Robert Kagan, Washington Post.com

 

President Obama has a once-in-a-generation opportunity over the next few months to help make the world a dramatically safer place. It's not by negotiating an arms deal with Russia, or strengthening the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or by making that elusive climate-change deal with the Chinese, worthy though those initiatives may be. It is by helping the Iranian people achieve a new form of government. Given the role that the Islamic theocracy in Tehran has played in leading and sponsoring anti-democratic, anti-liberal and anti-Western fanaticism for the past three decades, the toppling or even substantial reform of that regime would be second only to the collapse of the Soviet Union in its ideological and geopolitical ramifications.

 

Imagine an Iran whose educated, inventive and highly cultured people were allowed to flourish, fully enmeshed in the global economy and society. Imagine the effect on the Muslim world and the greater Middle East of a modernizing, prosperous Iran that held regular, free and fair elections. Those who have long advocated a "grand bargain" were right to talk about the immense global benefits if Iran could be integrated into the international order. Their big mistake was thinking such a bargain could be had with benighted and virulently anti-Western leaders. But the bargain would be grand if the present government could go the way of the Brezhnevs and Ligachevs.

 

Regime change is more important than any deal the Obama administration might strike with Iran's present government on its nuclear program. Read article.

 

AJ DiCintio, NMJ.us

 

No one ought to express surprise that the result of the Massachusetts Senate race has not in the least shaken the faith of the American left, despite the fact that it came on the heels of Obama's crashing poll numbers and the gubernatorial results in Virginia and New Jersey.

 

After all, being a true believer "comes with the territory" as much for those who make a religion of politics and gods of politicians as it does for any person who buys into the lie that great possibilities flow from ridiculous hopes and foolish dreams.

 

For proof, consider that to the delight of his professors at the Chicago Political Machine (as well as Columbia and Harvard), post-Massachusetts Obama immediately fulfilled his responsibility as the nation's Liberal-in-Chief by offering a public testimonial of his faith in which he proclaimed that "The fault, dear Citizens, is not in my policies but in myself; for I have failed to explain that my policies reflect your values."

 

Yes, despite the shocking, enormous waste of the feckless Democratic Party Wish List Pork Travesty costing 800 billion borrowed dollars; the insulting, arrogant, dangerous power grab contained in the 2,000 pages of The Shameless Federal Government Healthcare Takeover Makeover Act of 2010; and the blatant immorality of the "generational theft" inherent in an outrageous plan to add ten trillion dollars to the national debt over the next decade, our most ideological president ever insists that his ACORN values and the "core values" of the American people are one and the same. Read article.

 

David Limbaugh.com

 

Watching President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech makes me wonder whether the reason he tells so many fibs is that he believes them himself. Either that or he is an even better actor than he is a teleprompter reader.

 

Obama not only wasn't contrite about his broken promises and disastrous record; he was on the attack, daring anyone to oppose his agenda -- even in the face of the Massachusetts rebuke. But let's see how some of his statements match up with reality.

 

On health care, he taunted congressmen to "let me know" if any of them have "a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen Medicare for seniors and stop insurance company abuses," as if his own plan would do those things.

 

Even the Congressional Budget Office has said most of the Democratic plans would increase the budget. Besides, you can't reduce overall costs when government forces an increase in demand, even if it caps insurance premiums and shifts costs elsewhere and/or imposes rationing. The CBO has also reported that with Obamacare, millions would remain uninsured. So under his plan, costs would rise, quality and choice would decrease, care would be rationed, millions would remain uninsured and, worst of all, the government would acquire an unprecedented level of control over all aspects of our lives.

 

Do conservatives have better ideas? Of course. Read article.

 

Brion McClanahan, Townhall.com

 

With the ongoing debate over Obamacare and socialized medicine occupying much of the collective attention of the American public the past few months, Americans have become more familiar and focused on Senate rules and procedures, particularly the possibility of a Senate filibuster to stifle a vote on national healthcare. This has angered many Democrats, particularly those who seek to ram through bigger and more expensive government at a time when many Americans want to pump the breaks on irresponsible spending, higher debt, and higher taxes.

 

This led Massachusetts representative Barney Frank to call for and end to filibusters in a 16 January interview on the now bankrupt Air America radio network. Frank said that a Senate rule requiring a 60 vote majority to end a filibuster is “anti-democratic” and that “it’s time to shut it down.” Small States from the “Mountain West,” in his estimation, continually conspire to retard progress in the Senate. Mr. Frank has never been more correct, at least concerning the “anti-democratic” nature of the Senate. In fact, this is precisely what the founding generation wanted when they designed the Upper House.

 

Piece Butler of South Carolina agreed, and added that “taking so many powers out of the hands of the states…tended to destroy all that balance and security of interests among the states which it was necessary to preserve.” States’ rights, the essence of the “Mountain West” minority that Frank criticizes, served to stop mob rule in the Congress. Read article.

 

Jonah Goldberg, LATimes.com

 

The Democrats came into power believing that downplaying and downgrading the war on terrorism was both right and politically smart. The former is debatable, the latter unsupportable.

It is always dangerous to mistake your ideological preferences for shrewd political strategy, but that is precisely what President Obama and his advisors have done with the war on terror.

 

On the right, the prevailing critique of the president's approach to the war on terror is that it is both deeply ideological and unserious. Obama remains fixated on the idea of closing Guantanamo, even if it means keeping irredeemable terrorists in U.S. prisons indefinitely. The administration initially banned the use of the term "war on terror," preferring the ridiculous bureaucratese "overseas contingency operations." Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano favors "man-caused disasters" to describe 9/11-style terrorism. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. has decided to send self-professed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and four others to a civilian trial in New York City, allegedly without consulting anyone save his wife and brother.

 

Immediately after the Ft. Hood shootings and again after the foiled Christmas Day attack by suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the president's initial response was to look at the incidents through the now familiar ideological prism. These were "isolated" attacks from individual "extremists."

 

Admirably, Obama was quick to correct the record about Abdulmutallab, contradicting Napolitano's initial contention that "the system worked." Rather, Obama admitted there was "systemic failure." Since then, the media have reported that Abdulmutallab's arrest and interrogation were as flawed as the system that let him on the plane. FBI agents interviewed the jihadist for 50 minutes, according to the Associated Press, before he was read his Miranda rights and lawyered up, and no one even bothered to consult with Obama's national security team. Read article.

 

Jeffrey Folks, American Thinker.com

 

In a December 18 interview, President Obama stated that he "would rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president." Several things need to be said about this apparently straightforward remark.

 

If Obama actually were a "really good" president, there would be no reason for him to serve only one term. The American people would recognize his accomplishments and reelect him. What Obama actually meant to say is that he would prefer to be a really radical president who has set himself against the wishes of the people and so cannot hope to be reelected. He prefers to be this kind of president because as an elitist, he believes that he is superior to the mass of people and so has the right to decide for them what is best. Nothing that happens during his presidency and nothing that is said will convince him otherwise.

 

On nearly every major issue, the president's policy has proved unpopular once it has been explained clearly. This is why Obama so often engages in secrecy and obfuscation. It is why his party in Congress conducts secret negotiations and passes major legislation on Thanksgiving or just before Santa's arrival on Christmas Eve. It is why bills are passed without having been read even by their sponsors. Obama's party is legislating in the dark because it does not want the American people to know what it is doing.

 

This fact is at the heart of what Obama means by a "really good" president. A really good president, he believes, is one who swiftly and furtively enacts unpopular legislation so that by the time anyone can object, it has become a fait accompli. A really good president is one who disguises his ideologically extreme positions long enough to "transform" the country in ways that will cost him reelection once the truth is made known. This is why in the President's mind, a "really good" president must so often be a one-term president. Read article.

 

 

 

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