Obamacare Summed Up in One Sentence

Dr Barbara Bellar is a candidate for the Illinois state senate.  She has an impressive bio:  Doctor, lawyer, Army Guard Major and former nun!

She's also funny.  In this short YouTube video, she sums up Obamacare in one very long and very funny sentence:

I wish her luck and pray for her victory.  The corrupt state of Illinois could use more legislators like her.  

Rocky Mountain Breakdown

Mitt Romney turned in a masterful explanation of free-market economics, which explains Obama's flat-footed confusion

I was going to wait for the tortured screams and angst-ridden howls of the Obama loony left to die down before I wrote about the debate, but oh well...

Listening to Bill Bennett’s Morning in America radio program on my way to work the morning after the first presidential debate, I heard a caller make a great point.

He said that if this is how Obama prepares for meetings with world leaders, and if this is how he performs, we are in even bigger trouble than we think. That caused me to look back to his bowing, the pleading to Medvedev to give him more time to sell us down the river, the “leading from behind,” which is no leadership at all, and I realized just how astute that caller was. Obama has not led, overseas or at home.

Look at his greatest triumphs: Set piece speeches where the remarks were prepared and there was no challenge to his thinking. In Obama's defense, he has a record to run on now, and it's a junkyard of political arm-twisting, federal steamrollring, stale progressive bromides and failed statist projects.  Clarence Darrow couldn't defend that.

The Denver debate was a fitting bookend to the president's triumphant coronation in that city four years ago. It’s easy to float out on stage amid the Greek columns to adoring throngs, but it is much different to face an ideological opponent and defend your ideas and actions. Obama excels at the former and fails in the latter. He really is a rock star, but what we need is a president, and he’s not up to the task.

Who do you want representing this nation? A stumbling bumbler with an overinflated ego and a messiah complex, or an experienced, confident man who knows what he believes and can articulate it without the aid of a teleprompter?

The President did get off some good zingers...  

Almost 24 hours later!  His peevishness continued into the next day when, in the worst case of delayed reaction ever, finally voiced a few weak ripostes to an adoring throng that that rewarded him with some sycophantic laughter before he slinked out of Denver.

Romney's best line:

Mitt had this to say about Obama's venture socialism and throwing taxpayer money at his well-heeled political cronies like Solyndra:

I had a friend who said you don’t just pick the winners and losers, you pick the losers, all right?

Romney also gets props for being the only candidate in history to threaten to cut off the moderator's funding.

Best post-debate line by a pundit (H/T to Leticia)...

... was by Dennis Miller, who is now my favorite talk show host:

"Obama better hope that a "kicked ass" is covered under Obamacare"

Keep you powder dry my fellow Right Blogistanis and savor this, because we've got 30 days until the election, and I guarantee it will be a nail-biter.  Obama's most powerful super PAC, the news media, will take revenge on Romney for bloodying their hero.

Pee Wee Obama's Play House

Observational Therapist 

Progressives, including the press, have destroyed their credibility

They have proven themselves unable to face facts, as George Orwell would say.  Even when someone forces the facts upon them, like a broken adding machine, they are unable to derive the logical conclusion.

Progressive defenses of Obama's abysmal record have not just strained credulity, but burst it. This corrupt, incompetent man has wasted more money than any other president in the history of the nation, and we are no better off. Yet, liberals remain in a persistent hopium-induced trance, insisting he's still "The One." Forward! They go, into the abyss with this horrible, carter-esque failure.

Victor Davis Hanson has written a brilliant piece that sums it up nicely, The Fantasy House of Barack Obama:

By Fantasy House I do not mean — or rather only mean — Barack Obama’s La-La land in which Austrians speak Austrian, Hawaii is in Asia, Afghans speak Arabic, the Maldives lie off Argentina, there are seven additional states, servicemen are zombie corpse-men, and Kansas twisters kill 10,000 at a time.

$ More people are unemployed now under Obama than during the Bush years

$ Median income has fallen under Obama

$ Gas prices have doubled under Obama

$ Grocery bills are at least 20% higher under Obama, growing 8% just this past year

$ Cash for Clunkers destroyed perfectly good used cars, driving up prices in that market

$ Obama is a record breaker:  He's wracked up more debt in four years than any other president 

If this is what progressives call success, I'd hate so see how far in the crapper we'd have to fall for them to call it failure.  Reviewing Obama's record makes me nostalgic for George Bush, since that president's record beats Obama's in every aspect, including less Middle Eastern hatred towards the US.

VDH closes by telling us... "Do not take council of your fears" 

And I say amen to that.  You can't eat hope and change.  The hard left hallelujah choir is beyond reason, but there are still plenty of sensible, thinking people open to facing the facts.  Let's bring those facts to them.

Why the Debates Don't Matter

The Obamabots will go Forward!  Into the Abyss!  with Comandante Zero no matter what.

He leads Romney by double digits among women, despite the fact there are half a million more unemployed women now than when Obama took office.  In the War on Women, Obama is the Commander in Chief.

He still has the confidence of almost half the country despite breezily zooming off to Vegas (after telling us not to go) hours after a US Ambassador was murdered in a terrorist attack. Barack Obama is an unserious man in a very serious time.

Anyhoo, George Will, in his usual pithy manner deprecates political debates as little more than sound bite kabuki:

The spectacles we persist in dignifying as presidential “debates” — two-minute regurgitations of rehearsed responses — often subtract from the nation’s understanding. (George Will)

A subtraction of understanding can only help President Obama and hurt Mitt Romney.

Will started out this latest excellent column by giving us a stunning factoid:

“the average age of the Supreme Court justices (66) is less than that of the Rolling Stones (68)” (George Will)

Although, like the Stones, the Supreme Court appears to be lapsing into self-parody, they have not yet gone on the road to become their own cover band.

Will threw this out as entre to some serious questions for the candidates about recent Supreme Court decisions…

For Romney:

Do you reject the Kelo decision, in which the Supreme Court deferred to governments’ desire to seize private property and give it to wealthier private interests who would pay higher taxes?

For Obama:

You deplore the court’s Citizens United decision. What is your constitutional basis for rejecting the decision’s principle that Americans do not forfeit their First Amendment rights when they come together in corporate entities (mostly nonprofit advocacy corporations such as the Sierra Club) to speak collectively?

He also has foreign policy and domestic policy questions, and the ones to Romney are no easier than the ones to Obama. If we put Professor George Will in charge of the debates, they might actually be debates. It’s a brilliant article. You can read the whole thing here.

So watch the debates tonight if you must, but you can bet your bottom Obama-dollar the baggy-eyed Bolshevik Jim Lehrer and his fellow leftwing inquisitors will not be bringing the heat to their messiah, but Romney had better watch his back.

Articles I hope Romney and his team have read:

Harsanyi - Make Obama Own the Economy

Krauthammer - Go Large, Mitt

Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Years Ago?

Me and my family? Hell no!

We’re lucky to bank anything after paying all the bills, but we do thank God I still have a job.

We sit here being eaten alive by higher gas and food prices, and Bernake's Obama-saving QE3 will just make it worse, yet there are plenty of people still ready to pull the lever for this dismal failure of a president.

Why are we all feeling poorer? Because we are!

According to an analysis of Census Bureau data by Sentier Research, median household income has fallen more during the three-year recovery, 4.8 percent, than it did during the 18-month recession, 2.6 percent.

As one of the researchers told Bloomberg, “Almost every group is worse off than it was three years ago, and some groups had very large declines in income. We’re in an unprecedented period of economic stagnation.”(Pethokoukis – Better off? Not in this Reality)

Here’s what else President Obama has brought us:

* Unemployment over 8% for 42 consecutive months
* GDP growing at less than half the rate of previous recoveries
* There are fewer people working now than when Obama took office
* Poverty is up 24% and median income is down 8.1%
* Gas prices have doubled Under Obama’s reign
* The president tried to play dumb about it on Letterman, but he's increased the national debt by an unprecedented $6 trillion., bringing the grand total we owe to over $16 trillion.

And despite the coronation of a citizen of the world named Barack Hussein Obama, who supposedly understands the Muslim world...

...People in Muslim countries hate us now more than when Bush was in office

So, are we better off? Hell no. Time to fire the president and hire somebody new.

For more damning details of the Obama economic disaster, see James Pethokoukis' article, This economy could be so much better.

How Romney can Seal the Deal

Here’s how Romney can seal the deal: 

Stop running from the fact that he’s a rich and powerful man and instead embrace it.  Take that nasty Democrat party-created negative and turn it into a positive.

This is still America. We don't hate rich people; we want to be like them!




Mitt should come right out and say it:

“Yes, I am rich, and I want you to be rich too. Having your own money, and you own means of wealth creation opens up a whole new world for you. You gain an independence and self-esteem that empowers you to steer your own life with dignity, instead of being herded like cattle by an overbearing, faceless government.”

He should continue...

"Under a Romney presidency, I will call off the brigades of bureaucratic regulators who are besieging the entrepreneurs and the job creators, and we will drill and manufacture and innovate.

You want to start your own business?  I'll remove the red tape and break down those government-imposed barriers for you so you can be your own boss."

We all want to get rich, and Romney is Tony Robbins on steroids. He needs to embrace who he is and bring it to the masses.

It wouldn’t hurt to employ Clint Eastwood’s quote, either:

“When somebody does not do the job, we gotta let him go.”

The Secret (Weapon) Romney Tapes

Dying for an Education

cnn.com

Is it morally right to bring a change to people that would be beneficial in the long run, but that could kill them in the short run?

What if that beneficial change conflicts with that society's values?

CNN has written another article on the challenges of educating girls in Afghanistan, Despite Deadly Risks, Afghan Girls Take Brave First Step.

In it, they tell of the challenges facing the girls and those who struggle to educate them.

There were at least 185 documented attacks on schools and hospitals in Afghanistan last year, according to the United Nations, and the majority of those attacks were attributed to armed groups opposed to educating females.

It's heartbreaking, but you know what? I read stuff like this and I just don't care anymore. God have mercy on my soul, because I should care, and probably somewhere deep inside I really do.

Deeper down, I wonder what we are doing trying to change other people. It's bleak, and the sad fact is, if enough Afghans really disagreed with the taliban types who throw acid in little girls' faces, it wouldn't happen anymore. But they don't, so it does. We are fighting heroically to give this benighted society something it does not want.

"...Nasty, Brutish and Short"

The actions of the heroic women featured in the CNN article end in tragedy. Young daughters burned alive inside of schools, others attacked and killed on their way home after a happy day of learning.  Life is cruel:  Those girls would still be alive if we had just left them alone and not tried to educate them. 

But that begs the question of a life lived heroically or cowardly:  Is it better to be a semi-literate third-grade girl who ends up getting blown up in your school? Or would it be preferable to remain illiterate and unschooled and die from a hemorrhage at 28 after giving birth for the fifth time with no health care because you had to cut wood and cook for the men hours after giving birth?

Obamaville

“Not since the grim days of the Great Depression has New York City had 20,000 children sleeping homeless each night,” said Patrick Markee, senior policy analyst with the Coalition for the Homeless (NY Daily News)

Help the poor? Obama’s government is helping the rich and the politically connected. What have the poor ever done for Obama?

GM’s stock (Which We the Taxpayers hold billions worth) is tanking, and here’s a big reason why:

Nearly two years after the introduction of the path-breaking plug-in hybrid, GM is still losing as much as $49,000 on each Volt it builds, according to estimates provided to Reuters by industry analysts and manufacturing experts.

Cheap Volt lease offers meant to drive more customers to Chevy showrooms this summer may have pushed that loss even higher. There are some Americans paying just $5,050 to drive around for two years in a vehicle that cost as much as $89,000 to produce. (Reuters)

Obama robbed the taxpayers to bail out his GM and UAW cronies, and now GM wants us to do them another favor by selling the stock back to them for half of what we paid for it.  See how this works?  They screw us coming and going.  This is how Obama "fixes" things.

The bailout was illegal and the waste of taxpayer dollars is immoral.  With Obama success like this, who needs failure?

The Democrats’ GM Fiction

Time Mag, Daily Beast Go After Obama

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Sept. 18 found Obama’s foreign policy approval rating among registered voters to be 49%, down from 54% a month earlier. Among independents that fall was steeper, down to 41% from 53% a month prior. (Time)

Finally, reporters other than Jake Tapper are standing up on their hind legs and pointing out the wreckage Obama's bumbling foreign policy has caused. His administration's stumbling and chaotic response to the latest violence overseas was too much to paper over, apparently.

In the days following the attacks, the White House at first said it believed the attack in Benghazi in eastern Libya that claimed Stevens’ life was spontaneous, born of protests over an inflammatory California-made video mocking the Prophet Muhammad. “We do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned,” U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice told CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sept. 16.

The Administration has since changed course and now admits the attack may have been pre-planned. Clinton told senators on Thursday that she believed that it was “self-evident” that it was a terrorist attack. (Time - Libya Makes Obama Vulnerable)

The Daily Beast points out the obvious: That the Obama administration's mumbling, self-contradictory Libya narrative is falling apart, even as it took Obama's team more than a week to stop contradicting one another.

“I think this is a case of an administration saying what they wished to be true before waiting for all the facts to come in,” says one senior retired CIA official. (Daily Beast)

Obama didn't build that!

Up to this point, "It's better to be lucky than good" has been an apt description of Obama's foreign policy.  He didn't get bin Laden; all he did was authorize the operation that was made possible by the hard work of others that was started under President Bush.  He choked the Afghanistan surge in its cradle by simultaneously announcing our withdrawal.  He could have saved lives and money by simply ordering us to get out.

     

Obama has been a passive observer on the world scene.  Like a middle school boy in a new school, he hangs back until he finds out which football team the cool kids like and then jumps on board.  That is what strikes everyone about this administration.  America doesn't jump on bandwagons and attempt to ingratiate itself with shady characters; we lead.  Or at least we used to.

It's no surprise that Obama's foreign policy is in shambles. His National Security Advisor, Thomas Donilon, has no foreign policy experience. Ambassador Susan Rice is a smart woman, but inexperienced and in over her head, and Hillary may be a hard-boiled tough guy, but she too lacks a foreign policy background. This is what amateur hour at the White House looks like.

Forget the perils of a 3:00 AM phone call. This White House is dangerously unprepared regardless of the time of day or night.

President Obama's 2.9%

Everybody in the Obama echo chamber is talking about Romney’s 47%, but the number that matters is Obama’s 2.9%. That’s the percentage above 50% that he got last time. He won’t get it this time.

Ask yourself, how many people do you know who voted for Obama last time but who are not this time? Now, how many McCain voters do you know who plan on switching to Obama?

The Press is Suppressing Romney Voter Turnout

The press is screaming that it's over for Romney because they want it to be. They are trying to drive public opinion to keep their false idol from falling this November. This sign of desperation is itself an encouraging sign for Romney. Were he losing heroically as a good Republican should, the media would be lauding him and lionizing him as they did noble loser John McCain, and Bob Dole before him.

The reality is, Romney’s moving up and Obama is going down.

2008:  Obama's High Water Mark

The other encouraging thing is that Obama's 52.9% of the vote in 2008 was his high water mark. Cult of personality hysteria drove extremely high participation percentages on the left, and the historical excitement got youth and minorities to turn out for him in record numbers. Well, the hopium smoke has dissipated, the thrill is gone. Sure, they’ll turn out again, but he’ll never whip them into anything like the frenzy of 2008.

Obama will also not get all the moderates he got last time, and finally, he won’t have the votes of what I call “The naily board contingent.” I personally know a handful of people who are non-political but fairly conservative, usually Republican voters, who voted for Obama last time. They did it because it was historical, but also because they were tired of Bush and they were disgusted that the GOP had become indistinguishable from the Democrat party.

They whacked the GOP with a naily board. Those people that I know are all voting for Romney this time, and I believe I can confidently extrapolate out from this miniscule sampling, given the polling data and anecdotal evidence we see around the nation.

Obama has Nowhere to Go but Down

So, Obama has nowhere to go but down. Less people are working than when he became president, median income is down, gas prices have almost doubled, and food and energy costs are eating us alive. His “stimulus” produced doodly-squat, unless you are a Democrat party-approved union, well-heeled green energy mogul, or Wall Street fat cat.

At least FDR’s spending gave men and women the dignity of work while it built libraries, beautiful neoclassical government buildings, bridges and dams. What do we have to show for Obama’s multi-trillion dollar spending spree?

President Obama has a crappy record of no accomplishments, and the world hates us even more now.

But perhaps the worst news of all for President Obama, 60% of Americans think his most powerful super PAC,  the News Media, is full of crap.

As a bonus, I highly recommend The Obama You Don’t Know

We're Angry Too

The Muslim world *Surprise!* continues to explode in violent rage, with rampaging mobs burning and killing their way through their cities.

At least in Libya is looks like they are doing violence for the right reasons, where angry mobs chased an Islamist group out of Benghazi.

Anyway, I'm tired of hearing about how inflamed the Muslim street is.  Their hate meter is already pegged, so, ho hum...

Oh?  You Muslim extremists are all mad and explody again?  Well, here's a message for ya...

Hey, Angry Muslims (not all Muslims, just the angry hatey ones), you think you hate us? You think your hate is the burniest of burning hatey hate?

Wrong. We hate you worse. Only ours is not a murderous hate. It is a hate that despises.  The way one despises mosquitoes and termites, or the stench from the sewage treatment plant when the wind blows the wrong way.

You're a pain in the ass, and you need to get over yourselves.

The US Government does not fund anti-Islamic art...

...It only funds anti-Christian projects

You get angry when a private citizen draws a picture of Muhammad? That’s nuthin! My government paid an artist to dunk an image of my God in a jar of urine.  It also paid an artist to sculpt an image of my Lord's mother in the medium of elephant dung and pornographic pictures.

I didn't throw firebombs at the National Endowment for the Arts building in DC, I didn’t scream murderous hatred like a flaming pack of hemorrhoids, and I didn't storm the art museum where they were displayed and I didn't call for the decapitation of the "artists." Neither did any other Christians so far as I know, although one Christian did deface the elephant dung thing, and he didn’t hurt anyone doing it.

You stupid Muslims (not the smart ones) are snuffing the light of liberty. If you want to sit in tyrannical darkness in your own beshitted lands, have at it, but we hate you because you've brought your darkness, religious chauvinism, murderous hatred, petty bigotries and passive-aggressive victimology agitprop to Western Christendom.

Unlike you though, we don't hate everybody. We have no problem with people, including followers of Muhammad, who come here and respect our constitution and the rights of others.  Muslims have made great contributions to this nation in all fields of endeavor, and I am proud that they and their families can live the American dream here unmolested, and attend their houses of worship without fear.  Shia are safer here than in most of the Islamic world.

In this land, unlike where you came from, you are free to worship how you want and believe what you want. Inherent in that is the requirement to accept like an adult that others will think, act, worship and believe differently than you. Some will even lampoon your religious beliefs.  If you don't like it, go back home and continue destroying the society you came from.

For an excellent defense of offensive speech, see How Muslim Extremists Can Learn from Larry Flynt

H/T to Constitutional Conservative for the inspiration

The Obamanation Flag: Mark Steyn's Take

Mark Steyn's take on the Obamanation Flag...

"I see the Obama campaign has redesigned the American flag, and very attractive it is too. Replacing the 50 stars of a federal republic is the single “O” logo symbolizing the great gaping maw of spendaholic centralization. And where the stripes used to be are a handful of red daubs, eerily mimicking the bloody finger streaks left on the pillars of the U.S. consulate in Benghazi as its staff were dragged out by a mob of savages to be tortured and killed. What better symbol could one have of American foreign policy? Who says the slick hollow vapid marketing of the Obama campaign doesn’t occasionally intersect with reality?"

(Mark Steyn)

That's just the first paragraph. Please go read the whole article at National Review.

Apologia

We’ve had a few religious squabbles here recently, and it was my fault.  I started the fire.

I probably came off condescending and self-righteous, and for that I apologize. My purpose was to defend orthodoxy and preserve it from smirch. If one wants to depart from Orthodoxy and Tradition, as found in The Bible and the writings of the early Church Fathers, great. Just don’t claim that what you are doing falls within the pale of Orthodox Christianity as it has been understood for all of its history.

But here I go preaching again.  I guess I just can't help myself.

To their credit, Jack Camwell and FreeThinke ended up acknowledging that they had indeed departed from orthodoxy, and they both gave spirited defense of their ideas.  I don't agree with them, but I respect their right to hold their beliefs, and what fun is a discussion when everyone agrees?

Anyway, while Googling Soren Kierkegaard, I came across a quote from Emmanuel Kant, and I wondered if this is where Jack Camwell and FreeThinke were coming from. When I say I strive to understand those I debate with, especially when I disagree with them, I mean it!

So, my Blogistani buddies, here is a little peace offering, from Wikipedia:

In 1784 Immanuel Kant challenged the thinkers of Europe to think for themselves.[173]

"Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men, long after nature has released them from alien guidance (naturaliter maiorennes), nonetheless gladly remain in lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves as their guardians. It is so easy to be immature.

If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me.

The guardians who have so benevolently taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it that the far greatest part of them (including the entire fair sex) regard taking the step to maturity as very dangerous, not to mention difficult.

Having first made their domestic livestock dumb, and having carefully made sure that these docile creatures will not take a single step without the go-cart to which they are harnessed, these guardians then show them the danger that threatens them, should they attempt to walk alone. Now this danger is not actually so great, for after falling a few times they would in the end certainly learn to walk; but an example of this kind makes men timid and usually frightens them out of all further attempts." (Wikipedia)

See also: 
Introduction to Kant
Kant and Religion
Catholic Encyclopedia:  Kant

Poetic Justice

Pakistani Protester Killed by Smoke from American Flag

In an apparent case of red, white and blue revenge, a Pakistani protester died yesterday after inhaling smoke from a burning American flag during an anti-US rally.

Abdullah Ismail succumbed at Mayo Hospital in Lahore a day after attending the fierce protest at the city’s Mall Road, where an estimated 10,000 people rallied.

Witnesses said Ismail had complained of feeling ill after breathing fumes from burning flags, Pakistan’s Express Tribune reported. (NY Post)

I don't know if Obama has issued an apology yet, or decreed that flags be made of non-toxic fabric...

For a hilarious send up of this event, see Dan Miller in Panama.

H/T:   Conservatives on Fire

A Sick Culture

The Ottoman Empire was famously called The Sick Man of Europe back in the mid 19th century.  The words of Czar Nicholas could just as easily be applied today to the Muslim World...

"a sick man—a very sick man," a "man" who "has fallen into a state of decrepitude, ... gravely ill".

Islam has spawned a sick culture. It is not normal or healthy to stone adulteresses, behead "infidels," collapse walls on homosexuals, chop off hands, or bomb and burn and murder at every perceived slight. It is sick.

And please, those of you who enjoy defending Islam, spare us the crap this time. It wasn't Copts who did this latest violence.   It wasn't Zoroastrians who stormed the US embassy in Tehran and took Americans hostage.  It wasn't Hindus who brought down the World Trade Center.  It was all done by Muslims.   

Muslims Must Learn the Golden Rule

Having a murderously jealous religious chauvinism is very unhealthy, for themselves and those who have the misfortune to become embroiled in their churlish and hyper-sensitive controversies.  For a people so given to hair-trigger screaming grievance at any less-than-reverent treatment of Islam, they sure enjoy trashing the religions of others, often by arson and murder.  If they want to be respected and treated like adults, they need to start acting like adults and respect the religious rights of others.

The events in Benghazi created a major opportunity for President Obama to speak out about an important problem that afflicts a significant segment of the Muslim world: an inability to recognize that it is not just its religion that deserves to be respected.

The president had an opportunity, and still has the opportunity, to call upon Muslim leaders to teach those who heed their words that they accord to others the same respect for the heritage and practices of other religions that they rightly expect for their own. (Dov Zakheim)

Why are Muslims so easily offended?

Dr. Fouad Ajami, a most expert and articulate observer of the Arab world, explains...

There is an Arab pain and a volatility in the face of judgment by outsiders that stem from a deep and enduring sense of humiliation. A vast chasm separates the poor standing of Arabs in the world today from their history of greatness. In this context, their injured pride is easy to understand.
[...]
Younger Arabs today can be brittle and proud about their culture, yet deeply ashamed of what they see around them. They know that more than 300 million Arabs have fallen to economic stagnation and cultural decline. They know that the standing of Arab states along the measures that matter — political freedom, status of women, economic growth — is low. In the privacy of their own language, in daily chatter on the street, on blogs and in the media, and in works of art and fiction, they probe endlessly what befell them. (Why is the Muslim World so easily Offended?)

Walter Russell Mead does his usual excellent work putting these violent events in context. Much of it is about local politics...

Moderates who speak against violence or try to cool matters look like American puppets; this is the kind of issue the radicals love, and we can expect them to milk it for all it is worth.

He goes on to caution people like me who tend to say to hell with them.  That's what the 7th century Muslim extremists want:  To drive an even greater wedge between Islamic society and modernity.  The obscurantists want to keep the people ignorant, superstitious and suspicious.

I saw it myself as I sat at Bagram prepared to go into Pakistani Kashmir after that big earthquake in 2005.  We had whole field hospitals and Satcom systems with phone banks so people could call their families and tell them they were ok.  We had food and medicine, but Pakistan told us no.  

They saw how our stature increased in Indonesia thanks to the aid we provided after the tsunami.  They did not want their people cosying up to Uncle Sam or, Allah forbid, to stop hating America.  So we complied with their request and put no personnel on the ground and dropped anonymous packages from the sky.

As we've seen in Libya, even helping them topple a dictator and putting in an Arabic-speaking ambassador who genuinely admires the culture doesn't move the pegged needle on their hatred dial.

They are sick, but the cure must come from within. As a man over at HuffPo wrote to his fellow Muslims, It is now Time to Grow Up

See also Mark Steyn - Disgrace in Bengazi

They Hate Us More under President Obama

NewsRealBlog

Proof Positive had an excellent blog post this past Monday, making the point that if an obscure YouTube video has inflamed the Muslim world, then President Obama’s incessant bragging about killing Osama bin Laden must really piss them off.

After all, the protesters in Egypt and other countries were chanting “We are all Osama bin Laden!”

So, shouldn’t Obama stop mentioning this all the time and stop poking a finger in the eyes of over a billion people who already hate us? How many deaths is he responsible for? Not counting his drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen? Shouldn’t he discontinue those as well? It doesn’t really comport with his promise that his election would ease Muslim hostility. I’d say he’s thrown gasoline on the fire.

Here’s what happens to American presidents who look to be loved in the Middle East. In 2008, the year Obama won the presidency with his pledge to end George W. Bush’s wars, 75 percent of Egyptians had an unfavorable opinion of the United States. Today it’s 79 percent. Four years ago, that was the percentage of Jordanians with a negative view of the U.S. Now it’s 86 percent. (Niall Ferguson)

If an obscure YouTube video made them mad, just wait until Hollywood's killing bin Laden movie comes out...

More importantly, shouldn’t the president intervene with Hollywood and demand they shelve the film about the killing of bin Laden? If he does not, the perpetual festering boil known as the Muslim world will become even more inflamed, and both the president and Hollywood will have blood on their hands, and by MSNBC standards, that would make them accessories to murder.

Campaign 2012: Obama and the Press vs Mitt Romney

MItt Romney in a moment of candor

(Washington Post) “There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…

 “And I mean the president starts off with 48, 49 … he starts off with a huge number. These are people who pay no income tax. Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax. So our message of low taxes doesn’t connect. So he’ll be out there talking about tax cuts for the rich. I mean that’s what they sell every four years. And so my job is not to worry about those people. I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives. What I have to convince the five to ten percent in the center that are independents that are thoughtful, that look at voting one way or the other depending upon in some cases emotion, whether they like the guy or not.”

Mitt Romney has committed a fatal political error: He told the truth. Do you really think those happily sitting in Section 8 housing collecting welfare and food stamps are going to vote Republican? Hell no! They’re voting to keep the gravy train running on time.  They don't know the money is all borrowed; they think it all comes from Obama's stash.

The Press: Obama’s Ministry of Propaganda 

Most insidious is the press. They’ve known about this, it’s old news, but they’ve held it back, like ammo, for an opportune time. Obama’s dead cat post-convention bounce followed by crazed Muslims storming our embassies and killing Americans made this a great time to unleash this “news,” and the sheeple liberals in this country flock and baa at this “news” like the dutiful little children of the state that they are.

This will die down, but never fear! The “news” media has more! They’ve got Romney oppo research results stacked to their digital ceilings, and they will keep blasting these trivialities out there, firing for effect, to cover Obama’s horrible record and his serial stumbles as he finishes flushing our country down the toilet.

See, this "gaff" is much more serious than Obama divulging Britain's nuclear secrets to Russia, or getting caught whispering to Vlad the Impaler's little boy Medvedev that he would have to wait to sell us out until after the election.

Everything the president says is treated like the Voice of God, his every stumbling, bumbling action explained away by his flying monkeys in the press.  Meanwhile, the most innocuous Romney utterance is universally declared a gaff, as Obama's propagandists in the media call for daily Two Minutes Hate aimed at that evil, traitorous  bajillionaire Mitt Goldstein.

President Obama doesn’t need campaign cash, the news media is busy crafting and airing pro-Obama, anti-Mitt Romney propaganda 24/7.

See also:
Political Realities
Romney… Talking Like a Conservative

Liberty: It's Lost on Progressives & Their Muslim Extremist Allies

The stupid boobs at the nuthouse known as MSNBC apparently have no understanding of freedom of speech:

Over at MSNBC, a riot of consensus broke out when contributors Mike Barnicle and Donny Deutsch as well as University of Pennsylvania professor Anthea Butler all agreed that the people behind the video should be indicted as accessories to murder. “Good morning,” declared Butler, “How soon is Sam Bacile [the alleged creator of the film] going to be in jail folks? I need him to go now.”

Barnicle set his sights on Terry Jones, the pastor who wanted to burn the Koran a while back and who was allegedly involved in the video as well. “Given this supposed minister’s role in last year’s riots in Afghanistan, where people died, and given his apparent or his alleged role in this film, where . . . at least one American, perhaps the American ambassador, is dead, it might be time for the Department of Justice to start viewing his role as an accessory before or after the fact.”

Deutsch helpfully added: “I was thinking the same thing, yeah.” (Misplaced Blame for Embassy Attacks)

At least they've stopped calling themselves liberal and adopted the term progressive, because their constitutionally-ignorant bullshit has nothing whatsoever to do with classical liberalism.

Why can’t our government simply stand up for free speech?

Matt Welch asks, What's So Hard About Saying, "In the United States, we are not in the business of approving these messages"?

"...it behooves the State Department to constantly explain the vast differences between state-sanctioned and legally protected speech in the so-called Land of the Free. If the U.S. government really was in the business of "firmly reject[ing]" private free-speech acts that "hurt the religious beliefs of others" there would be no time left over for doing anything else.

"It's really not that hard. The values in that film (or "film") are not our values; our government respects religion, religious expression, and religious pluralism (including and especially that of Muslims, even in the wake of murderous Muslim-led attacks on American soil); and we are not in the business of approving or (for the most part) regulating the private speech of our citizens. To the extent that that message is not sufficient for rioters, the problem is theirs."

And if this doesn’t send a chill up your spine, you deserve the government you get:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal authorities have identified a Coptic Christian in southern California who is on probation after his conviction for financial crimes as the key figure behind the anti-Muslim film that ignited mob violence against U.S. embassies across the Mideast, a U.S. law enforcement official told The Associated Press on Thursday. (CBS)

Our federal government should not be expending public resources to out infidels, and Four Star Generals should not be calling up private citizens to discuss a citizen’s exercise of his freedoms.

What's going on?  Progressives are in bed with 7th Century obscurantists to attack freedom of speech, passing anti-blasphemy resolutions at the United Nations.

Somebody needs to tell the progressives that rolling back the Enlightenment is not progress.

Links:

National Review – No! No! No!

Misplaced Blame for Embassy Attacks

Why do They Hate Us?

The answer is, who cares?

Haters will always find a pretext. Do you really think anything can be gained by placating people who break into murderous burning and  bombing tantrums over cartoons? Trying to understand their motivations would be a descent into madness. They want us dead and off the global scene.  It's as simple as that.  Convert or die.

Michael Young has written an important piece in Beirut’s Daily Star, America Just Cannot be the Loved One:

The White House and the State Department would do best to save their public diplomacy funds and focus more on a redefining a lasting, bipartisan strategy toward the Middle East that can span antagonistic administrations. This has not been done in a serious way since 9/11, and it needs to be at this essential moment when Arab countries are facing momentous change. In politics, love is overrated.

A Failure of Intelligence

We dump hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into intelligence and security. Why was there no warning of these embassy attacks? Is the CIA asleep? Is the US intelligence monster too busy spying on Americans?

Rogers (House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich) also said that the attacks would demand a thorough review of the American intelligence apparatus, which did not flag any warning signs before the attacks despite the fact that they came on the 11th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. (The Hill)

I hope President Obama does not follow in Bush’s footsteps, when the former president gave the CIA director a Medal of Freedom in the wake of the worst intelligence debacle in our nation’s history.

Bush couldn’t fire anyone. Can Obama?

The Middle East: A Gunpowder-Filled Nut Log

The civilized world needs to tell the 7th century throwbacks who go all burny and explody over people criticizing their 'prophet" to grow up. So their hurty widdle hurt feelings were hurt. Awwww….

Get over it! Grow up and take it like a man like the rest of us do when something we cherish is insulted! That’s what we need to tell these murderous, fleck-spittle morons. To do anything less is to let tantrum-throwing three-year-olds with military armament dictate our words and actions. It’s insane.

Anything less is a capitulation and will only do more damage to liberty worldwide. As I said previously, the rampaging idiots hate us, and they will always find an excuse to slash, burn, bomb and murder.

Also, we should not be about bringing “freedom” to these benighted lands. It is up to the people who live there to shape their societies. A plain look at history and the world around us reveals what a malign influence Islam has on any society it gets in a chokehold. We see it, they see it, but they want it anyway, so why spend blood and money to try to dissuade them?

So one-sixth of the planet enjoys living in a toilet. Let them! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again...

They want Islam? Then we need to stand back and allow their conquering heroes to give it to them good and hard.