About Me

Name: Bert Chapman
Biography
Loading...

Create Your Own Blog Find Other Townhall Blogs

Comments

Blog Roll

 

Stop Sotomayor!

President Obama has nominated Sonia Sotomayor to be Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.  Citing her purportedly compelling personal story and her supposedly superior recognition of the "real life concerns" of Americans, the messianic complex President now seeks to infiltrate the nation's highest court with one of his leftist acolytes.  The Obamites believe that appointing the first Hispanic to the Supreme Court will reap political gains among this demographic group without bothering to consider that most Hispanics do not adhere to the liberal social and legal values Sotomayor espouses and would seek to codify into constitutional law.
 
Where to begin with the reasons for opposing this nomination.  Personal stories, no matter how compelling, are not sufficient reason for supporting a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.  Sotomayor is a member of the totalitarian leftist victimization school of thought which would seek to do anything necessary to entrench racial preferences for non whites into constitutional law and public policy while branding as racists those daring to disagree with them.  This is most vividly demonstrated by her siding with New Haven, CT's racially discriminatory practices denying promotion to meritorious white firefighters in Ricci v. DeStefano because no minority applicants were able to pass the justifiably rigorous firefighter promotion requirements in this community.  Her imbecilic comments that she has special insights into legal philosophy because she is a Latina should be shot down as infantile racism!  Her videotaped comments at a Duke University Law School forum, in which she declared that judges make policy, is sufficient evidence that she does not have a proper judicial philosophy of interpreting the law let alone an intellectually valid understanding of the judiciary's role in our constitutional government as envisioned by the founders which thunderously demonstrates that she is unworthy of being appointed to the Supreme Court.
 
Her appointment will result in opinions that seek to expand abortion rights, trample on traditional marriage by expanding it to include sodomites, place acute burdens on businesses through expanded and unnecessary regulations with the emerging area of climate change likely to be a particulary burdensome demonstration of this, give expanded constitutional legal rights to Islamist terrorists who seek to kill multiple numbers of Americans and impose Sharia law on our country, and sacrifice U.S. constitutional sovereignty by deferring to the opinions of foreign and international laws which are produced by individuals and organizations not elected by or accountable to U.S. taxpayers.  She is already on record in Didden v. Village of Port Chester as favoring aggressive governmental eminent domain claims and has the bizarre and historically inaccurate viewpoint that the 2nd amendment does not limit state or local government gun control laws.
 
Sotomayor is an intellectual lightweight who has had numerous opinions reversed. Even the liberal magazine New Republic has expressed serious reservations about her quality, qualifications, and judicial temperment.  Conservatives should wager a vigourous opposition to her nomination by intellectually and rhetorically roughing her up as much as possible during the confirmation process.  It's HIGH TIME liberal administrations and Senators get a dose of the medicine they gave conservative Supreme Court nominees like Robert Bork and Justice Thomas when they experienced tumultuous confirmations in 1987 and 1991.  Sotomayor is entitled to no special treatment because of her ethnicity or life's story and she needs to be told in the bluntest language possible that playing the ethnic or racial cards in her confirmation hearings won't work this time.  We also need to explain to Hispanics that she does not hold the conservative social and family values they cherish and that her opinions and rulings will be injurious to traditional moral values and to the ability for Hispanics and all other Americans to economically prosper and fully participate in the American dream.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (1) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Liar! Liar! Speaker Pelosi's Pants On Fire!

Those of you who remember the Gomer Pyle sitcom of the 1960s, will recall that one of his favorite lines he uttered when he didn't believe something was "Liar Liar pants on fire."  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's claim that she had not been briefed by the CIA on enhanced interrogation techniques nearly seven years ago has been demolished by CIA records saying she was briefed and by the testimony of numerous members of Congress from both parties.  The last time such a high-ranking government official was caught in such a lie was when Bill Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives for perjury in December 1998.  Unfortunately, the political climate is more favorable toward Pelosi at this time, but her credibility (not that she had much with conservatives anyway) has taken an irreperable hit by her politically timed amnesia.  Pelosi is more concerned with scoring retroactive political points against Bush Administration policies toward terrorists,  than in finding effective ways of winning wars against these terrorists and extracting actionable intelligence from them.  If Pelosi had concerns about enhanced interrogation techniques, she should have expressed them when she was briefed.  Apparently, she did not express such concerns and little did she realize that May 2009 would see her make a perjuring fool out of herself, embarass the House of Representatives, and further increase enmity and distrust between intelligence community agencies and Congress.  If Pelosi, had any shred of decency she would resign as Speaker but I don't see this egocentric prima donna having the courage to demonstrate such statesmanship.
 
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Cheney's Defense of Bush Administration Antiterror Policies

Former Vice-President Dick Cheney is spot on in his defense of Bush Administration antiterror policies.  Although there were flaws in the execution of aspects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, these policies have succeeded in keeping the U.S. free from subsequent terrorist attacks.  I am particularly heartened to see Cheney's stout defense of waterboarding as an interrogation tactic.  Time is of the essence in intelligence work and you frequently need to act quickly to be able to extract actionable intelligence from terrorists, their collaborators, and synthesizers.  We are not dealing with choir boys who want to sing Kum By Yah.  We continually forget that we are dealing with sadistic monsters who want to kill hundreds or thousands of non-Islamists "infidels" in a single act in the fallacious belief that they will inherit heavenly virgins as a reward.  We also forget that these individuals want to impose an autocratic Taliban-like regime over the entire world.  This is not a esoteric philosophic debate conducted in a pristine academic conference hall.  It is an existential struggle between freedom and an centuries old form of tyranny which seeks to use our open society and the multiple characteristics of 21st century telecommunication technology to advance its objectives.

I only wish Cheney, former President Bush, and other Bush Administration officials had made more vociferous defenses of their policies against the pygmy brained Obamaites during the 2008 campaign and earlier.  While that might not have been enough to keep the election from swinging to the Democrats given the lamentable state of our economy, it would have heartened the conservative base and reinforced the inclination of some swing voters to not take a chance of Barack Obama's empty "change you can believe in" rhetoric.  Unfortunately, antiterrorism policies being pursued by the Obama Administration, if they even merit the phrase "antiterrorism policies", are little more than pathetic attempts to appease Islamist terrorists and the loony left of the Democratic Party, and are daily increasing the possibility of another terrorist attack or attacks within the U.S. which will produce higher casualties than 9/11's attackers ever dreamed of.


Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

A Modest Proposal for Party Loyalty & Specter's Departure

The news of "Senator" Arlen Specter's defection to the Democrats has left the liberal media a flutter and I'm sure Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann are feeling tingles in their legs as well.  Despite his admirable job interrogating and devastating Anita Hill during the 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Justice Thomas, Specter's departure from the GOP is highly desirable.  I don't know what Specter's party support voting percentage has been in recent years but it's clear he had moved into the RINO (Republican in name only) category and it was just a matter of time before he defected to the donkeys.  My modest proposal for party loyalty is that if a legislator doesn't support their party's positions at least 60% of the time (which is a D- in most academic grading), that their overall commitment and loyalty to party principles and policies is dubious and that they are prime candidates for defection to the opposition.

Particularly reflective of Specter's arrogance is his desire to avoid subjecting his political fate to Pennsylvania GOP primary voters in 2010.  Here's a news flash for the "Senator."  You are accountable to the people of your state and especially accountable to those of us who are members of the party you purport to represent!  Specter's defection will provide, in most cases, the Democrats with a sycophantic supporter of Obama Administration policies and his lack of overall moral principles, other than his absolute desire to retain his Senate seat, should give pause to any Democrats inclined to support him.  By moving to caucus with banditos Reid and Pelosi, Specter gives the Democrats a near hammerlock on Senate legislative activities and does not provide the counterbalance to Obama Administration fiscal recklessness, obsequious pandering to union militancy, foreign and national security policy weakness, and social policy degeneracy which this country urgently needs.

Hopefully, Specter's defection will allow Pennsylvania voters of moderate to conservative ideological convictions to see that former Rep Pat Toomey is the best representative of their ideological views and should be sent to the Senate during the 2010 elections.  Specter clings to a delusional ideological belief that the Democratic appeasement oriented Modern Republicanism of Nelson Rockefeller and Dwight Eisenhower is relevant, instead of being totally discredited by party members, ideologically dead, and not appropriate to the challenges facing our country today.  Specter's departure from the GOP gives the party a chance to expunge ideological and personally opportunistic offal from its intestines and to rebuild itself with principled conservatives willing to promote and pursue fiscally prudent, morally beneficial, and realistic national security policies to promote our country's economic, social, and foreign policies.

Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Obama Interrogation Decision Increases Terrorist Attack Possibilities

In the over 7 1/2 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks there have been no additional terrorist attacks in the U.S.  The reasons for this have been providential protection, security enhancements made by governmental agencies since 9/11, initiating military operations against Islamist terrorist strongholds in Afghanistan/Pakistan and Iraq, and conducting vigorous interrogation (including waterboarding) against terrorist suspects.  Unfortunately, Obama's recent decision to end enhanced interrogation against terrorist suspects is a dangerous move that drastically increases the likelihood of a successful terrorist attack in the U.S.

When seeking to gather actionable intelligence against terrorist targets time is of the essence.  It is often necessary to use harsh techniques to elicit the information necessary to prevent such attacks from occurring.  Islamist terrorists have no interest in appealing to our better our natures nor are they responsive to the alleged cures of secularist western psychotherapy.  They do not desire to dialogue with us.  They desire to destroy us and believe that by doing so they will go to heaven.  Attempting to rationally converse with them in the naive hope that they will voluntarily confess operational attacks against American targets is sheer stupidity!

Whether you are playing a game or sport or engaging in a war you never tell your opponent or enemy what you will not do because that gives them an overwhelming competitive advantage against you.  For instance, a prudent basketball coach will never publicly announce that they will not use a 2-3 zone defense against an opponent or abstain from taking three point shots.  Obama's decision to ban enhanced interrogation techniques means terrorists now know the limits to which use military and civilian intelligence personnel can legally go in their attempts to extract information from terrorists we capture.  Al Qaida and other anti-American terrorists can now train their operatives on how to effectively resist these drastically limited interrogations of them.  There is no telling how many American and civilian lives will be lost because of this imbecilic decision.

The Obama Administration's decision that it may actually consider prosecuting Bush Administration officials who wrote the legal justifications for these enhanced interrogations is also chilling.  Policy differences between presidential administrations are now being criminalized.  Can you imagine the outcry that would ensue if the Republican Administration coming after the Obama Administration decided it would criminally prosecute Obama Administration Justice Dept. officials such as Attorney General Holder for issuing this document.  The leftist legal "intelligentsia" would go beserk with cries of fascist intimidation and other nonsense.

Sadly, we have a President who is absolutely clueless on how to fight Islamist terrorism.  He naively believes he can sit down and have a civil conservation with terrorist despots like Ahmadinejad and demagogic twits like Hugo Chavez who desire to kill Americans and thwart our national interests at every turn.  This naive belief in his persuasive powers is something Obama shares with Franklin D. Roosevelt who stupidly believed he could turn Joseph Stalin into a respector of democratic freedoms.  If, God forbid, there are further terrorist attacks in the U.S. against American civilian and/or military targets, you can trace the lineage of such attacks to the April decision to end enhanced interrogation techniques.   Is this the kind of change you can believe in?  I don't think so.


Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

DHS Says Those Right Wingers Are Coming!

In a distressing sign of the left wing ideological imbecility influencing Obama Administration policymaking, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently released a report warning of potential threats to national security from returning U.S. military veterans.  Using "reasoning" generally practiced by kooky anti-racist groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, DHS hypothesized that U.S. soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq could be susceptible to undefined "right wing propaganda" and might then use their military skills to launch terrorist attacks in the U.S. given existing economic anxieties.
 
Homeland Secretary Janet Napolitano has apparently apologized for this stupidity to veterans organizations and to normal intelligent Americans, but her department has suffered serious damage to its analytical credibility and Napolitano's own credibility has also been seriously, if not fatally, compromised.  Instead of focusing on mythical right wing threats existing only in the fevered delusional imaginations of leftist multicultural paranoids, Napolitano should direct DHS analysts to focus on addressing real security threats to the U.S. emanating from Islamist terrorists and spillover violence from Mexican drug cartel wars.  It is vital that all U.S. intelligence agencies conduct sober threat-based assessments of existing and emerging threats to U.S. security and not succumb to the ideological delusions of Obamaite supporters who are convinced that there are "racists under every bed" who seek to thwart the messianic delusions of the Obama Administration.  I hope Americans maintain their outrage over this shoddy analysis and that congressional homeland security oversight committees rake Napolitano over the coals and conduct hearings on whether the Obama Administration is compromising the quality of intelligence analysis on security threats to the U.S. in order to placate its militant left-wing ideological base.
 
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Obama and the Somali Pirates

Yesterday's rescue of the captain of the pirate seized U.S. tanker off the Somali coast is a welcome event.  The Obama Administration was slow to recognize the gravity of this matter but , fortunately, Obama decided to listen to the military and the Navy seals resolved this matter in the only way it could be.  Unfortunately, the pirates and terrorists as criminals mentality contending that such individuals can be prosecuted in normal civilian legal proceedings still holds dangerous sway in Obama Administration thinking as demonstrated by pronouncements and policy decisions made by Attorney General Holder and Sec. State Clinton.  The fact that the surviving pirate kidnapper is to be tried under civilian procedures is not a good sign that the Obama Administration understands that the resurgence of international maritime piracy can only be dealt with through military means.

Positive steps the Obama Administration could take to cope with this menace are reversing the two decades long decline in U.S. naval surface ships and seeking funding for fast, highly mobile, and heavily armed vessels capable of finding, tracking, and destroying pirates in oceanic and littoral waters in areas of the world as diverse as the Somali coast, Straits of Malacca, and elsewhere.   Giving our naval forces liberal rules of engagement to destroy these bandits is also essential!   The administration and congress should also draft legislation giving U.S. flagged merchant ships the legal authority to train and arm their crews to fight and defeat, or at least deter, pirate attacks until naval reinforcements can arrive.  Such legislation would be consistent with U.S. constitutional provisions giving privateers the authority to conduct de facto military operations and seize pirate property.  We should immediately withdraw from any international maritime agreements prohibiting civilian merchant ships and their crews from defending themselves against pirate attacks.  We should also work closely with our allies and potential allies to develop coordinated procedures for ruthlessly destroying pirate forces desirous of attacking commercial shipping which is so critical to global economic health.  A basic prerequisite of such procedures is an ABSOLUTE PROHIBITION against ship owners paying ransom to pirate terrorists.

These pirate attacks are result of the consequences of a failed Somali state which has no control over its terroritory and failed nation states are a national security threat to the U.S. and other countries which is constantly referenced in national security literature.  The U.S. and other western countries should seriously reconsider establishing a colonial presence in Somalia regardless of what the United Nations or African nations think.  Somali's location so close to critical trade routes and Middle East oil supplies is so important to the international economy that it must be governed by a stable and competent entity even if this entity consists of Western countries.  The world cannot allow that region of the world to be controlled by anarchy or Islamist terrorist organizations.


Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

North Korea: Obama's First National Security Test

North Korea is threatening to conduct a ballistic missile test in the next several days.  Such weapons could carry nuclear weapons which could be used against our allies in South Korea or Japan or even against the western U.S.  Japan, fortunately, has the good sense to begin deploying its Patriot missile defense system against this danger.  Unfortunately, Barack Obama and his administration seem to be taking a "whatever" attitude toward this threat.  Obama is seriously considering scaling back or even eliminating the missile defense systems that we have installed in Eastern Europe, Alaska, and the Pacific Ocean as part of his ideological attachment to failed 1970s style arms control ideology.  One of the tenets of this ideology is its belief in mutually assured destruction in which all sides participating in a nuclear exchange are destined to be destroyed and that it's useless to try to defend your populations and security interests through missile defense or other protective measures.  Was this the change you wanted when you voted for Obama last November?
 
While Obama is at the critically important G20 summit in London this week and will also be attending a subsequent NATO summit after the G20, his administration seems more intent on asking the United Nations Security Council for another toothless, spineless resolution against Kim Jong Il's Stalinist regime.  Obama should be working to make sure the military is prepared to take all defensive and offensive measures necessary to prevent the North Koreans from carrying out a missile test.  Kim Jong Il only understands brute force and the credible threat of regime change.  Passing another empty UN resolution or tightening already existing economic sanctions against North Korea will have no impact on a regime that doesn't care about its citizens well-being and is only interested in clinging to power at all costs.  If Obama were a true leader, he would use his eloquence to persuade leaders at the G20 and NATO summits of the need to take decisive action against the North Korean missile threat and its rogue regime.  Failure to take out North Korean missiles will be noticed by anti-American factions in Iran, Al Qaida bases in Pakistan, Hizbollah in Lebanon, the Taliban, and China.  Conversely, resolute action against the North Korean missile threat will produce positive behavioral responses from anti-American regimes and terrorist groups.
 
This is truly Obama's first critical national security test as commander-in-chief.  So far, his response, and that of his Administration, have not been encouraging.
 
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Uprising Against Obama Notre Dame Commencement Speech

The University of Notre Dame has invited new presidents to speak at its spring graduation ceremonies for as long as I can remember.  In 1977, dimwit Jimmy Carter pontificated that Americans were "over their inordinate fear of Communism" in his graduation oratory within the Golden Dome's shadow.  This, of course, was as the Cubans were seeking to export Communism to African countries as varied as Angola and Somalia, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge was committing genocidal atrocities in Cambodia, and the Soviets were preparing to directly intervene in Afghanistan and while also saturating Eastern Europe with SS-20 nuclear missiles aimed at Western Europe. 
 
With the advent of "Messiah Obama", this invitation has been extended by Notre Dame's administration.  However, something remarkable is happening.  An online petition site www.notredamescandal.com/ has been launched and is currently gathering signatures to send to Notre Dame's President protesting this invitation to Obama on the grounds of his abortionist and anti-life proclivities.  I've just signed this petition myself, although as a Protestant I wish the petitioner organizers had deemphasized the Catholic theology doctrinal aspects of their protests in favor of a more theologically ecumenical pro-life rhetorical approach.   One of the particularly nice features of this protest is that it bluntly charges Notre Dame administrators with favoring popularity over principle in their effort to curry favor with Obama and his minions.
 
Notre Dame is located in St. Joseph's County Indiana which, according to Indiana Secretary of State election returns, voted for Mr. "Change We Can Believe In" by a margin of 68,000+ to 48,000+ last November.  It would be nice to think that some of the signers of this petition we're idealistic dimwits who have seen the error of their ways and are beginning to realize the fraudulent nature of Obamamania when it comes public policy implementation.  I hope alums and other individuals concerned about their alma mater's institutional reputation will voice opposition to any inviations for Obama to speak at their graduations or award him an honorary doctorate.  We can hope the scales of delusion about Obama's intent and policies are starting to end and the clarity of increasing personal and national debt and vulnerability to national security problems is becoming more apparent to the American public.
 
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Dawn Johnsen: Obama's Dangerous Nominee to Head Justice Dept.'s Office of Legal Counsel

President Obama has nominated Indiana University law professor Dawn Johnsen to head the Justice Dept's Office of Legal Counsel.
This office is responsible for providing legal advice to the Justice Dept. and the President.  Johnsen is a dangerous choice and all conservatives should contact their Senators to urge them to vote against her.
 
Johnsen advocates unrestricted access to abortion in her writings and public legal advocacy.  If confirmed, she would use her powers to turn this important and allegedly nonpartisan office into a government funded and authorized propaganda wing for abortionist advocacy organizations such as Planned Parenthood and the National Abortion Rights Action League.  Johnson's writings and temperament would see OLC devote a significant portion of its taxpayer funded resources to further expanding and codifying "abortion rights" into federal law and to legally targeting individuals and groups holding pro-life abortion positions.  Recent attempts by some abortionist advocates to use Racketeering in Corrupt Organizations (RICO) laws intended for organized crime bosses against pro-life individuals and organizations may occur on a federal level if doctrinaire abortionist apparatchiks such as Johnsen have their way.
 
Johnsen's nomination should also be opposed due to her dangerously naive beliefs on the nature of the Islamist terrorist threat.  She stupidly believes that conventional legal tactics are all that is necessary to confront and defeat an agile and fanatically devoted coalition of forces which are contemptuous of western Judeo-Christian derived legal jurisprudence.  She fails to understand that harsh actions, including warrantless wireless surveillance and even torture, are necessary to prevent Islamist terrorists from launching assaults against civilian and military U.S. targets.  The policies Johnsen advocates would dismantle the success we've had in preventing subsequent 9/11 terrorist attacks within the U.S. and would actually increase the possibility of terrorist attacks within national boundaries.

She has also launched libelous personal attacks against former Justice Dept. official John Yoo, a noted constitutional scholar, who wrote many of the Bush Administration's legal justifications for its anti-terrorist campaigns.  I heartily recommend Yoo's book The Powers of War and Peace:  The Constitution and Foreign Affairs After 9/11 published in 2005 by the University of Chicago Press.  Apparently, Johnsen can't deal with the reality that Yoo is a superior scholar to her and has a more intelligent and moral understanding of the Islamist terrorist threat.
 
We should work to defeat Johnsen's nomination.  She is an embarrassment to the legal profession and, as a Hoosier, I find it appalling that someone with values and beliefs antithetical to the values this country needs in trying times will be providing legal advice to the Justice Dept. and the President on so many critically important issues. 
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (1) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Remember British Conservative Party Leader David Cameron and His Family

British Conservative Party leader David Cameron and his family should have the sympathies and prayers of all American conservatives today.  He and his wife Samantha have lost their six year old son Ivan who died after a long battle with cerebal palsy and epilepsy.  The Camerons have two other children and the British Conservatives are, under his leadership, experiencing a revival of their fortunes after nearly 12 years of Labour Government.  The House of Commons suspended Prime Minister's Question Time today as a gesture of sympathy for the Camerons.  The British Conservative Party website www.conservatives.com/ has a blog with expressions of sympathy.  As an American Conservative and admirer of British Conservatism, I wish to extend my personal sympathy to the Camerons and my prayers that they will experience God's healing comfort at this time.  Even though I don't have children, I appreciate that all children are God's precious and unique blessings.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (1) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

"Fiscal Responsibility" Summit

The audacity of the Obama Administration's hyprocrisy reached new heights and sunk to new depths today.  It announced it was holding a "fiscal responsibility summit" to focus on the upcoming release of its first budget.  At a time when our budget deficit is skyrocketing due to Keynesian stimulus packages and never ending aid to incompetently run financial institutions and recklessly profligate mortgagees, Obama has decided the great unwashed among us need to learn the lessons of fiscal responsibility.

Watching Liberal Democrats like Barack Obama and Joe Biden pose as paragons of fiscal probity is nauseating!  It's like hearing the Kennedy family pose as paragons of ethical virtue, Bill Clinton posing as a defender of marital monogamy, and a brothel of prostitutes posturing as paragons of sexual chastity!  At no time in their political career, have Barack Obama or Joe Biden demonstrate the slightest concern for governmental budgetary restraint.  Neither have congressional allies of theirs as varied as Barney Frank, John Dingell, Robert Byrd, Harry Reid and a host of other congressional appropriators.  During a time when our government should be seriously looking at ways of trimming government spending, these dimwits have just passed a "stimulus" bill which will exacerbate our federal budget deficit and national debt, create limited long-term economic development and job creation, and further addict our credit obsessed society with the illusion of free money without consequence.

Whenever previous Republican adminstrations made tenouous efforts to achieve reductions in government spending or make substantive reforms to entitlement programs such as Social Security or Medicare, they were greated with vituperation from Obama, Biden, and other congressional Democratic defenders of unlimited pork barrel spending.  Charges of racism, meanness to the poor, insensitivity, and  other forms of denunciation greeted those of us with the gall to suggest the government should live within its means and not burden future generations with debt.  We should expose Obama and his economic pretensions for the hypocritical frauds that they are and tell him that real economic reform in this country requires making tough decisions that will offend the parasitic welfare state galoots representing many of the core constitutencies of the Democratic Party.  If Obama wants to truly be a fiscally transformative leader, instead of an empty rhetorical blowhard, he needs to have the political guts to repeatedly kick the labor unions, social welfare lobbies, civil libertarians, imprudent state and local governments, and other cohorts of liberal polity in the groin when they come squawking for economic stimulus money.

I'm not holding my breath waiting for this to happen but hope does spring eternal.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Attorney General Holder's Diatribe

As part of the "change we can believe in" rhetoric of the Obama Administration, we will get to hear ourselves subjected to at least four years of black victimology rhetoric such as that propounded by Attorney General Eric Holder yesterday.  Claiming that the U.S. was "cowardly" on racial matters near and dear to the heart of leftist twits like himself, Holder vowed to revitalize the purportedly moribund Justice Dept. Civil Rights Division to go after manifestations of "racism" and other examples of "incorrect ideological thinking" not in accordance with the omniscient wisdom of Rassenfuhrer Holder and other affirmative action apparatchiks.

When our Attorney General should be focused on fighting international terrorism and real world blue and white collar crime, he has apparently decided to use the powers of his office to even the score with those of us not desiring to genuflect before his persecution complex.  If he were intelligent, Holder would address the real problems facing the black community by telling young black men and women to apply themselves in school, avoid drugs and alcohol, obey the law, be loyal to their opposite sex mates, and abstain from sex outside of marriage if they desire to achieve the fullest measure of the American dream.  Unfortunately, Holder seems imprisoned in a Jim Crow time warp where Bull Conner is lurking around  every street corner to smash any sign of black self-awareness.

Another example of this willingness from the newly empowered liberal black majority to flex its muscles occurred in New York yesterday.  The New York Post, in an example of genuinely American political satire, published a cartoon showing police shooting a chimpanzee for authoring the recently passed economic stimulus legislation.  An assorted cabal of local and state New York black politicians got in a dander over this thinking the cartoon was insulting Messiah Obama himself.  This mob has been filmed chanting "shut the Post down" in rhetoric which was used by the white racist lynch mobs of earlier in the 20th century.  My how the worm has turned.  Liberal twits like this need to understand that if they can denounce former President Bush and other conservatives with vitriolic imagery and rhetoric, that they should be able to take it when they and their causes are denounced by their critics.    We are going to be in for an interesting few years which will become even more challenging as the lofty expectations of Obamaland disintegrate over the next several months.

Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Gregg's Withdrawal as Commerce Secretary and Census Controversy

It's just been announced that New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg has decided to withdraw his nomination as Secretary of Commerce.  Citing irreconcilable differences on the economic stimulus and the Obama Administration's apparent politicization of the 2010 Census, Gregg wisely decided he could not work with what will become an arrogant, corrupt, and spendthrift Obama Administration.  I was somewhat surprised Gregg accepted the nomination in the first place.  I guess he was tired of Harry Reid in the Senate and wanted to do his patriotic duty to help the country in its economic travails and give some solid conservative economic advice to the liberal ideologues in the Obama Administration.  Gregg's withdrawal shows that Obama's rhetoric about "reaching across the aisle" is as empty as a Bill Clinton promise.
 
The Obama Adminstration's desire to put direct control of the 2010 Census into the White House demonstrates the power hungry nature of Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.  The population census, as mandated by the Constitution, determines congressional representation and helps allocate federal funding for various programs.  As a librarian who specializes in government information, it is particularly important that decennial Census data be absolutely objective and not subject to political manipulation.  Unfortunately, Democrats have not recognized this and have sought to manipulate Census data to increase the number of ethnic minorities, the homeless, and other individuals dependent on governmental largesse who are counted in the Census.  A particularly egregious example of Democratic tampering with the Census has been their insistence that the dubious practice of sampling be used in determining the U.S. population.  Sampling allows estimates to made of population in a geographic area based on a partial sampling of the population in that area. For instance, if you determine that 800 people live in a particular section of a city and the city has ten sections, you use sampling to "determine" that the city has 8,000 residents.  Of course, each of these ten sections within this city could have far more or fewer than 800 people in these sections.  Sampling give you an inherently inaccurate count and you actually need to make a good faith effort to count all individuals residing in these sections.  Besides being of dubious statistical quality, sampling is blatantly contrary to the Constitution's provision that an actual enumeration (or counting) be made of the U.S. population.
 
The Census Bureau and other government agencies make vigorous efforts every 10 years to inform people of the Census and the legal requirement that they fill out their forms.  Personally confidential data in the Census cannot be legally released for 72 years after the Census is filled out and Census Bureau personnel are subject to criminal penalties if they illegally disclose this sensitive personal information.  In addition, anyone who is reasonably lucid knows they have to fill out Census forms every ten years for years ending in 0 and can fill out the Census questionnaires in a short period of time and turn them in.  It would be particularly tragic if the 2010 Census becomes hostages to Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel's rampaging ambitions for absolute political power.  The U.S. Census has done a generally effective job of documenting U.S. population trends and developments over 220 years and Americans should stand up to the Obama Administration's desires to pervert the Census for their own partisan advantage.
Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (0) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive

Obama's Taxing Predicament

Barely two weeks into Messiah Obama's new order, the tarnish is eroding from his halo fasting than you can say "change we can believe in."  First Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, a reputed economic wunderkind, was found to have been deficient in his taxpaying, and his confirmation was opposed by 34 Senators with the wisdom to see that the leader of the department the IRS is part of should, as a minimum job requirement, be able to pay his taxes.  Today, the Obama Tax Evaders (the next big hip-hop act) became a trio when his nominee for Chief Productivity Officer couldn't demonstrate sufficient productivity to pay her taxes and was forced to give up her aspirations and when Health and Human Services Secretary designee Thomas Daschle was forced to resign when he forgot to pay various taxes and was found to have received significant financial benefits from the health industry he's supposed to regulate.  Daschle, a former Senate Majority leader who was thankfully ousted by South Dakota voters in 2004, has been an especially unctuous liberal populist whose purported prairie "man of the people" rhetoric is as enduring and substantive as the tumbleweeds floating across the Great Plains.  His departure from public life alone is glorious news for the future of our Republic and warrants conservative dancing in our ice cold streets and countryside!

You would think that the problems his appointees have had with tax matters would cause Obama's economic "brain trust" to consider drastically simplifying our hopeless convoluted tax system as a means to lessen the occurrence of such embarrassments and increasing economic productivity and revenue collection enhancement.  I'm  not holding my breath waiting for that to happen but hope does spring eternal.

With the apparent addition of New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg as Commerce Secretary, Obama now has three Republicans in his Cabinet who will, hopefully, reign in possible penchants for protectionism.  Perhaps, they might even force him to scale down his economic stimulus fantasies and look at spending restraint and debt reduction as the best means for restoring national economic vitality instead of nostalgically trying to reprise FDR's New Deal.  I'm heartened by the growing opposition to the stimulus package which will further exacerbate the federal deficit and national debt, create limited long-term jobs, and resurrect inflation to levels not seen since the Carter Administration or even, at an extreme, Weimar Germany.   Astute students of economic history know the horrific consequences that Weimar Germany's hyperinflation ultimately  produced for German national leadership in the 1930s.   Hopefully, the Senator from New Hampshire to replace Gregg will have the wisdom and political courage to espouse fiscal thrift against the profligacy of the Obama Administration and represent a true alternative to Obamism despite the Granite State's recent drift to leftist stagnation.


Email ItEmail It | Print ItPrint It | CommentsComments (1) | TrackbacksTrackbacks (0) | Flag as offensiveFlag as Offensive