Who gets credit for the rescue of Captain Phillips?

Ethel C. Fenig, American Thinker.com

 

President Barack Obama (D), as Commander in Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, is taking credit for the successful rescue of ship captain Richard Phillips, basking in the glow of an absolutely outstanding performance and raw courage of the ship's captain Richard Phillips, the ship's crew and the U.S. Navy under his skilled direction. 

 

However military correspondent Jeff Emanuel at Pajama Media claims the reality is quite different; the inexperienced Obama and his equally inexperienced staff and advisers, committed to a peaceful resolution, needlessly dragged out an incident that, thanks to Phillips' bravery, could have been successfully resolved in a few hours with minimal loss of life.

 

Instead, because of Obama's dithering, it turned into a drawn out, dangerous confrontation that, ironically, caused the death of three of the Somali pirates, and almost cost Phillips his life. Read article.

Victor Sharpe, American Thinker.com

 

The other day I happened to watch the original 1963 Stanley Kramer directed movie, "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

 

46 years later, that title seems frighteningly apt when looking at what the world has become. Stanley Kramer would have been hard put to recognize how prescient his title was. But his film was essentially a comedy of errors; today the world is reduced to a tragic-comedy with a terrifying emphasis on the tragic.

 

The Obama juggernaut is relentlessly eroding American power in a perilous world consisting of petty tyrants, dictators, theocrats, a la the mullahs of Iran, and a United Nations that is anything but united, except in one squalid respect. The Islamic bloc, consisting of some 57 nations, holds the UN to ransom if it does not follow their lead in bashing Israel ad nauseam.

 

Take the grotesquely misnamed United Nations Human Rights Council. This organization epitomizes the term tragic-comedy for it ignores appalling human rights abuses in Sudan, Zimbabwe, Libya, Sri-Lanka, Saudi-Arabia, et cetera. It is a body that is hostile to the democracies and blatantly cossets the worst human rights abusers. Read article.

 

Burt Prelutsky, Townhall.com

 

During the presidential campaign, we were told that Barack Obama was another Lincoln. At the time, I recall thinking that he might very well be another Lincoln, but certainly not Abe. Then we were told he was another FDR, which was certainly closer to the truth, and not just because they both smoked cigarettes and made Narcissus look like a shrinking violet.

 

But, now that he’s been in office for a while, he mostly reminds me of Wile E. Coyote. He thinks he’s very clever, but he keeps falling off the cliff while holding the anvil he intended to drop on the Roadrunner.

 

I felt that those people who insisted last year that, down deep, Obama was a Muslim were being unfair. While I had to question what sort of Christian would have sat in Jeremiah Wright’s church, soaking up all that racist swill for 20 years, at least the Trinity United Church of Christ wasn’t a mosque. But I have to confess Obama seems to be doing everything he can to make me question my earlier judgment. Read article.

Jewish Ledger.com

 

Sometimes humor - even dark humor - is the best way to the heart of a matter.

 

There's the story that circulated during the last administration about a middle of the night phone call to the White House and how it would have been answered in the two Bush presidencies. Informed that Israel and her neighbors were at war again and Israel was in dire need of immediate re-supply, Bush 43 would have unhesitatingly ordered the supplies into the air to Israel. Bush pere, 41, on the other hand would probably have asked his aide to convene a cabinet meeting in the morning.

 

Even though Obama's been in office for a short time, we already have an idea of his response to that middle of the night call. Read article.

 

Review & Outlook, Online WSJ.com

 

We'll take pro-growth victories wherever we can find them these days, and last week saw a small one in the U.S. Senate, of all places. The Members voted 51-48 to cut permanently the death tax rate to 35% and exempt all estates of less than $10 million per couple ($5 million for a single taxpayer) from any tax. President Obama wants a 45% rate with only a $7 million exemption.

 

Every Republican voted for the lower rate, and so did 10 Democrats. This is the closest thing to bipartisanship we've seen so far this year on Capitol Hill, but naturally the White House and most of the media are appalled. Their idea of bipartisanship is when three Republicans cross party lines to pass $780 billion in "stimulus" spending.

 

Perhaps this explains why Majority Leader Harry Reid blew a gasket during the floor debate, calling the death-tax amendment by Jon Kyl (R., Ariz.) and Blanche Lincoln (D., Ark.) "outrageous," a "stunning act of hypocrisy," and a tax cut for those "at the very top of the food chain."

 

Then he actually said: "We can only turn the page from recession to recovery if we watch every single taxpayer dollar the way families watch every dollar in their budget." We'd say Mr. Reid was being deliberately ironic, but Harry doesn't do irony. He's an outrage man. And speaking of which, he was at that very moment working to pass a 2010 budget outline that includes record spending and trillions of dollars in new debt. Read article.

 

John Cranford, CQ Politics.com

 

Tax wonks with a macabre sense of humor are having a field day with the game of chicken now being played out on Capitol Hill over the estate tax. At either end of the political spectrum, the absolutist position in this fight is to allow current law to stay in place in all its quirky glory — and then see where the chips fall.

 

The problem is, the estate tax will switch from on to off to on again between now and 2011. The current law is, in a word, stupid. It will not permit the federal government to collect any tax at all on the estates of people who die after midnight this coming Dec. 31. But Uncle Sam will then be able to impose the heftiest levy in a decade on the estates of those who leave this world after midnight on Dec. 31, 2010.

 

The sick joke is that rich folks ought to definitely watch their backs next year, lest their greedy heirs decide to, er, take advantage of this special, one-off tax break.

 

The responsible position, of course, is to prevent this yo-yo effect in estate tax policy from occurring at all. But that would require lawmakers to decide to act both responsibly and soon, something the absolutists may not choose to do. Read article.

 

Michael M. Bates, Capitol Hill Coffee House.com

 

If, as Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed, taxes are what we pay for a civilized society, we have become very civilized indeed…

 

A difficulty is that our tax laws are so complicated, so convoluted, so loaded with preferences and exceptions, that it’s next to impossible to understand them, let alone apply them fairly.

 

President Barack Obama must be acutely aware of this problem by now. Tom Daschle, his first nominee to run Health and Human Services, withdrew after disclosure he hadn’t paid $146,000 in back taxes. The same day, chief performance officer designee Nancy Killefer withdrew her name from consideration because of tax issues.

 

In his role as Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner runs the Internal Revenue Service. This is ironic as it was disclosed during his confirmation hearings that Geithner himself failed to pay almost $40,000 in taxes since 2001. Moreover, he took a dependent-care credit on his returns even after an accountant advised Geithner he didn’t qualify. Obama asserted Geithner’s errors were “an honest mistake.”

 

During the confirmation process for Health and Services secretary, Kathleen Sebelius paid the IRS more than $7,800 for “unintentional errors” of previous tax returns. Obama’s nominee for U.S. trade representative, Ron Kirk, was sworn in last month after paying $9,975 for amended tax returns. Labor secretary designee Hilda Soltis’s husband settled over $6,000 in tax liens in February.

 

If people who qualify for appointment at the highest levels of government can’t accurately complete their taxes even with extensive professional assistance, what chance does an average Joe or Jane have of navigating a tax code that’s out of control? Read article.

 

Don Surber, Daily Mail.com

 

President Obama's European Vacation, as one White House staff member put it, was a success, if one pays no attention to that rocket that North Korea launched in the middle of the trip.

 

Obama's call for a nuclear-free world was praised by most people.

 

Not me.

 

A nuclear-free world would be a disastrous place where millions of people would be slaughtered by wars.

 

Let us review the record:

 

August will mark the 64th anniversary of the dropping of two atomic bombs in Japan to end World War II.

 

Those bombs saved up to 1 million American soldiers who did not have to fight in hundreds of Iwo Jima battles to subdue Japan.

 

In the 64 years since those bombs did their job, there have been no world wars. The horror unleashed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki provided a sobering lesson to the world.

 

The European continent has had its quietest period in centuries. Sabers occasionally have been rattled, but never used.

 

In the 64 years prior to the dropping of the atomic bombs, there had been two world wars.

 

If we go back another 64 years, there are numerous other wars, and 64 years before that, a fellow named Napoleon was a one-man wrecking crew. Read article.

 

Think Progress.org

 

In a column for the Philadelphia Inquirer titled “The Elephant in the Room: Obama vs. The United States,” former right-wing senator Rick Santorum declares that the President of the United States has a “deep-seated antipathy toward American values,” made obvious by his nomination of a highly-qualified, brilliant legal scholar for a post at the State Department:

 

Watching President Obama apologize last week for America’s arrogance - before a French audience that owes its freedom to the sacrifices of Americans — helped convince me that he has a deep-seated antipathy toward American values and traditions. His nomination of former Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh to be the State Department’s top lawyer constitutes further evidence of his disdain for American values.

 

Santorum is just the latest right-winger to insist that, since Obama policies are not conservative, they are thus by definition anti-American. During the campaign, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) stated flatly, “Barack Obama’s views are against America.” Last week, Sean Hannity declared that Obama “harbors deep resentment that he just hides” and accused him of pandering to “the worst instincts of those who hate this country.” Read article.

 

Paul Kengor, American Thinker.com

 

I hear it again and again, even from some pro-business conservatives:

 

Hey, I have no sympathy for AIG and the automakers and the banks. When you take government money, you can expect the government to tell you what to do. Besides, some of these companies are wasteful, charge too much, and their salaries are too high.

 

Well, if that's so, then why doesn't the government intervene to run our universities, which consume huge amounts of government money? Why don't President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress dictate marching orders to university presidents? Why not fire the bad ones? Why aren't Barney Frank and Chris Dodd calling in provosts to explain themselves? Read article.

 

Michael O'Hanlon and Omer Taspinar, Washington Times.com

 

The Obama administration's plan for Afghanistan and Pakistan is generally strong. It properly focuses on two central goals: providing population security for the Afghan people and building up indigenous institutions so Afghans can provide their own security and run their own country as soon as possible.

 

The plan does require some ongoing improvement, however. Two stand out in the aftermath of the NATO summit of recent days. Ideally, they would have been fixed before the summit, but there is still time to repair the flaws in the coming weeks.

 

Both concern command arrangements. In Iraq, make no mistake about it, while Gen. David H. Petraeus rightly receives tremendous praise for the success of the surge, Gen. Raymond T. Odierno and Ambassador Ryan Crocker were essential elements of the three-man team (Gen. Odierno remains in Iraq as Gen. Petraeus' successor).

 

These men represented not only America's, but the overall international coalition's various strengths and assets. Read article.

 

Rowan Scarborough, Human Events.com

 

Liberals have created a powerhouse propaganda machine that helped Moveon.org smear a four-star general, promotes endless environmental scares and brags it can place its left wing themes in the nation's leading newspapers.

 

Fenton Communications pitches for trial lawyers, collectively the largest contributors to the Democrat Party, as well as for the hard line environmental group Greenpeace; Venezuela's socialist leader Hugo Chavez; anti-war demonstrator Cindy Sheehan; and gay and abortion advocates.

 

Understanding Fenton's connections to the press, liberal Washington lawmakers, pressure groups and trial lawyers is increasingly important for conservatives if they are to emerge from their decidedly minority status in Washington.

 

Just recently, some of Fenton's clients and other left-wing groups formed a huge coalition to push President Obama's government-expansion agenda. The Campaign to Rebuild and Renew America Now boasts over 100 member organizations and promises a state-by-state media campaign: meaning it will attack Republicans who vote no. Read article.

 

Nancy Levant, NWV.com

 

Today’s conquerors have new and improved weapons to add to their current arsenals of whole-earth destroying weapons — computer systems, satellite systems, digital and nano technologies, genetic and viral hocus pocus, financial and accounting theft, and exquisite dialectical logic, coupled with ivy league educations in psychological operations, social manipulation and engineering — today’s new breed conquerors are, I’m very afraid, insane. Chronic pathological lying and manipulation are, after all, diagnosable deviancies.

 

Today’s conquerors are also armed with think tanks and other repo men, all with very interesting educations, who are paid to collect national wealth through orchestrated debt. And all are highly-paid loyalists to the high-end drama of conquering — all addicts make and require drama and crisis. Take note of the daily controlled media.

 

There is nothing new in history for governments to conquer from within. It’s called usurpation. But today’s over-runners are an extraordinary bunch. They are pathological liars. While claiming extraordinary expertise with absolutely bizarre resumes and credentials, they rotate in and out of short-term commission and council assignments, short-term international assignments, and suddenly, they are cabinet members and presidents, and man oh man, do they have circular recommendations! Their credentials are, quite simply, magical. Read article.

 

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