"Obama a One-Trick Pony"?

Powerlineblog posts a long and thoughtful piece by a professor at Hillsdale College analyzing a recent Peggy Noonan column on President Obama.

The Noonan column and the professor's analysis gives voice to many on both the Right and the Left who wonder whether Obama has the skills, depth or interest in governing as he campaigned.

In Noonan's words:

Mr Obama is in a hard place. Health care hangs over him, and if he is lucky he will lose a close vote in the Senate. The common wisdom that he can't afford to lose is exactly wrong--he can't afford to win with such a poor piece of legislation. He needs to get the issue behind him, vow to fight another day, and move on. Afghanistan hangs over him, threatening the unity of his own Democratic congressional base. There is the growing perception of incompetence, of the inability to run the machine of government. This, with Americans, is worse than Obama's rebranding as a leader who governs from the left. Americans demands baseline competence. If he comes to be seen as Jimmy Carter was, that the job was bigger than the man, that will be the end.

The Hillsdale professor (who often finds Noonan's gauzy, moralizing writing style off-putting), thinks Peggy Noonan is spot on this time. He concludes with his own observation--that Democrats are sowing what they have reaped:

[In 2008, the Democrats] had on their hands an inexperienced, recently minted US Senator from Illinois who was -- as Joe Biden put it in a candid remark that typifies his propensity for speaking his mind without first thinking about the consequences -- "the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." Never mind, they thought, Obama's long-standing connections with William Ayers, the unrepentant mastermind of a domestic terrorist bombing campaign in the 1970s. Never mind Obama's close association with the racist demagogue Jeremiah Wright. Never mind his lack of executive experience, his unfamiliarity with the private sector, and his ignorance of the ways of Washington. With the help of the pliable press, he could be sold -- and Americans would congratulate themselves on their lack of racial prejudice if they voted for him.

Now comes the reckoning. For Barack Obama seems to be a one-trick pony. He is very good at delivering a speech if he has a teleprompter at hand, and the first and even the second time that you hear him, you will be impressed. If you bother later to read and re-read the speech you will perceive its emptiness. But few will do that, and by the time that they do, it will be too late.

My take on all this is that it must be very tough to be a Democrat loyalist these days. We conservatives knew what we were getting with Barack Obama, and are surprised only by the scale of his arrogance and the emptiness of his politics. Liberals are just discovering that the man they swooned for as a candidate can't or won't deliver what he promised them.

Imagine how disappointing the next three years is going to be for them. And the worst part is, they can't admit it to anyone. Not even themselves.

"America the Valiant"

A Thanksgiving Day column by Claudia Rosett.

An excerpt:

Thanksgiving is a day to step back... and count not only a laundry list of material comforts, but also the gifts of the spirit. For all the sound and fury, there is no place richer in such blessings, or with more to be proud of, than the United States of America. For more than two centuries, this country has endured and prospered as a free nation, outlasting an array of despotisms that once loomed large. America of its own volition ended slavery, survived its Civil War and led the way to victory in World War II and the Cold War. In modern times no nation has been friendlier to invention, creativity and the commerce that makes for betterment of life around the globe. America is where the Wright Brothers took flight, where vacuum tubes of the lugubrious early computers led onto the microchips of the digital age and where medicine has made the greatest strides.

Yet with all that has come a sense of guilt and unease. Having led the way out of a 20th century afflicted with totalitarian ideologies and two world wars, America over the past decade has been reviled by many of its own elite for being "unilateral," for overthrowing in Iraq one of the world's worst tyrants, for leading a scientific and industrial revolution in which it produced more carbon dioxide per capita than Laos.

The big question before us is whether America will now bow, scrape, regulate and spend its way into decline. Columnist Charles Krauthammer, speaking in New York at the Manhattan Institute's annual dinner in October wisely argued that decline is not an imminent destiny, but a choice.

Read the rest of Claudia Rosett's article here.

Navy SEALs Face Assault Charges for Capturing Most-Wanted Terrorist

In Barack Obama's America, it appears that the only defendants fit for military justice are those brave men and women whose actions actually protect and defend this country.

If you are a radical Muslim officer in the U.S. armed forces who kills 14 fellow soldiers and an unborn baby while shouting "Allahu Akbar," you will be defended as a victim of Islamophobic harrassment.

If you are a member of the U.S. special forces on the front lines of what used to be called the "war on terror" who gives a mass killer a bloody lip you will be vilifed and court-martialed.

What a country.

H/T: Erick Erickson at Redstate.com

Damn it, I do like Sarah Palin

What is it about Sarah Palin that has the denizens of the "lamestream media" (Sarah's term, not mine) all tied up in knots? The has-been Bob Schiefer (you may have heard of him) declares that Sarah Palin has no future in politics, and Keith Olbermann becomes apoplectic at the news that Sarah Palin reads Newsmax magazine.

Newsweek magazine puts a purloined photo of a shorts-clad Sarah on its cover and declares that Sarah is "bad for the GOP and bad for the rest of us." The media fairly snarls with contempt for her, and even some mainstream Republicans stiffen at the very mention of her name.

Even my wife (who admittedly is not a Republican) and some of my close friends (who are) recoil at the very mention of her name. They declare with smugness that she's either too stupid, too shallow or too inexperienced to be president. When I ask for back up for these assertions, I am told that the burden is on me to prove that she isn't (stupid; shallow; etc.).

Is there another public figure in our history who has suffered the scrutiny and ignominy that Sarah has? The AP reportedly assigned eleven (11) staffers to "fact check" her book, Going Rogue, which was released on Tuesday. Nora O'Donnell of MSNBC ridiculed a 14-year old girl merely for being a fan of the former Alaska governor and now bestselling author. David Letterman, the poster boy for liberal tolerance of all things mysogynistic, makes crude (and unfunny) jokes about Palin's daughter sleeping with a baseball star.

I will leave it to others more qualified than me to analyze the phenomenon called "Sarah Derangement Syndrome" My own theory is that what the Left hates is the connection that Sarah has with ordinary Americans and timeless American values, like family, individual effort and accomplishment --without government assistance--free market capitalism and (especially) the belief in a loving God. The fact that she is an accomplished woman with five kids (including one with Downs Syndrome) who is not beholden to the narrow strictures and doxologies of radical feminism only adds fuel to the already blazing fire.

In other words, what the Left hates about Sarah is what they hate about you. They hate you because you love freedom, fear God and resist government trammeling on your Constitutional rights. They hate Sarah because she gives voice to the primal yearning for liberty, free speech, independence and free enterprise that resides deep in the DNA of every American.

The Left hates Sarah almost as much as they fear her. And they fear her because she has the capacity to light the spark of inspiration in the rest of us to resist everything that the Left represents.

Which is exactly why I like Sarah Palin. Damn it.

Our Wise and Benevolent Rulers Know Best

The U.S. Senate plans to vote late Saturday night on a Motion to Proceed which would bring the 2094-page Senate "health care" legislation to the floor. This Motion needs to attract 60 votes in order to overcome a filibuster. Conventional wisdom has it that all Republicans will vote against the Motion, and a few vulnerable so-called "moderate" Democrats are on the fence. It would presumably require only one or two of these "moderates" to join the Republicans in order to kill the bill.

At the suggestion of author and radio talk show host Mark Levin, I have tried calling the so-called "moderate" Dem Senators (Lincoln, Landrieu, Nelson and Bayh) at their Washington fortresses and all of their field offices to urge them to vote "No"on the Motion to Proceed. It would appear that our benevolent and wise political masters (f/k/a public servants) don't really care what the "folks" think. When I don't get a busy signal I get a voice mailbox. When I get a voice mailbox it is invariably full.

I would like to think that the constituents of these worthies are ringing their phones off the hook. But I have this sinking feeling that the phones have been taken off the hook by our munificent rulers since they already know what the people think and really don't care.

Naw. They wouldn't be that craven. Would they?

For more information on the "Levin Surge" to defeat this bill, click here.

"A perversion of the justice system"

Lindsey Graham, Senator from South Carolina, can be maddening sometimes, as when he sides with John Kerry on the need for climate-change regulation or with John McCain and the rest of the Democrats and squishy Republicans on immigration.

But after watching this brilliant smackdown of AG Eric Holder at the Senate hearing on the outrageous decision to try KSM in Federal court, my affection for Lindsey has grown geometrically.

I just wish he hadn't called Holder a "fine man" in this clip. There is little support for that proposition and much evidence to the contrary.

Broder: Make a Decision, Mr. President

The dean of the liberal Washington press corps, David Broder, calls out President Obama for "dithering" on Afghanistan. He reminds his readers that Afghanistan was the "good war" Obama campaigned on, the one he agreed we ought to have waged and we couldn't afford to lose.

Says Broder in advising Obama, "If we can't afford to lose, than play to win."

By the way the White House attacked Dick Cheney for daring to call Obama a ditherer. Will Broder come in for the same treatment?

Berlin 1989: "Walls Can Fall"

This short piece by Darrell Issa, the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, is a reminder of the awful price paid by those who lived behind the Iron Curtain in tyranny's shadow and the threat to freedom that Marxist ideology poses to this day.

Issa is quick to single out Ronald Reagan as the indispensable figure without whom the events of 20 years ago might not have transpired. It was Reagan who refused to weaken our defenses or compromise our security that put the final nail in the rotten Soviet Communist coffin. "How different the world's course might have been if Jimmy Carter won reelection in 1980," wonders Issa.

Now that Barack Obama is serving Jimmy Carter's second term three decades later, we may be about to find out.

The Stimulus Sham, Revealed

The red line is the new official unemployment rate of 10.2%. The line below it is Obama's projection of unemployment without the stimulus. The line below that is Obama's projection of unemployment with the stimulus.

Just like Obama's 640,000 jobs "saved or created," you can ssume the Bureau of Labor Statistics 10.2% unemployment numbers are bogus, too. Just imagine what the chart would look like if the BLS counted workers who have given up looking for jobs or are underemployed.

The number would be closer to 17%. Not that far off the 25% real unemployment rate at the peak of the Great Depression.

I don't mind if Obama fails, but why does he have to drag the rest of us down with him?

Senate Conservatives Fund Conference Call

Please join Senator Jim DeMint and Erick Erickson of Redstate.com on the Senate Conservatives Fund Election Conference Call tonight at 8:30 to learn how to take back the country.

To register please click on this link.