THE Big and Essential Question for Our Time

Have the American people become too:


*  Soft and comfortable to exert themselves as a result of basking in illusions of material wealth,


*  Focused on trivialities, or


*  Stupid and/or lazy


to defend their heritage and meet the challenge expressed by Benjamin Franklin when he emerged from the Constitutional Convention declaring that the delegates were creating for the new nation "a republic if you can keep it"?


This just released poll indicates that Americans still have the right instincts and ideas. 


That, however, does not answer the question of whether we still have the ability and will "to keep it."  That very big and essential question is posed better than it is above and explored by the always erudite and unfailingly perceptive Thomas Sowell in this essay, the reading and careful consideration of which is strongly recommended.

Our Wise Men and Our Obstacles

In the battle of ideas, our domestic statists have no matches for intellectual supporters of individual responsibilities and rights such as Victor Davis Hanson, Charles Krauthammer,  Thomas Sowell, Mark Steyn, and Walter Williams, to mention but a few.


Their favorite guttersnipe counter to those heavyweights, Anthony Weiner, has been forced from the scene, and they are left relying on statist ideologues typified by  Bill Ayers  Noam Chomsky, and Paul Krugman, who have few new or original ideas and enjoy very limited audiences.


Nonetheless, the individualists are hard pressed to gain ground against the collectivist looters and any gains that are made seem to be temporary, hard to defend, and under constant threat.


That this is so is due to the fact that the those adhering to the libertarian bent of the nation's founders have and are focused primarily on pursuing their private interests and lives. Their  opponents, on the other hand, are driven almost entirely by their ideologically goals. In furtherance of their agenda the collectivists since the 1960s have gained control of much of the nation's culture. Unless and until the statists are stripped of control of, and counterbalanced in the country's major media including the entertainment industry, religious, and academic institutions at every level, professional organizations, and financial and business establishments, the dream of the nation's founders will continue to deteriorate, being forced to give way to unrelenting attacks and threats. 

Ratcheting Up Indignities On Submissive Sheeple

It must be both surprising and gratifying to our authoritarian statist rulers to find it so easy to impose ever increasing humiliations and burdens on the American people by gulling them into acceptance of the notion that the impositions are necessary for public safety and security and/or the common good.


The latest travesties, described in this report, would have been resisted forcefully and, if necessary, with violence, by earlier generations of Americans. Now there are hardly even any murmurs of protest and no effective opposition or resistance. (Some, like me, respond simply by traveling only via our private cars, ceasing to fly or travel by any means that requires exposure to such atrocities, but that too serves the purposes of the authoritarian rulers.)


Our country is being transformed bit by bit but at an accelerating rate from the past's "land of the free and home of the brave" to the "land of the servile and home of the fearful" that we are becoming. To understand the in progress changes just imagine how the founders -- think of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Patrick Henry -- would have reacted had a functionary of some government agency presumed to grope them or paw through their belongings before they could board a stagecoach. 


Those who commit these atrocities must have passed a test similar to the one described in a joke in which a gun is handed  to applicants for a government job. Each applicant then is instructed to enter a room and shoot to death a relative who is confined and seated in it. Most applicants, not knowing that the gun is loaded with blanks, withdraw. Only those who proceed are hired. Executive and supervisory positions go to the "really good Germans" who emerge from the room declaring that because the gun was loaded with blanks it was necessary for them to beat its occupant to death with a chair. So it goes in the Transportation Security Agency, Janet Incompetano's entire Department of Homeland Security, and virtually all the rest of the federal bureaucracy that is training us to accept and live with whatever they choose to inflict on us.


These people all would have been shunned, if not coated with tar and feathers, and run out of town astride rails by Americans of generations past.

Un-American President Striving To Change America Into An Un-American Nation

The U.S. today has a president whose upbringing was far different than that of Americans in general. As a result, his experiences and traditions have nothing in common with those of ordinary Americans. Therefore, as is detailed in this perceptive essay. he lacks any understanding of, or appreciation for those experiences and traditions, and his values and views are markedly and dramatically different from those of an overwhelming majority, if not virtually all of the nation's citizens.

As a politician, the oddly alien, detached, and remote president seeks -- with great discomfort and effort -- to cloak his distinctly un-American frame of reference with rhetoric that emulates, but more frequently parodies the nation's normal political discourse. This is becoming increasingly obvious with the passage of time as it becomes clear that his goal is to transform the nation into something that is foreign and unfamiliar . . . a very un-American America. 

Delaying Greece's Default

The financial world is breathing sighs of relief because the Greek parliament has adopted some cosmetic financial reforms, a.k.a. an austerity program, that will give their fellow Europeans cover for providing funds to enable Greece to avoid -- for now -- a default on its debt obligations.


Don't be fooled about what actually is taking place.  It's the same old game of extend and pretend. At 155 % of the country's GDP and with that ratio to rise to 170 % next year, Greece's indebtedness is not repayable. It's just too large and what is now occurring actually is increasing it. 


The other Europeans are not participating in the current charade for any noble purpose, out of the goodness of their hearts, or because of any benevolent feelings for the Greeks. They are acting to try to save themselves . . . for the time being.


Greece's indebtedness, in the form of bonds, is held by Europe's big banks and those holdings exceed by some pretty hefty margins the net worth that is the capital of those banks. Accordingly, a default by Greece in meeting its payment obligations on those IOUs would bring down those financial houses and their ruin would threaten the political stability and structure of the nations in which they are located.


So it's extend and pretend . . . for now. Shove the problem down the road, and hope that some miracle will occur to stave off the eventual inevitable default and collapse or, more realistically, to delay it until those now in charge will have departed from the scene and left others to face the music.


Does anyone recognize this as having any relationship to what we are seeing in the U.S.?

Advice From International Looters

Guess what the International Monetary Fund wants the U.S. to do.


No, they are not recommending that we:


NEITHER A BORROWER NOR A LENDER BE


Instead, the IMF want the U.S. to lift its debt ceiling, to authorize the government to borrow more money, increasing its already staggering indebtedness, so that ever more American dollars can be funneled into the coffers of the insatiable IMF for distribution to the world's deadbeats. There is neither any end nor limit to the pouring of money into the international looters' bottomless ratholes.

Reality Check for November 2012

A guy who worked at Republic Steel for 10 years until it closed in 1983 recalls that the best line he ever heard there was uttered when a worse than useless young black kid was being reprimanded for the last time.

The black youth objected to the shop foreman, you’re firing me because I’m black!

The boss said No, we hired you because you are black. We’re firing you because you’re useless!

Great (and Unfortunately Accurate) Foresight

The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all the departments in one, and thus to create whatever the form of government, a real despotism. A just estimate of that love of power, and proneness to abuse it, which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position.

 . . . George Washington 

Farewell Address, 1796

Nobody Acknowledging (Let Alone Responding To) Actual Scope Of Nation's Fiscal Calamity

After decades of digging (while tip toeing around) the nation's financial hole, members of our political establishment now are being forced -- largely as a result of  the Obama administration's excesses -- to deal with the over spending monster they have created. They are seeking to do so with the politicians' usual strategy when a real problem becomes inescapable  -- avoid, hide, lie, pretend . . . and endeavor to push the problem off into the future to be dealt with by others.


As is spelled out in this report, the abyss is deeper by several orders of magnitude than commonly believed or than any visible member of our ruling political class is willing to acknowledge. Therefore, as the report makes clear, neither any of the proposals being bandied about by either the Demorats or the Republicons nor any combination of them, has any realistic possibility of actually solving the problem.


Several highly qualified financiers such as those quoted in this predictive piece anticipate -- though in somewhat more guarded language -- that the U.S. economy is destined to crash and burn, that we're going to plummet into a financial quagmire significantly more severe than anything we yet have experienced.  It is noteworthy that one of those making this prediction is an individual who already has decamped offshore personally and is relocating to foreign jurisdictions the very substantial assets he has amassed through many years of successful investing based on accurately foreseeing financial situations and circumstances.


Nonetheless, fear not; the diggers are continuing to dig -- our fearless spenders are not at all daunted by the debt bomb!

Progressive Agenda

We ask that the government undertake the obligation above all of providing citizens with adequate opportunity for employment and earning a living. The activities of the individual must not be allowed to clash with the interests of the community, but must take place within its confines and be for the good of all. Therefore, we demand: . . . an end to the power of the financial interests. We demand profit sharing in big business. We demand a broad extension of care for the aged. We demand . . . the greatest possible consideration of small business in the purchases of national, state, and municipal governments. In order to make possible to every capable and industrious [citizen] the attainment of higher education and thus the achievement of a post of leadership, the government must provide an all-around enlargement of our entire system of public education . . . .  We demand the education at government expense of gifted children of poor parents . . . . The government must undertake the improvement of public health — by protecting mother and child, by prohibiting child labor . . . by the greatest possible support for all clubs concerned with the physical education of youth. We combat the . . . materialistic spirit within and without us, and are convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only proceed from within on the foundation of the common good before the individual good.

. . . Nazi Platform

Munich, 1920

We All Need To Sacrifice Though Perspectives Vary

Please accept my apology in advance for the following about an unpleasant subject. I tried very hard not to do it, but because it helped my perspective and made me feel much better, I thought perhaps it would do as much for you. It's tough, but we all need to do our part.

By making sacrificial and proportional cuts in your own personal budget, you can appreciate that budget cutting really cuts to the quick. The President ordered the cabinet to cut a whopping $100 million from the $3.5 trillion federal budget. That's a lot of money.

I'm so impressed by this sacrifice that I have decided to do the same thing with my personal budget. I spend about $3,000 a month on fuel, groceries, insurance, utilities, etc. etc., and now it's time to get out my budget cutting axe, go line by line through my expenses, and get to work.

I'm going to cut my spending at exactly the same ratio as the President - 1/35,000 of my total budget. After doing the math, it looks like instead of spending $3,000 a month; I'm going to have to cut that number downward by eight cents.

Yes, I know that is a lot and I must somehow get by with $2,999.92, but that is what sacrifice is all about.

The President has requested that we get some of our own skin in the game with everyone else. So we'll just have to do without some things, that are, quite frankly, luxuries those eight cents normally buy us. Guess I'll have to put a little less vermouth in my martini or give up lemon in my wife's gin and tonic. I know it will be a tough decision.

Hope this helps brighten your day ... and gives you a little better understanding of just how serious our President is.

Meanwhile, by the way, our first lady, La Belle Michelle, is doing her bit, by having held the cost of her just completed taxpayer funded African sojourn to a miserly sum estimated at just about a  half a million bucks . . . plus, of course, another paltry $430,000 or so in her aircraft operating costs.

Feeling better about shared sacrifices now?

A Necessary Question

How many really stupid and incompetent people can there be in one administration?


The question is raised by this latest bit of news from the seat of what currently passes for our nation's government.


(You probably will find it worthwhile to take the time to view the video clip embedded in the article)

Who Are the Members of Our House of Reprehensibles?

The fact that congress has gone Weinerless got me to wondering about the people who sit in that high domed disaster center atop Capitol Hill, and, sure enough, thinking about it even briefly led me to realize who they are.


The dumbfoundingly obvious answer to the question is that they are the annoying twerps who constantly scrambled to sit in the front rows of our elementary/grade school classrooms and then irritated us by always raising their hands, waving them frantically, clamoring to be called on, whenever the teacher posed a question. 


They were obnoxiously annoying then . . . and, except for coming together to collectively become a serious constant menace to all of us, they haven't changed a bit.

Native Criminal Class Has Decamped To Occupy New Haunts

Mark Twain's native criminal class has decamped from congress where the class members were discovered by Samuel L. Clemens in his day. They have moved on to more powerful, profitable, and secure new digs, leaving the clownhouse atop Capitol Hill to the collection of egotistical fools, pathetic perverts, petty scammers, and pompous poseurs that now hold sway there.


The serious gangsters and crooks have moved into controlling positions that they now occupy in (i) powerful administrative agencies from which they run the government's bureaucracy, (ii) the leftrickle media, and (iii) the nation's major academic and financial  institutions.  They are firmly ensconced in, and running the show from their sinecures in those new haunts.

Great Insight From a Retiree

I can tell generally who the good people are by how much the press hates them, said retired Louisiana electrical engineer David Kimball, one of the multitude of small donors contributing to Michele Bachmann's presidential campaign. The full Associated Press report on the small donations flooding in to fund Ms. Bachmann's race can be seen here.

Clueless Fed Chairman Akin To Blind, Deaf, and Dumb Airline Pilot

If an airline chief executive officer were to admit that he had no idea why his carrier's aircraft were unable to get off the ground, the company's board of directors would immediately replace him with someone who could diagnose the problem and find a way to solve it forthwith.


Not so in government, where the Federal Reserve's chairman remains at the controls of our economy even though he admits that he doesn't know why it is stuck or how to get it moving. Actually, the situation is worse than that -- Americans in the current economy are like passengers on a  jumbo jet that has plunged to a dangerous level while the pilot at the controls doesn't recognize the situation and is devoid of any idea on how to reverse the continuing descent and regain altitude.


For those who don't recall, the Fed chairman with the impressive beard and professorial mien got his job on the basis of previously having continually assured one and all that the nation's finances were hunky-dory right up to the time the economy had plunged off the cliff and was smashed to smithereens in the crash.


Does anyone else out there remember Peter Sellers' portrayal of the Chance the Gardener in the 1979 movie Being There?

Our First Phony's Pandering Push

Don't bother trying to understand Obama's recent policy pronouncements in any rational way. They are strictly political and mark the start of the failed president's campaign effort to pander his way to reelection by following rather than leading popular opinions.


Yesterday's announced drawdown of troops deployed in the Afghan war was not based on any strategy considerations. The scheduled force reductions are contrary to the recommendations of the military leaders in the field but in accord with domestic opinion polling results. Even at the highly politicized command level, the Obama force reduction rate is viewed as risky, as is detailed in this report.


Similarly, today's administration announcement of a release of oil from the nation's petroleum reserves is intended not to further any national interest. It is intended to curry popular favor by reversing -- temporarily during the run up to the 2012 election -- the surge in gasoline prices caused by the administration's production-hostile energy policies for which the administration has earned public opprobrium. The release will cover the nation's oil consumption for all of 36 hours and is just political trickery according to this article. Also, an excellent Investors Business Daily commentary on the subject and Obama's ingenuous explanation of his actions can be seen here. 


Meanwhile, the administration has shoved most of its radical agenda onto the back shelf, hoping voters will forget about the repugnant individual items until a successful reelection effort enables the Obama gang to begin pushing them again when there will no longer be any consequences for alienating the nation's citizens. Not being delayed are little noticed but very significant administrative measures demanded by union bosses as a price for the continuation of big labor as part of the core constituency upon which Obama is so dependent that he is captive to it, irrespective of the damage to the rest of the nation and its economy. Among these administrative actions are NLRB efforts to (i)  prevent Boeing from expanding production facilities elsewhere than in union shops in and near Seattle, and  (ii)  severely curtail  the ability of employers to effectively campaign against labor organizing efforts prior to an employee vote on affiliating with a union.


Today the pretend champion of the ordinary Americans is hobnobbing with -- and seeking financial support from -- the Wall Street manipulators who brought down the nation's economy -- the very people he publicly reviles as "fat cats." He is lunching with the financial gang's  common man members who were able and willing to come up with $38,500 apiece to lunch with him at a posh Manhattan eatery.


The enchantment is gone. People are weary of listening to his teleprompter blabberings. His policies are disasters and increasingly recognized as such. In short, he's in deep doodoo politically and knows it. So he's resorting to shoring up his corrupt and dependent core constituencies and trying to pander to enough others to enable him to extend his tenure. 

U.S. Providing Better Border Security in Korea Than in Arizona

Does it make sense for the U.S. to deploy -- on a temporary basis that has just been extended for three more months -- only 1,200 National Guardsmen on its border with Mexico while it for 58 years has been guarding South Korea's border with that nation's northern neighbor and currently has 28,500 troops stationed there for that purpose?


The underlying issues and their ramifications are being raised (and reported on in this article) by the sheriff of Pinal County in southern Arizona, who last Sunday was elected 2011 National Sheriff of the Year by the National Sheriff's Association.    

Truth Hiding Media

Our old line mainstream -- now morphed into the leftrickle -- media have taken on the task of shielding Americans from politically incorrect information.


Accordingly, you are unlikely to find in these supposed news outlets anything about this reported survey that found more than 80 per cent of American mosques -- that, not so incidentally, are proliferating and being supported by our government -- engaged in fostering terrorism.


Another example was provided by the guy who last weekend was caught carrying explosives or their components while creeping around the Pentagon, causing a lockdown, evacuations, roadblocks, etc., in the area was -- guess what -- a Muslim. But that shocking fact wasn't mentioned in the media which insist that we look to them for essential information. The creeping creep has been identified in a wide variety of other ways, all of them irrelevant, such as his being a Marine reservists, a native of Ethiopia . . . and on and on, with nary a mention of his very relevant religion.


Still another example was provided by the opprobrium that was directed by the ruling class toward one of their own, John McCain, who, imitating the stopped clock that is right once a day, had the temerity to publicly point out the existence of indications that illegal immigrants are responsible for the massive  wild fires that have been devastating vast areas of Arizona.


Some things are so commonly and obviously true that they should be universally assumed in the absence of compelling evidence to the contrary.  This is especially so in instances such as those described above in which the leftrickle media guardians of political correctness never will report that any of those for whom they provide perpetual cover and protection -- such as Muslims, illegal immigrants, and liberals --are responsible for anything reprehensible.

U.S. Government Program a Real Killer

An agency of the Obama - Holder Justice Department intentionally equipped gangs of murderous thugs with a high volume of powerful firearm, as is made clear in this account, which also points out that the numbskulls in charge now are investigating themselves because -- guess what -- their "Fast and Furious" program had widespread deadly results.


There was a time that people in charge were held responsible for what occurred  on their watches. No longer though, as it appears from this followup report that the President and his Attorney General who runs the Department of Just Us are going to evade responsibility. One of their appointed underling appears to have been designated to walk the plank.


It is worth noting in the linked reports that until the results were publicly exposed, the morons running the program were "giddy" over them and ignoring and/or threatening internal critics of their dangerous lunacy.


This administration should be required to issue a warning that in addition to its destructive impact on the nation's economy and the rule of law, multiple deaths now have been proven to be among its side effects. 

Death Throes of Desperate Administration

Having weighed the U.S. economy down to the point that it is threatening to limit his presidency to a single term, Obama now is thrashing about in a desperate search for anything and everything that might lend a temporary semblance of vitality to the extended and ongoing national disaster in the run up to the 2012 election. The frantic but probably futile efforts are spelled out in this report. 

Keep Eye Out for Possible Demoquack 2012 Switch

After the Republicons get committed to running against the hapless current occupant of the White House in 2012, they then might find themselves unprepared to face, and actually facing another Demorat candidate for the presidency.


Shocking though it may be, Obama may not be his party's candidate for the presidency next year.


It is possible that he might pull out either on his own or as a result of being pressured into doing to by the cretins who currently pass as the Demorats' elder statesmen.


The two arguments against this are (i) Obama's colossal ambition and ego, and (ii) the absence of a credible alternate candidate.


However, the Chosen One's ambition and ego might be overridden by poll numbers sinking to a sufficiently abysmal level to presage certain defeat . . . a defeat so humiliating bad as to drag the party down to a low enough level to destroy it as a viable political force for years to come.


As for there being no alternate candidate in sight, think either Hillary (if the Demoquacks have the stomach for the possibility of another Clinton administration) or someone who can be manufactured, put forward, and puffed and propped up to limit the extent of the party's losses.


Were the Republicons not the stupid party it would have people already thinking about and preparing for this possibility as remote as it may seem today.  

Jefferson On Government Debt

It is a wise rule and should be fundamental in a government disposed to cherish its credit, and at the same time to restrain the use of it within the limits of its faculties, 'never to borrow a dollar without laying a tax in the same instant for paying the interest annually, and the principal within a given term; and to consider that tax as pledged to the creditors on the public faith.' 

. . . Thomas Jefferson, 1813

Letter to John Wayles Eppes

Wrongheaded To Criticize Luxurious Obama Excesses

It is misguided to criticize the Obamas for their excessive globe trottings, sumptuous vacations, and unprecedented personal usage of Air Force One notwithstanding the huge cost to the public treasury of those things at a time that a great many Americans are struggling financially and our insolvent government has to rely on borrowing from foreigners to meet its obligations.


As distasteful as it is to see the nation's first family behaving like a redneck clan that has just hit the lottery big time, we should welcome their focus on satisfying their cravings for lavish living as such unrestrained personal pursuits divert them from concentrating on their ideologically driven efforts to impose far more expensive and damaging policies on our body politic.   

Our Overlords' Singular Accomplishment

The nation's ruling class and the government -- or, perhaps more correctly, the misgovernment -- that it has inflicted on us have created an enormous gap between ordinary Americans and the overlords who want to rule them.  A huge number of the former (who want to govern themselves) see that gap as being as great as the one that existed in the 18th Century between the American colonies and England. See the full details of this finding in this report by the Rasmussen polling organization.

How Much of a Numbskull Is Our President?

IT IS BETTER TO BE SILENT

AND THOUGHT A FOOL

THAN TO OPEN ONE'S MOUTH

AND REMOVE ALL DOUBT

That bit of wisdom from Winston Churchill should have been kept in mind by our Chosen One before he issued his legal defense for unilaterally ordering our military to attack Libya.

Although your not so humble blogger:

 (i) makes no claim to being an expert on the Constitution even though he long ago took (and enjoyed and did quite well in) his law school's mandatory constitutional law class, and 

(ii) over the years has become far less sure of anything than he was in younger days when his slogan was often wrong but never in doubt,

he has read the argument put forth by the President in support of his actions and  concluded that he certainly knows more about the Constitution than the nation's chief executive because is is clear that:

The President knows and understands 
virtually nothing about our nation's basic governing document.

His is operating at a level similar to that reflected by Richard Nixon when he claimed that if the president does it, its legal.

One has to wonder what he said in those constitution law lectures he supposedly presented to University of Chicago law students as it has become obvious that he views the Constitution as meaning whatever he wishes it to mean .  .  . anything a con man can convince the gullible to accept. 

The question posed in the headline for this post is based on the fact that the executive branch of our government has at its head an individual who now has established that his understanding of the nation's legal bedrock is at the same dismal level as his understanding of economics.

So what is that he does know that qualifies him to discharge the responsibilities and exercise the powers of the office that we entrusted to him?

In a Nutshell

...is 70 years old.

T oday, if Dorothy were to encounter

men with no brains, no hearts,

and no balls,

she wouldn't be in Oz.

She'd be in Congress!

Even the dim bulbs with delusions of adequacy who comprise our congress have figured out that something's not right about Obama having attacked Libya on his own.

However, as they are totally lacking in cojones, all they are doing is some pissing and moaning.

And with no knowledge of understanding of, or appreciation for the Constitution -- notwithstanding that each of them has sworn to protect, defend, and uphold it -- their complaint is that their turf has been and is being invaded. They are upset about their prerogatives rather than the violation of the nation's fundamental bedrock law.

Accordingly, instead of focusing on impeachment, which would be appropriate,  the collection of lackwits is muttering somewhat vaguely about cutting off funding for the hostilities being conducted by the executive branch on its own. Cash seems to be the only thing politicians understand and appreciate.

Obama Committing Highest of High Crimes (But Won't Be Held Accountable)

Nothing is more impeachable, according to an eminent and highly regarded constitutional scholar, than taking the country to war without proper authorization in accordance with the Constitution. Click here for what the 40-year Library of Congress constitutional law expert has to say about the President's unilateral usurpation of the war making power.

Our Pakistani 'Ally'

President Obama repeatedly calls for patience toward Pakistan, but, as Al Smith, a long ago New York mayor was wont to say, Let's Look at the Record:


Pakistan's military and intelligence establishment denies that they were sheltering Osama Bin Laden even though he was living right under their noses. So were they lying, just averting their eyes, or just so hopelessly incompetent?


Whatever the answer, it makes no sense to view them as an ally and to keep financing them as if they were. But there's even more, much more:


*  A key Al Qaida operator, one Hassan Ghul, who with great effort by U.S. forces, was turned over to Pakistani authorities at their request on the basis of their assurances that he would not be allowed to go free. However, according to this report, he was freed and has rejoined Al Quaida.


*  Meanwhile another militant who closely associated with Bin Laden, Fazle-ur-Rahman Khali. who heads a terrorist group aligned with Al Qaida and was a confidant of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shiekh Mohammed, lives freely near Pakistan's capital with, according to this account, the knowledge of Pakistani authorities.


*  In the last few days it has become known that Pakistani authorities have rounded up and detained their now disappeared countrymen who assisted the U.S. in the Seal team mission that successfully rid the planet of Bin Laden.


*  Finally, according to this current dispatch,  our Pakistani allies still are tipping off our supposedly common targets  to enable them to escape when the U.S. shares with the Pakistanis information and advance plans for attacking the militants the Pakistanis supposedly are helping our forces to combat.


What an ally ! ! ! !


Patience, my ass.

Let's get out troops out of the Afghan and Pakistani hell holes and leave the schemers in charge there with a message that if anything untoward is let loose on us or our allies from their neighborhood our response will not be a proportionate one and that we will retaliate without restraint, devastating them and their country and laying complete waste and to it . . . destroying everything there to the point that it will be a struggle for anyone in it ever again rise to even a stone age subsistence level.

Fatal Flaw In the Fixin'

In undertaking to repair the U.S. health care system that has long been the best in, and envy of the world, a system that -- claims to the contrary notwithstanding -- was not by any means broken, the Obama wrecking crew ignored or was ignorant of the bedrock rule for medical practitioners --

First and Foremost: 

DO NO HARM

Tough Question

It's hard to tell whether Obama's foreign military ventures are intended to divert attention from the sorry state to which his ineptness has reduced the economy or if his torpedoing of the economy is designed to keep the public focus on it instead of on his reckless military adventurism.

Good Advice

We would do well to follow the advice repeatedly offered by President Obama to avoid a return to "the failed policies of the past" so long as it is understood that "the past" includes (and requires particular focus on) the past two and a half down years during which he has occupied the White House plus the immediately preceding two bubble building years during which his party controlled congress and its agenda.

Deserves Reading

Lee Rodgers is unusually good today. See what he has to say here.

Rx: For Limiting Social Security and Medicare Payouts

. . . and if you're not ready, 

don't worry, 

we'll get you there.

San Francisco Bay Area Approaching 22nd Bridge Too Far Away Anniversary

Another baseball season is well underway and when the next world series rolls around it will be 22 years since the Loma Prieta earthquake toppled portions of the San Francisco -Oakland Bay Bridge, making it clear that the eastern portion of the span was unsafe and required replacement.

It still hasn't been replaced though the project has been going on for longer than it took to build the transcontinental railroad (including its multitude of bridges) . . . longer even than it took the the country to put men into space and on the moon after a decision was made to undertake those projects.

How come? How can this be.

It's the region's paralysis . . . caused by egotistical politicians and a plethora of governmental agencies, each with his, her, or its own goals and agendas.

There will be a great deal of finger pointing among these bodies if disaster strikes before the replacement bridge is completed and opened for use.

Another Endless Undeclared War

We're getting into another one, almost without anyone noticing . . . and as occurred in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Libya, our more recent venture into Yemen is growing, according to this report. Once again, there is no end in sight and the mission is expanding.


Meanwhile -- as noted below in this June 13 post -- the administration is explicitly claiming the imperial right to unilaterally engage in acts of war in or against other nations, without any congressional approval . . . the Constitution be damned.


That bothersome document sought to make it difficult to commit the nation to war. That was not accidental. It was a deliberate decision by America's founders, who didn't want the nation's citizens kept in perpetual poverty like Europeans who throughout history had been forced to bear the costs of their kings' unending wars against one another.  


What the founders did not foresee were the successive supine congresses since World War II, eager to evade their responsibilities, acquiescing in the seizure by the executive branch of the war making power that under the Constitution was to be exercised solely by the legislative branch.  

Truly a Know Nothing President

While I long have disliked and strongly disagreed with President Obama, I until this week nonetheless had bought into the line that  he was a brilliant or highly intelligent and sophisticated individual.


That evaluation was smashed to smithereens when without the support of a script and a teleprompter he in the last few days commented that he believed ATM machines, because they reduced the need for bank  tellers, contributed to the high level of unemployment the nation is experiencing.


The guy who supposedly is leading the nation exposed himself as a Luddite, an economically ignorant simpleton . . . a plain and simple doofus.

Neither the Unemployed Nor the Voters Are Getting the Humor

FoxNews.com reports that President Obama told a joke this week at a meeting of his so-called Jobs Council:

One of the Council's recommendations to President Obama was to streamline the federal permit process for construction and infrastructure projects. It was explained to Obama that the permitting process can delay projects for "months to years ... and in many cases even cause projects to be abandoned . . . I'm sure that when you implemented the Recovery Act your staff briefed you on many of these challenges." At this point, Obama smiled and interjected, "Shovel-ready was not as . . . uh . . . shovel-ready as we expected." The Council, led by GE's Jeffrey Immelt, erupted in laughter.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! OK, now here's another one: A one-term president walks into a bar . . . .


In another sign that the administration is facing up to the dimming prospects for reelection, it's staffers now are asking for immunity from accountability -- calling it "affixing blame" -- for the results of their decisions and actions. As this report shows, the current crew fears being removed from power in the 2012 election. 


Meanwhile, according to this analysis, the radical Obama agenda is quietly being shelved to keep it out of the sight and consciousness of the voting public until after the election. Thereafter, if Obama is able to win reelection, he and his gang will have no further need to avoid incurring voter opposition and wrath, and they are hoping that they then will be able to continue implementing their statist plans. 

Signs of the Times

The proliferation of signs like this seems to be proceeding apace while the 2008 bumper stickers supporting the frequent Air Force One golfing flyer have been disappearing at a dramatic rate. 

. . . and the Inside the Beltway Sleaze Plays On and On and On with No End in Sight

In the continuing kerfuffle over the peccadilos of one slimy member of the House of Reprehensibles, almost nobody has bothered to observe that the guttersnipe's creepy conduct easily measured up to, and arguably was well above the standard set in the oval office by its prior Demorat occupant and judged by the United States Sty to be acceptable for the nation's chief magistrate.

A Gem on Obamacare

Today's Wall Street Journal contains an excellent and insightful editorial entitled Why Obamacare Is Losing In the Courts which includes this wonderful tidbit:

Even Soviet apparatchiks, 

who told producers what to make, 

did not dare tell people what to buy.

The entire editorial can be accessed by clicking here.