Peter Ferrara, Fox News.com

 

When he was running for president Obama promised, over and over, that he would cut taxes for the 95% of Americans making less than $250,000 per year. He pledged that his tax increases would only apply to the top 5% of Americans making over $250,000. Yet Obama fully supported passage of the House cap-and-trade tax bill. If the bill reaches his desk, your taxes are going up.

 

On Friday, the House of Representatives passed today cap-and-trade tax legislation designed to reduce carbon emissions by raising the prices of oil, gasoline, natural gas, coal, home heating oil, and anything else that produces carbon dioxide emissions, believed to be the main culprit behind supposed global warming. That is estimated to increase costs per family by an estimated $1,600 to $3,200 each year.

 

During the campaign last year, in the debates, in speeches, and in campaign ads, Barack Obama promised over and over that he would cut taxes for the 95% of Americans making less than $250,000 per year. He pledged that his tax increases would only apply to the top 5% of Americans making over $250,000. Yet Obama fully supported passage of the House cap-and- trade tax bill.

 

In one nationally televised debate, Obama scorned John McCain's charge that he would raise taxes by insisting that if you make less than $250,000 per year, your taxes will go down, emphasizing the point with a grand downward sweeping motion of his arm. In a speech on September 12, 2008 in Dover, New Hampshire, Obama said,

 

"I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."

 

The tax cut for 95% of Americans turned out to be a little $400 per worker tax credit, less than $8 per week, just for this year and next. Under the recently passed Democrat budget, that tax cut is gone after next year.

 

That will be replaced instead with the new cap-and-trade cost burden that will be paid by everyone in the prices of everything we buy, but particularly in electricity (primarily produced by burning fossil fuels), gasoline, natural gas, home heating oil, and food. Read article.

Joy Tiz, Canada Free Press.com

 

For previous generations, the question: “Where were you when Kennedy was shot” has served as a conversation starter as well as a catalyst for exploration of a shared history. It would seem that the quintessential question will soon be: “where were you when you found out Michael Jackson was dead?”

 

All other news of the day having been declared inconsequential, Fox proceeded to indulge in unnecessary and disproportionate keening about the calamitous death of the world’s most famous pedophile. The same Michael Jackson who once told a reporter it was “sweet” and “charming” to sleep with little boys and ply them with “Jesus Juice” (known to lucid people as “wine”) has been deified. Jackson, who dangled one of his babies off of a hotel balcony also obtained those children via a bizarre and labyrinthine arrangement, named one of them Blanket and made them wear burkas.

 

Americans know far more about Michael Jackson than they do about the history of Iran and its relationship to the United States. Most of what America knows is wrong, having been subjected to pertinacious propaganda in Ayers’ based public education.

 

Which is why the interest in the life and death of Neda Agah-Soltan was so facilely dwarfed by the opulent freak show that surrounds Michael Jackson. Read article.

Ed Morrissey, Hot Air.com

 

Jim Geraghty first wrote that all of Barack Obama’s promises come with expiration dates, and broken promises from politicians are nothing new, of course. However, one usually expects politicians — especially those running on hope and change — to either remain true to their professed core values and the issues that fueled the most passion on the campaign trail, or at least explain their change in the daylight. Obama did neither, nor did he apologize to the man he besmirched endlessly on the campaign trail while adopting the policy that Obama most demonized as a candidate.

 

Andrew Malcolm can’t believe the chutzpah:

"In yet another sign of political perfidy, the White House of President George W. Bush has drafted a presidential executive order that would allow that double-dealing Republican chief executive to hold suspected terrorist detainees indefinitely.

 

"According to the president’s intentions, such suspects could be detained for long periods of time, virtually indefinitely. Is this really what the nation voted for last November?

 

"Oh, wait. No. According to an exclusive Washington Post/Pro Publica report this afternoon, it’s the refreshing new Democratic administration of Barack Obama that’s now preparing this new executive order to hold certain terrorist suspects indefinitely.

 

"This is an obviously inspiring sign of the new style of leadership the Democrat promised and is finally bringing to the White House." Read article.

John Bolton, Standpoint Magazine.co.uk

 

Judging a new American President's national security policies after six months in office is a perilous enterprise, especially in the case of Barack Obama, where constant incantations of "change" and serial criticisms of his predecessor are the order of the day.

 

 Nonetheless, during the 2008 primaries, Democratic candidates fiercely debated their respective abilities to handle the "3am call," and Joe Biden later warned that the inexperienced Illinois Senator would be "tested" early in his tenure. Now there is a partial record, and, more importantly, a worldview on which we can grade Obama's performance.

 

Obama is the first post-American President. Central to his worldview is rejecting American exceptionalism and the consequences that flow therefrom. Since an overwhelming majority of the world's population would welcome the demise of American exceptionalism, they are delighted with Obama.

 

One student interviewed after an Obama town hall meeting during his first presidential trip to Europe said ecstatically, "He sounds like a European." Indeed he does.

 

Of course, as a successful politician, Obama is never going to admit expressly that he rejects a unique US role in the world. Asked during his trip about this very subject, Obama responded, "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." This answer, of course, proves precisely the opposite of what Obama is ostensibly saying. If every country is exceptional, none is. Read article.

 

Philip Klein, Spectator.org

 

As President Obama and Democrats in Congress continue their push to overhaul the nation’s health care system this year, it’s turning out that their biggest obstacle is not Republicans, but each other.

 

The dilemma is simple: moderate Democrats see the need to scale back legislation, but liberals yearn for something bolder. The evolving dynamic is similar to the one that ultimately killed comprehensive immigration reform during the Bush administration when Republicans tried to compromise to win over Democrats, but incurred the wrath of conservatives in the process.

 

The key sticking points on health care involve whether at a time of unprecedented debt, the nation can absorb the massive cost of insuring everybody, and whether Congress should create a new government-run plan, which proponents call the “public option.”

 

In recent weeks moderate Democratic Sens. Mary Landrieu and Joe Lieberman came out opposed to the government-run option, while fellow Democratic Sens. Kent Conrad and Dianne Feinstein have publicly said that there aren’t enough votes in the Senate to pass such a plan. Read article.

 

Tom Fitton, Right Side News.com  

 

Barack Obama wants the U.S. Senate to pull out a rubber stamp for his Supreme Court pick, Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Senate Democrats, meanwhile, are trying to force this nomination through as quickly as possible. And now we know why. The more we learn about Judge Sotomayor, the more apparent it is that she should not sit on our nation's High Court.

 

First, we learned about Judge Sotomayor's racist statements. During a "cultural diversity lecture" at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law in 2001, for example, Judge Sotomayor said the following: "I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion [as a judge] than a white male who hasn't lived that life." She has also said that "experiences as women and people of color" should affect judicial decisions and that Hispanics should have "greater comfort" with the legal system knowing she is on the federal bench.

 

Then, Judicial Watch uncovered Sotomayor's 12-year relationship with the radical race-baiting Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF). Sotomayor was the "top policy maker" on the PRLDEF's Board of Directors. And during her tenure the organization aggressively pursued a number of controversial lawsuits and took objectionable public positions.

 

To give just two examples of many, in 1998, the PRLDEF filed a lawsuit against the New York City Police Department over a promotion exam they deemed "racist" forcing the NYPD to change to a more "race sensitive" and less difficult version. In 1990, meanwhile, a spokesman for Sotomayor's group also said that the FALN terrorists who shot five members of Congress in 1954 were merely "fighters for freedom" like Nelson Mandela. Read article.

 

JD Pendry

 

Our country has two enemies: Those who want to destroy us from the outside and those who attempt it from within.

 

Jimmy Carter, you are the father of the Islamic Nazi movement. You threw the Shah under the bus, welcomed the Ayatollah home, and then lacked the spine to confront the terrorists when they took our embassy and our people hostage. You're the runner-in-chief.

 

Bill Clinton, you played ring around with Lewinsky while the terrorists were at war with us. You got us into a fight with them in Somalia and then you ran from it. Your weak-willed responses to the USS Cole and the First Trade Center Bombing and Our Embassy Bombings emboldened the killers. Each time you failed to respond adequately, they grew bolder, until 9-11, 2001.

 

John Kerry, dishonesty is your most prominent attribute. You lied about American Soldiers in Vietnam . Your military service, like your life, is more fiction than fact. You've accused our military of terrorizing women and children in Iraq . You called Iraq the wrong war, wrong place, wrong time, the same words you used to describe Vietnam You're a fake.. You want to run from Iraq and abandon the Iraqis to murderers just as you did to the Vietnamese. Iraq , like Vietnam , is another war that you were for, before you were against it. Read article.

 

Jack Cashill, American Thinker.com

 

Within days of my going public last September with the speculation that terrorist emeritus Bill Ayers helped Barack Obama write his acclaimed memoir, Dreams From My Father, I learned that I was not alone in that intuition.

 

Since then, I have received helpful contributions from serious people in at least five countries and any number of states and have integrated many of their observations into my ongoing narrative, summarized here. If you are unfamiliar with this research, please read this before going forward. 

 

About a week ago, however, I heard from a new contributor. I will refer to him as "Mr. West." Like most contributors, he prefers to remain anonymous. The media punishment that Joe the Plumber received has much to do with this nearly universal reticence.

A week before that, I heard from another excellent contributor, Mr. Midwest. Their collective contribution should dispel the doubts of all but the willfully blind that Ayers played a substantial role, likely the primary role, in the writing of Dreams. Read article.

 

Erika Holzer.Blogspot.com

 

For many conservatives, libertarians, and even some objectivists, the answer is not self-evident.

 

In “The Wreckage of the Consensus” Rand wrote about the

“ . . . need for a foreign policy based on long-range principles, i.e., an ideology.” (Emphasis Rand’s.) “But,” Rand stated emphatically, “a revision of our foreign policy, from its basic premises on up, is what today’s anti-ideologists dare not contemplate. . . . ” She went on to point out that “[a] proper solution would be to elect statesmen—if such appeared—and with a radically different foreign policy, a policy explicitly and proudly dedicated to the defense of America’s rights and national self-interests….” (Emphasis mine.) (The Objectivist, April 1967.)

 

In other words, unlike Obama, whose “foreign policy” is so fuzzy as to be almost devoid of principles (not even short-range, let alone long-), Rand would have advised a newly elected president to give high priority to a clear-cut foreign policy as soon as he took office, thus eliminating the possibility of being caught off-guard—as Obama was—five months into his first term by the Iranian crisis. Read article.

 

Pamela Geller, American Thinker.com

 

Many people (including Barack Obama) have pointed out that Mir Hussein Mousavi, the defeated presidential candidate and a key figure in the Iranian protests, is scarcely different from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. After his numerous overtures to the mullahs, it is not hard to know why Obama is hoping the opposition will be crushed. But there are signs that many of the Iranian protesters are not fighting for Mir Hussein Mousavi. Mousavi is an Islamic Republic establishment hack. Are people in Iran dying for more of the same thing they have been getting from the Islamic Republic for thirty years?

 

I do not believe for one moment that the resistance to the Iranian regime that the world has witnessed, with young people risking torture and death, has been about installing Mousavi as President. The Iranians were given four choices; it was not as if they could write in Ronald Reagan's name. They went with what they had. Mousavi was the "reform" candidate, and that was what they voted for -- which is why millions took to the streets. Mousavi's background is problematic? Why wouldn't anyone believe that Mousavi, if he became President, would also have to answer to the people of Iran, the people who risked their lives "for change"?

 

Mousavi may be transformed by events as well. Is he not capable of evolving? Robert Byrd, senior US Senator and President pro tempore of the United States Senate (a position that puts him third in the line of presidential succession) joined the Ku Klux Klan when he was 24 and was elected Exalted Cyclops; he also held the position of Kleagle (recruiter). People do change, and Mousavi says things that are inimical to the absolute power of a theocratic state. He knows it, and his supporters know it. Moreover, he candidly admits that the Green revolution has led him to take positions he did not anticipate taking. As Khamenei envisions the matter, theocracy is absolute rule, and this is the Islamic way of doing things. But Mousavi has called for freedom of speech -- this is not Islam, it is not a theocracy, and it suggests a new liberalism and free expression of ideas.

 

The ultimate question is what a regime change, or even modification of the regime with a Mousavi as president, would mean to Iran's nuclear program. I am optimistic on this front for two reasons: one, because I do not hear Mousavi saying bad things about the U.S. and Israel to whip up the crowds; and two, if he wants rapprochement with the West, he will have to give up the bomb. And I think he does want the support of the West. If he becomes President, he will need the West as a bulwark in his defenses against a resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism. He is a Muslim -- nothing much has changed about that, but he may bow to pressure from the Iranian people for a relaxation of Shari'a rule and a return to something like the way Iranian society was under the Shah. This could lead him to moderate things in Iran a bit: no bomb, and perhaps no Syria, Hezb'allah and Abbas as proxies by which to wage terrorism.

 

He is a Muslim -- nothing much has changed about that, but he may bow to pressure from the Iranian people for a relaxation of Shari'a rule and a return to something like the way Iranian society was under the Shah. This could lead him to moderate things in Iran a bit: no bomb, and perhaps no Syria, Hezb'allah and Abbas as proxies by which to wage terrorism. Read article.

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