Identity politics on steroids

A Delaware beauty / charm / personality contest runs into a tangle over whether the winner sufficiently qualifies as a member of the demographic group that makes for the basis of the contest.  Examination of the kid's genetic makeup ensues.

Are we vulgar and divisive yet?

Who's shaving what

Investors Business Daily has a pretty exhaustive list of businesses shedding hours and / or jobs outright as a result of Freedom-Hater-care.

United behind a battle plan

It's the distillation of all that has come before.  Boehner says that the House will propose delaying all of FHer-care for a year, and scrapping the medical device tax.  (Who thought that one up in the first place, and what the flip could possibly have been the rationale?)

There were cheers at the closed-door meeting at which this was adopted.  One Representative  shouted "Let's roll!" and another described the moment as "beautiful."

The next step

I'm really starting to like Tom Graves, the House member from Georgia who strived for a defund-it-now approach in his own chamber.  Since that's no longer an option due to a failure of will in the Senate, he's now crafted a plan to delay FHer-care entirely for two years.  Should sound reasonable to anyone other than those with complete disregard for how badly America hates this law.

Stay united, House Pubs!

He went there

The Most Equal Comrade, the Lightworker in Chief, He Who Would Quell the Rise of the Seas, Citizen of the World, spoke today on the phone with America's principle enemy, the president Iran.

He is personally responsible for any further Americans who die as a result of any gestures undertaken specifically to express hostility to the United States.  For that matter, he is such an enemy.  Every action he undertakes is an expression of hostility to the United States.

There's ever only one type of interaction to have with a Freedom-Hater, aka Democrat: defeat.

That didn't take long

Remember my post about Guido Barilla and what he had to say about the principles guiding the marketing campaign for his family's pasta company?  How I wondered if the hard left would take in this development in an atmosphere of respect for the freedom of others to openly state their values and even base their business strategies on them?

Nah.

This is how you fight for freedom

You patiently and steadily increase your ranks, and then you send an explicit warning to those whose courge to do the right thing may need a bit of bolstering:

CNS News is reporting that a group of 21 House members have sent a letter to all GOP Senators, warning them against a cloture vote on the Continuing Resolution. A vote on cloture would give Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) the ability to remove the defunding Obamacare provision included in the CR. The House conservatives who signed the letter stated that they consider a cloture vote the same as a vote in support of Obamacare.

“it is highly likely that Majority Leader Harry Reid will move to amend the House-passed CR and remove the language from the bill that defunds Obamacare before sending it back to the House.

“As you are also aware,” the conservatives wrote, “such a motion can only proceed if three-fifths of the Senate invokes cloture and allows this amendment process to begin. Simply put, the only chance that Senator Reid has to pursue this course of action is if six or more Republican Senators join the Democrats in voting to invoke cloture.

“Therefore,” the House conservatives said to every Republican senator, “it shall be our policy to regard any cloture vote that gives Senator Reid a green light to reinstate Obamacare into this CR the same as a vote for Obamacare itself.” 

The cloture vote will come today and requires 60 votes. It will allow debate to end on the Continuing Resolution and proceed to toward a final vote. Reid controls 54 votes, while the GOP has 46 so should the Senate GOP stand together the cloture vote would be stalled. According to Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK), who authored the letter, "until Harry Reid guarantees a 60-vote threshold on any amendment including his amendment to add back Obamacare" the Senate GOP should vote against cloture. Otherwise a simple majority of the Senate could vote to continue Obamacare funding.

Heroes still exist.

The MEC regime doesn't just want to orchestrate America's decline; it wants to show other nations how it's done

Were you aware of this about the new EPA regs that effectively prohibit any new coal-fired power plants? :

the EPA itself has admitted that the new rules would do little, or nothing, to save the environment.

“The EPA does not anticipate that this proposed rule will result in notable CO2 emission changes, energy impacts, monetized benefits, costs, or economic impacts by 2022,” the EPA writes under the comments section of its proposal. Let me translate this: The new rules will be bad for business, bad for job creation, will provide zero economic, socioeconomic, or social benefit to the community. . . Oh, and we’re not going to even pretend we’re doing this for the planet.

Now, without some kind of explanation of why it would still be a great idea, that would be a bit too much for the American public to swallow, don't you think?   Well, the overlords think you will swallow it if they offer this:

So why then adopt the rules? According to the EPA administrator, Gina McCarthy, the rule is part of an effort to “position the US for leadership” on the global warming issue. Right. . . By implementing useless, and ultimately job-killing, bureaucracy with no intent of “fixing” Al Gore’s imaginary crises. Way to lead, Obama. Way to Lead.

So we can feel good about ourselves for showing the world's nations how to dismantle their economies for a non-existent problem.

LITD likes this

Guido Barilla, chair of the pasta company tht bears his family's name, says only heterosexual couples will ever be shown in adds for the company's products.

Will the FHers respect the freedom of the free market, or will they howl and grandstand?

The Most Equal Comrade may have to choose between two routes forward, neither of which he's gonna like

Just this afternoon, two very welcome developments came down the pike:  John Boehner said the House won't approve any funding bill that doesn't delay all of FHer-care for a year, and Dem Senator Joe Manchin says he supports delaying the individual mandate for a year.

Allapundit at Hot Air concludes his great piece on all this, including mention of yet another  White-House-delayed piece of FHer-care, namely postponement of enrollment in some online small-business exchanges, and the MEC giving yet another speech with a Baghdad Bob tone about how it's all going swell, with an interesting scenario:

Exit question: At this point, would the White House rather meet Boehner’s demand for a one-year delay of all of ObamaCare or Manchin’s demand for a one-year delay of the individual mandate specifically? I think there’s more political risk to the latter than the former, no? If you delay the whole law, you buy yourself time to work out all the bugs before trying again at a rollout next year. It’ll be hugely embarrassing to the White House to postpone things when they’re this close to launch, and there are doubtless lots of congressional Democrats who don’t want O-Care becoming a key issue right before the midterms, but that’s survivable. What’s potentially not survivable is rolling out the exchanges now minus the individual mandate, which means lots of young adults will face no legal compulsion to buy in. If (as Bill Clinton noted two days ago) healthy uninsured people refuse to fork over their money, then insurers suddenly don’t have a pool of revenue to cover all the people with preexisting conditions who are signing up, and then the whole scheme starts to collapse. There’ll be no delays after that; if insurers start crumbling, we’ll be in post-ObamaCare mode as a country. Better, then, to hit pause on the whole thing if you’re O to prevent that sort of collapse, right?

The Most Equal Comrade was spewing a lot of dog vomit yesterday when discussing the exchanges

The out-of-pocket expenses - co-pays, deductibles, premiums - are going to be high indeed.

The Most Equal Comrade admits taxes are involved in "financing" FHer-care

Yesterday at the Clinton Global Initiative, he uttered the words, "We did raise taxes on some things."

Some of the these taxes that go into effect right away or real soon include

• medical device tax
• cap on flexible spending accounts
• a 3.8% surtax on investment income for households making over $250K
• Medicare payroll tax increase

That's the near-term stuff.  Remember, the employer mandate has only been delayed a year.  The regime is also going to tax insurance companies for the routine operation of collecting premiums.  Then union members and early retirees will see a new tax.

Consider the amount of money that people would be holding on to if none of the above were going to go into effect.  Why, the masses might even be able to save enough to pay directly for most of their health care expenses!

There is nothing affordable about Freedom-Hater-care

From Tennessee.

From Colorado.

From California.

From North Carolina.


You'll recall the example from Louisville, Kentucky we provided yesterday.


The overlords are cackling as you are brought to your knees.

The non-meeting that confirms Iran's contempt for the Most Equal Comrade

The Rouhani administration's "charm offensive" still leaves room for a good old snub, which is what the MEC got in New York during the UN General Assembly session.

Our jackbooted overlords seem to think they're immune to accountability

Lois Lerner is going to retire with full benefits.

John McCain: still the ultimate embodiment of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome

He may have outdone himself in the shamefulness department today.  Thank God Tom Coburn was there to immediately refute his main assertion, namely, that Freedom-Hater-care was passed fairly:

McCain went even further, stating, “We fought as hard as we could in a fair and honest manner and we lost,” regarding Obacare. “One of the reasons was because we were in the minority, and in democracies, almost always the majority governs and passes legislation.” He said that Obamacare discussions represented “one of the most hard fought, fair, in my view, debates that has taken place on the floor of the Senate [over] the time I’ve been here.” Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) immediately said that Obamacare was not passed fairly; as a matter of fact, it was passed without a single Republican vote, in the dead of night, without releasing the text of the bill until just hours two days before the vote.

I'm hearing that Senator here-are-my-testicles-on-a-silver-platter is considering hanging it up after his curent term.  Can't happen a moment too soon.

Ted

His speech went over 21 hours and then he immediately went on Rush Limbaugh's show to make the case some more.  Said he was going to get a little shut-eye and then head back to the Senate chamber.

Loving freedom requires courage, particularly in history's darker periods.  The signers of the Declaration knew they risked getting shot or having their farms burned.  Freedom Riders knew that German shepherds and fire hoses were part of the bargain.  More recently, Sarah Palin knew that the vilest insults to her daughters were inevitable.  Now it's Ted's turn.

What he embodies is the understanding that there comes a point when strategic calculation and careful weighing of contingencies are inadequate weapons against tyranny.

You know what the Pub establishment reminds me of?  The Ellsworth M. Toohey character in The Fountainhead.  He was the big-shot architecture critic who tries to dissuade newspaper publisher Gayle Wynand from using Howard Roarke as the designer for his new high-rise office building.  When Wynand protested that, even though Roarke had his enemies, he was nearly universally recognized as the most gifted architect of his time,  Toohey said that was precisely the argument against him.  His selection would pose way too serious a challenge to the mediocre status quo.

Ted accomplished exactly what he intended to.  Somewhere in this world, there is an elected Republican official who does not compromise, whose singular commitment to the vision of restored American freedom animates his every breath.  That gives hope to the rest of us warriors that we wouldn't have otherwise.

Archbishop Darwish poses a very good question

Given the pro-sharia zeal of for all intents and purposes the whole anti-Assad resistance in Syria, why is the West so hot to side with it?

Delivering America's largest city into the hands of a communist

Bill DeBlasio, almost certain to be NYC's next mayor, went to Nicaragua several times during the 1980s and actively worked to help the Sandinistas consolidate their takeover of the post-Somoza government.  

Honeymooned in Cuba.

Then came back and followed a long-march-through-the-institutions path similar to that of the Most Equal Comrade.

Jeb doesn't get the modern Florida Republican center of gravity

He, who at one time was touted as the "real conservative" in the Bush family, has been busy lately disparaging opponents of Common Core as backward-looking obstructionists.  But recent moves by the Sunshine State's executive and legislative branches indicate it is the former governor who is out of step.

History will show that Barack Obama bears nearly all the responsibility for the destruction of Western civilization, and that he acted intentionally

The Most Equal Comrade addressed the UN General Assembly this morning.  Reaching out to Iran and acting like its nuke program is for civilian energy production, apologizing yet again for US role in world, calling Israeli development in Samaria and Judea "occupation," tough talk to Assad with nothing to back it up.  Signals a scaling-back of drone activity.  Says he still wants to close Gitmo.  Whines about his image across the political spectrum in Egypt.

And that's the way it is in Freedom-Hater-ruled post-America.

At least they won't feel alone

Earlier today, we took a look at the Mangione family of Louisville, and how the premium for the catastrophic-care policy they bought on their own some time back is going to triple next year.

They have company.  Lots of it.  A typical family of four will spend $7450 more on health care under FHer-care between 2014 and 2022 than it would without it.

There's a meeting room on Capitol Hill that needs to be fumigated; it's rotten with the virus that causes Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome

. . . And RGS can make those afflicted do foul things indeed:

A curious moment happened on Fox News Sunday. Chris Wallace told Karl Rove that a number of Republicans in Congress had sent him opposition research on Ted Cruz once Fox announced Cruz would be on.

Rove responded. He said this was all happening because Cruz and Mike Lee had not worked out strategy in the regular Senate Republican Conference lunches on Thursdays. Rove said that was what was supposed to happen. Except that for a year now, Senate Republicans have routinely leaked the proceedings of those meetings to the New York Times and Washington Post in ways designed to harm Cruz, Lee, and others who side with them.

In fact, as one Senator noted in last week’s meeting, this would not be happening but for John Cornyn and Mitch McConnell choosing not to lead. Had Lee and Cruz approached their Senate colleagues, they would have been dismissed. I can say this confidently because it has happened repeatedly and since their election to the Senate their Republican colleagues have routinely taken to “on background” leaks assailing them.

I doubt Rove is that tuned out. He simply disagrees with their strategy and has been very vocal about how terrible he thinks it is. But the strategy is actually quite marvelous and Rove has to be smart enough to what is actually going on. Now it is time for everyone else to see the bigger picture.

My contempt for RINOs, squishes and Reasonable Gentlemen has taken a quantum leap.

Why we call it Freedom-Hater-care - today's edition

Consider the Mangione family of Louisville Kentucky:

Andy and Amy Mangione of Louisville, Ky. and their two boys are just the kind of people who should be helped by ObamaCare. But they recently got a nasty surprise in the mail.

"When I saw the letter when I came home from work," Andy said, describing the large red wording on the envelope from his insurance carrier, "(it said) 'your action required,benefit changes, act now.' Of course I opened it immediately."

It had stunning news. Insurance for the Mangiones and their two boys,which they bought on the individual market, was going to almost triple in 2014 --- from $333 a month to $965.

The insurance carrier made it clear the increase was in order to be compliant with the new health care law.

"This isn't a Cadillac plan, this isn't even a silver plan," Mangione said, referring to higher levels of coverage under ObamaCare.

"This is a high deductible plan where I'm assuming a lot of risk for my health insurance for my family. And nothing has changed, our boys are healthy-- they're young --my wife is healthy. I'm healthy, nothing in our medical history has changed to warrant a tripling of our premiums.

The insurance company made it clear that this is an industry-wide phenomenon.  The government is making the company provide - and the Mangiones take - all kinds of bells and whistles that weren't in the policy when the family bought it.

My situation is similar.  I have a catastrophic-care policy, and that's it.  Will I be getting a notice  like this soon?

Melt the phones of the US Senate.

One thing seems to be occurring with greater frequency as we approach the onset of FHer-care

Cancellation notices from insurance companies.

This religion is on a par with the others?

Fully take in Phyllis Chesler's account of how her marriage to a fellow Bard College student in 1959 turned out.

Religion of peace - today's edition

Suicide bombing at a Christian church in Peshawar, Pakistan kills 60.


And 59 are dead so far in a jihadist attack on an upscale shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya.  As the attackers entered, they told Muslims to hurry and get out.

Because local control of education is anathema to Freedom-Haters

If you've been looking for a concise yet pointed argument against Common Core, check out this column by Vanessa Silkwook, a member of the Sumner County Tennessee school board.

And while we're at it, how about this particularly egregious example from Vermillion Parish in Louisiana of how it takes no time at all for FHers to warp any curriculum they get their hands on?

Money line: "We know we are going to be reimbursed less"

Cleveland Clinic to rather drastically cut staff and budget because of FHer-care.

That's some pretty purple stuff to be putting out there for all eternity

I don't normally preoccupy this blog with matters of vile ad hominem attacks.  It's kind of like focusing on race-charged stories.  I just get embarrassed for our species for not being able to rise above such a juvenile level.  Nonetheless, descent into that level is clear evidence that someone with whom you're debating has run out of intellectual gas.

That's clearly the case with Allan Brauer, the chair for the Sacramento FHer party, who went off the rails in a Twitter exchange with Ted Cruz aide Amanda Carpenter pretty early in the unfolding of the comment thread.

Maybe he'll back up what he's on record as saying with a substantive argument that factually justifies his vehemence, but I'm not holding my breath.

Yet another sign that there's still some love for freedom, the rule of law and American sovereignty on Capitol Hill

House Gang of Seven immigration-reform bill declared almost certainly dead.

Why it's worth it to fight

House votes to pull the plug on Freedom-Hater-care.

This blog is still on board with the defund-it approach

Yes, I'm aware of the dismissive tone O'Reilly took on his Fox show last night, the condescension he displayed to his Tea Party Express guest, and his touting of Karl Rove's WSJ column.  Yes, I'm aware of David Freddoso's column this morning arguing that the defund-it approach is unmitigatedly harmful to Pubs.

Not buying it.  Here's a roundup of arguments by folks who speak for me:

Hugh Hewitt at Townhall:

Cruz and his fellow gifted rhetoricians Mike Lee, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio have all inveighed against Obamacare consistently and for months. They have a plan to keep the fiasco that is Obamacare front and center of the American people, and they are working the plan. They are building a movement, not a dance card, in D.C.

The House Republican leadership would have mostly preferred to fade the issue, hoping that events would break their way or at least resolve in some sort of bipartisan consensus.

Events broke their way only in the fact that this disaster of a president was revealed to the world by Vladimir Putin as a bumbling, stumbling incompetent that only the Beltway GOP could not flank.

This president won't stand up to Assad or Putin, but he will bully Beltway Republicans. That's what he does. It is the only thing he has done well in the past five years.

But the four aces of the GOP in the Senate won't be intimidated and won't be bullied, even when their colleague John McCain calls them "whacko birds."

Cruz and his colleagues rallied hundreds of thousands of voters to sign on to the effort to defund Obamacare. That's called building a network that can be mobilized in future elections. That's called playing to win, now and in 2014 and 2016.

Mark Davis at Townhall:

So why even try this? Won’t it freak people out? Won’t the media hate us? Won’t some voters call us obstructionists?

Yes, yes and yes. So let’s do it.

After decades of inconsistent conservative leadership, there are finally people in office with the guts to take bold stands unseen since Reagan-- maybe unseen since Goldwater.

After endless years of half-measures and middling efforts, unapologetically muscular conservatism is going to cause some alarm. It will startle Democrats, who have long enjoyed rolling a Republican party that’s been there to be had, and it will positively terrify establishment Republicans, who see that their conservative batting averages are suddenly insufficient.

As for the media, I could not possibly care less what they think. Are we really going to plot strategy so as not to draw fire from liberal network anchors and faux conservative pundits currying favor at Georgetown parties?

Shrinking from what conservatism requires because we fear negative media reaction is like guiding foreign policy to avoid making terrorists mad. In both cases, guess what? They already hate us. We should do the right thing and let the chips fall where they may.

While we can, and should, tell the media where to take a walk, we do actually have to care about voters. But again, operating from a foundation of fear is completely wrong.

Rather than lose sleep over what independents will think of a government shutdown, let us march forward with votes in both congressional chambers, telling President Obama, every Democrat and every voter that Obamacare is an unprecedented scourge that requires the strongest negative response.

Andrew McCarthy at PJ Media:

The objections to the defunding strategy are as unconvincing as they are feckless. Naysayers argue that President Obama will never sign a bill to fund government operations that slashes his signature achievement. Thus, the argument goes, defunding can only result in a government shutdown for which, thanks to Obama’s slavish media, Republicans will be blamed. Also trotted out, of course, is the bromide the GOP establishment chants to rationalize its supine posture whenever opportunities arise to oppose Obama’s hard Left agenda: “We only control one-half of one-third of the government, so we cannot dictate policy.”

Resistance is futile, in other words, so why resist at all? It’s an ironic argument since it seems Republican leadership only resists when doing so is futile, when the resistance is token. Thus the prior votes to repeal Obamacare, all forty of them, taken in the comfortable knowledge that they had no chance of succeeding – just going through the motions in faux fulfillment of a commitment to the base to work tirelessly to undo the law. But when something might not be futile – when it could actually work, and therefore entails hard work and risk – we generally find leadership in folderoo mode, babbling its one-half-of-one-third mantra.

Defunding could work for several reasons. First it puts the lie to the one-half-of-one-third blather. The United States Constitution does not set up government by percentage; it sets up government by enumerated power. The capacity of the respective branches to shape policy is not a function of how many of the branches a political party controls and by how much. It is a function of the subject matter of the policy in question. The president is only one-third of the government, but he is commander-in-chief, and if the issue is war strategy, he has policy primacy – it is immaterial whether the opposition party has a lock on Congress and the courts. Similarly, if the issue is adjudication of a constitutional case, it matters not whether we have a Republican president and 535 Republicans in Congress – the tune can be called by five left-wing Democrats in robes (or roughly one-half of one-third of the government).

When it comes to spending, Congress has primacy, and pride of place rests with the House (the one-half of one-third Republicans control) because the Constitution mandates that spending bills originate in the lower chamber – the one closest to the people. Equally important, the hard jobs in government are the ones where an officeholder has to do something. It is a lot easier when all that’s necessary is to refuse to act. Spending requires a positive act by Congress – not a thin dime may be spent unless Congress approves. That is, there can be no spending on Obamacare unless Congress votes to approve it. Thus, the one-half-of-one-third crowd is in the driver’s seat. All they need to do is say, “No.” It is President Obama who needs action here – congressional Republicans need only decline to act.

And by the way, if Republicans do act, if they vote to fund Obamacare, then they are for Obamacare. Don’t let them fool you with meaningless “repeal” votes. Repeal – i.e., changing the law – is a positive act; unlike refusing to spend money, it cannot be accomplished simply by saying no.

William Sullivan at The American Thinker:

This is an "undoubtedly risky" strategy, says Fox News.  Obama and Reid have "warned Republicans not to go down that road, suggesting they will bear the brunt of blame if the gambit results in government shutdown." Yes, yes, we've heard it before.  If Republicans don't consent to raising the limit on the national credit card, the world will end and all that.  But then, Republicans are willing to raise the limit under certain conditions, aren't they?  So why a government shutdown would be singularly Republicans' fault in this particular instance is a bit of a mystery.  Allowing the government to shut down because of ideological conviction against the health care bill isn't really at all different from allowing the government to shut down because of the left's ideological conviction in favor of it.But all this fanciful and formulaic rhetoric we are hearing from Democrats aside, why might conservatives deride such efforts to defund ObamaCare, and prefer the path of "compromise"?  It's ObamaCare, after all.  Securing representatives that would fight it tooth and nail was what the culling of Democrats in 2010 was all about.

[snip]

Does that mean there is no value in taking up the fight?  Sometimes, fighting a losing battle based on principle and in selfless dedication to what is right -- and being seen doing it, à la Ted Cruz -- can be rousing for a political cause.

And if Krauthammer is also right in his hopeful prediction that ObamaCare will be crushed by its own immense size and economically destructive makeup, what harm is there, then, in being among the voices that have been heralding that horrible outcome while fighting to protect Americans from it?  Wouldn't Republicans then have more credibility with the American people for having done so?

I think they would.  But the real reason ObamaCare must be fought at every turn is that Krauthammer is probably wrong.  Not about it being an unwinnable battle -- it may very well be.  But if history is any measure, he's probably wrongfully optimistic about ObamaCare's potential to be reversed after its continued implementation. 

Sullivan's real money line is this:  "Time normalizes even the most malignant social entitlement program."  The more aspects of FHer-care that are implemented, the more its permanence is assured.

And we'll upend heaven and earth before we let that happen.

It's not the final battle, but it's good to take a moment and appreciate an important victory

The House is set to vote to defund FHer-care.

This is a pretty dramatic reversal of position for the leadership. That means that it makes a difference when freedom-cherishing citizens melt the phones, attend rallies, write columns, blog, get the facts out and go see legislators when they come back to their districts.

You never let up in the war for America's soul.

Community Reinvestment Act: the main culprit in the 2008 financial crisis

Tom Blumer at PJ Media says that the Larry Summers withdrawal from Fed chairmanship consideration marks an opportune occasion to reaffirm the main cause of the 2008 train wreck:

The real reason that Summers, who started out as President Obama’s favorite for the post, didn’t even get to the starting line has nothing to do with merit and everything to do with the left’s determination to preserve its fundamentally false narrative about what caused the financial crisis of 2008. You see, Larry Summers’ biggest sin was that he had a “past role in financial deregulation.” In Leftyland, interstate banking deregulation, with accompanying “Wall Street greed,” is entirely to blame.

The truth is that deregulation is a far distant third on the list of contributors, and would never have been a relevant factor without government regulators’ aggressive handling of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and the conduct of “government-sponsored enterprises” Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

[snip]

It is no coincidence that the number of subprime loans, which barely existed before 1995, exploded. Regulators also enthusiastically embraced especially risky “low doc” and “no doc” loans, which came to be known as “liar loans.”

[snip]

In a September 17 column, normally astute economist Robert J. Samuelson, while acknowledging that they were “the exception, not the rule,” noted that in the latter stages of the home-lending bubble, “banks and investment banks (‘Wall Street’) knowingly packaged bad home mortgages in securities that were then sold to unsuspecting investors.” But he failed to recognize that the dollar volume of Fan’s and Fred’s known 15-year deception dwarfed any latter-stage fraud in which “Wall Street” may have engaged.

You see, there were specific causes, not some kind of vague force such as "greed" responsible for what occurred.  

 

 

Those afflicted with Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome don't suffer alone; they inflict real harm on the country as well

Marlin Stutzman, a House member from Indiana has been thrown off the chamber's whip team by Pub establishment leadership.  His transgression was giving a thumbs-down to the current iteration of the farm bill.

This guy is a third-generation farmer.  He's in the field when he's not in Washington.  He had the spine to say that he was in the particular economic sector in question and was asserting that it didn't need the kind of government largesse that has been automatically assumed every five-year cycle going back to 1933.

He's experiencing a setback at the moment, but there's a future for this guy.  In a world starved for principle, he has garnered notice from those who love freedom.

It's the Reasonable Gentlemen who value the status quo over limited government who are in their twilight.

Well, looky here

Per Rasmussen, 51 % of Americans are cool with a government shutdown if that's what it takes to pull the plug on FHer-care.

Another pundit no longer inclined toward a favorable view of the MEC

Ruth Marcus at the WaPo really rakes him over the coals.  Mainly talks about the Syria mess, but then gets going and mentions dropping the ball on Larry Summers, and the upcoming debt ceiling battle as well.

The money line:

In the past few weeks, I have encountered not a single person outside the White House, Republican or Democrat, who has kind words for Obama’s performance.

Hey, our bunch tried like hell to avoid this juncture.

How's this for sinister?

May 30, 2012, at the US Capitol.  A meeting between the Congressional Black Caucus and the Conference of National Black Churches.  You are no doubt beginning to smell the odor of victim-mongering and meme-of-voter-supression-mongering.  Anyone would.

But did you know what two high-ranking MEC regime officials were at the meeting? Attorney General Eric Holder and then-IRS commissioner Douglas Shulman.  Dissing recent voting law changes in various states, advising on strategy.  Railing against the conservative movement.

This regime doesn't do impartiality.

The second thoughts of a major water-carrier

Dig this:  Warren Buffett recommends scrapping Freedom-Hater-care and starting over.

Because his objectives are crystal-clear, as is his understanding of human nature

A most insightful profile in the NYT on Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.  Edifying background on his career as a diplomat and how he acquired his world-affairs savvy, and how he ate Secretary Global-Test's lunch.

What a deceitful chunk of dog vomit

The Most Equal Comrade, that is.

He knows damn well that the only actual bill that codifies what base / tea party / pro-freedom / actual conservatives want to do re: FHer-care and the budget is the one put forth by Tom Graves.  We are about funding the entire operation of the federal government, except that monstrosity that the American people hate and have always hated.  Still, he characterizes the situation thusly:

Specifically, the president went after Republicans who say they won't vote for any budget deal that does not nullify the Affordable Care Act. "I cannot remember a time when one faction of one party promises economic chaos if it can't get 100 percent of what it wants," Obama said. "That's never happened before, and that's what happening right now."

Obama appealed to the rest of the Republican Party for help in brokering a budget compromise, challenging members to break with those calling for defunding Obamacare.

"Are some of these folks so beholden to one extreme wing of their party that they're willing to tank our whole economy?" he said. "Are they willing to hurt people?"

This is our enemy.  There's only one way to interact with him: defeat him.  Thwart everything he tries to do for the next 40 months.

A study in reporting style contrasts

There are two fresh polls out - one from NBC/WSJ, and one from USA Today/Pew - that show that Freedom-Hater-care is still overwhelmingly loathed.

Now, here's the interesting part of this.  Consider the difference in reportage about each.  Mark Murray at NBC News focuses on its complexity and costliness:

[M]ost Americans say they don't have a good grasp of what the law entails. Thirty-four percent say they don’t understand the law very well, and another 35 percent say they understand it only “some.”

“Call any insurance company and ask them any question about the new health-care law, and they don’t understand,” said a New Jersey Republican man who opposes the law.

[snip]

Yet a lack of information isn't the only hurdle that the Obama administration and its allies face in implementing the law. For one thing, a whopping 73 percent of respondents say they're already satisfied with their coverage. 

It's true that Murray points out that the 30 percent who claim to understand the law "fairly" or "very" well have a more positive view of it, but he does a woefully inadequate job of proving, via any kind of quotes, that they do indeed understand it well.

Anyway, compare and contrast the emphasis of his article with that of Susan Page's in USA Today:

WASHINGTON -- Republican lawmakers have failed in dozens of attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but a new USA TODAY/Pew Research Center Poll shows just how difficult they have made it for President Obama's signature legislative achievement to succeed.

[snip]

"There has been a full-court press from Day One from the opposition to characterize and demonize the plan," says Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution, who wrote about the GOP efforts in a 2012 book about Washington he co-authored, It's Even Worse Than It Looks. "The campaign against the law after it was enacted, the range of steps taken, the effort to delegitimize it — it is unprecedented. We'd probably have to go back to the nullification efforts of the Southern states in the pre-Civil War period to find anything of this intensity."

Well, of course there has, and we're going to continue it, pal.

I'm kind of taking a shine to the "obstructionist" label.  Maybe if the United States  of America can be restored and we aren't faced with a uniformly destructive barrage of initiatives from government, pro-freedom folks can be something other than that.

Out of the running

Larry Summers for Fed chairman, that is.  Even though he was the Most Equal Comrade's first choice.  Why would that be?  Bingo!  Go to the front of the class.  Opposition from the politicize-everything base.

But he's guaranteed to be able to stay in power

We're going to trust this outfit to comply with the chemical weapons agreement?

GENEVA — Syrian government forces are systematically attacking hospitals and medical staff members and denying treatment to the sick and wounded from areas controlled or affiliated with the opposition, United Nations investigators said Friday in a new report that also detailed the use of hospitals as torture centers by military intelligence agencies.

[snip]

The report cited a string of attacks on hospitals that were shelled by artillery or bombed by jets, often after aerial reconnaissance by helicopters. A public hospital in the northern city of Aleppo came under fire from helicopters and was hit by rockets and a missile strike. “These attacks injured and killed civilians receiving treatment in the hospital and medical personnel, significantly damaged the hospital’s infrastructure and substantially reduced its ability to treat patients,” the report said.
Patients, too, are among the targets. “In exploiting medical care to further strategic and military aims, government forces have engaged in agonizing cruelty against the sick and wounded,” the report said, identifying a number of government intelligence agencies that have used hospitals as torture chambers.
Among these is Military Hospital No. 601 in Damascus, where “detainees, including children, have been beaten, burned with cigarettes and subjected to torture that exploits pre-existing injuries.”

 

I think this latest policy twist is going to unravel.

 

FHers always resort to ad hominem atacks when they run out of intellectual gas

Joe Biden may think he really rattled some cages by calling House Pubs "neanderthals,"  but the reason they held up passage of the renewal of the Violence Against Women Act is that it expanded the act's scop to include men and prisoners, was going to spend money redundantly and grant authority to tribal courts.

Domestic violence is one of those societal issues that is far more effectively addressed at the local level, but Freedom-Haters never pass up a chance to extend the reach of the federal leviathan.

No time for blinking

The notion of funding all of the government except FHer-care has been codified into legislation:

Republican Rep. Tom Graves and 42 House cosponsors introduced a budget plan Thursday to defund Obamacare without forcing a government shutdown, placing pressure solely on the shoulders of Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Graves’ Security, Stability, and Fairness Resolution is a continuing resolution budget bill that offers a fiscal year 2014 budget that keeps the government open but does not fund Obamacare. The Obama administration has already delayed the law’s employer mandate until 2015, after the 2014 midterm elections.

I was pleased to see my representative, Luke Messer, on the list of 42 co-sponsors.

But the Freedom-Haters in the Senate are wasting no time breathing down John Boehner's neck, trying to encourage his symptoms of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome:

Reid met with Speaker John A. Boehner, R-Ohio, and the other top congressional leaders for about 45 minutes on Thursday morning to discuss ways to deal with the looming deadlines on government funding and the debt limit. Reid and his Democratic leadership team followed the meeting with a news conference.

“As we all know, the speaker has a problem, how to get the government funded,” Reid said. “I told him very directly that all these things they’re trying to do on the Obamacare is just a waste of their time.”

Reid repeated what he’s said many times before: He is sympathetic to Boehner and will provide as much help as he can as Congress tries to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government running, as well as another hike in the debt limit.

Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin was more direct.

“I sometimes sympathize with Speaker Boehner, but the fact of the matter is, if he wants to lead for the good of this nation he has to step beyond the tea party faction in his caucus,” the Illinois Democrat said. “If he would call our farm bill on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives, it would pass. I believe if he called our immigration bill on the floor of the House of Representatives, it would pass. If he would call on the floor a basic funding level of the Senate budget resolution, it would pass.”

Instead, Durbin said, “He has bowed to this willful minority in his own caucus at the expense of this government and of this nation.”

Will the Speaker remember that this is a war for America's soul?

You can't say the Most Equal Comrade didn't clearly tell us this was his intention

Back in 2008, he told us he would create a situation in which it would be prohibitively expensive to build a new coal-fired power plant.

Well, now here come the new EPA regs to put teeth behind his declinist vision.

At a time when the state of the world indicates that we should achieve as much energy independence as possible, at a time when climate models have been shown to have wildly overestimated warming,  and the arctic ice cap has grown by 60 percent in the last 12 months, this mad regime, the Freedom Hater party, will stop at nothing to kneecap the nation it loathes and only wants to govern so as to teach it a lesson.

The war for America's soul is definitely not letting up.

What are they made of now that it's crunch time?

Erick Erickson at Red State on the dissipating resolve of the talk-a-good-game conservatives we sent to Congress in 2010:

 I’m talking about your local “tea party” Republican.

He is in Washington now, on his second term. He told you all along he was going to roll back Obamacare. He would do what it took. He understood that the Democrats were willing to risk their majority to pass Obamacare so Republicans must be willing to risk their majority to repeal Obamacare. They must go to the mat. They must pull out all the stops. They must do anything and everything to stop Obamacare.

Now, on the eve of the exchanges, Republicans in Washington refuse to fight. They want another symbolic vote. They want to hug it out. They want you to know how very much they oppose Obamacare, but by God please don’t make them fight it. The government might shut down. They would get the blame.

Of course they will always get the blame. They don’t realize what is going on. The media is solidly lined up against them. The media is always lined up against them. It is the voters that matter. And the voters like winners. So they must win. They must, even in the face of a shutdown, hold the line and defund Obamacare.

Unless they do this — unless they are willing to fall into the abyss and stay there until the other side folds — we lose. The nation loses. Obamacare begins.

I can offer an encouraging sign from personal experience. The other day I called the Washington office of my representative, Luke Messer, and the gentleman I spoke with said the Congressman was on board with the defund-now route.  Perhaps he can have a persuasive lunch with some wobbly colleagues.

On a date fraught with historic significance . . .

. . . Sheryl Atkisson of CBS News says we still don't know just what went down last year in Benghazi, and that the MEC regime isn't helping us find out.

When even Mo gets what's really going on . . .

Maureen Dowd at NYT understands the new world dynamic in which the MEC is Vladimir Putin's bitch.

When the people remember that the power rests with them

Colorado State Senate president John Morse and State Senator Angela Giron are OUTTATHERE.

A great day for the Second Amendment, and a historic development that will shift the political dynamics in the Rocky Mountain state.

Doesn't seem to have helped himself

It's early - first cup of coffee; watch out for typos - and I've only seen one postmortem on the MEC's speech, but it seems like an accurate assessment of what I saw last night.

Dana Milbank at the WaPo:

At 9 p.m. Tuesday, President Obama, in his address to the nation, said that he had “asked the leaders of Congress to postpone a vote to authorize the use of force.”

This contradicted what his secretary of state, John Kerry, had said in testimony to Congress just 11 hours earlier. “We’re not asking Congress not to vote,” Kerry told the House Armed Services Committee. “I’m not asking [for] delay,” he added later.

Kerry can be forgiven for being at odds with the president. The president, in the space of his 16-minute address, was often at odds with himself. He spent the first 12 minutes arguing for the merits of striking Syria — and then delivered the news that he was putting military action on hold.

Crash and burn.

Piece it together

Putin is sending yet more conventional weapons to the Assad regime to whack the rebels with,

and Russia requested a UN Security Council meeting and then suddenly withdrew that request.

The transformation is complete

I honestly don't know where to begin listing, let alone linking to, all the assessment being made by observers all across the ideological spectrum that the MEC regime has damaged US prestige and world leadership beyond anything in history.

A good place to start, for both latest developments and a taste of how appalled everyone is, would be Hot Air.  An Ed Morressey piece there has links to disparaging articles in The New Republic and Politico, as well as a scathing NYT Roger Cohen column.  Also, good coverage by Allahpundit of how Russia is reacting to the sudden involvement of the UN.

David Satter at NRO's The Corner makes the point that this is a great way for Syria and Russia to play for time.

Laura Ingraham says that maybe it's time for the MEC to stop playing golf and play some chess.

There are barely words to describe what a dark juncture this man has brought us to.  How I wish the leftist worldview could be exposed to the light of truth and discredited in some less destructive, history-altering way.  Collectivism and the orchestrated decline of the West were never going to work, but it's no longer a dorm-room debate.  It's a fait accompli, and the consequences will be felt by millions of real people.

Israel: Is the Most Equal Comrade going to trust resolution-violating Assad in order to "save face?"

Across the Israeli political spectrum, they think the new development is faulty in the extreme:

President Shimon Peres, a staunch supporter of President Obama, reacted to the proposal by warning that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad is "not trustworthy," and former Minister of Foreign Affairs Avigdor Lieberman said that Syria merely would use any such deal to "buy time," according to the AP. They seemed to agree with skeptics in the U.S. such as conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer, who noted that the deal cements Assad's efforts to stay in power and effectively guarantees him victory in Syria's civil war.

Last month, the Israel Defense Force (IDF) noted in a blog post that Syria had violated U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the Second Lebanon War and mandated that Hezbollah would disarm and leave southern Lebanon. (France, which willintroduce a new resolution formalizing the Kerry gaffe, was  involved in drafting Resolution 1701 as well). Since then, the IDF said, Syria has helped re-arm and strengthen Hezbollah, with help from Iran, openly violating the cease-fire.

Plus, how much "face-saving" value is there to a deal that positions the Syria-Iran-Russia-China axis as predominant on the world stage and leaves the US looking like a has-been?

Reason number 1,427,966 to keep your kids out of government schools

There are school districts in in 19 states sending "your-kid-is-fat" letters home to parents of students, based on body mass index readings these factories of totalitarianism subject the young cattle-in-training to at the beginning of the school year.  It seems to have originated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

On how many levels is this wrong?

1.) It's none of the government's business what any of us weigh.

2.) It involves the government in the family life of the child and undermines parents' rights to raise children as they see fit.

3.) It softens up the populace for the massive collection of data on each of us comrades that is coming down the pike unless FHer-care is stopped.  (Call your Representatives and Senators and demand defunding before the exchanges kick in on October 1.)

4.) It could have self-esteem impact on kids at vulnerable points in their development.  Maybe even trigger eating disorders.

5.) Schools are places for learning reading, literature, language, math, geography and science.  This is way outside their purview.

That Vladimir Putin is one slick dude

Here's the dizzying turn of events in the last few hours:

1.) Secretary Global-Test shoots off his mouth, issuing yet another ultimatum without a clear consequence, this one demanding that Assad turn his entire chemical-weapons stash over to "the international community," whatever that is.

2.) State Dept. forced to walk the statement back, calling it a "rhetorical argument."

3.) In Moscow, Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Moallem meets with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, to convey a Putin-hatched proposal that Syria hand over its stash - Kerry's off-the-cuff "rhetorical argument," basically.

4.) Syria responds at least fairly positively, since the proposal comes from an ally.

5.) US State Dept. says it will take a "hard look" at the Russian proposal.

6.) The world gets to see who the serious world-stage players are and who the assclowns and wannabes are.

That's gonna leave a mark

Pun intended, I guess. Once again, I recently came across a lefty pundit's latest nugget of dog vomit and was hoping I'd find an effective takedown of it.  In this case, it was Anna Marie Cox's column on Mark Levin's new book The Liberty Amendments.  Well, bingo.  Queen of Liberty does a bang-up job.

Secretary Global Test has really gone off the rails

Issues what, I guess, he sees as an ultimatum to Assad: hand over your chemical-weapons stash within a week, or .  . .
That's where it gets interesting.  Is Global-Test off his meds or something?  He telegraphs that the consequence of not doing so will be an "unbelievably small" action."

Is somebody some time today going to ask this assclown how that squares with the DoD estimate that it would take 75,000 ground troops to secure all of Assad's chemical weapons?

Yes, it has been on purpose

Often throughout this blog's existence, I have been accused of undermining various points I've made by my insistence that the Most Equal Comrade and the Freedom-Hater party generally have been deliberately orchestrating America's decline.

For substantiation of the position I still insist on taking, I cede the floor to the towering Norman Podhoretz:

His foreign policy, far from a dismal failure, is a brilliant success as measured by what he intended all along to accomplish. The accomplishment would not have been possible if the intention had been too obvious. The skill lies in how effectively he has used rhetorical tricks to disguise it.

The key to understanding what Mr. Obama has pulled off is the astonishing statement he made in the week before being elected president: "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America." To those of us who took this declaration seriously, it meant that Mr. Obama really was the left-wing radical he seemed to be, given his associations with the likes of the anti-American preacher Jeremiah Wright and the unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, not to mention the intellectual influence over him of Saul Alinsky, the original "community organizer."

So far as domestic affairs were concerned, it soon became clear—even to some of those who had persuaded themselves that Mr. Obama was a moderate and a pragmatist—that the fundamental transformation he had in mind was to turn this country into as close a replica of the social-democratic countries of Europe as the constraints of our political system allowed.

The whole piece is worth your time.

The fact is that post-America has no discernible foreign policy

Mario Loyola at NRO is that rare breed: a conservative who thinks a strike on the Assad regime is a good idea.  He readily admits, however, that it's a shaky course of action in the present circumstances, because such a move would not be anchored in any kind of consistent principles:

The Bush doctrine focused on the confluence of rogue regimes, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction. It called for early preemption of gathering threats and the spread of democracy to drain the swamp in which threats take root. But the Bush doctrine was largely discredited by the trauma of the Iraq war, particularly among independents and younger conservatives of a more isolationist bent. The doctrine was replaced in the Obama administration by a fluffy collection of meaningless platitudes and campaign talking points. Since then, America has been almost totally permissive of rogue regimes that support terrorism and proliferate WMD. It no longer has any real policy of confronting them. Hence there is no real “threat” against Syria or Iran, and if there is no threat, there can’t be a credible threat. 

It certainly is worrisome that Obama is in danger of not following through on an explicit threat against Syria’s use of chemical weapons. But the source of his threat was not U.S. national-security policy. It was an “international norm” that matters mostly to proponents of world government among the academic Left. That group does not have enough influence to provide Obama with a solid majority in favor of strikes, so Obama has had to go looking for support among proponents of the old Bush doctrine. And they insist that any military strikes must materially weaken the Assad regime, enough to bring it down or at least push Assad to the negotiating table. To get their support, the administration is expanding the target list. But that does not mean Obama has embraced the Bush policy (which Bush himself often shied away from) of confronting rogue regimes that support terrorism and proliferate WMD. Even if he carries through on his threat, the threat doesn’t stem from any consensus policy, so strikes can’t make the policy more credible. 

Which is why most of us on the right are making the hard call in the other direction.  Not that that choice won't have unsavory consequences.  But then, unsavory consequences are a given when your nation is presided over by the Most Equal Comrade.

Don Wade, RIP

WLS - originally launched by Chicago-based Sears Roebuck ("World's Largest Store") - has had several legendary incarnations since its inception in the early 1920s.  Its long-running National Barn Dance show rivaled The Grand Ole Opry and the Louisiana Hayride as weekly rallying rituals for America's rural demographic.  Its entry into the rock & roll market in the late 1950s ushered in over two decades of antics by some of the Top 40 format's biggest and wackiest stars - Dick Biondi, Larry Lujack, John Records Landecker - and its call-letters jingle from that era is still central to its identity.

Then came the transition to talk radio in the late 1980s.  The station tried several hosts before it found a long-term winning lineup.  Only one team made that transition successfully: Don Wade and Roma, who had come on board in 1985 as disc jockeys, but felt they had plenty to say about culture and public policy.  They quickly cemented in the listening public's mind their on-air personas: Don the crusty curmudgeon with a heart, and Roma the holistic poet-type.  Their morning show has been a Windy City institution since, and they have held many a corrupt Illinois politician's feet to the fire, among other noteworthy accomplishments, during that time.

Alas, that era is over.  Don passed away in Roma's arms this weekend after a protracted bout with brain cancer.

He was one of ours, and he was one of the best. We can only hope such formidable talent is rising through the ranks to man the radio-station artillery positions in the war for America's soul.

Arty types ain't going to dig FHer-care

Folks who play music, make videos, write plays and sculpt clay and have health insurance through any kind of professional association are going to be jettisoned come New Year's Day.

Squeeze the free-thinkers into dependence on the leviathan state.  Why didn't Pol Pot think of that?  More subtle but just as effective as any re-education camp.

And speaking of the chasm between reality and the precarious abstraction that the FHers inhabit . . .

Heard yet about Samantha Powers's doozy?

Our highly-credentialed UN Ambassador Samantha Power either believed, or pretended to believe, that Iran and/or Russia would be cowed by the international community’s revelations about and reaction to Syria, and would be convinced to turn on Assad as a result:

“We worked with the UN to create a group of inspectors and then worked for more than six months to get them access to the country on the logic that perhaps the presence of an investigative team in the country might deter future attacks,” Power said at the Center for American Progress as she made the case for intervening in Syria.
“Or, if not, at a minimum, we thought perhaps a shared evidentiary base could convince Russia or Iran — itself a victim of Saddam Hussein’s monstrous chemical weapons attacks in 1987-1988 — to cast loose a regime that was gassing it’s people,” she said.

This is—well, I’m not sure I can come up with an adjective, or even a string of adjectives, that describes it. Stupid? Delusional? Naive? And yet, completely unsurprising, if you know much about Samantha Power.

Two subjects that completely elude FHers: human nature and history.  Which wouldn't matter if they never had any power.

Will this bit of reality finally discredit the Freedom-Haters' precarious abstraction?

I wouldn't hold my breath, but it ought to.  The arctic ice cap has grown by 60 percent in the last year.

It's on purpose - today's edition

US labor force participation hasn't been this low since the Jimmuh era.

All because the Most Equal Comrade felt a political need to cover his tail end

If he was out to make history, he's certainly doing that.   Latest roundup of Syria-related developments:

 - Russia is sending in a ship carrying "special cargo."  And I hadn't seen this until just now: Russia is using the term "nuclear catastrophe."

- Hizbollah is prepared to defend Damascus.

- The Dow and Nasdaq are reacting unfavorably to Putin's assertion that Russia would militarily side in with Assad in a use-of-force situation

- Non-essential personnel at the US embassy in Lebanon are being evacuated.

 - Seasoned Pentagon hands want no part of this.

It's gonna be a long weekend.

Has a golden opportunity arisen by default?

Few things in this world unfold in a perfectly linear, much less perfect, fashion.  Blessings generally manifest themselves in situations where we've just had a bite of a you-know-what sandwich.
Consider the cesspool of humiliation into which the MEC is wading.  Nile Gardiner at The Telegraph lays it out in wince-inducingly detailed bullet points:

1. The president hasn’t made a convincing case why a Syria intervention is in the US national interest. He has also sent a confusing messageover his ‘red line’ over Syria’s use of chemical weapons, declaring in Sweden that this wasn’t his red line, but that of the international community.

2. Public opinion is hugely sceptical over a Syrian intervention, with Members of Congress inundated with calls from constituents wary of war. There is very little public appetite for another war in the Middle East, not least one where the goals and objectives are unclear.

3. President Obama’s international coalition for military action is looking pretty pathetic, with only France signing up. The British have wisely decided to stay out, and no other NATO allies have stepped forward to offer military assistance. Obama looks increasingly isolated on the world stage, and that matters to US lawmakers. America remains the world’s only superpower, but it always prefers to go to war with allies at its side. As Margaret Thatcher once put it, “the United States needs friends in the lonely task of world leadership.”

4. The Obama administration’s case hasn’t been helped by extremely bad publicity for Syria’s rebel movement, some factions of which are aligned with al-Qaeda. A searing piece in The New York Times this week revealed (with video footage) the brutal execution of captured Syrian government forces by Islamist militants. There has also been significant coverage in the American media of rebel attacks on Christian villages, imagery that hardly plays well in Middle America.

5. Secretary of State John Kerry has been a liability, not an asset, for President Obama. Kerry has been entrusted with leading the Administration’s charge for war, making the case before the House and Senate, as well as the American public. Kerry, however, has been a notorious appeaser of the Assad regime, and worked tirelessly to undercut efforts by the Bush Administration to isolate Assad’s Baathist dictatorship. Photographs of Kerry intimately dining with the Assads in Damascus have hardly helped his case.

6. Hillary Clinton, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, has remained largely silent on the Syria issue. One of her aides claims she is backing Obama’s push for war, but she hasn’t taken to the airwaves to support the president. Whatever her reasons for staying Mum, Clinton’s absence has probably lost the president some Congressional backing among Democratic waverers.
7. Obama’s campaign on Syria hasn’t been helped by declining support among Americans for his overall foreign policy. The “Obama doctrine” has been a striking failure on the world stage, from the disastrous Russian “reset”, to the lack of US leadership in the Middle East. The president’s handling of international affairs is increasingly viewed negatively by Americans, with just 41 percent of voters backing his foreign policy according to a recent poll.

8. Barack Obama simply doesn’t come across as a war leader, one who instills confidence both at home and abroad. He has a well-earned reputation for apologising for his country on foreign soil, and extending the hand of friendship to America’s enemies, from Tehran to Khartoum. His traditionally Jimmy Carter-esque approach simply doesn’t square with his new found desire to start bombing a foreign land. In the eyes of the American people, he’s not exactly General Patton. 

Not a good scenario generally for our nation.  But is there a silver lining?  The other main issue before those who still understand freedom and believe, against a barrage of evidence to the contrary, that American greatness is not permanently gone, is how to repeal Freedom-Hater-care.  Heritage Action, The Madison Project, Americans for Prosperity and other such groups are working feverishly to convince a critical mass of  Congresspeople to defund it before the exchange are up and running at the beginning of next month. Is not our hand strengthened by the MEC's squandering of his political capital?  The Syrian matter has consumed so much oxygen in our national conversation, and left such a bad taste in so many mouths, that defying the man who embodies the full foulness of the FHer enterprise may actually be something that can be extended to another important issue.

Might this be the ideal time to pounce?