Wesley Pruden, Washington Times.com

 

Barack Obama is getting his first lesson in the on-the-job training course for the presidency. If he can stand up to Hillary Clinton and her sidekick, we'll all feel a little better about his coming conversations with Vladimir Putin, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong-il, with or without preconditions.

 

Henry Kissinger might be correct, that Hillary would make an "outstanding" secretary of state, that such an appointment would be an act of manly "courage" by the president-elect. He should know. "To appoint a very strong personality with an independent constituency into a Cabinet position," he says, would be "a symbol of a new approach." All perhaps true.

 

But "courage" is sometimes fool's courage. Far back in another century Bubba warned us that he and the missus come bundled as one: "Buy one, get one free." Mr. Obama himself no doubt knows this. When he was asked Sunday night on "60 Minutes" about the prospect of Hillary and Bubba moving in with the Obamas at the White House, he said the right things, but he looked like a man who had just learned that his mother-in-law is coming for Christmas to stay through the Fourth of July. Read article.

NoQuarterUSA.net/blog

 

From his community organizing days onward, Obama has routinely claimed credit (often sole credit) for the work of others. To give Obama the appearance of a record, Emil Jones, President of the Illinois Senate, put his name on dozens of bills for which colleagues had fought for years (prior to the Democrats’ becoming a majority). Obama’s comment when questioned, "They couldn’t have done it without me." His DNC suppliers refer to his phoney record as if it were real. Although Obama rewarded Jones’ district with huge earmarks, he apparently left a trail of anger and resentment among the other senators.

 

Having never stood for any principle or signature issue, led no fights, passed no bills to speak of, written no articles, avoided votes that would leave controversial footprints, and, in contrast to Hillary Clinton and John McCain, demonstrated no capacity to work with colleagues—let alone on both sides of the aisle—Obama speaks deceptively about his record.

 

Obama lies with abandon about positions he took. He inflates his role, if any, in achieving an outcome. He refers to what "my committee" has done when he isn’t even on the committee. He has claimed that his ideas formed the basis for the economic stimulus package passed by the Congress.

 

He proposed as his own another Hillary plank (three-month moratorium on mortgages) that he had criticized when she made it long before the crisis. Missing in action during the financial meltdown, he caved to transferring the remaining wealth of American citizens to his Wall Street and ACORN buddies. Read article.

 

The Sting: Obama's Old Deal

Jeffrey Lord, Spectator.org

 

"A good catch word can obscure analysis for fifty years."

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

 

The Obama era comes clearer.

 

The President-elect, says the President-elect himself on CBS' 60 Minutes, believes in an administration centered on the principle of "something that works."

 

This bromide always sounds appealing to the unwary. It has that fairy tale intrigue. Not too hot, not too cold. J-u-u-u-s-t right. A little left here, a little right there. Middle, sort of. Centrist, don't ya know?

 

Except of course, this idea never turns out to be either center or, as it is also frequently touted, new. It is -- shockingly! -- nothing more than old-fashioned liberalism afraid to advertise. It is, as the saying goes, what it is. Read article.

 

How the Academic Left Elected Obama

2 Sosters from the Right.com

 

In a thought-provoking article for American Thinker, Paul Kengor discusses the reasons why young people went bonkers for Obama:

 

"These youth live and learn on college campuses where "diversity" and "tolerance" and "multiculturalism" -- bogus buzzwords that apply only to ethnic, gender, and sexual diversity, not genuine diversity of ideas -- reign supreme. Racial diversity is at the crux of this academic trinity, the source and summit of the faith. It is the molten, golden calf, where much of the intelligentsia and their disciples gather to worship. Political correctness has supplanted traditional religion.

 

"Thus, when the university community was presented with Barack Obama, a charismatic, impressive, seemingly excellent Democratic presidential candidate -- who happened to be African-American -- the reaction was nearly reverential, bordering on idolatry. The good senator's bracing radical associations -- enough to deny any other American a security clearance -- and which were not coincidental to a man ranked the most leftist member of the most leftist Senate in U.S. history, didn't matter to the academic world. Quite the contrary, those who dared to point out these associations -- FoxNews, talk-radio, the McCain-Palin ticket -- were deemed loathsome Neanderthals deserving of being burned in effigy from the nearest dorm."

 

Perhaps the most alarming point made in this article is the undeniable fact that in most universities across the country, you would have to hunt for a conservative hidden in the overwhelmingly leftist staffs. It's galling enough that professors today see fit to influence their students with their personal political beliefs, but the diversity they praise in ethnicity and gender is sorely lacking in their educational approach. If calling it "indoctrination" seems like an exaggeration, let's at least admit that there is little ideological diversity in campuses where approximately 85% of the staff is liberal and deliberately vocal, while the remaining 15% do little to balance the field. Read article.

 

Moonbattery.com

 

57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress (50/50 shot just by guessing).

 

81.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism (25% chance by guessing).

 

82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot (25% chance by guessing).

 

88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket (25% chance by guessing).

 

56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground (25% chance by guessing). Read article.

 

P.J. O'Rourke, Weekly Standard.com

 

Our 28-year conservative opportunity to fix the moral and practical boundaries of government is gone--gone with the bear market and the Bear Stearns and the bear that's headed off to do you-know-what in the woods on our philosophy.

 

An entire generation has been born, grown up, and had families of its own since Ronald Reagan was elected. And where is the world we promised these children of the Conservative Age? Where is this land of freedom and responsibility, knowledge, opportunity, accomplishment, honor, truth, trust, and one boring hour each week spent in itchy clothes at church, synagogue, or mosque? It lies in ruins at our feet, as well it might, since we ourselves kicked the shining city upon a hill into dust and rubble. The progeny of the Reagan Revolution will live instead in the universe that revolves around Hyde Park.

 

Mind you, they won't live in Hyde Park. Those leafy precincts will be reserved for the micromanagers and macro-apparatchiks of liberalism--for Secretary of the Department of Peace Bill Ayers and Secretary of the Department of Fairness Bernardine Dohrn. The formerly independent citizens of our previously self-governed nation will live, as I said, around Hyde Park. They will make what homes they can in the physical, ethical, and intellectual slums of the South Side of Chicago.

 

The South Side of Chicago is what everyplace in America will be once the Democratic administration and filibuster-resistant Democratic Congress have tackled global warming, sustainability, green alternatives to coal and oil, subprime mortgage foreclosures, consumer protection, business oversight, financial regulation, health care reform, taxes on the "rich," and urban sprawl. The Democrats will have plenty of time to do all this because conservatism, if it is ever reborn, will not come again in the lifetime of anyone old enough to be rounded up by ACORN and shipped to the polling booths.

Jonathan Tobin, JWR.com

 

If Likud wins in Israel, how badly will the two new leaders of the alliance clash?

 

Barack Obama spent the first week after being elected president of the United States planning the next four years. Yet, even though the office is occupied by somebody else until January, the pundits are already predicting the next administration's trouble spots.

 

At the top of the list is the outcome of the Israeli elections scheduled for this winter. If Likud Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu is sent back to the prime minister's office, we are told, a major conflict with the Obama White House is inevitable.

 

The assumption is that an Obama administration will regard "Bibi" Netanyahu as an obstacle to peace and that he will personally blow up the U.S.-Israel alliance. Read article.

 

Mere Rhetoric.com

 

General James L. Jones is widely rumored to be Obama's preferred candidate to be White House National Security Adviser... Jones prepared a report on Israel's policies in the territories... The World Tribune said it "blasted Israel's role" for "hampering the movement of PA forces, blocking plans for weapons shipments and technology to the Palestinians and resisting coordination." ..

.

Obama said this about Jones: "Let me tell you who I associate with... If I'm interested in figuring out my foreign policy, I associate myself with my running mate, Joe Biden or with Dick Lugar...or General Jim Jones, the former supreme allied commander of NATO." Read article.

 

Bret Stephens, Online WSJ.com

 

With the election of Barack Obama and huge Democratic majorities in Congress, liberals must now practice something other than the politics of nostalgia and what-if.

 

This is a politics that has been in the making since at least 1968, though its real origins probably go back to 1944 and the first great liberal what-if: What if an ailing FDR had died nine months earlier, and been succeeded by the great progressive icon and polymath (and original moonbeam), then Vice President Henry Wallace?

 

In that case, perhaps, desegregation would have happened sooner, universal health care would be with us today, and the "century of fear" that Wallace predicted as the outcome of the Truman Doctrine would have been avoided by means of a more conciliatory policy toward the Soviet Union. Read article.

 

Editorial, NRO.com

 

Iraq’s cabinet approved a security pact to keep U.S. troops in the country another three years. The agreement goes now to the parliament, where it seems likely to win approval.

 

The United Nations mandate under which American troops were operating lapses at the end of the year. If we hadn’t reached an agreement with the Iraqis, our troops no longer would have been able to operate in the country. The negotiations were long, complex, and highly controversial within Iraq. That they were successfully concluded is a blow to the schemers in Iran — and to their cat’s-paw, Moqtada al-Sadr — who did all they could to torpedo the pact.

 

We hope Barack Obama pays heed. He has been handed an extraordinary opportunity. Few would have thought when President Bush ordered the surge two years ago that there would have been such extensive security gains and that a sovereign Iraqi government — albeit flawed and fragile — would be in a position to begin taking control of its own destiny. Obama will have the chance to preside over a successful endgame in Iraq. This is the gift the surge has given him, if he doesn’t throw it away. Read article.

 

Fred Thompson, Townhall.com

 

I’m sure after this two-year campaign everyone would like to take a deep breath and put aside politics for a while. The holiday season approaches. It is time for all of us to give thanks for the many blessings we have been given.

 

But our gratitude for life and liberty should also serve as a reminder that what we were working so hard to achieve these past few years still very much hangs in the balance.

 

We are now living in a nation controlled by a Democratic Party committed to cutting the budget for our national defense, raising taxes and nibbling around the edges of our personal freedoms in the hopes none of us notices. Democrats will do it through regulation in the executive branch, legislation in Congress and rulings from the judiciary.

 

This activity will be taking place during a time when we know that somewhere in the world our worst enemies either have, or are trying to get their hands on, the most dangerous weapons known to man. Read article.

 

Kyle-Anne Shiver, PajamasMedia.com

 

What was the horrible unity about which a Salon.com blogger most opined and found so utterly disgusting from 2004 to 2006?

 

It was this statement: “We all support our troops.”

 

Oh, yes! Now that’s an abomination. Overtly repugnant groupthink in action.

 

A unified war effort in the face of international Islamic terrorism was simply out of the question.

 

And this bellow of wartime dissent was the single rallying cry which seemingly unified all Democrats for the past five years — from coast to coast, from the once-hallowed halls of Congress to every foreign shore that would entertain their Bush-bash tirades.

 

Whenever American war-dissenters of note traveled abroad, they made a point of publicly and self-righteously deriding our one president as worthy of nothing but shame.

 

The Dixie Chicks to a sold-out crowd in London: “Just so you know, we’re ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas.” And for the past five years, the Chicks have pouted, fumed, and even made a box-office-bomb movie about their unjust “treatment” at home among us pro-America conservatives.

 

Unity? Surely you jest.

 

But all kidding aside, since I’ve never given one whit what Europeans thought of us or our president, I hereby resolve not to travel across the Big Pond and trash President Obama. Read article.

 

Lawrence Kudlow, Washington Times.com

 

President Bush came out fighting for free markets with a strong and stirring defense of American capitalism on the eve of the G-20 World Economic Conference. Stocks soared 550 points Thursday as Mr. Bush's luncheon speech was played live on all the major cable networks. It was as though Mr. Bush was trying to leave an economic-primer to his successor-elect Barack Obama. Markets cheered because it's the best thing they've heard in many weeks.

 

Here's one of several great passages from Mr. Bush: "At its most basic level, capitalism offers people the freedom to choose where they work and what they do... the dignity that comes with profiting from their talent and hard work. ... The free-market system also provides the incentives that lead to prosperity - the incentive to work, to innovate, to save and invest wisely, and to create jobs for others." In other words, free-market capitalism is the best path to prosperity. During a gloomy period of financial crisis, recession, big-government rescues, and ailing banks and industrial companies, Mr. Bush has provided a strong visionary dose of big-picture economic prosperity and optimism that can lead the United States and the rest of the world out of its economic doldrums.

 

During a gloomy period of financial crisis, recession, big-government rescues, and ailing banks and industrial companies, Mr. Bush has provided a strong visionary dose of big-picture economic prosperity and optimism that can lead the United States and the rest of the world out of its economic doldrums. Read article.

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