Slapping our allies -- again -- so they can cash in on union money.

Investor's Business Daily:  Something's wrong when a president's lieutenants agitate against his own policies. But Defense Secretary Gates' call for free trade with Colombia arose from a true national security need. So where's the president?

The president claims he wants free trade with Colombia, but has done nothing to rouse votes on Capitol Hill or to prod House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who personally iced the pact in 2008.

Mired in domestic politics, Congress remains in thrall to union cash, with Pelosi unwilling to move to a vote until Big Labor gives the nod, something the AFL-CIO says it will never do.

Gee, thanks, Mr. President.

Investor's Business Daily:  Rather than protesting the greatest expansion of government in U.S. history, Tea Party attendees should be thanking Big Government for all it's done. At least, that's what President Obama thinks.

As the Associated Press reported Thursday, the president said he was "amused" by the Tea Party faithful gathering in cities across America to protest soaring government spending, ballooning debt and the explosion in taxes that will be needed to pay for it all.

"You would think they'd be saying thank you," he said.

And why should they be thankful? As the president himself said on his weekly radio address a week ago, "one thing we have not done is raise income taxes on families making less than $250,000; that's another promise we kept."

In fact, that wasn't his promise at all.

Here's what candidate Obama really said in September of 2008: "Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."

Got that? "Not any of your taxes." The claim of no tax hikes on those below $250,000 as a result of the current administration's policies is completely and utterly false.

A report from the House Ways & Means Committee's GOP members notes that, since January 2009, Congress and the president have enacted $670 billion in tax increases. That's $2,100 for each person in America. At least 14 of those tax hikes, the report says, break Obama's pledge not to raise taxes on those earning less than $250,000. Roughly $316 billion of the tax hikes — 14 increases in all — hit middle-class families, the report says.

This is the delusional thinking that's led to the Tea Party Movement's soaring popularity. The hundreds of thousands that turned out around the country on April 15 were objecting to the systematic ruin and loss of liberty that massive fiscal irresponsibility brings.

Given all this, no one should be shocked that 52% of Americans in a recent New York Times/CBS Poll said President Obama's policies are moving the U.S. towards socialism. It's that serious.

April 16, 2010

The military is not an appropriate place for social engineering.

Pat Buchanan, Townhall.com:  When asked about Obama's call to allow homosexuals to serve openly, Gen. James Conway, commandant of Marines, responded that the only consideration should be whether changing the law "would enhance the war-fighting capabilities of the United States Marine Corps."

So we must ask:

Would having openly homosexual males in the barracks at Parris Island or Camp Pendleton, with 18- and 19-year-old Marine recruits, strengthen unit cohesion and morale? Would having gay officers date other gay officers and living together in civil unions or matrimony on Marine bases enhance the war-fighting capabilities of the Corps?

A pathetic response from a posturing president.

Mona Charen, Townhall.com:  Welcoming the leaders of 47 nations to Washington to discuss what he called "an unprecedented threat," President Obama described in ominous terms the potential for nuclear terrorism. "Just the smallest amount of plutonium -- about the size of an apple -- could kill and injure hundreds of thousands of innocent people." The possibility that a terrorist group could get its hands on a nuclear weapon is, the president added, "the single biggest threat to U.S. security, both short term, medium term and long term."

At the conclusion of the conference, when everyone had agreed to voluntary measures to secure loose nukes, the president pronounced himself very satisfied and confident that the world will make "enormous progress" on controlling nuclear proliferation.

Talk about whistling past the graveyard! The administration assembled an elaborate tableau to feign progress on nuclear proliferation while patently failing to grapple with the most obvious, ominous, and imminent threat -- Iran.

Let's assume that Obama was sincere when he described a nuke in the hands of a terrorist as the greatest threat facing the United States. How does he imagine that threat might materialize? Participants in the "nuclear security summit" blathered on about securing nuclear materials and monitoring uranium and plutonium supplies. That's nice. But the likeliest route for a terrorist to obtain a nuclear bomb would be for a nuclear-armed Iran to simply hand it over. And Iran is enriching its own uranium. That's what all those centrifuges at Natanz and elsewhere are spinning away at.

More than three quarters of the members of Congress and 76 Senators have called upon the president to fulfill his 2008 promise to "do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon." That's a vote of no confidence.

The nuclear security dog and pony show represents a pathetic preference for image over substance and will be remembered as one of the most shameful abdications of this presidency.

The nuclear summit accomplished nothing.

Charles Krauthammer, Townhall.com:  There was something oddly disproportionate about the just-concluded nuclear summit to which President Obama summoned 46 world leaders, the largest such gathering on American soil since 1945. That meeting was about the founding of the United Nations, which 65 years ago seemed an event of world-historical importance.

But this one? What was this great convocation about? To prevent the spread of nuclear material into the hands of terrorists. A worthy goal, no doubt. Unfortunately, the two greatest such threats were not even on the agenda.

The first is Iran, which is frantically enriching uranium to make a bomb, and which our own State Department identifies as the greatest exporter of terrorism in the world.

Nor on the agenda was Pakistan's plutonium production, which is adding to the world's stockpile of fissile material every day.

So what was the major breakthrough announced by Obama at the end of the two-day conference? That Ukraine, Chile, Mexico and Canada will be getting rid of various amounts of enriched uranium.

What a relief. I don't know about you, but I lie awake nights worrying about Canadian uranium.

Indeed, the Washington summit was part of a larger misdirection play -- Obama's "nuclear spring." Last week, a START treaty, redolent of precisely the kind of Cold War obsolescence Obama routinely decries. The number of warheads in Russia's aging and decaying nuclear stockpile is an irrelevancy now that the existential U.S.-Soviet struggle is over. One major achievement of the treaty, from the point of view of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, is that it could freeze deployment of U.S. missile defenses -- thus constraining the single greatest anti-nuclear breakthrough of our time.

This followed a softening of the U.S. nuclear deterrent posture (sparing non-proliferation compliant states from U.S. nuclear retaliation if they launch a biochemical attack against us) -- a change so bizarre and literally unbelievable that even Hillary Clinton couldn't get straight what retaliatory threat remains on the table.

But not to worry. Canadian uranium is secured. A nonbinding summit communique has been issued. And a "Work Plan" has been agreed to.

Oh yes. And there will be another summit in two years. The dream lives on.

Obama is an insult to the dignity of the presidency and of America.

Jeffrey Kuhner, The Washington Times:  President Obama has disgraced the United States - again. During this week's nuclear summit in Washington, he bowed when greeting Chinese President Hu Jintao.

The act was not only shocking but revealing. Mr. Obama has come under intense criticism for bowing to leaders in the past - the king of Saudi Arabia, the emperor of Japan. But never before has America's commander in chief prostrated himself to a foreign tyrant on U.S. soil.

By bowing, Mr. Obama degraded and cheapened the office of the presidency; as commander in chief, he represents every American when meeting with other heads of state. He is supposed to embody the dignity of the Oval Office, reflecting our collective heritage as a self-governing, constitutional republic.

His actions reflect a fundamental, reflexive anti-Americanism - a profound contempt and hatred for his own country. Mr. Obama bows because it symbolizes America's need to "humble" itself on the world stage.

In short, Mr. Obama is bowing to the world. He seeks to establish a post-American multipolar order in which Washington is only one power among equals. He is a radical leftist, who welcomes the end of the United States as the world's last superpower. The very notion of "American exceptionalism" is repugnant to him - as it is to most multicultural progressives.

Sincerity or ideology?

James Wilson, 1790:  The first and governing maxim in the interpretation of a statute is to discover the meaning of those who made it.

April 15, 2010 -- Tax Day

Not in my Navy, not on my ship, not on my watch.

The Washington Times:  The late Rep. John Murtha, Pennsylvania Democrat, has achieved his highest undeserved honor. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus has decided to name the Navy's newest San Antonio Class amphibious transport-dock LPD 26 the USS John P. Murtha. This is a slap in the face to every service member who bridled when Murtha publicly accused Marines in Iraq of intentionally killing women and children in cold blood.

Murtha made his views known after details emerged about a firefight in Haditha in November 2005 in which 24 Iraqis were killed. Murtha accused the Marines of engaging in premeditated murder....

Appropriate for today.

Justice John Marshall:  An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation. --McCullough v. Maryland, 1819

April 14, 2010

Stupidity is not a strategy.

Michael Medved, Townhall.com:  How does reducing the number of nuclear weapons in America’s arsenal make our nation stronger or safer? How does it help to deter potential chemical or biological attacks if we rule out nuclear retaliation in advance?

 

The right believes that it will serve our country and all of humanity if the United States influences the rest of the world in the direction of American norms and values. The left maintains that both the U.S. and the world will benefit if the “community of nations” pushes our country toward a more internationalist posture, with less insistence on American distinctiveness and exceptionalism. If you believe that the United States would be better off as one more member of the world community rather than the dominant global power, then the Obama nuclear policy almost makes sense. The same left-leaning ideologues who want to implement an economic leveling among all Americans also long to see a power-leveling among all nations of the earth. In the upcoming elections, most Americans may not comprehend the arcane details of nuclear policy, but they will certainly understand that a president who seeks to limit our military power and retaliatory options in no way contributes to our national security.

Winston Churchill on socialism.

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance and the gospel of envy; it’s inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

Obama is JohnsonCartersameoldstuff.

Victor Davis Hanson, NRO:  President Obama could rather easily restore his credibility. But to do so, he would have to stop talking and start making hard policy decisions.

Barack Obama has a marvelous way of sounding innovative, fresh, and novel while offering stale, predictable bromides. His policies at home are an extension of LBJ’s old Great Society. Abroad we’ve been getting a more sonorous version of Jimmy Carter’s global self-righteous sermonizing.

The public wanted a racially transcendent figure and got instead a Chicago ward boss. The problem now for Mr. Obama — reflected in growing popular discontent — is that on matters of debt, taxes, energy, jobs, and race, he apparently has very little new to offer. He just serves up in new wording the them/us divides of the past.

A slick photo-op is not a strategy.

Investor's Business Daily:  As a slick nuclear "summit" takes place in Washington, Iran announces it's a month away from joining the "nuclear club"? Photo ops are no anti-nuclear terrorism strategy.

The Obama "O" campaign logo presumably helped get him elected in 2008 — along with his rousing speech at a football stadium in Denver.

But showmanship and perpetual campaigning do not an effective national security policy make.

A B-2 bomber can take out an uranium enrichment facility in Iran. But the logos and roundtables and lighting — and sound bites and documents — that will be the actual end product of this week's summit will do nothing to stop Iran, or North Korea, or al-Qaida, or any other would-be atomic terrorist government or group.

The groveler in chief.

Investor's Business Daily:  Now we bow to everybody — from Saudi royalty to Japanese emperors to Hu Jintao at the opening of the security summit in Washington on Monday. We also apologize to everybody from the Muslim world to the European community for any past actions or words that may have given the impression we thought America was special.

Time was, world leaders came to Washington to stay on the good side of an America they either feared, respected or both. When America sneezed, the world caught a cold. Now when we sneeze, world leaders offer a tissue and tell us to call them in the morning.

President Obama's latest bow, to China's president, is indicative of the slide in our prestige and influence under this administration.

The "Do's" supporting the "Do Nots".

Phyllis Schlafly, Investor's Business Daily:  Income tax day, April 15, now divides Americans into two almost equal classes: those who pay for the services provided by government and the freeloaders. The percentage of Americans who will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009 has risen to 47%.

That isn't the worst of it. The bottom 40% not only pay no income tax, but also the government sends them cash or benefits financed by the taxes dutifully paid by those who do pay income tax.

This is a massive transfer of wealth and a soak-the-rich racket. The top 10% pay 73% of the income taxes collected by the federal government.

Plucking the goose to death.

Arthur C. Brooks, WSJ:   Jean-Baptiste Colbert, the 17th-century French minister of finance, once remarked that "the art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing."

Many Americans are already hissing loudly, but the plucking in earnest is only beginning. Starting in January 2011, "the rich"—defined by President Obama as individuals earning more than $200,000 and families earning more than $250,000 per year—will see their marginal tax rate rise to 39.6% from 35%. Their effective tax rate will increase even more as certain credits and deductions are phased out.

Disarming America.

Frank Gaffney, The Washington Times:  Sarah Palin clearly has gotten under President Obama's skin with her sharp critique of his muddle-headed pursuit of U.S. denuclearization. In response, Mr. Obama felt compelled to note that he wasn't acting on his own. He told ABC News last week, "If the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are comfortable with it, I'm probably going to take my advice from them and not from Sarah Palin."

Now, based on the acquiescence of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen with respect to the president's other radical assault on the U.S. military - namely, his determination to repeal the law barring avowed homosexuals from serving in the armed forces - one would have reason to doubt the ability, or at least the willingness, of these two men to give the commander in chief "advice" he did not want to receive.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs did provide one bit of advice at the end of his remarks on the Nuclear Posture Review - advice that the disarmer in chief would have been well advised to heed, but didn't: "Without such improvements, an aging nuclear force supported by a neglected infrastructure only invites enemy misbehavior and miscalculation."

April 13, 2010

The real party of "No".

The Washington Times:  Democrats say no to balanced budgets. They say no to lower taxes. They say no to smaller government. They say no to states' rights. They say no to gun rights. They say no to the rights of the unborn. They say no to sensible immigration laws. They say no to policies that would encourage private-sector job growth. They say no to tort reform. They say no to sensible, targeted health care reform. They say no to pro-growth environmental regulations. They say no to education reform that rewards results instead of teachers' unions. They say no to bipartisanship. They say no to moderate nominees for federal courts. They say no to ending affirmative-action handouts, preferences and quotas. They say no to welfare reform. They say no to tough laws for criminals. They say no to a strong national defense. They say no to families. They say no to faith.

By putting faith in government above all else, Mr. Obama's Democrats say no to American values. They say no to the American dream.

Naive and dangerous.

Nile Gardiner, Telegraph (UK):  Despite some strong competition from Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter, President Obama has spectacularly blown the opposition out of the water, on almost every level, from appeasing America’s enemies abroad to building the foundations of a European-style welfare state at home. The end result is an America that is weaker, more vulnerable to attack, and mired in mountains of debt. No other president in US history has done more to undermine the original vision of America’s Founding Fathers, while replacing it with a reckless and risky agenda that threatens America’s ability to lead the free world.

The ego that ate Chicago.

James Taranto, Best of the Web:  The Web site of Foreign Policy magazine describes an exchange that underscores one of President Obama's least attractive qualities:

Obama said Sunday that the United States is still "working on" democracy and a top aide said he has taken "historic steps" to improve democracy in the United States during his time in office.

What rankles, though, is Obama's habit of putting down America while praising himself. The laughable assertion that Obama has taken "historic steps to improve our own democracy" shows not humility but an extreme vanity. A truly humble president would occasionally evince some doubt as to whether he is worthy to lead America. Obama seems to doubt whether America is worthy of being led by him.

Not a time to go wobbly.

Wesley Pruden, The Washington Times:  [T]he unraveling of the Obama myth is the refining work of reality, which is a harsh teacher who grades on a steep curve. The Tea Party protests, much maligned by polite and prissy folk, have turned the nation's politics upside down and there's scant sign that anything will turn them aright again. The meek and mild Republican strategists have been neutered by the accusation that theirs has become "the party of No." Indeed it has, and for one brief, shining moment it has the old politics on the run. This is no time to go wobbly.

April 12, 2010

The poison of "social justice".

Jed Gladstein, American Thinker:  Of course, the notion of "social justice" is beguiling at first glance. By its very vagueness, the phrase invites people to endow it with whatever meaning they find most appealing. For a devout Moslem, social justice means Sharia -- the subjugation of all people to Islamic religious law by any means Mohammed endorsed. For cultural Marxists, social justice is publicly proclaimed to be the dispossession of the "haves" and their replacement by the "have-nots." For a contemporary American liberal, social justice is primarily a matter of using the law to redistribute material goods and social services by requiring "advantaged" citizens to forfeit their advantages so that "disadvantaged" citizens can have them (sometimes called "distributive justice").

 

Yet while revenge may motivate some of the advocates of social justice, it does not characterize all of them. For some, the concept of social justice is more ideological. It is founded on a belief that the government should supply social goods and services to the people as a matter of civil rights. That is what lies behind recent pronouncements by leading Democrats about the "right" of people to health care. Of course, such statements are made without any attempt to legitimate the assertion, as if the proposition is simply self-evident. But for anyone who understands the historical role of government in society, that kind of proposition is anything but self-evident. In fact, it is directly contrary to what should be evident to anyone who understands the historical role of government in American society.

April 11, 2010

Oops!  No bump for Obama, Dems, or Obamacare.

The Washington Examiner:  Last September, just as public opinion was beginning to turn against Obamacare in a serious way, Bill Clinton made a bold prediction. "The minute health care reform passed," he said in a policy forum in New York City, "President Obama's approval ratings would go up 10 points." Clinton's prediction reflected the wishful assumption of many wishful liberal-leaning pundits and think tank analysts, as well as the strategy of Obama's political advisers. They viewed the rising public clamor against Obamacare as a temporary aberration, not as a lasting problem that could potentially undo his presidency.

But -- surprise! -- there has been no bump for Obama, nor for Democrats in Congress, nor for Obamacare. In fact, Obama's public approval rating now registers consistently below 50 percent and seems headed steadily downward, with polls conducted for CBS, Fox News, and Quinnipiac putting him in the mid-to-low 40s. Republicans lead in nearly every poll of the generic congressional ballot, prompting liberal Democrat number-cruncher Nate Silver to write that if the election were held today, Republicans would likely take control of the House of Representatives by a comfortable margin. Democratic retirement announcements keep coming even at this late date, mostly in districts where Republicans can compete.

Meanwhile, polls continue to show a strong majority opposing Obamacare and favoring its repeal. The latest Fox News poll puts the opposition at 55 percent, with 39 percent in favor. This reading comes despite Obama's backward-looking campaign tour in recent weeks to build public support for Obamacare, something he and his party were unable to do during the year prior to its enactment. The Democrats assumed they had to pass a health care reform bill, any bill, regardless of the depth or intensity of opposition. Failure, they reasoned, would harm them at the polls. As it turned out, their success may kill them in November.

April 9, 2010

My son's comment on Mona Charen's article (see below).

CB,Jr.:  The problem with politics is that it is full of lawyers.  Especially lawyers that have done nothing else other than be lawyers and politicians.  This is because to a lawyer semantics of words matter.  Words to a lawyer  are all that matter.  A contract and a law matters to a lawyer in how it is worded.  A lawyer loves a contract because it is a signed piece of paper that they can hold up in court.  But how a contract or law is worded can be a justifiable defense.  This is all well and good in a land that lives by these same laws, but in the real world it holds no weight.  In the real world with bad people who aim to do bad things only one thing matters that speaks louder than words - action.  Rogue countries don't care about contracts or semantics.  They will sign treaties all day long and talk nice till you are blue in the face, but that doesn't change the fact that they are still going to do bad things.  The principal of any high school already knows that he can yell at the school bully all day every day, he can call him "misunderstood" instead of a bully.  But until the bully sees any kind of action to believe there will be punishment for bad behavior, he will still go on being a bully.  And now that Obama has just emasculated the world's only Principal, the bullies get to run free.

What we get for our new National Security Strategy and Nuclear Posture Statement.

UPI: No U.S. soldiers in the region would live to tell about a U.S. military attack on Iranian soil, the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces said Thursday.

Maj. Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, the armed forces chief of staff, was quoted in the semiofficial Fars News Agency as saying Thursday that U.S. soldiers would not survive an attack on Iran.

"If the U.S. seriously threatens Iran and takes an action against Iran, none of the U.S. soldiers in the region will return to America alive," he said.

Who will become the new America?

Jonah Goldberg, Townhall.com:  We can't become Europe unless someone else is willing to become America.

Europe is a free-rider. It can only afford to be Europe because we can afford to be America.

The most obvious and most cited illustration of this fact is national defense. Europe's defense budgets have been miniscule because Europeans can count on Uncle Sam to protect them. Britain, which has the most credible military in NATO after ours, has funded its butter account with its gun account. As Mark Steyn recently noted in National Review, from 1951 to 1997 the share of British government expenditure on defense fell from 24 percent to 7 percent, while the share on health and welfare increased from 22 percent to 53 percent. And that was before New Labor started rolling back Thatcherism. If America Europeanizes, who's going to protect Europe? Who's going to keep the sea lanes open? Who's going to contain Iran? China? OK, maybe. But then who's going to contain China?

Spineless.

Mona Charen, Townhall.com:  While they were reclassifying Iran and North Korea, the Obama administration, with spine of purest Jell-O, let it be known that the revised National Security Strategy will eschew references to "Islamic extremism," "jihad," "Islamic radicalism" and other such terms. "Do you want to think about the U.S. as the nation that fights terrorism or the nation you want to do business with?" asked National Security Council staffer Pradeep Ramamurthy, who runs the Obama administration's Global Engagement Directorate. It's apparently acceptable to use the term "fights terrorism" when you're retreating from it. (Speaking of language, this is not the first administration to appoint "czars," but it may be the first to create "directorates." Doesn't anyone at the White House get a chill down his spine at the word, which is part of the title of the GRU, the KGB's sister agency? Guess not.)

These euphemisms betray a weak-mindedness about foreign policy the likes of which we have not seen since Jimmy Carter warned us about our "inordinate fear of communism." This attention to softening our image arises from the leftist conviction that strife and trouble in the world are the result of U.S. bullying and bravado, or can at least be diminished by American meekness. This is such an ingrained worldview that nothing as mundane as experience can shake it. Thus we have the spectacle of Barack Obama, repeatedly rebuffed in the most graphic terms by Iran's ruling gangsters, nevertheless persisting in seeking engagement.

Shrinking America.

Fouad Ajami, WSJ:  President Obama's "war of necessity" in Afghanistan increasingly has to it the mark of a military campaign disconnected from a bigger political strategy.

All this plays out under the gaze of an Islamic world that is coming to a consensus that a discernible American retreat in the region is in the works. America's enemies are increasingly brazen, its friends unnerved. Witness the hapless Lebanese, once wards of U.S. power, now making pilgrimages, one leader at a time, to Damascus. They, too, can read the wind: If Washington is out to "engage" that terrible lot in Syria, they better scurry there to secure reasonable terms of surrender.

The shadow of American power is receding; the rogues are emboldened. The world has a way of calling the bluff of leaders and nations summoned to difficult endeavors. Would that our biggest source of worry in that arc of trouble was the intemperate outburst of our ally in Kabul.

Obama seeks to destroy the guarantor of world peace.

Jeffrey Kuhner, The Washington Times:  President Obama has destroyed the world's last superpower. America is no longer the global cop. Enemies no longer tremble at our military might. Our foes no longer respect us. Washington no longer has the will - or stomach - to maintain its hegemonic status.

This is the real meaning of the administration's dramatic shift in nuclear security policy. The Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) announced this week represents a geopolitical watershed: the end of the American moment, the point at which the United States abrogated its decisive leadership on the international stage.

Mr. Obama thinks the NPR represents a key step toward attaining his ultimate goal: a world free of nuclear weapons. Hence, he is slashing America's arsenal and narrowing the conditions in which nuclear weapons can be used.

The president is a left-wing fantasist who believes the atomic bomb poses the greatest threat to international security. He is wrong. The bomb has been the most important force for global peace in history. The nuclear deterrent prevented the United States and Soviet Russia from directly coming to blows during the Cold War. For centuries, vast armies have rushed at each other's throats; great power rivalries led to bloodbaths on the battlefield. The existence of the bomb has made that obsolete. America's vast nuclear arsenal ensures it will never be in a major military conflict with giants, such as Red China or Imperial Russia.

He has transformed America into a nation that is no longer serious about its international responsibilities. He has rendered the country a joke in the eyes of the world - especially to its enemies.

Mr. Obama is a dreamer. He has a messiah complex - the belief that his presidency is about permanent historical change such as establishing socialist progressivism and a nuclear-free world. His delusions may play well with the liberal press corps. But in the real world - the world of Chinese militarism, Russian gangsterism, Iranian adventurism and Islamist imperialism - he is viewed as the caretaker of a declining hyperpower.

Mr. Obama's dream is a nightmare. Pax Americana has maintained global order since 1945. It is now crumbling, sapped by a crisis of confidence. The barbarians are at the gates. A new Dark Age is almost upon us. The American superpower is no more.

America will survive, no thanks to Obama.

Wesley Pruden, The Washington Times:  America will survive the Obama administration, though it might test the limits of the patience of the divine providence that has protected our republic so far. The president, who no doubt means well, wants to give us all a cheap thrill. That's the most generous explanation of his adventure into nuclear policy.

 

His Nuclear Posture Review, revealed this week, sets out for the first time that the United States "will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons [nations] that are party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty" - even if in answer to chemical, biological or cyber attacks. The president offers only a little of his hopey-changey to reassure doubters: He hopes the new policy will shame the rogue states pursuing the bomb into giving up their dreams of nuclear piracy. That will change things.

But the worst of what Mr. Obama's latest feel-good initiative will do is to make him still smaller in the eyes of the enemies that he thinks the United States doesn't have. These adversaries, who may be evil but aren't dumb, will conclude that they're not dealing with a president so much as a community activist who wandered into the White House on a nation's naive whim.

We've avoided World War III so far largely because the United States has been the ultimate guarantor of the security of most of the Free World. This guarantee worked for 70 years because the Free World believed that the United States meant what it said. Now Mr. Obama would eliminate that trust and dismantle the guarantee. It's more of his vision of a Little America, neutered and pacific, like the neutered and pacific little nations of Europe. Some thrill.

April 8, 2010

Hang on to your wallet.  The Socialist-in-Chief wants more taxes.

Nile Gardiner, Telegraph (UK):  The relentless drive by the Obama administration to undercut economic freedom in the United States continued yesterday with Paul Volcker’s call for the possible introduction of European-style value-added taxes as well as energy or carbon taxes. Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chief, is currently the most powerful economic adviser to the president after Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and sits as the chairman of the president’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

This is not empty, throw away rhetoric, but a call to arms by an aggressively interventionist and uncompromisingly left-wing US administration that is actively seeking to refashion the United States in the image of the European Union, both in terms of foreign and economic policies.

Obama the rookie.

Michael Ledeen, PJM:  He doesn’t know much history (he thinks Muslims invented printing), geography (his America has 57 states), or economics (he believes you can reduce health care costs by adding millions to the public rolls).

The most important thing to this president is how you feel and what you say, not all those annoying facts (50 states, the Chinese invented printing, and you increase deficits when you spend more).  And, like most students, when the debate goes badly for him, the president makes fun of his critics–when he actually lets them talk a little bit.  Remember when he hosted a few Republicans in the White House so he could listen to what they might say about health care…and then talked twice as much as they did?

As a typical undergrad, Obama loves to talk, and loves to talk about peace and justice.  You know, the really important things.  His new nuclear policy is right out of a college bull session:  “Why don’t we just promise not to use them?”  Nukes are bad, ugly things. Doesn’t everyone agree that the world would be better off without them?

Wishing away the threat.

The Washington Times:  President Obama's latest strategic innovation in the war on terrorism is to ignore jihad and maybe it will go away.

The Obama administration is removing terms such as "jihad" and "Islamic extremism" from the U.S. National Security Strategy in an attempt to convince Muslim countries that America doesn't view them solely through the lens of counterterrorism. It's reasonable to look beyond terrorism in developing relationships with Islamic states. Our assistance programs are based on humanitarian motives, for example, so they need not explicitly draw links between promoting good will and hopefully making it less likely that people will fly aircraft into our buildings.

But the National Security Strategy is not some kind of outreach initiative, it is the framing document for America's global safety. The United States cannot effectively combat the root causes of Islamic extremism by ignoring them. The war on terror - rather, the "overseas contingency operation," in O Force terminology - won't be effective if this country overlooks the nature of the enemy and his motives. The U.S. strategic blueprint is not the proper place for a public-relations stunt.

The new development is a disturbing example of Mr. Obama's seeming obsession with all things Muslim. It's reminiscent of the Department of Homeland Security's 2009 draft glossary of domestic extremist groups that listed Christian and Jewish organizations as threats but didn't include any Muslim groups. Or the administration's obstinate unwillingness to describe the Fort Hood massacre as an example of Islamist terrorism, even though the shooter - Nidal Malik Hasan - clearly was wrapped up in that ideology and shouted the traditional jihadist war cry "Allahu Akbar!" before opening fire.

Mr. Obama's Muslim mania increasingly pervades government and has yet to be adequately explained or even addressed. It places America in growing peril.

America, land of the free(loaders).  Where's my free lunch??

Investor's Business Daily:  The United States was once a nation of proudly independent people. But now Americans in large numbers think they deserve free access to the Web, no-cost college educations, and jobs they don't deserve and can't be fired from. They believe others should be responsible for their mortgages and feel they have a right to early, cushy retirements at someone else's expense.

This unsustainable condition is perpetuated by a federal tax code that is forcing a shrinking number of taxpayers to fund the government while removing a growing number of Americans from the income tax rolls.

According to the Tax Foundation, 60% of U.S. households were taking in more in benefits and services from government six years ago than they paid out in taxes. That will rise to 70% or more under President Obama's spending hikes.

At some point, there won't be enough independent and productive citizens to keep the freeloaders living in the luxury to which they've become accustomed. That won't be the end of America, but we'll be able to see it from there.

April 7, 2010

Obama's leech society.

Margaret Talev, McClatchy:  Two weeks after President Barack Obama signed the big health care overhaul into law, Americans are struggling to understand how — and when — the sweeping measure will affect them.

Questions reflecting confusion have flooded insurance companies, doctors' offices, human resources departments and business groups.

"They're saying, 'Where do we get the free Obama care, and how do I sign up for that?'

Obama's delusional "peace through weakness" nuclear strategy.

Investor's Business Daily:  Our arsenal is to shrink by thousands of nuclear weapons, and we'll restrict the instances in which their use is an option. Worse yet, we'll tell our enemies when and if we will use them, eliminating the ambiguity that has helped keep us safe. Under President George W. Bush, our posture reserved the right to use nuclear weapons "to deter a wide range of threats," including biological and chemical attack.

President Obama will sign a U.S.-Russian arms treaty in Prague on Thursday and host a nuclear security summit in Washington next week. The administration says the treaty will scale back the number of deployed long-range warheads by 30%. Obama pledges we will "reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy." Unfortunately, he will reduce our national security as well.

Our potential enemies have not stood still. As Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, points out, Moscow is on track toward upgrading 80% of its strategic forces. It routinely conducts underground, hydrodynamic tests that Obama considers impermissible under the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty we religiously observe.

In his Prague speech last year, Obama spoke of "America's commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons," ignoring the fact that before 1945 we lived in such a world and it was neither peaceful nor secure.

We'd prefer that the security of the American people be entrusted to an American military ready to respond with overwhelming force to any attack from any source, rather than pieces of parchment and the goodwill of our enemies.

Too bad our elected representatives ignore it.

Thomas Jefferson, 1787:  The constitution, too, which was the result of our deliberation, is unquestionably the wisest ever yet presented to men.

April 6, 2010

Obama's socialist healthcare bill.

Byron York, Townhall.com:  Health reform is "an income shift," Democratic Sen. Max Baucus said on March 25. "It is a shift, a leveling, to help lower-income, middle-income Americans."

In his halting, jumbled style, Baucus explained that in recent years, "the maldistribution of income in America has gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy, and the middle-income class is left behind." The new healthcare legislation, Baucus promised, "will have the effect of addressing that maldistribution of income in America."

At about the same time, Howard Dean, the former Democratic National Committee chairman and presidential candidate, said the health bill was needed to correct economic inequities. "The question is, in a democracy, what is the right balance between those at the top ... and those at the bottom?" Dean said during an appearance on CNBC. "When it gets out of whack, as it did in the 1920s, and it has now, you need to do some redistribution. This is a form of redistribution."

Summing things up in the New York Times, the liberal economics columnist David Leonhardt called Obamacare "the federal government's biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago."

Obama talks a lot, but doesn't say much worthwhile.

Wesley Pruden, The Washington Times:  The president, who early on came to regard himself as the prince with the voice that could make the earth move, has never been able to resist the sound of his voice. He likes question-and-answer sessions with carefully screened constituents because it gives him jumping-off places for stump oratory. When a woman named Doris stood up at a rally at a battery factory in North Carolina to ask whether "it was a wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care package," he had a few words for her. Nearly three thousand of them.

Mr. Obama spent the next 17 minutes and 12 seconds — conscientious reporters are paid to keep track of such statistics — wandering through a maze of wonkery that would put an entire Washington think tank to sleep. He talked about Medicare waste, foreign aid, Warren Buffett, earmarks, and offered two lists of "essential three points" for everyone to keep in mind. Alas, by this time nearly everybody, including the president, was fast asleep. He never answered Doris' question, but he did apologize for taking so long about it.

He and his secretary of state have called Iran's nuclear-weapons program "unacceptable" so often that it has become a mantra. The president set several final, absolute, positive deadlines for Iran to negotiate a comprehensive, verifiable, workable agreement satisfactory to the several nations of the West — or else. The president has waived the deadlines, one by one. He finally made the waiver permanent and invited the evildoers to tea, declaring that "our offer of comprehensive diplomatic contacts and dialogue stands." For this Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had a ready insult: "They say they have extended a hand to Iran, but [we] declined to welcome that."

This would have persuaded presidents past to accept reality and deal with it, but that's no longer the fashion. Mr. Obama merely sends word to the teleprompter that more show-and-tell is in the works.

April 5, 2010

Obama's stagnation economy.

Michael Barone, Townhall.com:  Last summer, I wrote a column framed as a letter to a young Obama voter. It concluded: "You want policies that will enable you to choose your future. Obama backs policies that would let centralized authorities choose much of your future for you. Is this the hope and change you want?"

It seems that some young Obama voters have decided it isn't. The Pew Research Center's poll of the millennial generation, which voted 66 percent to 32 percent for Obama in 2008, found that they identify with Democrats over Republicans by only a 54 to 40 percent margin this year.

Perhaps they are coming to realize that the burdens the Obama policies are placing on the private sector economy are reducing their choices for the future. The stimulus package, Obamacare, higher taxes (when the health care plan kicks in and when the George W. Bush cuts for high earners expire), new environmental restrictions -- they're all job-killers and help to explain why a recovering economy isn't producing many new jobs. Unemployment has been at 10 percent, rounded off, for six months now. Even Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says it's not going to decline a lot any time soon.

Get the message?

Orlando Sentinel:  "If you voted for Obama seek urologic care elsewhere. Changes to your healthcare begin right now, not in four years."—from a sign posted on the office door of Dr. Jack Cassell, urologist, Mount Dora, FL.

Obama's destruction of healthcare.

Dr. Jason Fodeman, The Washington Times:  Obamacare is brutal for physicians, and the detriment transcends dollars and cents. The law establishes approximately 159 new committees, agencies and bureaucracies, each with incredible power and flexibility to dictate physician decisions and burden an industry already regulated to death with even more red tape. This will further strip doctors of their autonomy and drown them in ever more bureaucracy and paperwork. It will make doctors even more beholden to the whims of unaccountable bureaucrats and lawyers than they already are, at the expense of the patients' best interest. Doctors will have to waste valuable time complying with inane regulations that are superfluous and sometimes harmful to patient care. This will result in physicians having even less time to administer to patients. The problem will be magnified as declining reimbursements compel doctors to see more patients to maintain the same income. It will hamstring a physician's ability to practice good medicine and will drain job satisfaction.

Obamacare will dissuade bright young minds from entering medicine in the first place, while many doctors already practicing will either retire or switch careers. New patients will be unable to find doctors, and many patients content with their health care will eventually encounter similar difficulty. Obamacare is certainly bad for doctors. Ultimately, however, it is the patient - haplessly facing restricted access, long waits and rationed care - who suffers the most.

Mr. Obama has correctly noted the shortage of primary care physicians, but his prescription to resolve the problem will only exacerbate it. Furthermore, there are shortages in many specialties and subspecialties as well. A policy of "Regulate more, pay less" will prove a very difficult recruiting motto.

Obama wants to be "Big Brother".

The Washington Times:  The Obama administration has gone on the record in favor of using innovative means to follow people's movements. In February, the Justice Department argued before the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that government agents should be permitted to track citizens by triangulating the locations of their cell phones. The Obama administration argued this can be done without the need for warrants because Americans have "no reasonable expectation of privacy" when it comes to their personal communications devices.

If the O Force believes it's OK for the government to track citizens by their cell-phone signals, it's not a great leap to believe the same rule would apply to an implanted radio chip. This concern fits within a general disquiet over the Obama administration's incessant drive to expand government power over Americans' private lives.

The health care law's provision mandating the purchase of health insurance, for example, is an unprecedented and unconstitutional claim of power under the Commerce Clause, which uses the IRS as its enforcement mechanism. A Congress that believes it can wield this type of power will determine that the government should mandate the type of electronic chips currently used to keep track of pets, livestock and convicts. The government already seems to believe that citizens can be divided among these three categories anyway.

April 2, 2010

Obamacare is unconstitutional.

Wall Street Journal:  The most important legal challenge turns on the "individual mandate"—the new requirement that almost every U.S. citizen must buy government-approved health insurance. Failure to comply will be punished by an annual tax penalty that by 2016 will rise to $750 or 2% of income, whichever is higher. President Obama opposed this kind of coercion as a candidate but has become a convert. He even argued in a September interview that "I absolutely reject that notion" that this tax is a tax, because it is supposedly for your own good.

Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum and 13 other state AGs—including Louisiana Democrat Buddy Caldwell—claim this is an unprecedented exercise of state power. Never before has Congress required people to buy a private product to qualify as a law-abiding citizen.

All human activity arguably has some economic footprint. So if Congress can force Americans to buy a product, the question is what remains of the government of limited and enumerated powers, as provided in Article I. The only remaining restraint on federal power would be the Bill of Rights, though the Founders considered those 10 amendments to be an affirmation of the rights inherent in the rest of the Constitution, not the only restraint on government. If the insurance mandate stands, then why can't Congress insist that Americans buy GM cars, or that obese Americans eat their vegetables or pay a fat tax penalty?

April 1, 2010

More ripoffs come to light.

The Washington Times:  Obamacare is a socialist law designed to take money from some Americans and use it to benefit others. The health care bill signed into law by President Obama is full of hidden time bombs. One costly provision buried in the lengthy reconciliation bill at the last minute has taxpayers covering long-term at-home care for the elderly. Through the so-called Community Living Assistance Services and Support Act (CLASS Act), Americans will find between $150 and $250 taken out of their paychecks each month to cover this program nobody knew about.

Democrats claim this isn't a controversial program, but if they really believed that, they wouldn't have had to sneak the provision into the reconciliation bill. But it was snuck in the reconciliation bill only two days before the House vote.