Bolton at his best...

More Mr. Nice Guy:

"Obama has now explicitly rejected the idea that U.S. weakness is provocative, arguing instead that weakness will convince Tehran and Pyongyang to do the opposite of what they have been resolutely doing for decades—vigorously pursuing their nuclear and missile programs. Obama’s first year amply demonstrates that his approach will do nothing even to retard, let alone stop, Iran and North Korea."

Quote of the Day....

Jennifer Rubin:

"...when the thrill was based on cotton-candy rhetoric and a blank slate onto which Obama told us we were projecting our hopes and dreams. If there is no there there, then the thrill is not likely to return."

The Phantom strikes again!

Obama's 2011 budget will include phantom cap-and-trade revenue:

"But then Obama's $787 billion economic stimulus program has produced two million phantom jobs located in phantom zip codes in phantom congressional districts, so perhaps nobody should be surprised to see phantom revenues in a White House budget proposal."

Steun is the Dave Barry of politics...

Mark Steyn:

..."“I don’t quit.” So on he went. As my colleague Rich Lowry put it after the Massachusetts vote, the public thinks Obama doesn’t get it, and Obama thinks the public doesn’t get it. And as he’s got the microphone, he’s gonna keep talking at you until you do get it.

The ever tinnier, more perfunctory sophomoric uplift at the start and finish can’t conceal the hope-killing, jobs-slaying, soul-sapping message in between, which is perfectly consistent, and has been for two years. As President Obama sees it, whatever the problem — from health care to education, banking to the environment — the solution is more Washington."

Of course he's against it now....

OBAMA'S DUBIOUS ALLIES:

"And there was nothing to stop foreign nationals from donating directly to the Obama campaign. As Scott Johnson noted in this newspaper, 'No presidential campaign has ever before received such a gargantuan sum of money from unidentified contributors.'

An investigation by National Journal reporter Neil Munro found that the McCain campaign Web site didn't allow anonymous donations, while the Obama Web site did."

Keep 'em coming... then we know he will be gone

Obama Letting It Ride on a Bad Bet:

"Since taking office, Obama has continued to see the presidency as the perfect perch from which to campaign for a job he already has. The solution to every problem the White House runs into is “more Obama.” Much of this stems from Obama’s own arrogance. When people disagree with his health-care proposals, it is because they don’t really understand them or because they are misdirecting their anger at him. When Rep. Marion Berry (D., Ark.) warned the president that the 2010 midterms were shaping up to be a replay of the 1994 Republican tsunami, Obama reportedly told him that there was one important difference between then and now: “Me.”"

We really didn't need 12 months to find this out, did we?

RE: RE: Surprises

The White House positively crawls with lawyers and has instant access to any scholar in the country. Couldn’t it have run this part of the speech passed someone who knew what he was talking about before the president stood before the entire country and showed that he didn’t know what he was talking about?

Ira Stoll gives four reasons why he didn’t like the speech, calling the president a phony. The president is also, it seems, incompetent.

Finally, some sanity...

Bloomberg Balks at 9/11 Trial:

"The Obama administration on Wednesday lost its most prominent backer of the plan to try the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks in Lower Manhattan when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said the trial should not be held in New York City."

Facts are such an inconvenience when you are trying to take the country over....

President Wrong on Citizens United Case:

"Tonight the president engaged in demogoguery of the worst kind, when he claimed that last week's Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC, 'open[ed] the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities.'

The president's statement is false.

The Court held that 2 U.S.C. Section 441a, which prohibits all corporate political spending, is unconstitutional. Foreign nationals, specifically defined to include foreign corporations, are prohibiting from making 'a contribution or donation of money or ather thing of value, or to make an express or implied promise to make a contribution or donation, in connection with a Federal, State or local election' under 2 U.S.C. Section 441e, which was not at issue in the case. Foreign corporations are also prohibited, under 2 U.S.C. 441e, from making any contribution or donation to any committee of any political party, and they prohibited from making any 'expenditure, independent expenditure, or disbursement for an electioneering communication.'

This is either blithering ignorance of the law, or demogoguery of the worst kind."

I love this woman....

Althouse: Justice Alito overshadows Obama on the day after the President's address.:

"Isn't it fascinating that the lengthy, amplified, magnified speech of the most powerful man in the world with his big captive audience — in the magnificent room and in smaller rooms all over the country — are outweighed by one man's headshake and silent mouthing of 2 or 3 words?

And isn't it ironic that, right when we saw the judge's minimalist expression that overwhelmed the President's torrent of words, Obama was railing about the 'powerful interests' and that would use their great wealth to speak far too much during election campaigns?

It's not how much or how loud you speak that counts, is it?"

Never at a loss for stupidity....

PETA wants animatronic groundhog:

"Punxsutawney Phil might be the most pampered groundhog in the world, but that's not good enough for the folks at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

They sent a letter to Phil's handlers, urging them to use a robotic rodent rather than the real Phil on Tuesday."

Goes perfectly with my post on Matthews...

Left Goes Bonkers Over McDonnell’s Crowd:

Again, our so-called "progressives" get really snarky when someone other then them seem to be playing the race card. Only real liberals are permitted to be inclusive......

Thanks, Jim....

I Was Completely Wrong About Barack Obama

Just how laughable is this:

MSNBC’s Matthews: ‘I Forgot He Was Black’



If you want a sign of how bad things are on the left, listen to this idiot. You see, when you are "progressive", the fact that Obama is black is something that should always be on your mind because, well, you know, he's black; and we are supposed to be amazed that he got the job in the first place. Could this be any more patronizing or insulting? I mean, I actually HATE (caps intended) Obama; and I can promise you that I am measuring him not by the color of his skin, but the content of his (non-existent) character.

God forbid a Republican (or worse, a Fox News commentator) would have uttered these words. But, not to worry, Matthews is a member of the "good" press, and this won't keep him off the White House invite list for briefings.

Pay attention, Mr. President...

Syzygy:

"Government in general can never be trusted: that is one of the reasons why the US constitution is such a subversive document. It says that people can criticize the government, that the government can't disarm them, that the government has only those rights explicitly given to them and all other rights belong to the people, not the government.

... the US Constitution is the most subversive document ever published. With it, citizens can deny tyrants and the corrupt from taking over the system, and the system of checks and balances has, as we've recently seen, even worked when only one part of the system refuses to countenance the sins of the other two."

Taranto is right on the mark...

...Shockingly, half of all Americans have IQs below the median. But intelligence is not the same thing as wisdom or sense. Very intelligent people have been known to advance very compelling arguments on behalf of very bad ideas.

What's more, there is a particular type of stupidity to which intelligent people are uniquely prone: intellectual snobbery, or the tendency to cultivate an attitude of contempt toward those who are not as bright. This may appeal to New York Times readers or voters in, say, Hyde Park--that is, to people who think they're better than everyone else too. But it may prove Barack Obama's undoing as a national politician.

Basta!

From Disgusting to Odd:

"A question about Barack Obama is starting to take shape in the American mind: where does this stop? The “this” is the collective hodgepodge of delinquent policy, administrative incompetence, a bottomless capacity for self-delusion, hubris, and the vetoing of American opinion. The “this” is comprised of attempts to harness populist disaffection in order to create a diversion, the presidential campaign that never ends, the 24/7 up-and-down-the-dial interview blitz, the hyper-partisan “post-partisanship,” and, foremost, the compulsion to lay all blame at the feet of the previous president.

Back in October, Charles Krauthammer called Obama’s incessant denunciation of George W. Bush “disgusting.” Three months later, and still going strong, the habit is bordering on eccentric. Not merely in its preponderance, but in kind. Consider that Obama explained away Republican Scott Brown’s Massachusetts victory as resulting from Americans’ anger over the “past eight years.” A Republican won because of the voters’ rage toward Bush?

Also bordering on the eccentric is the president’s endless infatuation with his own story. On the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Obama noted how the Soviet Union’s collapse paved the way for his path to the White House. He thought the Olympics would be in the bag if he flew to Copenhagen and recited a tale from the Book of Barack. When he went to Massachusetts to stump for Martha Coakley, he told the audience, “So it’s good to be back in Boston. . . I came back here a few years ago and gave a little speech that turned out pretty well.” This was a reference to the electrifying DNC Convention speech that made him a star. “Something about Boston folks have just always been good to me,” he said, as if the people of Massachusetts were obligated to uphold this benevolent tradition. This time he was heckled and the state took a fatal chunk out of his agenda."

I'm sure this comes as a surprise to many - but certainly not me:

A World of Difference:

"This is as much an indictment of Obama as of the sycophantic press that raised nary a critical word during the campaign and instead spent its investigative energies and venom on Sarah Palin (who turned out to be more in sync with the electorate on health-care reform, climate change, and anti-terrorism policy than the suave sophisticate whom the press raved about)."

Quite a mouthful....

Conrad Black:

"The burning question after the Massachusetts Senate election is whether the administration will respond by making a course correction to survive politically, by jettisoning its policy core and cleaning up its methods, or by “doubling down,” as President Obama has implied, and escalating the ideological and guerrilla war for direction of public policy. This was a referendum on the Obama administration, including health care, but not just health care. Even less was it just the rejection of an astonishingly unappealing candidate, predestined to glory as a trivia question. John F. Kennedy took that seat with lashings of his father’s money in an anti-Brahmin revolt against Henry Cabot Lodge in 1952, and was reelected by 864,000 votes in 1958. In the intervening years of Teddy Kennedy, the Democrats could have won with a candidate not confined to two legs and one head. This was less a wake-up call than a Te Deum for a dying and sweaty dream."

Great fucking idea!

Are Donation Limits Next?:

"There should only be a two rules for campaign finance.

1. Candidates must account for every dollar raised.
2. All donations above $100.00 are to be posted in a searchable database online within 24 hrs of the check being cashed.

Other than that nothing. At least then we could see who the candidates are beholden to."

What's Worse, "Disingenuously waving the flag of the First Amendment," or Burning it? - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine

Reason Magazine:

"...When a law requires any group of two or more people who raise $5,000 for the purposes of making a political statement to adhere to a blizzard of federal regulations subject to fines, that law by definition chokes off the 'voices of everyday Americans' that President Barack Obama, in his ridiculous reaction to the decision yesterday, expressed outrage on behalf of. Free-speech campaign-finance enthusiasts are willing to censor or chill those small voices for the greater purpose of attempting (and largely failing) to blunt the political activity of hated Corporations (or 'Wall Street banks, health insurance companies and the other powerful interests,' in the words of a president who has been bailing out Wall Street banks and crafting legislative deals with health insurance companies and other powerful interests for a year now). What campaign-finance supporters are not willing to do, at least most of the time, is admit that they're making any tradeoff on political expression at all."

Oh, the natives are very restless....

HillBuzz:

"America needs to see what “Hope” and “Change” really mean…to see how Obama’s minions really behave. To see what they are up to, in ceaseless efforts to shut down all opposition to him and his socialist agenda.

We will fight these people until they actually do kill us.

And if that happens, we hope and pray some of you out there will continue the fight after us, and continue to expose these people. They can’t take all of us down, and in attacking so many of us, they will, we believe, bring THEMSELVES down in the end.

A full report on all we’ve learned later, we promise."

Obama's dream scenario....

Anti-Chávez Channel Is Taken Down:

"''They must comply with the law, and they cannot have a single channel that violates Venezuelan laws as part of their programming,'' Diosdado Cabello, director of Venezuela's state-run telecommunications agency, said Saturday."

Sound familiar?

Nothing HATES success more than failure....

Berkeley High may cut lab classes to fund programs for struggling students:

"Most districts would not argue with such a record, but Berkeley High's science labs are embroiled in a debate over scarce resources with overtones of race, class and politics.

Campus leadership has proposed cutting before- and after-school labs -- decreasing science instruction by 20% to 40% -- and using that money to fund 'equity' programs for struggling students in an effort to close one of the widest racial and ethnic achievement gaps in the state."

You see, all the liberals see the need for teaching evolution, they just refuse to practice it....