Wesley Pruden, Washington Times.com

 

The killer disease dispensed by Barack Obama slipped into remission yesterday, and we can be thankful it did. "Remission" is not "cure," but it's a start.

 

Harry Reid, the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, led the obsequies for the rush to judgment, though he was not necessarily obsequious about it. "It's better to have a product based on quality and thoughtfulness rather than trying to jam something through." Nary a Republican in Washington could have said it better.

 

The president is trying to make the best of the demise of his promise to get health care "reform" on his desk for a signature before Congress goes home on Aug. 7. "That's OK, I just want to keep the people working," he said late Thursday. "I just want it done by the end of the year. I want it done by the fall." This is brave face-saving talk from the man who insisted for months that he had to have his health care "reform" by August, or the sky would fall (or at least cloud over, darkly). He took particular exception to a Republican senator's boast that the GOP would make health care "reform" the president's Waterloo. His taking the senator's bait dramatically raised the stakes in the struggle.

 

Then Mr. Obama adopted a curious diversionary tactic in the wake of Mr. Reid's concession of defeat, returning public attention to the controversy - and the president's contribution to making it a controversy - over the arrest of Henry Louis Gates. Read article.

Charles Krauthammer, NRO.com

 

What happened to Obamacare? Rhetoric met reality. As both candidate and president, the master rhetorician could conjure a world in which he bestows upon you health-care nirvana: more coverage, less cost.

 

But you can’t fake it in legislation. Once you commit your fantasies to words and numbers, the Congressional Budget Office comes along and declares that the emperor has no clothes.

 

President Obama premised the need for reform on the claim that medical costs are destroying the economy. True. But now we learn — surprise! — that universal coverage increases costs. The congressional Democrats’ health-care plans, says the CBO, increase costs in the range of $1 trillion plus.

 

In response, the president retreated to a demand that any bill he sign be revenue-neutral. But that’s classic misdirection: If the fierce urgency of health-care reform is to radically reduce costs that are producing budget-destroying deficits, revenue neutrality (by definition) leaves us on precisely the same path to insolvency that Obama himself declares unsustainable. Read article.

Daniel Greenfield, SayAnythingBlog.com

 

In the sixth month of his presidency, Obama has turned an economic downturn into an economic disaster, taking over and trashing entire companies, and driving the nation deep into deficit spending expected to pass 10 trillion dollars.

 

Abroad, Obama seems to have no other mode except to continue on with his endless campaign, confusing speechmaking with diplomacy. It is natural enough that Obama, who built his entire campaign on high profile public speeches reported on by an adoring press, understands how to do nothing else but that.

 

While the press is still chewing over Obama’s Cairo speech, this celebrity style coverage ignores the fact that Obama’s endless world tour is not actually accomplishing anything. Instead his combination of ego driven photo op appearances and clueless treatment of foreign dignitaries have alienated many of America’s traditional allies. Those who aren’t being quietly angry at Obama, like Brown, Merkel or Netanyahu, instead think of him as as absurdly lightweight, as Sarkozy, King Abdullah or Putin do.

 

While his officials carry out their dirty economic deeds, Obama responds to any and every crisis as if it were a Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland musical, with a cry of, “Let’s put on a show.” Thus far Obama has put on “shows” across America, Europe and the Middle East. And what the adoring media coverage neglects to cover, is that Obama’s shows have solved absolutely nothing. They have served only as high profile entertainment.

 

Neither alienating America’s traditional allies, through a combination of arrogant bullying and ignorance, nor appeasing America’s enemies, has yielded any actual results. Nor does it seem likely to. Islamic terrorism is not going anywhere, neither are the nuclear threats from North Korea and Iran. While Obama keeps smiling, the global situation keeps growing more grim. Read article.

 

Pat Buchanan, Townhall.com

 

"The sound alone was worth the $24 billion!"

 

So said fellow Nixon speechwriter Ray Price as the mighty Saturn V rocket lifted Apollo 11 and Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins off the launch pad, three miles away, on the start of their voyage to the moon.

 

It was a splendid moment in that first year of the Nixon presidency, a year that had gone remarkably well for a minority president who had come to office with both houses held by the opposition.

 

Within weeks of taking office, Nixon had taken a grand tour of the European capitals. He had proposed a Family Assistance Plan, cooked up in Pat Moynihan's shop, to wide applause. He had announced a withdrawal of 100,000 troops from Vietnam.

 

Returning in triumph, Nixon departed for his August vacation.

 

From North Korea to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, and Honduras, and from the economy to health care to carbon emissions, things are not going Obama's way. He is 10 points below where Nixon was after a full year, and on economic issues -- unemployment, the deficit, spending -- he is under 50 percent.

 

This presidency is not yet in trouble. But it is sure headed that way. Read article.

 

Kimberley A. Strassel, Online WSJ.com

 

Here’s the dirty secret behind Washington’s health-care “fight”: Democrats won everything in last year’s election.

 

You wouldn’t know it from the way President Barack Obama is blaming the GOP for his flagging health agenda. “There are those [read the GOP] who are advocating delay just as a desperation move to try to kill it,” complained White House budget director Peter Orszag. Republicans are working to “block health-care reform,” groused the president. “Republicans should immediately put an end to their political games,” demanded Democratic Rep. Chris van Hollen.

 

Indeed. The party of the left owns the White House, a filibuster-proof Senate, and a 70-seat House majority. As one House Republican aide quipped: “We could have every GOP congressman and their parents vote against a Democratic bill, and still not stop it.” All Democrats have to do is agree on something.

 

That they can’t is testimony to Team Obama’s mismanagement of its first big legislative project. The president is a skilled politician and orator, but the real test of a new administration is whether it can shepherd a high-stakes bill through Congress. In retrospect, the mistakes are growing clear.

 

• Living in the short term: The administration thought it was clever back in February, using its $787 billion “stimulus” as an excuse to pass all manner of non-stimulating spending. But the bill sent deficits soaring, forcing those numbers to the center of today’s health debate and unnerving Democratic deficit hawks. Mr. Obama’s demand that a bill be deficit-neutral enthused House liberals to propose crushing tax hikes that further alienated conservative Democrats. Read article.

 

Randall Hoven, American Thinker.com

 

I once wrote that we could play "Communist Manifesto Bingo": once President Obama enacts or strengthens five planks from the Communist Manifesto, yell "bingo" and you win. One month into President Obama's first term, BINGO!

 

I did change my own game rules just a tad. Instead of using the exact planks from Marx, which can be ambiguous for some people, I'm using a more detailed list from the current Communist Party USA. The CPUSA provides its platform on its website . Find "Election 2008" and go to "Click here to download PDF." I saved you the trouble, though, and listed the CPUSA's platform in a nice outline, below.

 

(Just for you anti-conspiracy buffs, note that I am not dredging up Marx himself, or something written by an anti-communist decades ago. I am citing the exact words of the Communist Party of the USA itself, as it exists right now. I encourage you to visit the CPUSA's web site. Obama's presidency is animating for them; the excitement vibrates through almost every article. The National Chair calls it a "new era."   I'm not making this up.) Read article.

 

Gatewaypundit.blogspot.com

 

Democrats know their cap and trade energy legislation will cripple the US economy. Barack Obama admitted it on the campaign trail in 2008 saying the program "would cause energy prices to skyrocket."

 

Obama also promised this audience of supporters that cap and trade would bankrupt the coal industry. White House Budget Director Peter Orszag told George Stephanopoulos in a March interview that Obama's proposed cap and trade energy legislation would increase energy costs for everyone. Democratic Congressman John Dingell (D-MI) summed up cap and trade at a Congressional hearing on April 24th saying, "It's a Great Big Tax."

 

Cap and trade policies will likely cost American families $700 to $1,400 dollars per family per year. Read article.

 

Sam Theodosopoulos, Newsbusters.com

 

The administration’s “Green Jobs” czar, Van Jones, has a “very checkered past” deep-rooted in radical politics, including black nationalism, anarchism, and communism. The broadcast network newscasts have mostly failed to report on Mr. Jones’s past political affiliations which are lock-step with the network’s downplay of coverage regarding President Obama’s associations with the former radical and terrorist William Ayers during the election.

 

At 6:47 a.m. EDT on the July 10 edition of “Fox and Friends,” Americans for Prosperity Policy Director Phil Kerpen, told interviewer Brian Kilmeade that Jones is “somebody who was involved in radical politics in San Francisco, “who was self-admittedly “radicalized in jail” and found “Communism and anarchism.” Kerpen compares Van Jones’s Communist past with his new quest for environmentalism and the creation of green jobs:

 

I think it’s pretty instructive what his past is...it’s the same sort of philosophy, the idea that government ought to be reordering society in accordance with some utopian vision that failed with communism and socialism, and will fail with this green jobs idea.

 

In an April 12, 2009 World Net Daily article titled “Will a “red” help blacks go green?”Aaron Klein reports that Jones himself stated in a 2005 interview his environmental activism was a means to fight for racial and class “justice,” and that he was a “rowdy black nationalist,” and a “communist.”

 

Because the administration’s “czars” do not go through congressional confirmation, and are therefore not scrutinized or vetted, many Americans have no idea who they are or where they come from. Read article.

 

Atlas Shrugs2000.Typepad.com

 

While the mullahs are butchering the best and the brightest of Iran, the shameless Obama and his minions are still trying to revive this dead regime in Tehran. This is outrageous. I really don't get it. What's in it for them? Don't they understand the implications of a free Iran for the whole world? Don't they understand that a free Iran will greatly benefit the American interests in the region and through out the world. Don't they really understand that a free and peaceful Iran can help roll back Russian's outreach in the region and curtail the radical Islamic terrorism in the region? Why don't they understand this simple fact of geopolitics? Why can't he bring himself up to talk against our common foe and denounce them?

 

The individual who recorded it took a massive risk. It exposes the highest ranked Basijis with their names, the tactics they are using, and where they work. The commanders you will hear are among those who are responsible for horrific violations against human rights in Iran. The names of some of these will appear in a random order during the audio. Listeners' discretion is advised... GO HERE - Scroll down to read commentary and view video.

 

Erin Geiger Smith, Business Insider.com

 

A prominent federal judge blasted Obama's plans to overhaul financial regulations this week.

 

The Obama administration's regulatory reform report is impossible to implement and based on ignorance of the causes of the financial collapse, according to Richard Posner, a judge for the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School and author of many books focusing on law and economics.

 

"The [r]eport's fundamental weaknesses are its prematurity, overambitiousness, reorganization mania, and FDR envy," Posner said in part one of what will be a two-part article, featured on FinReg21.com.

 

Unlike FDR's plans that seemed to work "in the blink of an eye," the report's proposals could not be implemented for years, Posner said. This problem would be obvious if the report had "addressed costs, staffing requirement, and milestones for determining progress toward program goals."

 

The report is both too short and too long for Posner - "too long to be a statement of principles that would provide a basis of discussion, too short to enable an assessment of the desirabilty and feasibility of the specific proposals the report makes."  Posner, it seems, would have preferred either a ten-page think piece or a proposed bill with full cost-benefit analysis.

 

Posner's main complaints are that the report assumes it knows the causes of the economic collapse (mainly blaming a combination of disasters among bankers, credit rating agencies and consumers and a lack of regulation) when they will not truly be clear for years, if ever. Read article.

 

Ben Shapiro, Townhall.com

 

Somewhere in the dark unknown blotch that is North Korea, there is a young man bent beneath a heavy burden. He is dozens of pounds underweight, fed on corn and salt, hunched over at the waist. His teeth are turning black, and several have already fallen out. He suffers from diarrhea and fever.

 

Every so often, he watches as the camp guards shoot disobedient prisoners in the head. Sometimes, he watches as camp doctors lead young pregnant women into a room where they perform forced abortions. The young man will die before he hits 50; he'll be lucky to make it to 40. He will die in chains, as his fathers and grandfathers did before him; according to a Korean Bar Association report released this week, hundreds of thousands have suffered the same fate.

 

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calls his government "unruly."

 

Somewhere in Iran, there is a young girl. She has been placed in a dirty cell on charges of treason to the government. She is frightened and alone; her family does not know where she is. She knows that the next morning, she will be executed. 

 

But she does not fear her execution as much as she fears the night to come. She is a virgin; she knows that under Iranian law, she cannot be executed until she is deflowered. And she knows that the Iranian Basji militia are determined that she be killed, which means that this night, she will be forcibly married. Then she will be raped, in order to make her eligible for the death penalty. Dozens of young girls have suffered the same fate, according to a Jerusalem Post report. Read article.

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