Borrowing from Venezuela: One, Two, Three Strikes, You're Out!

In Venezuela, opposition students have come up with a clever saying to express their disdain for the megalomaniac Hugo Chavez: "Electricity, Water, Crime, Tas Ponachao," which, borrowing from the Venezuelan love of baseball, is roughly saying "one, two, three strikes, Chavez, you're out!"

The now-viral slogan appears on banners, signs, t-shirts and at baseball games everywhere in Venezuela, protesting the blustering and incompetence of Chavez's "reforms" against the evil bourgeoisie. (Well, maybe not appearing at the home of a businessman on the run, where Chavez's client-looters are happily eating in the kitchen or taking a dip in the swimming pool.)

I think a similar slogan should be applied to Mr. Obama and his party.

As Kimberly Strassel notes in yesterday's Wall Street Journal, after the so-called mainstream media touted Mr. Obama's third major legislative "victory": "There's no longer any question whether this White House can close a sale. Its problem is the country doesn't like what it's selling."

The most recent "finance reform" is an example of looting, exploiting a crisis to make it easier for unions and activists, for example, to crash corporate boards. Which has what to do, exactly, with reforming banking and Wall Street?

The state-supportive media no doubt will tout the historic victories. But the public is not buying it.

I think it's time we in the public coin a similar slogan for our friends in the Democrat Party ("Dem Bums"?), and Mr. Obama in particular, perhaps soon to appear on a t-shirt or at a local baseball game near you: "Stimulus, Healthcare, Banks, You're Out!"

Political Over-promising and Under-delivering?

Very good article today by the Washington Examiner on the continuation of the "blame game" campaign by President Obama regarding the Gulf Oil spill, and the backlash it's causing him politically. Basically, after years of "blaming Bush" the expectations of the executive have been raised so high, they are sure to disappoint when the increasingly human Barack Obama flails about.

Which raises a larger point. Remember the old adage: "Under-promise and over-deliver?" Doesn't that kind of sum up the entire political problem of modern liberalism (other than it's squishy "third-way" variant)? It's all over-promise and under-deliver.

Did we end the War on Poverty? Or create a Great Society? Did liberalism really bring about a New Deal where the so-called "little guy" was liberated from the corruption of government power by the very industries it claimed it would control? (Or, to put it in today's lingo "asses it would kick?")

The answer is No.  Today we see the Obama presidency is rife with corporatism (BP, Goldman Sachs, General Motors, etc.)

So much of modern liberalism is grandiose and utopian, so full of over-promising. How can it lead to anything but disappointment? And yet, the faith lives on . . .

"Philosophers Shouldn't Run for Office," Except Obama

I can understand why people are upset with Rand Paul. I think they are misunderstanding his intentions, which are not racist. But I can understand how they could have that reaction.

From what I have read in the Twittersphere and in blogs, etc. people angry with Paul quite often show that they misunderstand the very nature of the crisis of southern segregation, which was not a spontaneous exercise in free dis-association, but a government mandated and enforced reality, under Jim Crow, etc. (Separate public facilities, anti-miscegenation laws, etc.) Laws which violated basic rights under the constitution, which were helping to integrate the races. Laws which were supported by a band of vigilantes in a secret society. So, why did this require laws, and "secret" enforcers?

I still think it is possible to have a reasonable discussion about what actually happened during that crisis and learn lessons from it. About lawmaking. The same way people still watch D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" to understand the reality of political propaganda, and how the Klan flourished.

If a senatorial candidate can't "philosophize" on the job, what is he or she doing running for the United States Senate anyway, which is supposed to be an aristocratic, deliberative body?

Which is why I don't understand someone like Chris Matthews going on the Jay Leno show and saying "philosophers shouldn't run for office."

Matthews, it seems to me, thinks politics should be basically for the enjoyment of him and his beer-drinking buddies. Like sports; to watch the instant replays, talk about tactics and tell colorful stories about old Irish pols like his former boss, Thomas "Tip" O'Neill.

I used to enjoy Hardball, but I am finding Matthews' approach to politics growing shallower by the day. Perhaps he's been hanging around Keith Olbermann a little too long.

Anyway, who then was this guy (see below), who gave Matthews that thrill up his leg? You know, the guy who wants to "transform" America by eliminating the Founders' paradigm of negative rights?

I guess you can only "philosophize" about America if you're going in one direction -- which is away from the philosophy of the highly-philosophical Founders.

Serial Contradictions, or, Why President Obama Needs Press Conferences

I know a lot of people who admire and voted for President Obama. But, like Victor Davis Hanson, I assume these people also have a memory, and a sense for logical and ethical consistency.

Hanson compellingly chronicles once again in this piece the "serial contradictions" of President Obama, on everything from his own policies vs. Bush policies to the cost and impact of health care reform to how he differs from his political opposition today.

From his piece:

"The blatant hypocrisy and untruths are superimposed on a constant (it has not yet begun to let up in his second year) refrain of either “Bush did it” or “the opposition won’t let me be bipartisan.”


And all of this shows why President Obama can no longer be allowed to duck the real-time press conference, even with the likes of the White House press corps, an obsequious lot. His inconsistencies must be addressed, and reconciled, if that is possible. Otherwise, he, or we, might go mad.

The Supreme Court Nominee, and the Context, are Both Disturbing

If a Republican president . . .

• lashed out at television news networks, radio hosts and others for their coverage of and opinions about him
• questioned the legitimacy of the information on the Internet and the utility of the devices that provide it
• had his agencies seek to reclassify Internet Service Providers for the purposes of greater regulation and control
• and THEN nominated a friend and fellow law professor to the Supreme Court who said that the exercise of free speech is dependent on how the government calculates the social costs of that speech (!)
  

. . . would there not be great wailing, gnashing of teeth and hand-wringing across the land?

Would there not be ponderous statements from Senators about "deeply disturbing" revelations about the nominee that raise concerns about her qualification to serve on the court, and the president's overall intentions given a series of unseemly statements from the bully pulpit against political dissent?

(Let's leave aside for a moment the even larger context of the president's youthful associations with all sorts of "revolutionary" Marxist thinkers, his government taking more and more control of automakers, banks, insurance companies, etc., and his apparent disinterest in the tyranny of and crushing of political dissent by statists such as Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Castros, etc. Ex-communist James Burnham's maxim that for so-called liberals "there are no enemies on the left" seems more apropos than ever.)

Hypocrisy in politics is nothing new, nor is it restricted to the Democratic Party. However, when the people with "good intentions" are running the show apparently, tyranny, even in creeping soft forms is deemed impossible. Right up until, as the French Revolution showed, they're not running the show anymore, and their heads are in the guillotines.

But, civility and courtliness will prevail, because after all, they're all friends and colleagues in Washington.

So, Elena Kagan will be confirmed, and the creep of soft tyranny will continue.

No Need to Violate the First Amendment When You Have Industrial Policy

Just a bit more on the Charles Krauthammer piece mentioned in my previous post. Mr. Krauthammer makes a couple of points. One is about Madisonian norms.

But even more importantly, and what makes his piece so trenchant, is that he is exposing a subtle way to suppress and control the media without explicitly violating the Constitution. It's called industrial policy.

Threaten a network and you are also sending signals to other who might get in the way of a political agenda.

To potential advertisers: we control a lot of money, contracts and life support in bad times. Don't advertise on networks where we find stories unfavorable to our political agenda.

To media rivals: don't follow the disfavored media outlet or we'll do the same to you that we're doing to them.

This is the change we've been waiting for? Co-opting the NEA, ACORN and other government-funded groups for political propaganda purposes? And cutting the financial legs out of the free press if it interferes with our "revolution?"

How very Hugo Chavez-like of Mr. Obama.

On Obama Thuggishness toward Dissenters

Charles Krauthammer is one of Washington's most intelligent and respected opinion journalists. He makes an important point in this piece. President Obama and his thuggish administration, in trying to delegitimize political dissenters (Fox News, Chamber of Commerce, Insurance Companies, etc.) and in fact intimidate them into silence by threats, is ignoring the Madisonian traditions of our country.

You know, the traditions that say we must respectfully tolerate dissent.

The traditions that differentiate us from countries such as Russia, Iran and Venezuela, whom Mr. Obama has such cordial relations with, but who all intimidate, prosecute and even murder dissenters as enemies of the state, Allah, or the revolution.

Mr. Obama is showing himself to not only fail at all of his promised open-minded and open-dooredness. He is showing himself to be diametrically opposed to it.

Can a person with such a vaunted opinion of himself and his mandate to "fundamentally reform America" be trusted to respect dissent, or even the Constitution itself should his project be threatened by political failure?

When he attempts to exclude Fox News from a press event, as took place this week, how long before, Hugo Chavez-like, he finds some reason to shut down Fox News entirely?

Is this intolerant behavior the "change we've been waiting for?"

AP Fact Checks Obama's "No Pork" and Other Fibs

Helpful piece today from the AP in response to what can only be described as brazen untruths told by President Barack Obama about his stimulus bill and his administration.

The campaign may be over, but the campaign mode is not. But it seems now the media are not so wowed by Obama and are beginning to question his tactics more seriously. A good development, if a little late.

It's Now Acceptable to Criticize Obama

Bad news for President Barack Obama. With this article from the New York Times, it's now officially acceptable for the so-called mainstream media to criticize the new administration for hypocrisy. Less than month after the glorious inauguration.

Another Long Island Sentinel Contribution

Another modest contribution today to the Long Island Sentinel, this time about signs of weakness in the Obama presidency.

Let the Overreach Begin

Prior to Barack Obama's inauguration, a number of pundits predicted that Obama would need to triangulate to some degree away from his Democratic colleagues in the Congress, lest they overreach and cause the chief executive to waste valuable political capital, as happened in the early days of the Clinton presidency.

As this trenchant political analysis by my old colleague Larry Kudlow demonstrates, Mr. Obama has indeed allowed himself to become identified with a Democratic House pork-barrel bill -- usually the ordinary disgraceful business of Congress -- masquerading today as emergency "stimulus."

As Kudlow notes, criticism is now coming from all sides, including former Clinton budget honcho Alice Rivlin.

One wonders if Obama will now try a charm offensive to put lipstick on this pig, or cut his losses. Either way, this is no First 100 Days FDR for sure.

Stimulus Plan Pork Justifies Cynicism about Obama

The change we've been waiting for continues. Great story today on the SF Chronicle web site with some of the details of the so-called Obama stimulus plan.

Included are the same kind of pork-barrel projects we see in "normal" times in Washington. Yet, this is supposed to be an emergency, and the kind of situation that requires immediate action. To do what, renovate malls? Give me a break.

I think it's all clear to be cynical about Obama, even for the Obama zombies. It took us, what, all of a few weeks?

Tax Cheat Tim Geithner "Too Important" To Reject for Treasury?

Amazing, absurd story today about tax cheat Tim Geithner, Barack Obama's nominee for Treasury. When the political class decides a tax cheater is too important to their plans to "fix" the economy to disqualify for office -- even though the same tax cheat will oversee the IRS -- you know the country is in serious, serious trouble.

This is the "change" we've been waiting for? If a Republican tried this, the Democrats would be apoplectic. Don't tell me this is a principled group in Washington. They deserve nothing but scorn.

Read Byron York's coverage of this story at National Review Online.

More Political Murder in Putin's Russia

Another day in Vladimir Putin's Russia, another "troublemaker" murdered.

Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer representing the family of a murdered Chechen girl, who also represented murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya and other abused Chechens, has been shot and killed. Curious how all these people making trouble against the Russian established order just happen to die.

One of George Bush's worst mistakes, among his many, was calling Mr. Putin someone he could work with, and his "friend." The prospects for the naive Obama administration are not much better, since BO seems to think he charm just about anyone.

Putin is, in fact, a murderer. And a potential mass murderer if energy prices rise again, which may encourage him to return to overrunning the former Soviet bloc nations such as Georgia and Ukraine. One shudders to think of the political murders that will ensue then.

Shlaes Reminds Us of the Cost of Government Arrogance

Excellent piece today by Amity Shlaes, disabusing us of our current New Deal nostalgia. Did you know, for example, that FDR set the price of gold daily at his breakfast table, based upon his own "lucky numbers?" (Shlaes' latest book, "The Forgotten Man" is up there on my reading list for '09.)

Make no mistake: Barack Obama, often compared to FDR on the basis of his nascent popularity and his big spending plans, has absolutely no idea how to fix the American economy. He and his administration minions will "experiment" and tinker like Roosevelt, because, like Roosevelt, they are supremely confident in their own competence.

Shlaes reminds us of the remarkable arrogance and folly of such an approach.

The answer to economic growth is simple. Get out of the way. Animal spirits in the marketplace create growth, not government. Government redistributes resources via coercion, which produces nothing at its best and destroys productive resources at its worst.

Sadly, it seems likely that we will have to suffer for at least 24 months, until the midterm Congressional elections, and perhaps more, if the Republican Party cannot rid itself of its pathetic, grasping leadership and return to its roots in classical free market economics and limited constitutional government.

Obama's Seeming Justice: Stunning Election Day News

Stunning story today in the Washington Times, as summarized beautifully by John Batchelor.

The FBI, at this hour, is involved in the investigation of Barack Obama's land deal with Tony Rezko. At issue: graft and lying on a Senate ethics form (a crime which took down Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska.)

This on top of last week's revelation of a "restrictive covenant" on the property which suggests collaboration between the two, in contradiction of Obama's own statements to the press.

This may be the shortest presidency in modern history. And no doubt, it will rival Bill Clinton's, at an even earlier stage, for partisan warfare. Right out of the gate, can you say "failed presidency?"

Despite the surreal resistance of the Bush-Haters and the Obama-Philes to the facts, the corrupt Barack Obama is a living example of what the sophist Glaucon described in Plato's Republic over 2,000 years ago:

"So let the unjust make his unjust attempts in the right way, and lie hidden if he means to be great in his injustice (he who is found out is nobody): for the highest reach of injustice is: to be deemed just when you are not." -Glaucon, Book II, Republic.

Obama's Whitewater, and the Evidence that He Lied

Another major revelation this week about the Tony Rezko and Barack Obama land deal. (a.k.a., Obama's Whitewater.)

At the time of the deal, Obama told the media that there was no deal, no coordination and no undue influence in Tony Rezko buying the adjacent lot to his own mansion. But GOPmom blog has uncovered evidence of a coordinated effort.

Heretofore unknown, and conveniently never mentioned by Obama, a restrictive covenant existed on the adjacent property, that would have made it not worth Rezko's time and effort to buy that property. A restrictive covenant that was conveniently dropped before the closing.

Now, thanks to some mysterious source, it's out there. (Has the second Clinton arrow flown?) (See also John Batchelor's interesting musings on the source of this discovery.)

What this suggests is coordination, among the numerous buying and selling parties in this deal, all of which is currently being investigated by prosecutors in Chicago as Rezko sings.

Despite the hatred of George W. Bush and Republican policy -- some of which is much deserved -- which blinds the public to the questions of ethics at hand, GOPmom blog drives home the salient point:

"According to numerous media reports, foreign nationals financed Rezko. The public must openly speculate about who holds undue influence over Senator Obama and how these people can influence domestic and foreign policy. This has nothing to do with dubious associations or even poor judgment. This is about political corruption in government. Unfortunately, Senator Obama’s actions should concern anyone who believes in a well-functioning government of the people, by the people and for the people."

It's time to care, Bush haters. Because, "the battle is won [or lost] before it is ever fought." The impeachment has begun before the election results are even in.

Great Lines from McCain Today

Great lines from John McCain on the campaign trail today:

"We've got Joe the Plumber and Tito the Builder with us today, real working-class heroes who've had the courage to stand up and say that Barack Obama's tax and spend policies are not good for America. Not good for working class people who are trying to get ahead. Of course, now they are using Ohio's confidential data to dig into Joe's background. [Pause for boos.] Thank you for your courage gentlemen. I'm proud to have you on my side."

"And who does Barack Obama have on his side? Tony the Fixer, Jeremiah the Hater and Bill the Bomber!" [Loud applause]

Oh, actually, McCain didn't say that yet. But he should.

Feel free to use, Senator McCain.

One More Obama October Surprise This Week?

We got our October surprise for Barack Obama in the form of radio excerpts on YouTube. These were reportedly uncovered by "Naked Emperor News" a relatively unknown web site.

In the interview, Obama speaks rather candidly about his belief in the redistribution of income, possibly through the courts, but more likely through legislation. He cites the paradigm of "negative rights" as a failing in the American Republic.

I had expected this October surprise. But not from the Republicans. The news media are giving them too much credit by suggesting these are Republican tactics.

In fact, I would say that because the Republicans are too incompetent to mount true political attacks, expect a second October surprise later this week, but before Sunday. The true sources of the current surprise are waiting to see if the radio interview can carry a second or third news cycle.

But whenever this story loses momentum, a second arrow will fly. And it will come, as did the first, from the Clintons.

Who is more likely to know Boston and Chicago progressive radio, the GOP, or, say, someone in the circle of a Clintonista like Rahm Emmanuel (D., Illinois)?

If Hillary is going to be president, Obama must lose, so that she can face off against Sarah Palin on '12. That is the Clinton objective. Not a mere seat on the Supreme Court, which Hillary won't get. The Clintons do not leave things to the good will of their rivals.

When Sarah Palin was selected, the Clintons had an epiphany, which caused them to lick their chops all the more. Let Palin take the rest of the hits to break the glass ceiling. The environment will be much more conducive to a "tough woman" in '12. Especially after an aging president decides he can no longer continue and leaves it to his VP (Palin).

Note well: If you see the second arrow fly, you will know where it came from.

Barack Obama is Unfit to be President

Andrew McCarthy, writing in National Review describes just another event that Barack Obama and that guy in his neighborhood Bill Ayers attended. It is absolutely telling.

A man who would glad-hand with such despicable characters to advance himself politically is not a person who would stand up for anything during a time of crisis. That is the great lesson that is missing during Obama-mania.

Barack Obama is a soulless, self-concerned hack, and completely unfit for the Presidency.

Do me a favor Obama supporters: You may hate Bush. I think he's a boob. McCain may be another pathetic, visionless creature of Washington. But please, Obama supporters, tell me you're holding your nose when voting for this guy, and that you are not really proud of someone who cozies up to the most radical, terror-loving, anti-Semitic kooks, just to advance his own pathetic political career.