Vile Leftwing Professor Pours Hypocritical Hate On Congressman Paul Ryan For Drinking Glass Of Wine

It was just last week that I was able to look at Democrats’ personal behavior toward others and show that they as a species were really quite indistinguishable from cockroaches.

And here we are again, with cockroaches I mean Democrats being cockroaches I mean Democrats.

Rep. Ryan was at a restaurant with a dinner party when out of the blue this vile professor comes over and goes ballistic at his table, creating a giant scene until she was thrown out on her ear for being so rude and hateful.

It would probably be better if the management simply asked people at the door what party they belonged to and blocked Democrats as haters BEFORE they barged in and started scenes, in my view.

The following article asks some pretty wonderful questions of this leftwing self-righteous hypocrite.  I then have more piling on to do when Byron York gets done with this liberal turd:

Paul Ryan accuser won’t talk
By:Byron York | Chief Political Correspondent Follow Him @ByronYork | 07/11/11 8:47 AM.

Susan Feinberg, an associate professor of management and global business at  Rutgers University, caused a stir in the left-wing blogosphere over the weekend  with her account of witnessing House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan  drinking a glass of $350-a-bottle wine at an upscale restaurant near the  Capitol.  (Feinberg, who was at the restaurant, Bistro Bis, with her  husband to celebrate her birthday, knew the wine was pricey because she could  make out the name on the label and checked it on the wine list.)  Feinberg  confronted Ryan, accusing him of hypocrisy for drinking an expensive wine while  advocating reduced spending for Medicare and Medicaid.  But she didn’t stop  there.  Feinberg also suggested Ryan might be guilty of ethics violations,  secretly snapped a photo of him and two dinner companions, and then took the  “story” to Talking Points Memo, the lefty site which ran a high-profile  piece suggesting Ryan might be guilty of some sort of wrongdoing.

Ryan told TPM that his two dinner-mates had ordered the wine, and that he,  Ryan, didn’t know what it cost and drank only one glass.  Ryan’s  explanation was supported by TPM’s account, presumably based on Feinberg’s  recollection, which said that when Feinberg confronted Ryan about the cost of  his wine, “Ryan said only: ‘Is that how much it was?'”

Nevertheless, Feinberg and TPM hinted that Ryan might have violated House  ethics rules by accepting an expensive meal from lobbyists.  But it turned  out that the two men with whom Ryan was dining were, as he said, economists and  not lobbyists.  Feinberg and TPM also suggested that Ryan might have  violated House rules against accepting gifts in general.  But it turned out  that Ryan had paid for his meal and wine — Ryan even showed TPM his copy of the  receipt, which TPM then posted on the web.

Having failed to catch Ryan in an act of wrongdoing, Feinberg and TPM accused  him of hypocrisy. Ryan’s dining companions, one of whom was a wealthy hedge-fund  manager, ordered two bottles of the $350 wine.  Ryan, by his own account,  drank one glass but nevertheless paid for one of the bottles.  But the $700  wine bill outraged Feinberg and her husband, who were at the restaurant to  celebrate her birthday.  “We were just stunned,” she told TPM. “I was an  economist so I started doing the envelope calculations and quickly figured out  that those two bottles of wine was more [sic] than two-income working family  making minimum wage earned in a week.” When she had finished her own meal,  Feinberg confronted Ryan and angrily asked him “how he could live with himself”  for drinking expensive wine while advocating cuts in Medicare and  Medicaid.  Feinberg left the restaurant after management intervened.

In one brief and unpleasant moment, Ryan got a taste of 2012-style political  combat in which everyone, everywhere is a potential opposition campaign tracker  and there are plenty of press outlets ready to publish a tracker’s  accusations.

On Saturday, I sent Feinberg an email asking a few questions about the  incident and about her unhappiness with Ryan.  First, the photo she snapped  of Ryan and two men sitting a few tables away appeared to be taken from her own  table, and on that table was a bottle of wine.  (Feinberg told TPM that she  and her husband had shared a “bottle of great wine.”)  A check of the  Bistro Bis wine list — in much the way that Feinberg did at the restaurant —  shows that the wine was a Thierry et Pascale Matrot 2005 Meursault, which is $80  per bottle at Bistro Bis. Was that, in fact, Feinberg’s bottle of wine?

I asked Feinberg, an economist, what price constituted outrageous in her  mind.  Would she have been as upset if Ryan’s wine were $150 a  bottle?  Or $100 a bottle?  Or perhaps $80 a bottle, like her own —  which is, after all, more than a day’s labor for a worker making the minimum  wage.

If the problem was not just the wine’s cost, then what other factors were  involved in Feinberg’s anger? Was it because she thought Rep. Ryan was a  hypocrite for drinking expensive wine while recommending reduced spending on  Medicare and Medicaid?  Was it because she believed Rep. Ryan was corrupt  for drinking with two men she suspected were lobbyists?  And finally, did  Feinberg believe she behaved appropriately in the matter?  Would it be  appropriate for a conservative who felt strongly about, say, Rep. Nancy Pelosi,  or Rep. Barney Frank, to do something similar to them under similar  circumstances?

Feinberg’s response was brief: “I’m sorry.  I have no comment on  this.”

After the TPM story was published, a number of left-leaning websites picked  up the tale.  New York magazine wrote that Ryan has “$350, fiscally  imprudent, fancypants” taste in wine.  The Atlantic wrote that Ryan “is in  the habit of drinking $350-a-bottle wine,” although the publication presented no  evidence to support that contention. The Atlantic also expressed hope that the  wine story would become as much of a political burden on Ryan as the $400  haircut was on former presidential candidate John Edwards.

Ryan himself is downplaying, but not avoiding, the matter.  He answered  questions from TPM, producing the receipt, but has said little else.  When  asked whether incidents like this might happen again in the future, with  Democrats and Republicans engaged in mortal combat over federal spending, a  person close to Ryan said only: “I would hope that it was just one woman who had  a little too much to drink and had a little too much fire in her belly and just  decided to cross a line.  Paul is more than happy to have a debate and  understands that people disagree with him, but there’s a right way and a wrong  way to do that.”

It turns out that this Professor Susan Feinberg worked on John Kerry’s campaign.  The relevant facts about Senator John Kerry and his rich liberal activist wife occur near the end of this very recently written piece (again, Democrats are just hypocrites ALL the time; there’s literally ALWAYS something to prove it constantly going on):

 Did you know, for instance, this about Barack Obama?

Prior to his run for President, Barack and Michelle Obama were in the top 2% of income earners, but actually gave less than the average American in charitable giving.

Obama gave .4% of his income.  In spite of being rich, and being in the top richest 2% of Americans, Obama gave only $1,050 to charity.  When the average American household (that’s mostly us in the bottom 98%) gave $1,872, which was 2.2% of their incomes.

For the record, Barack Obama was 450% more selfish, more stingy, more greedy and more self-centered than the average American.  Even though the average American had nowhere NEAR Obama’s wealth.  And that is a documented fact.  And let’s also consider how much Michelle Obama earned by receiving lavish political patronage because of her husband’s career.

And then you find that as cheap and chintzy and stingy and selfish as the redistribution of wealth president (a.k.a. Barry Hussein) was before he decided to run for president, his vice president was even STINGIER.  Because Joe Biden gave less than one-eighth of one percent of his wealth to charity.

And, of course, Democrats who lecture us on “paying our fair share” while they either welch on their debts, refuse to contribute to charity, cheat on their taxes, or all damn three are a dime a dozen.  Let’s have a few prominent examples: Bill and Hillary Clinton, who have largely welched on Hillary’s campaign debts.  There’s Charlie Rangel, the man who chaired the committee that wrote the tax laws while not bothering to pay his own damn taxes.  There’s “Turbo Tax” Timothy Geithner, the man in charge of the Treasury and I.R.S. who didn’t bother to pay his own taxes.  There’s former Democrat candidate for president John Kerry, a millionaire, who tried to wriggle away like the worm he is from paying the taxes he should have paid on his yacht.  There’s Kerry’s wife and fellow Democrat Teresa Heinz-Kerry, who in spite of inheriting the Heinz fortune actually pays less in taxes than the median American family.  And then there’s a bunch of more garden variety cockroach Democrats such as Eric Holder, Tom Daschle, Bill Richardson, and Claire McCaskill.  And the vile putrid bunch of Democrats running Bell, California.

And let me throw in “San Fran Nan” Nancy Pelosi into the mix.  Here’s an already filthy rich woman who increased her wealth by 62% last year while millions of Americans are suffering.  She’d certainly be one who would say, “Screw America, screw the American people and screw the unemployment rate; I’m getting MINE.

These are the hypocrite vermin who constantly lecture us about how “the rich should pay their fair share.”  And these slime certainly should.  But of course, while they screech the Marxist screed of class warfare, they know that they’ve written the tax laws to benefit themselves and their supporters – to the extent they even bother to follow those tax laws that they demand everybody else follow to begin with.

“The audacity of indifference.”

You think these people don’t know their way around $350 bottles of wine the way you know the way to the bathroom in your own home?

Let’s get back to Susan Feinberg and the guy she thought deserved to be president.  John Kerry’s wife is a filthy rich heiress who inhereited the Heinz fortune.  But guess how much taxes she pays?  She’s structured it so she actually pays less than the median American family.  Did she HAVE to do that?  Oh, no.  She just wanted to screw you, the typical taxpayer, by using every possible gimmick to lessen her tax burden even while she self-righteously lectures everybody else about their “duty to pay more.”  SHE could pay more, but she is a liberal, and ergo sum a hypocrite.

How about John Kerry himself?  Well, John Kerry splurged on himself to buy a $7 million yacht.  Not feeling any need to give American workers jobs, Kerry opted to buy his yacht in New Zealand.  And then, not feeling any need to pay taxes, Kerry opted to moor his yacht in Rhode Island rather than in his own state of Massachusetts, so he could save $1/2 a million in tax.  But that doesn’t stop him from lecturing everybody else.

And, according to garden variety self-righteous liberal hypocrite Susan Feinberg, THIS behavior is just fine.  It’s that Ryan guy who was actually himself rather surprised at how much it costs to have dinner with rich friends (I’ve experienced that myself when I looked at a tab from a restaurant a date or a friend have suggested in the past) who is evil.

A small government free market guy who believes people should be free to keep and spend their own money having a $350 bottle of wine is not hypocritical; a liberal who says the rich should pay more in taxes while welching on his or her own taxes is, by contrast, a quintessential hypocrite.

I’d say I was amazed at the chutzpah of a liberal who goes to dine at a high-end restaurant and then is appalled that a Republican would actually go to the same restautant.  But I have long come to understand that the essential ingredient to liberalism is blatant abject hypocrisy.  To put it in the context of her own story, “When she had finished her own pricey meal, she got up and rudely gave Paul Ryan a facefull of the hell her husband tragically has to live with every night of his life for daring to have a pricey meal.”

Liberal Rallies Pimp Hard-Core Totalitarian Socialism

John Edwards ran a campaign of “two Americas” in 2004 and again in 2008.  This particularly disgusting species of vermin could have been our president; he certainly could have been our vice president.

Now decent Americans know they would NEVER want to belong to “John Edwards’ America” if there was any possible other one to belong to.  The man is pure slime, as are the “values” he ran on.

John Edwards was right, though: there REALLY ARE “two Americas” being fought over right now.  They are the United States of America that our founding fathers fought for and created based on a profound Judeo-Christian view of the world, versus the Union of Soviet Socialist States of America dreamed of by the left.  The former has an economic basis of free market capitalism; the latter has an economic basis of a hybrid mixture of crony capitalism (i.e. fascism) and communism.  The former is based on individual liberties balanced by duties based on the Judeo-Christian moral tradition; the latter is based on a Marxist/fascist notion of statism balanced by nothing but their own lust for power.

On June 17 a union leader denounced New Jersey Governor Chris Christie compared Christie to Adolf Hitler and threatened to start World War III to destroy him:

At a rally in New Jersey protesting Republican Gov. Chris Christie’s deal to reform New Jersey’s state pension system, a union leader charged Christie with acting like a Nazi. And not any ordinary Nazi, but Adolf Hitler himself.

“Good afternoon brothers and sisters. Welcome to Nazi Germany,” Communications Workers of America District 1 Vice President Christopher Shelton is seen raving at a Thursday rally in a video posted on YouTube.

“We have Adolf Christie and his two generals trying to make New Jersey Nazi Germany.”

After ranting more about “Adolf Christie,” the YouTube video shows Shelton comparing the pension battle in New Jersey to World War II.

“Brothers and sisters, this is not going to be an easy fight,” he shrieked. “It took World War II to get rid of the last Adolf Hitler. It is going to take World War III to get rid of Adolf Christie. Are you ready for World War III?”

Rally attendees are seen wildly cheering Shelton’s speech in the video.

There’s a couple of major problems with Christopher Shelton’s thesis: one is that Adolf Hitler was a socialist: “NAZI” stood for “National SOCIALIST German WORKERS Party“; and the second is that it was Adolf Hitler and those who thought like him who started that terrible war.  Just like the REAL Nazis in Shelton and the leftists who think like him are angling to start the NEXT world war.

Who is starting the wars going on now?  Look at Greece, where leftists are violently rioting because there isn’t any more money to pay for their socialism.

When you look at the Nazi Party platform, you see hardened socialism all over it:

• The abolition of unearned income;
• Nationalization of trusts;
• Inclusion into profit-sharing;
• Increase in old-age pensions;
• Creation and maintenance of a sound middle-class;
• Aguarian reform, which included the siezing of land without compensation;
• State control of education;
• Creation of a “folk” army to supplant or replace the regular army;
• State control of the press

Leftwing socialist is in the Nazis’ own words:

– The first obligation of every citizen must be to work both spiritually and physically. The activity of individuals is not to counteract the interests of the universality, but must have its result within the framework of the whole for the benefit of all Consequently we demand:

– Abolition of unearned (work and labour) incomes. Breaking of rent-slavery.

– In consideration of the monstrous sacrifice in property and blood that each war demands of the people personal enrichment through a war must be designated as a crime against the people. Therefore we demand the total confiscation of all war profits.

– We demand the nationalization of all (previous) associated industries (trusts).

– We demand a division of profits of all heavy industries.

– We demand an expansion on a large scale of old age welfare.

– We demand the creation of a healthy middle class and its conservation, immediate communalization of the great warehouses and their being leased at low cost to small firms, the utmost consideration of all small firms in contracts with the State, county or municipality.

– We demand a land reform suitable to our needs, provision of a law for the free expropriation of land for the purposes of public utility, abolition of taxes on land and prevention of all speculation in land.

– We demand struggle without consideration against those whose activity is injurious to the general interest. Common national criminals, usurers, Schieber and so forth are to be punished with death, without consideration of confession or race.

– We demand substitution of a German common law in place of the Roman Law serving a materialistic world-order.

– The state is to be responsible for a fundamental reconstruction of our whole national education program, to enable every capable and industrious German to obtain higher education and subsequently introduction into leading positions. The plans of instruction of all educational institutions are to conform with the experiences of practical life. The comprehension of the concept of the State must be striven for by the school [Staatsbuergerkunde] as early as the beginning of understanding. We demand the education at the expense of the State of outstanding intellectually gifted children of poor parents without consideration of position or profession.

– The State is to care for the elevating national health by protecting the mother and child, by outlawing child-labor, by the encouragement of physical fitness, by means of the legal establishment of a gymnastic and sport obligation, by the utmost support of all organizations concerned with the physical instruction of the young.

– We demand abolition of the mercenary troops and formation of a national army.

– We demand legal opposition to known lies and their promulgation through the press. In order to enable the provision of a German press, we demand, that: a. All writers and employees of the newspapers appearing in the German language be members of the race: b. Non-German newspapers be required to have the express permission of the State to be published. They may not be printed in the German language: c. Non-Germans are forbidden by law any financial interest in German publications, or any influence on them, and as punishment for violations the closing of such a publication as well as the immediate expulsion from the Reich of the non-German concerned. Publications which are counter to the general good are to be forbidden. We demand legal prosecution of artistic and literary forms which exert a destructive influence on our national life, and the closure of organizations opposing the above made demands.

You look at this platform and you explain to me how “the National Socialist American Workers Party” wouldn’t be the DEMOCRATS.

Unions HELPED Hitler rise to power.  Homosexuals DOMINATED Hitler’s SA which he rode in his rise to power.  Both were purged when they had outlived their usefulness.  Hitler didn’t want “unions”; Hitler wanted THE union of all Germans in a greater German Reich.  Hitler didn’t abolish unions; he created one big giant union by unifying them.  Hitler had said of the trade unions:

“I am convinced that we cannot possibly dispense with the trades unions. On the contrary, they are among the most important institutions in the economic life of the nation.”

Read up on the German Labor Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, DAF): “DAF membership was theoretically voluntary, but any workers in any area of German commerce or industry would have found it hard to get a job without being a member.”  That is NOT the “right-to-work” policies of conservatives; IT IS THE UNION AGENDA OF LIBERALS.  Read up on the Obama NLRB lawsuit against Boeing for daring to open a plant in a non-union right to work state and explain how we’re not seeing the same story all over again.  Obama is dictating (like the dictator he is) to a private company while unions say “if you aint union, then you don’t get no job.”

Nietzsche – a hero of Nazis AND leftists ever since – put it best.  He pointed out that the artist was not only the creator of beautiful objects but of values.  He pointed out that cultural change requires artistic change: “Change of values – that is a change of creators.”  And this change to new values had to involve the breaking of old values.  As Nietzsche put it, “Whoever must be a creator always annihilates.”  Destroying the old order and giving birth to the new attracted ALL the cutting-edge leftists of the day.

Homosexuals, artists, and all the other leftists and leftist movements of the day joyfully joined Hitler.  But once Hitler gained power and forged his own social order, many of these began to encounter brutal censorship.  Why?  Simply because when these people and movements were attacking the old order, they were useful, but once Hitler began to impose his own order, they who attacked order became a threat to be repressed.  To put it in other words, they were hung on their own petard.

To whatever extent that Hitler crushed the trade unions that had eagerly helped him gain power, he crushed many other useful idiots the same way.  That participation in their own destruction is part of the ultimate death-wish that is liberalism.  We’re seeing it now as liberals routinely support Islamic radicals who would gleefully murder every single one of these tools the moment they gain real power.

That said, there is also a deliberate and fundamental misunderstanding of fascism by the left.  If you read leftists, you come away thinking that somehow “fascism” is the takeover of a state by corporations.  But stop and think: Hitler, Himmler, Eichmann, Hess and all the other key Nazis WEREN’T corporate CEOs who took over the state; THEY WERE SOCIALIST POLITICIANS WHO TOOK OVER THE CORPORATIONS.  They usurped the corporations and FORCED them to perform THEIR agenda.  They either performed the Nazis’ will or they were simply taken away from their rightful owners and nationalized.

And to the degree that German crony capitalist corporations helped Hitler in his rise to power, THEY WERE JUST MORE USEFUL IDIOTS.

The same sort of takeover of German corporations by socialists is building in America.  Take Maxine Waters, a liberal Democrat, as the perfect example.  Whad did she say of the oil companies?

“This liberal will be all about socializing … uh uh … would be about … basically … taking over … and the government running all of your companies.”

THAT’S what Hitler did, too.  Hitler got this power through regulations that required corporations to do his bidding, just like Obama has repeatedly done.

And then consider how willing Maxine Waters used “crony capitalism” (which is the essence of developing fascism) to directly personally benefit even as she shaped the banking industry.

The Democrat party is the party of socialism.  It is the party of Marxism.  It is the party of fascism.

Here are some pictures from the latest May Day rally, along with a brief description of what is going on.  For the record, this is from an email that was forwarded to me.  I did not write it or generate the pictures, but could not provide a “link”:

Pictures taken on May Day, May 11, 2011

WAKE UP AMERICA!!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When I tell people that public political rallies are more and more being led by communists and socialists, most folks simply don’t believe me. Aw, come on, you’re just giving decent protesters an extreme label, they say. No, actually, I’m not: The communists freely and proudly declare their affiliation. And the SEIU has no problem marching arm-in-arm with them. “Smash Capitalism” is a slogan the SEIU apparently endorses — or at least doesn’t mind marching behind. In case you think the SEIU is some peripheral out-of-the-mainstream organization: The SEIU devoted $28 million to Obama’s campaign, making the SEIU “the organization that spent the most to help Barack Obama get elected president.” Furthermore, who is Obama’s favorite White House guest and one of his closest confidants? The individual who has visited the Obama White House the most: SEIU President Andy Stern, who has visited 53 times. Obama is closely linked with the SEIU. The SEIU is closely linked with communists. You do the math. Did I say communists? Sorry, I meant Communists (with a capital “C”). Note how the Communists that day (like the women on the right in this photo) carried solid red flags symbolizing their ideology. Keep that in mind as you view the next photo… One of the SEIU leaders picked up a Communist flag and led a contingent of rank-and-file SEIU members. Everyone was OK with that. The way you can identify the SEIU members in all these pictures: They’re the ones in purple t-shirts carrying blue-and-yellow signs. So, as you can see, the communists and the union members intermingled as the march progressed. In case you were wondering what the SEIU was saying during all of this, here’s a video of the SEIU chanting “Legalization or REVOLUTION!” Clear enough? And it wasn’t just the SEIU at the march — other “normal” unions like the AFL-CIO were on hand as well. There were plenty of teachers’ unions attending too, and they brought along many of their public school students for some good old-fashioned communist indoctrination,. Most of the idiots in the US who walk around with Che buttons or Che shirts do so simply because they foolishly think he’s “cool.” These hardcore communists carry his image not because he’s “cool,” but because he was one of the most radical revolutionaries who ever lived. Right up there with Lenin, apparently. In order to have a more “civil dialogue” with their political opponents, the marchers made a puppet of a demonic Statue of Liberty aligned with the “Tea Bag Party.” OK, I guess Hitler comparisons are off the table for now — too many people have called it taboo. So what’s second best? The Devil! Tell me the honest truth: If the Tea Party had marched in a rally behind a banner held up by fascists or neo-Nazis, don’t you think it would have been national news? But the nation’s biggest Obama-supporting political organization marched behind banners like these, and not a peep about it in the media. Hmmmm…. Until recently, the average American has regarded fascists and communists as equally noxious and equally malignant. As well they should have. But the drive these days by the left side of the spectrum is to make communism and socialism somewhat less remarkable and more palatable. For two years they angrily denied the Tea Party accusation that Obama’s policies and supporters had a socialist bent. But in recent months, as the accusation had started to gain traction, the new leftist tactic has become: “What’s so bad about socialism after all? You’re demonizing a very popular and respectable ideology!”

The very first picture above brings the riots of the left in Wisconsin to use fascist tactics to block the elected democratic process in that state.

The war has already started, and the people who say today – “Because workers of the world unite it’s not just a slogan anymore“ and “We’re trying to use the power of persuasion. And if that doesn’t work, we’re going to use the persuasion of power “ – are the ones who started it.  They are saying to one another:  “There are actually extraordinary things we could do right now to start to destabilize the folks that are in power and start to rebuild a movement“; and “you could put banks at the edge of insolvency again.“

These are people with no morals beyond the morality of fascism.  They want to impose their will on you.  They want to take what is yours and give it to themselves.  They want to make the state god while THEY run that state; and then force you to come to them and devote yourself to “the state” in order to have a job, health care, food, life itself.

The beast is coming.  And when he comes, Democrats will be the Party that cheers him and votes for him.

The Democrat Party has become the party of genuine evil in America.  A vote for Democrats has become a vote for hell itself.

Stop and think about why the union leader in New Jersey demonized Gov. Chris Christie: Christie wants to save his state from certain financial implosion.  He wants to restructure government union benefits that are giving many “public employees” a hundred thousand dollars in benefits a year while they are retiring in their mid-fifties.  These unions want to leach off the system until it collapses.  And it WILL collapse: in California ALONE the public employees’ accumulation of unfunded liabilities is $500 BILLION.  The unfunded liabilities of all the states easily exceeds $1 trillion.

Which of these “two Americas” is fascist?  The one that wants to kill America and impose a totalitarian system in its place, or the one that is trying to embrace the vision of our founding fathers just short of way too late?

Update, June 20: The overwhelmingly Democrat-controlled New Jersey Senate just agreed with Governor Chris Christie on the reforms that he was called a “Nazi” for proposing.  If you want to see the Nazis in the story, look at Christopher Shelton, look at his union and look at the Democrat Party that is controlled by these unions.  THAT’S where you’ll find all the Nazis.

Obama Ambassador Cynthia Stroum A Self-Aggrandizing Tyrant (In Other Words The Perfect Liberal)

One might argue that every president plays political games.  But Barack Obama ran with such a dogmatic self-righteousness that he would be “The One” to transcend this crap that his total pathetic failure to do so amounts to a major scandal.

Big Obama donor quits envoy job amid criticism
Posted: Feb 04, 2011 1:10 AM PST
Updated: Feb 05, 2011 1:10 AM PST
By MATTHEW LEE
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) – As a supporter of presidential candidate Barack Obama, Cynthia Stroum was a superstar whose financial backing of the campaign landed her a plum diplomatic posting in Europe.

As America’s ambassador to Luxembourg, the wealthy Seattle-based businesswoman was a disaster.

According to an internal State Department report released Thursday, less than a week after she quit, Stroum’s management of the U.S. Embassy in the tiny country was abysmal. The report says her tenure of about one year was fraught with personality conflicts, verbal abuse and questionable expenditures on travel, wine and liquor.

Stroum’s case illustrates the pitfalls that presidents can face when they appoint non-career diplomats to ambassadorships as a reward for their political support.

The Luxembourg embassy “has underperformed for the entirety of the current ambassador’s tenure,” said the report, which was prepared last fall before she resigned abruptly. “At present, due to internal problems, it plays no significant role in policy advocacy or reporting, though developments in Luxembourg are certainly of interest to Washington clients and other U.S. missions in the NATO and EU communities.”

Stroum resigned effective Jan. 31, just days before the scathing report from the State Department’s inspector general was made public. A message left with a person who answered the phone at her Seattle home said she was unavailable for comment. The call was not returned.

In a farewell message published in the Luxembourg press, Stroum said she was leaving the job because she wanted to return to private life. “The reality is that I now need to focus on my family and personal business,” she said.

At the State Department, her departure was not announced. Spokesman Mark Toner gave no hint of problems when asked about the situation. “We are grateful for her service to the United States and wish her all the best in her new endeavors,” he said.

But the report paints a picture of a corrosive atmosphere at the small embassy, with the ambassador running roughshod over staff, threatening to read their e-mails, largely concerned about job-related perks and involved in improper purchases.

The situation was so bad that the inspector general recommended that the State Department dispatch medical personnel to Luxembourg to test the stress levels of embassy employees. It said at least four staffers quit or sought transfers to Iraq and Afghanistan during her tenure, unusual steps for diplomats assigned to a modern, Western European capital.

“The bulk of the mission’s internal problems are linked to her leadership deficiencies, the most damaging of which is an abusive management style,” the report said. “She has followed a pattern of public criticism of colleagues, including (deputies), who have not performed to her satisfaction.”

“Those who have questioned or challenged some of the ambassador’s actions state that they have paid a heavy price in the form of verbal abuse and been threatened with dismissal,” it said.

The report said the State Department was aware of the situation and that a perceived lack of action in dealing with it could be harmful. “It is unfortunate that an impression is being created among officers and local employees at this mission that this kind of behavior may be routinely tolerated by Department of State leadership, particularly for non-career ambassadors.”

Stroum began her short diplomatic career in 2009 when Obama nominated her to the cushy position of U.S. ambassador to the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, a tiny nation of 500,000 people about the size of Rhode Island and surrounded by France, Belgium and Germany.

Aside from her business experience as an investor, entertainment producer and philanthropist active in numerous charities, Stroum’s major qualification for the post appeared to be her generous contributions to Democratic politicians and causes, particularly Obama’s campaign.

Financial reports say Stroum donated the maximum personal amount to Obama’s campaign. She also donated $2,300 to the failed presidential campaign of former Sen. John Edwards.

As a fundraiser, the records show she was responsible for ginning up at least $500,000 for Obama, putting her near the top of the campaign’s money generators.

The inspector general said it had learned in interviews with embassy staffers that Stroum, shortly after her arrival in Luxembourg, discussed with them “the importance she attaches to the perquisites of” being an ambassador. As such, she was particularly concerned about the state of the ambassador’s residence, which was being renovated, it said.

Because of the renovation, Stroum sought temporary housing. An embassy official spent six weeks searching for an appropriate property and, using contacts in Luxembourg, Belgium, Germany and France along with two officials from the U.S. Embassy in Brussels, screened 200 properties and visited 30 to 40.

They found only four that met the ambassador’s requirements and she rejected all of them, according to the report, before an acceptable residence finally was found.

Apart from those difficulties and management problems, the report identified several improprieties while Stroum was in charge in Luxembourg. Among them:

– Stroum spent $2,400 to fly with an aide to a Swiss “professional school” whose graduates have gone on to work for Buckingham Palace and similar places to interview candidates to replace a retired property caretaker and a fired chef. The purpose of the trip was listed as “management meetings.” Although no one from the school was hired, such recruitment is allowed only if there are no qualified local employees. In addition, they did not get proper authorization for the trip.

– The embassy purchased $3,400 in wine and liquor a day before the 2010 budget year ended in an effort spend as much of its annual entertainment funds as possible. The booze did not arrive until the next fiscal year and State Department rules say embassies are not allowed “to use excess year-end funds” to buy items unless they are used in that year.

– Stroum was reimbursed for the purchase of a new bed because she “preferred a queen bed to the king-size bed already provided.” The embassy twice asked Washington to reimburse the amount but was denied because it was a personal choice. Despite the refusals, the No. 2 at the embassy signed off on a voucher “reimbursing the ambassador for the cost of the mattress out of program funds.” The report said the voucher needs to be repaid.

Liberalism = Abuse of Other People’s Money.

Cynthia Stroum ought to be held up as a quintessential liberal, as she is a total hypocrite who talks about how much she cares for the little people while running roughshod over them.  And her selection for an ambassadorship ought to be held up as a quintessential Obama appointment.  It is the paradigm of liberal hypocrisy.

John Edwards, John Kerry, Bill and Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Charlie Rangel, and every single Democrat in Bell, California are other recent examples of the complete disgustingness of liberalism.  And let’s not forget the pork emperor Barack Obama AND his empress wife Michelle, either.  These and many other Democrats personify the type of people who claim that private citizens aren’t entitled to keep their own money.

Liberals endlessly lecture Republicans as being “hypocrites” when they preach good moral values and then fail to live up to those good values with immoral personal conduct.  And, of course, that IS hypocrisy, no question about it.

But Democrats don’t just preach garbage that they themseleves don’t bother to live up to; they seize other people’s money and routinely hypocritically betray their own stated values using other people’s money to do it.

Just keep in mind that Republicans can’t steal your morality and spend it on their mistresses the way Democrats routinely do in their hypocrisy.

She shouldn’t resign; Obama should look for MORE self-absorbed and self-aggrandizing tyrants JUST LIKE HER so we can better see what Democrat rule is really like.

‘Jeopardized the country’? Pelosi And Rangel Jeopardizing Democrats

Following Nancy Pelosi’s vow that her Congress would be the most ethical in history, she has tolerated some of the biggest scumbags in history, such as William Jefferson, who was caught red-handed with $90,000 of bribe money in his freezer, and his fellow House Ways and Means committee member (and chairman) Charles Rangel, who was caught equally red-handed massively cheating on his taxes.

It should be pointed out that the House Ways and Means Committee writes the nation’s tax laws.

It’s almost as egregious a violation as, say, the Secretary of the Treasury being a documented tax cheat.  Oh yeah.  Never mind.

It is worth pointing out that if these guys had been Republicans, they would have been long, long gone.

A private citizen was attempting to confront Charles Rangel a full year ago.  And, of course, it was a well-known fact even as the Democrats were taking total power through a mainstream media campaign that falsely demonized the Republicans and falsely hyped the Democrats’ “change.”  It’s a shame that the mainstream media and the Speaker of the House were indifferent to this kind of corruption from the guy who writes everybody else’s tax laws.

Everybody should pay their “fair share” of taxes – unless they’re Democrats, that is.  Particularly Democrats who write or enforce the nation’s tax laws and selectively punish whomever they want to punish for doing the same damn thing they do.

Democrats are showing their true character.

I saw a “Kerry-Edwards” window sticker on a car from Minnesota in my church’s parking lot.  And I was utterly disgusted that somebody who actually thinks of himself or herself as a Christian supported such a putrefying pile of moral slime as John Edwards.

And of course, as a backdrop to all this, New York is having an impossible time finding a Democrat who isn’t lower than whale turds to govern the state.  Do you want the guy who rents prostitutes by the thousands, or do you want the guy who threatens beaten women to keep their mouths shut and not appear in court?  Patterson says he won’t run for reelection, and presumably New York Democrats are going to “hope” for the “change” that the third time’s the charm.

But let’s get back to Rangel.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – rather than make her claim to run the most ethical Congress in history anything other than the total depraved mockery that it always was – instead invented a “new threshold” which justifies keeping tax cheat Rangel in charge of writing tax laws.  From The Hill:

Rep. Charlie Rangel’s admonishment for violating House gift rules “is not good,” but his actions did not put the nation at risk in any material way, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Sunday.

Pelosi said it is not her place to interfere in any investigations of the matter and said she would not get involved politically.

“But the fact is, is that what Mr. Rangel has been admonished for is not good,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.” “It was a violation of the rules of the House. It was not a–something that jeopardized our country in any way.”

I remember playing games with my kids.  They understood the concept of winning, but they did not understand the concept of fair play.  So they invariably kept changing the rules to benefit themselves at that particular moment of the game.

Which is exactly what Nancy Pelosi, the complete moral idiot and chief Democrat ethicist, is doing now.  With Charles Rangel, with reconciliation, with health care, with pretty much everything.

Well, it must be fine then.  It’s easy to be “the most ethical Congress in history” when you have such a personally vile sense of ethics.

It’s this kind of moral reasoning that leads to the Louisiana Purchase and the Cornhusker Kickback.  What is right and wrong is however we wish to define it at the moment; and we’ll change the rules again later when it fits our agenda to do so.

The Daily Beast, which runs decidedly to the political left, is running the following picture as “The Photo That Could Doom the Democrats“:

Of course, what the photograph depicts is Rangel on a foreign beach, enjoying the fruits of his tax fraud.

And the first words of the article are these:

Nancy Pelosi is protecting Rep. Charles Rangel, who failed to pay taxes on his Caribbean villa, among other miscues. But the ethically challenged congressional baron is endangering the Democrats’ control of Congress.

When we think about the “ethically challenged congressional baron,” we should immediately connect him to the ethically challenged congressional queen.

Throw the both out.  Throw the whole lot of them out.

White House Blames Bush For Obama’s Failures In Afghanistan

Asked about the problems Obama is facing in Afghanistan, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs went to his tried and anything-but-true playbook of demagoguery, saying:

“You can’t under-resource the most important part of our War on Terror – you can’t under-resource that for five, or six, or seven years…..and hope to snap your fingers and have that turn around in a few months.”

It’s all Bush’s fault.  That’s pretty much all you have to know about the Obama administration’s political strategy, in a nutshell.

Gibb’s by now completely expected demagoguery doesn’t account for why Barack Obama has already lost more troops in Afghanistan so far this year than George Bush ever lost, as the following chart shows:

I would submit another couple of theories instead, such as:

1) The White House can’t possibly win the “war on terror” that Gibbs refers to when in point of fact they deny that such a war even exists in the first place.  If you pick up a copy of “The Complete Moron’s Guide To Winning A War,” you find out that the first step is to acknowledge that you are actually in a war.  Too bad, Obama didn’t read the book.

I don’t know, but maybe we would be better off with a president who called a war on terror something like, oh I don’t know, a “war on terror.”  Instead we have a president who was apparently appalled by such a barbaric term as ‘war’ or such a pejorative term as ‘terror’ and preferred the description, ‘Overseas Contingency Operation’ instead.

2) The president who boldly advanced and wildly succeeded in Iraq with his “Surge” deserves far more credibility than the president who campaigned demonizing the very strategy that brought us success in Iraq.  On January 10, 2007 Obama said, “I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there; in fact, I think it’ll do the reverse.”  Obama demanded a timeline that would have had us crawling out of Iraq by March 2008 with our tails behind our legs rather than winning.

Maybe a big part of the problem is that Obama is every bit as incompetent in Afghanistan as he demonstrated himself to be in Iraq.

But you just keep demonizing the president who knew who to win even while you worked to undermine him, Mister Loser-in-Chief.

3) Maybe part of the problem is that you utterly failed to rally the world behind you as you claimed you could in your deluded “I’m your messiah!  Adore me!” tour. Obama claimed that he could “rally NATO members to contribute troops to collective security operations, urging them to invest more in reconstruction and stabilization operations, streamlining the decision-making processes, and giving NATO commanders in the field more flexibility.” Not only did Obama fail to deliver the eager European cooperation in Afghanistan now that that mean, nasty evilmonger Bush was gone, but he actually got even less of a commitment than Bush got.

Conservatives predicted that Europe would talk a good talk but refuse to fight a good fight.  Too bad we elected a president who lacked the wisdom and common sense to understand European cowardice and apathy.  Because we elected a fool, we will struggle mightily to live up to our fools’ grandiose promises.

4) Maybe part of the problem in Afghanistan is that you’re own troops don’t trust your commitment.

Barack Obama’s efforts to undermine President Bush’s war in Iraq are so lengthy that I can only direct you to the list of the times that he tried to screw our soldiers and cause them to lose in Iraq.  But it’s hard to read it and not come to the conclusion that Barack Obama has an awful lot of explaining to do about why he so unrelentingly worked against victory.  Tragically, the media – which shared Obama’s liberalism – failed to hold him accountable.  And now what is Obama to do when Obama’s liberal base does the same thing to Afghanistan that Obama himself did in Iraq?

And here we are, with the Pentagon doubting Obama’s commitment to Afghanistan.  Such a SHOCKER! Who would have ever figured?:

Pentagon worried about Obama’s commitment to Afghanistan

By Nancy A. Youssef, McClatchy Newspapers Nancy A. Youssef, Mcclatchy Newspapers   – Mon Aug 31, 7:29 pm ET

WASHINGTON — The prospect that U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal may ask for as many as 45,000 additional American troops in Afghanistan is fueling growing tension within President Barack Obama’s administration over the U.S. commitment to the war there.

On Monday, McChrystal sent his assessment of the situation in Afghanistan to the Pentagon , the U.S. Central Command, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and NATO . Although the assessment didn’t include any request for more troops, senior military officials said they expect McChrystal later in September to seek between 21,000 and 45,000 more troops. There currently are 62,000 American troops in Afghanistan .

However, administration officials said that amid rising violence and casualties, polls that show a majority of Americans now think the war in Afghanistan isn’t worth fighting. With tough battles ahead on health care, the budget and other issues, Vice President Joe Biden and other officials are increasingly anxious about how the American public would respond to sending additional troops.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to talk to the media, said Biden has argued that without sustained support from the American people, the U.S. can’t make the long-term commitment that would be needed to stabilize Afghanistan and dismantle al Qaida.  Biden’s office declined to comment.

“I think they (the Obama administration) thought this would be more popular and easier,” a senior Pentagon official said. “We are not getting a Bush-like commitment to this war.”

Conservatives have been claiming for YEARS AND YEARS that Democrats lacked the courage or will to sustain a war through difficult times.  That’s because again and again, with a perfect track record over the past 40 years, Democrats have been the ones undermining America’s military efforts on foreign soil.  And why on earth should anyone doubt for a second that they’re going to break their streak now?

So beat me with an electric cattle prod, but I simply couldn’t be more shocked that we’re already proving to be right — AGAIN!!!

What we’re ultimately going to see in Afghanistan from Democrats is the same fair-weather friends that Bush saw in Iraq.  We wont go back to “The vile spectacle of Democrats rooting for bad news in Iraq and Afghanistan” only because a Democrat is now in the White House.  But the same spirit of cowardice, abandonment, and betrayal that drove the Democrats’ partisan agenda under Bush will resurface.  It’s just who these people are.

Hillary Clinton – now Obama’s Secretary of State – is the epitome of the liberal weasel.  After the announcement of Saddam Hussein’s capture in Iraq, we had the following moment among many other self-serving moments:

Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York that December, she declared, “I was one who supported giving President Bush the authority, if necessary, to use force against Saddam Hussein. I believe that that was the right vote” and was one that “I stand by.”

Of course her “stand” didn’t last one second longer than her partisan political self-interests.

Hillary Clinton is joined by Nany Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Kerry, John Edwards, John Kerry, and a whole host of Democrats who supported taking military action in Iraq before they were against it.

Some sites that list Democrats’ treachery:

Truth or Fiction
Freedom Agenda
Snopes

Nearly 60% of Democrat Senators actually voted for the Iraq War.  The 2003 Iraq War actually had better Congressional support than the 1990 Gulf War.  Democrats went from embracing every essential claim that President Bush made to justify the war – including supporting the war itself – only to deceitfully degenerate into “Bush lied, people died.”  But it wasn’t Bush who lied – it was Democrats.

Charles Krauthammer cites Democrat strategist and Kerry ’04 campaigner Bob Shrum’s describing Afghanistan as the “right war” as a tactic to attack Bush in Iraq while not being “anti-war.”  It was an incredibly cynical strategy from an incredibly cynical political party.  Frankly, anyone who thinks that the Democrat Party will do the right thing for the right reasons in Afghanistan is simply deluded.

No nation can get involved in a war because of public opinion, and then abandon that same war because of public opinion.  Such a policy would make any kind of sustained foreign policy completely unsustainable, and would make us utterly unworthy of any alliances whatsoever.  And that is precisely what makes what Democrats – and Barack Obama himself – so morally despicable for what they did in Iraq.  They were for the war when it served their interests to be for the war, and then they turned against the war the moment the opinion polls began to show fading support in order to politically demonize Republicans who continued to stay the course.  When the Senate Majority Leader of the United States of America – Democrat Harry Reid – literally declared defeat in Iraq even as our soldiers were in Iraq fighting to secure victory, it was a literal act of treason.

Frankly, given how Democrats demagogued changing American opinions about the war in Iraq, it is talionic justice that they now suffer due to the change in popular opinion over Afghanistan.  The true shame now, JUST AS IT WAS IN IRAQ, is that our warriors should not be exposed to the whims of the public.

5) Look back at the table above.  Barack Obama has already sustained 17.5% more American causalities in Afghanistan than George Bush did in 2008 – with a full third of the year remaining.  At this point, Obama is poised to sustain more U.S. casualties in Afghanistan than George Bush did in the first five years of the war combined.

There is clearly a resurgence in the ranks of our terrorist (yes, I actually said ‘terrorist’) enemy.

I would submit that it is more than possible that the forces of jihad have understood that – as a result of American weakness – we now have a weakling of a president who can be pushed around and who will cave in.  Given the fact that even Obama’s own LIBERAL BASE are increasingly worried that Obama lacks necessary courage and commitment, should the Taliban and al Qaeda not think the same thing?

They understand – even as our Pentagon fears – that America under Obama is losing its will to fight, and that America now has the kind of leadership that has already demonstrated a willingness to cut and run on a fight.  All they need to do is read Barack Obama’s own surrender-rhetoric regarding Iraq to understand their current enemy.  And that understanding is understandably energizing them to fight even harder.

6) I might also add that our current White House is literally “at war” with the CIA that contributes to the operational intelligence our military planners use.  The CIA is suffering from bad morale which is at at a thirty year low. While I do not have the background to assess whether the Obama White House’s undermining of the CIA is responsible for fewer intelligence breakthroughs in Afghanistan and subsequently fewer successful military operations, I believe I have a prima facia reason to believe that such is the case.

President Obama, how it George Bush’s fault that you decided to target the CIA as part of your political witch hunt?

Our Marines understand who their loyal friend and commander was, and what they have in his place now:

Youtube

At the present rate, Barack Obama is going to sustain more than 76% more American casualties in Afghanistan than did George Bush last year.  And he’s blaming what is clearly his failure on Bush?

The fact that Barack Obama has based so much of his “leadership” on demonizing and demagoguing his predecessor is actually evidence of the fact that he himself is no real leader at all.

And that failure in leadership may be the most significant reason of all for Obama’s failure in Afghanistan.  As he waffles around indecisively, his troops – who don’t trust him and can’t count on him –  are going to increasingly find themselves drifting helplessly along with the next approval poll.

Barack Obama for President of God Damn America

John Edwards to his class warfare cue from Karl Marx and turned “the proletariat vs. the bourgeoisie” dialectic into “two Americas.”

Well, I think that both Marx and Edwards are full of crap; but there clearly are two Americas these days.

I think that Barack Obama’s pastor, spiritual mentor, and member of the family for 23 years hit the “two Americas” nail closer to the head.  Jeremiah Wright said there were two Americas, too:

“No, no, no, not ‘God Bless America,’ ‘God Damn America.’“

There’s the United States of God bless America, and there’s the United States of God damn America.  Ronald Reagan tried to lead us toward the former, and Barack Obama will try to lead us toward the latter.  And we shouldn’t confuse Wright’s and Obama’s two America’s anymore than we should confuse Marx’s and Edwards’ version.

Am I being unfair?  Absolutely not.

Barack Obama made this church – and its theology, and its pastor, and its congregation – his home for 23 years.  That’s a long time.  It’s way past long enough to realize that you’ve made a mistake.  And it’s way, way past long enough to claim ignorance as an excuse.  How many years can you freely choose to immerse yourself in an environment before you become personally responsible for your choice?

The leftist Rolling Stone had this to say:

This is as openly radical a background as any significant American political figure has ever emerged from, as much Malcolm X as Martin Luther King Jr. Wright is not an incidental figure in Obama’s life, or his politics. The senator “affirmed” his Christian faith in this church; he uses Wright as a “sounding board” to “make sure I’m not losing myself in the hype and hoopla.” Both the title of Obama’s second book, The Audacity of Hope, and the theme for his keynote address at the Democratic National Convention in 2004 come from Wright’s sermons. “If you want to understand where Barack gets his feeling and rhetoric from,” says the Rev. Jim Wallis, a leader of the religious left, “just look at Jeremiah Wright.”

So I’m looking at him.

John McCain once had the famous line that “I looked into Putin’s eyes and I saw K.G.B.”  Well, when I look into Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama’s eyes I see, “God damn America.”

The whole nation looked at Jeremiah Wright, and we all heard him shout, “God damn America!”  And how Barack Obama’s congregation cheered and applauded when Rev. Wright shouted, “No, no, no.  Not God bless America.  God damn America!”  We heard him viciously attack America and white Americans on any number of fronts.  Barack Obama’s pastor and spiritual mentor for 23 years – who married him, bappized his children, and was like family to him – said that racism was how this country was founded and how it is still run.  He said that America was the number one killer in the world.  He said that we immorally bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki without batting an eye.  He said that we killed women and children by bombing Cambodia, Iraq, and Nicaragua (where Marxist liberation theology came from). He said 9/11 was merely America’s own chickens coming home to roost and we deserved to be attacked by terrorists because WE were the real terrorist.  He said that the government gives black people drugs just so it can put them in prison.  He said that AIDS is a white-America-created genocide against black people.  He spelled America with three KKKs.  The very sermon that so inspired Obama that it inspired his book title, “The Audacity of Hope,” had the phrase, “white greed drives a world in need.”

If you would have sat through that year after year, then you vote for the man who did sit through it year after year.  Vote for God damn America.

Jeremiah Wright preached his famous “God damn America” message and all the others before thousands of Barack Obama’s fellow congregation more than five years ago.  Barack Hussein Obama’s pastor preached a lot of vicious, vile, racist, and profoundly anti-American stuff while Obama’s fellow congregants stood up and cheered.  And it never bothered Barack Obama one little bit until the public started finding out about it.

Obama said he wasn’t ever at the church when anything REALLY bad was said.  But how could such an intelligent man be so completely ignorant, and be such a pathetic judge of character?  Thousands of his friends heard those messages, and the same vicious stuff that was coming out of Jeremiah Wright’s mouth on Sundays was similarly featured in the Church’s Trumpet Magazine (which featured Obama on its cover several times). Even AFTER those “soundbites” came out, Obama continued to sit on the fence.  He said he could no more disown Wright than he could disown the black community.  In the same way that we would later find out that Obama did not care about the terrorist past of William Ayers – whom Obama partnered with to advance a “education” agenda that taught children radicalism rather than “the Three R’s,” Obama revealed how comfortable he was to be immersed in a radicalized environment.

He continued to remain in the church after ALL of the above sermon messages surfaced, and he remained in the church until it became more of a political liability than an asset.

Barack Hussein Obama has known about Jeremiah Wright’s radical nature from day one, and embraced it.  The Rolling Stone biography of Obama continues:

In his 1993 memoir “Dreams from My Father,” Obama recounts in vivid detail his first meeting with Wright in 1985. The pastor warned the community activist that getting involved with Trinity might turn off other black clergy because of the church’s radical reputation.

And that incredibly radical influence is very much a part of him, as the Rolling Stone article embraces:

Obama has now spent two years in the Senate and written two books about himself, both remarkably frank: There is a desire to own his story, to be both his own Boswell and his own investigative reporter. When you read his autobiography, the surprising thing — for such a measured politician — is the depth of radical feeling that seeps through, the amount of Jeremiah Wright that’s packed in there. Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising.

It isn’t at all surprising that a man who spent 23 years immersing himself in the radical theology of a radical spiritual guru at a radical and racist church would himself be a radical.  What is incredibly surprising is that so many millions of voters would so ignorantly and so naively dismiss that background and embrace the man who was so profoundly shaped by it.

So they are voting for God damn America.

I’m not going to try to tell anyone not to vote for God damn America.  If you want it, vote for it.  I’m simply saying, don’t be an uninformed ignorant fool who doesn’t even have a clue who the man he or she is voting for actually is.  You aren’t what you say in your flowerly speech; you’re what you do.  And for the overwhelming majority of Barack Hussein Obama’s life, he has been a willing part and participant in God damn America.  Open your eyes.

How Can Liberals Justify Themselves Over Their Betrayals On Iraq?

I see these “Bush lied, people died” junk and want to vomit. Allow me to explain why.

In April 2003, more than three out of every four Americans supported taking military action to remove Saddam Hussein. And by my accounting, quite a few of those Americans were Democrats.

On October 11, 2002, nearly 60% of Democrat Senators in the United States Senate voted to pass the Iraq War Resolution, NOT because “Bush lied,” but because they believed (rightly, given the circumstances) that it was the right thing to do. In the House, the vote was 296-133; in the Senate, the vote was 77-23.

CNN noted that:

The president praised the congressional action, declaring “America speaks with one voice.”… The measure passed the Senate and House by wider margins than the 1991 resolution that empowered the current president’s father to go to war to expel Iraq from Kuwait. That measure passed 250-183 in the House and 52-47 in the Senate.

We did not go to war lightly, or without earnest debate. But it was recognized that – in the face of a corrupt United Nations, with permanent veto-wielding members of the Security Council preventing ANY meaningful resolution to force inspections on Saddam Hussein – that diplomacy had fully run its course. The question was whether we would permit a WMD-armed Iraq, or whether we would go to war to prevent it.

Contrast what we did in Iraq with what Russia recently did in Georgia. Did Vladimir Putin of Russia have the legitimacy of being able to point out that Georgia had violated seventeen U.N. Security Council resolutions? Or even one? No. But the United States could point to the 17 resolutions Iraq had violated. Did Russia spend over a year engaging both Georgia and the world prior to launching its military action, as the U.S. did regarding Iraq? No. Russia just invaded without talking to anybody. The fact of the matter is that the United States did not rush into anything, and it did not ignore either the rest of the world or every legitimate means of diplomacy. The people who would morally equivocate between the Unites States and countries like Russia are the very worst sort of moral idiots.

So how did we get to the lowest and meanest political cycle – with the war in Iraq being its central rallying cry – given this early support?

The people most responsible to honesty, decency, and love of country in their politics is our political leaders. How did leading Democrats view Iraq and the looming confrontation prior to the war?

Senator Hillary Clinton, urging the support of her fellow Senators for the Iraq War Resolution, said:

In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001.

It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons. Should he succeed in that endeavor, he could alter the political and security landscape of the Middle East, which as we know all too well affects American security.

Now this much is undisputed. The open questions are: what should we do about it? How, when, and with whom?

The following quotes come from Freedom Agenda. Each is sourced.

Sen. John Kerry, the Demcratic candidate for president in 2004, said on Mar 17, 2003:

“It is the duty of any president, in the final analysis, to defend this nation and dispel the security threat. Saddam Hussein has brought military action upon himself by refusing for 12 years to comply with the mandates of the United Nations. The brave and capable men and women of our armed forces and those who are with us will quickly, I know, remove him once and for all as a threat to his neighbors, to the world, and to his own people, and I support their doing so.”

On May 3, 2003, Kerry said:

“I think it was the right decision to disarm Saddam Hussein. And when the president made the decision, I supported him, and I support the fact that we did disarm him.”

John Edwards, who was on the Kerry Democratic ticket in 2004, and who finished a strong third among Democratic challengers for the 2008 nomination, said:

“My position is very clear: The time has come for decisive action to eliminate the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. I’m a co-sponsor of the bipartisan Resolution that’s presently under consideration in the Senate. Saddam Hussein’s regime is a grave threat to America and our allies. We know that he has chemical and biological weapons today, that he’s used them in the past, and that he’s doing everything he can to build more. Every day he gets closer to his long-term goal of nuclear capability.

Current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Dec 16, 1998, said:

“As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I am keenly aware that the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons is an issue of grave importance to all nations. Saddam Hussein has been engaged in the development of weapons of mass destruction technology which is a threat to countries in the region and he has made a mockery of the weapons inspection process.”

And on Nov 17, 2002 she said:

“Saddam Hussein certainly has chemical and biological weapons. There’s no question about that.”

On Oct 10, 2002, she said:

“I come to this debate, Mr. Speaker, as one at the end of 10 years in office on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, where stopping the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction was one of my top priorities. I applaud the President on focusing on this issue and on taking the lead to disarm Saddam Hussein. … Others have talked about this threat that is posed by Saddam Hussein. Yes, he has chemical weapons, he has biological weapons, he is trying to get nuclear weapons.”

Howard Dean, former Democratic candidate for president and current Democratic National Committee chairman, said on Sep 29, 2002:

“There’s no question that Saddam Hussein is a threat to the United States and to our allies.

If Saddam persists in thumbing his nose at the inspectors, then we’re clearly going to have to do something about it.”

Current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Oct 9, 2002 said:

“We stopped the fighting [in 1991] on an agreement that Iraq would take steps to assure the world that it would not engage in further aggression and that it would destroy its weapons of mass destruction. It has refused to take those steps. That refusal constitutes a breach of the armistice which renders it void and justifies resumption of the armed conflict.”

I defy any liberal or Democrat to look at these statements and many others from their own leadership, and then defend the remarks and positions that these very same Democrats would subsequently take.

The question that I and so many Republicans and conservatives have is this: how can the men and women who said these things, along with many other prominent Democrats who made similar pronouncements, turn not only against how the war was being conducted, but against the very grounds for the war itself? The former can be justified; but how can Democrats possibly justify the latter? How is this not the most cowardly and cynical act of betrayal?

How can you Democrats possibly be proud of Sen. Harry Reid, who said “I believe that this war is lost“? How can you possibly continue to support him?

How can you possibly NOT be ashamed of Rep. Jack Murtha, who tried and convicted in the press what we now know were innocent Marines of the most heinous war crimes in Haditha?

There is simply no possible way that Democrats can justify their post-war behavior in light of their pre-war positions. Post-war Democrats literally call their pre-war selves liars; pre-war Democrats literally call their post-war selves cowards and even traitors. Democrats condemn themselves by their own words.

If you can show me a worse example of cowardly political backstabbing in the modern era, I would welcome the comparison.

Obama Foreign Policy: The ‘Grave Threat’ Of Naive Pretension

Several years ago, my young nephew believed that he was the most magnificent thing that ever happened.

He was Superman.

His family went from encouraging his self-esteem to trying to take him down a notch.

But for a while, there was no taking him down a notch. His sense of himself was so full that no failure or defeat could reach him. It didn’t matter if you caught him a thousand times, he still genuinely believed that he was faster than you.

That’s kind of where Barack Obama is, methinks.

He says that – unlike George Bush and the other candidates for president, he would pursue unconditional talks with leaders of rogue regimes. As time passed, Obama proceeded to tack on so many stipulations to his “precondition-free” talks that his policy was no different than anyone else’s.

But he still claimed his policy was better.

Obama said that Iran wasn’t a serious threat to the United States, but was forced as the sheer ridiculousness of his position was revealed to acknowledge that it was in fact “a grave threat.”

But he still maintained his position never changed, and he had been right along.

Obama said that Jerusalem must remain the undivided capital of Israel to Jewish groups, and then said to Palestinians that the issue of Jerusalem would be subject to negotiation.

But he maintained that his position was “no shift in policy.”

Obama opposed the surge strategy in Iraq, arguing it would lead to more sectarian violence and result in more American deaths. In the face of overwhelming evidence that he was wrong – with even al Qaeda acknowledging its defeat – Obama had his campaign scrub his worst criticisms from his website and began to “evolve” his position on Iraq without ever acknowledging that he had changed.

Barack Obama maintains that he “never has doubts about his foreign policy experience.” Never.

That’s why he can ignore the advice of General David Petraeus and other military experts. Just try convincing a pretentious child that you know better than he.

Nope. Obama is still the fastest, strongest, bestest boy in the whole wide world. And nothing – no matter how many times events prove him wrong – can shake that naive childish confidence.

My nephew got through this period, and is a terrific kid to be around. Obama has a very long way to go.

John Edwards – in the face of his caught-red handed act of adultery – said, “In the course of several campaigns, I started to believe that I was special and became increasingly egocentric and narcissistic.” I would submit that Barack Obama is FAR more egocentric and narcissistic than Edwards at this point.

The pattern continues merrily along: when Russia invaded Georgia, Barack Obama offered a neutral, insipid statement calling for both sides to restrain themselves. John McCain immediately issued a sharply-worded message that condemned the Russian invasion of a democratic government and ally. As the days, the war, and the death and destruction, dragged on, Obama began to issue increasing criticism of Russia (you know, like McCain had immediately done).  McCain appeared prescient; Obama appeared ignorant.

Barack Obama was taken to school in foreign policy yet again. But like a pretentious child, he can’t see it or admit it. Hence his campaign came up with this beauty via a senior adviser:

Obama adviser Susan Rice, appearing on MSNBC’s “Hardball” Tuesday night, accused McCain of responding irresponsibly. “Barack Obama, the administration and the NATO allies took a measured, reasoned approach,” she said. “We were dealing with the facts as we knew them. John McCain shot from the hip, very aggressive, belligerent statement. He may or may not have complicated the situation.”

In other words, McCain should have taken “the nuanced” and “measured” initial position Obama did and call on Georgia to “restrain” itself as Russian tanks started rolling through its streets.

John McCain “shot from the hip” with a “very aggressive, belligerent statement” that “may (or may not) have complicated the situation”? When McCain’s assessment was right-on target and Obama’s was pathetically weak?

It’s really no different than that little arrogant punk kid who can’t admit he got beat claiming that his opponent somehow cheated.

America needs to take a long, hard look at Barack Obama and conclude that it needs an experienced adult to make good decisions – not a pretentious child who is pathologically incapable of dealing with his limitations and inadequacies.

Sleazy Tabloid Rag Morally Superior To Top Democrat, Major Media

Sadly, this comes as no surprise to me.

I wrote about this when the evidence of the affair was already way beyond overwhelming, back when John Edwards was caught visiting Rielle Hunter in a hotel room in the wee hours of the morning.

Up until recently, John Edwards has refused to comment on a National Enquirer story that’s been unfolding for over a year. Asked about it on Thursday at an event in New Orleans, Edwards pompously sniffed: “I have no idea what you’re asking about. I’ve responded, consistently, to these tabloid allegations by saying I don’t respond to these lies and you know that … and I stand by that.”

Democrat strategist Lanny Davis somehow managed to climb up onto his gigantic moral high horse yesterday long enough to chide Fox News for covering the scandal (“It’s a private matter, blah blah blah.”). But where was this guy when Republican politicians were getting nailed? It would have been nice if you could have shown up on that high horse of yours then, Lan.

Okay, so John’s wife Elizabeth has been diagnosed with terminal, incurable cancer, and the guy that was very nearly our Vice President responded by getting busy with some homewrecker that filmed the pretty boy.

Now, it is something that such a major Democrat player is revealed to be a slimeball and a soulless liar. You’ve got major liberal donors (e.g. Fred Baron) showing their willingness to financially bail out a creep in the act of being a creep; you’ve got money games being played, with the mistress and the Edwards staff campaign fall guy (Andrew Young) being moved to mansions to keep the lie going; you’ve got a Democrat candidate for president and vice president cynically cashing out on the loyalty of those around him.

But the bigger deal about this story is the fact that a slimy tabloid rag is demonstrated to be morally superior to not only this top Democrat, but the major news organizations as well.

The National Enquirer‘s Barry Levine was on Geraldo Rivera’s Fox News program on Saturday pointing out that the Enquirer had “left a lot of bread crumbs way back in October” for the mainstream media, and that during the campaign for the Democratic nomination “all the time the mainstream press is following [Edwards] around, this affair was happening right under their noses.”

The New York Times hasn’t deigned to cover the Edwards scandal, even when it became blatantly obvious. But these ideologues didn’t have a any problem whatsoever literally creating an affair out of scratch to tarnish Republican John McCain. The title of the story itself – “For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk” – shows just how out to destroy McCain’s character The New York Times was. And there was no basis for this innuendo hearsay story at all.

And The Los Angeles Times not only refused to run a story in their own backyard when it reflected poorly on a Democrat, but they even went to the lengths of trying to cover up the story in their blog.

The Enquirer has had a whole bunch of ammo last year on this, but the elite media – not wanting to damage a top Democrat during the campaign season – put “the cone of silence” over the story, ala Maxwell Smart. Their silence about Edwards didn’t stop The New York Times from running a pseudo-story broadside about a manufactured John McCain affair.

In an unrelated but quite related story, Fox News pointed out yet another example – in its coverage of yet another major Democrat scandal going on – of the leftist bias that now so completely characterizes the media:

Selective Reporting?

We told you about Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick getting out of jail Friday. Thursday, when the Associated Press reported that he had been imprisoned for violating terms of his bond in his perjury case, the AP failed to mention his party affiliation. Kilpatrick is a Democrat.

But back on July 29, when Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was indicted, the AP made his party affiliation clear. The headline read, “Ted Stevens indicted, longest-serving GOP senator.” The article included the word “Republican” seven times and “GOP” four times.

Media watchdog Web site NewsBusters.org reports that both “ABC World News” and “NBC Nightly News” also failed to report Kilpatrick’s party affiliation.

It’s a shame. If you want politically neutral news, don’t turn to The New York Times, or The Los Angeles Times, or the Associated Press, or ABC, or NBC. Way too often they can only be counted on to try to help Democrats and hurt Republicans. Nope. If you want honest coverage, you’ve got to turn to the people that run stories about alien abductions, paparazzi trash, and half-dog, half-human babies.

The funny thing is that, even as major media are now forced to cover the Edwards story (due to prurient interests), they are covering it on very different terms from their coverage of Republican sex scandals. I constantly see the question, “Should we be covering this story? Is it good for society? How is it relevant?” When such questions never occupy the debate in covering Republican scandals. Let me just put it this way: if Sen. Larry Craig in a restroom is a story, then former Sen., V.P. candidate, and Presidential candidate John Edwards in a hotel room is a story as well. Yet we find the media in hand-wringing introspection over the latter when it seemed only to exult in the former.

John Edwards certainly ought to be ashamed. But the press should be hanging their heads as well.

Obama’s Class-Warfare Approach Will Harm Country

Barack Obama can fix everything just by taxing the rich. He can massively increase social spending simply by taxing the bejeebers of the evil and greedy rich. You CAN eat your cake and have it too!!!

There’s only one thing wrong (apart from the whole Marxist class warfare thing) with his plan:

Obama foolishly believes that raising taxes on the rich will be a panacea so that he can engage in all kinds of massive social programs (to the tune of $874 billion in new spending). He plans to raise $100 billion by increasing taxes on the rich. What he doesn’t understand is that the rich will change their behavior, begin sheltering their money, and suddenly government will see its stockpile of golden eggs shrink, and keep shrinking. Obama is counting on the rich acting exactly as they have been acting as a result of the Bush tax cuts. But he simply doesn’t understand that that isn’t the way real life actually works.

In today’s paper there was an Associated Press article discussing the federal budget deficit that contained the following statement on taxes vis-à-vis revenues.

McCain promises to renew the full roster of Bush tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 and add many more for businesses and upper income people who pay the alternative minimum tax. The Bush tax cuts expire at the end of 2010 and renewing them would soon cost well over $200 billion a year. Eliminating the alternative minimum at the same time would cost almost as much.

The sentence “The Bush tax cuts expire at the end of 2010 and renewing them would soon cost well over $200 billion a year” is completely true – if human beings are simply robot idiots. It’s completely false if people react to changing environmental conditions by changing their behavior. The thing is that people AREN’T robot idiots and they DO change their behavior to avoid negatives and take advantage of positives.

The rich don’t think in stupid, stagnant terms anymore than anyone else does.

Think of the recent high gas prices. Americans have overwhelmingly altered their behavior as a result of the high gas prices, driving nearly 10 billion fewer miles compared to last year. As the price of gas became more and more expensive, Americans reacted by altering their behavior. And if the price of gas goes back down, people will respond by increasing their driving.

And the rich do the same thing. They react to high taxes by sheltering their money, and they react to lower taxes by increasing their investments and growing their business.

The easiest example of this is the luxury tax that Democrats stupidly applied to items like yachts some years back. They saw only the additional revenue they would obtain by “soaking the rich,” but the rich – faced with a 10% additional tax – simply stopped buying yachts and the result nearly destroyed the boating industry. You don’t get rich by being stupid with money. But Democrats think entirely in class-warfare terms, and are simply incapable of learning this lesson.

What liberals – both in politics and in the media – do is look at the tax revenues, put in the higher tax rates they prefer, and calculate that they would make X.XX% more if the tax rate were higher. But that’s simply false, and it has been factually and historically proven false.

The Bush tax cuts produced higher than projected revenue – to the tune of a 35% growth between 2003 and 2006.  In comparison, during the height of the Clinton economy between 1997 and 2000 – when he didn’t have 9/11 (and the subsequent hit to the economy) and we didn’t have wars in Afghanistan and Iraq dragging us down, federal receipts still rose only 28.2%.

A July 13, 2005 New York Times story titled “Sharp Rise in Tax Revenue to Pare U.S. Deficit” said:

The big surprise has been in tax revenue, which is running nearly 15 percent higher than in 2004. Corporate tax revenue has soared about 40 percent, after languishing for four years, and individual tax revenue is up as well.

Most of the increase in individual tax receipts appears to have come from higher stock market gains and the business income of relatively wealthy taxpayers. The biggest jump was not from taxes withheld from salaries but from quarterly payments on investment gains and business earnings, which were up 20 percent this year.

A Treasury Department analysis found that the tax cuts prompted the creation of jobs and increased the gross domestic product. It points out that:

Lower tax rates enable workers to keep more of their earnings, which increases work effort and labor force participation. The lower tax rates also enable innovative and risk-taking entrepreneurs to keep more of what they earn, which further encourages their entrepreneurial activity. The lower tax rates on dividends and capital gains lower the cost of equity capital and reduce the tax biases against dividend payment, equity finance, and investment in the corporate sector. All of these policies increase incentives to work, save, and invest by reducing the distorting effects of taxes. Capital investment and labor productivity will thus be higher, which means higher output and living standards in the long run.

Prior to the Reagan Revolution in 1981, the top marginal federal income tax rate was 70% (it is currently 35% under President Bush). At the 70% rate, the top 1% paid only 19% of the federal income tax burden, and the top 5% paid 37%. With the tax rate cut in half, the top 1% are paying more than twice as much of the total tax burden – nearly 40% – and the top 5% are paying nearly 60%.

And not only do the rich pay a higher percentage of their wealth in taxes under the lower taxes of the Bush plan, but they pay a higher ratio of their wealth in taxes than they did when the rates were higher.

If Obama counts on wealthy Americans to act the same with punitive tax rates that they do with low tax rates, he’s simply mistaken. If he raises the rich’s taxes, they will shelter their money and figure out ways to pay less and less. Even John Edwards and John Kerry sheltered their money to avoid paying taxes. And they’re more wonderful than anybody!

And when Obama can’t pay for his $874 billion extra spending by taxing the rich, he’ll come after you.

Don’t fall for the class-warfare strategy. It didn’t work for the Soviet Union, and it won’t work for the United States.

Low taxes is good for ALL the people by providing incentives for business investment and economic growth. The key to any budget is to live within one’s means, and not spend more than one takes in.

An Obama presidency would fail on both counts.