The Starving Time

While the multiple overseas crises, the surge of illegals across our southern border and

administration scandals hold our collective attention, I thought I would take a step back and see how 66 months of Priest-King’s enlightened leadership have reinvigorated the economy since the “Great Recession” of 2008-2009.  (I put quotation marks around the phrase since I lived through the double-dip recessions of 1978-1983 and times were a lot tougher then, but I digress.) I’ve devoted quite a bit of effort detailing the failure of his socialist policies in a conventional sense and the success of his socialist policies in advancing his goals, namely the massive increase in the size, scope and power of government, the redistribution of the nation’s wealth and the restructuring of our economy from free-market capitalism to a central planning model, but after commenting on the Priest-King’s laughable management style and foreign policy, it’s time to beat the economic horse again.

First, let’s see what improvements have been made.  The unemployment rate as of 01 July 2014 was 6.1%, the lowest since September 2008 as the home mortgage meltdown began to bite and a marked decrease since October 2009 when the rate peaked at 10.0%.  The private sector has recorded net job growth for at least 22 consecutive months and the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached an all-time high of 17,138.20, an increase of 260% from the rock-bottom mark of 6594.44 in March 2009, so at first blush, it would seem that we are steadily recovering from the recession but if we look at the big picture, things simply aren’t as rosy as Priest-King would have us believe. During this so-called “recovery,” the economy has grown at an average rate of 2.2% per quarter and a total of 11.1%, but The Wall Street Journal reports that the average GDP growth of all post-1960 recoveries is 4.1% and a total of 21.1%, so the recovery that Priest-King has managed is roughly half of what we would expect.  There are 5.6 million fewer jobs available now than there were seven years ago and because of the stark conditions, the labor force participation rate is 63.7%, the lowest mark since 1983: People have simply given up trying to find work. Even worse, if someone is able to find a job, it is more likely to be part-time as employers try to cope with the steep costs of Obamacare – as of December 2013, the full-time labor participation rate was 80.9%, a decrease of 1.7% from the pre-recession level, while the proportion of employees working 34 hours per week or less has climbed.

Taxes and regulations under Priest-King have strangled growth. As of 01 January 2013, thirteen new taxes took effect including six related to Obamacare alone.  The social security payroll tax went up from 4.2% to 6.2%, the top marginal tax rate for incomes over $450,000 went up from 35% to 39.6%, businesses will no longer be able to deduct the full cost of capital improvements, the deduction for corporate expenses related to the Medicare Part B subsidy has been eliminated and the deduction for individual medical expenses has been reduced, among other things.  Together with 157 new major regulations that cost $73 billion per year for compliance and we have a U.S. economy that is being choked into submission, crawling on the floor, unable to generate the revenue required to repay our $17 trillion in national debt, let alone create millions of high-paying, full-time jobs.

Contributing to the stratospheric rise in our national debt is the fact that 49.5% of all workers pay no Federal income taxes at all.  (People ridiculed Mitt Romney’s remark that he’d never be able to convince 47% of the voters to support him because of their dependence on government, but it turns out Mitt actually underestimated the figure.)  Combine that with 10,000 baby boomers retiring every day and we face $45.9 trillion in obligations over the next 75 years with no way to pay it.  By 2024, 62% of the non-interest Federal budget will be devoted to Social Security and Medicare alone, resulting in a burden of $299,000 per working American which is clearly unsustainable, but we’re not done yet.

Since LBJ declared War on Poverty in 1964, the Federal government has spent over $17 trillion on means-tested welfare but poverty has actually increased.  One out of seven Americans relies on food stamps for basic survival, spending on food stamps has almost doubled from $39.3 billion annually to $75.3 billion and Priest-King, rather than help the poor transition from assistance to work, has accelerated the growth of welfare by excising that part of the 1994 Welfare Reform Act that requires welfare recipients to work in exchange for their benefits.  By providing cash bonuses to states that enroll more welfare cases and covering 80% of the cost of new enrollees, the Federal government gives the states powerful incentives to sign up more people to the public trough and undercuts the intent of welfare reform to transition people from dependency to self-sufficiency.  Adding insult to injury, the expansion of welfare destroys families: 72.8% of black children born in 2009 were illegitimate.

The facts speak for themselves.  In exchange for the suffering of 313 million people and permanent damage to our democracy, we have feeble growth and below-normal employment.  Calling what we have a “recovery” insults the definition of the word.  Priest-King believes that prosperity is only prosperity when everyone prospers, that success is only success when everyone succeeds, that equal results matter more than equal opportunity.  If someone is disinclined to work, then it is the duty of government to provide that person a safe, secure, stable living for the rest of their life.  Free-market capitalism with its emphasis on risk-taking, initiative, individual responsibility and self-reliance is anathema to his vision, it must be chained, shackled, taxed regulated and beaten into submission.  With huge tax increases, huge costs for Obamacare, hundreds of new rules, millions of people giving up on finding a job and a shrinking, overworked and ragged workforce, it is no surprise that the economy is gasping, wheezing and limping along.  This is the new normal whether we like it or not.  As in the Clinton years when liberal pundits told us that lying was actually beneficial, Priest-King wants us to believe that mediocrity is success, that unemployment is being productive and that destroying the world’s greatest economy is inspired leadership: God save us from more inspiration.  My friends, this state of affairs threatens our democracy.  The Founders envisioned a nation of self-starters, rugged individualists who only needed a clear set of rules to move out and make their dreams reality.  They supplied their own drive, their own resources, their own creativity and they were willing to sweat, they reached the Pacific Ocean and then the moon, they cured diseases,  they won two world wars, invented amazing technology, fed their friends and enemies alike and built the greatest nation in the history of the world.  The Founders certainly didn’t anticipate a nation where 36.3% of working-age adults sit idle, where half the population pays no taxes yet draws on the public treasury, where we pay people not to work and punish those who work too well, where the president not only doesn’t stop such misery but encourages it.  Even a liberal like Thomas Jefferson would be appalled at a society in which sloth is rewarded and prosperity is flogged in the public square, and would recognize that when the resources are gone, chaos will surely follow.  “He who does not work, neither shall he eat,” decreed Captain John Smith in the Jamestown colony, quoting Scripture, and by enforcing this simple credo, he helped save the colony from starvation.  I pray to God that we relearn it soon because Priest-King may be Messiah-in-Chief but he’s no John Smith.

Fighting Joe

Joe Hooker was a man poised for greatness.  The grandson of a Revolutionary War officer, he graduated

from West Point and served with distinction in the Seminole and Mexican Wars, earning three promotions in the process. In the first two years of the Civil War, he proved to be a brave, aggressive and effective division and corps commander, eliciting praise for his combat leadership in the Peninsula Campaign, the Second Battle of Manassas, Antietam (where he was wounded) and the debacle that was Fredericksburg.  Promoted by Abraham Lincoln to Commanding General of the Army of the Potomac, Joe Hooker was within reach of the ultimate prize: If he could destroy Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia and win the war, he would be acclaimed a national hero and the Presidency would be his for the asking.

Greatness has a price, though, and sometimes you have to step on toes to get it. Hooker testified against his old commanding general, Winfield Scott, during a court-martial proceeding in the 1850’s, resigned his commission, openly criticized Union generalship during the First Battle of Manassas and asked President Lincoln to reinstate him, brazenly highlighting his own qualifications for command. He mocked George McClellan in the press and was insubordinate to McClellan’s successor, Ambrose Burnside, during and after the Battle of Fredericksburg, going so far as to propose setting up a dictator.  Having been promoted to lead the Union’s premier land force, Hooker reformed and strengthened the Army of the Potomac to such a point that he boasted, “May God have mercy on General Lee for I shall have none.”  True, he was a hard-drinking man and a womanizer, but he had a great army and a great plan which, if executed, would indeed annihilate the Army of Northern Virginia, open the road to Richmond and end the war.

So far, so good.  In late April 1863, Hooker ordered a cavalry raid behind Lee’s lines which, although conducted cautiously, nonetheless distracted and confused Lee enough to enable Hooker to cross the Rappahannock River and appear on Lee’s left flank.  By dawn of Friday, 01 May 1863, he had 70,000 men on Lee’s side of the river and with light resistance, threatened to envelop the Rebels from the east and the west.  As the day progressed, resistance increased but by 2:00 PM, the Federals had pushed through to the eastern edge of the dense forest called the Wilderness and it was then that things began to come apart.  Hooker started to lose his nerve and rather than continue the attack, he ordered his men to withdraw and then dig in, hoping that Lee would be forced to attack his larger army.  Having witnessed Lee baffle and humiliate successive Union generals while outnumbered and outgunned, maybe Hooker was afraid of the wily Virginian, but for whatever reason, Hooker’s confused and frustrated subordinates fell back, passing the initiative to their worst enemy.

Defying all military logic, Lee had divided his army to hold the Federals threatening Fredericksburg and then deal with Hooker’s attack, and then did it again, sending Stonewall Jackson’s entire corps of 28,000 men on a looping march around the Union lines.  Besides noticing Hooker’s sudden timidity, Lee also saw that Hooker’s right flank was left exposed and vulnerable, so rather than attack Hooker head-on as “Fighting Joe” had hoped, Lee chose to assault Hooker’s weakest position and, if he was successful, roll up the entire Federal army and turn looming defeat into overwhelming victory.  For nine hours on Saturday, 02 May 1863, Stonewall Jackson’s II Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia marched across the front of the Federal positions, partially screened by Jeb Stuart’s cavalry but repeatedly observed by men of the Union III Corps and the reconnaissance balloon Eagle.  Reports of the Confederate movements reached Hooker who issued desultory orders to prepare for an attack but took no assertive action to either bolster his right flank or fall on Jackson’s corps while on the march, essentially allowing the Rebels freedom of maneuver until, at 5:30 PM while troops of the Federal XI Corps were preparing their supper, 28,000 screaming Confederates exploded out of the woods and the rout was on.  The Union right flank collapsed, and though Stonewall Jackson was himself mortally wounded that night and there was hard fighting the next day, the battle was lost.  To add insult to injury, Hooker was stunned by a cannonball that struck a roofpost at his headquarters on 03 May, knocking him senseless for an hour. At this critical time, while he was stupefied and probably concussed, he refused to relinquish command, paralyzing the Army of the Potomac when it desperately needed strong, professional leadership, and the Battle of Chancellorsville would become Robert E. Lee’s greatest victory and the Union’s most humiliating defeat.  Despite overwhelming advantages in men and materiel, Joe Hooker went down in history not as a national hero but as a national laughingstock.

Barack Hussein Obama, Priest-King of the Americas, Generalissimo of the People’s Revolution and Keeper of the Golden Flame, assumed office in January 2009 and inherited the world’s top economy and the world’s best military.  America was in the depths of a serious recession (caused by liberal social engineering as reported in detail in this space and elsewhere) but the underlying structure was sound, and rather than relieve the burden of heavy taxes and onerous regulations to spur growth, Obama defied logic by increasing taxes and issuing thousands of new rules and adding trillions of dollars in additional debt. While Joe Hooker’s highest level of competence was as a corps commander, Priest-King’s highest level of competence was as a social gadfly, a community organizer who spurs other people to action while assuming no responsibility himself, and also like Joe Hooker, a goad who found it much easier to criticize someone else’s leadership than to exercise command himself. Like Hooker, Obama had an ambitious plan that he couldn’t execute and when faced with a situation he didn’t understand or anticipate, he froze – his reactions to the Iranian elections in 2009, the comatose economy, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt times two, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Iran’s nuclear program, Iraq, Europe’s financial crisis, the burgeoning conflict between Israel and Hamas, the invasion on our southern border and the various scandals plaguing his administration.  He has been outmaneuvered by Vladimir Putin, Bashar Assad, by Iran and by everyone living in Central America, he can’t believe, he cannot accept what is happening right in front of him, he watches transfixed as the disaster unfolds, motionless, unblinking, “like a duck that’s been hit on the head” as Lincoln described Hooker.  The common thread running through all of these situations is a crying lack of leadership, the fumbling, slow-witted paralysis of a man outmatched by circumstances, a college professor whose ideas, so fashionable at liberal cocktail parties, are proven to be inadequate after five years of hard experience.  His bold promises and boasting are now known to be lies, his strategy of “soft power” and “lead from behind” is a late-night punchline, he is a proud man who can hear the snickering behind his back, the PhD who can’t change a tire. Yet he remains in charge, too arrogant to pass command to abler hands, and we have no Lincoln to relieve him, so we will suffer more, the world will suffer more, someone will carve him in marble to great acclaim and we will hope to God that we never hear of him again.

Sliding Toward the Abyss

My stepson called me last night to discuss Eric Cantor’s surprising loss in the Virginia Republican primary and that occupied our attention for a good while – it shows the establishment GOP that they have to deal with the Tea Party honestly or go down in flames – but the conversation turned when I told him that the city of Mosul had been taken by al-Qaeda, that 500,000 people were fleeing the city and that the Iraqi security forces, trained and equipped and supported at such a high cost in blood and treasure these past eleven years, had also fled the city, abandoning their vehicles, weapons, equipment and even their uniforms in their haste.  He was very sad at this news since he worked in Mosul as a contractor for Kellogg, Brown and Root for two years (he worked in Iraq from 2003-2007 during the worst of the insurgency) and knew military and civilian personnel who had been killed trying to secure the city, and the realization that all the sacrifices made toward that goal had been wasted struck him hard: The black flag of al-Qaeda now flew over his former compound.

America is repeating one of its worst traits in the loss of Mosul, that of abandoning a major strategic objective before the objective is met and leaving the affected people to their fate.  John Kennedy authorized the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 and at a critical moment, withheld naval and air support that doomed the operation.  In 1975, despite firm and repeated assurances to the contrary, Gerald Ford denied military assistance to South Vietnam as it was invaded by the North, guaranteeing a Communist victory and the worst strategic defeat in our history. Jimmy Carter refused to support Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi as he faced a fundamentalist Muslim revolution in Iran because Carter disapproved of the human rights abuses committed by the Shah’s security forces, though the U.S. had overthrown the previous government in favor of Pahlavi and the Shah had been a major ally against Soviet expansionism in the Persian Gulf for twenty years. This ensured the rise of the most radical Islamic regime in the world, the world’s foremost sponsor of terrorism and the greatest threat to Middle East peace ever. George H.W. Bush encouraged the Shiite tribes in southern Iraq to rebel against Saddam Hussein in 1991, as well as the Kurds in the north, then stood aside and watched as they were slaughtered in the thousands by Saddam’s tanks and gunships.  Over and over, America fights and bleeds and dies for an objective and then goes home before the objective is achieved, with dangerous consequences for us and deadly consequences for the people we leave behind.

Maybe establishing an Arab democracy in Iraq was simply impossible, maybe overcoming the kleptocracy was simply too hard, but after 9/11, it was worth the attempt and was certainly worth a better effort than arbitrary retreat.  Thirteen years of combat and massive investment have failed to change the corruption inherent in Afghan tribal culture and having declared unilaterally that the war is over, America leaves that benighted country in the hands of a resurgent Taliban to complete its misery.  In both of these cases, we chose to walk away, we could have stayed and fought the enemy on his own territory and kept the worst of Islamic extremism from our shores and we could have done so indefinitely, but our President lacks the stomach for that.  He is interested, rather, in disengaging from conflicts, in disengaging from the hard and flinty work of defending our interests, in assuaging hurt feelings in the Muslim world, in exchanging five hardened Taliban commanders for one American deserter, in emptying the cages at Guantanamo to please his friends at Berkeley, in giving up.  Projecting American power into the teeth of our enemies nauseates him (as his commencement speech at West Point last month attests), and beyond disdain for the military – cutting their budget by $1 trillion by 2022, closing the National World War II Memorial during the government shutdown – he just doesn’t think that America and her commitments are worth fighting for.  Those Iraqis who welcomed the Americans in 2003, who trusted us and helped us and believed that a democratic Iraq was possible, who now are running for their lives, are simply gullible and eminently disposable fools.  Those Afghans who suffered under the Taliban’s savage rule, who cooperated with us against them, who wanted a brighter future for their daughters than mutilation, slavery, ignorance and an early death, who now face the return of those pitiless sociopaths to the seat of power, live in a country very far away, whose customs we don’t understand and who are so ungovernable that even Alexander the Great gave up and returned to Babylon. Those Syrians who believed the President of the United States when he said that use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime would constitute a “red line” that would invite swift retribution, whose children have been massacred by Assad’s poison gas and who lie in their graves unavenged, cannot be distinguished from the Hizbollah, Iranian and al-Qaeda thugs now overrunning the country and aren’t worth a confrontation with Vladimir Putin; ditto Ukraine.  Priest-King finds these people boring and tedious, their circumstances too complicated for his lofty intellect, annoying distractions from the important work of dismantling the world’s lone superpower and shaping his legacy.  So he looks away, maybe for political reasons but maybe because he knows the job is too big for him, maybe because florid speeches and empty threats are no replacement for guts, maybe because he is the wrong President for our time.  America deserves better, certainly Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Ukraine deserve better, but as we contemplate what could have been, Mosul burns.

Tainted

Throughout American history, there have been situations so urgent that extraordinary action by the President has been demanded.  George Washington took to the field personally to crush the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794, the first major test of our young democracy; Thomas Jefferson bought Louisiana from Napoleon without Constitutional authority to do so, in order to double the size of our country; Abraham Lincoln faced the greatest threat of all by suspending the writ of habeas corpus – a power reserved to the Congress alone – and jailed Confederate sympathizers without trial, besides waging a continental war; Franklin Roosevelt led the nation through the greatest war in history, jailing 100,000 American citizens rather than risk one act of sabotage; Harry Truman tried to nationalize the country’s steel mills during the Korean War to avoid a potentially disastrous strike; Ronald Reagan forced the Soviet Union to collapse by accelerating the arms race and not maintaining the status quo as his critics demanded, and through his compassion for American hostages then held by Hizbollah in Lebanon, authorized the illegal sale of missiles to Iran that resulted in the Iran-Contra scandal that crippled his second term.  In all of these cases, the needs of the moment were so pressing that unusual and even illegal action by the President was required but such action was not part of a general pattern of the given administration.  (You will note I have purposely omitted the Bill Clinton years since those stand apart in a special class of criminality and would require more time to discuss than I have.) Yet now in 2014, we are governed by a man so intoxicated with his godlike stature that he acts as he chooses; he obeys laws, breaks laws, ignores laws, creates laws, condemns, kills and destroys at will, a man who despises the country he leads, its Constitution, the very office he holds, a man for whom the title of President is insufficient, a man for whom pontifex maximus is more appropriate, the greatest emperor in the New Rome, the feeble, stooped, emaciated and toothless America of his socialist fantasies.

He refuses to enforce immigration law and the Defense of Marriage Act. He fires the CEO of General Motors when he has no legal authority to do so. His Attorney General encourages the attorneys-general of the states to disregard laws with which they disagree, particularly those that forbid homosexual marriage, refuses to prosecute the Black Panthers for voting rights violations, authorizes the illegal sale of firearms to the Mexican drug cartels then hides behind Executive Privilege rather than disclose to Congress the full details of the sordid affair. Priest-King lies repeatedly to ensure passage of the Affordable Care Act, changes the law over twenty times without legal authority to do so, then claims that the millions of hapless citizens who’ve lost their health care as a result of his deceit “should have known” that they would lose it.  He appoints political cronies to the National Labor Relations Board without Senate approval although the Senate was in session.  He uses the Internal Revenue Service, the NSA and the Justice Department to flog his political enemies and unilaterally grants amnesty to 116,000 illegal immigrants who have been convicted of crimes and jailed, again without legal justification.  The depth and breadth of Priest-King’s lawlessness in unsurpassed in American history but have we seen everything yet? What else is he capable of doing?

Although he enjoyed a privileged upbringing (raised by doting grandparents in the tropical paradise of Hawaii, educated at Columbia and Harvard, no evidence that he was victimized because of his race), Priest-King harbors a deep hatred for America.  If America was founded by rich white European men for their own selfish purposes, if these men passed a Constitution and laws designed to maintain their hegemony while minorities suffered, if America got rich by defrauding and exploiting the weak and marginalized peoples of the earth, then Barack Hussein Obama – umm, umm, umm! – will take whatever measures are necessary to make things right and those include issuing bills of attainder and ex post facto laws.  (Now, before you sneer and scoff and blithely dismiss this as a preposterous notion, remember what we’ve already discussed.) Priest-King is a revolutionary in the deepest Saul Alinsky tradition, committed to radically and irreversibly transforming the United States of America into its rightful condition as a post-industrial, post-capitalist, let’s-share-the-love egalitarian commune, so any resistance to his vision is by nature counterrevolutionary.  Since the law can be used to protect counterrevolutionaries, the law must be changed or overridden to meet the situation. By a stroke of his pen, Priest-King could sign Executive Orders authorizing the arrest and imprisonment of persons he deems are “security threats,” without trial and for activities that were legal at the time but which, by the same pen, he declares illegal.  Would Congress and the American people object?  Certainly some Congressmen and Senators would, and a great many people, but these would be Priest-King’s political enemies whom he has never been able to win over.  The disturbing aspect of such reaction is that it would not be universal.  The same liberals who defended Bill Clinton’s perjury would leap into the fray.  His allies on Capitol Hill and in the media, on college and university campuses, in the unions and environmental groups, would rally to him, applauding his bold action, cheering him on, opining that the Constitution should not be a straitjacket for his enlightened leadership and that he should jail even more of the right-wing, stubborn, conservative relics who oppose him. The rule of law would be redefined to mean whatever he wanted it to be, Congress would shrivel like a useless appendage on the sidelines and who’s to say that the Supreme Court, which has already proven it can be intimidated regarding Obamacare, would overturn such blatant unconstitutional action?  Who would try to enforce the Supreme Court’s ruling if they did oppose the President?  The American people would then be living under the same tyrannical conditions that motivated their forebears to rebel against the British Empire and overthrow it, and everything they fought for would be brought to nothing.  Is this truly the nation we want to pass on to our grandchildren?  Is American oppression really so much more preferable to British?

Arrest and imprisonment without trial has been the hallmark of authoritarian regimes from Rome to North Korea, as is charging people with crimes that weren’t crimes when they were committed.  Priest-King has already demonstrated his contempt for the rule of law, that he’s willing to kill American citizens on his own authority and that he’ll use the Federal government to assail his political opponents, the Constitution be damned.  If you’re a liberal and this scenario works for you, then be encouraged to stay the course: You go, Barack!  But if you’re a conservative as I am and this scenario terrifies you, if this scenario represents the death of democracy and everything we’ve built since 1776, then you will continue to resist and criticize and frustrate the Priest-King with every means at your disposal until your dying breath…or until Eric Holder’s minions knock at your door.

Genius!

Administrators at the Veterans Affairs hospital in Phoenix, Arizona, kept a secret list of patients who were

waiting for treatment while publishing a falsified list that complied with VA regulations.  As many as forty veterans died as a result of excessive delays in their care and an investigation into the practice has now spread to 42 VA hospitals across the country.

E-mails obtained through the Freedom of Information Act reveal that a senior White House advisor, Ben Rhodes, was directly involved in crafting the talking points that Ambassador Susan Rice delivered on multiple Sunday talk shows following the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on 11 September 2012.  The e-mail emphasizes a previously-unknown YouTube video critical of Islam as the cause of the attack and deflects criticism of  “a broader failure of policy,” and contradicts earlier White House denials of coordination between the President’s staff and the State Department regarding Ambassador Rice’s remarks.

E-mails subpoenaed by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee indicate that IRS headquarters in Washington, DC, was directing and controlling the targeting of conservative groups seeking 501(c)3 tax-exempt status starting in March 2010, rather than a couple of “rogue agents” at the Cincinnati office. (Two hundred ninety-two conservative groups received extreme levels of scrutiny vice six liberal groups.) They also prove that Senator Carl Levin and Representative Elijah Cummings, both liberal Democrats, were pressuring the IRS to throttle conservative/TEA Party groups before the 2010 elections, proving that the United States Congress and the Executive Branch were colluding to deprive American citizens of their Constitutional rights.

In contradiction to his earlier criticism of electronic monitoring of domestic communications during the Bush 43 administration, Priest-King expanded the scope of such monitoring to include virtually every telephone call and keystroke in the United States and the permanent retention of that information by the Federal government or by its agents.  Such national-scale monitoring of private communications represents the most colossal violation of Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure in American history.

In order to determine the source of a national security leak, the Justice Department subpoenaed the telephone records of over 100 Associated Press employees, Fox News reporter James Rosen, and Mr. Rosen’s parents, even naming Mr. Rosen a “co-conspirator” in a Federal indictment.  Attorney General Eric Holder testified to Congress that he didn’t intend to arrest and prosecute Mr. Rosen and the indictment was more of a scare tactic than anything else, but this episode demonstrates the commitment of the Priest-King administration to intimidating the free press.

As a result of Priest-King’s stated “red line” in Syria, President Bashar Assad remains in power, continues to use chemical weapons against his own citizens and is invulnerable to UN sanctions.  Given Russia’s firm support, it is highly unlikely that he will be overthrown and replaced by a pro-Western democracy.

As a result of Priest-King’s “reset” with Russia, Vladimir Putin has seized Crimea, occupied eastern Ukraine, threatens to split the country in two and gives safe haven to NSA traitor and fugitive Edward Snowden.

As a result of Priest-King’s “pivot” to Asia, China’s cyberespionage activities against U.S. companies and government agencies has increased, China has claimed all of the East and South China Seas as their territory, freedom of speech, Internet access, pro-democracy reforms and Christianity are rigorously suppressed and North Korea’s psychotic behavior continues unabated.

As a result of his repeated assurances that, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan, period,” 6.2 million Americans have lost their health insurance, others have seen their deductibles, premiums and co-pays quintuple, 31% of all small businesses will drop their employees’ health coverage by 2016 and health care costs will climb $1.7 trillion between 2010-2020.

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives conducted an illegal operation called Fast and Furious in which known criminals were allowed to purchase firearms in the United States and transport them across the border to arm Mexican drug cartels.  This operation resulted in over 1700 guns being used to commit crimes on both sides of the border, the deaths of an unknown number of Mexican nationals and the murder of U.S. Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, who was killed in December 2010.  To date, less than half of the guns in question have been recovered and no-one has been fired or prosecuted.

You get the point.  Barack Hussein Obama, Priest-King of the Americas and Generalissimo of the People’s Revolution, presides over the most corrupt, lawless and inept administration in American history.  Crimes are committed, laws are openly ignored, flouted, disregarded or changed at his whim, people suffer and die and absolutely no-one is ever held to account.  American power and prestige, so dearly earned, is frittered away, wasted, allowed to wither and is now openly mocked abroad: Retreat and weakness are now our watchwords.  The economy sputters along on fumes, unemployment and food stamps are the “new normal,” and veterans of the nation’s armed forces, those most deserving of respect and diligent care, are allowed to die while smiling bureaucrats collect fat bonuses.  Six years ago, I warned you, fellow citizens, that electing Priest-King to the Presidency would result in this state of affairs and over 66 million of you ignored my warnings, twice, so if you have lost your job, lost your house, lost your health care, lost an elder to the VA’s tender mercies, you’re living on the government dole, none of Priest-King’s promises have been kept and you can’t understand why this has happened to you, then you’re as dumb as a bowl of soup and you deserved what you got.

The Flaccid President

 

When I last contributed my opinion in this space, I criticized Priest-King's amateurish

handling of the crisis in Syria which, as of this writing, has still not been resolved to our satisfaction: Bashar Assad is still in power and blasting the opposition with barrel bombs and long-range missiles, Syria's chemical weapons stockpile has yet to be completely controlled and destroyed and Russia continues to hold the

initiative in Syria and in the United Nations. This situation by itself would be embarrassment enough for the world's lone superpower but we must now add the ongoing humiliation in Ukraine. For about one week

in February, the Ukrainian people exulted in an historic victory, the deposition of the Russian puppet Viktor Yanukovych from the presidency, and the prospect of genuine democratic reform and closer relations with the West. The transformation of their country from Cold War satellite to modern liberal democracy and free-market economy, started in the Orange Revolution, was within reach, but then the

iron hand of Vladimir Putin slammed down hard. Russian forces overran Crimea, seized Ukrainian military bases, destroyed Ukrainian naval vessels and ensured approval of a popular referendum proposing secession of Crimea from Ukraine which led to prompt annexation by Russia, and are now massed on the Ukrainian frontier with the apparent intention of invading Ukraine proper and restoring their puppet to his former office, all in defiance of Priest-King's protests that this was "Cold War thinking" and Putin was "on the wrong side of history" and sanctions against a handful of his senior aides and exclusion - temporary exclusion, I might add - from the G8. Vladimir Putin is delivering a lesson in geopolitics that Priest-King is apparently too smart to understand, that soft warnings, half

measures and limp-wristed professors' lounge idealism are no match for men with guns.

Preventing an independent, pro-Western Georgia from integrating with the European Union and NATO was a strategic priority for Russia in 2008 so Vladimir Putin invaded that country, overwhelmed Georgia's military in five days, installed pro-Russian governments in the provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and was bombing the capital of Tbilisi before he decided to stop, demonstrating that he would act in his own interest, world opinion be damned. President George W. Bush, though he had started military cooperation with Georgia in the mid-2000's and invited Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to the White House, was too distracted by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the presidential campaign
and the burgeoning financial crisis to offer more than lip service to the embattled Georgians, which was exactly the circumstance that Putin had sought - a preoccupied America, exhausted by seven years of war and unwilling to interfere in his plans. He followed this calculus again to throttle the West's plans to stop Iran's nuclear program and again to prevent U.S. military action against his ally Assad in Syria, exploiting the West's disinclination for conflict to protect Russia's strategic interests and flex his political

muscle, because for Vladimir Putin, power is what matters. Winning is what matters. He lost heavily when President Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and again when Bush invaded Iraq in 2003. He bungled an assassination attempt against pro-reform presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko in Ukraine in 2004, bungled rigging an election, looked foolish congratulating his stooge Yanukovych on television and is determined never to lose like that again. He wants to restore Russia's former greatness and power, he was lionized by a preening liberal media during the Sochi Winter Olympics (hello, Bob Costas) and now he owns Crimea. Who's to stop him now?

And that is the crux of it. Our European allies shrink from confronting Russia for fear of losing a major energy supplier and inviting Russian military retaliation. Priest-King himself, besides being annoyed by

Putin's open disrespect and confused by his boorish behavior, sees the Ukraine crisis as a

distraction from his goal of deconstructing America into a Scandinavian free-love commune and is disposed to hang back and let the situation play out, which means death for the Ukrainian people. Really stopping Russia would be risky, something Priest-King studiously avoids, it would alienate his base of America-hating Left-wing intellectuals, and the possibility of protecting freedom and democracy is outweighed by his craven need for popularity. In contrast to the swaggering former KGB colonel, Priest-King has amassed a nearly unbroken record of failure where foreign policy is concerned, failure to secure Russian and Chinese support for tougher sanctions against Iran, failure to secure Chinese
protections for human rights and intellectual property rights, failure to defeat AI Qaeda, failure to secure our border with Mexico, scorn from Hugo Chavez, retreat in Iraq, a reluctant, half-hearted surge and then a retreat from lithe war we have to win," indecision during the Arab Spring and the Egyptian uprising and of course, the attack on our consulate in Benghazi that left the U.S. Ambassador and three others dead. He is furiously cutting our military at the same time that Iran's nuclear program is accelerating, that North Korea continues to launch missiles, that AI Qaeda is surging across North Africa and that Russia is massing 80,000 troops on the Ukrainian border, so he has given the Russian dictator
absolutely no reason to treat him as anything besides a ridiculous weakling, so he will continue to lead from behind while Ukraine burns to cinders.

But it doesn't have to be this way. If actually deploying U.S. troops to Ukraine is off the table, there are steps we can take that will put Vladimir Putin in such a twist that he will beg us to let him quit and go home:

• Freeze all Russian assets in the United States and Europe so Putin can't get his money and neither can anyone else.

• Immediately send combat materiel to Ukraine, especially anti-tank and air defense weapons, so the Ukrainians will have the substance to defend themselves.

• Deploy strong U.S. air and naval forces to the Baltics and Eastern Europe, forces capable of

bloodying Putin's nose, and insist that our NATO allies do the same.

• Cancel the planned cuts to the Defense Department.

• Guarantee Ukraine and Europe itself that we can meet all of their energy needs at a cheaper price than Putin can, and then actually do it. Cut Putin out of his biggest market and then watch the Russian economy sputter and die.

These measures would send the strongest signal short of war that we won't tolerate Russian mischief in Ukraine or anywhere else, without losing more lives or territory. They would bolster our allies' confidence in us that we'll come through in the clutch, they would put that whiny little mobster in his place and they would demonstrate once again why the United States won the Cold War. Unfortunately, these measures would have to be implemented by a strong, determined leader and Ronald Reagan's been dead for ten years, so we're stuck with the skinny pipsqueak currently living in the White House: Ifthere were ever a situation where one of those little blue pills would come in handy, this is it.

 

 

Selective Outrage

Even a casual observer of politics and popular

culture would notice that liberals are an angry lot and usually angry about a lot of things at the same time: Saving the planet, social justice, income inequality, the “war on women,” charter schools, racial profiling and the list goes on into infinity. If it isn’t meryl Streep testifying to Congress about the dangers of alar (there weren’t any), it’s Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon protesting for the Sandinistas, for Ralph Nader, against Ralph Nader, with Cindy Sheehan and Jane Fonda  about the invasion of Iraq, against Governor Scott Walker and for Occupy Wall Street. Liberals rant and rave and storm about until, sometimes, their opinions collide with each other, which brings us to Boko Haram.

The kidnapping of 276 girls in Nigeria is rightly judged an abominable act, compounded by the threat of Boko Haram’s psychotic leader, Abubakar Sharam, to sell the girls into slavery and a life of prostitution, misery, abuse, disease and early death.  All civilized people should be shocked by this outrageous crime and everything should be done to find the girls and rescue them before it’s too late, but this situation also shines an unflattering light on liberals, who, I suspect, aren’t aware of it:

·         Non-intervention in other countries’ affairs has been a hallmark of liberal theology since the Vietnam War.  The aforesaid Ms. Sarandon and Ms. Fonda bitched about the invasion of Grenada and American support for the Contras in Nicaragua, liberals protested the deployment of American forces  to Saudi Arabia in 1990 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and Code Pink protested at George Bush’s ranch over the Global war On Terror.  However, as with the protests against apartheid in South Africa, the ouster of Ferdinand Marcos from the Philippines, the invasion of Haiti to restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power and the bombing of Libya in 2011, liberals who demand American military intervention in Nigeria (#BringBackOurGirls) demonstrate that non-intervention as a principle is rather flexible when it concerns one of their pet causes, in this case, two causes: Feminism and Africa.  Thus Sheila Jackson-Lee can wave $12 in cash at the gate of the Nigerian Embassy, angrily referencing the price Boko Haram would accept for one of their victims, insists on a powerful and immediate American military response and doesn’t grasp the hypocrisy – they’re girls, they’re black, so anything is justified.

·         Abubakar Sharam’s threat, “Allah commands me to sell them,” referring to the girls he kidnapped at gunpoint, underscores that he is a psychotic Muslim thug leading an army of psychotic Muslim thugs, a stereotypical representative of the militant Islam that has waged war on Western civilization for the past forty years and the very reason we have been at war since 9/11, yet haven’t liberals like John Kerry, Dick Durbin, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi and Priest-King himself accused the United States of a baseless anti-Islamic hatred?  Did not Priest-King begin his reign by apologizing to the Muslim world for American “mistakes”? (A gentleman was arrested in London last week merely for quoting Winston Churchill’s remarks on Islam, the authorities charging him with making “insensitive remarks,” this in the city that was savagely bombed by Muslim terrorists in July 2005.) Demanding that the U.S. military should forcibly rescue his captives ought to bring a blush to liberals’ cheeks but they’re apparently unaware of the contradiction.

·         Many of the kidnapped girls are Christians, a fact omitted in most of the mainstream media coverage of this event.  Militant Islam has persecuted Christians for 1400 years but especially since the 1970’s – Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, East Timor, South Sudan, everywhere in the Muslim world – have we seen a committed, vengeful, robust campaign of anti-Christian hate, compassing the full range of human depravity: Kidnapping, rape and slavery are just the latest manifestations.  Usually, the Left mocks and insults Christianity, blaming the Church for every ill in the world but now liberal commentators and politicians, Michelle Obama included, urge the immediate rescue of these innocent girls, confirming what we already knew to be the truth: Christians are overwhelmingly the victims of Muslim violence and prejudice, not the other way around.

It is reported that two of the girls have died of snakebite, that another girl has escaped and that about 100 girls have been forcibly converted to Islam and exploited on Youtube.  As the days roll by and no substantive action is taken, it becomes less and less likely that the girls will ever be recovered and one of the issues that will have to be confronted in the aftermath of this tragic episode is the utter futility of liberalism as expressed in foreign policy. The fact is that we should intervene in the affairs of other countries when it is in our national interest to do so.  We fight militant Islam because it threatens us, because it is a crude, violent and repressive ideology that seeks to enslave the world and to destroy whatever it cannot enslave.  Muslims attack and kill and kidnap and torture and rape and enslave Christians because they hate their very existence and if these facts contravene every principle of liberalism known to Man, then so be it, because what is more important: Dealing with the world the way naïve liberals want it to be or dealing with the world the way it really is?