Why Sarah Palin Should NOT Run For President In 2012

There seem to be two camps regarding Sarah Palin: there is the camp who hates her, demonizes her, trivializes her, etc.; and then there is the camp that fanatically adores her.

Imagine how lonely I must be for not being in either camp.

I genuinely admire Sarah Palin, and if anyone takes the time to search my blog, he or she will find only positive things about Sarah Barracuda.

And yet I do not want Sarah Palin to run; and in fact I would argue that it is BECAUSE I admire Palin and her past and future contribution to this nation that I do not want her to run.

I write this the day after Sarah’s Iowa speech, during which she offered no clues whatsoever on whether she would enter the race.

First, let me present the list of things that I think would make Sarah Palin a great future president:  She is fearless; she has proven that she is ready to take on the entrenched special interests of EITHER party; she has a rare degree of common sense; she has a talent at zeroing in on the heart of an issue and framing it in a way that enables a real solution; and I believe she has genuine integrity and that she truly understands America in a way that we’d have to go back to Ronald Reagan to rival.

Does that sound like something that would come from a Sarah Palin hater?

So why don’t I think – after all the above accolade singing – that Sarah should NOT run for president this year?

Another list: she is too young; too inexperienced; too distant from Washington to understand the people or the political system; too much of a lightening rod; and too polarizing.

Sarah Palin had more relevant experience than did Barack Obama when Obama ran for president, because she had served as a governor.  That said, she was the governor of one of the smallest states in the nation by population, and a state that is almost entirely dependent upon federal money.  And she only served half of her term as governor.

While I personally believe she was forced to leave the governorship for the sake of her family due to a system that allowed the left to despicably personally target her over and over again, the fact remains that she left office.  And the left will never let America forget that she left.  And of course you can’t quit when you’re president, can you?

Barack Obama has demonstrated that he was far too young and far too inexperienced to be the president of the United States.  But the man has the single virtue of being nearly three years OLDER than Sarah Palin.

It certainly is not Sarah Palin’s fault that the mainstream media went beyond morally rabid and psychologically unhinged in their coverage of her; the fact of the matter is that to too large of a degree, their blood libel paid off.  Sarah Palin was torn down one vicious, hateful lie at a time.  And at this point in her career, she simply has not recovered from that.

According to the Fox News polling (hardly unfavorably to her), Sarah Palin would begin with 8% in the polls if she ran.  And that is way too little, way too late.

Barack Obama announced in February of 2007.  He ran for president for nearly two full years.  If Sarah Palin had wanted in, she frankly should have got in a long time ago.

I support Rick Perry, and most of the reasons I support him have to do with the fact that where Palin has deficiencies, Perry has assets.  He is in his sixties; he has been the longest-serving governor of one of the largest states; he very much understands how the Washington system works; he has a documented record of job-creation that Sarah Palin simply cannot match.  And he has the ability to both unite the Tea Party and the GOP establishment AND to raise large institutional money that Sarah Palin simply will not be able to do.

Barack Obama will have a billion dollar war chest, by most accounts.  He is a cynical disingenuous hypocrite and liar to amass that war chest, given his previous rhetoric, but he will have a billion dollars nevertheless.  Sarah Palin’s unfunded moxy will simply not defeat a billion dollars’ worth of ads that will make her look like a Christian fanatic “last days psycho” version of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by the time the smoke clears.

The other reason I hope that Sarah Palin does not run is that doing so would tremendously undermine the brand of none other than Sarah Palin.

As long as she dances on the edges, the fact remains that no one will know what would have happened had she run.  She’ll continue to possess her mystique.  If she runs and loses, that bloom will forever be off the rose, and Sarah Palin will be nothing more than another failed presidential candidate.  She’ll be a loser.  Yes, if she were to lose in a closely fought campaign, it could actually help her – as it helped Ronald Reagan who ran a primary challenge against Gerald Ford in 1976 (which sadly guaranteed the presidency of one unmitigated fool named Jimmy Carter, but that’s another story).  But if she loses by a wide margin – which I predict would happen this season – she would be done as a future viable Republican candidate.  She would never get the attention or the money of the establishment she needs to win, because that establishment would judge her by her performance this time around and simply never give her another chance.

Sarah Palin is currently incredibly successful at identifying and helping good candidates, raising funds and framing issues.  I still marvel at how she transformed the narrative in the ObamaCare debate using Facebook while on vacation.  That capacity – which I would argue all Republicans should treasure – would be massively undermined by an unsuccessful primary run now.

To put it into gun metaphors, Sarah, keep your powder dry.

Stay out, keep working, keep raising money, keep your profile up and come to America’s rescue in (hopefully!) 2020 when you are older and demonstrably wiser.

I’m Backing Governor Rick Perry For President

Many (myself included) have thought that Rick Perry would run for president.

Today he made it official.  The governor from Texas is running for president.  And I believe he will be the next president of the United States.

Here’s Rick Perry’s website.  It’s pretty nice.

Here’s an article on Rick Perry that I hope will make you support him, also.  Among a lot of other facts, it contains this chart:

And here’s an article on his announcement:

Texas Governor Rick Perry launches presidential bid
By Harriet McLeod | Reuters – August 13, 2011

CHARLESTON, South Carolina (Reuters) – Republican Rick Perry, the conservative governor of Texas, on Saturday declared himself a candidate for president with a blistering attack on Democratic President Barack Obama.
 
“I realize that the United States of America really is the last great hope of mankind,” Perry said, as he accused Obama of imperiling America’s standing in the world with “disastrous economic policies” and the “incoherent muddle that they call foreign policy.”
 
Delivering a speech to about 700 conservative activists in South Carolina, Perry, 61, touted his job creation record in Texas and promised to reduce taxes, business regulations and the overall role of government in people’s lives. He said leaders in Washington have lacked courage and Obama’s policies have “prolonged our national misery, not alleviated it.”
 
“Mr. President, let us tell you something. You cannot win the future by selling America off to foreign creditors. We cannot afford four more years of this rudderless leadership,” Perry said.
 
Perry’s entry shakes up the race for the Republican nomination to face Obama in the November 2012 general election. Opinion polls indicate Perry already is close on the heels of former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, the early Republican front-runner.
 
Perry, who caused a stir in 2009 when he openly pondered his state’s secession from the United States, was sharply critical of what he called an overbearing federal government.
 
“As Americans we realize that there is no taxpayer money that wasn’t first earned by the sweat and toil of one of our citizens,” said Perry, drawing a loud round of cheers and applause from the hundreds of people who packed into a Charleston hotel to hear him speak.
 
“That’s why we reject this president’s unbridled fixation on taking more money out of wallets and pocketbooks of American families and employers and giving it to a central government,” he said.
 
“Spreading the wealth punishes success while setting America on course for greater dependency on government.”
 
Perry’s candidacy could steal support from fellow conservative Tea Party favorite Michele Bachmann, replacing her as Romney’s top rival and potentially bridging the gap between the party’s establishment center and right-wing activists.
 
The three-term Texas governor is an opponent of abortion rights and gay marriage. He is considered a strong fund-raiser.
 
‘DOWNGRADING OUR STANDING’
 
Perry seized on the fact that the U.S. credit rating was downgraded this month by a leading rating agency following the contentious deal to raise the U.S. debt ceiling this month.
 
“The fact is for nearly three years President Obama has been downgrading American jobs, he’s been downgrading our standing in the world, he’s been downgrading our financial stability, he’s been downgrading our confidence and downgrading the hope for a better future for our children,” Perry said.
 
He also blasted Obama’s foreign policy.
 
“Our president has insulted our friends and he’s encouraged our enemies, thumbing his nose at traditional allies like Israel,” Perry said.
 
“It’s pretty simple. We’re going to stand with those who stand with us. And we will vigorously defend our interest. And those who threaten our interest, harm of citizens, we will simply not be scolding you. We will defeat you,” he said.
 
The announcement by Perry, who has made his deep Christian faith a big part of his public image, came one week after he led a seven-hour religious rally in Houston to pray for America, a nation he described as “in crisis.”
 
He put his religious faith on display on Saturday. He asked his audience to remember the U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan last week when their helicopter was shot down by militants. “Just take a moment to say, ‘Thank you Lord that we have those kind of selfless, sacrificial men and women,'” Perry said.
 
Perry said his state has “the strongest economy in the nation” and that since June 2009 Texas, home to less than 10 percent of the U.S. population, has been responsible for more than 40 percent of all of the new jobs created in America.
 
“He’s telling us what we see as the lost promise of America,” said Richard Atwater, 67 and retired, who lives in Tupelo, Mississippi, following Perry’s speech.
 
“He’s a true conservative,” added Paul Holmes of Grand Prairie, Texas.
 
Perry could draw comparisons to George W. Bush, the last Texas governor in the White House, raising the possibility of “Texas fatigue” among voters.
 
Raised on a west Texas farm, Perry has never lost an election. After a stint in the Air Force, he rose through the ranks of Texas politics from the House of Representatives to agriculture commissioner, lieutenant governor and then governor in 2000 when Bush left for the White House.
 
(Editing by Will Dunham and Tom Brown)

Here are the articles I’ve written which ought to help explain why he’s my guy in chronological order:

Proof That Republican Economic Policies Work Just FINE: Conservative-Friendly Texas Created 38% Of ALL U.S. Jobs In 2010

Hey, ‘Republicans Drove Us Into A Ditch’ Liberals, Put THIS Into Your Pipe and Smoke It: Conservative Economic Principles RULE In Texas

Want To Know How To Balance The Budget And Have Full Employment? Ask Republicans Who Are DOING It

Basically, Rick Perry knows how to run a successful economy.  And you can know that because as the longest-serving governor of one of the largest states in the nation – the state that has created FAR more jobs than any other state – Rick Perry has PROVEN that he knows how to run a successful economy in a way that no one else in America (and certainly not Barack Obama!) can claim.

Someone put it this way, and I completely agree with it:

Mitt Romney is an establishment candidate that many believe can win, but who carries a lot of baggage for flip-flopping; Michelle Bachmann is the true conservative, but one whom many don’t believe can win because she is such a lightening rod.  Rick Perry is an establishment candidate who can get huge fundraising because he is the governor of the most successful economy in the nation.  And he is a true conservative.

Rick Perry is the one man who can truly unite both disparate wings of the GOP.

He’s not “perfect.”  for example, some of his positions on illegal immigration leave me a little uncomfortable.  I keep in mind, however, that he’s been the governor of a border state with a LOT of Hispanics in the voting population; I keep in mind that as a governor – unlike Michelle Bachmann, or Rick Santorum – he’s actually had to govern which made it a lot harder for him to live by talking points; and I keep in mind that he’s a Republican who can actually WIN.

George Bush made substantial gains in the Hispanic vote.  And when you combine that with the fact that Obama has had substantial losses among Hispanics, and bottom line Rick Perry has a real shot at the Hispanic vote.

I say that as someone who believes that if Barack Obama is re-elected, the United States of America is doomed, finished, dead.  It’s not just looking back at the way he’s broken the nation thus far; it’s knowing that he would be vastly worse in a second term he will know that he will never have to face the American people ever again.

While my endorsement doesn’t exactly mean a whole heckuva lot, I am endorsing Gov. Rick Perry for president.  And I hope to do my part to help him win in 2012.

I hope you join me in beginning to pray for this man every single day between now and November 2012.

Here is a transcript of Rick Perry’s words at the August 6 prayer rally in Houston Texas.  They prayed for rain, and praise God they got rain on just a week later on August 13!

Here is a transcript of his announcement speech in South Carolina.  This was the first time any politician reminded me of Reagan since Reagan.  And here is the Youtube video:

Here are some of his words when he went to New Hampshire later on August 13.

 By the way, here’s another article that belongs in here, as we are going to now begin to see the heavily-liberal mainstream media try to morph Rick Perry into a George Bush clone:

Remember This When Democrats Try To Morph Gov. Rick Perry Into A Clone Of George W. Bush

Pawlenty on Obama: ‘You can’t be pro-job and anti-business. That’s like being pro-egg and anti-chicken.’

Tim Pawlenty just went way up on my list of candidates after that particular remark in my title.

Is Obama anti-business?  Well, how about this for a factoid: 77% of investors think he is.  He was anti-business in 2009.  He was anti-business in 2010.  And he is still anti-business in 2011.  How many eggs are you going to get when you’re out to get all the chickens and when the chickens know you’re out to get them?

Here’s an article that talks about this former governor who has been successful where Obama has failed, failed and failed some more.  What is interesting is how we hear Pawlenty talk about how to fix our broken economy, and Obama talking about wtf???

Republican presidential candidate Pawlenty: ‘We are in deep doo-doo’
By Abdon M. Pallasch Political

How badly has President Barack Obama managed the United States’ economy?

Pretty badly, says plain-talking former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty in a campaign stop in Chicago Tuesday.

“We are in deep doo-doo. We are in deep crap,” Pawlenty said Tuesday, in a locale meant to drive home the Republican presidential candidate’s differences with the president.

In a classroom at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy Studies, located across the street from the law school where Obama used to teach, Pawlenty laid out his tax-slashing, budget-cutting proposal that he says will save the U.S. economy:

There would be only three tax rates: Zero, for low-income earners who currently pay no federal tax; 10 percent, for single people earning up to $50,000, or married couples who earn up to $100,000; and 25 percent, for people who earn more than that (down from a top rate of 35 percent now). He would cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent and end the estate tax.

Those tax cuts, plus a freeze on federal spending, would spur growth of 5 percent a year, he said.

Democrats immediately said Pawlenty’s proposed tax cuts would disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

Obama senior advisor David Axelrod, who finished a speech on the North Side just before Pawlenty started his, credited Pawlenty with “good stagecraft” for holding the speech on Obama’s old stomping grounds. But he said Obama’s budget-fixing recipe is better.

Pawlenty “left his own state with a $5 billion deficit and now he’s counseling the rest of the country on how to handle finances,” Axelrod said. “He proposes massive new tax cuts for upper-income Americans … that would produce huge new deficits. He wants to replay the same formula that got us into the jam in the first place.”

But Pawlenty told the classroom full of students at the university that people should not focus on “whether this makes some group a little more wealthy or a little less wealthy. You can’t be pro-job and anti-business. That’s like being pro-egg and anti-chicken.”

Flirting with the so-called “third rail” of American politics, Pawlenty said he would raise the retirement age for younger workers to start collecting Social Security in the future. People nearing retirement now would not be affected, he said.

“If you’re coming in new to the work force, gradually, over time, we are going to raise the retirement age,” Pawlenty said. “If you’re wealthy, you’re not going to get the cost-of-living adjustment.”

Proposals that can be short-handed as “cutting Social Security” can kill campaigns, but Pawlenty said, “It’s going to be the ‘Jack Nicholson election.’” Referring to the movie “A Few Good Men,” Pawlenty said, “There’s that famous line when he’s on the witness stand and he said, ‘You can’t handle the truth.’ The American people, I think, can handle the truth. It doesn’t mean we freak ’em out. It doesn’t mean we scare ’em. … I’m only doing this because I love the country. We’ll only get it to a better place if people are willing to tell the American people the truth. I am. President Obama isn’t. He’s ducking, bobbing, weaving.”

In a speech at the Misericordia, a home for children and adults with disabilities, Axelrod told the story of how, back in April, he and Obama were crafting a joke about Pawlenty for Obama to use at the White House Correspondents Association dinner. The two were interrupted by a National Security Council staffer who had to brief Obama on something, so Obama asked Axelrod to leave the room.

When Axelrod came back in, Obama rejected a suggestion for a joke about how Pawlenty “could really be a strong candidate but for his unfortunate middle name: bin Laden.”

“ ‘That’s so hackneyed, bin Laden, that’s so yesterday, Why don’t we take that out,’ ” Obama said, Axelrod recalled. “ ‘We’ll put in “Hosni.’’ ’ ” Axelrod didn’t think that was as funny, but he agreed to it.

“It was only the next day that we realized that he had not only eliminated Bin Laden from the joke. He had given the order to eliminate bin Laden from the face of the Earth,” Axelrod told the crowd.

Later, speaking to reporters, Axelrod laughed when asked if he agreed with potential Republican candidate Sarah Palin, who said over the weekend that Paul Revere’s famous ride was an attempt to “warn the British’’ — that the British were coming.

“I think that’s a good reflection of why we can’t abandon education,” he said. “We need good education so everybody knows their history lessons and gets them properly.”

Pawlenty just laughed when asked the same question. He proceeded to a fund-raiser.

Well, first of all,we are – to put it in Pawlenty’s accurate term – ” in deep crap” – and the best Axelrod can do is talk about a joke that Obama’s people are going to go after Sarah Palin for an impromptu remark about Paul Revere when their guy is on the record saying he’d visited 57 states with one more yet to go?

And Obama’s going to talk about Pawlenty’s $5 billion deficit?  Seriously?  And just how many TRILLIONS of deficit does he have just so far???  Obama’s budget just for this term would add THIRTEEN TRILLION DOLLARS to the national debt.  From McClatchy:

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama proposed a $3.73 trillion budget Monday  for fiscal 2012 that he said will start reining in runaway budget deficits, but  his plan envisions the gross national debt swelling by almost $13 trillion over  a decade.

Obama’s budget sets up a clash with the  Republican-led House of Representatives over how to recover from the deep  recession of recent years and strengthen the economic foundation for the future,  with federal spending the pivotal battleground.

Obama added $3 trillion to the deficit in less than two years.  Another way to put it: In just nineteen months, Obama added more to the debt than every single US president from George Washington to Ronald Reagan – combined.

And this idiot is talking about $5 billion???  Like we’re not supposed to laugh our asses off and then impeach Obama as a clear and present danger to the United States?  Particularly when in fact Pawlenty in fact DID actually leave office with the budget balanced?  If you’re going to talk about devastating developments after the guy was gone – especially when that characterization is being made by the guy’s political enemies – at least have the courtesy to do the same sort of redacting with Bill Clinton’s legacy – who managed to take all the credit for balancing the budget but wasn’t in any way responsible for the disastrous Dotcom crisis that unfolded on his watch.

Which is to say, Democrats should either give Tim Pawlenty plenty of credit for balancing the budget or at least shut the hell up.

Tim Pawlenty as a man has a good, solid life.  And he’s got the background and the bona fides to get behind.  He is a candidate worthy of consideration.

On Cavuto’s Fox News program on Friday, Cavuto pointed out that the White House was questioning whether Tim Pawlenty was being realistic about whether he could create the kind of 5% GDP that he is talking about.  Pawlenty’s response was almost as good as his quip in my title.  I don’t have an exact quote, but basically he said “I’m an optimist, and I have an optimistic view of America’s future.  We’ve been great before, and I believe we can be great again.  And if Barack Obama could say that he was going to provide jobs for the all the jobless, slow the rising oceans, heal the planet, end all the wars and basically remake our nation, I think I can talk about doubling our GDP.”

Touché.

Tim Pawlenty wants to increase our GDP and grow our economy and create jobs by NOT being anti-chicken while claiming to be pro-egg.  In other words, the man actually makes sense.

Obama has spent three years demonizing and attacking businesses while demanding that they create more jobs.  That, by stark contrast, is 100% pure insane, no additives or preservatives.

Pawlenty wants profound tax cuts.  And while liberals want to ignore history and argue that the more you tax, the more you collect in tax revenue, Pawlenty cites the fact that every single time we have cut tax rates, we have dramatically increased our tax revenues.  See my article “Tax Cut’s INCREASE Revenues; They have ALWAYS Increased Tax Revenues” for that documented history.

Think of it in terms of gas (as I’ve argued before in more detail).  As the price of gas went up and up and up, did people buy the same amount of gas?  No way; they very quickly cut back on their driving.  If you increase the price of something, you sell less of it.  And in the same way, if you increase tax rates, you invariably end up encouraging counter-productive behavior, as the wealthy find it worthwhile to quit investing and instead pursue tax shelters and loopholes to protect their assets.

It is simply a repeatedly documented fact that every single time we have cut tax rates, we have ended up with increased revenues, as businesses and individuals were encouraged to invest because they were being rewarded with the ability to actually keep more of their own profits.  It comes down to this: if I give you a job, and you work hard, but at the end of the day the tax man comes and takes it all away, you’re not going to bother to take my job.  With total taxes exceeding 50% in a number of states, businesses and individuals are put in a position in which they take all the risks in hiring and investing – and if they lose they lose big – but even if they win they aren’t allowed to keep enough of their money to make the risks worth taking.

Democrats claim that the deficit has increased with lower tax rates.  And that is true.  But that isn’t the fault of the lower tax rates – WHICH AGAIN ACTUALLY INCREASED THE GOVERNMENT REVENUES DRAMATICALLY.  The bizarre argument that Democrats are making is analogous to the argument that the guy who lives in his parent’s basement and makes minimum wage and lives within his modest means actually makes more money than the multi-millionaire who buys multiple mansions, yachts and cars and then finds himself in debt.  It was the reckless spending that put us into the hole, not the tax policies that resulted in the politicians who spent that money having more money to spend.  Pawlenty is arguing that we need to profoundly cut tax rates and simultaneously have a balanced budget amendment and dramatically cut our spending.

That isn’t even mentioning the constant hypocrisy of the Democrats as they fail to live up to their own demagogic rhetoric.

Then there’s the issue of the Bush tax cuts.  Democrats say we’ve had the Bush tax cuts, and look what’s happened.  Two things.

First, consider this: Obama signed the compromise to extend the Bush tax cuts for two more years on December 17, 2010.  Many experts believed Obama would be forced to do this as a result of the Republican landslide victory that changed the political landscape in early November.  So let’s look at what has happened to the jobless rate since November:

November 2010: 9.8%
December 2010: 9.4%
January  2011: 9.0%
February 2011: 8.9%
March    2011: 8.8%
April    2011: 9.0%
May      2011: 9.1%

Interestingly, Obama initially appeared to be reaching out to the business leaders he had been attacking.  After getting his head handed to him in November 2010, Obama began to reach out to Republicans.  And then in mid December, he began to reach out to business – with his signing of the Bush tax cuts extension a major part of that reaching out.  In early January, he appointed as his new chief-of-staff a man who had a “business-friendly” persona.

And the market, the investors, the businesses, ordinary Americans, liked what they heard.  The public clearly, overwhelmingly wanted to see Obama reach out to the party that had just won massively.  Republicans are the party of business; reach out to business.  Let’s get to work growing this economy rather than attacking the people who grow the economy.

But even as people liked what they heard, there was always a question, as asked in this case by CNN Money:

“So is Obama really changing his tune on big business? Or is the president merely glad-handing big business while plowing ahead with his 2012 goal of making the rich pay more?”

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long before the business and investment community realized that Obama hadn’t changed his spots at all.  It’s either “same lies, different tune,” or “different lies, same tune” with this guy.

Before hardly any time had passed, “William Daley” became an afterthought and Obama was right back to attacking business with the same ferocity as before.

Obama’s senior economist Austan Goolsbee – now the FIFTH senior Obama economist to jump Obama’s HMO Titanic (with “HMO” standing for “His Majesty Obama” had this to say shortly before HE left.  And this according to an obvious liberal:

When Amanpour asked [Goolsbee] what the Administration could or should be doing to improve conditions, he ticked off items you’d expect to hear from a typical GOP Presidential adviser:  we’ve got to get the debt under control; we have a White House effort to identify and get rid of governmental regulations that are preventing the private sector from growing the economy; we should pass “free trade” agreements backed by the Chamber of Commerce; and we should leverage limited public dollars to release billions in private funding for investments.

Goolsbee’s bottom line:  “It’s now up to the private sector.”  That’s exactly what you’d expect from President Romney’s economic adviser.

And, of course, that brief flash of clarity was immediately followed by Goolsbee’s resignation.  We won’t be having any anti-Marxist heresies on Comrade Obama’s watch, no sir commissar.

Just in case you’re wondering why the economy seemed to be improving before going back into the toilet, there’s your answer.  The people who actually create jobs began to think that Obama finally had some level of actual awareness about how the economy and business and job-creation works, before Obama slammed the door on that idiotic thesis.  They believed Obama’s lies right after the election, then Obama demonstrated (“dictated” is more like it) that he hates business as much as he ever did, then he renewed his war on business, and it’s right back into the crapper with the U.S. economy.

So there’s the backstory behind the economy appearing to improve before diving headfirst back into the gave.  Obama is right back to being “pro-job” but “anti-chicken.”

Up above, I said there were “two things” about the Bush tax cuts and their impact on the economy.  The first point is that the extension of the Bush tax cuts DID work for five months of straight improvement – at least until Obama and the Democrats made sure that businesses and investors knew that they were as hated as ever.

The SECOND point about the Bush tax cuts – or ANY other tax cuts, for that matter – is that they have to be consistent and long-term before they will truly succeed.  This is because businesses need to know their operating environment before they will be willing to take risks such as hiring more workers.  They need to have a clear, long-term picture (most think at least five years) of what their tax liability will be.  And they need the same kind of knowledge about their health care liability and their regulatory liability.  If you start or expand a business, you’ve got one primary question: “Am I going to be able to make this work?”  And in order to answer that fundamental question, you need to know what your costs will be.

Obama signed the Bush tax cut extension for two years – and then very quickly went back on that signature by demagoguing the very thing he’d signed.  Will these tax rates be there for them in two years?  Certainly not, if Obama wins.  And there goes the window to make important investment/growth decisions.  Obama made sure that business owners wouldn’t have a long-term understanding of their taxes.  ObamaCare has thousands of pages being written as we speak; Obama’s regulations are being written as we speak; and nobody knows anything about how any of it will affect them.

Hence the paralysis.

Tim Pawlenty knows that no nation and no economy has ever had a recession that lasted forever – save when leftists have been allowed to run those nations/economies.  He also knows that economic growth and expansion are there just waiting for Obama to leave us the hell alone and get off our backs so that business owners can build better lives for themselves and their families – and create the jobs that result from those businesses growing – by allowing wealth creators to keep more of their own money.

He knows that if you really want to be pro-job, you had better be pro-business.  And that is something that Barack Obama has now proven he will never be, regardless of what he might say to the contrary.

[Update, 8/13]: Today, Michelle Bachmann won the Iowa Straw Poll, versus Pawlenty – who had spent a lot more time and money – coming in a very distant third.

I can’t explain why Iowans basically walked away from Pawlenty, but I can tell you why I’ve been annoyed with him.  It’s simple: his non-stop attack on Michelle Bachmann.

You want to go after people, Tim?  Go after Obama.  Heck, go after Mitt Romney like a lot of people said you should have done during the first debate.  But to go after Michelle Bachmann is just dumb.

To not go after Romney and then go after Bachmann makes you look like a guy who was afraid to fight the star quarterback and then started punching a cheerleader to show you were still “tough.”

You’re trying to present yourself as a true-blue conservative.  Everyone KNOWS Michelle Bachmann is a true conservative.  So why go after her when you could be going after a Mitt Romney who has held whatever position made him look good at the moment?

To continue, some of your attacks against her are just stupid.  Like the one that Michelle Bachmann didn’t stop things like cap and trade and ObamaCare being passed in the House.  As if she was somehow the Imperial Queen of the chamber rather than one minority Republican (at the time) in a chamber with 434 other representatives.  That was just a plain dumb attack.

You finished a distant third, Tim.  Which apparently will allow you to survive.  But if you keep tee-ing off on Bachmann, you won’t be around much longer.

Proof That Republican Economic Policies Work Just FINE: Conservative-Friendly Texas Created 38% Of ALL U.S. Jobs In 2010

How’s THIS for a record to run for president on?

CNBC EXCERPTS: RICHARD FISHER, FEDERAL RESERVE BANK OF DALLAS PRESIDENT AND CEO ON CNBC’S “SQUAWK BOX” TODAY
Published: Tuesday, 7 Jun 2011 | 10:51 AM ET Text Size By: Jennifer Dauble

[….]

FISHER ON CREATING RULES:

“WE’VE GOT TO CREATE RULES AND REGULATIONS HERE THAT ATTRACT CAPITAL AS WELL AS DEAL WITH OUR UNFUNDED LIABILITIES OUR DEFICIT PROBLEMS AND SO ON, JUST AS TEXAS HAS MANAGED TO DO SO RELATIVE TO OTHER STATES IN THE UNITED STATES.”

[…]

FISHER ON TEXAS JOBS:

“SINCE THE RECOVERY BEGAN, 38 PERCENT OF ALL JOBS CREATED IN AMERICA HAVE BEEN CREATED IN TEXAS, AND TEXAS IS BACK UP, IN FACT MY 11TH FEDERAL RESERVE DISTRICT OF TEXAS, PARTS OF LOUISIANA, PARTS OF NEW MEXICO; OBVIOUSLY 96 PERCENT OF THAT PRODUCTION AND THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE ARE IN TEXAS OF MY DISTRICT- HAS MORE EMPLOYMENT NOW THAN IT HAD WHEN THE CRISIS BEGAN.”

Obama and the Democrats have relied on a demagogic narrative that Republican policies failed and Democrats offer “hopey changey” for the last three years of what is now an increasingly obviously failed presidency.  The fact that it couldn’t be more false doesn’t stop them from telling and retelling the liberal fairy tale over and over and over again to a wide-eyed mainstream media and anyone else fool enough to believe them.

The difference between California (liberal Democrat) and Texas (conservative Republican) are the difference between long dark hopeless night and bright sunny optimistic morning.  Take for example restaurant chain Carl’s Junior:

Carl’s Jr. chief downplays Texas talk
Written by Henry Dubroff
Wednesday, 02 February 2011

CKE Restaurants CEO Andy Puzder sees advantages in moving the company’s headquarters from Carpinteria to Texas, but a move is not imminent, he told The Business Times.

In a Feb. 2 telephone interview from Houston, where he is looking at the  company’s fast-growing Carl’s Jr. operation, Puzder said he paid a  visit to Texas Gov. Rick Perry earlier in the week and discussed the  company’s growth in the Lone Star State.

But he said that CKE, the parent company of Carl’s Jr. and Hardees,  won’t break its lease in Carpinteria or abandon the headquarters in the  near term. “We love California and we’d love to stay,” said Puzder. “Our  heart and soul is in California.”

But Puzder said that long delays in opening stores, California’s  byzantine rules on overtime pay and high personal income taxes could  make a move inevitable. “We feel more like we’re being pushed out,” he  said, adding that “economics may compel us to do so.”

CKE has been growing rapidly in Texas, where it now has 40 restaurants  and expects to have 300 by the end of the decade; in comparison, it has  700 stores in California. “The growth of this company is in Texas, and  the real big question for this company is, where are your restaurants  and where is the growth?” Puzder said.

Puzder also said that Californians leaving the state for jobs and  entrepreneurial opportunities in Texas are part of the reason for its  fast growth in that state. Carl’s Jr.’s brand familiarity is so high in  Texas that the two most recent store openings in the state, including a  unit in Houston, set records for revenue. “Jobs and consumers are in  Texas,” Puzder said. “Our customers beat us here.”

And, yes, CKE moved its operations to Texas.

And yes, a LOT of Californians have beaten them to the Lone Star State.  I showed previously the difference in cost between renting a truck to move from California to Texas versus moving from Texas to California.  At that time, it cost $900 to move from Texas to California, versus $3,000 to go the other way, because all the moving trucks were already in Texas.  That’s a 233 percent difference.

Which matches a national trend, as people are forced to move out of failed blue states to successful red states.

Thanks to the failure of liberalism.

Here’s some of the specific reasons why liberalism fails at job creation from another article:

Carl’s Jr. chewed up by California, Moving Corp HQ to Texas

[…]

Indeed, CKE Restaurants, parent of Carl’s Jr., is likely to move its headquarters from Carpinteria, near Ventura, to Texas and is undergoing a rapid expansion of restaurants in the Lone Star State. Right before the budget circus got going Wednesday, CKE CEO Andrew Puzder spoke at the California Chamber of Commerce, blocks from the Capitol dome. Like most of us, Puzder loves California and has no interest in leaving it, but he told harrowing tales about doing business in a state that has gone from an entrepreneurial heaven to a bureaucratic nightmare.

“It costs us $250,000 more to build one California restaurant than in Texas,” he said. “And once it is opened, we’re not allowed to run it.” This explains why Carl’s is opening 300 restaurants in Texas and only maintaining its presence in California. Texas has lower taxes than California, but the reason for the shift has more to do with regulation and with the attitude of the respective governments.

Puzder complained about the permitting process here, where it takes eight months to two years to open a new restaurant compared to an average of 1 1/2 months in Texas. In California, restaurants have to provide new curb cuts, new traffic lights, you name it. The company must endure so many requirements and must submit to so many inspections that it becomes excessively costly – and the bureaucrats are in charge of the project.

Once the restaurant is open, Puzder said, the store’s general managers are not allowed to run the business as if they own it. That’s the key to the company’s customer service approach – allowing general managers to do whatever it takes to make customers happy. But California’s inflexible, union-designed work rules, for instance, classify general managers as regular employees. They must be paid overtime for any work beyond an eight-hour day. They must take mandated breaks at specified times.

If a busload of customers comes to a store, these general managers must sit back and do nothing if they are on a break period. Most states have 40-hour workweek rules, meaning employees are paid overtime after exceeding 40 hours of work in a single week. In California it is based on the day, which limits the ability of managers to work, say, six hours one day and 10 hours the next day. Puzder complains about these industrial-era requirements that impede flexibility and harm customer service.

And California law encourages “private attorney general” lawsuits against private businesses over overtime and other regulatory rules, which has created a huge financial incentive for attorneys to file questionable legal actions against restaurants.

“It’s not like we have kids working in coal mines or women working in sweatshops,” Puzder said. It’s not as if his workers in other states, where these regulatory rules don’t exist, are oppressed, he added. “How does this help us instill entrepreneurial values?” He wonders how all these nonsensical rules teach people about being independent from the government rather than dependent on it.

I’d argue that the rules are designed specifically to impede private enterprise and to hobble entrepreneurship. After all, the unions, trial attorneys and liberal legislators writing these rules believe that government is the answer to most problems and that private industry is a cancer.

“People are just dying to get out there and make money,” Puzder said. “But California is setting a bar here. You can’t work smarter, harder, longer or better.” His company has had to fire hardworking store managers who insist on working longer hours than the state allows. He wants to tell these people, “Come to Texas, and we will hire you.”

The big debate at the Capitol has been whether to pass a budget with tax extensions. Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic legislators believe the only thing wrong with California is that people here don’t give the state enough of their paychecks. They believe this state has too-few government workers and too little oversight of business.

Democrats offer us a government of the Weiners, by the Weiners and for the Weiners.  They want the Anthony Weiners of the world to have control over your health care, over your pension, over your life.  They want government’s finger in every pie.  They want more taxes, taking a bigger and bigger share of earnings, savings and profits.  They want more regulations.  They want to be able to say who receives and who pays, who wins and who loses, even who lives and who dies.

The Democrat Party and Barack Obama are failing America – to the extent they even want “America” at all.

When you think Democrat policies versus Republican policies, don’t consider Obama’s way overused and frankly demagogic “Republicans drove us into a ditch” analogy; just consider Republican states like Texas and Democrat states like California.  The conclusion couldn’t be more clear.

Obama Wishes He Was President Of China (And So Do I)

I remember once attending a lecture from the great analytic philosopher Alvin Plantinga.  He told a couple of good jokes.  One of them was a chance encounter with a mathematician at a university who worked with a fellow professor who was a solipsist.  For the record, solipsism is basically the belief that only your own mind exists, and that basically everyone and everything else around you is a figment of your imagination.  Plantinga was fascinated with this, and asked the mathematician what it was like working with someone who literally believed you didn’t exist.  And the mathematician said, “It’s okay, I suppose.  We tend to take pretty good care of him, because if anything were to ever happen to him, that would be it for the rest of us.”

Philosophers love jokes like that.

Barack Obama is so incredibly narcissistic that you begin to wonder if he’s like that mathematician, and thinks that only he exists, or that only he matters.

Everything revolves around this guy’s pathologically and malingnantly narcissistic ego.  Case in point:

President of China?
Obama’s lament.
9:01 AM, Mar 11, 2011 • By WILLIAM KRISTOL

“Mr. Obama has told people that it would be so much easier to be the president of China. As one official put it, ‘No one is scrutinizing Hu Jintao’s words in Tahrir Square.’”

  “Obama Seeks a Course of Pragmatism in the Middle East,” The New York Times, March 11, 2011.

Mr. Obama is right.

If you’re president of China, people around the world who are fighting for freedom don’t really expect you to help. If you’re president of China, you don’t have to put up with annoying off-year congressional elections, and then negotiate your budget with a bunch of gun-and-religion-clinging congressmen and senators. If you’re president of China, you can fund your national public radio to your heart’s content. And if you’re president of China, when you host a conference on bullying in schools, people take you seriously.

Unfortunately for him and us, Barack Obama is president of the United States. That job brings with it certain special responsibilities. It’s a tough job—maybe tougher than being president of China. But Barack Obama ran for president of the United States. Maybe he should start behaving as one.

It is just so appropriate that Obama would say something so monumentally stupid and so pathologically self-absorbed on the day when our allies in Japan suffer a massive catastrophic tsunami in which 88,000 people are missing and their nuclear reactors could literally melt down and spew unprecedented disaster. 

The people of Japan just survived a massive 8.9 earthquake.  Then they managed to live through a gigantic wall of water from a tsunami.  And if that wasn’t bad enough, they then found out that they would be trapped in the wreckage of their homes – unable to either leave or be rescued – because of radiation leaks resulting from a nuclear meltdown.  And what do these people say?  “Poor Barry Obama-san!  We are very fortunate indeed that we do not have the difficulties of his life!  We have no food, no clothes, no place to sleep and we are sick from radiation; but at least we are not being scrutinized!”

I mean, who cares about everybody else; it’s clearly all about Barry Hussein and the hard time he’s having in the job he told so many lies to get.  Wah!

It’s rather obvious that we should all have a serious pity party for this loser.  Only he matters, after all.

I’ve got a few suggestions beyond Kristol’s for Barry H.  First of all, he could quit.  I for one wouldn’t complain, especially if Obama took his fellow incompetent Joe Biden with him and allowed John Boehner to cry at his swearing-in ceremony.  Because as much as that man might cry, at least he doesn’t whine.

The second thing I have to point out is that here we’ve got Obama publicly wishing he were the tyrant totalitarian dictator of a communist country.  I think the fact that he’s plagued with a democratic republic – which he despises – is finally getting to him.  Why can’t he run over his dissenters with tanks like the Chinese leaders can, he apparently wonders.  Because, you know, Barry, the reason they don’t scrutinize  the Chinese dictator’s words in Tahrir Square is the same reason they didn’t scrutinize the Chinese dictator’s words following the events in another square – Tiananmen Square and the Tiananmen Square Massacre, to be precise.

And I know that you would crave nothing more – you Marxist-fascist tin-plated tyrant – than to be able to “punish your enemies” the way the Chinese presidents do it.

Another thing I would point out is that maybe the reason people aren’t scrutinizing Hu Jintao’s words as much as they are yours is because Hu Jintao tells the truth more than you do.  Maybe if you told the damn truth just once people would stop finding out that, sure enough, you lied to us again.

I mean, Barry Hussein’s lies go up to like 1,600 by now.  This is a guy who is somehow even lying if he tells you he’s lying.

And we’re not supposed to “scrutinize” him?  I mean, seriously?

One of Obama’s lies was about “unparalleled transparency.”  Remember that one?  Now the same guy who talked about being the most transparent president in the history of the world is whining about being scrutinized, as if this lying little weasel can’t stand it that someone would have actually taken one of his galling and unmitigated lies seriously.  And the end result is – fittingly – stories like this one.

“When I promised you unparalleled transparency, what I meant was how dare you examine what I’m constantly trying to do behind your backs!”

Another thing I would point out is that maybe they don’t scrutinize Hu Jintao so much because, unlike you, Barry Hussein, Hu Jintao is not an absolute hypocrite of rarefied proportions.

Oh, and for the record, neither is John Boehner – especially when compared to Tsarina Pelosi.

Lastly, it would be nice if Obama were the president of China.  That way he could destroy China, which – according to Obama’s own intelligence chief is basically our worst enemy which is out to destroy us – and we wouldn’t have a complete moral moron completely imploding the most powerful nation in the history of the world in only four miserable years.

So get your skinny butt out of the White House and go pout to China.  Go away mad, but please just go away.  Sadly, the Chinese people are far too smart to make the same O.B.A.M.A. (as in, “One Big Ass Mistake, America”) as the American people stupidly made by giving you a job.

NPR Once Again Demonstrates How Pathologically Biased And Hostile To Conservatives It Is

NPR.  I think it stands for Nitwitted Propagandist Roaches.  It sure seems like it, anyway.

According to surveys, NPR is one of the gold standards of mainstream media objectivity.  But if you could get inside these leftwing ideologues’ heads for just a few minutes, you would find that they couldn’t be more biased and unfair toward conservatives, Republicans and the Tea Party.

March 08, 2011
NPR exec: tea party is ‘scary,’ ‘racist’ 

[Youtube video link]

James O’Keefe, master of the video sting, targets NPR this time, in a pretty damaging interview with Ron Schiller, NPR’s senior vice president for development, and Betsy Liley, senior director of institutional giving.

O’Keefe’s compatriots, Shaughn Adeleye and Simon Templar, posed as members of a Muslim group with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood that wants to give NPR $5 million in light of the recent Republican threats to defund public broadcasting.

In the course of a lunch at Café Milano, Schiller presents himself as a liberal who thinks the tea party is “scary” and that there are not enough Muslim voices on the American airwaves, nodding as his lunchmates say they are glad NPR allows Hamas’s and Hezbollah’s views to be heard.

He claims the Republican party has been “hijacked” by the tea party, and when one of his lunch partner’s suggests that they’re “radical, racist, Islamaphobic, Tea Party people,” Schiller says, they’re “not just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.”

He also veers pretty wildly off the script that NPR CEO Vivian Schiller clung to during her address to the National Press Club Monday, saying “it is very clear that in the long run we would be better off without federal funding.” Vivian Schiller (no relation) was very careful to make the point Monday that while federal funding is only about 10 percent of NPR’s budget, it’s essential.

It was announced yesterday that Ron Schiller is leaving NPR to take a job at the Aspen Institute.

He came to NPR from the world of university fundraising and became NPR’s top fundraising official in late 2009, not long before discussions began for the $1.8 million gift from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations that, along with the Juan Williams firing, helped make NPR such a potent political target for Republicans.

I’ve reached out to NPR for comment and will update when I hear back.

UPDATE: NPR media reporter David Folkenflik tweets NPR’s comment: “We are appalled by the comments made by Ron Schiller in the video, which are contrary to what NPR stands for.”

UPDATE: The full NPR statement from Dana Davis Rehm, senior vice president of Marketing, Communications & External Relations:

“The fraudulent organization represented in this video repeatedly pressed us to accept a $5 million check, with no strings attached, which we repeatedly refused to accept. We are appalled by the comments made by Ron Schiller in the video, which are contrary to what NPR stands for. Mr. Schiller announced last week that he is leaving NPR for another job.”

Oh, that’s right.  The REAL bad guys in this story are the people who demonstrated just how completely corrupt and dishonest you rat bastard taxpayer-dollar shakedown artists at NPR are.

Keep in mind, the people that NPR is on film demonizing at present constitute most of the American people.  But according to liberal orthodoxy, conservatives, Republicans and Tea Party people are supposed to be forced to subsidize an organization that couldn’t be more unfair to them.

Are you seriously so demented and so depraved that you believe that these people could give conservatives a fair shake?

If you said yes, you just failed the moral IQ test; you are a truly stupid and immoral human being.  You cannot see the world as it is because you are too depraved.

Bottom line: given that NPR is supposedly “objective,” and yet we now know just who these hard-core leftwing zealots are, let’s just realize that the entire mainstream media is basically one leftwing propaganda machine.

Here’s Ron Schiller in all of his bigoted, hateful, biased, propagandist “glory” via a transcript:

This an undercover video is  by filmmaker, James O’Keefe of Acorn Video Expose fame, who hired two men to pose as members of an Islam organization linked closely to the Muslim Brotherhood.  In the video, the men were discussing their wish to make a $5 million donation to NPR over dinner with Schiller.

It was at that dinner that Schiller is caught on video making claims, his comments fully transcribed below from the video on the left sidebar,  that has landed him and NPR in the middle of yet another public funding scandal:

RON SCHILLER (President, NPR Foundation): I think what we all believe is that if we don’t have Muslim voices in our schools, on the air – I mean it’s the same thing we faced as a nation when we didn’t have female voices.

The current Republican party, particularly the Tea Party, is fanatically involved in people’s personal lives and very fundamental Christian. I wouldn’t even call it Christian; it’s this weird evangelical kind of move.

The current Republican party is not really the Republican party, it’s been hijacked by this group; that is, not just Islamaphobic but really xenophobic. I mean, basically, they are, they believe in sort of white, middle American, gun toting  — I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people.

Now, I’ll talk personally –  as opposed to wearing my NPR hat. It feels to me that there is a real anti-intellectual move on the part of a significant part of the Republican party. In my personal opinion, liberals today might be more educated, fair and balanced than conservatives.

Well, to me, this [Egypt] is representative of the thing that I, uh, I guess I am most disturbed by and disappointed by in this country; which is that the educated, so-called ‘elite’ in this country is too small a percentage of the population, so that you have this very large, uneducated part of the population, that, that carries these ideas.

It’s, it’s much more about this type of anti-intellectualism than it is about a political. A university, also by definition, is considered in this country to be liberal, ah, even though it’s not at all liberal. It’s liberal because it’s intellectual — pursuit of knowledge and that is traditionally something that Democrats have funded and Republicans have not funded.

So, particularly Republicans play off of the belief among the general population that most of our funding comes from the Government. Very little of our funding comes from the Government; but, they act as though all of it comes from the Government.

 It’s about 10% of the total station economy.  The total station economy is about $800 million a year; and about $90 million comes from the Federal Government.

Well, frankly, it is very clear that we would be better off in the long run without Federal funding. And the challenge right now is that if we lost it altogether, we would have a lot of stations go dark.

Speaking to why he felt that way: I think for independence, number one. Number two is that our job would be a lot easier if people weren’t confused — because we get Federal funding, a lot of Americans, a lot of philanthropists  actually think we get most of our money from the Federal government; even though NPR, as you know gets 1% and the station economy, as a whole, gets 10%.

NPR would definitely survive and most of the stations would survive.

Speaking of Zionist influence at NPR: I don’t actually find it at NPR; the zionist or pro-Israel even among funders. No. I mean it’s there in those who own newspapers, obviously; but no one owns NPR. So I, actually, I don’t find it … Right, because I think they are really looking for a fair point of view and many Jewish organizations are not. And frankly, many organizations, I’m sure there are Muslim organizations that are not looking for a fair point of view. They’re looking for a very particular point of view and that’s fine. We’re not one of them. I’m gathering that you’re not, actually.

And even around the Juan Williams issue, we had a very long discussion and they all agreed in the end — well of course you had to fire [Juan Williams]; but why they won’t say that?  [shaking his head] In all of the uproar, for example around Juan Williams, what NPR did, I’m very proud of and what NPR stood for is non-racist, non-bigoted, straightforward  telling of the news.

Our feeling is that if a person expresses his or her opinion, which anyone is entitled to in a free society, they are compromised as a journalist. They can no longer fairly report.  And the question that we asked internally was – Can Juan Williams, when he makes a statement like he made, can he report to the Muslim population and be believed? And the answer is no. He lost all credibility and that breaks your basic ethics as a journalist.  (To be continued.. TheProjectVeritas.com)

But hey, I’m sure National Propaganda Radio is every bit as fair in its coverage to the violent, unfair, ignorant, uneducated, anti-intellectual, xenophobic, seriously racist racist Republicans as they would be to the superior and enlightened Democrats.  In fact, it’s very difficult to discern any difference in Schiller’s views toward Republicans and Democrats, unless you look really, really hard.

I remember talking to a liberal professor a couple years back.  He literally compared allowing coverage of the conservative point-of-view to allowing a serious discussion about a “flat earth.”  On his view, it was idiotic to even allow conservatives to have a voice in any discussion.

And the most incredible thing of all was that after saying all of this, he made the astounding claim that his liberal point of view was “tolerant” and “open-minded.”

What this professor said was what most “journalists” think.  It just never occurs to them that conservatives might even possibly have a valid point, let alone think it’s necessary to cover the “flat earther” conservative position.  And these are our “gatekeepers” who get to decide what “all the news that’s fit to print” is.  And how to slant it.

All that said, obviously, conservatives should be forced to pay for propgandists who hate them and hate everything they stand for.

Wouldn’t it be nice if one day soon, liberals are forced to fund Rush Limbaugh with their tax dollars???

Colin Powell: ‘I Can See My Illegal Immigrant Laborers From Here’

As hard as it is for me to admit this, or even believe I used to think it, there was a time when I really wanted to see Colin Powell run for president as a Republican.  I thought he’d win for sure, and in the limelight of the Gulf War, I thought he’d be a great president.

Then things started to trickle out about him, and my approval for him wilted like a plant that got too much sun and not enough water.  First it was the fact that he was fond of abortion, and from there it was a death by a thousand cuts.

And then he endorsed THE most radically leftist candidate for president in the history of America, and I realized that Norman Schwarzkopf won the Gulf War, and Colin Powell somehow got all the credit because he was the first socially-promoted chairman of the joint chiefs of staff.

And now we’re to this:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 19, 2010
Colin Powell: Illegal Immigrants Fix My House
Former Secretary of State Urges Republicans to Support Path to Legal Status for Undocumented Workers

(AP)   Former Secretary of State Colin Powell says illegal immigrants do essential work in the U.S. and he has firsthand knowledge of that – because they fix his house.

Powell, a moderate Republican, urged his party Sunday to support immigration generally because it is “what’s keeping this country’s lifeblood moving forward.”

In an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” he said a path to legal status should be offered to illegal immigrants because they “are doing things we need done in this country.”

He added: “They’re all over my house, doing things whenever I call for repairs, and I’m sure you’ve seen them at your house. We’ve got to find a way to bring these people out of the darkness and give them some kind of status.”

Powell did not say whether he’s hired illegal immigrants directly or they showed up with contractors.

Powell was President George W. Bush’s first-term secretary of state and the nation’s top military officer in the presidency of Bush’s father and in the early months of the Clinton administration. Despite his Republican standing – he was once considered a formidable prospect for the GOP presidential or vice presidential nominations but stayed out of contention – he endorsed Democrat Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential election.

In lamenting the party’s rightward drift Sunday, he said Republicans must not become anti-immigration and spoke in support of legislation that would give certain children of illegal immigrants a way to become citizens if they pursue a college education or military service.

Immigration, he said, offers the U.S. a chance to maintain a youthful population in contrast with the aging of Europe and Japan.

Powell also said “fringe” elements on the right are taking a low road when they label Mr. Obama a foreign-born Muslim and peddle other false theories about non-American influences on the president’s character. Mr. Obama was born in the U.S. and is Christian.

“Let’s attack him on policy, not nonsense,” he said.

How about, “Let’s attack Colin Powell for breaking the law.”

Colin Powell claims that he’s a Republican even though Republicans are a bunch of racists, and even though in every conceivable way he’s actually a liberal.  He says Republicans are becoming “anti-immigrant.”  When the fact of the matter is that Republicans are something Colin Powell clearly is NOT: anti-ILLEGAL immigrant.

Turns out that Colon (i.e., the last part of the digestive system before the turd comes out) Powell is a guy who wants open borders while denying he wants open borders.  It’s fine to have laws against illegal immigration, even though it isn’t; but whatever you do, don’t enforce those laws that are okay to have in spite of the fact that they really aren’t okay.

In his interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Powell said:

“We can’t be anti-immigration, for example, because immigrants are fueling this country. Without immigrants, America would be like Europe or Japan with an aging population and no young people coming in to take care of it.”

If Colin Powell actually believes that, then maybe he was wrong in supporting the murder of 50 million conceived potential citizens that have been torn apart in the abortion mills.  Maybe we wouldn’t need illegal immigrants to come pouring across our borders if we hadn’t murdered actual citizens who would have served the role of “keeping this country’s lifeblood moving forward.”

Liberals constantly inflict abject mayhem on our society.  And, as a redress to the mayhem they inflicted with their stupid and evil policies, they propose still more stupid and evil policies that will afflict us with yet more mayhem.

Just sayin’.

It’s really sad, thinking about what Colin Powell could have been for America, versus the redundant flatulence he has come to be.

Most Americans Finally Blaming The Most Irresponsible President In History

One could conclude – based on rhetoric alone – that George Bush never left office, and Obama never actually ascended to the presidency.

After all, according to the Obama narrative, only one man is responsible for anything these days.  And that man is George Bush.

Obama isn’t “responsible.”  He’s completely irresponsible.

Obama has never once taken the “The Buck Stops With George Bush” sign off of his desk.

Since we all know that the buck stops at the highest political office, and since we all know that Obama keeps passing the buck off to George Bush, we can therefore know that Obama really isn’t our president.  Whether he produces his damn birth certificate or not.  Given the fact that leadership is ultimately about taking responsibility, and Obama refuses to take any responsibility whatsoever, he’s clearly not the POTUS.  And since Bush is apparently STILL responsible for everything, he becomes our defacto president even nearly two years after actually leaving the office.

Well, Barry Hussein may never accept responsibility for the failure of his policies, but at least more Americans are finally saying that this is Barack Obama’s sucky economy, rather than agreeing with Obama that he had nothing to do with anything.

From Rasmussen:

48% Blame Obama for Bad Economy, 47% Blame Bush
Monday, August 02, 2010

For the first time since President Obama took office, voters see his policies as equally to blame with those of President George W. Bush for the country’s current economic problems.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 48% of Likely U.S. Voters now think Obama’s policies are to blame for the continuing bad economy, up three points from last month. Forty-seven percent (47%) say the recession that began under Bush is at fault.

With voters across the country expressing stronger belief that the economy is getting worse rather than better, these new findings spell potential bad news for Democratic candidates this fall. The president is already planning to limit his campaign appearances with candidates because of potential voter backlash.

In June and last October, 45% blamed Obama’s policies for the country’s ongoing economic woes, the previous high finding on this question. The number who blame Bush is down from 62% in May 2009 when Rasmussen Reports first began tracking the question regularly. Only 27% faulted Obama at that time.

As is often the case, Mainstream voters and the Political Class have wholly different viewpoints on this question. While 61% of Mainstream voters now blame Obama’s policies, 87% of the Political Class say the bad economy is due to the recession that began under Bush.

Fifty-five percent (55%) of men blame Obama’s policies for the current economic problems, while 52% of women think Bush is the cause.

Among voters not affiliated with either major party, Obama is now chiefly to blame by a 52% to 44% margin.

That last paragraph is particularly significant.  Independents OVERWHELMINGLY blame Obama over Bush for the worsening economy.

And if that news isn’t revealing enough, Gallup/USA Today just came out with a poll showing Obama at only 41% approval – the lowest of his presidency.  He’s now flirting with being in the 30s.

I don’t really care what Democrats think about Obama vs. Bush.  The Democrat Party can be rightly defined as the party of moral idiocy.  But we are finally seeing rank-and-file Americans who are not involved with political ideology looking at going on two years of failure and false demagoguery and coming to the correct conclusion about whom to hold responsible.

When the economy appeared to be improving, Obama starting talking about his “summer of economic recovery.”

From Politico:

Obama, Biden declare ‘Recovery Summer’
By MIKE ALLEN 6/17/10 5:06 AM EDT

Vice President Joe Biden today will kick off the Obama administration’s “Recovery Summer,” a six-week-long push designed to highlight the jobs accompanying a surge in stimulus-funded projects to improve highways, parks, drinking water and other public works.

David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president, said: “This summer will be the most active Recovery Act season yet, with thousands of highly-visible road, bridge, water and other infrastructure projects breaking ground across the country, giving the American people a first-hand look at the Recovery Act in their own backyards and making it crystal clear what the cost would have been of doing nothing.”

But then we got all kinds of lousy economic news to rain turds all over Obama’s “Mission Accomplished” summer of recovery tour.

We got news like this:

Steep decline in GDP growth raises alarms
By Don Lee, Los Angeles Times
July 31, 2010

Reporting from Washington — U.S. economic growth slowed sharply in the spring, stoking concerns about a weak job market, a drawn-out struggle for the unemployed and growing financial pressures on millions of American families.

The nation’s gross domestic product grew at an annualized rate of 2.4% in the second quarter, falling from an upwardly revised 3.7% expansion in the first three months of the year, the Commerce Department said Friday.

While many economists had expected growth to moderate, the reported decline was a jolting 35% below the previous quarter. Gross domestic product is the value of all goods and services produced in the economy. […]

In the wake of Friday’s report, a number of economists downgraded their growth forecast for the second half of the year to as low as 1.5%, an anemic rate that would likely push the unemployment rate above June’s 9.5% figure.

Commerce officials also revised downward some prior growth figures for real GDP, which is the inflation-adjusted value of all goods and services produced in the U.S. The government Friday said real GDP grew 5% in the fourth quarter of 2009, down from a previously reported 5.6%.

Overall, the new data painted a picture of a deeper recession than previously believed.

Government spending and inventory adjustments have powered the economic recovery that began last summer, and they juiced up the second quarter as well. But economists expect tighter public spending, particularly by budget-strapped state and local governments, to be a drag on the economy in the coming quarters.

Many private economists projected that the unemployment rate would rise to 9.8% or higher by the end of the year.

And today, we learned that housing prices were down, factory orders were down, and consumer spending was down.  As the LA Times put it:

U.S. consumers did not boost their spending in June and their incomes failed to increase, further evidence that the economic recovery slowed in the spring. And Americans saved at the highest rate in nearly a year.

Personal spending was unchanged in June, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday. It was the third straight month of lackluster consumer demand. Incomes were also flat, the weakest showing in nine months.

The disappointing report on spending and income was among a raft of data released Tuesday that confirmed the economy ended the April-to-June quarter on a weak note.

Factory orders dropped 1.2 percent in June to a seasonally adjusted $406.4 billion, the Commerce Department said. It was the second consecutive decline after nine straight months of gains. Lower demand for steel, construction machinery and aircraft dragged down the figure.

And the number of buyers who signed contracts to purchase homes fell in June. The National Association of Realtors says its seasonally adjusted index of sales agreements for previously occupied homes dipped 2.6 percent to a reading of 75.7. That was the lowest on records dating back to 2001 and down nearly 19 percent from the same month a year earlier.

Last week the government said economic growth for the second quarter slowed to 2.4 percent. Many analysts believe it will dip further in the second half of the year as high unemployment, shaky consumer confidence and renewed troubles in housing weigh on the year-old economic recovery.

What’s funniest of all – if anything is funny during a complete failure’s destruction of what had been the greatest nation in the history of the planet – is that Obama was literally still congratulating himself when the bad news came dumping down:

President Obama was in New Jersey yesterday killing time before his appearance on ‘The View’. So he stopped at Tastee Subs and held a small business summit, pushing for legislation to increase funding to the Small Business Administration. In between sound bytes on jobs and bites of Tastee’s super-sub special, more bad economic news came rolling Obama’s way.

And then all of a sudden the Obama administration is all, “Oh, crap! Stop looking at our “success”!  No!  Don’t look at our “recovery summer”!  We don’t want to take responsibility after all!  Start looking at Bush again!  He’s the only one who is actually RESPONSIBLE!”

So now – after Obama patted himself on the back and congratulated himself for his mission accomplished, all of a sudden we’re back to the “Bush recession.”

BIDEN LAMENTS ‘BUSH RECESSION’…. Vice President Biden appeared on NBC’s “Today” show earlier, and used a line I don’t recall leading White House officials using before, at least not lately.

Ann Curry noted that the administration has been blamed for high unemployment rates, and asked, “Has this administration done enough?”

Biden replied, “Let me put it this way: there’s never enough until we restore the 8 million jobs lost in the Bush Recession. Until that happens, it doesn’t matter. I mean, it matters, but it’s not enough.”

Which is to say that, according to the Obama administration, George Bush is to blame for all the jobs HE lost, PLUS all the jobs that OBAMA lost.  After going on two years in office, Obama still isn’t responsible for anything at all.  Oh, except for that brief period when it looked like maybe things were looking up and Obama could suddenly be “responsible”.

When Bush left office, unemployment was 7.6%.  Barry Hussein promised that his massive stimulus would save the day.  He assured the American people that he understood what was wrong, and that he had the solution.  His administration promised that if the stimulus (which started out at $787 billion, then got revised upward to $862 billion, but which will actually cost taxpayers $3.27 TRILLION) was passed, unemployment would not go over 8%.

From NPR:

President Obama is being forced to wade into a domestic economic debate that just won’t go away: As the unemployment rate rises, there have been calls for a second round of stimulus spending.

Obama is in a difficult position. He has to defend his $787 billion economic stimulus package at a time when there are few visible signs that it has had an effect. Unemployment is at 9.5 percent, even though the White House predicted in January that with the stimulus bill, it would rise to only about 8 percent.

And the LA Times article cites economists as now predicting that unemployment will rise to at least 9.8% – or higher.  Which for the record is a lot higher than 8%.

It’s not enough to say Obama was incompetent.  He lied.  He pitched himself as Mr. Wonderful, and utterly failed to live up to all of his false promises.

In October 2008 I wrote an article which quoted Chief Executive Magazine as follows:

In expressing their rejection of Senator Obama, some CEOs who responded to the survey went as far as to say that “some of his programs would bankrupt the country within three years, if implemented.” In fact, the poll highlights that Obama’s tax policies, which scored the lowest grade in the poll, are particularly unpopular among CEOs.

And I had cause to cite that article again recently, as Obama pursued the incredibly demagogic rhetoric that said we had to go forward with his “change” rather than backward.  Lest you don’t see the obvious flaw, allow me to point out that Germany went forward with Hitler’s “change,” too.  And then there was Stalin’s “change,” and Pol Pot’s “change,” and Castro’s “change,” etc.

To argue that moving forward to “change” is somehow intrinsically good is intrinsically stupid.  It is the very worst kind of moral idiocy.  And that “logic” has repeatedly justified the most evil outcomes in the history of the human race.

The CEOs – whom unlike the Obama administration actually understand something about business – have turned out to be right.  And Obama has turned out to be completely wrong.  Over and over and over again.

Obama pitched his entire campaign for presidency on “hope” to go along with his nebulous “change.”  Sadly, the American people didn’t understand that there isn’t and can be no hope in the progressive agenda of Barack Hussein.  There is only increasing government control over more and more of our lives.

It should terrify you that Obama is well on the way to the three-year plan toward bankruptcy that the CEO’s predicted of an Obama presidency.

Left Continues Whining ‘How DARE You Be Against The President!’ Chutzpah

I have to just laugh in mocking, derisive laughter every time I hear a Democrat whine about people criticizing President Obama.

After eight unrelenting years of Bush derangement syndrome (when frankly Bush wasn’t really even all that conservative), you’d think liberals would be capable of that scintilla of personal introspection that would reveal to them, “We kind of asked for this.”  But, nope.

A particularly hilarious example of this comes from liberal radio personality Bill Press:

Bill Press: Obama’s Poll Numbers Down Because Americans Are Spoiled Children
By Noel Sheppard
Wed, 07/14/2010 – 10:23 ET

Liberal talk radio host Bill Press says President Obama’s poll numbers are down because Americans are spoiled, impatient children that want everything solved yesterday.

After describing to his listeners Tuesday all the fabulous accomplishments this president has made since taking office in January 2009, Press admonished the citizenry for giving the White House resident poor grades for his efforts.

“I think this says more about the American people than it does about President Obama,” barked Press.

“I think it just shows once again that the American people are spoiled” (audio follows with partial transcript and commentary):

BILL PRESS: “Basically, spoiled — as a people, we are too critical. We are too quick to rush to judgment, we are too negative, we are too impatient. Especially impatient. We want it all solved yesterday, and if you don’t, I don’t care who you are — get out of the way.

And again, basically spoiled. To the point where it makes me wonder if it’s even possible to govern today. I gotta tell you, I don’t think Abraham Lincoln — who certainly didn’t get everything right the first time — could govern today. I’m not sure Franklin Roosevelt could govern today, the way we are again. Just about like spoiled children. And it’s Americans, and it’s the media, and if we don’t get instant gratification, then screw you is basically our attitude.”

Noel Shepperd then replies to Press’ rant:

Yes, America, you’re spoiled.

We promised that if you elected us, things would get better for you.

When you bought into our “Hope and Change” pitch, the unemployment rate was 6.6 percent. Now it’s 9.5 percent.

On Election Day 2008, 7.3 million Americans were out of work. Now it’s 14.6 million.

And the fact that this makes you unhappy means you’re spoiled and impatient.

As Brian Maloney wrote Tuesday, “[O]nly ultra-partisan Democratic Party crony Bill Press could manage to blame voters for Obama’s failure to thrive.”

Now, as crazy as it is that Bill Press can’t understand why Americans are “impatient” with Obama on day 89 of the worst environmental disaster in American history as we circle the drain to a double-dip recession following Obama’s boast that he would keep unemployment under 8% if his stimulus was passed, that’s not what makes me laugh.

What makes me laugh is that Bill Press was as “impatient” (not to mention demagogic and hateful) about President George Bush as anyone.  He literally wrote the book, Bush Must Go, which sounds absolutely nothing like, Bush Should Stay.

Here’s Bill Press being extremely “impatient” with George Bush’s presidency in May 21, 2002:

It is not irresponsible to demand that bureaucrats do the job we pay them to do. It is not irresponsible to expect people in authority to be held responsible for dumb, and perhaps fatal, mistakes. And, finally, it is not irresponsible, even in time of war, to raise questions about the presidency of George W. Bush.

Now let’s see.  Bill Press is bitching about impatient and childish Americans criticizing Obama after only 18 months as president. When he was impatiently and childishly (by his own standard, to boot) of George W. Bush after a mere 16 months in office.

Nothing can be more cruel than to hold a Democrat to his own standards of judgment.

Given that Obama’s 2010 corresponds to Bush’s 2002, it’s hard for a reasonably intelligent mammal to understand why the left is so upset for the criticism now being given to Obama.

Take a trip down memory lane.  Call it a tale of two Bills, as Bill Sammon points out how the left was treating George Bush a year and a half into HIS presidency:

Analysis: Press Largely Ignored Incendiary Rhetoric at Bush Protest
By Bill Sammon
Published August 12, 2009
FOXNews.com

News outlets that are focusing on the incendiary rhetoric of conservatives outside President Obama’s town hall meeting Tuesday ignored the incendiary rhetoric — and even violence — of liberals outside an appearance by former President George W. Bush in 2002.

When Bush visited Portland, Ore., for a fundraiser, protesters stalked his motorcade, assailed his limousine and stoned a car containing his advisers. Chanting “Bush is a terrorist!”, the demonstrators bullied passers-by, including gay softball players and a wheelchair-bound grandfather with multiple sclerosis.

One protester even brandished a sign that seemed to advocate Bush’s assassination. The man held a large photo of Bush that had been doctored to show a gun barrel pressed against his temple.

“BUSH: WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE,” read the placard, which had an X over the word “ALIVE.”

Another poster showed Bush’s face with the words: “F— YOU, MOTHERF—ER!”

A third sign urged motorists to “HONK IF YOU HATE BUSH.” A fourth declared: “CHRISTIAN FASCISM,” with a swastika in place of the letter S in each word.

Although reporters from numerous national news organizations were traveling with Bush and witnessed the protest, none reported that protesters were shrieking at Republican donors epithets like “Slut!” “Whore!” and “Fascists!”

Frank Dulcich, president and CEO of Pacific Seafood Group, had a cup of liquid thrown into his face, and then was surrounded by a group of menacing protesters, including several who wore masks. Donald Tykeson, 75, who had multiple sclerosis and was confined to a wheelchair, was blocked by a thug who threatened him.

Protesters slashed the tires of several state patrol cruisers and leapt onto an occupied police car, slamming the hood and blocking the windshield with placards. A female police officer was knocked to the street by advancing protesters, badly injuring her wrist.

The angry protest grew so violent that the Secret Service was forced to take the highly unusual step of using a backup route for Bush’s motorcade because the primary route had been compromised by protesters, one of whom pounded his fist on the president’s moving limousine.

All the while, angry demonstrators brandished signs with incendiary rhetoric, such as “9/11 – YOU LET IT HAPPEN, SHRUB,” and “BUSH: BASTARD CHILD OF THE SUPREME COURT.” One sign read: “IMPEACH THE COURT-APPOINTED JUNTA AND THE FASCIST, EGOMANIACAL, BLOOD-SWILLING BEAST!”

Yet none of these signs were cited in the national media’s coverage of the event. By contrast, the press focused extensively on over-the-top signs held by Obama critics at the president’s town hall event held Tuesday in New Hampshire.

The lead story in Wednesday’s Washington Post, for example, is headlined: “Obama Faces ‘Scare Tactics’ Head-On.”

“As the president spoke, demonstrators outside held posters declaring him a socialist and dubbing him ‘Obamahdinejad,’ in reference to Iran’s president,” the Post reported. “People screamed into bullhorns to protest a bigger government role in health care. ‘Nobama Deathcare!’ one sign read. A young girl held up a sign that said: ‘Obama Lies, Grandma Dies.’ Images of a protester wearing what appeared to be a gun were shown on television.”

On Sunday, The New York Times reported that a Democratic congressman discovered that “an opponent of health care reform hanged him in effigy” and was confronted by “200 angry conservatives.” The article lamented “increasingly ugly scenes of partisan screaming matches, scuffles, threats and even arrests.”

No such coverage was given to the Portland protest of Bush by The New York Times or the Washington Post, which witnessed the protest.

The media just turned a blind eye to Bush derangement syndrome.  Nothing to see here, folks.  But when anyone criticized Barack Obama, it was “OH MY JEBUS! THIS IS THE WORST AND MOST EVIL STUFF WE HAVE EVER HEARD!!!  CONSERVATIVES ARE ALL WORSE THAN NAZIS!!!”

For my part, I don’t expect liberals to be gracious or fair to the next Republican president (whom you can expect to see inaugurated on January 20, 2013, btw).  So you won’t hear me crying about it.

Why DON’T I expect liberals to be gracious or fair?  Because it’s just not something they are capable of, that’s why.  I don’t expect cockroaches to be anything other than cockroaches.

It doesn’t matter if conservatives try to tear Obama down, or whether conservatives try to do everything they can to support Obama.  Liberals will tear into the next Republican president either way.  And just as viciously.

So keep firing away, conservatives.  Because the way liberals are whining at us and to themselves, we can rest assured what we’re doing is working.

Who ‘Acted Stupidly’? The Cop, The Professor, Or The President?

We have a situation in which a police officer placed a man who turned out to be a Harvard professor of African-American Studies under arrest for disorderly conduct.  And then we have a situation in which the President of the United States of America decides to directly involve himself in his role as Racial-Arbiter-in-Chief.

The best place to begin is with the facts.  A neighbor saw two men attempting to force their way into a home that had already sustained an attempted break-in previously that week.  The police arrived.

And then, from excerpts of the police report (the full actual report is available in PDF format here):

On Thursday July 16, 2009, Henry Gates, Jr. – -, of Ware Street, Cambridge, MA) was placed under arrest at Ware Street, after being observed exhibiting loud and tumultuous behavior, in a public place, directed at a uniformed police officer who was present investigating a report of a crime in progress. These actions on the behalf of Gates served no legitimate purpose and caused citizens passing by this location to stop and take notice while appearing surprised and alarmed.

…When I arrived at Ware Street I radioed ECC and asked that they have the caller meet me at the front door to this residence. I was told that the caller was already outside. As I was getting this information, I climbed the porch stairs toward the front door. As I reached the door, a female voice called out to me. I looked in the direction of the voice and observed a white female, later identified {} who was standing on the sidewalk in front of the residence, held a wireless telephone in her hand arid told me that it was she who called. She went on to tell me that she observed what appeared to be two black males with backpacks on the porch of• Ware Street. She told me that her suspicions were aroused when she observed one of the men wedging his shoulder into the door as if he was trying to force entry. Since I was the only police officer on location and had my back to the front door as I spoke with her, I asked that she wait for other responding officers while I investigated further.

As I turned and faced the door, I could see an older black male standing in the foyer of {} Ware Street. I made this observation through the glass paned front door. As I stood in plain view of this man, later identified as Gates, I asked if he would step out onto the porch and speak with me. He replied “no I will not”. He then demanded to know who I was. I told him that I was “Sgt. Crowley from the Cambridge Police” and that I was “investigating a report of a break in progress” at the residence. While I was making this statement, Gates opened the front door and exclaimed “why, because I’m a black man in America?”.   I then asked Gates if there was anyone else in the residence. While yelling, he told me that it was none of my business and accused me of being a racist police officer. I assured Gates that I was responding to a citizen’s call to the Cambridge Police and that the caller was outside as we spoke. Gates seemed to ignore me and picked up a cordless telephone and dialed an unknown telephone number. As he did so, I radioed on channel I that I was off in the residence with someone who appeared to be a resident but very uncooperative. I then overheard Gates asking the person on the other end of his telephone call to “get the chief’ and “what’s the chiefs name?’.   Gates was telling the person on the other end of the call that he was dealing with a racist police officer in his home.  Gates then turned to me and told me that I had no idea who I was “messing” with and that I had not heard the last of it.  While I was led to believe that Gates was lawfully in the residence, I was quite surprised and confused with the behavior he exhibited toward me.  I asked Gates to provide me with photo identification so that I could verify that he resided at Ware Street and so that I could radio my findings to ECC. Gates initially refused, demanding that I show him identification but then did supply me with a Harvard University identification card. Upon learning that Gates was affiliated with Harvard, I radioed and requested the presence of the Harvard University Police.

With the Harvard University identification in hand, I radioed my findings to ECC on channel two and prepared to leave. Gates again asked for my name which I began to provide. Gates began to yell over my spoken words by accusing me of being a racist police officer and leveling threats that he wasn’t someone to mess with. At some point during this exchange, I became aware that Off. Carlos Figueroa was standing behind me. When Gates asked a third time for my name, I explained to him that I had provided it at his request two separate times. Gates continued to yell at me. I told Gates that I was leaving his residence and that if he had any other questions regarding the matter, I would speak with him outside of the residence.

As I began walking through the foyer toward the front door, I could hear Gates again demanding my name. I again told Gates that I would speak with him outside. My reason for wanting to leave the residence was that Gates was yelling very loud and the acoustics of the kitchen and foyer were making it difficult for me to transmit pertinent information to ECC or other responding units. His reply was “ya, I’ll speak with your mama outside”. When I left the residence, I noted that there were several Cambridge and Harvard University police officers assembled on the sidewalk in front of the residence. Additionally, the caller, Ms. Walen and at least seven unidentified passers-by were looking in the direction of Gates, who had followed me outside of the residence.

As I descended the stairs to the sidewalk, Gates continued to yell at me, accusing me of racial bias and continued to tell me that I had not heard the last of him. Due to the tumultuous manner Gates had exhibited in his residence as well as his continued tumultuous behavior outside the residence, in view of the public, I warned Gates that he was becoming disorderly. Gates ignored my warning and continued to yell, which drew the attention of both the police officers and citizens, who appeared surprised and alarmed by Gates’s outburst. For a second time I warned Gates to calm down while I withdrew my department issued handcuffs from their carrying case. Gates again ignored my warning and continued to yell at me. It was at this time that I informed Gates that he was under arrest. I then stepped up the stairs, onto the porch and attempted to place handcuffs on Gates. Gates initially resisted my attempt to handcuff him, yelling that he was “disabled” and would fall without his cane. After the handcuffs were property applied, Gates complained that they were too tight. I ordered Off. Ivey, who was among the responding officers, to handcuff Gates with his arms in front of him for his comfort while I secured a cane for Gates from within the residence. I then asked Gates if he would like an officer to take possession of his house key and secure his front door, which he left wide open. Gates told me that the door was unsecurable due to a previous break attempt at the residence. Shortly thereafter, a Harvard University maintenance person arrived on scene and appeared familiar with Gates. I asked Gates if he was comfortable with this Harvard University maintenance person securing his residence. He told me that he was.

And then there’s the President of the United States, feeling the need to directly involve himself in a report of a break-in and a disorderly conduct arrest:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Recently, Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was arrested at his home in Cambridge. What does that incident say to you? And what does it say about race relations in America?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, I — I should say at the outset that Skip Gates is a friend, so I may be a little biased here.

I don’t know all the facts. What’s been reported, though, is that the guy forgot his keys, jimmied his way to get into the house; there was a report called into the police station that there might be a burglary taking place.

So far, so good, right? I mean, if I was trying to jigger into — well, I guess this is my house now, so — (laughter) — it probably wouldn’t happen.

(Chuckling.) But let’s say my old house in Chicago — (laughter) — here I’d get shot. (Laughter.) But so far, so good. They’re — they’re — they’re reporting. The police are doing what they should. There’s a call. They go investigate. What happens?

My understanding is, at that point, Professor Gates is already in his house. The police officer comes in. I’m sure there’s some exchange of words. But my understanding is — is that Professor Gates then shows his ID to show that this is his house, and at that point he gets arrested for disorderly conduct, charges which are later dropped.

Now, I’ve — I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.

And number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcing disproportion ately. That’s just a fact.

As you know, Lynn, when I was in the state legislature in Illinois, we worked on a racial profiling bill because there was indisputable evidence that blacks and Hispanics were being stopped disproportionately. And that is a sign, an example of how, you know, race remains a factor in the society.

That doesn’t lessen the incredible progress that has been made. I am standing here as testimony to the progress that’s been made. And yet the fact of the matter is, is that, you know, this still haunts us.

And even when there are honest misunderstandings, the fact that blacks and Hispanics are picked up more frequently, and oftentime for no cause, casts suspicion even when there is good cause. And that’s why I think the more that we’re working with local law enforcement to improve policing techniques so that we’re eliminating potential bias, the safer everybody’s going to be.

We find out in addition that the police officer, Sgt. James Crowley, actually teaches courses on racial profiling at Lowell Police Acadamy, and has been teaching the course there for five years.  We find out that Sgt. Crowley receives no pay for teaching the class, and that he drives from Cambridge to Middlesex Community College in Lowell.  And we find out that he is an incredibly well-respected police officer.

Okay.  So here’s your test: WHO was “acting stupidly”?

For the record, it is black men like Henry Louis Gates who make the charge “racist” utterly meaningless to me.  Because the only way I could be any more racist than Gates is if I went to weekly meetings wearing a white robe and a pointy hat.

Personally, I have to give a tie to Professor Henry Louis Gates and President Barack Obama.  Gates is clearly an arrogant hard-core racist jerk who deserved to be seriously beaten with a baton, let alone arrested.  And Barack Obama is clearly an arrogant, hard-core fool who should have kept his stupid mouth shut rather than join Gates in throwing around charges of racism.

Mouthing off to police officers is a bad idea, and Henry Louis Gates officially disqualified himself from the roles of reasonable and intelligent people for having so remarkably mouthed off with so little provocation.  And Harvard University is clearly an inferior academic institution for having such pathetic, angry, bitter, nasty, racist psychos on its payroll as “faculty.”

I am a law-abiding citizen, yet I have had several similar encounters with the police.  On one occasion, I was ordered off my motorcycle (back when I had one), and ordered to interlock my fingers behind my neck and drop to my knees on the side of a highway.  I hadn’t mouthed off in any way, or given any cause to believe that I was a threat when the black police officer gave me the order.  And the officer’s tone had been, “Do it now or I will shoot you.”  He inspected me for weapons and inspected my bags, before clearing me to stand up.  When I asked why he had treated me this way, the officer curtly answered, “You matched the general description of a robbery suspect.”  No, “Gee, I’m really sorry.  It must have been kind of embarrassing kneeling on the side of the road with your arms over your head like that and all them cars driving by.”

I thought the officer was a complete jerk.  But it never even occurred to me to think that this black authority figure was a racist out to get even with whitey.  Primarily because I’d already had three earlier unfortunate wrong-place-wrong-time situations with rude police officers who were white.  Once I’d been loudly cursed at by a police officer who was manning a perimeter check point when I tried to tell him I’d just seen the man they were probably looking for and noted the direction he was running.  Another time I was ordered out of my car at literal gunpoint out in the desert.  I had gone out there to walk my Rottweiler, and the officer was treating the situation as a possible stolen car incident.

It’s partially because police officers are always potentially about to be shot at, and partially because law enforcement just too often attracts men and women who get off exercising authority, that civilians often feel like they are being treated rudely.

In the particular case of Sgt. James Crowley and Professor Henry Louis Gates, it seems clear to me that Crowley was in the former category of “potentially about to be shot at,” while Gates was in the latter category of “get off exercising authority.”

Blacks often talk about racism being about an unequal power relationship.  Well, the racists in this particular situation are the powerful men in society: a privileged Harvard University professor, and a President of the United States.  And the victim of racism is an honest, blue collar working man.

How dare you accuse such a man of racism, Professor Gates?  How dare you, President Obama?  You were the two men who acted stupidly, and you are the two men who should feel ashamed of yourselves.

Is Barack Obama a racist? As far as I’m concerned, he’s now got three strikes.  Strike one was belonging to a thoroughly racist church under Jeremiah Wright for 23 years.  Strike two was his appointment of a “wise Latina judge” who had imposed a racist ruling penalizing white firefighters just for being white.  And strike three is standing up for a racist bigot like Gates – who apparently becomes the next thoroughly racist extremist bigot Obama would no more disown than his own white grandmother – and associating Sgt. Crowley with racism and racial profiling when he didn’t know the facts of the case by his own admission is strike three.

It’s not the police officer who should be defending himself against allegations of racism.  It’s Henry Louis Gates.  And it’s Barack Obama.  Obama should be asked every single day, “How dare you defend the kind of racist behavior your good friend Henry Gates exhibited toward that poor white police officer who was just trying to do his job?”