As usual Obama sounded great speaking of how America and the world needed to respond to N.Korea. As usual his response to the launch didn’t match the rhetoric and reality, as real clear Krauthammer, Fox News contributor, posted by Town Hall blog, makes crystal. Here’s Charles on the N. Korean missile launch and the weak response from President Obama :
h/t Greg Hengler
Update:
I’m sorry. I was in a hurry and didn’t do Obama’s comments justice. In referring to America Obama said we’d “shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive…” Charles Krauthammer fills in the blanks for me with regards to a fuller history on the subject.
Commenting on President Barack Obama’s lack of grace in dissing his country on the world stage, Steven Forbes says, President Obama should take a day off. Go to Camp David. Watch some old tapes of Ronald Reagan, and learn what it’s like to be a real President.“
Charles Krauthammer says more:
Charles Krauthammer thinks President Obama’s endgame is “Leveling“:
Obama is a leveler. He has come to narrow the divide between rich and poor. For him the ultimate social value is fairness. Imposing it upon the American social order is his mission.
Fairness through leveling is the essence of Obamaism. (Asked by Charlie Gibson during a campaign debate about his support for raising capital gains taxes — even if they caused a net revenue loss to the government — Obama stuck to the tax hike “for purposes of fairness.”) The elements are highly progressive taxation, federalized health care and higher education, and revenue-producing energy controls. But first he must deal with the sideshows. They could sink the economy and poison his public support before he gets to enact his real agenda.
The “side shows” are the credit crisis, which , and the collapse of the U.S. automakers. Tim Geithner now wears the credit crisis as an albatross around his neck while Obama may come to rue his despotic intervention into the car business. Krauthammer doubts that this intrusion will leave lasting effects on our nation saying only, “Some find in this “descent into large-scale industrial policy a whiff of 1930s-style fascist corporatism.”
Obama’s real agenda is another matter in Krauthammers view:
Bizarre and constitutionally suspect as these interventions may be, the transformation of the American system will come from elsewhere. The credit crisis will pass and the auto overcapacity will sort itself out one way or the other. The reordering of the American system will come not from these temporary interventions, into which Obama has reluctantly waded. It will come from Obama’s real agenda: his holy trinity of health care, education and energy. Out of these will come a radical extension of the welfare state; social and economic leveling in the name of fairness; and a massive increase in the size, scope and reach of government.
I mention Charles Krauthammer’s observation because I find it very troubling that as busy as constitutional scholars were during the Bill Clinton impeachment days, we hear little from them now. History should have taught us what times of national crisis especially collapse have wrought in a nation which has been otherwise civilized. For example, Richard J Evans who wrote of Hitler’s endgame in his just released The Third Reich at War states that in of a previous book of his trilogy, The Coming of the Third Reich :
“I’m trying to be comprehensive, to show Nazi Germany and Nazi society at war in every aspect. In addition to the much better known military aspects, I try to deal with culture, literature, the arts. And I have human experiences — diaries, letters, personal testimonies.
In “The Coming of the Third Reich,” I try to say that it was not inevitable while pointing out that the Weimar Republic did, in fact, bring Nazism. The crucial point to remember is that in the 1928 elections, Nazis scored less than 3% of the national vote. By 1932 they were by far the largest party, with one third of the vote. So it’s the Depression. More than one third of the work force is unemployed by the middle of 1932. Businesses have crashed; banks have bankruptcies; people are disoriented by terrible inflation. It’s a desperate situation. And in that situation, the sense of activism, dynamism, youth, vigor, and radicalism that Hitler and the Nazis conveyed, tapping into nationalist resentment about the Treaty of Versailles with vague but vehement promises to restore Germany to its greatness…. All that had an irresistible appeal.
In “Can it happen here” (read the comments too!) Bookworm writes:
“…it’s worth noting that, when Hitler came to power in 1933, he did so with just barely more than 50% of the popular vote. There was never a time when the majority of Germans were members of the Nazi party. For most Germans, right through the end of the War, their crime wasn’t active complicity with Nazi atrocities, it was passive complicity. From a mixture of fear and brain washing, they just went along.
The Anchoress writing of lost freedom and persecution, wonders how much American will tolerate before realizing that freedom “is lost in increments and inches.”
As the magic that unleashed a relatively unknown Barack Hussein Obama onto the political scene and now world scene, do we really know what we have unleashed. Changes has come so quickly and gone unchallenged by any in a position to slow them down or investigate them such as our Congress who should be the voice of balance for the Nation. As I asked before where are the voices of our constitutional gurus? For that matter, where is our Congress and its role of checks and balances. What will the out to lunch Congress cost us?
Ace of Spades calls it a good piece:
Charles Krauthammer can’t write fast enough to keep up with all the crap he can’t believe is happening. “We are now so deep into government intervention that constitutional objections are summarily swept aside.” Seizing every opportunity to seize, seize, seize power for the government from the people, Geithner “seeks yet broader powers.”
Obama’s goal, writes Krauthammer,
“is to rewrite the American social compact, to recast the relationship between government and citizen. He wants government to narrow the nation’s income and anxiety gaps. Soak the rich for reasons of revenue and justice. Nationalize health care and federalize education to grant all citizens of all classes the freedom from anxiety about health care and college that the rich enjoy. And fund this vast new social safety net through the cash cow of a disguised carbon tax.
Our President seems naive about the goodness and fairness of Big Government. Our founders were not so naive about the weakness of men and statesmen, hence checks and balances. The present disproportionate numbers in the Congress of Republicans to Democrats cripples that system. We are off kilter and in trouble.
While Capitalism needs corrective checks and balances, with a heavy dose of scrutiny, to cure it’s ills, Big Government isn’t the one to take over for the patient. Share holders are more invested and intuitive than this generation of gobbling government bureaucrats. We can’t trust our lawmakers to steer clear of side line profit-making or taking as the scandalous last years have shown. (You know the names.)
President Obama’s medicine is to level field by cutting the growth producers in this nation off at the knees. Good luck Mr. President a crippled America will not fill your coffers for the Big Dole.
When you think you’ve heard it all, Amy Welborn tells you that the unanimously elected a new dean, Dr. Katherine Ragsdale of the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge is preaching Abortion is a Blessing!
As quoted by Chris Johnson of Midwest Conservative Journal:
And when a woman becomes pregnant within a loving, supportive, respectful relationship; has every option open to her; decides she does not wish to bear a child; and has access to a safe, affordable abortion – there is not a tragedy in sight — only blessing. The ability to enjoy God’s good gift of sexuality without compromising one’s education, life’s work, or ability to put to use God’s gifts and call is simply blessing.
These are the two things I want you, please, to remember – abortion is a blessing
and our work is not done. Let me hear you say it: abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done.
I want to thank all of you who protect this blessing – who do this work every day: the health care providers, doctors, nurses, technicians, receptionists, who put your lives on the line to care for others (you are heroes — in my eyes, you are saints); the escorts and the activists; the lobbyists and the clinic defenders; all of you. You’re engaged in holy work.
Can there be anything sadder ? Convenience over conscience, money over morals, sex over sacredness, what are those Doctors of Divinity thinking. Dr. Katherine Ragsdale is their unanimous choice. I can better understand why questions of the true Presence of Christ in the Eucharist are at issue when these people cannot recognize the true presence of a child in the womb.
Pursuing Holiness has this: [UPDATE: Ms. Ragsdale deleted the sermon, but on the intarweb things have a zombie-like way of coming back to get you. Cached copy is here. And for posterity, here’s a PDF of the cached page with Our Work Is Not Done. Why do you think she deleted it?
Where was Obama born?
Barack Hussein Obama was elected President of the United States of America, but was he legally eligible. In other words, is Obama really our President or are we in a period of Interregnum? By requirement of the United States Constitution, Article 2, Section 1, no one can be sworn into office as president of the United States without being a natural born citizen.
Why has Congress and the Electoral College been so sloppy with procedure. Is obtaining the complete birth certificate of the man in the White House somehow Classified or a Top Secret issue? The question is a serious one.
Hawaii at the time of Obama’s birth allowed births that took place in foreign countries to be registered in Hawaii. There is no reference to a hospital associated with Obama’s birth. African relatives claim that they were present at the Coast Provincial Hospital in Mombasa, Kenya for his arrival? No answers here; only questions as to the sealing of his birth certificate records by Govenor Linda Lingle of Hawaii. Her stated reason; fear of Identity theft. Give me a break!
Obama’s autobiography states that his mother was a minor and his father a citizen of Kenya. The actual hospital records on a long-form birth certificate can establish Constitutional legitimacy and certainty that Obama Hussein Obama is indeed our President. Is it too much for a citizen to ask?
Be Holy! 