very spirit that has built the nation—the innovating, inventing, creating, independent current that runs from coast to coast.

This is the liberal agenda for government. It does not encourage pioneers, inventors and investors—it suffocates them.

In a world where others have lost their liberty by trading it away for the false promises of the state, we choose to hold to our founding principles. We will stop these power-seekers where they stand. We will keep America, America, by retaining its character as the land of opportunity. We welcome the entrepreneur, the inventor, the innovator. We will insist on greatness from every one of our citizens, and rather than apologizing for who we are or for what we have accomplished, we will celebrate our nation’s strength and goodness. American patriots have defeated tyrants, liberated the oppressed, and rescued the afflicted. America’s model of innovation, capitalism and free enterprise has lifted literally billons of the world’s people out of poverty. America has been a force for good like no other in this world, and for that we make no apology.

There was so much not to like in it.

First, this idiocy that somehow only now that he's pulling troops out of Iraq, in accordance by the way with an agreement forged between the Iraqis and his predecessor George W. Bush, is there enough to go "on offense" against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Second, he reveals his utter pettiness in what Jonah Goldberg refers to as his "lawyerly avoidance of reality":

This is what passes for bipartisan graciousness at the highest level of national security? Bush was a really swell guy who loved his country. Okay. What about the fact that he was right about the surge and our ability to leave Iraq (as much as we are) is attributable not to Obama’s fidelity to his campaign pledge, but to a decision made by Obama’s predecessor, a decision Obama opposed vociferously. I don’t expect an “I was wrong” from an Oval Office address (though it would be nice — as it would have been from Bush more than once, too). But Obama’s lawyerly avoidance of reality makes him seem petty and raises the suspicion that he can’t think straight about these issues. That is dangerous.

And third, he demands that Americans must now get behind the troops returning home and, um, do everything they can to implement Obama's destructive agenda.

And so at this moment, as we wind down the war in Iraq, we must tackle those challenges at home with as much energy, and grit, and sense of common purpose as our men and women in uniform who have served abroad. They have met every test that they faced. Now, it is our turn. Now, it is our responsibility to honor them by coming together, all of us, and working to secure the dream that so many generations have fought for –the dream that a better life awaits anyone who is willing to work for it and reach for it.

Our most urgent task is to restore our economy, and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work. To strengthen our middle class, we must give all our children the education they deserve, and all our workers the skills that they need to compete in a global economy. We must jumpstart industries that create jobs, and end our dependence on foreign oil. We must unleash the innovation that allows new products to roll off our assembly lines, and nurture the ideas that spring from our entrepreneurs. This will be difficult. But in the days to come, it must be our central mission as a people, and my central responsibility as President.

Wow. Do we get uniforms, too?

Someone needs to remind President Bullshit that his central responsibility is to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution. And that Someone is the voters who will go to the polls in November to stop him in his tracks and reverse the damage. In other words, Repeal Obama.

So let's look ahead to November and see if Americans can come together to make Obama's dreams reality, albeit perhaps not as he intends.

And so at this moment, as we wind down the war in Iraq, we must tackle those challenges at home with as much energy, and grit, and sense of common purpose as our men and women in uniform who have served abroad. They have met every test that they faced.

Yes they have. And now they are returning home to record unemployment, trillions in debt, and no hope for economic recovery, all thanks to Obama. And that war on terror they've been fighting for the last nine years? Obama won't even call it by its name, that's how committed he is to whitewashing it. He was against the surge and voted to cut off funds to the military in Iraq. He refused to acknowledge its success even after it was obvious. He won't offer one thin slice of genuine praise, even on their behalf, to their real Commander-in-Chief, George W. Bush. And he is busy right now gutting the very military they have served with such honor and trying to cut the absentee military vote out of future elections.

And now -- what? He thinks they are going to vote Democrat in November?

Now, it is our responsibility to honor them by coming together, all of us, and working to secure the dream that so many generations have fought for –the dream that a better life awaits anyone who is willing to work for it and reach for it.

Actually, Sparky, Americans were already living that dream in large numbers until you and your "progressive" friends set an IED under the American and world economies with your monstrously destructive big-government Ponzi schemes.

But hey, come November, you will see with astounding clarity that Americans are willing to come together -- in a wholly organic, spontaneous and individual rights-driven grass roots movement that hews to the original American Revolution by waging war against tyrannical government-- to secure that dream again, the dream that a better life awaits anyone who is willing to work for it and reach for it.

And they will take back both houses of the Legislative Branch as the first step to achieving that very end.

Our most urgent task is to restore our economy, and put the millions of Americans who have lost their jobs back to work.

Too true. Keeping the Bush tax cuts and repealing Obamacare will certainly help. In fact, booting the Democrats, unleashing Congressional oversight and dismantling Obama's ruinous agenda will practically guarantee Americans reach every one of Obama's stated goals:

• Strengthen our middle class;
• Give all children the education they deserve and workers the skills they need;
• Jumpstart industries that create jobs;
• End dependence on foreign oil (Secretary of Energy Sarah Palin);
• Unleash innovation (entrepreneurs will take care of themselves - that's what makes them entrepreneurs);

President Obama is right: doing all this would be terribly difficult were he to retain all his ill-gotten power. It will be much less difficult once he is reined in. In the days to come, it will be We The People's "central mission" to do just that.

Someone wake me when the idiot left stops its dishonest caterwauling over Rush Limbaugh's perfectly logical judgements against the Messiah.

NRO's Peter Wehner wastes far too much time trying to explain the truth to idiots who aren't interested in hearing it:

The argument Limbaugh is making is fairly simple to follow: President Obama is proposing plans Limbaugh believes (with justification, in my view) will hurt our economy and hurt our country. If Obama fails in getting his plans through Congress, we will be better off. Certainly one can make the argument that Obama’s various plans, from his “stimulus” package to his profligate, record-spending budget, have caused the market to go south at an alarming rate. Obama’s plans aren’t the only reason the market is going down, but it is unquestionably a key contributing factor.

If Obama is proposing policies that you believe vary from being unwise to malignant, you would want those policies to be blocked, which is another way of saying you want Obama’s ambitions to fail. That is what Rush Limbaugh is arguing, and it’s entirely
reasonable (and not terribly controversial) for him to hold this view.

But those in the MSM are pretending that those who hope Obama’s plans fail are really rooting against America. That is nonsense. Limbaugh wants America to succeed; as a conservative, he hopes Obama’s astonishing liberal power-grab fails. It’s really not all that complicated to understand.

What I wonder, though, is where Anderson Cooper and his colleagues were during the Iraq debate, when the surge was clearly beginning to work — yet leading Democrats, one after another, said it was failing. This was a situation in which America was engaged in a war of enormous consequences and, if we had lost, it would have been a geo-political and humanitarian catastrophe. Yet anti-war critics – including Sen. Barack Obama — insisted on promoting the narrative of America’s failure in Iraq when the evidence was the opposite.

Where was the outrage then, I wonder? And why wasn’t Cooper insisting that those who opposed President Bush's critics line up behind him? We could be generous and merely call it a double standard. Or we could be less generous and call it hero-worship by Obama’s media courtiers.

All of which of course is true.

Back in the Clinton era you had a better chance of getting a clean New York taxi than an honest response from either the press or the Clinton War Room to Rush's criticisms of Slick Willy, and that's how it is again today with the Messiah camp, which is made up of pretty much the same crowd. The strategy is the same too, proving that you can't teach vicious liberals new tricks: Carville the Frenulum and Begala the Forehead are checking in with Rahm in the Left Wing every morning to co-ordinate their attacks on Rush, which are meant to divert attention away from Obama's economic trainwreck that, unlike those of us who had the brains to cash out before the bastard drove the economy into the tank, will likely impoverish every last fucking idiot that voted for the Great Jug-Eared One.

All the talking heads on CNN, MSLSD and the other walking dead are full of crap and they know it. They know that contra their propaganda, Rush doesn't want America to fail. As always, they have to lie to maintain their storyline, because to tell the truth would force it to collapse. Every last one of those squealing over The Talent On Loan From God hoped and prayed for President Bush to fail in every possible way they could imagine, without regard for the consequences. Fail in Iraq, fail in the war against Islamofascism, fail in his efforts to protect America from more attacks, fail in his quest to free 50 million Muslims from the clutches of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Casualties in Iraq? Good for the Democrats' numbers. Bad economic indicators? Just ask Dick Gephardt, who declared that "for every one hundred point drop in the dow, we gain another seat". John Murtha worked overtime slandering the fine young men and women of the armed forces in Iraq, time after time, fabricating out of his hatred for America one war crime after another, so viciously that those he accused have finally had enough and are suing the rotten old bastard. Harry Reid brazenly declared Iraq "lost" in an attempt to pre-empt public support for the surge that finally, horror of horrors for Democrats and idiots, established the victory in Iraq that President Jug-Ears still refuses to declare, which is why the military audiences he uses for propaganda will save their applause for their next get-together with their beloved President Dubya.

At the outset of the Surge in Iraq, the despicable Reid and his fellow Democrat lickspittles accused General Petreaus of planning to lie in his testimony before Congress. Hillary declared that she had to "suspend disbelief" before taking the General's testimony.

The MSM and the idiot left accused Bush of every possible crime against every possible straw man they could conjure. And now that Rush Limbaugh declares that he wants Obama's transformation of America into a socialist welfare state to fail, the whining and recriminations and accusations and condemnations from the left have reached a fever pitch.

Well. Whine on, kiddies. This is war, economic and ideological war. And you will surrender without condition.

Announcing a tax on the banks had its obviously intended effect yesterday when the S&P fell by almost 1% after a six day run and bank stocks tanked across the globe. That should signal to one and all that Obama is intentionally putting even more downward pressure on the economy, moving once again to punish a targeted area of the private sector where he has no business whatsoever extending his reach.

At the same time Obama is punishing private sector bankers for their successes, he is doing the exact opposite with Fan and Fred, both of whom he has cut loose from any fiscal accountability whatsoever and whose executives are drawing huge salaries. This is baldfaced scapegoating by a president looking to divert attention away from the disastrous unemployment he has wrought with his insane and immoral economic policies.

Obama’s Found a Villain to Distract the Angry Voter

The voters are getting angry at The One. A majority disapprove of how he’s handling health care “reform” AND the economy. The AP reports that the billions spent on road construction has done nothing to lower unemployment. The “most popular government program” in years, Cash-4 -Clunkers was actually, predictably, a flop. Unemployment is way higher than they said it would be if we didn’t rush through the borrow and spend porkulus bill...

So, what to do to keep the rabble from voicing their displeasure? Blame someone else! Obama wants to tax the big bad banks. He says it’s to get our TARP money back and to reduce undue risks by the greedy bankers. The One wants you to believe that the big banks are the kind of guys who would take the last piece of pizza from the birthday boy at Chuck-E-Cheese (see above photo).

Obama has been strident in his criticism of bankers, calling them “fat cats” last month in an interview that aired on the eve of their visit to the White House. With public anger over the bailout still strong, Obama has embraced populist rhetoric in an effort to shame bank executives into paying back the government more quickly and their executives less lavishly...

If the purpose is to get the TARP money back from the banks, that’s almost done. Most of the banks have paid it back and the rest are working on it. The money we’ve totally flushed away is the stuff we gave out after we turned TARP into a giant slush fund – the bailouts to the auto companies, AIG, Goldman Sachs, etc.

If the purpose is to get banks to quit taking outrageous risks, I have a better solution – When questionable investments put banks at risk of failure…LET THEM FAIL. That will temper risk. Failed banks will be broken up and sold off to sound banks. Let capitalism take care of it. Get the government out of it.

The real purpose is to distract the voters from the failure of the stimulus, boost Obama’s approval ratings and create a new tax to redistribute the wealth. It certainly isn’t a way to grow the economy.

No Hope, And Certainly No Change

Obama Said™ back in January that if the Porkulus Bill didn't pass RFN that unemployment would get as high as 9 percent. But as Rush Limbaugh has recently pointed out, the most meaningless phrase in the English language is "Obama Said™".

Via America's Anchorman, this illuminating comparison of job losses and subsequent recovery in every recession since 1948. Five months after the bottom of the worst-case 1974 recession, job losses have almost doubled since Obama took office, and Obama's economy is still sinking like a boatload of Gigantic Cajones.



Calculated Risk is tracking the shiny new Obama economy.

Rush Limbaugh on today's intellectually insulting "jobs saved or created" bullshit from Obama spokesnitwit Robert Gibbs:

Mr. Gibbs, your boss has destroyed millions of jobs. Your boss Barack Obama has destroyed millions of small businesses. Your boss, Mr. Gibbs, and you are party to this because you promote this disaster; your boss has destroyed the lives of countless American families. What is this excrement about jobs saved or jobs created?

Barack Obama is destroying this economy. He's destroying management, he's destroying assembly lines, he's destroying opportunity, he's destroying hope. He's destroying liberty for future generations. He hasn't created or saved a damned thing. Barack Obama destroys. He destroys and destroys. The only jobs he has created are government jobs. He stole money just like Pelosi is stealing money. With no accountability, Obama is stealing money from the private sector and paying people to work for him so he can steal more.

This administration is engaging in unconstitutional acts: this country does not provide constitutionally for a "pay czar" to tell anybody what they can and cannot earn. This Constitution does not provide for the government to mandate its citizens buy anything.

He is destroying home ownership, he is destroying entrepreneurship, he is destroying the industrial heart of this nation; he is trying to destroy the military. Barack Obama creates nothing but havoc, unsettledness and angst and disheartenment.

Barack Obama is a Destroyer, not a creator. The only people saving and creating is us, the American people. The American people are doing everything they can to save their jobs. Small businesses are doing everything they can to hold on to their employees, maybe hire some more. The economic heart of this engine is its people, not Barack Obama. The intellectual heart of this nation is its people, not Barack Obama. The last, best hope of this nation is our people; it is not Barack Obama. Barack Obama is an obstacle in the way of the people who make this country work, and it is an insult to my intelligence, it is audacious for this man and his administration to be putting out fraudulent, phony numbers about the number of jobs HE has "created or saved". We have lost three point three million jobs since Barack Obama was inaugurated... it is bad and getting worse precisely because of what Obama has done.

Whatever Happened To Not Wanting To Meddle?

Obama purposely set fire to the race issue by eagerly answering a planted question at the end of his Wednesday night Obamacare infomercial, raising the issue of racial profiling by racially profiling a white Cambridge police officer as, surprise, surprise, a racist. Even while admitting that he didn't know the facts about the arrest of his distinguished homey, Professor Henry Louis "Yo Mama" Gates, Obama opined that the Cambridge police acted "stupidly".

Then he doubled down, claiming he didn't know what all the fuss was about- all he did was accuse a white cop of racism without a shred of supporting evidence. "Think nothing of it- I do it all the time."

This episode again reveals the chip on Obama's shoulder that became evident when he called his grammy a "typical white woman" and showed up again Wednesday in painting the arresting officer as a stupid racist, a characterization that he now cannot afford to back down from, because, as we all know, Messiahs don't apologize. Can't afford to. But it's pretty obvious who really "acted stupidly" here, and that's president McJugears.

So even as Obama phones Jim the Cop to blow smoke up his cracker ass, he still does not apologize for, well, you know, calling him a stupid racist and all. Without knowing any of the facts, and after again demonstrating that he is never more than a heartbeat away from using the race card. And why not? It's worked for him for years- "community organizer", remember?

Prejudging without the facts, based on racial bias, based on racial stereotypes: I thought that was exclusive to NASCAR fans, ain't that so, lefties?

A post-racial president?

Yo mama.

Ace: Breaking: Obama Phones Officer Crowley; Calls Him Good Police Officer and Good Man; Allows He "G[ave] Impression" That He Was Maligning Cambridge Cops

Yeah, pretty sure Jim the Cop knows full well who he is without Obama telling him.

Just One Minute: "With two wars and a faltering health care reform effort, maybe President Stupidly should not be bloviating about local police matters, especially when he does not have the facts."

Power Line: The President As Hack Ideologue: "It is sad, though not suprising, to see our president fall into the familiar trap of ideologues, namely basing their view of what happened in a highly individualized event not on the facts of that event but rather on their prejudices...THE PRESIDENT CONTINUES TO ACT STUPIDLY: Today, Obama said that with all that's going on in the country with health care and the economy and the wars abroad, "it doesn't make sense to arrest a guy in his own home if he's not causing a serious disturbance." This is idiotic. Whether a person was justly arrested in connection based on a given incident has nothing to do with what's happening with health care or in foreign wars. Is Obama trying to say that the arrest would have been okay if everyone had health insurance, the economy was prosperous, and we were out of Iraq and Afghanistan?"

Or something.

Via Hot Air
Prior to attacking the NAFTA Agreement in recent statements, Barack Rodham Obama's campaign contacted Canadian Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Wilson to assure him that such statements were only campaign rhetoric and not to be taken seriously by the Canadian government.

Barack Obama has ratcheted up his attacks on NAFTA, but a senior member of his campaign team told a Canadian official not to take his criticisms seriously, CTV News has learned. Both Obama and Hillary Clinton have been critical of the long-standing North American Free Trade Agreement over the course of the Democratic primaries, saying that the deal has cost U.S. workers’ jobs.

Within the last month, a top staff member for Obama’s campaign telephoned Michael Wilson, Canada’s ambassador to the United States, and warned him that Obama would speak out against NAFTA, according to Canadian sources.

The staff member reassured Wilson that the criticisms would only be campaign rhetoric, and should not be taken at face value.

So Obama formalizes with the Canadian Government that he is lying to American voters in service to absconding with the White House. Or he is lying to the Canadian Government; neither decision is a good start for an aspiring President; not to his friendly neighbor, trading partner and close ally, and certainly not to American voters. In any case, the world now knows that Barack Obama is an opportunistic liar.

Ed Morrissey:

In case the Democrats don’t realize it, Canada is our most important trading partner — and they rely on NAFTA heavily. Canada is our number one resource for oil, followed by our other NAFTA partner Mexico. If we junk NAFTA, it will create a fairly large diplomatic rift and ripples throughout our economy. Instead of making us more popular in the world, the Democrats will start making us less popular on our own continent and alienate our closest friend, as well as damage all three economies.

Perhaps that’s why Obama’s campaign didn’t want the Canadians to take him seriously. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans are taking him seriously, even if Obama apparently doesn’t return the favor.

The White House sent Rahm Emanuel out to the Sunday show circuit to cover for his inept boss by doing what he does best: attacking political opponents with a flurry of lies. It's the oldest diversionary tactic in the world and it comes not a moment too soon, because the truth about the administration's knowledge and mishandling of events leading up to the Deepwater Horizon explosion is finally emerging, as toxic as the gusher itself, and heading straight for Obama.

First the Ballerina lied about Joe Barton's "shakedown" comment as thoroughly as anyone possibly could, before spilling it that the government under his boss "hadn't done its job." Joe Barton is a decoy; Obama's dereliction of duty for any and every political gain is the target that decoy is designed to protect.

BP is a major Democrat supporter, most importantly and germainly of Cap and Trade legislation, the imposition of which would be a boon to BP and a blow to the American economy. BP bet its single biggest political contribution ever, a million dollars, on Obama's presidential election campaign in support of his own Cap & Trade aspirations, and no doubt in informed anticipation of other favors. That's how it works with Obama, a fact BP apparently knew very well when it wrote that big fat check.

Which by the way Obama should give back to BP's shareholders or pay into the 20B fund.

Oh yes: Deepwater Horizon Inspections: MMS Skipped Monthly Inspections On Doomed Rig

Now the Democrat vermin are flooding in on BP's behalf. Start with Tony Podesta, brother of John Podesta, who is head of the Center for American "Progress" bought and paid for by George Soros, was chief of Bill Clinton's impeachment trial staff and director of Obama's transition team. Tony is working with the Queen of Doom herself, Jamie Gorelick, whose famous Wall helped enable the 9/11 attack and whose plundering of Fanny Mae set a record for brazen taxpayer embezzlement.

There are GOP players as well, but they are tokens on the periphery. This is all about the big Democrat fish hoarding to feed on the chum Obama is throwing their way.

Instapundit: WHY WON’T OBAMA waive the Jones Act? Because union interests are more important than the coastlines of red states?

Obama got record donations from BP while BP got a free ride from federal regulators.

Meanwhile, how about that double-digit unemployment rate about which Obama has done NOTHING?

Michael Barone on how Obama has extorted property belonging under U.S. bankruptcy law to secured American investors to pay off his unsecured union pals, and how that shortsighted thuggery will come back to haunt Obama's anointed winners. And the economy with them.

Think carefully about what’s happening here. The White House, presumably car czar Steven Rattner and deputy Ron Bloom, is seeking to transfer the property of one group of people to another group that is politically favored. In the process, it is setting aside basic property rights in favor of rewarding the United Auto Workers for the support the union has given the Democratic Party. The only possible limit on the White House’s power is the bankruptcy judge, who might not go along.

Michigan politicians of both parties joined Obama in denouncing the holdout bondholders. They point to the sad plight of UAW retirees not getting full payment of the health care benefits the union negotiated with Chrysler. But the plight of the beneficiaries of the pension funds represented by the bondholders is sad too. Ordinarily you would expect these claims to be weighed and determined by the rule of law. But not apparently in this administration.

Obama’s attitude toward the rule of law is apparent in the words he used to describe what he is looking for in a nominee to replace Justice David Souter. He wants “someone who understands justice is not just about some abstract legal theory,” he said, but someone who has “empathy.” In other words, judges should decide cases so that the right people win, not according to the rule of law.

The Chrysler negotiations will not be the last occasion for this administration to engage in bailout favoritism and crony capitalism. There’s a May 31 deadline to come up with a settlement for General Motors. And there will be others. In the meantime, who is going to buy bonds from unionized companies if the government is going to take their money away and give it to the union? (Emphasis mine. And the answer is no-one.) We have just seen an episode of Gangster Government. It is likely to be part of a continuing series.

I believe Obama announced in one of his long series of boring acceptance speeches, which one I don't remember, that his election would mark the day the waters ceased their rise. He certainly was prophetic. The problem is that it's the financial waters he is sending down the drain. Unless he is stopped, the economy will be on dry ground for a generation or more while the world's money takes refuge, as it always does, from gross leftist greed and stupidity.

You think those Enron guys were thieves? Just wait 'til you get a load of Obama and his pals, because you ain't seen nothin' yet.

What a day for Obama,
What a day for a daydreamin' boy.
He's lost in a daydream,
Dreamin' 'bout his bundle of joy.

What a day for Obama: everything is converging to take down both Captain Wonderful and his Democratic Congressional majority in the coming year, with The One's socialist dream of a destroyed America finally taking fatal hits in a fast-approaching fait accompli.

The list of troubles is a long one.

Obama can't effectively prosecute the War on Terror because he is deluded about it; he has angered every potential ally both foreign and domestic, both left and right; he doesn't want to hear the message he is getting, from the very financial advisors he selected to his Cabinet, that the economy needs private-sector jobs - the kind that only come via tax cuts and setting business free; he has handed the Obamacare steamroller to a runaway, totalitarian legislative branch run by PelosiReid.

Obama, through Attorney General Eric Holder, is extending aid and comfort to the enemy by affording captured illegal enemy combatants full Constitutional protections as if their terror attacks were criminal matters and not miltary ones; Iran is laughing at Obama's obsequiousness; Israel is aghast at his arrogance.

Obama's response to the Detroit terror attack was appalling, and the followup by Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Incompetano claiming that "the system worked" was flagrantly dishonest, completely oblivious to the potential gravity of the attack, and an insult to Americans' intelligence. The subsequent damage-control tour by Obama's Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan on the Sunday news shows was an unparalleled fiasco, revealing weapons-grade ideological blindness at the very top of the Obama administration.

Now comes news today that Democratic senators are jumping ship like a herd of rats. From Red State, this is big:

Bill Ritter, the Governor of Colorado, is gone. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) is gone. Chris Dodd (D-CT) is gone.

That's right.

Obama and the Democrats as a whole are heading for a reckoning with the American people later this year, and it ain't going to be pretty.

Not only that: they would want Obama to fail.

Rush Limbaugh discusses it here, and Byron York here.

First, here's Byron York:

In the Federalist Papers, written 221 years ago, Madison addressed the need for a Senate to accompany the more populist House of Representatives. An upper body, he wrote, 'may be sometimes necessary as a defense to the people against their own temporary errors and delusions.' For the times when a political leader would attempt to capitalize on those errors and delusions, the Founders prescribed the Senate, with its members elected to terms three times the length of those in the House, originally chosen not by the people but by the state legislatures. From Federalist 63: 'There are particular moments in public affairs when the people, stimulated by some irregular passion, or some illicit advantage, or misled by the artful misrepresentations of interested men, may call for measures which they themselves will afterwards be the most ready to lament and condemn. In these critical moments, how salutary will be the interference of some temperate and respectable body of citizens, in order to check the misguided career, and to suspend the blow meditated by the people against themselves, until reason, justice, and truth can regain their authority over the public mind?'

Now is the time for the salutary interference of temperate and respectable citizens, otherwise known as the 41 Republicans in the United States Senate. It is their job to help the president in areas where there is widespread agreement that he should be helped, and hold the line on everything else.

Of course the economy is in crisis. But if Obama had his way, everything would be treated as if it were a crisis. Health care is a crisis. The environment is a crisis. Education is a crisis. In truth, those other areas are not crises, and the Senate’s job is to delay action on them until Obama’s power to stir popular passions fades. Then, whatever legislation is truly needed on health care, etc., can be undertaken in a more reasoned and measured way.

Five years ago, in the 2004 presidential race, Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg did some research on behalf of candidate John Kerry. Greenberg wanted Kerry to be more bold in advocating wholesale change, so he convened a series of focus groups to test the public’s reaction to a number of aggressive policy proposals.

Greenberg found that voters would accept boldness on an issue or two, provided they were really important. But when a candidate promised bold action across the board, the people balked. “While voters are clearly open to bold initiatives to major problems, they may be less attracted to the candidate who wants to act boldly in every area, without exception,” Greenberg concluded. “All together, that may have suggested an expanding scope for government beyond what people felt they could trust.”

In our current situation, the people elected Barack Obama and large Democratic majorities in Congress. They didn’t elect them to do nothing. When action is needed to deal with the economic crisis — it would be nice to have a financial stabilization plan, Mr. President — they will support it.

But they didn’t elect Obama to change everything, either. With Pelosi eager to go along with the president’s every wish, it’s up to temperate and respectable citizens to distinguish the crisis from the non-crisis, and act accordingly.

In other words, it’s up to the Senate to slow things down. Just like Madison planned.

Now Rush, speaking to the newcomers to his audience which, thanks to the machinations of the Messiah, Axlerod, Carville, Begala and Greenberg, is expanding geometrically:

If our nation was all about a single individual succeeding simply because that individual must succeed regardless, we wouldn't have the form of government that we do. Now, conflating the president and the country -- and by that I mean, assuming that the president is always the country, assuming that the president always has the country's best interests at heart, such as the founders did, turns a functioning democracy into a robotic cult. I fear that that's what we have right now. We have a cult of fear and celebrity, a robotic cult, that is epitomized in Warren Buffett, it's epitomized by Jack Welch, it's epitomized by Barton Biggs and Jim Cramer and anybody else who knows what they see is devastatingly wrong, is horribly wrong, but because there is a fear to oppose, because the assumption is that Obama is the country, that Obama equals the best interests of the country simply because he's Obama, that's what gives you a cult. The worst part of it is that many of these people who are making hay over this Limbaugh-wants-Obama-to-fail garbage know full well, ladies and gentlemen, that what I just told you is the case.

This is not an honest debate going on here, as we have demonstrated in the first hour of the program with the Warren Buffett sound bites and the Barton Biggs sound bites and the Jim Cramer sound bites. It's not an honest debate. What's happening here is the most cynical kind of down and dirty politics by people who not only wanted George W. Bush to fail, but worked night and day to ensure that he failed. I say to you again, if the Founders wanted a situation where the government was about one official succeeding, then George Washington would have accepted the role he was offered as king. But we have separation of powers. We have division of powers. All of this is designed to ensure that a president fails when he is wrong. The Framers wanted the country to succeed.

Encounter Books is offering a series of Broadsides written by some of America's most authoritative conservative commentators, each chronicling the ways in which President Obama is wreaking havoc on the economy, electoral system, national security, health care and foreign policy vis Israel:

Uniting an 18th-century sense of political urgency and rhetorical wit (think The Federalist Papers, Common Sense) with 21st-century technology and channels of distribution, Encounter Broadsides offer indispensable ammunition for intelligent debate on the critical issues of our time. Written with passion by some of our most authoritative authors, Encounter Broadsides make the case for liberty and the institutions of democratic capitalism at a time when they are under siege from the resurgence of collectivist sentiment. Read them in a sitting and come away knowing the best we can hope for and the worst we must fear. The best defense is a good Broadside.

The titles include:
How Barack Obama Is Bankrupting The U.S. Economy by Stephen Moore
How The Obama Administration Threatens To Undermine Our Elections by John Fund
Obama's Betrayal Of Israel by Michael Ledeen
Why Obama's Government Takeover Of Health Care Will Be A Disaster by David Gratzer
How The Obama Administration Threatens Our National Security by Victor Davis Hanson

Anyone with the slightest intellectual honesty and curiosity will appreciate these reasoned arguments; idiots, on the other hand, will dismiss them out of fear and continue to worship The One and their pseudo-religion of "progressivism".

"The real driving force is that we former Democrats saw just how insane these people really are."

Via Ace

Oh boy, now we're getting somewhere. Here are excerpts from an open letter to Rush Limbaugh at the HillBuzz website declaring Hillary-backers' support for taking down the Obama Democrats:

An Open Letter to Rush Limbaugh and His Listeners — With Notes on the Democrat Civil War Already In Progress

During the campaign, Donna Brazile famously said that the Democrat Party no longer needed the people Obama once described as “bitter, religion-and-guns-clinging, Midwesterners”. Brazile took this further and said, outright, that the Democrat party did not need blue-collar white voters, the Jacksonian voters, the Hillary voters, because the party was “Obamafied” and would win elections for generations with the Obama coalition of blacks, Leftist elites, Hispanics, low information gay voters, and self-hating Jews.

This is all the Democrats have left, Rush.

Speaking from personal experience, as someone who has worked in fundraising for over 10 years and who has been a part of every presidential campaign since 1992, the Democrats have permanently alienated tens of millions of people who normally turned out reliably every year not just to vote Democrat, but also to write checks and otherwise participate in campaigns.

No more. Never again.

Here in Chicago, just about everyone who was part of Team Hillary efforts with me on the ground has completely divorced themselves from the Democrat Party. Being called a racist repeatedly and hearing from Donna Brazile that we are not needed will do that to a person.

But in a bigger sense, Democrats, by being so shameless and aggressive with the voter fraud in 2008 have opened too many eyes for us to ever go back to pretending that fraud and corrupt practices aren’t the hallmark of the Democrat Party.

There was a show on ABC a few years ago called Alias starring Jennifer Garner in which she played a woman working for a company called Credit Dauphine…which she was told was a front for a CIA organization called SD6. Garner’s character, Sidney Bristow, carried out her missions for SD6, overlooking different things the organization did that she might not have liked, because she thought she was doing what was best for the country. And then, one day, Sidney learned SD6 was actually an enemy of America…that it’s real mission was to destroy the country…that everything Sidney was told about SD6 was a lie. The mask came off SD6, and Sidney Bristow realized she had to work aggressively to take the whole enterprise down.

Rush (and his listeners), please hear me on this because you will not read this in the media — but just about every one of us from the Hillary 2008 campaign is a Sidney Bristow today.

Those of us who worked Democrat campaigns in the past put up with union associations and the other unsavory aspects of being a Democrat because we were told this was the only way Democrats could win…with union muscle. But, in 2008 the Democrats revealed themselves to be an SD6 conglomeration of every force in this country that wants to bring America down, tank our economy, usurp our Constitution, and lay waste to the American way of life.

Democrats took off the mask. The DNC reveled in being fully Leftist-controlled. Crazy people unapologetic in their Communist admiration took over positions of great influence not just in the DNC, but in our state and federal governments as well.

I’m horrified by that.

Hillary supporters are horrified by that.

And we have not sat back quietly to allow this to happen without a fight.

I know for a fact that people I worked with on the Hillary 2008 campaign have been actively working against every single Democrat who supported Obama’s nomination. Everyone who backstabbed Hillary Clinton is being undermined and sabotaged by people who might still be registered as Democrats but have no more loyalty to the party. Sometimes, conservative sites try to make this into a “sour grapes” sort of “Hillary’s revenge” meme — and there might be a taste of this in what’s going on — but the real driving force is that we former Democrats saw just how insane these people really are and we are now doing everything we can, behind the scenes, to use everything we know about the Democrat Party to collapse it from within.

If you think about it logically, there is not enough energy to sustain a years-long drive to remove Obama supporters from office just because people are still upset Hillary Clinton was not the 2008 nominee and is not president today. Sometimes, I think even you believe this is what this is all about. Your “Reverse Operation Chaos” initiative seems predicated on this, but that belief is apocryphal in that it misses a few big marks.

This is and it isn’t about Hillary.

What it’s really about is what the Democrat Party did to Hillary that alienated tens of millions of Jacksonian/Clintonian/middleclass Americans from the party permanently — and this includes what the party and Obama campaign did to Hillary’s supporters themselves (ie, calling them racists, telling them they weren’t wanted, calling them bitter clingers, etc.).

For the first time in our lives, so many of us former Democrats were given an Alinsky taste of what the Democrat Party really stand for…what it really believes…and how it really feels about America, our Constitution, our economy, and our way of life.

Howard Dean, Donna Brazile, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Obama took the mask off the Democrat Party…and the Leftist gorgon that lurked beneath is something America-loving, middleclass, Jacksonian/Clintonian Democrats want nothing to do with.

Read it all. It's either deliciously devastating or devastatingly delicious.

Either way, I really can't wait to thank them for their contribution on November 2.

Power Line contributor Hillsdale College Professor Paul Rahe comments on the "grave misgivings" developing among Obama's group of high-level economic and finance advisers, who are now being ignored by the man who sought their cover during the financial crisis:

In Tuesday's New York Post, Charles Gasparino reports that, although they will not admit anything of the sort in public, people like Morgan Stanley's John Mack, BlackRock's Larry Fink, Greg Fleming (once at Merrill Lynch), JP Morgan's Jamie Dimon, and Goldman Sachs' Lloyd Blankfein, who backed Obama at the time of the financial crisis last Fall, are now, in private, expressing grave misgivings.

Rahe counsels all the players named in Gasparino's report to do the right thing:

At some point, if these men have any self-respect, they will have to separate themselves from the current administration. At the time of the campaign, there were plenty of indications of Obama's radicalism. But the Democrats on Wall Street and many of our leading economists chose to look the other way. Now a number of the latter find themselves associated with an administration that cares far less about American prosperity than about rearranging economic, social, and political relations in the country to their own liking.

Here is a question to ponder. If Barack Obama had a fully free hand, what would he do? I suggest that we should pay close attention to developments over the last few years in Venezuela - for the direction in which Obama's proposals point is the one followed by Hugo Chavez. That he admires what Chavez has done is evident from the fact that he has lent Chavez a hand in his attempt to export the Venezuelan revolution to the Honduras.

This is truly a grave omen for the future, news only made worse by Greenspan's prediction today of further slowing in the economy - exactly what Obama wants.

Read Paul Rahe: Obama's Wrecking Crew

Here we go again.

The Messiah, January 8, 2009:

Only government can provide the short-term boost necessary to lift us from a recession this deep and severe. Only government can break the cycle that are (sic -- is) crippling our economy. That's why we need to act boldly and act now, to reverse these cycles. That's why we need to restart the flow of credit and restore the rules of the road that will ensure a crisis like this never happens again.

The Messiah, January 28, 2009:

In the end, the answer to our economic troubles rests less in my hands or in the hands of our legislators than it does with America's workers and the businesses that employ them. They are the ones whose efforts and ideas will determine our economic destiny just as they always have, for in the end it's businesses -- large and small -- that generate the jobs, provide the salaries, and serve as the foundation on which the American people's lives and dreams depend. All we can do, those of us here in Washington, as to help create a favorable climate in which workers can prosper, businesses can thrive, and our economy can grow.

The Messiah, February 9, 2009:

It is absolutely true that we can't depend on government alone to create jobs or economic growth. But at this particular moment, with the private sector so weakened by this recession, the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy back into life. It is only government that can break the vicious cycle where lost jobs lead to people spending less money which leads to even more layoffs.

Whatever you say, Mess. Reality is still reality.

The Anchoress is tracking the Messiah's Lies with her Obamarama Linkapalooza:

Obama outright lied last night - at least twice - and showed a tenuous grasp of history. I disagree with Ed about the history part. Obama understands history very well. He understands that if you lie about history enough, then the lie becomes the “truth” as far as the populace is concerned. Just like when Obama spoke to al-Arabiya TV and completely mischaracterized the “last 20-30 years” history between the Arab nations in the Middle East and the US. “A lie told often enough becomes the truth” who said that first? Oh, right… it was first said by Lenin! See Ed? Obama knows history! And too many of us have forgotten.

Lenin wasn't the only expert on lies. Here's Joseph Goebbels:

If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.

And therefore of the left.