RealClearPolitics - Sarkozy's Contempt for Obama

Wait. I thought Obama was going to make other countries love us again. The Russians, North Koreans and Iranians seem to like Obama a lot, as do Castro and Chavez. The French, Czechs and Poles? Not so much.

RealClearPolitics - Sarkozy's Contempt for Obama

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Big Hollywood » Blog Archive » Hollywood Backing Perv Polanski Shouldn?t Surprise Anyone

In case you needed reminding, Hollywood is a moral and spiritual cesspool.

Big Hollywood » Blog Archive » Hollywood Backing Perv Polanski Shouldn?t Surprise Anyone

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Big Government » Blog Archive » Massive Voter Fraud in NY Linked to ACORN

Wow, this is a surprise. It turns out that ACORN is engaged in voter fraud. They are a very multifaceted group. In addition to providing tax evasion and child sex slavery advice to aspiring brothel owners, they also engage in an active effort to undermine our democracy. I can see why Obama represented them as their lawyer in the past.

Big Government » Blog Archive » Massive Voter Fraud in NY Linked to ACORN

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Frank Rich -- Afghan War Hypocrite - Rich Lowry - The Corner on National Review Online

Remember when liberals, including Obama, claimed emphatically that the real war against terrorism needed to be fought in Afghanistan, not Iraq? Obama campaigned based on this claim. It is shocking, then, to realize that liberals were actually being disingenuous with these claims as a way to criticize Bush. Imagine. Instead, we are now seeing that liberals also oppose the war in Afghanistan, just 7 weeks after Obama announced his new Afghanistan plan that was so crucial to the war on terror. When they're campaigning, liberal politicians must, by necessity, pretend like they actually care about America's best interests. When they are in office, however, they can show more openly that it is their far left base that guides their foreign policy decisions.

From NRO:

Frank Rich -- Afghan War Hypocrite - Rich Lowry - The Corner on National Review Online

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Want Big Money? Become a Federal Bureaucrat

Reading this link will make your blood boil. It shows that average wages for Federal government employee are roughly 50% higher than average private sector employees. When you factor in the lavish benefits that Federal employees receive by voting Democrats into office every year, the disparity rises to almost 100%.

The Con Man In Chief

Good stuff from NRO:

It is a good thing that other congressmen did not follow Rep. Joe Wilson's lead. If they yelled out every time President Obama said something untrue about health care, they would quickly find themselves growing hoarse.

By our count, the president made more than 20 inaccurate claims in his speech to Congress. We have excluded several comments that are deeply misleading but not outright false. (For example: Obama pledged not to tap the Medicare trust fund to pay for reform. But there is no money in that “trust fund,” anyway, so the pledge is meaningless.) Even so, we may have missed one or more false statements by the president. Our failure to include one of his comments in the following list should not be taken to constitute an endorsement of its accuracy, let alone wisdom.

You Mislead! by Michael F. Cannon and Ramesh Ponnuru on


National Review Online

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Politicians shocked! Price controls produce the same result as always.

how many times do we have to learn this?

Politicians shocked! Price controls produce the same result as always.

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Glory Glory Man United

Order is being restored to the soccer universe:

Check it out.

Sarkozy Mocks Obama at UN Security Council: Hello, Big Media?

What media bias? Why didn't the New York Times or Washington Post mention Sarkozy's criticism of Obama's UN speech the next day? Was it not newsworthy?

Sarkozy Mocks Obama at UN Security Council: Hello, Big Media?

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Comparative videos: New Jersey/North Korea

Compare the videos of kids in New Jersey singing about Obama to North Korean kids singing about Kim Jung Il.

Comparative videos: New Jersey/North Korea

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Commentary Magazine's "Contentions" is another daily must read. Jennifer Rubin has a daily post there called "Flotsam and Jetsam" which is always great. Here is today's:

The New York Post’s editors: “And this week, after the UN Security Council adopted an anti-nuclear-proliferation ‘resolution’ that left out any mention of Iran, it took French President Nicolas Sarkozy to express shock: ‘How,’ he asked ‘could we justify meeting without tackling’ Iran’s nukes? Now, in light of yesterday’s revelation, Obama’s nine-month course seems almost suicidal. Surely this second site means Iran is closer to having a bomb than most knew. That it’s on a military base makes it harder for Iran to claim it’s for peaceful purposes—and perhaps tougher to take out by force, if need be. And the secrecy around it proves that Iran won’t ever ‘talk’ honestly with the ‘international community.’ Let’s face it: Negotiating isn’t likely to work. Obama needs a Plan B. Pronto.”

Rep. Howard Berman sounds the alarm: “Tehran could soon have humankind’s most frightening weapon if substantial diplomatic progress is not made in the coming days.” (Notice “days” is his time frame—he must not have heard about the “let’s see where we are at the end of the year” Obama time frame.) “To have a sanctions bill ready for the president’s signature by early next year, we must start the process for passing it now. I intend to bring our bill to committee for consideration next month. Should negotiations with Iran not succeed and should multilateral sanctions not get off the ground, we must be prepared to do what we can on our own.” Odd how the president isn’t calling for this to strengthen his own hand, isn’t it? Apparently the president must have leverage to use with Iran forced upon him.

Newsflash: It’s not easy to close Guantanamo. “President Barack Obama may not be able to meet his stated goal of closing the much-criticized Guantanamo Bay prison by January as his administration runs into daunting legal and logistical hurdles to moving the more than 220 detainees still there. Senior administration officials acknowledged for the first time Friday that difficulties in completing the lengthy review of detainee files and resolving other thorny questions mean the president’s promised January deadline may slip.”

Michael Gerson on Obama’s UN speech: “At the United Nations, Obama set out to denigrate American goodness so he can become our rescuer. The speech had nothing to do with the confident style of Democratic rhetoric found in Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy. It insulted that tradition. And no one is likely ever to quote the speech—except to deride it.” Read the whole thing.

Democrats have incurred the wrath of seniors who have figured out that their benefits are going to get slashed under ObamaCare. So they are “scrambling to prove they are on the side of seniors.” They better scramble some more—by a margin of 59 to 31 percent, seniors oppose it. “What seems certain, however, is that Democrats’ ability to push through a health overhaul along the lines of what Obama has called for will depend in large part on their capacity to convince seniors that it’s a good deal for them.”

Mickey Kaus thinks ObamaCare has found its death panel—the voters: “If voters oppose by a 64-34 margin a health care bill with individual mandates but no public option, doesn’t that mean voters will oppose by a 64-34 margin any health care bill that is likely to pass? … That would put Obama’s reform up in Dick Morris’ the-Democratic-party-isn’t-a-suicide-pact range.”

Marty Peretz: “The UN is a joke. If it weren’t in New York no one would come. As an instrument of peace it fails every time. At its best, it is mostly charade, like Ban Ki-moon designating Bill Clinton as the organization’s special envoy to Haiti. ‘Special envoy,’ my foot. But Susan Rice seems to feel at home at the United Nations. ‘Google’ her and read any of her nonsense about the organization. Any of it. If you don’t laugh you’ll cry. Either way your response will be appropriate.” Unfortunately, Obama believes her nonsense.

Mark McKinnon: “It’s pretty embarrassing when a Chinese president lectures an American president about free trade on his home turf. In a direct shot at his U.S. counterpart, President Hu Jintao Friday at the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh called on his fellow leaders to ‘resolutely oppose and reject protectionism in all forms.’ Because President Obama hasn’t.”

Check it out.

Obama's UN Speech

Good stuff from Michael Gerson on Obama's shameful UN speech:

Twice in his United Nations speech, Obama dares to quote Franklin Roosevelt. I have read quite a bit of Roosevelt’s rhetoric. It is impossible to imagine him, under any circumstances, unfairly criticizing his own country in an international forum in order to make himself look better in comparison. He would have considered such a rhetorical strategy shameful -- as indeed it is.

At the United Nations, Obama set out to denigrate American goodness so he can become our rescuer. The speech had nothing to do with the confident style of Democratic rhetoric found in Roosevelt, Truman and Kennedy. It insulted that tradition. And no one is likely ever to quote the speech -- except to deride it.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2009/09/all_about_obama.html

This is from Professor Mark Perry's Carpe Diem blog, which is a daily must read. I would definitely make some qualifying observations about his graph, however. First, the reason that interest rates are so much lower now than they were in the early 1980s is because our Federal Reserve is fixing the price of money using traditional monetary policy (a zero Fed Funds rate) and atypical quantitative easing measures (like buying mortgage backed securities). There will certainly be consequences to these measures in the future. Second, in the 1980s, household debt/income was about 60%, whereas now it is closer to 120%. So rates are lower, but the debt that households are carrying is twice as high. Third, we are facing a demographic time bomb with 80 million baby boomers wanting (at least in theory) to retire in the next 10 years. Finally, in the early 1980s, we had a President who favored free trade, free markets, lower taxes, less regulation and individual enterprise that leads to job creation. Currently, we have a big government statist who cannot wait to raise taxes, is provoking a trade war with China and who has never actually held a real job.

http://blog.american.com/?p=5380

Even The French Think We Are Sissies Now

Obama has so thoroughly discredited and emasculated our country with his naive and dangerous foreign policy that even the French think we are wimps.

From a reader:

Obama: “We must never stop until we see the day when nuclear arms have been banished from the face of the earth.”

Sarkozy: “We live in the real world, not the virtual world. And the real world expects us to take decisions.”

The rest of Sarkozy’s remarks were remarkable:

“President Obama dreams of a world without weapons … but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite.

“Iran since 2005 has flouted five security council resolutions. North Korea has been defying council resolutions since 1993.

“I support the extended hand of the Americans, but what good has proposals for dialogue brought the international community? More uranium enrichment and declarations by the leaders of Iran to wipe a UN member state off the map,” he continued, referring to Israel.

The sharp-tongued French leader even implied that Mr Obama’s resolution 1887 had used up valuable diplomatic energy.

“If we have courage to impose sanctions together it will lend viability to our commitment to reduce our own weapons and to making a world without nuke weapons,” he said.

Mr Sarkozy has previously called the US president’s disarmament crusade “naive.”

Housing Depreciation in Gold Terms

This is an interesting post. The median home price in the US has declined dramatically in nominal terms since the peak in 2005. But over the same time period, the value of the dollar has declined as well, especially versus gold. If you view gold as a store of value, then median home prices have fallen over 65% versus gold in the last 4 years.

From Seeking Alpha:

At the peak in 2005, the median home price equaled 490 ounces of gold. Currently, the median price is worth about 160 ounces of gold, or roughly the same valuation as 1988.

Priced in gold, the median house bought 460 ounces of gold in 2001 and 490 ounces at the peak in 2005--a gain of 6%, considerably less than the nominal price in dollars.

Had a homeowner eschewed the blandishments of the housing bubble in 2001 and sold his/her home for 460 ounces of gold and rented for eight years, he/she could now buy a home for 160 ounces of gold and have 300 ounces in hand.

Here is a chart of the Case-Schiller Composite plotted in percentage points of rise or decline.

If we looked only at this chart, we might reach the conclusion that housing has "bottomed" and that it's "cheap." But if we price housing in loaves of bread or gold, we might reach a completely different conclusion: priced in commodities or gold, housing may not have reached its nadir, and other stores of value might retain more purchasing power than housing.

Should gold plummet, then of course housing would rise in relative performance even if it remained flatlined in nominal prices. If gold were about to fall dramatically, then this could be the relative valley in housing/gold valuations.

But the more likely scenario remains a continuing decline in nominal housing prices back to pre-bubble valuations. In this case, even if gold remains flatlined at $1,000 an ounce, then it will take fewer ounces of gold to buy a house in the future.

The point is to consider housing in relation to purchasing power/relative performance, not just in nominal dollar terms. Housing will always have value as shelter and land will always have value as productive dirt, but we must be skeptical of the constant hype that "a home is your best investment."

For the past eight years, when priced in gold, that has been patently false.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/163166-if-housing-were-priced-in-gold

The Steady March of Tyranny

The current Senate government health care bill imposes a $1,900 fine for failure to buy government mandated insurance. Not paying the fine could result in jail time. Let me repeat that. You can be put in prison for failing to buy government-run health insurance.

From Politico:
http://www.politico.com/livepulse/0909/Ensign_receives_handwritten_confirmation_.html?showall

What Russia and China Think of Us

The Obama tragicomedy continues to play out, with the latest twist being that he has known since his inaguration about the secret Iranian nuclear facility. Despite this knowledge, he has been conciliatory to Iran while screwing over our allies like Poland, Czech Republic and Israel.

Victor Davis Hanson has these thoughts on what the Russians and Chinese are thinking:

Russia and China — the former recently appeased by the missile deal, the latter recently rebuffed with the tire tariff — are flush with cash and enjoy the notion that Iran bothers us more than it does them; they have not yet been hope-and-changed into helping Obama with his grand vision on the grounds that he is not Bush. Some look at our president and see a messiah; these two see a rookie in charge of a now-bankrupt country with $2-trillion-a-year deficits that is unsure what to do in two wars and in dire need of both imported oil and trillions in cash.


-- Posted from my iPhone

Media Treatment of Leftist Protesters Versus Tea Party Protesters

Good stuff from Tigerhawk:

Glenn Reynolds makes an excellent point about the highly variable twisting of media hankies over "violence" at demonstrations. A few clowns shout at a "tea party" and the media starts worrying about the resurgent Klan, but the left literally attacks the police at the G20 protests and nobody says anything.

There are two possible explanations for this different approach of the media to edgy demonstrators of the left and right.

First, the mainstream media are completely in the tank for the Democrats, and want to help them push the talking point that the tea-partiers are both extremists and typical Republicans (neither of which is generally true).

Second, the left benefits from the soft bigotry of low expectations: People expect leftists to act like thugs at these gatherings as they have for 40 years, so when they do again it is the same-old same-old. The striving burghers of the right, however, have never done this before, so it is news.

Both explanations are probably true to some degree, but which one dominates?

School Kids Taught To Praise Obama

This is creepy. Very Kim Jung Il-ish.

Nothing Creepy Here

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Bloodthirsty Dictators Love Obama--Part 2

From NRO:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez obliquely praised President Obama Thursday in an address to the U.N., saying he has replaced the "smell of sulfur" at the world body with the "smell of hope."

"It doesn't smell of sulfur here anymore," Chavez said in a clear allusion to an earlier insult he foisted on former President George W. Bush from the same podium three years earlier.

"It smells of something else. It smells of hope," he said, referencing Obama's presidential campaign.

Smells Like Something All Right

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Krauthammer's Take - NRO Staff - The Corner on National Review Online

Great take from Charles Krauthammer on Obama's dangerously idiotic speech to the UN yesterday. The UN continues to be a corrupt, anti-American, anti-semitic debating society for dictators, thugs and kleptocrats.

From NRO:

But the alarming part is what he said in the same paragraph where he said that it makes no sense anymore "the alignments of nations that are rooted in the cleavages of the Cold War."

Well, NATO is rooted in the cleavage of the Cold War. The European Union is rooted in the cleavage of the Cold War. Our alliances with Japan and Korea and the Philippines, our guarantees to Taiwan and Eastern Europe are all rooted in the cleavage of the Cold War. (Interesting noun, incidentally.)

So he is saying that is all now irrelevant. What does he think our allies are going to think who hear this?



Krauthammer's Take - NRO Staff - The Corner on National Review Online

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Pajamas Media » Obama and ACORN: A Love Story

Obama's claim on the Sunday morning talk shows that he was unaware of ACORN's federal taxpayer funding is a giant lie. It is understandable that he wants to distance himself from a group that engages in voter fraud and that condones child sex slavery. ACORN is just the latest Obama ally to get thrown under the bus once they've become a liability. Jeremiah Wright, Van Jones, Bill Ayers, etc. The list continues to grow.

Pajamas Media » Obama and ACORN: A Love Story

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Two Peas In A Pod

Bloodthirsty dictators love Obama.

Libyan President Muammar al-Qadhafi showered Barack Obama with unexpected praise on Wednesday, telling the U.N. General Assembly he hoped Obama "can stay forever as the president of the United States."

It was, perhaps, the only kind words Qadhafi had for anyone in his hour-long speech, during which he vented against what he called the "inequality" of the United Nations.

"You are the beginning of a change," the Libyan leader said of the U.S. president. "But as far as I'm concerned, Obama is a glimpse in the dark for the four years or the next eight years, and I'm afraid that we may go back to square one. How can you guarantee America after Obama?"

"We are content and happy if Obama can stay forever as the president of the United States of America," he added.


-- Posted from my iPhone

What If Bush Had Done This Stuff?

One can only imagine how the mainstream media (aka the mouthpiece of the Democratic party) would have reacted if President Bush had committed these gaffes.

The Washington Times editorial reserves one count of its indictment for a catalogue of Obama's embarrassing moments on the world stage:

[A] list which includes: giving England's Queen Elizabeth II an iPod with his speeches on it; giving British Prime Minister Gordon Brown a collection of DVDs that were not formatted to the European standard (by contrast, Mr. Brown gave Mr. Obama an ornamental desk-pen holder made from the oak timbers of Victorian anti-slaver HMS Gannet, among other historically significant gifts); calling "Austrian" a language; bowing to the Saudi king; releasing a photo of a conference call with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in which the president was showing the soles of his shoes to the camera (an Arab insult); saying "let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel's"; saying the United States was "one of the largest Muslim countries in the world"; suggesting Arabic translators be shifted from Iraq to Afghanistan where Arabic is not a native language; sending a letter to French President Jacques Chirac when Nicolas Sarkozy was the president of France; holding a town-hall meeting in France and not calling on a single French citizen; and referring to "Cinco de Cuatro" in front of the Mexican ambassador when he meant Cinco de Mayo. Also of note was Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton giving Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov a "reset" button with the Russian word for "overcharge."


-- Posted from my iPhone

Advice to Live By: Pass The Dutchie From The Left Hand Side

If I could give three pieces of advice to the young people of the world, it would be the following:

1)Eat your greens. (From Mr. T)

2)Don't ever try to put a mouse on top of a cow.

3)Always remember to pass the dutchie from the left hand side. Seriously...from the LEFT hand side. Please see the video below for a more detailed explanation of the concept.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFtLONl4cNc

CARPE DIEM: Real Lesson from Great Depression: Tax Damage

The three mistakes that the government made in the 1930s that caused the Great Depression were 1)tightening monetary policy 2)raising taxes and 3)promoting protectionism by imposing tariffs on imported goods. The Obama administration has decided to adopt two of these positions: raising taxes and imposing tariffs on imported goods. This is idiocy at it's most profound. From Carpe Diem:

CARPE DIEM: Real Lesson from Great Depression: Tax Damage

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Obama's Promises Have Expiration Dates

Amazing. Obama said repeatedly that Afghanistan was the primary theatre for the fight against terrorism when he was running for office. Now, with liberal support for the war in Afghanistan all but gone, he is ignoring advice from military commanders on the ground.

It Looks Like This 'Expiration Date' Stuff Is Contagious

Joe Biden, speaking at last year's Democratic Convention: "Should we trust Barack Obama, who more than a year ago called for sending two additional combat brigades toAfghanistan? The fact is, al-Qaida and the Taliban—the people who actually attacked us on 9/11—have regrouped in those mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan and are plotting new attacks. And the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff echoed Barack's call for more troops."

Joe Biden, today: "Among the alternatives being presented to Mr. Obama is Mr. Biden’s suggestion to revamp the strategy altogether. Instead of increasing troops, officials said, Mr. Biden proposed scaling back the overall American military presence. Rather than trying to protect the Afghan population from the Taliban, American forces would concentrate on strikes against Qaeda cells, primarily in Pakistan, using special forces, Predator missile attacks and other surgical tactics."

Roughly a year after citing the Pentagon's request for more troops in his criticism of President Bush and John McCain, Biden is urging that Obama ignore General McChrystal's request for more troops.

Don't worry, we are in the best of hands.

Check out what Obama said this weekend versus what he said 36 days ago on Afghanistan:

Obama, this weekend:

“No, no, no, no,” Mr. Obama replied. He said that he had inherited a strategy on Afghanistan that was “somewhat adrift,” and wanted to restore a sharp focus on defeating the al-Qaeda threat.

“We lost that focus for a while and you started seeing a classic case of mission creep,” he said.

Obama, an entire 36 days ago:

It's why I announced a new, comprehensive strategy in March — a strategy that recognizes that al Qaeda and its allies had moved their base from the remote, tribal areas — to the remote, tribal areas of Pakistan. This strategy acknowledges that military power alone will not win this war — that we also need diplomacy and development and good governance. And our new strategy has a clear mission and defined goals: to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and its extremist allies.

In the months since, we have begun to put this comprehensive strategy into action. And in recent weeks, we've seen our troops do their part. They've gone into new areas — taking the fight to the Taliban in villages and towns where residents have been terrorized for years. They're adapting new tactics, knowing that it's not enough to kill extremists and terrorists; we also need to protect the Afghan people and improve their daily lives. And today, our troops are helping to secure polling places for this week's election so that Afghans can choose the future that they want.

Now, these new efforts have not been without a price. The fighting has been fierce. More Americans have given their lives. And as always, the thoughts and prayers of every American are with those who make the ultimate sacrifice in our defense.

As I said when I announced this strategy, there will be more difficult days ahead. The insurgency in Afghanistan didn't just happen overnight and we won't defeat it overnight. This will not be quick, nor easy. But we must never forget: This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is a — this is fundamental to the defense of our people.

What happens when a White House that called a war "fundamental to the defense of our people" starts trying to argue that America "just can't win"?

Obama losing everybody on health care reform

From the American Thinker Blog:

The young and uninsured will catch on: This bill is designed to force healthy people who don't have health insurance -- and may neither need nor want it -- to buy it anyway, in order to raise the money to subsidize those who do need it.

Obama has pledged only to increase taxes on the rich. But his program essentially taxes the core of the middle class (those making $30,000 to $80,000). It will make them overpay in order to pick up the slack for others who need the extra coverage.

In other words, health-care "reform" is a health-care tax dressed up as a program to cover the uninsured.

No matter how Democrats get the money to cover those who need insurance, they offend supporters that they need to pass the bill:

* If they get the money from more Medicare cuts, they alienate the elderly still further.

* If they get it from raising the deficit, they lose moderates.

* If they hike taxes to do it, they lose the "Blue Dog" Democrats who've gone on record as opposing such increases.

* If they don't increase the subsidies, they lose the uninsured themselves.

Not even the uninsured - those most likely to benefit from reform - are backing the president with any enthusiasm. The most recent Rasmussen poll shows 58% of the uninsured supporting reform but fully 30% strongly opposed. It begs the question:

Just who is it that wants this mutli-trillion dollar boondoggle in the first place?


Obama losing everybody on health care reform

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The President Described Himself as "In the grips of rage"

Check out this post from Powerline:

Barack Obama has a history of belittling his adversaries in just such a fashion. In April, 2008, he was caught on tape during a debate with Hillary Clinton, rubbing his hand across the right side of his face and extending his middle finger in an obscene gesture that many in the audience could see it but she could not, and when this provoked laughter on the part of his supporters he responded with a knowing smile. Later, after accepting his party's nomination, he did precisely the same thing during a debate with John McCain; and, after Sarah Palin remarked at the Republican National Convention that the only difference between a pit bull and a soccer mom was lipstick, he observed at a rally that a pig with lipstick is still a pig. Again, many in the audience caught the dig and they, too, were rewarded with a knowing smile.

Obama is, in fact, a master of the insulting gesture. There is no other construction that one can put on his conduct towards Gordon Brown when the British prime minister paid him a visit shortly after his inauguration. First, in an ostentatious manner, he returned to the British embassy a bust of Winston Churchill that had been loaned to his predecessor. Then, when Brown presented him with a pen made from timber used in a British ship once involved in putting down the slave trade, he gave him in return a stack of movies on DVD which could not be played on machines sold in Europe.

Were Obama a yokel, one might be able to explain this away. But a yokel he is not, and there are State Department protocol officers who are highly sensitive to the proprieties. It is no accident that, at about the same time, the White House press secretary intimated in the presence of members of the British press that there was no special relationship between the United States and Great Britain. Obama's gesture was a calculated insult -- meant to be understood only by those to whom it was directed.

If we are to comprehend what is going on, we must pay close attention not only to what Obama says but to what he conveys in other ways. His tone is nearly always moderate but what he hints at and what he intimates by way of body language often convey the opposite Witness his warm embrace of Hugo Chavez. Behind the thin veneer of politeness, there is, I suspect, something ugly lurking. In the first of the autobiographies that he claims to have written, Barack Obama frequently speaks of himself as being in the grips of rage. We would do well to take him at his word. If we are to stop him from doing great damage to this country and to our friends and allies, we must take every opportunity that comes our way to unmask the man.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024565.php

Socialism vs. Individualism: Even Sweden Is Getting Clued In

From Powerline:

We noted here that the United States has the most progressive income tax system in the developed world. That's right--embarrassingly enough, more progressive than Sweden's.

Actually, a generation of economic stagnation has taught the Swedes a lesson. They've learned that government does not produce wealth, and if they want more people to work, jobs have to pay better, after taxes. Sweden is therefore in the midst of a series of tax cuts aimed at preserving the long-term viability of its economy. Today's headline: "Sweden slashes income tax further to boost jobs."

It's an interesting comparison: Sweden experimented with the nanny state, learned that it was devastating to the economic and moral health of its people, and is moving back toward individualism. Here in the U.S., we had the world's most dynamic economy, and the lesson we took away from that--some of us, anyway--was that we were doing something wrong and needed to socialize everything. Curious.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/09/024554.php

Federal Debt as a % of GDP

At what point does our federal government start borrowing just to pay the interest on our debt, much less the principal? And, how is this any different from a Ponzi scheme? Please note that this graph does NOT even take into account the $75 trillion or so in unfunded Medicare and Social Security liabilities. Pathetic.

Doctors Overwhelmingly Oppose Government Health Care

Very interesting survey of doctors regarding the abomination that is government run health care.

Major findings included:

• Two-thirds, or 65%, of doctors say they oppose the proposed government expansion plan. This contradicts the administration's claims that doctors are part of an "unprecedented coalition" supporting a medical overhaul.

It also differs with findings of a poll released Monday by National Public Radio that suggests a "majority of physicians want public and private insurance options," and clashes with media reports such as Tuesday's front-page story in the Los Angeles Times with the headline "Doctors Go For Obama's Reform."

Nowhere in the Times story does it say doctors as a whole back the overhaul. It says only that the AMA — the "association representing the nation's physicians" and what "many still regard as the country's premier lobbying force" — is "lobbying and advertising to win public support for President Obama's sweeping plan."

The AMA, in fact, represents approximately 18% of physicians and has been hit with a number of defections by members opposed to the AMA's support of Democrats' proposed health care overhaul.

• Four of nine doctors, or 45%, said they "would consider leaving their practice or taking an early retirement" if Congress passes the plan the Democratic majority and White House have in mind.

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=506199

Daily Show Clip About ACORN

Hilarious clip about the depth of ACORN's corruption and the mainstream media's conscious decision to ignore the story.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-september-15-2009/the-audacity-of-hos