It’s been awhile since VDH hit the ball out of the park like he does here. He really gets the nature of this Bourbon-esque monarchy that team Obama sees in the mirror. Well they had lots of mirrors at Versailles, as well.

United States of America does not possess the Guillotine. We have only impeachment and removal from office.

… Pity…T

Consider: The 120,000 troops in “the surge is not working” Iraq are now complaining of ennui —while the White House is paralyzed over whether to send more troops to the new escalating front in Afghanistan. How odd the present perceptions: Bush’s bad optional war became good in the public mind, and Obama’s necessary good war became bad…

The Russian gambit failed…

Sorta, Kinda, Maybe Diplomacy

…Guantanamo really will close on March 1, 2010; Iran must comply this time by June 1, 2010; all combat brigades will be out by March 2008, 2009, 2010; health care must pass by August, September, October, November…

Oil is climbing back over $80 a barrel…

They got greater bailouts, higher unemployment, larger deficits, and Chicago politics…

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• Laura Ingraham on ‘This Week:’ ‘I Might Not be Invited Back, George;’ Calls Out Charlie Gibson over ACORN Awareness (mediabistro.com)
• Politicized intelligence — will the Democrats investigate the real thing? (powerlineblog.com)
• Charles Krauthammer: In Afghanistan, the generals have spoken. But will Obama listen? (network.nationalpost.com)
• Little Hope, Less Change (navitor.blogspot.com)
• U.S. Chamber vs. Obama (blogs.wsj.com)
• Strassel: The Chicago Way (online.wsj.com)

As I watched Obama stumble, dissemble, and ramble through his prime time “State Media apparatchik public event” er, press conference, a powerful though came to mind. OK, two thoughts: The 1st, of course, was the mental image of the Brezhnev era military parades featuring the Soviet Elite atop the Kremlin walls waving to the “adoring” masses. Ah yes, the power of a prescient double entendre!

The 2nd:  Obama’s poll numbers are falling faster than Jimmy Carter’s. The Democrats, the ones who still eat meat, are in open rebellion, rightly fearing an impending 1994 redux. This guy is a liar, like Bill Clinton was. Obama, though, unlike Mr. Lewinsky, is an ideologue. Obama has neither the political skills nor the inclinations of W.C. Clinton to sway with the prevailing political winds and but survival above ideology. He has, along with the most left-wing congress since 1917, shoved his progressive, fascistic agenda against the collective will of the American people, who have seen this scam before.

His presidency, to quote a real US president, is like “an Evil Empire, whose last pages are even now being written.”

The Obama presidency is over. God bless America.

What we’re seeing is the people speaking through their politicians. Obama and many Democrats assumed that the financial crisis would predispose most Americans to favor a larger and much more expensive government than we ever have had before.

A plausible hope for change, perhaps, but polling shows it hasn’t happened. The prospect of huge federal deficits extending out as far as the eye can see is not appealing to most voters. The prospect of having the health care sector of the economy designed by the people who gave us the $787 billion stimulus package is even less appetizing.

But we should not cynically underrate the importance of a strong argument, which may prevail despite the transcendent aura of a new president. Some of the Blue Dogs’ concerns may be parochial (rural health care), but they make a strong case, buttressed by ( CBO’s) expert testimony, that Congress should not rush to transform the health care sector at huge cost and with little cost-cutting effect. And the Polis letter signers’ concern about the negative macroeconomic effects of higher taxation of high earners can find support in the writings of Democratic, as well as Republican, economists.

What will this Thursday bring? We’ll wait and see what comes from the buzzing on Capitol Hill. In the meantime, as I read the text of the Blue Dogs’ and Polis’ letters, I suddenly heard the voice of the late Jack Kemp proclaiming at the 1984 Republican National Convention that if you subsidize something, you get more of it and that if you tax something, you get less of it.
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• Obama’s Sinking Approval Ratings Are Even Worse Than They Look (usnews.com)
• Obama may have to wait for health care passage (ctv.ca)
• David Brooks: “Liberal Suicide March.” (althouse.blogspot.com)

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The argument has been frustrating.

We have the Colin Powell types demanding we draw and quarter the Rush Limbaugh’s and abandon conservatism. It’s just not fashionable, you see! We should just manage big government better than the democrooks.

Then there are the purists. Preferably start a new party, but at the very least, kick all the RINO’s and McCain’s to the curb! The republicans are worse than the democrats and must all lose, so that we can then win.

I’ve always thought both of these schools of thought were self defeating, for yes, we need to stand for limited government and constitutional jurisprudence, but there will never be enough of us to form a lasting majority. We must get better at teaching, explaining, and finding thoughtful, principled candidates, as well as finding some answer to the leftist, statist media monopoly that feeds the cancer of socialism that has befallen us. Reagan is the prototype. Idealistic, educated, dedicated to a purpose, not to a career, and yet appealing to centrists and democrats because he could explain conservatism in simple ways that people are instinctively drawn to and can’t ignore.

Mr. Barone has hit on a perfect message to which we can only hope the GOP is listening!…T

“So I think Republicans today should be less interested in moving toward the center and more interested in running against the center. Here I mean a different “center” — not a midpoint on an opinion spectrum, but rather the centralized government institutions being created and strengthened every day. This is a center that is taking over functions fulfilled in a decentralized way by private individuals, firms and markets.

…To govern is to choose, as John F. Kennedy said, and those in charge of these new centralized institutions are making choices that inevitably favor some and hurt others. Unsurprisingly, the politically well connected tend to get the favors. Banks forced to take government money are now blocked from paying it back and in the meantime must direct funds where the government wants them to go…when government gets this intertwined with the private sector, when it makes decisions not based on neutral economic criteria but by what is at best guesswork about the allocation and valuation of vast amounts of capital, bailout favoritism and crony capitalism are inevitable.

…It’s arguably good policy as well as good politics to run against this over-powerful center. Bailout favoritism and crony capitalism not only misallocate economic resources, they also sap faith in the fairness of our institutions. After World War II, Democrats wanted to retain wartime high taxes, pro-union labor laws, and wage and price controls — all manipulatable for political benefit by political insiders. Republicans ran in 1946 on the theme of “Had enough?” and won big enough majorities to lower taxes, revise labor laws and abolish controls.

The 1946 Republicans didn’t move to the center. They ran against the power of the center and permanently redefined where the center of the political spectrum was. That’s a path today’s Republicans might want to consider.
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Is it just me? Am I the only one who would do almost anything for one night with Ann Coulter?! Oh well…

I see that the press – MSNBC in particular – and the fanatic leftists in congress are clamoring to put Bush and Cheney in jail for “torture” related war crimes. They use as their latest shallow justification that WWII Japanese war criminals were executed for “waterboarding” American POW’s (execution is what the press and the left really want for Bush of course!).

Problem is, as is the case with most of what the MSM states as fact, and almost all of what the left claims, this case is patently false, and provably so.

In fact – the CIA just this very day released the transcript of the EIT congressional briefing, attended by Nancy Pelosi, which now proves not only that she knew and approved of the waterboarding EIT, but that she knew it had already taken place, and upon whom it specifically had been used (Abu Zubaydah). Again, she signalled her approval at this time.

- Hypocrite, thy name is liberal statist!..T

…Given what the Japanese did to prisoners, waterboarding would be a reward for good behavior.

…To claim that the Japanese – architects of the Bataan Death March – were prosecuted for “waterboarding” would be like saying Ted Bundy was executed for engaging in sexual harassment.

What the Japanese did to their POWs made even the Nazis blanch. The Japanese routinely beheaded and bayoneted prisoners; forced prisoners to dig their own graves and then buried them alive; amputated prisoners’ healthy arms and legs, one by one, for sport; force-fed prisoners dry rice and then filled their stomachs with water until their bowels exploded; and injected them with chemical weapons in order to observe, time and record their death throes before dumping them in mass graves.

The Japanese “water cure” was to “waterboarding” as practiced at Guantanamo what rape at knifepoint is to calling your secretary “honey.”

The Japanese version of “waterboarding” was to fill the prisoner’s stomach with water until his stomach was distended – and then pound on his stomach, causing the prisoner to vomit…

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The most dangerous, radical extremist ever to occupy a position of high executive authority in the history of the United States of America. The man is a National Socialist in the arena of economics – we already knew that – Now if these show trials occur he will duplicate the excess’s of Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler.

“Oh that’s too far!” you say? What will stop the cycle once our 250 year tradition of not criminalizing policy differences ends? What is it, really, that separates us from tinpot Latin dictatorships? They do, after all, all have constitutions, do they not? Indeed it is our tradition of the rule of law  which will be inevitably broken in the process of these NAZI show trials.

Pelosi, Reid, Leahy, Obama himself – they were all briefed on these methods – indeed, they all concurred and wished for even more strenuous techniques to be used. They are traitors to America ladies and gentlemen – nothing less.

The WSJ lays it out, excerpted below…T

Mark down the date. Tuesday, April 21, 2009, is the moment that any chance of a new era of bipartisan respect in Washington ended. By inviting the prosecution of Bush officials for their antiterror legal advice, President Obama has injected a poison into our politics that he and the country will live to regret…

…Mr. Obama may think he can soar above all of this, but he’ll soon learn otherwise. The Beltway’s political energy will focus more on the spectacle of revenge, and less on his agenda. The CIA will have its reputation smeared, and its agents second-guessing themselves. And if there is another terror attack against Americans, Mr. Obama will have set himself up for the argument that his campaign against the Bush policies is partly to blame…

…Mr. Obama is more popular than his policies, due in part to his personal charm and his seeming goodwill. By indulging his party’s desire to criminalize policy advice, he has unleashed furies that will haunt his Presidency.
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