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Quote of the Century

'My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of theworld. I hope you'll join with me as we try to change it.'

- Barack Obama -

Squishy Part 3

This really is beginning to concern me a great deal. From Laura Ingraham:

POTENTIAL COMMANDER-"OF"-CHIEF AVOIDS MILITARY:

We'd like to know what incredibly important event Barack Obama has scheduled on August 11 that prevents him from participating in a debate at Texas' Fort Hood. The townhall event, sponsored by an array of military support groups, hopes to offer the 6,000-strong audience (predominantly veterans and military families) an opportunity to directly question their next commander-in-chief. John McCain is ready and willing, but so far the Obama just can't find an opening. We wonder what scares him most -- a face-to-face matchup with McCain, potential heckles, or simply not being in front of his customary mass gathering of zombies. Whatever the explanation, Obama looks weak in front an audience that needs to respect him as their commander. Not a good start.

Being "Squishy" Part 2

An interesting post on The Corner at NRO

Obama's Response to 9/11

Throughout history, attacks by implacable foes have prompted somewhat consistent reactions:
Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.

Winston Churchill.

We, too, born to freedom, and believing in freedom, are willing to fight to maintain freedom. We, and all those who believe as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

We're going to hold them by the nose and we're going to kick them in the ass. George S. Patton.
In war, there is no substitute for victory.

Douglas MacArthur.

Then there's Barack Obama’s response to 9/11 published a week later in the Hyde Park Herald (as noted in Ryan Lizza’s piece in The New Yorker.)

Even as I hope for some measure of peace and comfort to the bereaved families, I must also hope that we, as a nation, draw some measure of wisdom from this tragedy. Certain immediate lessons are clear, and we must act upon those lessons decisively. We need to step up security at our airports. We must re-examine the effectiveness of our intelligence networks and we must be resolute in identifying the perpetrators of these heinous acts and dismantling their organizations of destruction. We must also engage, however, in the more difficult task of understanding the sources of such madness. The essence of this tragedy, it seems to me, derives from a fundamental absence of empathy on the part of the attackers: an inability to imagine, or connect with, the humanity or suffering of others. Such a failure of empathy, such numbness to the pain of a child or the desperation of a parent is not innate; nor, history tells us, is it unique to a particular culture, religion or ethnicity. It may find expression in a particular brand of violence, it may be channeled by particular demagogues or fanatics. Most often, though, it grows out a climate of poverty and ignorance, helplessness and despair.

We will have to make sure, despite our rage, that any U.S. military action takes into account the lives of innocent civilians abroad. We will have to be unwavering in opposing bigotry or discrimination directed against neighbors and friends of Middle-Eastern descent. Finally, we will have to devote far more attention to the monumental task of raising the hopes and prospects of embittered children across the globe—children not just in the Middle East, but also in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and within our own shores.

It's hard to visualize Obama on a horse at Stirling. But hey, Churchill, Patton MacArthur and Roosevelt couldn't lower the oceans or heal the planet

Being "Squishy" Part !

Byron York reports on today's NYT op-ed by Obama.

"An Unbelievable, Brazen Effort By a Politician to Rewrite History"

Sen. Lindsey Graham, speaking on a conference call a few moments ago, on Sen. Obama's New York Times op-ed today, in which Obama writes, "In the 18 months since President Bush announced the surge, our troops have performed heroically in bringing down the level of violence. New tactics have protected the Iraqi population, and the Sunni tribes have rejected Al Qaeda — greatly weakening its effectiveness. But the same factors that led me to oppose the surge still hold true…

"While Obama doesn't suggest that he supported surge — he says just the opposite — he skips over the fact that the successes he now recognizes are ones that he once predicted simply would not happen. From Graham: "In January 2007, Sen. Obama said, 'I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I think it will do the reverse.'"

Graham again: "It is very important to understand where he has been regarding the surge. He came out with full force against the idea of sending more troops. His solution was to pull out."

Saturday Browsing

Iowahawk continues to prove that he is the best satirist on the web. How can he make such stuff up?

iowahawk: The "Q" is for "Quality"

A Timely? Report

“The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot,” according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from US Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone.

“Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.”

This morning's New York Times? No, the U.S. Weather Bureau, 1922.

A Message from Senator Hatch

Frightening!!!

For all of us, there comes a time when the choices are so stark, the risks so great, we have to take a stand. We can no longer assume someone else will save us. We have to step forward and be counted.

We face such a time today. If we don't take a stand against the coming Democratic tsunami, the country we know and love today will be lost.

I believe the Democrats when they say they plan to double our taxes. I believe them when they guarantee they will rewrite federal labor law so unions can reorganize the work force without a secret ballot election. I believe them when they promise the trial bar they will strip away what few rights companies still have. I believe them when they say they are going to appoint liberal judges to the Supreme Court and swamp our federal benches all over the land. I believe them and so should you!

When the next President is sworn in, 6 of the 9 Supreme Court Justices will be over 70 years old. This could mean the next President could seat a new majority to the court.

And, I believe them when they vow to spend close to $100 million dollars to elect a super majority in the Senate, a majority so big that the Senate will no longer be our nation's legislative firewall.

Just this week, the Senator in charge of raising money to get Democratic Senators elected said they are going to pickup nine seats in the US Senate. Nine seats! Do you know what that would mean! That would mean they could pass every piece of their liberal agenda through the House and the Senate untouched! There would not be a tax they could not raise or a freedom they could not abridge.

And you know, there is nothing they won't say, nothing they won't do towin. Presidential hopeful Barak Obama has already raised millions to win the Presidency and he has now decided to raise funds for Democrats in the House.

Just last week he wrote a letter to Democrats around the country asking them to pour money into the House Democrat money machine.

All we Republicans can count on is ourselves. We either stand together, we either support our Senate candidates, or we are lost.Thank you and God bless you.

Sincerely yours,Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT)

Silly Little People

Even the Washington Post has to laugh at these clowns on occasion:

The Red, White and Eat Your Greens Party - washingtonpost.com

True Leadership

We are heading into a period of history when these people will be called upon to "solve" the nation's problems. There is a mean streak in this old dog who wants to watch the younger generations come to grips with what it means to give the Democratic Party complete control of all three branches of our government.

A report from Powerline:

Democrats Sucking Wind on Energy Policy

The Democrats had vowed to take up energy policy after the 4th of July recess, but now they have scrubbed all plans to bring energy legislation to the floor of the House. Why? In the words of The Hill, they are "in a bind" because they fear that any effort on their part to offer energy legislation would be met by Republican amendments to permit domestic drilling for oil and gas.

This would force Democratic Congressmen to take a position on whether they want to do something serious to bring down the cost of gasoline, as an overwhelming majority of Americans want. The Democrats, amazing as it may seem, are locked into a blind, ideologically-driven opposition to doing what is necessary to meet America's energy needs. The Hill quotes one Democratic aide:

“Right now, our strategy on gas prices is ‘Drive small cars and wait for the wind,’"
The Democrats know that they risk the wrath of the voters if they continue to force gasoline prices higher and higher:

Further complicating matters for Democrats is the growing number of pro-drilling Democrats who are becoming increasingly worried that voters might throw them in with their anti-drilling leadership.
One pro-drilling Democrat predicted that the backlash against Congress for gas prices could rival the outrage voters felt about the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

I've got news for the Dems: the voters care about gas prices a whole lot more than they ever cared about Jack Abramoff.

Reliving the Bad Old Days

John Hinderaker at Powerline offers the following theory. This old dog concurs.

I do think there is an opening here for a charismatic leader to drive the country to the left. The jury is still out on whether Barack Obama is such a leader. Why this opening should exist now is an interesting question. I think the answer is that we now have a generation of Americans who haven't learned about liberalism the hard way.

There was never a time when Americans decided that liberalism didn't sound good. Nor was there a time when a majority of Americans read Friedman, Hayek and Buckley and became intellectual conservatives. What did happen was that Americans voted for liberal policies that sounded good, and had to live with the bitter consequences: the pathologies that were spawned by the Great Society, declining cities, spiraling crime rates, high unemployment, inflation, economic decline, confiscatory tax rates, weakness abroad, and all the rest. For around 25 years, that bitter experience inoculated most voters against a return to liberalism.

But we now have a generation of voters who didn't undergo that experience, and to whom liberalism once again sounds pretty good. There are no doubt some older voters whose memories have faded, too. So, consistent with the maxim that those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it, we may have to suffer through another bout of liberalism to re-learn the lessons of the past.

Our Clueless Messiah

From Laura Ingraham:

OBAMA DAZZLES WITH FOREIGN POLICY EXPERTISE:

Uh oh. Someone let Obama out of the house without his teleprompter! The man just can't help but get frazzled if he's asked about anything weightier than his favorite pie. Appearing this morning on Good Morning America and the Today Show, inquiring minds wanted to know his thoughts about Iran test-firing its Shahab-3 missile, which is capable of hitting Israel. You won't believe his answer - that is, unless you've been following his campaign. Obama ... blamed America! He claimed the missile tests were the fault of President Bush's failure to deal diplomatically with Iran (lie #1), for not pushing tough sanctions (lie #2), and for using "overheated rhetoric" (Mahmoud "Kill the Jews!" Ahmadinejad apparently being the paragon of proper rhetoric?). If Diane Sawyer knew the difference between a Shahab-3 and Shakira, she might have actually asked a follow-up question rather than let him get away with this nonsense. Alas, no such luck.

From Australia

PSYCHIATRISTS have detected the first case of "climate change delusion" - and they haven't even yet got to Kevin Rudd and his global warming guru.

Writing in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, Joshua Wolf and Robert Salo of our Royal Children's Hospital say this delusion was a "previously unreported phenomenon".

"A 17-year-old man was referred to the inpatient psychiatric unit at Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne with an eight-month history of depressed mood . . . He also . . . had visions of apocalyptic events."

To read the whole article go here:

Doomed to a fatal delusion over climate change Herald Sun

"Sieg Heil"

From Victor Davis Hanson on NRO.

Megalomania 101

At first I thought the standard Obama warnings about crowd fainting when he started speaking were just peculiar, as was the bit about oceans receding and the planet healing. Then I noticed he has plans to move his speechmaking at the convention to a large outdoor arena, to allow the 'people' the right to hear him en masse. Now he negotiates to address Berliners in Kennedy/Reagan style (but weren't they already presidents?) in front of the Brandenburg Gate? Next? No doubt the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem.

For My Grown Up Readers

The following is the first question and answer from an interview that has been posted at National Review:

‘Once upon a time, in the not too distant past, childhood was a phase, adolescence did not exist and adulthood was the fulfillment of youth’s promise. No more,” Diana West writes in her book, The Death of the Grown-up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization. West is worried that “eternal youth” is “fatal” and recently took questions from National Review Online editor Kathryn Lopez.

Kathryn Jean Lopez: You note that more adults watch the Cartoon Network than CNN. Surely, you’ve seen Jack Cafferty. Is this really a problem?

Diana West: Not if that were the only statistic out there indicating a seismic cultural shift in sensibility has taken place that has made us more adolescent and less adult. Other such factoids include: the average video gamester was 18 in 1990; now he’s 33; the National Academy of Sciences has redefined adolescence as the period extending from the onset of puberty, around twelve, to age 30. And, leaving CNN aside, here’s another cartoon statistic: One third of the 56 million Americans who sat down in 2002 to watch SpongeBob SquarePants on Nickelodeon each month were between 18 and 49 years old. (Nickelodeon, incidentally, thought its core demographic group was the six- to eleven-year old set.)

These older fans may be chronological grown-ups, but their taste reveals an affinity for kidstuff their forebears didn’t share and almost certainly wouldn’t understand. The point is, aspects of the maturation cycle have stalled, leading to significant changes not only in pop culture, but in ourselves as a people.

“There isn’t any clear demarcation of what’s for parents and what’s for kids,” a former Hollywood studio executive told the Wall Street Journal. “We like the same music, we dress similarly.” The Death of the Grown-Up explores how, when and why this phenomenon came about, and, on a deeper level, what it is doing to us as a society and nation.

To read the entire interview, ( it's good stuff) please go here:

Interview on The Death of the Grown-up: How America’s Arrested Development Is

This is Pretty Icky

Now, after all of these years, I find out the truth!!!

This just in from another British newspaper:

Toddlers who dislike spicy food 'racist'

The National Children's Bureau, which receives £12 million a year, mainly from Government funded organisations, has issued guidance to play leaders and nursery teachers advising them to be alert for racist incidents among youngsters in their care.

This could include a child of as young as three who says "yuk" in response to being served unfamiliar foreign food.

The guidance by the NCB is designed to draw attention to potentially-racist attitudes in youngsters from a young age.

This kind of crap just keeps coming and coming.

News We are Not Allowed to Know

Decided to post this only because we Americans are unlikely to read or hear anything like this from our own media. This comes from that stately old British newspaper, The Times of London.

Al Qaeda's crushing defeat in Iraq appears to be virtually complete, now that it has been routed in its last remaining urban outpost -- Mosul.

After being forced from its strongholds in the west and centre of Iraq in the past two years, Al-Qaeda’s dwindling band of fighters has made a defiant “last stand” in the northern city of Mosul. A huge operation to crush the 1,200 fighters who remained from a terrorist force once estimated at more than 12,000 began on May 10. Operation Lion’s Roar, in which the Iraqi army combined forces with the Americans’ 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, has already resulted in the death of Abu Khalaf, the Al-Qaeda leader, and the capture of more than 1,000 suspects. . . .Major-General Mark Hertling, American commander in the north, said: “I think we’re at the irreversible point.”

Communism Defeated by Jokes?

A man goes to buy a car in Moscow, pays for it, and is told by the salesman that he can collect it on a particular date in 10 years' time. The buyer thinks for a moment and then asks: 'Morning or afternoon?' The salesman, astonished by the question, asks: 'What difference does it make?' And the buyer answers: 'Well, the plumber is coming in the morning.'

Had to laugh at this excerpt from a book reviewed by a British newspaper. To read the whole article, click below:

Was it jokes that defeated Communism? - Telegraph Was it jokes that defeated C

Something to Think About

Here is a quote from Mark Twain that I had never had the pleasure of reading before. Written over 100 years ago, it appears to be a thought that we never get a chance to think about while confronted with the every day censorship of political correctness:

"All the territorial possessions of all the political establishments in the earth--including America, of course--consist of pilferings from other people's wash. No tribe, however insignificant, and no nation, howsoever mighty, occupies a foot of land that was not stolen. When the English, the French, and the Spaniards reached America, the Indian tribes had been raiding each other's territorial clothes-lines for ages, and every acre of ground in the continent had been stolen and restolen 500 times."

Our Children are Next

From Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit!

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, we'd see schoolboys punished for refusing to kneel and pray in class. And they were right!!!

Schoolboys punished with detention for refusing to kneel down and pray to Alla

Two schoolboys were given detention after refusing to kneel down and 'pray to Allah' during a religious education lesson.

Parents were outraged that the two boys from year seven (11 to 12-year-olds) were punished for not wanting to take part in the practical demonstration of how Allah is worshipped.

They said forcing their children to take part in the exercise at Alsager High School, near Stoke-on-Trent - which included wearing Muslim headgear - was a breach of their human rights.

You can't make this stuff up. And, sadly, you don't have to.

Independence Day

The following is an excerpt from a speech given by President Calvin Coolidge on July 4, 1926. Even back 82 years ago, many Americans saw the vicious "progressive" ideology of socialism and collectivist government. This is, of course, what Coolidge is commenting on:

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter.

If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.

If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.

Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

Bite Sized Morsels

Notes from Laura Ingraham:

VOTE POODLE! Finnicky, elitist, entitled...a poodle would be the perfect addition to the Obama family. Put the veep vetting on the back burner for a few weeks, because Barack Obama is in search of a new pooch--and he's taking recommendations. The American Kennel Club is conducting a highly scientific poll on its website where you can weigh in on the best choice for the Obama family pet. Next up: choosing a name. Jeremiah, anyone?

THURSDAY WITH BYRON: In a bid to corroborate, further understand, and clarify Barack Obama's incessant references to his youthful days as a Chicago "community organizer," Byron York traveled to the South Side to speak with former colleagues and witness firsthand the fruits of Obama's labor. Except...there wasn't much fruit to see. In great contrast to Obama's proud reflections, Byron instead heard tales about a youthful political opportunist...and a little less asbestos on the South Side of Chicago

On the Make

Change, my ass! From a Powerline post:

This morning the Washington Post broke the news that Barack Obama got a sub-market interest rate when he took out a mortgage to buy his Chicago mansion in 2005:

The freshman Democratic senator received a discount. He locked in an interest rate of 5.625 percent on the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, below the average for such loans at the time in Chicago. The loan was unusually large, known in banker lingo as a "super super jumbo." Obama paid no origination fee or discount points, as some consumers do to reduce their interest rates.
Compared with the average terms offered at the time in Chicago, Obama's rate could have saved him more than $300 per month.

Obama's loan came from Northern Trust, whose employees have also donated $71,000 to Obama's campaign. This is, of course, the same home purchase in which Obama was assisted by his fundraiser, convicted felon Tony Rezko, who bought the adjacent lot for the seller's full asking price, while Obama paid $300,000 less than the asking price to the same seller for the house.
It has come to light that several Democratic Senators availed themselves of sub-market mortgages under circumstances that are more or less suspicious. Obama is in that rather tawdry category.

What is most striking to me, though, is not that Obama shaved a fraction of a point off his mortgage by being a politically powerful customer. It is, rather, the rapidity with which Obama was able to turn his ascension to the Senate into material wealth. The Post describes the Obamas' mansion, purchased just a few months after Obama became a Senator:
The couple wanted to step up from their $415,000 condo. They chose a house with six bedrooms, four fireplaces, a four-car garage and 5 1/2 baths, including a double steam shower and a marble powder room. It had a wine cellar, a music room, a library, a solarium, beveled glass doors and a granite-floored kitchen.

How were the Obamas able to afford this on a Senator's $162,000 salary? They weren't, of course. But in January 2005, the same month in which Obama assumed his Senate seat, Random House "agreed to reissue an Obama memoir, for which it originally paid $40,000, as part of a $2.27 million deal that included two future nonfiction books and a children's book." How does an author who has never sold many books get a multi-million dollar book deal? By being an up-and-coming Democratic Senator.

Then there is Michelle Obama, whose salary doubled to over $300,000 when her husband was elected to the Senate. It was the Random House book deal, together with Michelle's newly-discovered value to her employer, that paid for the Obamas' Chicago mansion.
You can draw your own conclusions from all of this. It strikes me that Barack Obama is a very old-fashioned politician. He is a powerful man, and he expects the world to kiss his ring and shower him with money and other good things. This is a Chicago tradition, I guess, and it's not hard to understand.

What's a bit harder to make sense of is Michelle Obama's attitude. She says that America is a "downright mean country." Is this an insight that she had while sitting in her double steam shower? Or perhaps while fetching a prime vintage from her wine cellar, or musing in her solarium, or applying makeup in her marble powder room, or treading the granite floor in her kitchen? It's hard to say. Maybe it's just another instance of liberal guilt.

But since Barack is as nakedly on the make as any politician in modern American history, the Obamas should perhaps drop the pose

Dissed !

A story out Denver:

9NEWS.com Colorado's Online News Leader 'Black national anthem' stirs cont