Amid all the turmoil, he discusses an apparently world historical issue of school bullying; honors the 2009-10 Stanley Cup Champion Chicago Blackhawks; delivers a radio address on another all-important subject, “Women’s History Month;” attends a fund-raiser; goes golfing (that darned weather: it was just too nice for the President to resist the temptation of hitting the links — for the 61st time in his two plus years in office); yuks it up with the Washington press corps (pronounced “k-o-r”, not “k-o-r-p-s,” try to remember this, Mr. President) at the annual Gridiron Dinner. And to top it all off, the crowning event in Barack Obama’s busy schedule — drum roll, please! — videotaping his NCAA tournament bracket picks. (Think about it: Obama discusses basketball with authority, which means that he must be spending a lot of time watching the games and listening to sports commentators. Exactly what he was elected for, wasn’t he?) While Rome burned, Nero fiddled. While the world burns, Obama ponders the outcome of a college basketball tournament.

Faced with this blatant display of indolence and indomitable refusal to fulfill the duties of his office, Obama’s supporters are puzzled: What happened to the giant who bestrode the world during the election campaign? Where have all the flowers gone? Something is definitely amiss. But what? Muses NYT putative conservative David Brooks, he of the creased pant leg fame, “All in all, President Obama is an astoundingly complicated person. During the 2008 presidential campaign, and during the first two years of his term, I would have said that his troubling flaw was hubris — his attempts to do everything at once. But he seems to have an amazing capacity to self-observe and adjust. Now I’d say his worrying flaw is passivity.” Maybe he is saving his extraordinary talents for a really monumental task deserving his undivided attention — perhaps making bracket picks come NBA playoff time?

The multiverse theory that postulates the existence of numerous parallel universes, each governed by its own laws of nature, is currently gaining traction in scientific circles. I have no idea if the theory is true in cosmogony, but in the socio-political realm the elites definitely exist in a universe separate from the rest of country, divorced from the unwashed masses and common sense. It is ruled by its own peculiar laws which its denizens are required to obey unquestioningly on pain of being cast into the outer darkness of fly-over America. In that universe, a reduction in the rate of growth of social spending, say, from nine to seven percent, is a “devastating cut”; a budget reduction of about five-thousandths of one percent is tantamount to the Apocalypse; increasing spending is a sure-fire way of shrinking the budget deficit; raising taxes is a recipe for prosperity; Sarah Palin is an idiot; Michelle Obama is the most beautiful woman with the most exquisite taste in clothes since Helen of Troy; and — the ultimate eternal verity — Barack Obama is a colossus of superhuman intellectual gifts and powers.

The smart set living in an echo-chamber that reinforces their conventional wisdom have eagerly embraced this article of faith because in their world to question Obama’s ability is to commit the deadly sin of racism. And don’t think they are cynics who merely parrot the party line and go along to get along. So deeply are they invested in the Obama myth that they summon all their intellectual resources to its defense. Utterly terrified of committing thought crime, they have internalized their beliefs and with religious fervor keep faith with their creed. To let any doubt creep into their minds is tantamount to aligning themselves with the “Obama-haters” — all those “yahoos” and “knuckle-draggers” of the far right. Their greatest fear is to break ranks with the true believers and invite ostracism — a prospect too horrible to behold.

And so they explain to one another that Obama’s defiant detachment must have some reason too complex for mere mortals to discern; his powerful mind is too intricate and resourceful for anyone to understand or pass judgment on his actions (or inaction, as the case may be). Thus one of the theories gaining favor in their circles: Obama is focused on lofty objectives way beyond the capacity of our meager intelligence to grasp; he sees the deeper truth; he soars to such heights that our earth-bound concerns dwindle into total insignificance.

Once upon a time there lived an emperor. One day two crafty weavers turned up at the palace and offered to make a new suit of clothes for the ruler — clothes so marvelous that they would be invisible to those unfit for their positions, stupid or incompetent. And so when the emperor stepped out to show off his brand-new attire, the courtiers, fearful of being found out and ridiculed, would not admit to themselves the truth of what their eyes were telling them. Until an innocent child in the crowd of onlookers cried out, “He isn’t wearing anything at all!”, and the spell was broken.

Hans Christian Andersen did not indicate whether the weavers’ names were David Axelrod and David Plouffe, but the similarity is striking. The two Davids brilliantly succeeded in packaging and selling to the country an unknown tyro from Chicago without a past or any visible qualifications other than imposing looks, a resonant voice and an ability to use the teleprompter. Like the weavers in the great Danish writer’s fairy-tale, the Obama handlers insulated their candidate against criticism by preemptively warning that any doubt as to his fitness for office was proof positive of mean-spiritedness and racism. And the liberal crowd swallowed the bait hook, line and sinker.

The famous Occam’s razor principle states that the simplest explanation is the most plausible one. Applying it to dispel the fog of propaganda, it becomes glaringly obvious that Obama is an accidental president, a lazy and indecisive incompetent devoid of any ability or desire to perform the job to which he was elected by a gullible majority, who loves the perks but hates the duties of his office; who loves to play but hates to work. Have a good look at the man occupying the White House: what you see is what you get. The Emperor has no clothes.

HT: American Thinker

After months of refusing to cut any spending, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) finally came out with a Democratic offer to cut spending for this current fiscal year by a mere $4.7 billion. The budget deficit for the current fiscal year is projected to be $1.6 trillion. So, the Senate Democrats’ spending cuts would lower the federal deficit by a mere .004%.

“At a time when Washington is borrowing about $4 billion a day, Democratic leaders want to cut about four and a half billion in government spending for the rest of the fiscal year and then call it a day,” said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R.-Ky.).

When the Democrats’ spending proposal came to the floor for a vote last week, Reid could not even keep his own Democrats on board because the spending cuts were so insignificant. When the Democratic alternative spending bill came to a vote in the Senate, 11 Democrats voted against it. The final vote was 42-58.

In contrast, the Republican House-passed Continuing Resolution (CR) which cuts government spending this year by $61 billion got more votes (44-56), but did not meet the 60-vote threshold needed to pass. McConnell held together all his Republicans for the CR (H.R. 1), except three who wanted even deeper cuts, Jim DeMint (S.C.) and freshmen Mike Lee (Utah) and Rand Paul (Ky.). So all of the Republicans in the Senate and 11 of the Democrats want to cut government spending this year, while Reid and other Democratic leaders fight to keep almost all the taxpayers’ money in Washington.

The Democratic House and Senate last year did not pass a budget or any of the appropriations bills. To keep the government from shutting down, McConnell and Obama negotiated a three-month CR in December. On February 19, the House Republicans passed a CR (H.R. 1) that cut $61 billion in government spending for the current fiscal year, which goes through September 30.

Reid at first refused to take up the House CR, calling the cuts “draconian,” and Obama said that he would veto the bill if it passed the Senate. So to keep the government funded after March 4, Congress had to pass a short-term CR. However, Boehner said that any short-term CR to keep the government funded while budget negotiations continued would have to include cuts in spending. Thus, the House passed a two-week CR last week that cuts spending by $4 billion and expires March 18.

While the Senate Democrats blocked the House CR, the House Democrats were claiming that they had already compromised on spending cuts. Pelosi said last week that the House Democrats “have, I repeat, have cut $41 billion from President Obama’s budget already.”

“We’ve come up more than halfway to meet the Republican proposals, Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D.-Md.) told reporters this week.

But, the Democratic leaders’ saying that they had already cut spending is merely a reference to the December CR which was $41 billion less than Obama’s proposed budget, which was never enacted. So the House Democrats are not willing to cut a single penny from current spending, but claiming that they have already come “halfway”.

To be fair, the Democrats learned how to claim bigger spending-cut numbers from the example set by the House Republicans. When Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R.-Wis.) first announced the CR in early February, he said that it met the Republicans’ “Pledge To America” by cutting spending back to 2008 levels and saving $100 billion from the President’s budget. But when the actual numbers were released, it was clear that Ryan’s CR did not bring spending back to 2008 levels and cut only $32 billion from current 2010 levels.

The House Republican leadership spent days trying to spin reporters by saying that the Pledge to cut $100 billion was always in reference to Obama’s proposed budget and was for a calendar year. But it was the backlash from the freshmen and the conservative wing that forced Speaker of the House John Boehner (R.-Ohio) to ask the Appropriations Committee to cut more discretionary spending. By the time the CR came to the floor for a vote, the Republicans had cut another $29 billion from this year’s spending.

So, the Democrats’ claim that their $41 billion is halfway to $100 billion means that both sides are citing non-existent cuts to hypothetical spending levels. Bottom line: Both sides are cooking the books to make their political points and improve their image with the public.

While the Senate debated the House spending bill last week, President Obama put out his second veto threat. The White House said that Obama would veto H.R. 1 if it passed the Senate because “the unbalanced bill would undermine the nation’s economic recovery and its ability to succeed in a complex global environment.”

Obama has now put out two veto threats, but has not participated at all in the negotiations with Congress on the budget.
“Where is the President?” asked an outraged Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R.-Va.). “We continue to hear from him and the White House that, ‘We are going to meet you halfway.’ Well, where is the President?”

Instead, Obama named Vice President Joe Biden as his “chief negotiator” with congressional leaders on the CR. But, Biden left the country before the Senate vote to travel to went to Finland, Russia and Moldova.

“The Vice President is the main negotiator; the Vice President is not even in the country today. We have less than a week and a half to go. You ask the press secretary at the White House, ‘Well who’s the lead negotiator with the Vice President gone?’ ‘Can’t tell you that.”” said Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R.-Calif.) last Wednesday.

Biden’s only involvement with the CR was to make phone calls to Boehner and McConnell. He tried calling Reid but they did not connect (There is more than one phone line on Air Force 2. I know; I’ve flown on it many times.)

So what are the next steps?

The House will vote on Tuesday on a three-week CR that will cut an additional $6 billion in spending. The House Republicans are putting the CR out a week earlier than the deadline in order to disarm the Democrats from making accusations of shutting down the government. The Senate and President are expected to go along with the new CR.

For the negotiations on the long-term CR to occur, Republicans insist that the Democrats have to come up with real spending cuts in order for them to negotiate down from the $61 billion level. But so far, the only offer on the table is the $61 billion from the House CR, which failed to pass the Senate last week.

“Where is the Senate Democrat plan? I’m not going to sit up here and negotiate with myself!” an indignant Boehner said last Thursday.

The negotiations between the House Republicans and Senate Democrats will have to resume, but the resolution and the final level of spending cuts is still unpredictable.

HT: Human Events

Faced with stifling debt, bloated pensions and intractable government unions, liberal Midwestern legislators have fled those states — paralyzing Republican fiscal reform efforts. Like Monty Python’s Brave Sir Robin and his band of quivering knights, these elected officials have only one plan when confronted with political hardship or economic peril: Run away, run away, run away.

Scores of Fleebagger Democrats are now in hiding in neighboring Illinois, the nation’s sanctuary for political crooks and corruptocrats. Soon, area hotels will be announcing a special discount rate for card-carrying FleePAC winter convention registrants. Question: Will the White House count the economic stimulus from the mass Democratic exodus to Illinois as jobs “saved” or “created”? More important question: How much are taxpayers being charged for these obstructionist vacations?

Voters have spoken: In Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio and across the heartland, they put Republican adults in charge of cleaning up profligate Democrat-engineered messes. Instead of defending their same old tax-hiking, union-protecting, spending-addicted ways, Democrats are crossing their state borders into big government sanctuary zones — screaming “la, la, la, we can’t hear you” all the way.

Wisconsin Democrats warned that their delinquent members — evading state troopers and literally phoning it in — could be gone “for weeks” to prevent a quorum on GOP Gov. Scott Walker’s modest plan to increase public union workers’ health insurance and pension contributions, end the compulsory union dues racket and rein in collective bargaining powers run amok.

Big Labor insists its intransigence isn’t about money, but about “rights.” But the dispute is about nothing but money and power — the union’s power to dictate and limit its members’ health insurance choices to a lucrative union-run plan, for example, which adds nearly $70 million in unnecessary taxpayer costs.

On Tuesday, only three of 40 House Democrats in Indiana showed up for legislative debate on a similar bill to end forced unionism and join 22 other “right to work” states. Hoosier media reported that some of the fugitive pols may be headed to Kentucky in addition to President Obama’s old political stomping grounds.

The White House and Beltway Democrats have paved the way for subverting deliberative democracy, of course. If only Republicans in Wisconsin and Indiana had followed the Obama/Pelosi/Reid model and rammed their behind-closed-doors-crafted legislative agenda through in the middle of the night on a holiday weekend, the Fleebaggers wouldn’t be on the lam today. But GOP legislators just don’t roll that way. It’s Democrats who cut and run — abroad in wartime and at home in crisis.

Almost eight years ago, more than 50 Texas Democratic state lawmakers holed up in Oklahoma and New Mexico for weeks to stymie a vote on Republican-sponsored redistricting plans they opposed. Over the past week, it was thousands of public school teachers in Wisconsin who faked illness and boycotted their classrooms. And it’s union henchmen calling out loud for statewide strikes to bring Republican reformers to their knees.

The Party of Truancy has become a laughingstock — and Americans aren’t waiting for left-wing late-night comedians to bring down the hammer of well-earned mockery. The Internet has lit up over the past week with “Wanted” posters and all-points-bulletin alerts for missing Democrats.

Blogger John Hayward of the conservative Human Events newspaper joked that “the next issue of National Geographic will track the migratory patterns of fugitive Democrats across the great plains.” Seton Motley of the Washington, D.C.-based Media Research Center weighed in: “First, Wisconsin. Now, Indiana. When we said ‘runaway government,’ it was a complaint — not a suggestion.” Comedian Stephen Kruiser snickered that OFA — the Democrats’ political organizing arm, Organizing for America — now stands for “Organizing Fleeing Americans.”

Note: Many of the loudest Washington and Hollywood critics of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s decision to resign from office in 2009 are themselves now AWOL on the Wisconsin and Indiana AWOL-ians. Who’s all for mocking “quitters” now? Anyone?

One mortified Wisconsin taxpayer speaks for many. “As the daughter of former Wisconsin Senate Minority Floor Leader William R. Moser (D-Milwaukee, Dist. 6),” Mary Magdalen Moser told me, she’s humiliated by the “flee-bagging” politicians. “I am ashamed of the actions taken by the minority party to subvert our system of government by boycotting its legitimate processes. Anarchy is undemocratic, and I know that my Dad is spinning in his grave right now. … I do not support refusing to participate, because that will not solve any of the issues facing our state.”

Remember the 2008 Democratic Party chant: “Fired up! Ready to go!” Well, there’s a new Democratic Party motto in town: “Ready to go? OK, then, let’s blow this pop stand!” It’s difficult to see how Obama and his absconder allies can “win the future” when they’re stampeding over each other to escape the present.

HT: Townhall.com

How delicious is irony, how fickle fate?

Just a little more than two years ago, liberals were ecstatic about Barack Obama’s election and Democrats’ control of Congress. Liberal pundits were all atwitter about the brand new Democratic Era that voters had ushered in. America would finally become what America should have been years ago: a European-style social democracy.

Boy, did Democrats misread their mandate! With very little hindsight needed, it’s apparent to all but ideologically-blinkered liberals that the Democrats’ gross overreach isn’t what voters wanted or expected. Voters wanted a redo of the Clinton years. Instead, in the person of Barack Obama, voters got an amalgam of FDR and LBJ with a dash of Neville Chamberlin thrown in.

But here’s the real kicker. Two years of Obama-Reid-Pelosi overreach and excesses may have been the table-setter for the real revolution now unfolding. Voters and taxpayers first needed to see the irresponsibility and recklessness of unalloyed liberalism to appreciate that conservative government is far superior. Thank you, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid.

Of course, the real revolution began last year with the 2010 midterm elections. Yes, the GOP made the largest gains in U.S. House seats since 1948. But the underappreciated story is that the GOP racked up huge gains in state legislative contests, and further down ballot, Republicans swept plenty of local offices. State legislatures control congressional redistricting. Republicans now dominate enough key statehouses to lock-in GOP congressional electoral advantages for a decade.

Had voters limited their ballots to throwing out the rascals in Congress, a fair argument could be made that 2010 was just a protest vote — an attempt by voters to shake up the Democrats. But when voters drill down to change party control of legislatures, city halls, and county commissions, you can bet that they’re thoroughly repudiating the party in power. The 2010 repudiation of Democrats was a clear expression of what voters did and didn’t want from government.

Move now to the present time. Republicans are on the march in Congress. Late last week, House Republicans passed a budget bill containing $61 billion in cuts. It’s not the $100 billion that conservatives aimed for, but it’s substantial and can be considered a down payment. The House Republican proposal now goes to the Senate. The budget process wrangling is just in its first phase. Moving forward, the GOP will have multiple opportunities to push more cuts.

And look what else House Republicans are doing. They’re using the budget process to hamstring Obamacare by denying it funding. Shutting down and then nixing ObamaCare would be an historic victory in the fight to end liberalism’s nearly hundred-year dominance; it would be one of those critical turning points in history — like Vicksburg and Gettysburg — a momentum shifter that leads to other key victories, such as entitlements reform.

Also, Indiana Republican Mike Pence offered and passed an amendment cutting funding for the odious abortion mill called Planned Parenthood. Another amendment, offered by Oregon Republican Greg Walden, that passed, chokes off funds for the Federal Communications Commission’s net-neutrality gambit. Net -neutrality would concentrate more power in the FCC’s hands and stymie free speech across the internet. Net-neutrality could well have been made in China.

Of course, the revolution just beginning isn’t confined to the Halls of Congress. Chris Christie, New Jersey’s intrepid Republican governor, fired the first shots last year in the burgeoning struggle to bring sanity back to state affairs. Christie’s efforts aren’t limited to balancing state budgets and reining in taxes, important as those things are. Christie is working to limit government and expand the playing field for the private sector. As we’re seeing, government without proper limits is a ruinous beast. California is a prime example.

Now newly elected Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is making headlines because he dares to say that his state is broke and that the public employees’ gravy train needs to end. Governor Walker wants to end collective bargaining for public employees, excepting police and firefighters, on the simple, common sense premise that employees shouldn’t be negotiating the hours they work, among other things.

In Ohio, Governor John Kasich is gearing up to slash budgets, rollback taxes, cut regulations, and confront the Buckeye State’s public employee unions. There’ll be fireworks aplenty in Columbus.

Thomas Jefferson is being proven right again. The states are the laboratories of democracy. Christie, Kasich, and Walker are seeking to demonstrate that limited, financially responsible government is best for economic and societal health. If successful — and we should all have high confidence that these governors will succeed — the lessons will not be lost on voters and politicians in other states. Revolutions are like that; it takes just a few courageous leaders to embolden others and for revolutions to spread.

A marvelous, if unintended, consequence of this burgeoning conservative revolution is what it’s doing to liberalism. The budding conservative revolution is starting to place strains on liberalism; beginning to make liberals and their allies fight defensive battles in multiple — and multiplying — places. Call this a modified Cloward-Piven — or Cloward-Piven turned on its masters.

Challenging liberal governance, and pressing limited government reforms, will help bring down liberalism across the nation. And that should be an indisputable aim of the new conservative revolution. Liberalism became a pox on the nation years ago. Marginalizing liberalism would be an incomparable service to generations to come — and to those kids being lied to now by too many Wisconsin teachers.

“Change We Can Believe In.” Mr. Obama’s slogan always had a nice ring to it, but it was misapplied and a little ahead of its time. With the conservative revolution, change we can really believe in has arrived. How’s that for rich irony?

HT: American Thinker

After months of “change,” Americans have had enough. An Aug. 8 Rasmussen poll of likely voters shows only 30 percent believe the country is headed in the right direction. Two-thirds (65 percent) think America is on the wrong track.

The same overwhelming majority tell Rasmussen they want smaller government – one that does less, costs less and operates far more efficiently.

Progressives scoff, asserting that Americans want Big Government – they just don’t want to pay for it. Besides, they argue, there are no other options: Conservatives have no ideas on how to address our problems.

They’re mistaken. The proof is found in “Solutions for America,” a comprehensive 54-page guide from The Heritage Foundation that presents more than 120 conservative policy prescriptions to get our nation back on the right track. Some of the recommendations are groundbreaking. Others are familiar. All have one thing in common: They would return power to the people. And, collectively, they will transform America.

For example, “Solutions for America” calls for ending the era of open-ended entitlements. Spending on the Big Three entitlement programs – Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security – is on auto-pilot, consuming an ever-increasing share of GDP without even a vote in Congress. Lawmakers need to bring these programs into the budgetary process, establishing firm, five-year budgets and making sure that those needing help the most get it.

We should raise the Social Security retirement age, and encourage people to work longer by eliminating payroll taxes for those over retirement age. We should let needy families choose how to spend their share of Medicaid dollars, allowing them to purchase higher quality private insurance. And when entitlement spending exceeds congressionally approved levels, automatic triggers should keep costs in line.

We must cap welfare spending, which now, across all levels of government, approaches $1 trillion. Congress should consider all 71 means-tested welfare programs as a whole, eliminating duplicative programs and capping annual increases in welfare spending at the rate of inflation.

Moreover, lawmakers should break the culture of dependency by making sure that able-bodied welfare recipients give something in return for their benefits. In some areas, this will mean strengthening work requirements. In others, it may involve treating some benefits as loans to be repaid.

Spending overall also needs to be restrained. “Solutions” recommends a mechanism to force Congress to live within a reasonable budget: a binding cap that limits future year-to-year growth in federal spending to inflation plus population growth. The general goal should be to lower spending to the historic norm of no more than 20 percent of GDP.

Other common-sense policy proposals in “Solutions” include:

– Aligning the top tax rate on corporate earnings with those of our 30 largest trading partners, so we can better compete for business globally.

– Letting states opt out of inflexible, D.C.-based programs, so they can resume their traditional leadership roles and freely pursue innovative approaches in areas such as education and transportation.

– Ending corporate welfare and earmarks.

– Returning to a foreign policy of “peace through strength” to deal with the growing threat of nuclear proliferation and well as the dangers posed by global terrorism and hostile conventional forces.

At a recent fundraiser, President Obama asserted: “The other side isn’t offering anything new.” As if centralized government based on the principles of control, spending, debt and redistribution of wealth is new. It isn’t. It’s been tried worldwide and has consistently failed.

Yet the calls for lavish spending continue – the only answer we get from the current leadership. Conservative answers start from a very different place. The counterpoint to thoughtless and expensive government programs is not new thoughtless and expensive government programs. The counterpoint is real reform.

The principles that our nation was founded upon aren’t ideas to be discarded. They’re exceptional goals to be rediscovered. Real government reform is itself an untested idea. That’s what conservatives offer. It’s an idea whose time has come.

HT: CNSnews

Dennis Prager

Next Tuesday, Nov. 2, 2010 is not Election Day. It is Referendum Day.

It may be commonplace for commentators to announce that every election is “the most important election in our lifetime” or something analogous. But having never said that of a presidential election, let alone an off-year election, this commentator cannot be accused of crying wolf when I say that this off-year election is not simply the most important of my lifetime. It is the most important since the Civil War.

The reason is that unlike all previous elections, this one is actually a referendum on the direction of the United States of America.

If the Democrats win:

– The American people have announced, consciously or not, that they support the Democratic Party’s “fundamental transformation” — those were President Obama’s words when he campaigned, and he has lived up to them — of America from a liberty-based state of limited government into an equality-based welfare state with an ever-expanding government.

– America will change from a country that emphasizes producing wealth to a country that emphasizes redistribution of wealth.

The left has never been primarily interested in creating wealth. Its primary goal always and everywhere has been to redistribute it. That so many businessmen and much of Wall Street are only now awakening to this fact is only a testament to the staggering lack of wisdom in big business.

– America will produce increasingly narcissistic citizens.

For proof, just look at the virtual shutdown of much of France and the ubiquitous rioting of vast numbers of its citizens over a tiny change in its welfare state — raising the age of retirement from 60 to 62. The idea that one will work two more years before receiving benefits until death so offends vast numbers of French — including young people who have every reason to believe they will live until the age of 100 — that they are fighting it as if their very lives were in jeopardy. That is the self-centeredness that all welfare states engender in their citizens.

– America will further reinforce the conviction that minorities are victims — who must be protected from their fellow Americans by the state.

Latinos, blacks, Muslims, gays and vast numbers of women have been told by the left and its political party that they are all persecuted by a country that is SIXHIRB — Sexist, Intolerant, Xenophobic, Homophobic, Islamophobic, Racist and Bigoted. That America is the least SIXHIRB country in the world is a fact that has been all but drowned out by the left-wing domination of television and print news media, all the entertainment media, and the high schools and universities.

– America will continue to undermine its unique ability to Americanize people of all ethnic, national, racial, and religious backgrounds.

With a Democratic victory the country’s very motto — E Pluribus Unum, “Out of Many One” — will continue to erode as ethnic and racial identities rather one American identity are increasingly celebrated. Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel has just announced that Germany’s experiment with multiculturalism has “utterly failed,” but the left and its political party, the Democrats, have redoubled their efforts to supplant E Pluribus Unum with multiculturalism.

– America will continue its economic slide.

With a Democratic victory, unsustainable debts will mount, wealth-producing companies will continue to flee from higher taxes and more regulations, energy use will be taxed in the name of environmentalist utopianism, and the government will continue to print dollars.

– America will become increasingly secular.

With a Democratic victory, the left’s goal of rendering America’s other motto, “In God We Trust,” an anachronism will come closer to fruition. Leftism is a jealous god. As in Western Europe, the Judeo-Christian roots of this country are ceasing to play the indispensible moral role they have played since before 1776.

And what would constitute a Democrat victory next Tuesday? Anything other than a Republican landslide. Any other result will be interpreted by the media and by the Democrats as solely a result of the economic recession and as the normal losses of the dominant party in off-year elections.

In other words, the only way to ensure that the electoral results are seen as a repudiation of the growth of the state and the other Democrat and leftist goals is through an enormous Republican victory.

Only then will America understand that this election was not first about jobs. It was above all about America.

HT: DennisPrager.com

The first: the tea party is not a “threat” to the Republican Party, the tea party saved the Republican Party. In a broad sense, the tea party rescued it from being the fat, unhappy, querulous creature it had become, a party that didn’t remember anymore why it existed, or what its historical purpose was. The tea party, with its energy and earnestness, restored the GOP to itself.

In a practical sense, the tea party saved the Republican Party in this cycle by not going third-party. It could have. The broadly based, locally autonomous movement seems to have made a rolling decision, group by group, to take part in Republican primaries and back Republican hopefuls. (According to the Center for the Study of the American Electorate, four million more Republicans voted in primaries this year than Democrats, the GOP’s highest such turnout since 1970. I wonder who those people were?)

Because of this, because they did not go third-party, Nov. 2 is not going to be a disaster for the Republicans, but a triumph.

The tea party did something the Republican establishment was incapable of doing: It got the party out from under George W. Bush. The tea party rejected his administration’s spending, overreach and immigration proposals, among other items, and has become only too willing to say so. In doing this, the tea party allowed the Republican establishment itself to get out from under Mr. Bush: “We had to, boss, it was a political necessity!” They released the GOP establishment from its shame cringe.

And they not only freed the Washington establishment, they woke it up. That establishment, composed largely of 50- to 75-year-olds who came to Washington during the Reagan era in a great rush of idealism, in many cases stayed on, as they say, not to do good but to do well. They populated a conservative infrastructure that barely existed when Reagan was coming up: the think tanks and PR groups, the media outlets and governmental organizations. They did not do what conservatives are supposed to do, which is finish their patriotic work and go home, taking the knowledge and sophistication derived from Washington and applying it to local problems. (This accounts in part for the esteem in which former Bush budget chief and current Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is held. He went home.)

The GOP establishment stayed, and one way or another lived off government, breathed in its ways and came to know—learned all too well!—the limits of what is possible and passable. Part of the social and cultural reality behind the tea party-GOP establishment split has been the sheer fact that tea partiers live in non-D.C. America. The establishment came from America, but hasn’t lived there in a long time.

I know and respect some of the establishmentarians, but after dinner, on the third glass of wine, when they get misty-eyed about Reagan and the old days, they are not, I think, weeping for him and what he did but for themselves and who they were. Back when they were new and believed in something.
Finally, the tea party stiffened the GOP’s spine by forcing it to recognize what it had not actually noticed, that we are a nation in crisis. The tea party famously has no party chiefs and no conventions but it does have a theme—stop the spending, stop the sloth, incompetence and unneeded regulation—and has lent it to the GOP.

Actually, Maureen “Moe” Tucker, former drummer of the Velvet Underground, has done the best job ever of explaining where the tea party stands and why it stands there. She also suggests the breadth and variety of the movement. In an interview this week in St. Louis’s Riverfront Times, Ms. Tucker said she’d never been particularly political but grew alarmed by the direction the country was taking. In the summer of 2009, she went to a tea-party rally in southern Georgia. A chance man-on-the-street interview became a YouTube sensation. No one on the left could believe this intelligent rally-goer was the former drummer of the 1960s breakthrough band; no one on the left understood that an artist could be a tea partier. Because that’s so not cool, and the Velvet Underground was cool.

Ms. Tucker, in the interview, ran through the misconceptions people have about tea partiers: “that they’re all racists, they’re all religious nuts, they’re all uninformed, they’re all stupid, they want no taxes at all and no regulations whatsoever.” These stereotypes, she observed, are encouraged by Democrats to keep their base “on their side.” But she is not a stereotype: “Anyone who thinks I’m crazy about Sarah Palin, Bush, etc., has made quite the presumption. I have voted Democrat all my life, until I started listening to what Obama was promising and started wondering how the hell will this utopian dream be paid for?”

There is also this week a striking essay by Fareed Zakaria, no tea partier he, in Time magazine. He unknowingly touched on part of the reason for the tea party. Mr. Zakaria, born and raised in India, got his first sense of America’s vitality, outsized ways, glamour and crazy high-spiritedness as a young boy in the late 1970s watching bootlegged videotapes of “Dallas.” What a country! His own land, in comparison, seemed sleepy, hidebound. Now when he travels to India, “it’s as if the world has been turned upside down. Indians are brimming with hope and faith in the future. After centuries of stagnation, their economy is on the move, fueling animal spirits and ambition. The whole country feels as if it has been unlocked.” Meanwhile the mood in the U.S. seems glum, dispirited. “The middle class, in particular, feels under assault.” Sixty-three percent of Americans say they do not think they will be able to maintain their current standard of living. “The can-do country is convinced that it can’t.”

All true. And yet. We may be witnessing a new political dynamism. The tea party’s rise reflects anything but fatalism, and maybe even a new high-spiritedness. After all, they’re only two years old and they just saved a political party and woke up an elephant.

The second fact of 2010 is understood by Republicans but not admitted by Democrats. It is that this is a fully nationalized election, and at its center it is about one thing: Barack Obama.

It is not, broadly, about the strengths or weaknesses of various local candidates, about constituent services or seniority, although these elements will be at play in some outcomes, Barney Frank’s race likely being one. But it is significant that this year Mr. Frank is in the race of his life, and this week on TV he did not portray the finger-drumming smugness and impatience with your foolishness he usually displays on talk shows. He looked pale and mildly concussed, like someone who just found out that liberals die, too.

This election is about one man, Barack Obama, who fairly or not represents the following: the status quo, Washington, leftism, Nancy Pelosi, Fannie and Freddie, and deficits in trillions, not billions.

Everyone who votes is going to be pretty much voting yay or nay on all of that. And nothing can change that story line now.

HT: WSJ

Establishment Washington got yet another whipping last night, as “the unelectable” Christine O’Donnell — supported by Sarah Palin and the Tea Parties — rallied to convincingly beat liberal and well-connected Mike Castle in Delaware’s Republican primary for Senate. Castle, we were told by the powers that be, was the only electable Republican — and his loss is already being mourned by “Beltway conservatives” like Karl Rove and Dana Perino, not to mention the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which has announced that O’Donnell will have to finance her campaign on her own.

Well, fine. The last time Republican voters agreed with the Beltway pundits (and the Democrats) and awarded a nomination to “the most electable Republican” who was “well-respected across the aisle,” we got John McCain. How did that work out? Just great — as long as you are a Democrat.

Thankfully, tiny Delaware’s voters ignored their party apparatus, actually held a true Republican primary, and chose the person who most closely represents what the Republican base voter believes in. This is what party primaries used to be for. It is what they should still be held for. It is simply unforgivable for Republican apparatchiks to choose sides in a primary — yet they do — and they are so often disastrous picks. Can you say “Arlen Specter”? “Charlie Crist”?

So while there’s no guarantee of success in November for O’Donnell, she joins a list of “unelectable Republicans” past and present like Ronald Reagan, Jesse Helms, Rand Paul, Scott Brown, Sharron Angle, Chris Christie, and Marco Rubio, to name a few. Their stories are varied, but all were deemed “unelectable” by the party insiders at some point in their careers, and they were all considered too conservative.

O’Donnell’s story of last night was simply a continuation of their stories in this very unusual 2009-2010 election cycle.

All faced establishment candidates and long odds — and yet all won by being unabashedly conservative. All read the tea leaves of the national mood much better than government insiders and political pros.

It is true that Angle, Paul, and Rubio have not won general elections yet — but they have already disproven the “unelectable” myth by staging huge rallies in the polls that we were told could never happen by the experts and insiders. Brown and Christie (who campaigned for Castle) meanwhile have shown that strong small-government conservatives can win in blue-state bastions like Massachusetts and New Jersey after all, destroying yet another inside-the-Beltway myth.

Compared to what Brown and Christie have done, Delaware might be relatively easy for O’Donnell. She had to come from way back in the polls just days ago, but she came so far so quickly that her win last night was never in doubt. It’s possible that she can do the same in the general election in a tiny state like Delaware, where face-to-face politics is the rule. And Joe Miller can replicate this in Alaska as well.

Perhaps some elections cannot swing so fast among huge populations, but one of the many ways the Tea Party groups are showing superior sophistication to the political pros is understanding the dynamics of small voting populations. Small-population Delaware, Nevada, and Alaska have just as many senators as do New York and California, and these are prime places to take a stand for principled conservatism with unknown candidates.

Yet the siren call of name recognition, inside connections, and perceived electability endures among the formulaic party pros.

Never mind that Mike Castle simply joins other moderate and respectable “electable Republicans” on the ash heap of history like McCain, Charlie Crist, Bob Dole, Arlen Specter, latter-day Jack Kemp, and Lisa Murkowski. All were establishment favorites who have, for varying reasons and in varying ways, brought shame and defeat upon that very establishment’s party. Some even became official enemies of the party, proving that conservative doubts about them were justified all along.

But the Beltway arrogance is not deterred.

The long knives of establishment Washington — including the blades of Rove and Perino — were already slashing into O’Donnell last night. They mumbled about her personal problems and her inexperience and her unclear financial background as reasons she cannot win the general election.

Well let me clue these comfortable Beltway mavens in on something: many of us country-class peons out here in “non-government” land have had problems like O’Donnell’s because of the burden of supporting Washington, not to mention the rash of bureaucrats at every conceivable level of government. It is becoming damned near impossible to negotiate a life outside the Beltway without some problems. That’s exactly what the Tea Party movement and all of these elections are about. We are sick of it.

In fact, the Delaware seat up for grabs is “the Joe Biden seat,” a seat that for decades has included a private AMTRAK seat every morning and every night for Biden. Whatever O’Donnell’s personal and financial problems are, they may have something to do with the fact that the taxpayers weren’t subsidizing her every whim the way they have Biden’s and Castle’s for decades.

It is too early to know if Delaware’s voters will look at O’Donnell’s candidacy that way in the general election — but we do already know this: Washington insiders’ views of electability are deeply flawed, and Washington has never been so isolated from the rest of the country. If elected, O’Donnell nor Miller nor Angle nor Rubio will be a threat to “work with” the Obama agenda or, worse yet, jump parties.

The voters instinctively know this. That’s why they are voting for these people. And when you think about it, that’s what makes someone truly “electable,” isn’t it?

And that’s the takeaway from the amazing victory last night for Christine O’Donnell.

HT: American Thinker

If she had, she would have seen that President Obama’s lack of cojones extends far beyond border security — it extends to our national security more broadly. President Obama, simply put, has no cojones when it comes to defending and protecting this nation from threats at home and abroad. His leadership style is more waxed chest and eyebrow trim than alpha male; he’s our first metrosexual president, an elitist who believes that sweet-talking and willful blindness to the nature of our enemies are a recipe for a success.

Being President of the United States is not an episode of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” where subtle commentary and snarky remarks produce results. It’s more like an episode of “Walker, Texas Ranger,” where there are good guys and bad guys, and the bad guys need a roundhouse kick to the face. But President Obama is busy watching Bravo.

Nowhere is Obama’s lack of metaphoric testosterone clearer than in his tack with the Ground Zero mosque issue. Obama said that the mosque should be built because this is a simple “freedom of religion” issue, which of course is false — the mosque can be built anywhere, just not on the secular holy site that is Ground Zero. Obama’s bizarre argument is equivalent to stating that it would be a “freedom of speech” issue if the KKK wanted to build a grand headquarters on the assassination site of Martin Luther King, Jr. In both cases, the principles of freedom of religion/speech are not risked by utilizing basic common sense.

The real issue here is the one Obama did not address: the responsibility of Islamism for the 9/11 attacks, and the association between the Muslims backing the Ground Zero mosque and Islamist ideology. Obama doesn’t believe Islamism is responsible for 9/11; in Dreams From My Father, he instead blames terrorism on economic imbalances (a Marxist and eunuch-ian response to the most devastating attack on American soil in history). And so for him, this is an easy decision — by simply eliding the larger issue, he can turn this into a case of xenophobia by anti-Ground Zero mosque Americans.

It’s not happenstance that Obama’s stance on the Ground Zero mosque is the most politically convenient for him; if he acknowledged the nature of our enemies, he’d have to rethink his entire foreign policy framework. He’d have to recognize that precipitous pullouts in Iraq and Afghanistan aren’t merely politically problematic, but also highly dangerous; he’d have to admit that the Muslims in the Middle East aren’t interested in making peace with the Jews in Israel; he’d have to see that the problem of Islamism isn’t merely a class or race problem, but a philosophical problem that crosses all borders. In short, he’d have to wake up to the fact that Islamism is a real threat at home and abroad.

But that wouldn’t go along with his blithe — dare we say feminine? — attitude toward our enemies, who he believes are tortured souls longing for American apologetics rather than cruel and brutal bastards bent on imposition of Shariah. In fact, Obama does Muslims a disservice by associating the imperialistic Islamism of the Ground Zero mosque — and yes, it is imperialistic — with Islam everywhere. There is a reason that Hamas has endorsed the Ground Zero mosque, and there is a reason the founder of the Ground Zero mosque refuses to disown terror against Israelis, and there is a reason he blames America for the attacks on 9/11. It’s because he’s a representative of an ideology that is political as much as it is religious, an ideology that seeks to overthrow the U.S. government and replace it with a barbaric tyranny. That Islamism should not be protected by the First Amendment in the first place.

Obama, as he has repeatedly informed us, was born and raised at least for part of his life a Muslim. He knows and thinks beautiful the call of the muezzin, he has said. That makes his ignorance of Islamism less pathetic than it is purposeful — purposeful and cojone-less. As our president, Obama must protect us from totalitarian ideologies. This is by far the most significant responsibility in his job description. He refused that responsibility this week.

We need a leader, not a womyn’s studies professor. Strike that — womyn’s studies professors are, by and large, twice as masculine as our current president. I would suggest that President Obama “cowboy up,” even though we already know what he thinks of cowboys. Unfortunately, his EZ-Bake Oven, Polly Pocket politics play right into the hands of our enemies.

HT: American Thinker

– The Congressional Budget Office says the 2010 federal deficit will be in excess of $1.3 trillion, as in $1,000,000,000,000+. (BTW, the next level we’ll be talking about out of Washington is quadrillion, which has fifteen 0′s.)

– Despite Vice President Joe Biden’s April boast that administration stimulus spending would spur the economy to add a half-million jobs a month by now, initial unemployment claims jumped a half-million last week, the worst since last November, as national unemployment remains at 9.5% and the economy sheds 131,000 more jobs.

– But the economy’s going great at the Democratic National Committee, which reports collecting $11.5 million from donors in July on top of the $53.8 million already taken in from various sources this year. The president just devoted three workdays across five states to rake in several more millions for his party.

– But before leaving for his ninth presidential vacation, 10 days at a secluded estate on Martha’s Vineyard, Obama devoted four minutes in the White House driveway to a special statement on the latest disappointing jobs numbers. (Full text, as usual, can be read on the jump, along with a brief reaction from the Republican National Committee chairman.)

No questions allowed because the president didn’t want to explain why despite the administration’s announced Recovery Summer Program, the jobs numbers have started going backward again after 19 months of promises and $787 billion in alleged stimulation spending. Because, faced with the uncertainty of the economy and the certainty of new taxes after Nov. 2, employers are holding back on hiring.

According to the president, he’s been “adamant” with Congress for months now about a new jobs bill to help small businesses. Obama says this really good bill is stalled in the Senate, where so much administration legislation has been crammed through so effectively by Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Reid’s been so good at it, in fact, that he’s now running for his political life in a reelection campaign back in Nevada where unemployment is 14.3% and Obama’s legislation is not so popular.

Reid’s up against a conservative Republican. So, that means Harry Reid must be a Democrat, just like Obama, and just like 59% of the Senate’s votes.

The very same party that has controlled both houses of Congress since the 2006 election and really controlled them both since the 2008 hopey-changey balloting.

So, facing the growing grim possibility of a GOP surge on Nov. 2, is this maybe the start of buddy-bickering within the Democratic huddle? Vulnerable people pointing the proverbial political finger of blame at someone else? That’s ridiculous, of course.

HT: Los Angeles Times

Nor is the problem confined to Milwaukee. As the sewage migrates southward toward Chicago, it impacts the shores of three Wisconsin counties and two in northern Illinois. The threat of E. coli results in the closure of beaches and other recreational activities, and the sights and smells do little for the tourist trade.

So, given the scope of this environmental and health hazard, occurring on a fairly regular basis, how do the Obama administration and the city and state Democratic machine choose to utilize Wisconsin’s allotment of borrowed federal funds?

On a “high-speed” rail link between Milwaukee and Madison, of course.

Madison is located roughly 80 miles due west of Milwaukee and is easily accessed via Interstate 94. Outside the city, the speed limit is 65 mph, and barring construction or an accident, the drive is easy. Bus service is also available between the two cities and the major communities in between. A rail link was abandoned decades ago for want of ridership.

Despite the fact that a majority of the public is against the project, Governor Jim Doyle (D) and the Obama administration insist on proceeding. Stating that the project would create “more than 5,500 construction and engineering jobs,” Doyle immediately went abroad and arranged for the purchase of the locomotives and cars in Spain. The Spanish company has committed to renovating an old plant in Milwaukee for some of the work, but the bulk of the work, and the profits, will go to Spain. Obviously, the jobs created would evaporate once the work is done, and the taxpayers would be left with ongoing operating and maintenance costs for a railroad that few will use. Like Amtrak, which runs regular service between Milwaukee and Chicago as well as to Minneapolis/St. Paul, every ride would have to be heavily subsidized.

The taxpayers of Wisconsin, among the most taxed in the country, have been vocal in their opposition. The response to this from Federal Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood is to say, “High-speed rail is coming to Wisconsin — there’s no stopping it.” Governor Doyle, whose administration and policies have been responsible for the loss of tens of thousands of Wisconsin jobs and the departure of many of the largest companies (as this is written, Milwaukee’s Harley-Davidson is considering moving its manufacturing facilities out-of-state), has decided not to run for reelection — for obvious reasons. Whether this project goes through or not, his legacy will be an expensive one.

What is happening in Wisconsin is demonstrative of a mentality that has infected government at both the national and state levels: a failure to set correct priorities and an inability to readjust those priorities in view of more serious and immediate needs. Refusing to secure the southern border, even in the face of increased drug trafficking and violence in Mexico; the inability of the administration to associate the Islamofascist movement with the threat of foreign and domestic terror, even as more incidents occur; and the insistence on passing health care and other legislation that is clearly opposed to the wishes of the majority are disastrous choices from the start. Refusal to modify or abandon them, even as their effects become obvious, is irrational at best and malevolent at worst.

In the private sector, there is a keen awareness of correct priorities and the need for the flexibility to alter them as circumstances change. It cannot be otherwise. Businesses exist to provide goods and services, and the final arbiter of their success or failure is the marketplace. No matter the product, they must be alert to changes in tastes, style, technology, society, or competition that would render their present offering vulnerable, and they must be prepared to modify, augment, or supplant it as needed. To refuse to do so begets failure, and in this day and age, the increased “speed of life” can bring that about quickly and with finality.

Within the past half-century, a number of factors have contributed to the growing isolation of government at every level from the pragmatic realities of business and the life of the average citizen. As campaign costs have risen, political office has increasingly become the province of individuals of great wealth, and money, whether inherited or acquired, tends to insulate its possessors from many of life’s realities — especially the economic ones. Once elected, an incumbent can forge links with lobbyists, PACs, wealthy ideologues, unions, and other sources of funds to greatly boost reelection chances. This has resulted in a larger population of multi-term politicians more beholden to their bankrollers than their constituents. Government has also become attractive to academics, who are frequently more used to the world of ideas and theories than practical realities. David Halberstam’s 1972 book, The Best and the Brightest, is an instructive discourse on how some of the leading academic minds of a generation helped enmesh the Kennedy and Johnson administrations in the mire of Vietnam and, once in, evolved a strategy of failure. Its lessons have not been learned by the current administration, and it is significant that fewer than 10% of the present advisory and administrative staff derive from the business community.

Many of the candidates who will be running in the fall in opposition to current policies at both the state and federal level have come from the private sector. In both substance and style, they resonate with an electorate disillusioned by and disgusted with ideologies, social engineering, impractical solutions, and, in one case at least, expensive and unnecessary railroad trains.

As for Milwaukee, there has been no plan to fix or change the sewer system, and the homeowners whose basements were inundated or have collapsed have been told by FEMA that, as of now, aid is possible only when the flood reaches the first floor. One thing is for sure: The next time the city experiences heavy rains, it will happen again, and billions of gallons of sewage will spew into Lake Michigan. There is an ironic footnote: This may be the first time that the eco-fixated Democrats should have put money down the sewer and failed to do so.

HT: American Thinker

President Obama has pledged more of your money to protect the unions and secure their vote. The administration demanded and got $26 billion taxpayer dollars to spare 300,000 teachers and other public workers from the unemployment lines.

The hundreds of billions of taxpayer money already spent by Obama and the Democrats since 2009 to pay off their union supporters was apparently not enough. Despite giving $100 billion in new funding to the Department of Education (DOE), courtesy of The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, in addition to the $25 billion bailout that saved the GM and Chrysler auto union workers, more is needed to thank them for their continuing support and unquestioning loyalty.

The Senate passed the $26 billion bailout measure last week and the House approved it on Tuesday with overwhelming Democrat support. Obama is expected to sign it quickly. The additional spending is partially paid for by reducing food stamps benefits to the poor.

The $26,000,000,000 required to protect 300,000 union jobs, works out to roughly $86,666 per job. This is an amazingly generous payoff to union workers, considering the average $56,100 yearly salaries of Americans working in the private sector.

Meanwhile the US economy continues to slow down, with the “official” unemployment rate holding steady at 9.5% and the underemployment rate (which includes part-time workers and those who have given up looking for a job) hovering around 17%.

More misery and uncertainty is in store for 15 million unemployed Americans. But government employees and union workers are experiencing unprecedented prosperity and job security under the protection of Obama’s socialist policies.

Originally posted at American Thinker Blog and at Chris Banescu.com

Image from: frugal-cafe.com

The Houston Chronicle reports that the Obama administration has ordered the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) department to implement multiple modifications to their facilities to make life easier, more comfortable, and pleasant for the hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants (approximately 400,000) it detains annually. An internal ICE email highlights 28 different changes the organization will have to make to soften the look of the facilities, present a friendlier environment to the illegals, offer better entertainment, organize fun activities, and provide illegals with free access to email and phone services, as well as better dining and training classes.

According to ICE officials all of these changes are part of broader efforts supported by Obama “to make the immigration detention system less penal and more humane.” In reality, these changes are akin to “creating an all-inclusive resort for immigration detainees” according to ICE union leaders.

Some of the changes the White House is demanding include:

• dance classes
• movie nights
• art classes
• cooking classes
• tutoring and computer training
• free and unmonitored phone service
• free email access
• bingo
• arts and crafts
• more variety in dining options
• self-serve beverage stations
• fresh vegetable bars
• fresh carrot sticks
• hanging plants
• recreation in natural setting
• robust aerobic exercise

Also, ICE is expected to eliminate pat-down searches, lockdowns, and light-out for low-risk detainees, as well as provide vastly expanded visitation rights (up to 12 hours per visit) in its facilities.

The changes listed in the ICE e-mail are planned for nine different detention centers owned and operated by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) across the country. According to the Chronicle, some of the changes “will be implemented within 30 days; others may take up to six months, said Beth Gibson, ICE’s senior counselor to Assistant Secretary John Morton and a leader of the detention reform effort.”

Illegal immigrant advocates are thrilled at the required changes. They have been advocating these transformations for years. Lory Rosenberg, policy and advocacy director for Refugee and Migrants’ Rights for Amnesty International was delighted with the promised improvements: “Many of these points are very important to changing the system from a penal system, which is inappropriate in an immigration context, to a civil detention system.”

However, ICE union leaders are appalled at the cavalier attitude towards the illegal immigrants they oversee and warn of the inherent dangers of such misguided policies. The officials are concerned the mandates will jeopardize the safety of their guards and agents, increase the potential for harm to other detainees, and cost the taxpayers more money in order to transform detention centers into an “all-inclusive resort” for immigration detainees.

“Our biggest concern is that someone is going to get hurt,” he said, taking particular issue with plans to relax restrictions on the movement of low-risk detainees and efforts to reduce and eliminate pat-down searches.

ICE leadership also expressed concerns about safety issues inherent in lowering security standards for almost half million detainees, many of which are violent and have gang affiliations. Tre Rebstock, president for Local 3332, the ICE union in Houston explains:

some detainees may be classified as low-risk because they have no serious criminal history but still may be gang members that “haven’t been caught doing anything wrong yet.”

He also said eliminating lockdowns will make it more difficult to protect detainees from one another.

He said reducing or eliminating pat-down searches could allow contraband into the facilities, including weapons.

These concerns are justified. According to ICE’s own report, as of September 9, 2009, 51% of the detained aliens were felons and 11% of the illegals had committed violent crimes. The report confirms that most common crimes committed by criminal aliens are those involving dangerous drugs, traffic offenses, simple assault, and larceny.

None of this matters to the ivory-tower elitist Obama. He condemned the people of Arizona for passing the SB1070 law that mirrors the US federal law on immigration calling it “misguided” and “irresponsible.” He has refused to listen to the American people, 73% of whom agree with Arizona and its stance on illegal immigration. He stood beside Mexican president Felipe Calderon as he bashed Arizona and its people. He then applauded Calderon’s defamation of America, while Democrats in Congress cheered and shouted their approval. He has refused to enforce our immigration laws and secure our borders. He has continued to push for amnesty while a vast majority of the American people are against it.

President Obama wants millions more voters who support his radical leftist ideals. Pandering to illegal immigrants, blaming America, and continually playing the racist card is how he can get there. This is the Democrat’s best chance to overwhelm the American electorate and they’re going for it. Damn the American people, full amnesty ahead!

5/28/2010 – Mark Steyn -
One of the chief characteristics of Barack Obama’s speechifying is its contempt for words as anything other than props of self-puffery. Consider, for example, his recent remarks to the graduating class of the United States Military Academy:

“America has not succeeded by stepping out of the currents of cooperation — we have succeeded by steering those currents in the direction of liberty and justice.”

“Steering those currents”? How could even a member of the president’s insulated, self-regarding speechwriting team be so tin-eared as to write that line? How could the president be so tone-deaf as to deliver it in May of 2010? Hey, genius, if you’re so damn good at “steering currents,” why not try doing it in the Gulf of Mexico?

Like those of many great “thinkers,” words for Barack Obama and his coterie seem to exist mostly in the realm of metaphor rather than as descriptors of actual action actually occurring in anything so humdrum as reality.

And so it is that, even as his bungling administration flounders in the turbulent waters of the Gulf, on the speaker’s podium the president still confidently sails forth deftly steering the ship through the narrow ribbon of sludge between the Scylla of sonorous banality and the Charybdis of gaseous uplift.

Two years ago this week, then Sen. Obama declared that his very nomination as Democratic Party presidential candidate (never mind his election, or inauguration) marked the moment when “our planet began to heal” and “the rise of the oceans began to slow.”

“Well, when you anoint yourself King Canute,” remarked Charles Krauthammer the other day, “you mustn’t be surprised when your subjects expect you to command the tides.”

Poor old Canute has been traduced by posterity. He was the Viking king of Denmark, England, Norway and bits of Sweden, which, as Joe Biden would say, was a big (expletive) deal back in the 11th century. And, like Good King Barack, he had a court full of oleaginous sycophants who were forever telling him, as Newsweek editor Evan Thomas said of Obama, that he’s “sort of God.”

So one day, weary of being surrounded by Chris Matthews types with the legs a-tingling 24/7, Canute ordered the footmen to take his throne down to the shore and he’d command the incoming waves to stay the hell out. Just like Obama, he would steer the very currents.

Next thing you know, Canute’s got seaweed in his wingtips and is back at the palace wringing out his Argyll socks. “Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings,” he said, “for there is none worthy of the name, but He whom heaven, earth, and sea obey by eternal laws.”

Read the full article on the Investors.com site.