Happy Halloween Everybody

I'll be spending the evening walking around downtown Asheville where you can see faries, queens and every kind of freak imaginable - and some people dressed in Halloween costumes as well.

Thomas Sowell's Dismantling America, parts 1 and 2

Part 1

Just one year ago, would you have believed that an unelected government official, not even a Cabinet member confirmed by the Senate but simply one of the many "czars" appointed by the President, could arbitrarily cut the pay of executives in private businesses by 50 percent or 90 percent?

Did you think that another "czar" would be talking about restricting talk radio? That there would be plans afloat to subsidize newspapers-- that is, to create a situation where some newspapers' survival would depend on the government liking what they publish?

Did you imagine that anyone would even be talking about having a panel of so-called "experts" deciding who could and could not get life-saving medical treatments?

Scary as that is from a medical standpoint, it is also chilling from the standpoint of freedom. If you have a mother who needs a heart operation or a child with some dire medical condition, how free would you feel to speak out against an administration that has the power to make life and death decisions about your loved ones?

Does any of this sound like America?

How about a federal agency giving school children material to enlist them on the side of the president? Merely being assigned to sing his praises in class is apparently not enough.

How much of America would be left if the federal government continued on this path? President Obama has already floated the idea of a national police force, something we have done without for more than two centuries.

We already have local police forces all across the country and military forces for national defense, as well as the FBI for federal crimes and the National Guard for local emergencies. What would be the role of a national police force created by Barack Obama, with all its leaders appointed by him? It would seem more like the brown shirts of dictators than like anything American.

How far the President will go depends of course on how much resistance he meets. But the direction in which he is trying to go tells us more than all his rhetoric or media spin.

Barack Obama has not only said that he is out to "change the United States of America," the people he has been associated with for years have expressed in words and deeds their hostility to the values, the principles and the people of this country.

Jeremiah Wright said it with words: "God damn America!" Bill Ayers said it with bombs that he planted. Community activist goons have said it with their contempt for the rights of other people.

Among the people appointed as czars by President Obama have been people who have praised enemy dictators like Mao, who have seen the public schools as places to promote sexual practices contrary to the values of most Americans, to a captive audience of children.

Those who say that the Obama administration should have investigated those people more thoroughly before appointing them are missing the point completely. Why should we assume that Barack Obama didn't know what such people were like, when he has been associating with precisely these kinds of people for decades before he reached the White House?

Nothing is more consistent with his lifelong patterns than putting such people in government-- people who reject American values, resent Americans in general and successful Americans in particular, as well as resenting America's influence in the world.

Any miscalculation on his part would be in not thinking that others would discover what these stealth appointees were like. Had it not been for the Fox News Channel, these stealth appointees might have remained unexposed for what they are. Fox News is now high on the administration's enemies list.

Nothing so epitomizes President Obama's own contempt for American values and traditions like trying to ram two bills through Congress in his first year-- each bill more than a thousand pages long-- too fast for either of them to be read, much less discussed. That he succeeded only the first time says that some people are starting to wake up. Whether enough people will wake up in time to keep America from being dismantled, piece by piece, is another question-- and the biggest question for this generation.

Part 2

Many years ago, at a certain academic institution, there was an experimental program that the faculty had to vote on as to whether or not it should be made permanent.

I rose at the faculty meeting to say that I knew practically nothing about whether the program was good or bad, and that the information that had been supplied to us was too vague for us to have any basis for voting, one way or the other. My suggestion was that we get more concrete information before having a vote.

The director of that program rose immediately and responded indignantly and sarcastically to what I had just said-- and the faculty gave him a standing ovation.

After the faculty meeting was over, I told a colleague that I was stunned and baffled by the faculty's fierce response to my simply saying that we needed more information before voting.

"Tom, you don't understand," he said. "Those people need to believe in that man. They have invested so much hope and trust in him that they cannot let you stir up any doubts."

Years later, and hundreds of miles away, I learned that my worst misgivings about that program did not begin to approach the reality, which included organized criminal activity.

The memory of that long-ago episode has come back more than once while observing both the actions of the Obama administration and the fierce reactions of its supporters to any questioning or criticism.

Almost never do these reactions include factual or logical arguments against the administration's critics. Instead, there is indignation, accusations of bad faith and even charges of racism.

Here too, it seems as if so many people have invested so much hope and trust in Barack Obama that it is intolerable that anyone should come along and stir up any doubts that could threaten their house of cards.

Among the most pathetic letters and e-mails I receive are those from people who ask why I don't write more "positively" about Obama or "give him the benefit of the doubt."

No one-- not even the President of the United States-- has an entitlement to a "positive" response to his actions. The entitlement mentality has eroded the once common belief that you earned things, including respect, instead of being given them.

As for the benefit of the doubt, no one-- especially not the President of the United States-- is entitled to that, when his actions can jeopardize the rights of 300 million Americans domestically and the security of the nation in an international jungle, where nuclear weapons may soon be in the hands of people with suicidal fanaticism. Will it take a mushroom cloud over an American city to make that clear? Was 9/11 not enough?

When a President of the United States has begun the process of dismantling America from within, and exposing us to dangerous enemies outside, the time is long past for being concerned about his public image. He has his own press agents for that.

Internationally, Barack Obama has made every mistake that was made by the Western democracies in the 1930s, mistakes that put Hitler in a position to start World War II-- and come dangerously close to winning it.

At the heart of those mistakes was trying to mollify your enemies by throwing your friends to the wolves. The Obama administration has already done that by reneging on this country's commitment to put a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe and by its lackadaisical foot-dragging on doing anything serious to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. That means, for all practical purposes, throwing Israel to the wolves as well.

Countries around the world that have to look out for their own national survival, above all, are not going to ignore how much Obama has downgraded the reliability of America's commitments.

Iraq, for example, knows that Iran is going to be next door forever while Americans may be gone in a few years. South Korea likewise knows that North Korea is permanently next door but who knows when the Obama administration will get a bright idea to pull out? Countries in South America know that Hugo Chavez is allying Venezuela with Iran. Dare they ally themselves with an unreliable U.S.A.? Or should they join our enemies to work against us?

This issue is too serious for squeamish silence.

Damn.

We are so screwed.

This is what we get for electing a know-nothing, done-nothing radical who never grew out of his college Marxism - with a giant racial chip on his shoulder to boot.

"Saved and Created"?

If your bullshit detector went started screaming bloody-murder when the little messiah and his surrogates started crowing about all the jobs that they had "created or saved" here's some evidence that it is properly calibrated.

Oct. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Heresy, thy name is Christina Romer.

Last week, the chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers -- a position that carried the title “chief economist” until Larry Summers took up residence in the White House -- testified to the Joint Economic Committee on the economic crisis and the efficacy of the policy response.

Here’s the executive summary in case you missed it:

The crisis: “Inherited.”

The economy: “In terrible shape” (the inherited one).

The shocks to the system: “Larger than those that precipitated the Great Depression.”

The policy response: “Strong and timely.”

The efficacy of the policy response: a 2 to 3 percentage point addition to second-quarter growth; 3 to 4 percentage points in the third; and 160,000 to 1.5 million “jobs saved or created,” a made-up metric if there ever was one. (More on that later.)

What was most puzzling about Romer’s Oct. 22 testimony was her comment on the waning effect of fiscal stimulus.

“Most analysts predict that the fiscal stimulus will have its greatest impact on growth in the second and third quarters of 2009,” Romer said. “By mid-2010, fiscal stimulus will likely be contributing little to growth.”

At first it was just fringe elements, such as conservative blogs and the not-really-a-news-organization Fox News, that pounced on Romer’s statement. Then other news outlets started to question her statement, which seemed to fly in the face of White House assertions that only a small portion of the stimulus -- $120 billion, or 15 percent -- has actually been spent. Most of the criticism of the stimulus coming from the president’s own party has been, “too little, too late,” and here’s Romer saying it’s kaput.

Thanks for That

Instead of being banished to the woodshed, Romer was consigned to the White House blog, where she slipped into professorial mode to explain the arcane distinction between the effect of the stimulus on the change in gross domestic product and its effect on the level of GDP.

Stimulus has its biggest impact on the growth rate of GDP when it’s implemented, Romer said, using a car-and-driver analogy: Step on the accelerator, the car goes from zero to 60.

Stimulus will keep the level of GDP and employment higher than they would have been even after the growth-rate effect fades, she said.

Her logic is impeccable. It’s her premise that’s flawed.

Dispensing Lucre

When the government distributes lucre or loot, people spend it. If your interest is national income accounting, spending other people’s money is great. Spending is a back-door way for government statisticians to measure what matters, which is the real output of goods and services.

But the government has no money of its own to spend; only what it borrows or confiscates from us via taxation. Oops.

“Government job creation is an oxymoron,” said Bill Dunkelberg, chief economist at the National Federation of Independent Business. It is only by depriving the private sector of funds that government can hire or subsidize hiring.

That’s why “jobs created or saved” is such pure fiction. It ignores what’s unseen, as our old friend Frederic Bastiat explained so eloquently 160 years ago in an essay.

Econometric models synthesize all sorts of variables and spit out a GDP forecast. From there they derive the change in employment using something called Okun’s Law, named after the late economist Arthur Okun, which describes the relationship between the two.

Fiction Lags Reality

Actual hiring seems to be lagging behind the model’s land of make-believe. For small businesses, which are the source of most job creation in the U.S., the government’s increased and changing role in the economy isn’t a confidence builder. Businessmen have no idea what health-care reform will mean for their cost structure or what whimsical tax policies the government might impose when it realizes those short-term deficits are running into long-term unfunded liabilities.

No wonder capital spending plans were at an all-time low in the third quarter, according to the NFIB monthly survey.

Only 30,383 jobs were created or saved by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, according to Recovery.gov, the government’s once-transparent Web site that has become a complex blur of numbers, graphs and pie charts. These are only the jobs reported by federal contract recipients. The Obama administration will report the larger universe of ARRA-related jobs on Oct. 30.

An extrapolation of what would have happened without the fiscal stimulus isn’t much consolation to the 9.8 percent of the workforce that is unemployed. Nor is Romer’s prescription for the economy and labor market very comforting in light of the trillions of future tax dollars that have been spent, lent or promised by the federal government.

“If you take your foot off the gas, the car goes from 60 back down to a slow crawl,” Romer said in clarifying blog post.

Gentlemen, start your engines.

(Caroline Baum, author of “Just What I Said,” is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are her own.)

The most recent polls

Provide no joy for the jackass party.

Rasmussen reports that Obama enjoys a presidential approval index of -11 and an overall approval rating of only 47% while 52% disapprove.

The GOP holds on to a 4% lead in the generic congressional ballot with independent voters favoring Republicans 41% to 21%.

62% of the American people believe that the nation is heading in the wrong direction under the leadership of Obama and congressional Democrats.

A majority of people continue to disapprove of the Democrats national socialist healthcare takeover.

And finally a majority of Americans believe that congress will refuse to address the most important issues facing our nation.

San Fran Nan needs to start boxing up her trash because after next November she won't be occupying the Speaker's office any more.

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

I'LL PASS ON 'OPTING OUT'
by Ann Coulter
October 28, 2009

The Democrats' all-new "opt out" idea for health care reform is the latest fig leaf for a total government takeover of the health care system.

Democrats tell us they've been trying to nationalize health care for 65 years, but the first anyone heard of the "opt out" provision was about a week ago. They keep changing the language so people can't figure out what's going on.

The most important fact about the "opt out" scheme allegedly allowing states to decline government health insurance is that a state can't "opt out" of paying for it. All 50 states will pay for it. A state legislature can only opt out of allowing its own citizens to receive the benefits of a federal program they're paying for.

It's like a movie theater offering a "money back guarantee" and then explaining, you don't get your money back, but you don't have to stay and watch the movie if you don't like it. That's not what most people are thinking when they hear the words "opt out." The term more likely to come to mind is "scam."

While congressional Democrats act indignant that Republicans would intransigently oppose a national health care plan that now magnanimously allows states to "opt out," other liberals are being cockily honest about the "opt out" scheme.

On The Huffington Post, the first sentence of the article on the opt-out plan is: "The public option lives."

Andrew Sullivan gloats on his blog, "Imagine Republicans in state legislatures having to argue and posture against an affordable health insurance plan for the folks, as O'Reilly calls them, while evil liberals provide it elsewhere."

But the only reason government health insurance will be more "affordable" than private health insurance is that taxpayers will be footing the bill. That's something that can't be opted out of under the "opt out" plan.

Which brings us right back to the question of whether the government or the free market provides better services at better prices. There are roughly 1 million examples of the free market doing a better job and the government doing a worse job. In fact, there is only one essential service the government does better: Keeping Dennis Kucinich off the streets.

So, naturally, liberals aren't sure. In Democratic circles, the jury's still out on free market economics. It's not settled science like global warming or Darwinian evolution. But in the meantime, they'd like to spend trillions of dollars to remake our entire health care system on a European socialist model.

Sometimes the evidence for the superiority of the free market is hidden in liberals' own obtuse reporting.

In the past few years, The New York Times has indignantly reported that doctors' appointments for Botox can be obtained much faster than appointments to check on possibly cancerous moles. The paper's entire editorial staff was enraged by this preferential treatment for Botox patients, with the exception of a strangely silent Maureen Dowd.

As the Times reported: "In some dermatologists' offices, freer-spending cosmetic patients are given appointments more quickly than medical patients for whom health insurance pays fixed reimbursement fees."

As the kids say: Duh.

This is the problem with all third-party payor systems -- which is already the main problem with health care in America and will become inescapable under universal health care.

Not only do the free-market segments of medicine produce faster appointments and shorter waiting lines, but they also produce more innovation and price drops. Blindly pursuing profits, other companies are working overtime to produce cheaper, better alternatives to Botox. The war on wrinkles is proceeding faster than the war on cancer, declared by President Nixon in 1971.

In 1960, 50 percent of all health care spending was paid out of pocket directly by the consumer. By 1999, only 15 percent of health care spending was paid for by the consumer. The government's share had gone from 24 percent to 46 percent. At the same time, IRS regulations made it a nightmare to obtain private health insurance.

The reason you can't buy health insurance as easily and cheaply as you can buy car insurance -- or a million other products and services available on the free market -- is that during World War II, FDR imposed wage and price controls. Employers couldn't bid for employees with higher wages, so they bid for them by adding health insurance to the overall compensation package.

Although employees were paying for their own health insurance in lower wages and salaries, their health insurance premiums never passed through their bank accounts, so it seemed like employer-provided health insurance was free.

Employers were writing off their employee insurance plans as a business expense, but when the IRS caught on to what employers were doing, they tried to tax employer-provided health insurance as wages. But, by then, workers liked their "free" health insurance, voters rebelled, and the IRS backed down.

So now, employer-provided health insurance is subsidized not only by the employees themselves through lower wages and salaries, but also by all taxpayers who have to make up the difference for this massive tax deduction.

How many people are stuck in jobs they hate and aren't good at, rather than going out and doing something useful, because they need the health insurance from their employers? I'm not just talking about MSNBC anchors -- I mean throughout the entire economy.

Almost everything wrong with our health care system comes from government interference with the free market. If the health care system is broken, then fix it. Don't try to invent a new one premised on all the bad ideas that are causing problems in the first place.

That last paragraph is the money quote of all money quotes. Engrave it on you brain because it not only applies to health care but to nearly everything else as well.

The Narcissist in chief

Here is something I found on American Thinker that explains the point I was trying to make in my last post better than I was able to:

The term "narcissistic rage" gets 26,000 citations in Google Scholar. It is a common feature of extreme or pathological narcissism.

While psychiatrists often say they can't do long-distance diagnosis, it really isn't that hard if you have a lot of information about a person and can watch how he operates from day to day. Intelligence agencies around the world have psychiatric staffs for exactly that purpose.

While most people are pretty hard to predict, extreme narcissists are comparatively simple. They constantly hunger for ego gratification, they are immature, constantly need to demonstrate their own superiority, often need endless sexual conquests (like Bill Clinton), are manipulative, constant liars, are completely cold about the human beings they harm (like John Edwards), and they deal with frustration by uncontrollable fits of rage.

I think that's what we saw last week with the White House lashing out at Fox News.

According to the New York Times,

"Speaking privately at the White House on Monday with a group of columnists and commentators, including Rachel S. Maddow and Keith Olbermann of MSNBC and Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich and Bob Herbert of The New York Times,


President Obama himself gave vent to sentiments about the (Fox) network, according to people briefed on the conversation... " (italics added).

So Obama didn't even keep this thing on background. He allowed himself to be quoted in his favorite rag, the New York Times. Dowd, Maddow, Herbert, and Rich did their part by going into attack-dog mode against conservatives. They know exactly what Obama needs and wants, and to keep in good stead with this White House, they feed that hungry ego with the most outrageous flattery and imitation.

It is a perfect symbiosis. Obama is easy to manipulate, and liberal commentators are used to demonizing the opposition. They've all been raised on Rules for Radicals.

Obama's thin skin is shared by his coterie. US News and World Report wrote:

Team Obama was pushed over the brink by a growing list of what it considered outrageous anti-Obama conduct by Fox that showed no sign of stopping. Obama's advisers say that they seethed while Fox commentators used their shows to encourage protests against Obama's healthcare proposals last summer. Team Obama fumed as Fox personalities tried to pressure some controversial Obama advisers to resign.

White House officials say that Fox has continued to stir the pot against Obama in a regular pattern -- raising a criticism, having Republican congressional leaders comment on it, and then using those comments to keep the criticism alive.

A break point came when Fox tried to create the impression that angry anti-Obama protesters at congressional town hall meetings last summer signaled that Obama's healthcare proposals were dying, a story line that other news organization picked up. White House officials say this was untrue, that those proposals were not dying at all.

Another break point came when Fox commentator Chris Wallace called White House officials "crybabies." A senior Obama adviser tells U.S. News that White House staffers developed "a growing realization" that the president would never get a fair shake from Fox.

Notice the need to have total obedience from the whole press. Fox News is a small part of the total media, but they've driven the Obees into a fit. Of course, every single president in American history has been targeted by the media, and generally much, much worse than Obama has. Take George W. Bush, for example. (But I forgot...Bush was Evil, and Obama is Good. Well, that explains it.)

Last week's coordinated Obama attack on Fox News made no PR sense. Fox increased its viewership by 10%. Obama lost points in the polls; you can give the American people only so many demonstrations of the Chicago Way before they figure out you aren't the Great Healer after all.

Obama is far and away the biggest and most naïve narcissist in living memory to occupy the White House. He hasn't been smoothed and polished by years of deal-making in the Senate like LBJ. The outrage looks like it was just an uncontrollable expression of who Obama and his crew are. If we get more of this, Obama's carefully buffed sheen will be permanently damaged for the saner 70% of the population. The other 30% will always fall for him anyway.

Pathological narcissism is a reflection of weakness, not strength. Tom Bevan at RealClearPolitics points out how much of it has been happening in less than a year of this administration, including months of a honeymoon period. Obama constantly uses wild and irresponsible accusations against his perceived enemies. Bevan writes:

In the first nine months in office President Obama and/or members of his administration have accused doctors of performing unnecessary medical procedures for profit; demonized bond holders as ‘speculators'; produced a report suggesting military veterans are prone to becoming right wing extremists; attacked insurance companies and threatened them with legislative retribution; ridiculed talk show hosts and political commentators by name from the White House podium; dismissed and demeaned protesters and town hall attendees as either unauthentic or fringe characters; maligned a white police officer for arresting a black man without knowing the facts of the case; launched an orchestrated campaign to marginalize the country's biggest pro-business group; and publicly declared war on a news organization.

When Obama runs into brick walls, he seems to reflexively go into a state of rage. Bill Clinton was the same way, and so was LBJ. But Clinton and LBJ had a lot of time to learn to moderate their own worst instincts. The best thing that ever happened to Bill Clinton as president was the election of the Gingrich Congress in 1994, which forced him to deal with reality. Jimmy Carter has been on a constant narcissistic revenge campaign since he lost to Ronald Reagan and never got a second term. It explains a lot about Jimmy's amazing destructiveness against his favorite whipping boy, Israel.

The same thing will happen to Obama if and when he loses the election in 2012. Since narcissists in power keep people around them in a constant state of fear -- everybody gets targeted and feels insecure -- you can expect a ton of dirty tricks in elections to come. But then Democrats constantly use dirty tricks.

I fear two things with Obama. One is if the GOP fails to elect a House majority in 2010 to keep Obama within the bounds of sanity. A GOP majority is essential for the safety of the country and the world. But even if Obama is defeated in 2012, he will just turn into an angrier version of Al Gore and Jimmy Carter. He will haunt the political future of this country as long as he is alive, because that famished ego never gets enough. Malignant narcissism often gets worse over time. And on the Left and among blacks, Obama will still have love and adoration enough to keep him supplied. He is an easy target for flattery by the Saudis, even the Iranians -- in fact, by all the real enemies we have.

So even if the voters throw out this very dangerous cult-like administration, you can expect Obama to be popping up in our politics for years to come. He will haunt the Democrats, which might be a good thing. But he will haunt the United States as well, even if he is defeated in 2012.

Mr. Lewis has come up with the perfect description of the Obama White House, a "very dangerous cult-like administration".

And notice how every past Democrat president of the modern era starting with Kennedy has been a preening narcissist? To find a Republican who comes anywhere close to them you have to go all the way back to Nixon.

It should tell us something very important about the Democrat party that it seems to be the natural home of Obama-type personalities.

Poor Baby

WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama says only once since Jan. 20 has White House life annoyed him.

It was the Saturday in May when, trying to be a good husband, he kept a campaign promise to take his wife, Michelle, to New York after the election for one of their "date nights" - dinner and a Broadway play.

Conservative commentators and Republican officials criticized him for doing so.

"People made it into a political issue," Obama told The New York Times Magazine for an article about the Obamas' marriage, appearing in the Nov. 1 issue. The article was posted on the Times' Web site on Wednesday.

Explaining why Obama is so full of crap with his crybaby whinging is slightly embarrassing. It is sort of like having to explain to a grown man or woman that water really is wet or that the sun really is bright. You are sitting there with charts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showing that the ocean really is deep all the while thinking that this person can't be this retarded and he must be doing this just to get under your skin. . .

In fact that is a pretty good description of just about any argument with a left-liberal.

But in the case of Obama's "date night" you have to put it in the context of everything else in his pathetic excuse for a presidency.

Starting with the fact that he has played golf more in the first nine months of his term than George W Bush did in the first two years.

Then there's their massively expensive junket to Copenhagen to try and secure the Olympics for Chicago where their appeal to the IOC amounted to a personal appeal to the Committee to give the Games to Chicago because it would make the Obama and his wife really happy.

And all the other cases of his constant self-referencing. No matter what he is speaking about the one certainty will be massively high recurrence of personal pronouns. Obama could be presenting the Medal of Honor to the mother of the Marine who gave his life capturing Osama bin Laden and the entire senior leadership of al Qaeda and the words "I" and "me" would appear in the speech at least 50 times more than any reference to the fallen hero or his deeds.

We could add his enemies list and his sense of entitlement to the servile obedience of the news media.

Then there's his dithering on Afghanistan as part of a political calculation where is is trying not to anger the lunatic fringe base of his party before congress votes on his national socialist health care system.

We could go on but there really isn't any need to. The sad and frightening fact is that the American people have committed the serious, and perhaps fatal, error of electing a malignant narcissist with no qualifications, other than the color of his skin and the ability to read a teleprompter, to be the leader of the free world.

Obama is immature, unprepared and totally out of his depth and what is worse he does not realize any of this. In his mind Obama blesses the nation simply by his splendid presence and is fully entitled to spend over ten million dollars of taxpayer money on a "date night" with his wife.

And we have more than three years to go. . .

The sleeping giant awakens

And is filled with a terrible resolve.

From The Washington Times:

This is one Mr. Deeds who apparently isn't going to town. The collapse of the Democratic campaign for governor of Virginia speaks volumes - chapters, anyway - about what the body politic is trying to tell Barack Obama's Democrats.

They're learning, painfully, that campaigning without George W. Bush is baffling, frustrating and scary. Worse, it offers a preview of what the congressional campaigning will be like next year. One Obama doorbell ringer, working neighborhoods in Northern Virginia for Creigh Deeds, says even the promise of free pizza can't lure faithful Democrats to a rally.

For weeks, The Washington Post, the house organ of the national Democratic Party, pounded away at Bob McDonnell, the Republican nominee, for having written politically incorrect term papers in graduate school, citing his master's thesis, which decried abortion, gender-bending and radical feminism, as proof that he doesn't like women very much.

Only a month ago, Mr. Deeds, the Post's horse in the race, wouldn't talk about anything but the McDonnell graduate-school thesis - maybe a boon to master's and doctoral candidates who can't get anybody but a professor to read their wit and wisdom, but, as it turns out, a bore to voters in Virginia. The public-opinion polls continue to show Mr. McDonnell ahead, despite all the Post's ineffective deeds, and with a lengthening lead.

Now Mr. Deeds doesn't want to talk about graduate-school scribbling at all, just as leaks from the Post newsroom reveal that the newspaper has a seven-part series ready for publication to prove that Bob McDonnell has had a lifelong hostility to those of the pink persuasion. He once pulled the pigtails of a little girl in the second grade, and as a third-grader he bounced a spitball, aimed at a male pal, off the shoulder of a girl two rows over. These are no doubt serious charges, violence against (tiny) women, sexual harassment and all that, but not likely to turn the tide of a runaway that is building in Virginia.

Suddenly, the White House is treating the bereft Mr. Deeds as if he's on the fourth day of a three-day underarm deodorant pad. Bill Clinton, accustomed to speaking to cheering thousands at a hundred grand a pop, was dispatched the other night to a Deeds rally to set the throng on fire with one of his late-October stumpwallopers. The rally, such as it was, was held not at an arena or a hotel - not even a Motel 6 - but in a campaign office in the Washington suburbs. The "throng" was counted in the dozens, about the size of a PTA meeting. Not even Bubba could dispel the gloom of a wake.

Didn't they learn anything when Clinton was president? Don't they remember how no one that Bill Clinton campaigned for actually won? Perhaps this was Obama's way of providing a scapegoat for Deeds' inevitable loss. After all the little tin messiah and Deeds were joined at the hip earlier in the campaign when everyone thought that Obama's anointment of a candidate would guarantee victory, but now that Deeds is sure to lose we can't have anything splash back and cast doubts on the deity of The One.

"These polls are either accurate, or they're not," he said, delivering an insight worthy of a Harvard political science professor. "So are the polls right? The answer is yes, no, and maybe." But what else could he say? Dispatched for mortuary duty, Bubba could only sympathize with the preacher called on to say something nice over the grave of the town bootlegger.

Barack Obama himself is offering the mere minimum of presidential support over the past seven days of the campaign, just mailing it in (even if delivering the mail in person). He'll make one last appearance with Mr. Deeds this week in Tidewater. Meanwhile, back in Washington, the president's political aides continue to dish the obsequies over a doomed candidate while pretending to pray for a miracle. So far no one has invoked Harry Truman, patron saint of doomed candidates, but there's still a week to go.

Mr. Deeds' friends are bitter about the anonymous voices peddling the discouraging word from the White House. "These 'anonymous voices' have decided those hard-working [down-ballot candidates] are just collateral damage in their effort to tell the world that if [Mr.] Deeds doesn't win, it is because he ignored advice," Paul Goldman, a former chairman of the Virginia Democratic Party, tells Politico, the Washington politics daily. "This isn't change we can believe in, but the same old, same old we voted out of office. Do they really believe their attempts to shield the president from blame is going to distract [Mr.] Obama's critics, much less change the arc of today's politics?"

Of course it won't, and that's what makes the Virginia race so scary for the president's men. Voters will use whatever club is available to "send a message," and sometimes, as any number of pols could tell you, the club is big, rough and means business.

Yes, a message is being sent. Here is another component of that message, from the Club for Growth:

Hoffman Surges Into Lead in NY-23
New CFG Poll shows Hoffman 31.3%, Owens 27.0%, Scozzafava 19.7%

Washington - A poll released today by the Club for Growth shows Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman surging into the lead in the special election in New York's 23rd congressional district to replace John McHugh, the former congressman who recently became Secretary of the Army.

The poll of 300 likely voters, conducted October 24-25, 2009, shows Conservative Doug Hoffman at 31.3%, Democrat Bill Owens at 27.0%, Republican Dede Scozzafava at 19.7%, and 22% undecided. The poll's margin of error is +/- 5.66%. No information was provided about any of the candidates prior to the ballot question.

This is the third poll done for the Club for Growth in the NY-23 special election, and Doug Hoffman is the only candidate to show an increase in his support levels in each successive poll. The momentum in the race is clearly with Hoffman.

"Hoffman now has a wide lead among both Republicans and Independents, while Owens has a wide lead among Democrats. Dede Scozzafava's support continues to collapse, making this essentially a two-candidate race between Hoffman and Owens in the final week," concluded Basswood Research's pollster Jon Lerner, who conducted the poll for the Club.

It would seem that voters in New York as well are using the vehicle of a special election to send a message to Washington about the direction that the little tin messiah and his Jackass Party are taking the nation.

As far as NY 23 goes Sozzafava is now the spoiler and should withdraw - that is if she truly has the best interests of the Republican party at heart.

But I doubt that she will. RINO's tend to be more hostile to genuine conservative than they ever are to left-liberalism. As the Queen of the RINO's Sozzafava will almost certainly think that denying the Palin wing of the GOP a victory is a more satisfying goal to achieve than denying the Pelosi-Obama wing of the Democrat party one.

Also we can only hope that events in New York will shame Newt Gingrich into shutting his stupid cake-hole.

Finally Rasmussen has more bad news for the Left as the residents of New Jersey (of all places) prepare to send the little tin messiah a message of their own:

With just a week to go in New Jersey’s closely contested race for governor, Republican Chris Christie holds a three-point advantage over incumbent Democratic Governor Jon Corzine.

The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey in New Jersey show Christie with 46% of the vote and Corzine with 43%. While the margin is little changed from a week ago and the week before, the biggest news may be that support for independent candidate Chris Daggett has dropped four points to seven percent (7%). The number of undecided voters is down to four percent (4%).

The decline in support for Daggett comes in a week when several state newspapers endorsed Christie or Corzine, but none followed The (Newark) Star-Ledger’s lead and came out in favor of the independent candidate. Additionally, Christie began a new ad campaign linking Corzine and Daggett.

Christie leads by eight points among those who are certain they will show up and vote. A week ago, he was up by five among that group. Christie’s supporters are also less likely to say they might consider voting for someone else.

Of course 2010 and 2012 are a long way off in political terms however in politics trends like this rarely reverse themselves.

Sometimes it takes a Democrat president who is too arrogant and/or too stupid to hide what he and his party really believe to wake the public up and stir them to action. That happened in 1980 after four years of the almost unbelievably incompetent Carter administration and it happened again in 1996 after Hillary Clinton's bumbling attempt to impose a Stalinist socialized medicine scheme (now known as ObamaCare) on the nation made her the national face of the Democrat party.

Things are shaping up now to make 2010 a repeat of 1996 and 2012 an echo of 1980. The only thing that could save the Democrat party would be for B. Hussein Obama to emerge from the narcissistic fantasy world he is currently living in and realize that the "historic" nature of his presidency and his unparalleled skill at reading a teleprompter are not enough to keep the electorate somnolent in an era of double digit unemployment, a dollar in free-fall and growing international threats.

The problem for Democrats is that Mr. Obama is too arrogant to ever come to that realization, too stupid to know the right thing to do even if he did and too lazy to do the hard work to turn things around even if he did have the humility and good sense.

Far more satisfying to jet around the world on "date nights" with his wife, play golf and make speeches to handpicked crowds of brain-dead worshipers.

Restoring our image around the world. . . Part II

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy, initially dubbed Sarko the American for his pro-U.S. stance, is finding it much tougher to deal with Washington than he had anticipated and is recalibrating his policies accordingly.

Stung by perceived snubs from U.S. President Barack Obama and encouraged by the growing importance of the G20, Sarkozy is increasingly reaching out to non-aligned states in an effort to extend France's international influence.

He has forged especially close ties with Brazil, is seeking alliances in central Asia and is intensifying his activities in the Middle East, using multi-billion dollar military and civilian nuclear trade deals as his calling card.

During the early days of the war all we heard out of the Left was that George W Bush was acting "unilaterally" and being a "cowboy" because we entered the conflict alone without a coalition of nations along with us.

Now the reality was that we were heading an alliance of a number of nations but it seemed that in whatever the Left uses for a mind no coalition could possibly be a true coalition unless it numbered France as one of its members.

The reality of the situation was that the Left's attitude that no possible action of the United States could be considered legitimate unless it was done in concert with France was born out of their certain knowledge that the men who were leading France at that time would never sign off on any genuine effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power.

The reason for that was that those French leaders were literally on Saddam's payroll. Millions of dollars from the Oil for Food Program were being siphoned off by Saddam and part of that money went into the pockets of French politicians as payment for acting as obstructionists against any plan which would put the UN imprimatur on a plan to oust Hussein from power.

We were told with confidant, even smug, assurance by the Democrat party the George W Bush's invasion of Iraq (in concert with a number of other nations and with congressional approval) had done terrible damage to our international reputation and our relationships with important allies - like France.

We were told with confidant, even smug, assurance by the Democrat party that the election of one Mr. Barack Hussein Obama (otherwise known as the little tin messiah) to the office of President of the United States would instantly heal our torn international relationships and restore America to a place of respect on the world stage.

So why then is the little tin messiah alienating our European allies?

First he issues a series of calculated insults to the United Kingdom, discarding the bust of Churchill which was a gift from their government to ours after 9/11, giving the Prime Minister a cheap box set of DVD's which won't even work in a European DVD player and giving the Queen an iPod with his own speeches on it - as though the greatest gift he could impart to the sovereign of the British Empire was a collection of his own gaseous teleprompter readings.

Then at the United Nations he undercuts France and Germany's plan to publicly confront Iran's pint-sized lunatic president with yet more evidence of his nations nuclear weapons program - so that it won't diminish the impact of his big speech (yet more gaseous teleprompter readings) to the world body.

Now we find that he as so alienated France that they are seeking military and nuclear deals in the Middle East and central Asia.

How's that "Hope and Change" working out?

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

THE GRATING COMMUNICATOR
by Ann Coulter
October 21, 2009

The Obama administration has attacked Fox News in order to prevent government corruption stories broken on Fox from bleeding into the other media, which are all-consumed with daily updates on Levi Johnston's Playgirl spread and Carrie Prejean's breast implants.

That's understandable. But I think the administration should have picked someone other than David Axelrod to deliver the claim that Fox News is "not really news," inasmuch as Axelrod was behind the leak of scurrilous allegations in Jack Ryan's sealed divorce papers when he was running for a Senate seat against Obama. Talk about vicious personal gossip.

Now that Fox has been branded an untouchable, the teacher's-pet media are jubilant.

In Newsweek, Jacob Weisberg wrote a column saying liberals should refuse to appear on Fox News, pointedly concluding, "And no, I don't want to come on 'The O'Reilly Factor' to discuss it." Considering that Weisberg is a 107-pound weasel with a speech impediment, this is on the order of Weisberg's announcing that he's not interested in appearing in the next "Ocean's Eleven" movie with George Clooney.

The strangest thing about all the invective against Fox is that it is happening in a world that contains MSNBC. At least Fox News primetime hosts, and many of their guests, know something about politics. MSNBC's primetime lineup presents an array of people who sound like earnest college kids who just walked up to a Common Cause table, and the sum-total of what they know about politics is what they read in the brochures.

In the past week, both Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann have rolled out the Willie Horton ad, claiming that it marked the beginning of vicious personal attacks in politics, as opposed to what it was: The most devastatingly relevant campaign commercial in all of American history.

You can always astonish college kids by telling them the true story of Willie Horton. Among the jaw-dropping facts are:

-- In the '80s, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that a prison furlough policy had to be extended to convicted murderers, who were ineligible for parole.

-- Even the Massachusetts Legislature, which contained about three Republicans, realized this was insane, and quickly passed a bill excluding first-degree murderers from the weekend furlough program. But in a desperate bid for the ACLU's Brain-Dead Liberal of the Year Award, Gov. Michael Dukakis vetoed the bill.

-- Horton, who was later released under this program, was in prison for carving up a teenager at a gas station and then stuffing his body into a garbage can. (He had already been convicted of attempted murder in South Carolina -- through no fault of his own, the victim survived.)

-- Even after Horton used his Dukakis-granted furlough to rape and torture a Maryland couple in their home for 12 straight hours, the Greek homunculus issued a statement reaffirming his strong support for furloughing murderers.

-- The Bush campaign commercial about Dukakis' furlough program never showed a picture of Horton. In fact, the actors playing "criminals" passing through a revolving door in the ad were all white.

-- Voters considered it relevant that a candidate for president was so beholden to the ACLU that he backed an idiotic furlough program that released first-degree murderers.

Every informed student of the 1988 campaign knows that the Bush ad didn't show Horton's picture. And yet in Keith's discussion of Bush's allegedly vile, racist use of Willie Horton, he used a phony version of the ad, doctored to include a photo of Horton.

I don't blame Keith personally for this blatant distortion: He gets all his research material from Markos Moulitsas and other left-wing bloggers, so he can't be held responsible for the content of his show. Keith's principal contribution to the program is his nightly display of self-congratulation and pompous douche-baggery.

Remember, Keith, like his MSNBC colleague Contessa Brewer, majored in "communications" in college, not a research-related field, such as political science. In his coursework, he learned such skills as: Dramatically Turning to Camera, Hysterical Self-Righteousness, Pausing Portentously and Gravely Demanding Apologies/Resignations From Various Public Figures.

Given this background, it's understandable that Keith will make errors. As viewers witnessed recently, he can't even pronounce the name of prominent American economist and philosopher, Thomas Sowell. (Although he did spend three weeks at a Berlitz course in Arabic honing his pronunciation of "Abu Ghraib" to razor-sharp prissiness.)

The bloggers and Keith bring different skill sets to the game. They provide the tendentious half-truths, phony opinion polls and spurious social science, while Keith provides his booming baritone, gigantic "Guys and Dolls" suits and gift for ridiculous, fustian grandiloquence. Keith is far better equipped than, say, the pint-sized, girly-voiced, Frito Bandito-accented Markos Moulitsas to deliver the party line.

But here's the fly in the ointment: Keith has once again been victimized by left-wing blogs into thinking that the 1988 Bush ad showed Willie Horton's picture, when in fact, Horton's race was deliberately scrubbed from the ad.

Again, in fairness to Keith, he's never been a "content guy." He was a communications major. (The agriculture school Keith attended offered a degree in this field.) He lifts the material for his show from liberal blogs, overwrites it, and throws in his trademark smirking and snorts. But that's all he does because, again, he was a communications major.

I got busy this past few days and missed posting Miss Ann's column in a timely fashion, but decided to go ahead and put it up late because it is one of her better efforts.

You can always tell what Democrats are afraid of because that is what they shriek with the most outraged fury over.

It is also what they tell the most outrageous lies about.

As the Left's paroxysms of foaming madness over the Willie Horton ad proves.

You can also see this in candidate debates when the Republican accuses his Democrat opponent of being "liberal".

At this point the liberal candidate will become huffy and lament the fact that politics has "degenerated" to the point where we must always attach labels.

Here's a comeback for the next Republican candidate who gets scolded for "labeling" his opponent. Ask his opponent if he supports putting warnings on packs of cigarettes. Then while the liberal is still sputtering ask the audience why it is proper to attach a warning label to one dangerous product, tobacco, but not another, political liberalism.

There is a lesson in here for the GOP, if it wishes to regain control of the legislature and the White House. Look at which Republican the Left is spewing the most hatred and derision at.

That is the person they fear the most. That is the person they believe can beat their little tin messiah in the next presidential election.

Do I need to say her name?

Doesn't look good for the Jackass Party

From Rasmussen Reports:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 27% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -13. That’s just a point above the lowest level ever recorded for this President. It’s also the sixth straight day in negative double digits, matching the longest such streak (see trends).

Just 31% of voters believe that Congress has a good understanding of the health care proposal.

Thirty-nine percent (39%) of Republicans have a favorable opinion of their party’s national chairman, Michael Steele.

The Presidential Approval Index is calculated by subtracting the number who Strongly Disapprove from the number who Strongly Approve. It is updated daily at 9:30 a.m. Eastern (sign up for free daily e-mail update). Updates also available on Twitter and Facebook.

Overall, 47% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Fifty-three percent (53%) disapprove.

The New Jersey Governor’s race remains a toss-up. Over the past week, both Jon Corzine and Chris Christie lost ground while support independent candidate Chris Daggett grew and so did the number of undecideds. Republicans hold a five-point advantage on the Generic Congressional Ballot. In Illinois, the race for Barack Obama’s Senate seat is a toss-up.

During his term as president Bill Clinton maintained undeserved high approval ratings while the Democrat party suffered severe losses.

Jimmy Carter, on the other hand, suffered well deserved low approval numbers while Democrats managed to retain control of the legislature (except for a 2 year period where the GOP controlled the Senate).

It would appear that B. Hussein Obama is going combine Carter and Clinton's worst aspects (from the Democrat perspective).

Clinton raised taxes, attempted to socialize the nation's health care system and passed the buck on Islamic terrorism ahead to the Bush administration but other than those things his day-to-day governance, especially on economic matters, was more or less center-left.

Clinton stood out of the way of the growing digital economy (rather than heavily taxing it as some of his advisers wanted him to do) and so allowed it to become the engine which drove the 90's economic boom (that the boom turned into a bubble which burst causing a recession is a topic for another day). This economic boom caused people fear "rocking the boat" by seeing Clinton removed from office (by electoral defeat or impeachment) so he enjoyed two terms of high approval ratings.

No matter what came out about Clinton (Monica, selling nuclear secrets to the Red Chinese, "Troopergate") people took their disgust out on the party (which had its own corruption problems) rather than the President.

Carter, on the other hand, governed like a Frankenstein cross between a 70's flower child and a Soviet era Politburo apparatchik managing to get literally everything both foreign and domestic totally wrong.

People saw the nation being made a laughing stock before the world and saw their personal economic situation going down the toilet and attached James Earl Carter's stupidly grinning face to the entire debacle and voted him out in a landslide after one failed term.

So Obama is going to go the way of Carter except that he is also going to be a Clinton-style drag upon his party.

Like Carter he is getting everything both foreign and domestic totally wrong and the almost inhumanly incompetent congressional leadership (Pelosi and Reid) are so joined at the hip with him that they are well within the blast radius of the public's rage.

Even if the Jackass Party does manage to pull off edge of their teeth wins in the deep blue states of Illinois and New Jersey the problems they are having bodes very ill for the party's prospects of retaining control of the House after the 2010 mid term elections.

At least somebody is telling the truth

WASHINGTON (CNN) – A leading fiscal mind on Capitol Hill and a one-time Obama Cabinet pick sounded the alarm Sunday over the projected long-term financial challenges the country faces.

“This deficit is driven by us,” New Hampshire Republican Sen. Judd Gregg candidly said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union when asked about the federal government’s projected $1.42 trillion operating deficit for the 2009 fiscal year.

“You talk about systemic risk. The systemic risk today is the Congress of the United States,“ the Ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee told CNN Chief National Correspondent John King, “that we’re creating these massive debts which we’re passing on to our children. We’re going to undermine fundamentally the quality of life for our children by doing this.”

“Now you can’t blame that on [former President] George [W.] Bush,” Greg said, noting that using the Obama administration’s projections the budget deficit for the next ten years is $1 trillion per year. And Gregg said that during the same ten-year period, public debt as a percentage of gross domestic product would increase from 40 percent - which Gregg called “tolerable but still too high” - up to 80 percent.

The figures, Gregg told King, “mean we’re basically on the path to a banana-republic-type of financial situation in this country. And you just can’t do that. You can’t keep running these [federal] programs out [into the future] and not paying for them. And you can’t keep throwing debt on top of debt.”

“Standards of living will drop if we keep this up,” Gregg also said.

After repeated promises from the White House that the final health care reform bill will be deficit neutral, Gregg said a Democratic plan to avoid otherwise automatic Medicare cuts without having a funding source for the projected expense of $250 billion over the next decade was “gamesmanship.”

Asked about criticism leveled Sunday by former Republican-turned-Democrat Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania that Republicans were being obstructionist in the health care reform debate, Gregg replied, “Well, I suppose he has to call us something now that he’s left the party.”

Responding to the Democratic charge that the GOP is “the party of ‘no,’” Gregg pointed to Republican health care reform proposals including his own and another co-sponsored by Republican Sens. Tom Coburn and Sen. Richard Burr, as well as a bipartisan proposal put forward by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Robert Bennett (R-UT).”

Gregg said the versions of health care reform voted out of the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee would amount to “a huge expansion of government.”

“You’re talking about taking the government and increasing it by $1-$2 trillion over the next ten years,” Gregg said. He added that he thought growing government at that rate would have a “very debilitating effect” on the overall economy and the ability of Americans to get health care in the future.

At one point earlier this year, Gregg, who is not seeking re-election to his Senate seat in 2010, was President Obama’s choice to head the Commerce Department. But the fiscal hawk removed himself from consideration because of differences with the new administration on several policy issues.

I do not believe that it is any longer possible to deny that what Obama and the congressional leadership are doing to the nation is deliberate.

This is nothing less than an attempt to destroy the United States of America so that they can rebuild a new nation (United Socialist States of America) from the rubble.

If the American people were truly awake to what is going on and were it is heading they would flood Washington DC and pack the Capitol with their bodies to the point were congress could not physically meet and form a quorum to enact any of the administration's legislative agenda.

They would keep this up until the 2010 election.

But this will not happen. The vast majority of the people, even conservatives, are not aware of how dire the situation is. The fact is that we are a hair's breadth away from losing the nation.

It is possible for a nation to go so far down the path of socialism that it cannot turn back without an abject collapse, as in the case of the USSR and Eastern Europe, or a violent revolution.

If Obama and his allies in congress are not stopped soon the US will reach that point.

Grandfather Mountain 10/17/2009

Frost covers the top of Grandfather Mountain as the fall colors reach their peak.

American Thinker tries to help out:

Thanks to an intrepid blogger with the tag Trapdoc posting a letter to Mark Steyn, the search for the Wikipedia Libelist responsible for damaging posts to the Rush Limbaugh account has been narrowed to the IP address of a New York City law firm:

"The quotes were added by a user with the IP address of 69.64.213.146. This address has been used mostly to make changes to the article about Rush, but also Karl Rove, Sean Hannity,.. James Dobson and Sara Palin from 2005 until earlier this year.

"While others have noted this in various forums, no one seems to have made the connection that this IP address is used as a gateway by the law firm Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP (see here, for example) that all users from that IP address come from the pbwt.com domain.)"

The firm provides a wide array of legal services with a broad spectrum of politically correct causes served:

"It is one of the first major firms in New York City to elect a woman as managing partner. In addition to its Diversity Committee, a group of Patterson Belknap attorneys formed PAC -- Patterson Attorneys of Color -- to assist with the enhancement of workplace diversity and the recruitment, retention and promotion of attorneys of color. Another group, Out at Patterson, focuses on issues relevant to the firm's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender individuals, and Women Lawyers at Patterson (WLAP) focuses on women's issues."

Considering Rush's militant political incorrectness, there may be a large number of potentially culpable attorneys and/or staffers to choose from. However, a forensic data retrieval technician should surely be able to narrow the focus and identify the likely poster. Perhaps Rush can enlist the aid of PBWT alumni, Rudy Giuliani, Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau or firm partner, Edward F. Cox, (son-in-law of former President, Richard M. Nixon) in his search for justice.

There is no question that Mr. Limbaugh has been damaged by the salacious quotes added to his Wikipedia profile and their dissemination in the PC-stream media. Hope this helps, Rush.

You know they say the only cure for a lawyer is another lawyer.....

Ralph Alter blogs at Right On Target

Thanks Mr. Alter, but if you are depending on the likes of Rudi Giuliani or Robert Morgenthau to help you help you take down a politically correct Manhattan law firm you will die and turn to dust before getting satisfaction.

Sorry, but if guys like this have to make a choice between being full-on conservatives or full-on liberals they will always tilt left.

Miss Ann is talking

That means that YOU are listening!

NATURAL-BORN LOSERS
by Ann Coulter
October 14, 2009

The question of whether President Obama should send more troops to Afghanistan misses the point.

What Obama really needs to do is: Invent a time machine, go back to the 2008 presidential campaign and not say, over and over and over again, that Afghanistan was a "war of necessity" while the war in Iraq was a "war of choice." (Oh, and as long as you're back there, ditch Van Jones, Valerie Jarrett and that gay "school safety" czar.)

The most important part of warfare is picking your battlefield, and President Bush picked Iraq for a reason.

Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan attacked us on 9/11 -- or the dozen other times American embassies, barracks and buildings came under jihadist onslaught since Jimmy Carter presided over "regime change" in Iran in 1979. Both countries -- and others -- gave succor to terrorists who had attacked the U.S. repeatedly, and would do so again.

As liberals endlessly reminded us during the three weeks of war in Afghanistan before the U.S. military swept into Kabul, Afghanistan has all the makings of a military disaster. It is mountainous, cave-pocked, tribal, has no resources worth fighting for and a populace that makes Khalid Sheikh Mohammed look like Alistair Cooke.

By contrast, Iraq had a relatively educated, pro-Western populace, but was ruled by a brutal third-world despot.

It's always something with the Muslims. You either have mostly sane people governed by a crazy dictator -- Iraq, Iran and Syria (also California and Michigan) -- or a crazy people governed by relatively sane leaders -- Pakistan and Afghanistan, post-U.S. invasion (also Vermont and Minnesota). There are also insane people ruled by insane leaders (but enough about the House Democratic Caucus). Sane people with sane rulers has not been fully tried yet.

Not only could regime change in Iraq work, but Iraq's countryside was susceptible to America's overwhelming air power. Also, Iraq has fabulous natural resources. Once the U.S. got control of Iraq's oil fields, the Shia, Sunni and Kurds could decide to either prosper together or starve together. (And it's not just oil: They're basically sitting on top of most of the world's proven reserves of cab drivers.)

By contrast, there aren't a lot of sticks that can be used in a wasteland like Afghanistan, where the people live in caves and scratch out a living in the dirt. The only "carrot" we might be able to offer them would be actual carrots.

But Democrats couldn't care less about military strategy -- at least any "strategy" that doesn't involve allowing soldiers to date one another. To the extent you can get liberals to focus on national security at all, you will find they are rooting against their own country.

Liberals sneered at Bush's description of Iraq as the "central front of the war on terror" and a step toward the "democratization of the Middle East" -- as Mark Danner did in the Sept. 11, 2005, New York Times -- because sneering was all they could do. By design, Iraq was the central front in the war on terrorism.

Any fanatic who hated the Great Satan, owned an overnight bag and was not already working for The New York Times was lured across the border into Iraq ... to be met by the awesome force of the U.S. military. Bush chose the battlefield that made the best flytrap for Islamic crazies and also that was most amenable to regime change.

Now nearly all denizens of the Middle East want the U.S. to invade them, so they can live in democracy, too. As Thomas Friedman inadvertently admitted, Lebanese voters credit their recent free election, in which the voters threw out Hezbollah, to President Bush. (American liberals, naturally, gave the credit to Obama, who they also believe is responsible for the sun rising every morning.)

Brave Iranian students who protested the tyrant Ahmadinejad did so because of Iraq -- and then they stopped because of Obama's indifference. Sadly for them, America's foreign policy will now be based on a calculus of political correctness, not national security.

During the campaign, Obama prattled on about Iraq being a "war of choice" and Afghanistan a "war of necessity" for no more thoughtful reason than a desire to win standing ovations from treasonous liberals.

But lo and behold, those very liberals who were champing at the bit to fight in Afghanistan are suddenly full of objections to the war there, too. As Frank Rich points out: "Afghanistan is not Iraq. It is poorer, even larger and more populous, more fragmented and less historically susceptible to foreign intervention."

Now they notice.

Afghanistan is a brutal battlefield, largely invulnerable to modern warfare -- something the British and Russians learned. But as our military under Bush showed the world in 21 days, scimitar-wielding savages are no match for the voluntary civilian troops of a free people.

Bush removed the Taliban from power, captured or killed the lunatics and, for the next seven years, about the only news we heard out of Afghanistan were occasional announcements of parliamentary elections, new schools, water and electricity plants.

The difficult choice Obama faces in Afghanistan is entirely of his own making, not his generals' and certainly not Bush's. It was Obama's meaningless blather about Afghanistan being a "war of necessity" during the campaign that has moved the central front in the war on terrorism from Iraq -- a good battleground for the U.S. -- to Afghanistan -- a lousy battlefront for the U.S.

And it was Obama's idea to treat war as if it's an ordinary drug bust, reading suspects their Miranda rights and taking care not to put civilians in harm's way.

A Democrat is president and, once again, America finds itself in an "unwinnable war." I know Democrats will never learn, but I wish the voters would.

Many people, including myself, have made this point about the wisdom of changing the battlefield from Afghanistan to Iran being in our best interests.

But, as usual, the left is immune to any kind of true reason.

An open letter to Rush Limbaugh

Pretend for a moment that you have no emotional attachment to the game of football. Look at a professional football team as just another business that might want to locate a factory in your city.

Do you think that it is fair that a billionaire team owner and his millionaire players should receive government funds (tax money taken not only from "the rich" but from middle and working class citizens) to build the facilities in which to conduct their business?

If it is morally wrong for the government to take the money of one private citizen and give it to another private citizen for that citizen to pay his or his families health care costs (and make no mistake it is morally wrong for the government to do that) then in what universe does it become right to take taxpayer's money and use it to build or upgrade a sports stadium in order to attract or keep a major league franchise?

After all the success you have had as a champion of conservative ideas do you really what to throw away every last trace of your moral authority by becoming a corporate welfare queen?

Because as a team owner that is exactly what you would be, just another bloated parasite sucking on the government tit.

If you became a team owner you could never again condemn misappropriation of taxpayer funds without labeling yourself as a rank hypocrite.

The NFL can't even claim that professional football couldn't survive without government subsidies because we have witnessed in recent years the explosive growth of NASCAR whose facilities are all financed entirely with private money.

The argument made by governments looking to justify taking taxpayer money and and using it as corporate welfare to lure a sports franchise to their city is that a team is a big boost to the local economy.

A number of economic impact studies which were not paid for by governments looking to justify spending public money on a sports team have shown that the true effect on a cities economy from a sports franchise is at best minimal and at worst slightly harmful.

Until the NFL and the NBA and Major League Baseball all reform their business practices so that they are no longer detestable parasites using government force to partially finance their operations no conservative ought to have anything whatsoever to do with them.

A dream denied

ST. LOUIS (AP) - Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh has been dropped from a group seeking to buy the St. Louis Rams. Limbaugh was to be a limited partner in a bid led by St. Louis Blues chairman Dave Checketts, but Checketts said in a statement Wednesday that Limbaugh's participation had complicated the effort. The group will move forward without him.

Checketts said he will have no further comment on the bid process. Limbaugh did not immediately respond to an e-mail sent late Wednesday seeking comment on Checketts' decision.

Limbaugh said on his radio show earlier Wednesday that he had been inundated with e-mails from listeners who supported him in the bid.

"This is not about the NFL, it's not about the St. Louis Rams, it's not about me," Limbaugh said. "This is about the ongoing effort by the left in this country, wherever you find them, in the media, the Democrat Party, or wherever, to destroy conservatism, to prevent the mainstreaming of anyone who is prominent as a conservative.

"Therefore, this is about the future of the United States of America and what kind of country we're going to have."

Limbaugh's bid ran into opposition from within the image-conscious NFL on Tuesday when Colts owner Jim Irsay said he would vote against the radio personality. Commissioner Roger Goodell said the commentator's "divisive" comments would not be tolerated from any NFL insider.

The league tries to avoid getting snared in controversial issues outside sports, which has caused Limbaugh trouble in the past. In 2003, he was forced to resign from ESPN's Sunday night football broadcast after saying of Philadelphia's Donovan McNabb: "I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well."

The Rams had no comment, reissuing a statement from Oct. 5 in which owner Chip Rosenbloom said a review of the team's ownership was under way and the club will make an announcement when it's over.

Checketts, the chairman of SCP Worldwide, announced that Limbaugh had been dumped toward the end of a news release.

"It has become clear that his involvement in our group has become a complication and a distraction to our intentions; endangering our bid to keep the team in St. Louis," Checketts said. "As such, we have decided to move forward without him and hope it will eventually lead us to a successful conclusion."

The move was hailed by the Rev. Al Sharpton, one of the most vocal critics of Limbaugh's bid.

"It is a moral victory for all Americans—especially the players that have been unfairly castigated by Rush Limbaugh," Sharpton said in a statement. "This decision will also uphold the unifying standards of major sports."

Sharpton added in a telephone interview that major sports leagues shouldn't welcome owners who are "divisive and incendiary."

Every major pro sports franchise has dealings with its community, he said. "It's unfair for taxpayers to be underwriting people who denigrate them," he said.

Checketts said Limbaugh would have not had any say in the direction of the franchise "or in any decisions regarding personnel or operations."

Before getting dropped, Limbaugh said he had no intention of backing out.

"I'm not even thinking of caving," he said. "I am not a caver. Pioneers take the arrows. We are pioneers. It's a sad thing that our country, over 200 years old now, needs pioneers all over again, but we do."

First of all, Al Sharpton. For my thoughts on that miserable ball of slime go here.

That a lying, hate-filled sack of feces like Sharpton - a man who is covered in innocent blood - is taken seriously enough to be consulted on absolutely any issue whatsoever is something that we should all be deeply ashamed of.

Now on to Rush Limbaugh and the NFL.

I am sorry that Rush is going to be denied his life-long dream of being an owner (if only of a very small share) of a professional football team. It is outrageous that members of the US legislature would rise on the floor of the house to denounce a private citizen and attempt to interfere with his lawful business activities.

It is even more outrageous that members of the mainstream media would attack any person with fabricated quotes in order to create the false impression that he is a racist. That there was absolutely no effort made to fact check any of the supposed Limbaugh quotes demonstrates that there was no desire to find the truth because it might get in the way of their hatchet job.

This tells us all we need to know about why "old media' is dying.

However I can't feel all that sorry for Rush. After all he is still fabulously wealthy. His radio program is still number 1 in the entire nation and he still has millions of devoted fans.

If not being able to own a tiny percentage of a football team is the worst price he has to pay he is a lucky man indeed.

After listening to him on the radio today talking about how much he loved the NFL and how he put the league and the players "on a pedestal" I have to wonder if he has since had an epiphany.

I mean he obviously learned nothing from the ESPN incident so is he awake now?

Does he now truly understand that the league that he has wasted so many hours of his life worshiping wants no part of him?

Like it or not the NFL is effectively run by left-liberals and a man like Rush Limbaugh shouldn't be willing to piss in its face if its nose was on fire.

I would say that I'll never watch football again, but I don't watch football now. My take on the NFL is that if they want me to watch they need to give the players swords.

Now that would be a show!