Favorites: Thomas Sowell, Mark Steyn, Victor Davis Hanson, Tony Blankley, Charles Krauthammer, Michael Barone, Jonah Goldberg, Dan Henninger, Kim Strassel, John Hawkins, Shelby Steele, Brian Lamb, Milton Friedman, Adam Smith, FA Hayak
The next time you hear Obama, or some Democrat blaming our huge deficit on George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, quote this excellent post by Bruce McQuain:
Democrats are particularly fond of that meme because it provides them the opportunity to again shift the blame for something on their arch enemy, George Bush. It is also a convenient way to claim they’re blameless for all of these trillions of dollars in deficit spending that has taken place over the years.
It would be nice to see this chart in the New York Times.
How many times have we heard about the trillions of dollars spent (as if a vast majority of the Congress didn’t approve the war).
According to the CBO’s numbers, the Iraq war has cost $709 billion. Not the wild estimates by some on the left (to include the absurd claims by James Carville and others that the war cost $3 trillion). And look carefully at the added cost of the war on top of the federal deficit spending shown in red.
Notice anything? Now think back – who was in charge of Congress from 2003 – 2007? And what was the trend in overall deficit spending – including the cost of the Iraq war – through 2007. Any impartial observer would point out the trend was downward. The party in charge of Congress at the time was the GOP.
Oh, by the way, via Gateway Pundit.: 71% of Americans Believe Iraq Is Better Today and Give Bush the Credit
I just bought Sowell’s latest book. He looks pretty good for an 80 year old, and thankfully, his mind is as fertile as ever.
Thomas Sowell has studied and taught economics, intellectual history, and social policy at institutions that include Cornell University, UCLA, and Amherst College. Now a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Sowell has published more than a dozen books, the latest of which is Dismantling America.
In introducing his new book, Sowell asserts that the Obama administration “is the embodiment, the personification, and the culmination of dangerous trends that began decades ago,” trends that are “dismantling America.” Sowell sees this in the dismantling of marriage, of culture, and of self-government.
Perhaps Obama will have the grace to admit this when the occasion presents itself next week. If he does, it will reflect well on the current Commander in Chief. If not, Boehner’s video makes the truth obvious anyway.
Below is the text of one of those emails we all get from friends. I had no way of knowing if it was true. After I forwarded it to 2 family members I got curious as to why I had never heard about this visit, so I did a little digging.
Here’s the original email:
The doctor had his TV on in his office when the news of the military base shootings at Ft. Hood , TX came on. The husband of one of his employees was stationed there.
He called her into his office and as he told her what had happened, she got a text message from her husband saying, “I am okay.” Her cell phone rang right after she read the message. It was an ER nurse,” I’m the one who just sent you a text, not your husband. I thought it would be comforting but I was mistaken in doing so. I am sorry to tell you this, but your husband has been shot 4 times and he is in surgery.”
The soldier’s wife left Southern Clinic in Dothan , AL and drove all night to Ft.Hood. When she arrived, she found out her husband was out of surgery and would be OK. She rushed to his room and found that he already had visitors there to comfort him. He was just waking up and found his wife and the visitors by his side. The nurse took this picture.
What? No news crews and cameras? This is how people with class respond and pay respect to those in uniform. I sent my cousin in Fayetteville , N.C. (Retired from Special Forces) that picture of George W. visiting the wounded at Ft. Hood . I got this reply:
What is even better is the fact George W. Bush heard about Fort Hood, got in his car without any escort, apparently they did not have time to react, and drove to Fort Hood. He was stopped at the gate and the guard could not believe who he had just stopped. Bush only asks for directions to the hospital then drove on. The gate guard called that “The President is on Fort Hood and driving to the hospital.”
The base went bananas looking for Obama. When they found it was Bush, they immediately offered escort. Bush simply told them to shut up and let him visit the wounded and the dependents of the dead.
He stayed at Fort Hood for over six hours, and was finally asked to leave by a message from the White House.
Obama flew in days later and held a “photo” session in a gym, and did not even go to the hospital.
I Googled “george w bush Ft Hood visit” and then went to FactCheck.org. Here’s the short answer:
Q: Did President George W. Bush drop everything to visit Ft. Hood victims? Was he ordered away by the Obama administration?
A: Bush did visit the wounded at Ft. Hood, but a Bush spokesman says that his visit was coordinated with base officials and that he was not asked to leave by the White House.
Here’s the Full Answer:
The e-mail contains a grain of truth. President George W. Bush did visit the wounded at Ft. Hood only a day after the tragic Nov. 5 shooting spree on the base, as was reported publicly at the time by a number of news outlets. But since then, we’ve had a steady stream of queries about this chain e-mail’s description of the visit, in which the author embellishes the facts considerably. Army officials would not comment, so we spoke to Bush spokesman David Sherzer, who was happy to set the record straight.
One might say the public has changed its opinion of Obama, but it seems more likely that the public is beginning to see Obama as it finally did Bush. The hard Right always felt about Obama as the hard Left did about Bush, but now independents seem simply to have rechanneled their Bush anger to Obama anger — something that has bewildered Team Obama, who cannot gain any traction by blaming the current malaise on the Bush legacy. Voters apparently don’t see the corrective to Bush’s deficit budgeting in Obama’s yet higher spending and larger government.
Lampoons Obama-Pelosi Socialist Agenda. A lot of good points here.
I Want Your Money trailer…Set against the backdrop of today’s headline – 67% of Americans don’t approve of Obama’s economic policies, the film takes a provocative look at our deeply depressed economy using the words and actions of Presidents Reagan and Obama and shows the marked contrast between Reaganomics and Obamanomics. The film contrasts two views of the role that the federal government should play in our daily lives using the words and actions of Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. Two versions of the American dream now stand in sharp contrast. One views the money you earned as yours and best allocated by you; the other believes that the elite in Washington know how to best allocate your wealth. One champions the traditional American dream, which has played out millions of times through generations of Americans, of improving one’s lot in life and even daring to dream and build big. The other holds that there is no end to the “good” the government can do by taking and spending other peoples’ money in an ever-burgeoning list of programs. The documentary film I Want Your Money exposes the high cost in lost freedom and in lost opportunity to support a Leviathan-like bureaucratic state.
Michael Barone is clearly one of the best columnists to read for a very broad perspective.
Here’s a 2700 word essay that offers more insight into over 200 years of American Political History.
A few short quotes:
We live now in a moment where it is clear that some of these policies went too far. Policies to increase homeownership helped produce the housing-price crash of 2007. Poorly understood innovations in finance led to the financial crisis of 2008. The resulting recession is painful and is, I believe, being prolonged by the economic policies of the Obama Democrats.
But the fact is that we are once again, as in the days of the early republic and not in the heyday of the Progressives and the New Dealers, a republic of property owners. Most Americans have accumulated—or will, during the course of their working years, accumulate— significant amounts of wealth. And that is why, I believe, American voters seem to be rejecting the policies of the Obama Democrats. Those policies, rooted in the Progressive and New Deal tradition, are designed to encourage a culture of dependence. It is the “soft despotism” of which Tocqueville warned us 175 years ago. The American people, the property-owning majority, even in this time of economic distress, seem to be embracing instead a culture of independence, a culture as old as the republic itself.
The major political development of the last 17 months has been an inrush of hundreds of thousands or even millions of Americans into political activity, an inrush symbolized by but not limited to the tea party movement. It is fascinating to me that the tea partiers have adopted the language and in some cases even the costumes of the Founders. While the Progressives’ descriptions of a “horse and buggy” Constitution and their sense that giant auto factories and steel mills were the harbinger of the future seem tinny and out of date, the language of the Founders continues to resonate with the clear timbre of a silver spoon tapping a crystal glass. The majority of the American people seem to firmly agree with the Founders’ insistence that no one should be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. And so we can take satisfaction that most of our fellow citizens in our freeholders’ republic still hold these truths to be self-evident.
New York State is somewhat behind California in debt and is hoping, along with many States, that Obama and the Democratic Congress will bale them out … again. Actually, always and forever.
Dick Morris has a good column giving this more definition. 2011, or 2013, may be when this is resolved, one way or the other:
Many say that the situation in Greece is a harbinger of what is coming to the United States. They are right. But first it will come to states like New York, California and Michigan that are stretched way beyond their means and deeply in debt.
Victor Davis Hanson continues to explain, with great clarity, how bad things are becoming under this president’s rule. If you have the stomach for it, read the whole article here:
“Change you can believe in” is working out in practice to mean: If you don’t like the Constitution’s separation of powers — ignore it.
Here are just two paragraphs for some flavor:
We saw something like this before from the Obama administration, when it bailed out the bankrupt Chrysler Corporation and by executive order overturned the legally determined order of creditors. “Senior” creditors were to have been, by contract, the first paid, while junior creditors waited in line. But the latter group included union workers. So Obama derided the senior lenders as “speculators” and simply put his own constituents and campaign donors in front of them. The first sign of a debauched society is that it does not honor contracts, but reinterprets them according to perceived political advantage.
and
What do all these ends-justify-the-means examples portend? Mostly, they reflect an effort by a technocratic class to implement social change through extralegal means if it finds that its agenda does not meet with public approval. In some sense, the Obamians have lost all faith that our democracy shares their vision, and so they seek to impose their exalted will by proclamation — as if they are the new Jacobins and America is revolutionary France throwing off the old order.
I thought these were moonbats when they did it against GWB, and I still think they’re wingnuts when they rail against Obama.
While I’m passionately against almost all of our president’s economic policies and most of his foreign policy, I believe he’s doing the right thing with regard to Afganistan. But, even if I didn’t support it, these kinds of “demonstrations” aren’t justified.
Here’s Anti-War group ANSWER is not giving Obama a pass for breaking his pledge to bring the troops home. One of the many lies that was told just to get elected.
Very interesting words from a 2001 interview of then State Senator Barack Obama. He explains in some depth his understanding of the need for redistribution of wealth, and how to do it.
This video surfaced on October 2008. It’s gotten over 2 1/2 million hits.
In yet another great explanation about how Obama’s goal is to take from the private sector and transfer wealth to the public sector, here’s a small sample from a post by Doctor Zero:
Remember Barack Obama’s infamous conversation with Joe the Plumber, in which he said, “It’s not that I want to punish your success; I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you that they’ve got a chance to success, too. I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody?” This was not merely a watery expression of Marxist principles. It was a damnable lie. Obama has no intention of spreading wealth around for the good of everybody. His objective is to transfer your wealth to the SEIU and other powerful collective organizations, to fund their lavish benefits. He even bought a car company as a gift to the United Auto Workers. The American taxpayer has pumped over $17 billion into GMAC, so it can continue to provide the UAW with wages and benefits far beyond anything those taxpayers enjoy… a wealth transfer hidden behind shell games and media manipulation.
This system has nothing to do with the people “behind you.” It’s all about satisfying people who already have gold-plated retirement plans and Cadillac health care, in exchange for their political support. Some of the most ridiculous benefit plans belong to government employee unions, which means the government is taxing the hell out of the private sector to pay itself to vote for itself. Vast sums are also plowed into subsidies for well-connected businesses, and welfare programs which have dangerously eroded the human capital we prize as our most precious resource.
Actually, this administration’s first instinct is to deny that radical Islam has declared war on America. Their second instinct is to not use words like jihad, sharia, or Islamic radicalism in their reports. The third instinct is to deny that the terrorism man-caused disaster suspect is an Islamic radical. And, Team Obama’s fourth response is to pamper the little darling and read him his rights.
“They’re at war with us, and we’re studying what rights they have… We’re worried more about the rights of terrorists..than urgency about keeping us safe.”
Let me start off by clarifying which organizations I consider to be the MSM (Main Stream Media): The 3 major TV networks: ABC, CBS and NBC, and the big 3 news publications: The New York Times, Washington Post and LA Times. Just a few of the many secondary news sources: MSNBC, CNN, CNBC, (most of) NPR and many major city newspapers.
I do not consider any of our local news organizations as falling into this (very generalized) category. I’m pleased to write that The Saratogian has never fit into that niche. While I’ve disagreed with many editorials on politics, I never saw any preconceived bias.
Noam Chomsky, a self-declared socialist, once said, “Any dictator would admire the uniformity and obedience of the US [mainstream] media.” Never would he have imagined that his critique would apply more than ever to the present-day relationship between the mainstream media and President Obama.
The manufactured villain evolved to be: 1) the traditions and tenets espoused by the founding fathers and the present day-politicians and citizenry (i.e., conservatives) who stand for those values, and 2) the perceived “unfairness” within the free enterprise system. The righteous: all those claiming to oppose the fabricated villain and favor “equality.”
In the 1960s, a social revolution took place against historical and societal norms. An era of peace and prosperity unprecedented in the history of mankind was underway in the United States, allowing a new generation who had never experienced hardship on a massive scale to focus on hedonistic pursuits, self-aggrandizement, and a search for meaning in their lives.
This movement was promptly seized by the true believers of the Left as a recruiting tool; Leftists proclaimed to the gullible that the United States was an unjust, repressive instrument of capitalism. The siren song of a classless society wherein all are treated fairly and there are no absolutes found eager ears. The protests against the Vietnam War and the very necessary civil rights movement, which achieved so much, were hijacked by many of the post-depression generation into a call to overthrow all of society’s foundational standards.
The protests surrounding the Vietnam War, and then Watergate, that most infamous of scandals, not only gave rise to the resignation of a president, but also accelerated the virulent polarization of politics and the beginning of the end of the impartial mainstream media.
This march to the media’s present role of being in league with the Obama administration is the culmination of the good-versus-evil narrative of modern journalism. The process of determining who are the righteous and who are the villains began almost half a century ago.
Here’s where the change really began:
As a consequence of the media’s perception of their own role in ending the Vietnam War and Watergate, the press began to look upon themselves not as neutral reporters of the news, but rather as a crusaders out to right the wrongs, as they perceived them, of the United States. Journalism, as taught in the university and promoted by those who had been active in the 1960s, came to be viewed not as an independent watchdog of government regardless of who is in charge, but rather as a vehicle for social and economic change.
