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POPSThe Year of Living Fecklessly by Charles Krauthammer 
Why is this so important? Because revolutions succeed at that singular moment, that imperceptible historical inflection, when the people, and particularly those in power, realize that the regime has lost the mandate of heaven. With this weakening dictatorship desperate for affirmation, why is the U.S. repeatedly offering just such affirmation? Apart from ostracizing and delegitimizing these gangsters, we should be encouraging and reinforcing the demonstrators. This is no trivial matter. When pursued, beaten, arrested and imprisoned, dissidents can easily succumb to feelings of despair and isolation. Natan Sharansky testifies to the electric effect Ronald Reagan's Evil Empire speech had on lifting spirits in the Gulag. The news was spread cell to cell in code tapped on the walls. They knew they weren't alone, that America was committed to their cause. Yet so aloof has Obama been that on Hate America Day (Nov. 4, the anniversary of the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran)
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POPSBarack Obama Gets An ‘F’ for Protecting Americans In his studied desire to be the unBush by responding coolly to events like this, Obama is dangerously close to failing as a leader. Yes, it is good not to shoot from the hip and make broad assertions without the facts. But Obama took three days before speaking to the American people, emerging on Monday in between golf and tennis games in Hawaii to deliver a rather tepid address that significantly underplayed what happened. He described Abdulmutallab as an “isolated extremist” who “allegedly tried to ignite an explosive device on his body” " phrases that indicate a legalistic, downplaying approach that alarms rather than reassures. Today’s words showed a lot more fire and desire to get on top of things " we’ll see whether Obama follows through with action. In the meantime, he went snorkelling. There has been a pattern developing with the Obama administration trying to minimise terrorist attacks. We saw it with Abdul Hakim Mujahid Muhammad, a Muslim convert who murdered
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POPSObama's Critics Are Also in His Administration Those deficits were nothing compared to those provided in Obama's budget. His deficits would last years after the recession is over and in spite of the massive tax increases that promises to accompany them. The Democrats correctly criticized Bush's deficits. Feldstein notes that Obama's deficits, because of its expensive health care agenda will reach $9.3 trillion -- more than twice the amount of the previous administration. In an earlier article in the Washington Post, Feldstein noted that "For the 85 percent of Americans who already have health insurance, the Obama health plan is bad news. It means higher taxes, less health care and no protection if they lose their current insurance because of unemployment or early retirement." Feldstein also notes that the price of the program is enormous and would cost more than $1 trillion and would raise the current maximum tax rate from 35 to 45 percent.
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POPS Pee Wee Obama's Big Adventure As a reference point when Bill Clinton went to Asia for a week in 2000, that trip alone cost $63 million for all of the necessities of a glutton White House. Don't think for a second that the gluttonous Obama's are saving one dime. I ask people to remember Ronald Reagan vacationing at the Reagan Ranch. I ask people to remember George H. W. Bush who vacationed Kennebunkport at his family house. I ask people to remember George W. Bush in vacationing at his Texas ranch. Those properties were all paid for and did not cost $40,000 in rent. These Republicans if you recall liked to ride horse in Reagan, fish in Bush 41 and Bush 43 liked running a chainsaw. All cheap entertainment. There was never any entourage of pigs in family and friends seeing who could suck an expensive vacation off the US taxpayers. All three of these Republican Presidents dealt with economic catastrophes and understood the value of every cent they were spending. Yet Obama rolls in and can't find
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POPSGOP Hypocrisy This is not a surprise to me. I always knew that their leadership were hypocrites.
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POPSBowing to communism at the climategate festival Ronald Reagan was right when he said that "America is a nation that has a government - not the other way around." Apparently Mr. Obama somehow rationalizes that it works for him the polar opposite, in other words, "I the president have a nation-and I the president have a government." President Reagan also said, "Government is not the solution-it's the problem." And here's where the country gets into trouble, by allowing the president, and the government to assume complete control over the American people.
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POPSU.S. Counting on Cows to Reduce Carbon Emissions Over 20 years ago, ALL Naysayers laughed and ridiculed the President, Ronald Reagan when he said cows were a major player in greenhouse gases...The Republicans didn't really back him up, because it did sound ridiculous....Good ole Reagan...
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POPSIs it too Early????????????OR IS IT TOO LATE? But Obama is about to diverge from this parallel. Whereas Reagan chose to reassert American power to bring U.S. allies back into line, Obama seems to be choosing to rejuvenate American alliances to revive national power. And this choice constitutes the largest foreign policy risk to his presidency in the months and years ahead.
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POPS Anatomy of a Shakedown by Charles Krauthammer But such dreams never die. The raid on the Western treasuries is on again, but today with a new rationale to fit current ideological fashion. With socialism dead, the gigantic heist is now proposed as a sacred service of the newest religion: environmentalism. One of the major goals of the Copenhagen climate summit is another NIEO shakedown: the transfer of hundreds of billions from the industrial West to the Third World to save the planet by, for example, planting green industries in the tristes tropiques . Politically it's an idea of genius, engaging at once every left-wing erogenous zone: rich man's guilt, post-colonial guilt, environmental guilt. But the idea of shaking down the industrial democracies in the name of the environment thrives not just in the refined internationalist precincts of Copenhagen. It thrives on the national scale too.
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POPSObama Nobel Acceptance Shite
Paleontologists generally trace the arrival of modern man, homo sapiens, back 200,000 years, yet the first authenticated written histories are barely 2,400 years old. How Obama and his speechwriters filled in the 197,600-year gap to prove that the practice of war is as old as mankind and implicitly inseparable from the human condition is a question an enterprising reporter might venture to ask at the next presidential press conference. Perhaps delusions of omniscience is the answer. The Oslo speech is replete with references to and appropriations of the attributes of divinity. And to historical and anthropological fatalism; a deeply pessimistic concept of Providence. Obama affirmed that "no Holy War can ever be a just war. For if you truly believe that you are carrying out divine will, then there is no need for restraint." Then shortly afterward stated "Let us reach for the world that ought to be - that spark of the divine that still stirs within each of our souls." An adversary'
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POPSGreen Shoot John Major, former British Prime Minister, often quoted the "Green Shoot" to talk the British recovery into reality.The reality was " he lost the election".
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POPSThe Environmental Shakedown I love the Dr. He brings all the pieces together to show why we're where we are today. When the call began (whenever?) to "Get the US out of the UN & the UN out of the US", it should have been heeded. Corruption abounds and it's tentacles are in every continent. Wonder what the final conclusion was on the UN member who committed "suicide" by "jumping" from one it's top floors?
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POPSAmerica's regression Pew Poll, today: Public opinion about the use of torture remains divided, though the share saying it can at least sometimes be justified has edged upward over the past year. Currently just over half of Americans say that the use of torture against suspected terrorists in order to gain important information can either often (19%) or sometimes (35%) be justified. This is the first time in over five years of Pew Research polling on this question that a majority has expressed these views. Another 16% say torture can rarely be justified, while 25% say it can never be justified.
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POPS Obanamomics 101 That stimulus has failed to stimulate, and the administration's claims of jobs it has supposedly created or saved have been discredited and become a national scandal. Obama's excuse: Calculating a jobs number is an "inexact science." Small, targeted tax cuts like the one aimed at small business won't do much for hiring. "This is an anti-risk-taking climate," says Republican representative Paul Ryan. "You have to give them incentives to lower the price of risk." Ryan recommends cutting the business income tax to 25 percent from 35 percent, eliminating the tax on capital gains for two years, and providing a 100 percent tax writeoff for equipment, plant construction, and other expenses the first year. Hiring would follow. Presidents from Calvin Coolidge to John Kennedy to Ronald Reagan to George Bush understood that strong incentives are necessary to trigger rapid growth and hiring.
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POPSSarah Palin: Fooling None Of The People... I hope the left will take a deep breath and stop treating Palin like a diabolical force. The American character has always had a large dose of orneriness in it, and the more ornery you were, the farther west you moved. Alaska has a reputation for being an icebox for malcontents. Palin came straight from the source, and countless Americans root for her. In hard times, being the bellyacher-in-chief is a valid role. Hence the rise of Glenn Beck.
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POPSPoll: Obama support dips below 50 percent The poll found 52 percent of respondents said they disapproved of the president's handling of the economy, compared with 43 percent who said they approved. In October, 47 percent said they approved of his handling of the economy and 46 percent said they disapproved.
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POPSReagan's Moral Clarity In 1982, when the United States was mired in its worst recession since World War II, President Reagan defied the pessimism of the day and predicted that “the march of freedom and democracy will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history as it has left other tyrannies which stifle the freedom and muzzle the self-expression of the people.” Roughly a year later, he called the Soviet Union what it so obviously was: an “evil empire.” The “evil empire” speech drew criticism from many of Reagan’s domestic political opponents, and it greatly angered the Kremlin. But it also galvanized Soviet dissidents, who were encouraged that a U.S. president had been bold enough to denounce the moral bankruptcy of communism.
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POPSObama Skips Anniversary of Fall of Berlin Wall, Sends a Video.....About Himself Did He Not Show Up Because It Wasn’t All About Him? Left-wing German paper Der Spiegel seems to have gotten that impression: Der Spiegel summed up as “People of the World, Look at Me”. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,567932,00.html Even worse- Obama spoke about himself to the crowd: “Few would have seen on that day that… that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent.” And, of course, he did not mention Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher in his speech.
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POPSObama skips Berlin Wall ceremonies I don't think he wanted to pay tribute to the historical impact that Reagan had at that time. Besides after a weekend at Camp David and the celebration of the House's healthcare passage...just too tired.
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POPSVEE Day in Alameda, California, we practiced duck-and-cover as well as earthquake drills. Nothing quaint or or historic about it then. Here’s Reagan speechwriter Anthony R. Dolan at the Wall Street Journal on the power of “Four Little Words” … you remember them: “Tear down that wall” … and the earth-shaking ideas they represented as well as the action that backed them. The popular myth is that the wall kind of toppled over by itself, with a little push from people power. That of course ignores not only the prior 44 years of Cold War … interspersed with several hot ones that cost us tens of thousands of American lives … it also ignores the massive military buildup of the 1980s, the encouragement of liberation movements behind the Iron Curtain, the tough engagement with old-school Soviet leaders and, not least, the cordial engagement with a Soviet leader who realized it was time to throw in the towel. An atmosphere was finally created in which people felt like they could
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POPSAntonin Scalia (@ wikipedia) A comment recently posted at amplify referenced the constitution and made me remember a very impressive "60 Minutes" segment about this member of the Supreme Court views.
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POPSRepublicans Need to Dump the Neoconservatives The republicans need a "tea party" within their own camp! The Bush and present GOP "conservatives" are pushing big government Statism as much as Democrats, with only a different slant. Wars for democracy are a key element of both parties now. There is an insidious philosophy underlying this acceptance of the "natural" growth of statism. Neoconservative columnist David Brooks wrote ... we need "a vigorous One Nation Conservatism ... by making the nation great, individuals are able to join their narrow concerns to a larger national project." Actually, it was originally the Democrats that used to believe in curtailing the powers of the Federal government. (This was after the Civil War where they were called Dixie-crats). See this related Clipmark: Danger--America Becoming Statist, First Bush Now Obama
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POPSGreat quote Some how I missed this quote... Reagan truly was The Great Communicator!
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POPSA Picture is Worth a Thousand Words Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion - the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation of individuals - the technique of the marketplace. Milton Friedman The other day, someone told me the difference between a democracy and a "people's democracy." It's the same as the difference between a jacket and a straitjacket. Ronald Wilson Reagan
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POPSFormer Secret Service Tell-All: Jimmy Carter a Fake, Phony, Liar Not surprising to me, but Reagan and Bush got the best reviews...the nicest. Read it and weep: http://www.northstarnational.com/2009/10/14/secret-service-agent-opens-window-private-lives-presidents/ Carter “didn’t want the police officers and agents looking at him or speaking to him when he went to the office,” explained an assistant White House usher. “The only time I saw a smile on Carter’s face was when the cameras were going,” one former agent told Kessler. After his presidency, Kessler reports that when Carter would stay at a townhouse maintained for former presidents in D.C., he would take down pictures of other presidents and put up more pictures of himself! “The Carters were the biggest liars in the world,” one agent told Kessler of the Carter era. Not surprising, liberals say they're for the common man; in an episode of Fringe maybe.
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