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Bury The Vietnam Analogy

Enough with the Vietnam analogies already
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Biden Butts In

As the commander in Afghanistan tries to get President Obama's attention on troops, it's political players like Vice President Biden who have his ear. Yet the military has a record of success. Biden has only blunders. ... More »
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Sarah Palin Is A Classic Populist Politician

Why people like Palin

What makes her so popular is her very nature. She is the definition of “grassroots”, a working mother who successfully entered politics at the municipal level and worked her way up to the governorship. She didn’t manage this by impressing people with her five different institutions of education, or how many books she had written on Russian foreign policy. No, she managed it because she inspired Americans who felt that Sarah was “one of them.”

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Jeri Thompson vs. David Brooks

American Spectator: While putting fresh newspaper in the birdcage this morning, I couldn't help but notice the New York Times column from David Brooks, who takes a potshot at conservative radio . . . Go
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Recovery?

Jobless claims increase again

Joe Biden keeps talking about the fabulous improvement on the economy he’s seen from the stimulus, but thus far, those effects have mostly been limited to the White House.  Initial jobless claims rose last week to 551,000, 17,000 more than the previous week and 12,000 more than analysts predicted.  Americans spent more last month, but that mainly came from the Cash for Clunkers program
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Dumb-Dumb

Video: Whoopi says Polanski didn’t commit “rape-rape”

How low will Hollywood go in defending Roman Polanski? Former Oscar hostess Whoopi Goldberg tries to parse the meaning of rape between rape and something called “rape-rape” — which, if you read the testimony of Polanski’s victim, Polanski literally did by raping her and then sodomizing her. Goldberg tries to argue that Polanski pled guilty to statutory rape, not actual rape, which is true, and that he served a sentence — which is absolutely false

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Big Leader, Big Government

The omnipresent leader

I don’t recall many schoolteachers leading hymms to George Bush when he shifted the ground under Saddam Hussein and changed his world. Something tells me no one in the educational establishment would be leading musical worship sessions for the equally historic President Sarah Palin or President Condoleeza Rice, either.

The guy is
everywhere, all the time. He’s been stalking the American voter all summer, muttering the ever-changing details and phony rationale for his health-care takeover plan. Mercifully, he stopped just short of filling our inboxes with spam emails, or dropping pop-up spyware onto our computers. I have a recurring nightmare that the Microsoft Office Assistant will rap on my monitor to get my attention, and start talking about the urgent need for health-care reform.

The omnipresence of our political leadership will only grow worse over time, if we don’t begin scaling back the super-State. Everything in life has become politicized, and politics have become highly centralized. The President, and the majority leadership in Congress, have an increasing amount of influence over every aspect of your daily life – not in a remote theoretical sense, but literally. If the government takes over health care, your body will become property of the State, which will have a vested interest in controlling your diet, exercise, and everything else that might affect your consumption of tightly-rationed medical resources. The cap-and-trade bill puts the federal government in charge of your kitchen appliances and light bulbs. These latest extensions of federal power come after decades of more gradual increases.

Once the functions of government move beyond essential expenses, such as national defense and border security, the rationale behind every additional tax dollar is based on the greater wisdom of the political class. You cannot be trusted to support the arts, care for the indigent, respect the environment, or do any of the other things Washington spends your tax money on. Soon, you will not be trusted to manage your own health care – in fact, under the Max Baucus health-care plan, you would be jailed for failing to purchase government-approved health insurance. If all of this money is taken from you because you can’t be trusted to spend it wisely, it follows that the people spending it must possess supreme wisdom. Likewise, the displaced private owners of a nationalized industry must be inferior to the politicians who now control it. No rationale for Big Government can escape these conclusions.



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Constitution

Found information about this in a book I'm reading, "Not a Suicide Pact; The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency," by Richard A. Posner.

SCOTUS case, "United States v. Curtiss-Wright Export Corp."

http://www.enotes.com/supreme-court-drama/united-states-v-c urtiss-wright-export-corp

"Justice George Sutherland, writing for the 7-1 majority, noted that this case fell into an area of governing not specifically addressed by the Constitution. However, he found that simply by the Unites States being a sovereign (politically independent) nation before the Constitution was written, that it had certain inherent (natural) powers to conduct international relations regardless if written in the Constitution or not. The United States had to meet international responsibilities. Sutherland wrote,

[T]he investment of the federal government with the powers of [conducting foreign affairs] did not depend upon . . . the Constitution. The powers to declare and wage war, to conclude peace, to make treaties, to maintain diplomatic relations with other sovereignties, if they had never been mentioned in the Constitution, would have vested [fixed] in the federal government as necessary concomitants [parts] of nationality [being an independent nation] . . .

"Further, Sutherland wrote it was primarily the president's responsibility to carry out foreign policy and he did not need an act of Congress before taking action. Sutherland commented that the president has "plenary [absolute] and exclusive [not shared] power . . . as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations — a power which does not require as a basis for its exercise an act of Congress." No specific grant of foreign affairs powers to the president needs to be provided in the Constitution. Unlike domestic issues where Congress must supply clear guidelines to the executive branch when delegating congressional powers, delegation of foreign affairs powers can be broad giving the president considerable discretion (choice) on how to proceed."

SCOTUS held that the USA acquired the powers of a sovereign nation by its successful revolution against England rather then by a grant in the Constitution; the nation is prior to the Constitution.

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Incompetence

Continuing resolutions?

Democrats control a solid majority in the House of Representatives.  They have a nearly filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate.  Their party controls the White House.  With all of that power, one would expect the budgetary process to flow smoothly enough for Congress to pass appropriations normally, especially since budget bills are not subject to a filibuster in the Senate.

What the heck are Democrats doing on Capitol Hill?

Democrats played this game for the 2009 budget in order to avoid having to negotiate the budget with outgoing President George W. Bush.  They stalled through continuing resolutions and then passed a pork-filled omnibus bill early this year, which Obama obligingly signed.  Obama has hardly demanded spending discipline from this Congress and has shown nothing but obsequious obeisance to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in allowing them to shape the actual bills for his legislative agenda all year long.

They have no excuse in 2010.  Bush is no longer the problem.  Republicans don’t have the votes to stop a budget bill without serious conflict within the Democratic caucuses.  This is flat-out incompetence and failure to focus on Congress’ primary responsibility of producing a budget for the upcoming fiscal year on time.


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News

Barack Hussein Obama Serves Up America on Silver Platter to UN Freak Show
Obama won the election by ten million votes but does not have a mandate to do this. He went to the United Nations, apologized for America, surrendered our super power status, and rejected  American Exceptionalism. We have a disaster on our hands.

Khadafy Sounds Like a Democrat. He's a Kook Inspired by Barack Obama!
Khadafy called for free medicine for all, and demanded an investigation into the JFK assassination. He's a genuine kook, and he's inspired by Barack Obama!

"Barack Hussein Obama has contributed nothing to the success of this great nation. He is constantly tearing down this country. He is disrespectful to the American people."

Democrats Eye Mike Dukakis, The Loser, to Replace Kennedy in Senate
A Limbaugh adage affirmed: Failure is a resume enhancement for Democrats.




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The No-Nukes President?

Obama to slash nukes: Guardian

This should not come as a big surprise, given Barack Obama’s political history, but his drive to drastically restructure the policy on American nuclear weapons could have a far-reaching impact on global security.  Obama will team with Gordon Brown to push for an aggressive schedule of disarmament, so aggressive that even the French have begun to object, according to the Guardian.  Obama apparently hopes to win concessions from Russia and eventually from Iran and North Korea by setting an example

None of this comes out of the blue.  Obama has always echoed strains of the no-nukes crowd in which he marinated in the Ivy League during the 1980s.  His antipathy towards missile defense systems during the campaign hinted at this kind of movement in nuclear-weapons policy.  The Left has often remarked on the supposed hypocrisy of demanding denuclearization of North Korea and prevention of nuclearization of Iran while we keep our own nukes and presumably give tacit agreement to others, especially India and Israel.


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