Hypocritical New York Times Ignores Obama Continuing Bush’s War Policies

May 05 2011 Published by under 2010 Elections

The New York Times’ vendetta against the Bush administration, and its willingness to serve as apologists-in-chief for the Obama administration, are boundless. The latest example of the Times’ hypocrisy is its lead editorial today entitled “The Torture Apologists: Efforts to justify torture after the Bin Laden killing are cynical and destructive.” Contrary to the informed opinion of current and former intelligence officers and CIA Director Leon Panetta himself, the Times argues that enhanced interrogation techniques do not work and were largely irrelevant in helping to locate Bin Laden. The Times also writes as if the Obama administration – as opposed to candidate Obama – had turned a completely new page in our war against global terrorism, rather than continuing many of the national security policies that the Times had so harshly criticized when used during the Bush administration. Here is what the Times editors had written about Guantanamo, indefinite detentions and secret detention camps during the Bush administration : Now that the Bush administration has made clear how offended it is at Amnesty International’s word choice in characterizing the Guantánamo Bay detention camp ‘the gulag of our times,’ we hope it will soon get around to dealing with the substantive problems that the Amnesty report is only the latest to identify. What Guantánamo exemplifies – harsh, indefinite detention without formal charges or legal recourse – may or may not bring to mind the Soviet Union’s sprawling network of Stalinist penal colonies. It certainly has nothing in common with any American notions of justice or the rule of law… What makes Amnesty’s gulag metaphor apt is that Guantánamo is merely one of a chain of shadowy detention camps that also includes Abu Ghraib in Iraq, the military prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and other, secret locations run by the intelligence agencies. Guess what? Guantanamo is still open. Renditions and indefinite detentions of high risk suspects without trial have continued during the Obama administration. So have suspension of habeas corpus and allegations of torture for detainees being held at least one legal “black hole” that we know of – Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan . The Obama administration has even asserted the power to kill an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, currently said to be residing outside the theater of war in Yemen, without any judicial warrant or due process of law. To be sure, al-Awlaki deserves to be targeted. He is reportedly responsible for not only encouraging attacks on the United States, but also directly aiding them. As an operative of al Qaeda, hiding in a country where al Qaeda forces had attacked the U.S.S. Cole and from which plots to attack the homeland are being hatched, al-Awlaki should be fair game. But given the numerous strident denunciations of the Bush administration’s enhanced interrogation techniques used to elicit potentially life-saving intelligence from the self-confessed mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and his cohorts, as well as the denunciations of the warrantless NSA program, shouldn’t the targeting for execution without prior judicial authorization or trial of an American citizen, who has no reported direct connections to planning the 9/11 attack, merit at least the same degree of critical scrutiny? Apparently not. For that matter, does the Times have any concerns that Osama Bin Laden was apparently shot in the head while unarmed? I think most Americans would agree that Bin Laden deserved his fate, sparing us the cost of detaining him and putting him on trial for crimes against humanity that he had boasted about. But how does the shooting of an unarmed man – no matter how vile –  fall under the Times ‘ notion of holding credible trials for very bad men The New York Times once again has demonstrated its hypocrisy in its quest to ensure Barack Obama’s re-election. Joseph Klein is the author of a recent book entitled Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations and Radical Islam

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Robert Malley Still Making ‘Uncle Yassir’ Arafat Proud

May 05 2011 Published by under 2010 Elections

Perhaps the most damaging blow to Middle East peace in recent history is the Hamas/Fatah “unity deal” announced by both terrorist parties.  Fatah, run by PA President Mahmoud Abbas tries to project a respectable image to the non-Muslim world this leads them to tone down the terrorist activity a bit and even try to negotiate with Israel every once in a while.  Peace has never been an objective of Fatah–just the appearance of wanting peace so the terrorist group can remain the favorite-child of liberal governments, including ours. Hamas throws up no smokescreens about its objectives–a worldwide caliphate and the destruction of Israel as the Jewish state. By all accounts Hamas will be the more powerful force in this arrangement.  Almost immediately after the deal was announced,  Hamas representatives.. …emphasized that the new unity agreement, reached on Wednesday, did not require them to accept the two-state solution or to engage in peace talks with Israel. They also stressed that the interim unity government that was expected to be established soon would not conduct peace negotiations with Israel. Even the “moderate” PA President Abbas admitted that peace was no longer a goal. On May 3rd he said to the  the Al-Aharam newspaper: “There is no need to demand that Hamas recognize Israel. The PA will not request that it do so.” Why should Abbas demand Hamas recognize Israel as the Jewish homeland when his own Fatah party doesn’t?  By any measure, this deal is a danger to peace, the U.S. interests in the area, and our ally Israel. Here in the United States, some of the Palestinians’ most useful propaganda tools are already taking advantage of the progressive media already heralding the agreement as the best thing for peace. Take, for example, Robert Malley.  For those who are unfamiliar with Mr. Malley, he is a former adviser to Barack Obama, and a second-generation Israel hater.  I do not believe the sins of the father is visited on the son, but this son has chosen to follow in his dad’s footsteps . Malley grew up in France, where his Egyptian-born father, Simon Malley, and New York raised mother, Barbara (Silverstein) Malley, were radical publishers of a controversial magazine about Africa and the so-called Third World. Malley’s parents were rabidly anti-Israel and counted Yasir Arafat as a personal friend. Indeed, Arafat was among those “leaders” (for want of a better word) who had intervened with the French government to readmit the Malley family to France after they had been expelled for their radical activities. Malley’s personal pedigree not only includes a host of anti-Israel articles, but the former aide to Bill Clinton is the only American privy to the Clinton peace efforts to blame Israel for their lack of success. Everyone else, including the former President , said that Yassir Arafat walked away from a “sweetheart” deal.  He was also believed to be the chief source for an article by Deborah Sontag that whitewashed Arafat’s role in the collapse of the peace process, an article that has been widely criticized as riddled with errors and bias. Formerly a member of Obama’s campaign team, Malley was supposedly fired by the campaign for having secret meetings with Hamas, but he was a willing sacrificial lamb to make Obama look good.  Now Malley serves progressive puppet-master George Soros as he is currently Program Director for Middle East and North Africa at the International Crisis Group, an international think tank funded by the “dude of spooky” himself. Most of the people who read Malley’s recent piece in the Washington Post pushing Hamas as an important peace partner are probably unfamiliar with his background as an apologist for Palestinian terror. But a close reading of the op-ed reveals his propagandist methodology . Twice before the world has sought to prevent the Islamists from governing — after Hamas won the 2006 legislative elections and, a year later, when it formed a coalition with Fatah. Twice, the world made a mess of things. The balance sheet is unequivocal: Hamas remains entrenched in Gaza; Fatah is no stronger; and, without elections or genuine pluralistic political life, democratic institutions in the Palestinian territories have rusted. Sometimes facts are just inconvenient things. What Malley refuses to mention that that it was Hamas that threw out the “democratic institutions” with a military operation that threw Fatah out of Gaza.  And a major reason Hamas and Fatah haven’t reconciled before was Hamas’ desire to perpetuate its violence against Israel–omething it has done very well, when you consider the fact that since Hamas took over Gaza, it is responsible for launching over 5,000 missiles, mortars, etc., into civilian areas of Israel. The only reason Fatah is ready to unite with Hamas despite its more blatant violence, is that in September they intend to get the United Nations General Assembly’s help in unilaterally declaring an Arab Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital.  They need the cooperation of Hamas to get this through. The most persuasive case against unity has been that it would dash prospects for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Even then, this was never a particularly convincing argument. For it was hard to imagine a fractured national movement reaching a peace agreement, let alone implementing and sustaining it. Palestinian reconciliation was more likely a prerequisite than an obstacle to peace. But now? The peace process is lifeless. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators have not met in months. Palestinians, convinced that they will get nothing from Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and little from the United States, are focused on getting the U.N. General Assembly to endorse their call for statehood. In this context, Netanyahu’s insistence that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas choose between peace with Israel or peace with Hamas is the emptiest of threats. Oh boy, Uncle Yassir would be so proud. Again Malley is not being truthful. Since Netanyahu became prime minister, he as called for a two-state solution and constantly called for negotiations.  When Netanyahu enacted his ten-month building freeze, PA President Abbas waited nine months to agree to talk and used the scheduled end of the freeze to stop talking.  More than once during the past few years, Abbas has refused to recognize Israel as a Jewish state and has insisted in order for there to be peace millions of Palestinians must be allowed to move into Israel as to negate its Jewish majority. Giving credit where it is due, Malley does have one thing correct: with the “Arab Awakening” throughout the Middle East, existing regimes are more likely to be replaced with governments even more radical. For Hamas, Mubarak’s fall likewise was decisive. An Egyptian government more in tune with public opinion coupled with a more powerful Muslim Brotherhood — Hamas’s parent organization — augurs a far warmer bilateral relationship. Growing unrest in Syria is another factor. The embattled Syrian regime, having offered safe harbor to Hamas’s leadership for a decade, wants to collect the rent — through overt signs of loyalty and support. Hamas has officially backed the regime but tepidly, out of reluctance to alienate its power base of Palestinian refugees and conservative Sunnis in Syria and beyond. Hamas calculates that even without immediate regime change, the Syrian regime inevitably will be transformed, its brutal crackdown having eroded much of its domestic credibility and regional influence. Tilting toward Cairo, a more important actor in the long run and more legitimate among Hamas’s constituency, was the safer bet. Accepting the Egyptian-brokered deal was a first step. However, he uses that analysis as a stepping stone for more misinformation: For political and legal reasons, the Obama administration cannot embrace a unity government (his subtle allusion to that nefarious Jewish Lobby) ….Beyond discomfort at Cairo’s improved relations with Hamas, is it not in America’s interest to see an influential Egypt critical of Israel yet committed to its peace accord; whose relationship with the United States is strong but not servile, and whose stances are more consistent with domestic and regional opinion? Even under Mubarak, Egypt has always been critical of Israel. The difference we are learning (but Malley ignores) is that it is the “new” Egypt which is critical of Israel and wants to trash the peace. It is not in America’s interest to have one Islamist terrorist group to begin to influence an Egyptian government on the precipice of being run by the radical Muslim Brotherhood. Might this not weaken Iran, which benefited from using Mubarak’s regime as a foil, and whose regional weight will deflate with the rise of a credible Arab counter-model? How would attempts to torpedo the agreement affect relations with this new Egypt — and, more broadly, with a newly assertive Arab public? Is Washington better off if Hamas feels compelled to drift from Tehran and Damascus toward Cairo? If the Muslim Brotherhood plays a more central role in Egypt, how might it influence Hamas? How might U.S. engagement with the Brotherhood influence that influence? OK let me understand this for a second.  The Muslim Brotherhood considers Iran its role model . Hamas and Iran have been allies for a very long time . If Hamas drifts away from Tehran toward Cairo, isn’t it drifting back toward Tehran?  I know, Malley is just trying to confuse me–either that or trying to mislead the reader. Then again, that is Malley’s modus operandi –confuse, distort and lie, I guess that’s what makes him the prefect Middle East guru for an organization “owned” by George Soros.  Sadly, when a progressive newspaper such as the Washington Post publishes an op-ed from people like Mr. Malley, whose anti-Israel opinion matches their editorial philosophy , they feel no need to explain his background. This omission is a disservice to the newspaper’s readers.

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Not Invited to the Wedding: Why Great Britain Doesn’t Like Barack Obama

May 02 2011 Published by under 2010 Elections

Last week, you couldn’t turn on the television or get on the web without being subjected to some sort of coverage of the royal wedding. It was truly a global phenomenon, and the American fascination with it was remarkable. What other event would prompt 22.8 million viewers across the country to wake up at an ungodly hour to witness an event taking place thousands of miles away? (Worldwide viewership is estimated at a staggering 2 billion, reportedly making the ceremony the most-watched event in history.) In addition to the media frenzy, there was much consternation and speculation about the deliberate omission of Barack and Michelle Obama from the guest list for the wedding. Explanations for the snub ranged from the fact that the wedding was not a state occasion to possible security concerns. But I can’t help but wonder if the reason for not inviting the Obamas runs much deeper than those reasons. After all, Barack Obama has presided over a stunning and shameful deterioration of the “special relationship” between the United States and the United Kingdom. “ Special relationship ” is the term often used to describe American-British relations. Winston Churchill used it frequently, though the term itself goes back to the 19th century. The phrase is a tip of the hat to our nations’ shared heritage and intertwined history, as well as a nod to the unique military, diplomatic, and economic alliance between the two countries. From the World Wars to the Reagan-Thatcher friendship, to Britain’s support of the War on Terror, the “special relationship” has been an obvious one. Unfortunately, President Obama has done severe damage to the “special relationship.” A series of gaffes in diplomacy and protocol on the part of both Barack and Michelle Obama have strained the bond between the US and Britain: Obama has been criticized by some for not embracing the ‘special relationship’ that has existed between the U.S. and Britain since the Second World War. Shortly after he arrived in the White House, the president presented Queen Elizabeth with an iPod and then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown with a bundle of American DVDs that would not work on British players. He also returned a bust of Winston Churchill that had stood in President George W. Bush’s Oval Office. Last year, Mrs. Obama also touched the back of Queen Elizabeth’s back which, as White House watcher Keith Koffler notes, is considered a major breach of protocol when dealing with the royals. The Obama administration has strained the US-British friendship with a series of political moves as well. In 2010, the administration, led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton , refused to acknowledge British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands , a territory that has been a source of tension between the UK and Argentina for years. During the oil spill crisis in the Gulf of Mexico last summer, many Britons were offended by the Obama’s continual references to “British Petroleum,” in spite of the fact that BP is a truly international corporation that hasn’t called itself “British Petroleum” in ages. And this year, those upstanding folks at Wikileaks released evidence that the United States shared with Russia secrets about Britain’s nuclear capability .

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Obama got Osama bin Laden. Good for him BUT…

May 02 2011 Published by under 2010 Elections

Under President Obama’s watch, Osama bin Laden has been killed by U.S. forces abroad. Americans and everyone who values Western civilization should rejoice. And make no mistake, even though he had to be dragged kicking and screaming into action against the Islamic fundamentalists, President Obama deserves credit for ridding the world of this Islamofascist monster. (President George W. Bush also deserves credit –maybe even more credit– but that is a discussion for another day.) It is an important victory in a war that the president had no interest in waging. It is also probably just about the only thing he’s done that’s good for America, especially after the previous Democratic president let bin Laden go. So President Obama has done a great thing. No doubt about it. But that doesn’t make him Captain America suddenly. Making bin Laden a grease spot does not take away from the fact that President Obama does not believe in America, at least not in the way most Americans believe in America. To him, America’s not a big deal. The president believes in American exceptionalism but only in a perfunctory way, that is, in a way that drains all meaning from the phrase. “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism,” he said . In other words, America is just another country, no better or worse than any other. (Except for Israel, of course. Obama has made it clear he doesn’t think Israel should exist.) This is the vision of the multiculturalist, the cultural relativist who cares nothing about America’s unique heritage and unparalleled respect for the rights of the individual. President Obama has made it clear that he does not believe in limited government. In fact, he mocks the strictures that America’s Constitution places on government and has devoted considerable resources to getting around that noble document. His horrific Obamacare legislation is just one example. The president will get a bounce in public opinion polls. It may even last for months. But never forget that America is in a sad state today because of the policies Obama and people like Obama support. Inflation is rising because the Fed, with Obama’s blessing, has been running the printing presses day and night. Energy prices are rising because Marxist environmentalist policies won’t allow American companies to drill for oil or open new refineries. As more and more families have trouble paying for the basics of human life, they will remember whose policies are making their lives difficult. To repeat, killing Osama bin Laden is a major accomplishment for the Obama administration and Americans should rejoice but it doesn’t make up for the damage that the Community Organizer-in-Chief has done to the country and to America’s standing in the world. Follow me on  Twitter and check out my upcoming book Subversion Inc.: How Obama’s ACORN Red Shirts are Still Terrorizing and Ripping Off American Taxpayers .

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Release of File on Barack Obama, Sr., Opens a New Can of Worms

Apr 29 2011 Published by under 2010 Elections

This story is cross-posted from  LisaGraas.com Just when you thought you could breathe a bit easier with the speculations about the President’s birth certificate being put (mostly?) to rest, along comes another can of worms in the form of the release of an immigration file on Barack Obama ‘s father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr . The file includes a lot of information that paints a different picture than many ( like this ?) we have seen before. Pamela Geller hits the story with the kind of frank commentary we’ve come to expect from her: Barack Hussein Obama, Sr.: Nightmares of My Father What a horrible man. Dreams of My Father. Indeed. Perhaps this explains President Obama’s animus towards the United States.. She puts it quite a bit more harshly in the rest of her article than I would put it, but suffice it to say that it’s pretty clear now that Barack Obama, Sr., was something of a “ slippery character “. From Fox News : With a father like this, it is little wonder President Obama did not want to release his full birth certificate. Though the proof that he was actually born in Hawaii may silence some critics, a new, rather more interesting side of his life has emerged – that his father Barack Obama senior was a serial womaniser and polygamist who government and university officials were trying to force out of the country. That’s about the size of it . Already, one New York Times contributor, Andrew Rice, has come to the defense of Obama, Sr., in claiming that he was ‘eased out’ of Harvard and deported from America….for dating white women . No, I think that when you date a lot of women, no matter their color, while you also happen to be married is the problem, Mr. Rice. As you can see, the views on the left and the right are again polar opposites, and can be over the top. Mind you, I don’t hold the sins of the father against the son. It does seem to shed new light on the hypocrisy of the left, however, in regard to how merciless they can be in their opposition research and in raking the families of conservatives over the coals…particularly the family of Sarah Palin who was so effective for the Republican presidential ticket during the 2008 campaign. It remains to be seen how this new information will be handled by the media, including pundits in the blogophere, in the days (weeks? months?) to come. Hopefully, we can be talking less about Barack Hussein Obama, Sr.’s misdeeds and more about Barack Hussein Obama, Jr.’s misdeeds …but I’m not holding my breath. This story is cross-posted from  LisaGraas.com

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The New Abolitionist: Dragging the Left to a Moral Argument

Apr 20 2011 Published by under 2010 Elections

Imagine an argument for the abolition of slavery based not upon natural law and fundamental human rights , but whether slavery is an effective means of production. Such an abolitionist might say, Slaves cannot be relied upon to produce all that the country requires. The subsequent debate would then center around the efficiency of slavery, rather than its morality. That’s the character of our modern debate regarding taxation. The Wall Street Journal published an editorial on Monday demonstrating “the fiscal futility of raising rates on the top 2%, or even the top 5% or 10%, of taxpayers to close the deficit.” Confiscating all the taxable income of the top 10% of taxpayers will not close the deficit, they say. Taxes will therefore have to be raised on the middle class to maintain the entitlement state. Jeffery Sachs counters from The Huffington Post . He claims that the “IRS data in fact prove exactly the opposite of what the Journal claims.” I’ll leave it to the Journal to defend their math, not because their case lacks importance, but because it is entirely beside the point. While it may be prudent to highlight “the fiscal futility” of the Left’s tax-hiking impulse, the foremost argument against perpetuating the entitlement state is a moral one. Consider Sachs’ rhetoric. [The Journal has] done us a huge service by drawing attention to the astonishing incomes received by America’s richest taxpayers, coupled with the declining rates of average personal income taxation paid by this group(…) … the American people are coming to understand the outsized incomes and wealth of the richest Americans and the need for them to pay more in taxes to help close the budget deficit. This is the slaver owner saying to our misguided abolitionist, We need only breed them faster and beat them harder, and our needs can be met. By focusing on the fiscal argument, conservatives cede the moral one. It doesn’t matter whether you can close the budget deficit with higher taxes. It’s still wrong to use the coercive power of government to redistribute wealth. It wouldn’t matter if there were a single person in all of America who claimed as earned income enough wealth to fund the grandest entitlement schemes we could hatch. It wouldn’t matter if there were one billionaire left on Earth while the rest of us starved. It would still be wrong to steal from that individual. The movement to abolish slavery was driven by moral outrage, by an appeal to our innate sense of right and wrong. So too must our quest for modern abolition be framed. The entitlement state is a yoke around our necks and those of our children. It is a curse we are obligated to lift. The citation of tax rates rather than taxes paid is as fundamentally dehumanizing as any claim of superiority one group has made against another, and should be as offensive to our sensibilities. It takes as granted that the labor and talent of one man is owed in tribute to another. This is not a notion upon which compromise is possible. You either believe all men are created equal and must be treated so under the law, or you don’t. Sachs does not. Neither does President Obama or any other leftist arguing to maintain the fundamentally corrupt status quo. Another man’s possession of that which you want or need does not entitle you to rob him, whether by your lone volition or by majority vote. This should not be controversial. Rather, it should be the line which divides citizen from criminal. This is the argument Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians must drag the Left to. It exposes their tyrannical nature and presents the public with a stark moral choice.

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Boston Professor Hails Obama for Declaring War on Deficits. Wait, What?

Apr 16 2011 Published by under 2010 Elections, Congress

To love your country is to hate red ink. Sounds like a Tea Party slogan, doesn’t it? This concise declaration of fiscal responsibility would look at home on many a conservative bumper or amid a sea of protest signs, but incredibly, it was uttered by Boston University history professor Andrew Bacevich as—I kid you not—a glowing endorsement of President Barack Obama’s April 13 speech on the federal budget . On the Daily Beast , Bacevich declares that the 44 th president has “expanded the operative definition of patriotism to encompass belief in balanced budgets”: This is surely a good thing. So too is the president’s willingness to finger the essence of the problem: a widespread desire for an endless free lunch—people coveting government benefits without a willingness to pay for them. Obama also performed a useful service in pointing out that any serious effort at deficit reduction will have to target the Big Four: Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and national security. Regarding that last category, the president promises to reassess not only military missions and capabilities, but also America’s role in the world. In our post-unipolar moment, such a reassessment is long overdue. Yet to have more than cosmetic results, Obama will have to take on some very sacred cows and some very powerful interests. I defy you to find a more surreal reaction to Obama’s remarks. We’ve previously discussed how Diamond Barry’s proposed budgets have been so bloated they call for new taxes by the trillions to sustain them. The president might have said on Wednesday that he wants to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next twelve years, but as Mark Knoller of noted right-wing mouthpiece CBS News reports : Budget totals issued by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in February project 10 years of deficits totaling $7.2 trillion between 2012 and 2021. Another two years at that rate would bring the 12 year total to $8.6 trillion. The Obama 12-year plan would cut the projected deficit total in half, but would leave another $4 trillion in deficits that would be added to the National Debt, which now stands at $14.27 trillion. Separately, OMB expects the Debt to double over the next ten years to a mind-boggling total of $26.3-trillion in 2021. It’s estimated the Debt that year would cost U.S. taxpayers $928-billion in interest payments. Four trillion dollars in deficit reduction would reduce the Debt to just over $22-trillion, and still inflict $700-billion in interest on the federal budget. If budget-balancing really is the new patriotism, then Obama falls short of the good, solid B plus range right out of the gate. By the way, Obama has decided signing statements aren’t evil anymore , and is using one to declare that he simply won’t abide by Congress’s vote to de-fund his czars . I don’t see how unilaterally disregarding spending cuts enacted by the legislative branch gets you points as a fiscal hawk. This is what Professor Bacevich considers visionary leadership aimed at cleaning up the mess we’re in ? If we assess Obama’s approach to “sacred cows” (and no, it’s not bold for a leftist to say we’re spending too much on defense, which isn’t the problem area anyway), then the grade drops further still. Consider his reaction to the substantive (if imperfect) plan proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), which attempts to address Medicaid and Medicare. Did the Uniter-in-Chief applaud Ryan’s willingness to make tough decisions? Did our first post-partisan president offer to reach across the aisle to find common ground between their plans, while offering substantive, good-faith critiques of particulars he disagreed with? Er, not exactly : But the way this plan achieves those goals would lead to a fundamentally different America than the one we’ve known throughout most of our history […] These are the kind of cuts that tell us we can’t afford the America we believe in.  And they paint a vision of our future that’s deeply pessimistic […] Worst of all, this is a vision that says even though America can’t afford to invest in education or clean energy; even though we can’t afford to care for seniors and poor children, we can somehow afford more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks for the wealthy […] their vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America.  As Ronald Reagan’s own budget director said, there’s nothing “serious” or “courageous” about this plan.  There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires.  There’s nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill. The demagoguery is so thick you could cut it with a knife. The fact is, the Ryan budget returns discretionary spending to not-exactly stingy 2008 levels. And as the Wall Street Journal writes , his Medicare “cuts” are cuts “only in the sense of slowing the rate of growth,” and his healthcare proposals are meant to address government-distortion of the incentive structure: “By capping the Medicare subsidy, seniors would pay for the marginal costs of their care, promoting competitive insurance. That would in turn incrementally change how doctors and hospitals provide care, encouraging competition in price and quality.” And the tax cuts for the rich? The Ryan budget outline by design does not provide many tax specifics, aside from an instruction to the Ways and Means Committee to propose a reform plan that would swap lower rates for fewer loopholes and special exclusions. This overhaul is not even a net tax cut—the instructions are to design a reform that is revenue neutral. It would hold tax receipts to their post-World War II average of between 18% to 19% as a share of the economy. The liberal claim that this means a tax cut for the wealthy is based entirely on the fact that marginal tax rates would decline, even though the loopholes primarily benefit higher-income taxpayers. At any rate, Mr. Obama’s own deficit commission also favored lowering the rates and broadening the base for a more efficient and competitive tax code. Mr. President, the only thing that embodies “a fundamentally different America than the one we’ve known throughout most of our history” is your vision. Your talk of what “we” can afford, what “we’ve” promised to this or that slice of the population, betrays your ignorance of a simple, quintessentially American truth: the people are not the government . Yes, we the people have a moral obligation to lend a hand to our young, our sick, and our downtrodden, but the role of our federal government is to protect our individual rights so we don’t have to watch our backs all the time, so we can focus on other pursuits, such as bettering ourselves and the world around us. To recognize that the government can’t afford all the collective charity work our liberal betters think it should undertake is not to reject the individual’s obligations to his countrymen. Mr. President, you accuse conservatives of “changing the basic social compact in America.” America’s social compact is the United States Constitution , and we’re not changing a word of it—we’re simply reasserting it’s original, true meaning.

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Miraculous GOP Turnaround Causes Michael Moore to Drop the Act and Ask Obama to Disenfranchise Wisconsin

Apr 08 2011 Published by under 2010 Elections

In a stunning development, a clerical error in Wisconsin has transformed what many expected to be a long, ugly legal battle favoring the Left into an almost certain victory for the Right , outraging leftists like Michael Moore , to the point where the radical “documentarian” has stopped bothering to hide his disdain for the democratic process. The intense Wisconsin Supreme Court race between the incumbent Republican, Justice David Prosser , and his Democrat challenger, state DNR enforcer JoAnn Kloppenburg , ended Wednesday with the latter declaring victory based on the Associated Press’s calculation of a 204-vote lead. Prosser didn’t budge , and most predicted an onslaught of recounts and vote fraud litigation to ensue. But on Thursday evening we learned that Waukesha county clerk Kathy Nickolaus had erroneously passed on the county’s data to the AP without the numbers from the city of Brookfield, which shifted the lead to Prosser by more than 7,000 votes. Leftists are predictably outraged that hijacking the judiciary to thwart Governor Scott Walker’s public-sector union reforms won’t work after all, though none have topped the overreaction of Moore, who tweeted last night: Republicans created the rule: “Whoever declares victory first, wins!” When will Obama Justice Dept impound ballots and stop the shenanigans? Much has been said about the totalitarian impulse and anti-constitutionalism behind modern leftism, but rarely is it expressed so overtly by one of their own. Moore wants the federal government to forcibly prevent the certification of a state election and give the office to someone based strictly on her own, premature and entirely unofficial , declaration of victory? Wow. I don’t think I even need to say anything more to explain how mind-blowingly horrendous his position is. Moore’s man-of-the-people act has never quite rung true , but after this he can’t even pretend to value such niceties as democracy, the rule of law, or ensuring that every vote is counted. He has truly and irrevocably dropped the pretense of being anything other than a would-be tyrant. As for Nickolaus and allegations of pro-Prosser funny business: yes, Nickolaus has been rightly criticized for blunders in the past, but the imaginative lefties crying foul right now are bound to be disappointed for several reasons.

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