Flattery

As regular readers know, I only rarely reproduce anything intact which I didn’t write but I was so impressed with the concepts which follow that I felt I must. Anyway, I received the following from a hotbed of modern liberalism; Northern California. But I got it from a dissenter from the area’s prevailing viewpoint.

And I represent it here and I also give the full URL at the end of the post.

“If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, what can be said of plagiarism”?

President Obama’s second State of the Union address contained enough recycled ideas and lines lifted from speeches of others to make historians wince. I suppose this is what one does when one not only has nothing new to say, but is required by custom and Constitution to come forth with a report of some kind by a certain time and day.

Had Obama or his writers been considerate enough to have informed listeners of where some of the president’s best lines and offered-up ideas originated, the speech might be remembered for its cutting and pasting of great and not-so-great moments of the past performance of others. After quoting Robert Kennedy early on, Obama tried to have his listeners believe that everything else he said that we might remember were his or his writers’ creations. Had the president submitted the text of his second State of the Union Address in the form of a college term paper, he would have been sent forthwith to the nearest academic dean. Once again, our public affairs are such that we have one standard for presidents and another for undergraduates. Now is as good a time as any to let Obama’s listeners in on what the late Paul Harvey would have termed “the rest of the story.” [Take the poll: Was Obama’s State of the Union speech a success?]

Early in his address, Obama said that he wanted the nation he leads to be a "light to the world." The last president who set such a mission for the nation he led, and in those exact words, was Woodrow Wilson.

Obama’s concept of the “American family” may well have had its origins in the first State of the State address New York Governor Mario Cuomo delivered in 1983. Cuomo proclaimed the state of New York as a “family.” He also talked about multiple partnerships, both public and private.

In an address to the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990, Margaret Thatcher delivered what might go down as the most memorable line in Obama’s second State of the Union address. The British Prime Minister told her American audience that the United States was the “first nation to have been founded on an idea.” It took the president a few additional words to get this idea across.

Obama’s pointed mutterings about a second “Sputnik Moment” being upon us and his recollection of how American policymakers responded to the last one with increased expenditures on infrastructure, science, technology, and education were clearly intended to evoke the spirit of Dwight D. Eisenhower. His setting of specific deadlines and goals was vintage JFK, but for the absence of any sense of challenge to his audience, list of benefits the United States would derive from them, or any semblance of a shared adventure the American people were about to embark upon. [Read Robert Schlesinger: Obama Not the First to Use 'Sputnik Moment.']

There was a certain Back to the Future feel to the masterful tributes Obama paid those Ronald Reagan might have described as “ordinary heroes.” After all, it was Reagan who began the practice of inviting citizens who had done extraordinary things to sit beside the first lady in the House gallery as the president recited their achievements. It was also Reagan who reminded his listeners that the greatness of America emerged not from the hand of government, but through the entrepreneurial spirit of the American people. [Check out a roundup of political cartoons on Obama.]

Obama received his most sustained applause when he said, "I know there isn’t a person here who would trade places with any other nation on Earth." Leaving aside the faulty grammar (people change places with people, not with nations), the poaching from John F. Kennedy's immortal inaugural address was obvious enough for the most historical of Obama's listeners to notice. ("I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation.") That Obama could utter almost identical words days after paying tribute to Kennedy on the 50th anniversary of the delivery of that famous speech and not making reference to it suggests a self-absorption rare even among presidents. [See photos of the Obamas behind the scenes.]

Most pointedly, the low point of Obama’s speech came when he brought back government re-organization from the ash heap of failed efforts of previous presidents who sought to save money without inflicting pain on a public that had grown accustomed to government largesse. This one, like all that talk about all those green energy jobs that lay before us, had fallen out of the presidential repertoire with retirement of Jimmy Carter. Obama might have had the decency to have Carter on hand to witness the moment. He will have another chance should he, when he delivers his budget, bring back that other Carter flop from yesteryear, “zero based budgeting.” [See a slide show of 10 worst presidents.]

Even Obama’s feigned attempt at humor had an antecedent in the remarks of a predecessor who spun better yarns than this president. Obama informed his listeners that salmon comes under the jurisdiction of one department when swimming in fresh water and under another when swimming in salt water. He rhetorically inquired what happened to the fish when “smoked.”

Somewhere in the White House library resides a published letter Franklin Roosevelt wrote to an adviser in which he complained that some bears were the property of the Interior Department, while others belonged the National Parks System. FDR, tongue in cheek, warned of a pending custody battle over cubs that emerged from illicit unions of bears crossing departmental jurisdictions. [Read A Brief History of the State of the Union Address.]

It would appear that the only president of note whose imprint was absent in Obama’s long awaited and much-anticipated speech was Obama. This was supposed to have been the moment when the nation found out whether he was at the core a Rooseveltian liberal of a Clintonian centrist. What it got was a cut and pasted version of great and not-so-great State of the Union and other addresses of the past.

Sometime last year, many suggested that Obama would have an easier time getting his message across if he was less dependent on his teleprompter. This may be the year his writers are advised to throw away their books of political quotations. Then we may finally find out what the president truly believes and what he hopes to achieve in the office he so ardently sought.”

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/alvin-felzenberg/2011/01/26/obamas-state-of-the-union-was-tantamount-to-plagiarism

Bend Down ....And You Might Feel a Slight Push .............

I hated turning 40 years of age. It wasn't just that I was forced to face the fact that youth was gone forever, a myth that I'd clung onto through my 30's, but I also had my first prostate exam. My doctor was as kind as possible and used a substantial dollop of lubricant. I was going to say a liberal dollop but that might be misinterpreted.

But now we're getting another insertion almost every time we turn on the news. And now, K-Y Jelly is not even offered. 

President Obama's storytellers recently launched a White House blog series called "Voices of Health Reform," where "readers can meet average Americans already benefiting from the health reform law."

How about a new White House series: "Voices of Health Reform Waivers," where taxpayers can meet all the politically connected unions benefiting from exclusive get-out-of-Obamacare passes -- after squandering millions of their workers' dues to lobby for the job-killing, private insurance-sabotaging law from which they are now exempt.

At the end of last year, the Department of Health and Human Services had granted some 222 temporary waivers to businesses small and large, insurers, labor and other organizations that offer affordable health insurance or prescription drug coverage with limited benefits. On Wednesday, the agency quietly updated its online list, which now reveals a whopping total of 729 Obamacare escapees -- in addition to four states, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio and Tennessee -- who collectively cover about 2.1 million enrollees.

At least one eyebrow-raising waiver recipient -- the left-leaning, nationalized health care-promoting Robert Wood Johnson Foundation -- has direct ties to the White House. Obama health care czar Nancy-Ann DeParle sits on the foundation's board of trustees.

Most noteworthy: We now know that as many as 40% of all the waivers so far have gone to Big Labor groups across the country.

The Teamsters Union, which hailed Obama last March for "enacting historic health care reform, providing health insurance to millions of Americans who don't have it and controlling costs for millions more who do," obtained waivers for 17 different locals.

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), which celebrated the passage of Obamacare as "an achievement that will rank among the highest in our national experience," secured waivers for 28 different affiliates.

The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers -- which exulted after the health care law's passage that "finally, affordable and comprehensive health care coverage will be available for millions of working Americans" -- saw eight of its affiliates win shelter from the Obamacare wrecking ball.

The Communications Workers of America, which sent its workers to lobby for Obamacare on Capitol Hill as part of the left-wing billionaire George Soros-funded Health Care for America Now front group, snagged a waiver that will spare a hefty 19,000 of its members from the onerous federal mandate.

And the Service Employees International Union, which poured $60 million into Democratic/Obama coffers in 2008 and millions more into the campaign for the federal health care takeover, added four new affiliates to the waiver list: SEIU Local 2000 Health and Welfare Fund, representing 161 enrollees; SEIU 32BJ North Health Benefit Fund, representing 7,020 enrollees; SEIU Local 300, Civil Service Forum Employees Welfare Fund, representing 2,000 enrollees; and SEIU Health & Welfare Fund, representing 1,620 enrollees.

That's in addition to three other previous SEIU waiver winners: Local 25 SEIU in Chicago with 31,000 enrollees; Local 1199 SEIU Greater New York Benefit Fund with 4,544 enrollees; and SEIU Local 1 Cleveland Welfare Fund with 520 enrollees. This brings the total number of Obamacare-promoting SEIU Obamacare refugees to an estimated 45,000 workers represented by seven SEIU locals.

Without the HHS-approved exemptions, these health providers would have been forced to drop low-cost coverage for seasonal, part-time and low-wage workers due to skyrocketing premiums. The only way they are keeping their health care is by successfully begging the feds to spare them from Obamacare.

The Democrats' law seeks to eliminate the low-cost plans (known as "mini-med" plans) under the guise of controlling insurer spending on executive salaries and marketing. The ultimate goal, as I've reported before: forcing a massive shift from private to public insurance designed by government-knows-best bureaucrats.

House and Senate Republicans plan separate investigations of the Obamacare waiver process. Who got one when and why? Who knew whom? Who didn't? HHS acknowledged Thursday that some 50 sanctuary-seekers had their waiver applications denied, but would not say more. Perhaps the White House storytellers, so eager to profile the "Voices of Health Reform," can enlighten us.

I'm sure that my prostate is important otherwise G-d wouldn't have given me one but, on the other hand, he, she or it, gave me an appendix which just seems to be nuisance at some point in life. 


But the only thing I know about my prostate is that it seems to determine if I'm coming or going. Now I really appreciate knowing the difference too.


LONG LIVE MY PROSTATE.

Note to Self; Buy Fresh Ammo!

Now that the hysteria following the shooting in Tucson, Arizona has started to abate, leave it to me to refresh the controversy that followed.

After all, it’s what good bloggers are supposed to do!  If the so-called “legitimate” media did the job they are supposed to do we would not need the blogosphere. But it doesn’t and we do. Even the doyen of the far-Left, the now unemployed Keith Olberman, has decided to come out of retirement and put his name to a Blog.

I’m sure he’ll have more readers than this one does but mine is better.

But I digress;

Prince George's County in Maryland borders Washington, DC. Democrats dominate the county and 88.87% of the residents voted for Obama.

What you did not hear in the news was that there were 13 shootings in the first 13 days of this year in that county.

So one is bound to ask, Why not?

While the press is eager to paint Jared Loughner, the Arizona gunman, as the face of conservative talk radio and join him at the hip to Republicans, they completely ignored the murder spree in an area dominated by Democrats.

Why isn't the press painting the picture of this overwhelmingly Democratic county as the face of today's Democrat - violent and out of control?

Can we assume that if 90% of the people vote Democrat that there is the highest probability that those responsible for this killing spree are Obama supporters? What would the mainstream media say if this occurred in a county that was overwhelmingly Republican? They would say it was fueled by Republican hate.

I guess the murder mess in a Democratic stronghold that borders our Nation's Capital needs to be ignored.

Yer, gotta love that 2nd Amendment.

Wanted -- A New Bottle ....

Well, I started to watch the Capitol Hill Prom Night when Obama made his appearance to try to start his reelection campaign. Because that’s what it was. But then I fell asleep but it was all on my DVR this morning.

Anyway Obama fulfilled his constitutional duty and gave his report on the state of the union last night and, if I had been he, this would have been mine.

We're in deep trouble.

You know why. Our debt has passed $14 trillion, and yet our current spending plans will make that worse. The U.S. debt will reach Greek levels in just 10 years.

But do not despair. If we make reasonable cuts to that which government spends, our economy can grow us out of our debt. Cutting doesn't just make economic sense, it is also the moral thing to do. Henry David Thoreau had it right when he "accepted the motto ... that government is best which governs least."

So what should we get rid of?

We start by closing the Department of Education, which did not educate one child since its creation. That saves $100 billion a year. Education ought to be in the free market. It's insane to take money from states only to launder it through Washington and then return it to states.

Next, we should close the Department of Housing and Urban Development: $41 billion. We had plenty of housing in America before a department was created. Let's get government out of that business.

Then we eliminate the Commerce Department: $9 billion. A government that can't count the votes accurately should not try to negotiate trade. Trade should be free. Free trade creates prosperity. And since trade should be free, we should eliminate all corporate welfare and all subsidies. That means: agriculture subsidies, green energy subsidies, ethanol subsidies and subsidies for public broadcasting. None of these is needed.

Let’s sell Amtrak! Taxpayers will save money, and riders will get better service. Why is government in the transportation business? Let's have private companies compete to run the trains.

Now for the biggest cuts. Republicans propose to cut discretionary nonmilitary spending. Good. But why stop there? That's only 15 percent of our budget. We must cut more. That means cutting Medicare, Social Security and the military.

I know. Medicare and Social Security are popular, but they are unsustainable. We must privatize Social Security and slowly replace Medicare with vouchers.

And that brings me to Obamacare. The only way to cut costs and still have medical innovation is to free the market. So I propose that we repeal Obamacare immediately. Then we must do more: We must repeal all government interference in the medical and insurance industries, including licensing. All that impedes competition.

Now, military spending. Do you recall what candidate Obama said about the war in Iraq?

"I will bring this war to an end in 2009. So don't be confused."

But I am confused. We're two years past 2009, but we still have 48,000 troops in Iraq. We must shrink the military's mission to truly national defense. That means pulling our troops out of Germany, Japan, Italy and dozens of other countries. America cannot and should not try to police the entire world. We can't afford it, and it's not right.

Those cuts will put America on the road to solvency. But that's not enough. We also need economic growth.

Our growth has stalled because millions of pages of regulations make businesses too fearful to invest. Entrepreneurs don't know what the rules -- or taxes -- will be tomorrow. This discourages hiring.

All destructive laws must go. I again propose the Stossel Rule: For every new law passed, we must repeal two old ones.

We need to progress to an America that cherishes individual freedom. That means a government limited by the Constitution, one that protects our shores and our persons but otherwise stays out of our way. We should take seriously the words of another president, Thomas Jefferson, and embrace "a wise and frugal government, which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned -- this is the sum of good government."

That's my State of the Union address.

We are 14 Trillion in debt and yet Obama wanted to talk about salmon and Tunisia and Sputnik and high-speed trains 25 years from now that nobody will ride. Sure those things work in European countries and Japan. But those countries don’t go from sea to shining sea, 3000 miles apart.

And if we want to ensure that we provide Americans with high-speed Internet access equivalent to South Korea why not pay for it by pulling our 50,000 troops out.

And, while we’re on that subject, just think how much we could save by withdrawing our military presence from Europe. Of course, that might mean that those sophisticated Europeans have to provide their own umbrella at the expense of cutting their welfare programs but …. Life’s a Bitch.

Perhaps my premature retirement last night was partially due to the fact that I played my word game. I counted 13 iterations of “Investment” and 8 of “Civility”.

14-year old Oban would be nice but you’d still get a warm welcome if it’s just a 12.

Your Place or Mine?

This evening will see Obama present his State of the Union message to Congress and to this Country. I’d like to miss it as I can barely stand to be in the same room with the man but, when you write a political Blog, it’s almost a prerequisite. However, in order to make it more palatable, you could try my game. There really aren’t any rules so you can make up your own or use mine.

First, make sure nobody is driving home. Then have an ample supply of popular adult beverages ready to hand. Then every participant chooses 2 keywords and every time one of those words are uttered by Obama, the person gets to take a sip or a slurp or a gulp or whatever.

My words are “investment” and “civility” and my tipple is straight malt Scotch Whiskey. But you can use them too if you wish. That’s just fine with me.

But when you see Obama tonight you will see four things: he will enter the hall, he will ascend the rostrum to be greeted by the vice president and the speaker of the House, then there will be the speech itself and, finally, the reactions of members of the Congress and others in the hall.

Here is the one thing you will not see and probably have never seen. You won't see what is behind the president and above the vice president and the speaker of the House. And because you won't see it, you won't know that you are missing something of surpassing importance.

Think about it for a moment. Why do television cameras never pull back and give a wide-angle view of the president delivering his speech? That is certainly routine for TV: It is considered uninteresting to TV viewers to have a fixed view of a subject.

Why, then, have almost no Americans ever seen what is located above the president, the vice president and the speaker of the House?

Chiseled in the marble wall behind the speaker and vice president, in giant letters, are the words "In G-d We Trust."

The immediate reaction is to wonder: Why have we never seen that before?  After all, we’ve been watching presidential State of the Union addresses for about 40 years.

Here is a theory -- and I say "theory" because it can’t be proved one way or the other.

A generation of Americans has been raised to regard any mention of G-d outside the home or place of worship as a violation of the deepest principles of our country. To the men and women of the left-leaning news media, in particular, "In G-d We Trust" is an anachronism at best, an impediment to moral progress at worst. The existence of those giant chiseled words so disturbs the media that, consciously or not, they do not want Americans to see them.

I do not for a moment believe that there is any conspiracy here. In some ways, I actually wish there were. I wish a handful of media executives had gotten together and conspired to instruct their various cameramen to avoid a wide-angle view of the president.

But, alas, no such conspiracy is necessary. The words "In G-d We Trust" emblazoned in giant letters behind the president of the United States just don't sit well with the secular media. So you won't see them.

We have been led to believe that America is supposed to be a secular country. But that was never the case. We were founded to be a G-d-centered, G-d-based country with a non-denominational government. And that is what those chiseled words affirm.

Yet millions of Americans -- religious and secular alike -- would be stunned to see what every member of the House sees almost every working day.

When this was mentioned to some congressmen they said that, just as remarkable is the fact tha,t when the president is speaking in the House chamber, he is facing a giant sculpted image of Moses holding the Ten Commandments.

Imagine how this scene would go over in American homes -- behind the president of the United States are the words "In G-d We Trust," and in front of him is Moses carrying the Ten Commandments.

This would astound and even confuse an America raised to believe that the words "separation of church and state" are in the Constitution, that those words prohibit the government from acknowledging even a nondenominational God and that no speaker at any public high school graduation ceremony may say "God bless this graduating class."

That is why, I am convinced, no camera tonight will give you a long or wide view of the president. It might change more than Americans' views of the presidential rostrum. It might change Americans' views of America.

Want to visit for tonight’s game?

Bring the 14 year-old Oban for me.

Ode to the Common Man ............ or should it be Owed?

It is still astonishing that Democrats continue to pitch themselves as the party of the common man. They represent only one constituency that could be considered the common man (unions) and even that claim raises doubts. First, union members nowadays are mostly well-paid government pencil-pushers, not the hard-working private-sector employees of the 1930s. Second, the Dems seem to hobnob only with overpaid, corrupt union leaders. Where’s the “common man”?

The contrast between the last Speaker of the House and the current one clearly illustrates this continuing lie. Pelosi acted like royalty because, being married to a very wealthy investor, she lives a life filled with riches and comforts much like the “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.” It’s no surprise that she felt entitled to co-opt Air Force planes for her personal travel and have the staff at her beck and call. Boehner’s wife works as a real estate agent in a moderately-priced area of Cincinnati, and Boehner has no intention of using government assets to visit her and his constituents. There is quite a difference in perspective – and the level of sheer arrogance – between the two.

Of the wealthiest zip codes in the U.S., 19 out of 20 vote Democratic. How much longer can the Dems continue the lie of representing the interests of the common man? What they represent is the interest of those who can take advantage of government in the most selfish manner.

Lightening has struck. I agree with left-wing blogger Ezra Klein of the Washington Post. He stated exactly my thoughts about the aftermath of the Giffords shooting. This should encourage more members of Congress to have meetings with their constituents and the rooms should be packed to show anarchists like Jared Loughner that we will not be deterred from protecting the rights of this Republic.

I fear though that some of the imperialists in Congress who feel their constituents are just a nasty inconvenience will use this as an excuse to be further detached from their voters.

President Obama searched high and low to find a new chief of staff – and ended up with another man from Chicago. Does he really think that the son and brother of two men who ran Chicago with a thuggish mentality can represent the salvation of his administration? Couldn’t he find one person worthy of the job from the other 49 states? Or perhaps he could have located someone who wasn’t spoon-fed shady machine politics since birth? At least this Daley has actually held a job in his lifetime, and has some relationships with the private sector. One good thing about this appointment – it doubles the number of Administration employees who have ever worked outside of government.

As the college bowl season began to wind down, I started to receive a flurry of text messages identifying those football players who elected to skip their senior season to enter the NFL draft. Then the shocker: Andrew Luck, Stanford quarterback and consensus #1 overall draft pick, decided to return for his final year of school.

How many people would advise someone to forego a multi-million dollar contract, and instead risk injury just to receive a college degree and complete the process he agreed to three years before? Many will call him a fool – but some of us call him a man.

Obama is being applauded in the mainstream media for bringing in new personnel with experience during the Clinton Administration. Devotees are insisting that these appointments will lurch him toward the center, work with the new Republican House, and prepare him for his re-election campaign. And that would do exactly what for his second term? Mr. Obama favors centralized government and expansive regulation from Washington. Handing him a second term will give him four more years to restrict individual freedoms and do permanent damage to the American dream. Mr. Obama will never have a life change and adopt Milton Friedman as his personal guiding light. You cannot make chicken salad out of ham.

Speculation is rampant that there may be a deal between the new Congress and Obama to lower the tax rate for corporations. At 35%, the United States has the second highest rate in the world, and that’s without considering state taxes. Our Canadian neighbors just lowered their top rate to 16.5%.

If this happens, it will be very amusing to watch the left go apoplectic – screaming about a sellout to those evil corporations even as it creates greater revenue for the government. Watch for this as Obama’s first great move to the center.

The inability of the New York Times to see beyond their instinctive liberal bias is often very entertaining. For forty years (and until 2010), there were no significant domestic oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico. When the presidential commission came out with its preliminary report, the Times could not wait to jump on the inadequacy of the regulatory bodies (which had a pretty good record for 40 years) and those evil profit-seeking oil companies. The report does not cite any specific shortcut taken for profit, but the Timesimplied so anyway.

Here is the real result: Does anyone think that any major oil company will ever again risk having to lay out over $20 billion for a stupid mistake? Or worse, risk a replay of the humiliation suffered by their chief executives? No CEO likes to lose money, but they like even less being personally and publicly embarrassed.

Of course, there’s no guarantee against another accident. But what happened to BP will cause every oil company to take deliberate and significant steps to avoid the same fate. Don’t look for a repeat soon. That’s your real regulation.

Maybe if enough additional people stop looking for full-time jobs, the unemployment rate will continue to plummet – thereby giving Obama and his media acolytes the opportunity to applaud his “successful” economic policies.

Would you buy a used car from this man?

Perhaps we’re overdue to revisit Obama’s “Religion of Peace”.

The "believer" shown above seems to have achieved a kind of religious exultation by decapitating Daniel Pearl. That's what emerges from a new report from Georgetown University and the Center for Public Integrity. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 "mastermind" whom the Obama administration abortively planned to try (with the full protections of our Constitution) in a civilian court in Manhattan, was the man who did it.

By studying the videotape of Pearl's unbearably cruel and barbarous murder (in a more innocent time -- 2002 -- Americans became nauseated just hearing about it), U.S. investigators were able to compare the vein structure of the hand that appears in the video with KSM's. Though Mohammed had acknowledged being the killer, some had doubts. This report should quiet them.

The exhaustive examination, like a postcard from Hell, provides new details that reveal the pornographic pleasure the murderers took in their brutality. The videographer apparently failed to capture the initial throat slashing. KSM accordingly re-enacted it, this time decapitating the 38-year-old Pearl.

Though the disorganized kidnappers had considered releasing Pearl at the start of his confinement in Pakistan, they changed their minds when they learned that he was Jewish.

"My name is Daniel Pearl. I am a Jewish American from Encino, California, USA," they forced him to say on tape before cutting off his head while he still lived. We can only pray that he didn’t live too long before his last words which may have been to recite the Sh’ma which simply affirms the basis of Judaism.


Later Al-Qaida later released the video titled "The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl."

They weren't finished with him, though. After Pearl's head had been sawed off his neck, Mohammed and his accomplices cut the rest of the body into pieces. They then washed the bloody floor and knelt down in the same spot to pray -- perhaps moved to religious ecstasy by the smell of American blood.

The video was intended as a recruiting tool -- but its appeal has likely waned with time. Lately, perhaps reflecting its diminished position after nearly 10 years of American counterattacks, al-Qaida has been resorting to more conventional propaganda. The fourth edition of Inspire, the English online magazine of AQAP (al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula) was released Jan. 15, and while the brutality is undiminished, al-Qaida's encouragement to its followers seems strained.

For one thing, the magazine devotes a great deal of space to emphasizing the compulsory nature of jihad -- it is the duty of every Muslim to wage jihad, they exhort -- perhaps suggesting that they are having trouble finding willing suicide bombers. Hoping to shame Muslims into becoming recruits, they heap praise on Roshonara Choudhry, a British Muslim woman who, after listening to tapes by Anwar Al-Awlaki, calmly stabbed MP Stephen Timms with a kitchen knife on May 14, 2010.

"I was trying to kill him," she told investigators, because of his vote in favor of the Iraq War. Witnesses said she smiled as she plunged the knife into his stomach. (He survived.)

Inspire was moved. "A woman has shown to the ummah's men the path of jihad! A woman my brothers! Shame on all the men for sitting on their hands while one of our women has taken up the individual jihad! She felt the need to do it simply because our men gave all too many excuses to refrain from it."

Inspire hopes to incite its readers with photos of the Chicago skyline, and of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., with a twinkling Christmas tree in the foreground. Contributors like al-Awlaki and Sheikh Adil al-Abbab stress that in addition to violence, jihad also includes plundering the wealth of infidels through force or fraud. That they need cash is obvious. Al-Awlaki himself suggests as much, saying "jihad around the world is in dire need of financial support."

He soothes those with residual qualms: "Some Muslims today might feel uncomfortable consuming money that was seized by force from the disbelievers and would feel that income they receive as a salary or from business is a better form of income. That is not true. The best and purest form of income is booty." Quite a daily devotional.

Like the communists, who justified any crime in the name of revolution, Islamists justify any outrage if the goal is fulfilling their twisted vision of Allah's will. Aware that they've been thwarted by American military power, al-Qaida now greedily imagines smaller-scale attacks on American civilians. "Pull off Mumbai near Whitehouse (sic) till martyrdom," they plead.

Perhaps, nearly a decade after 9/11 and the murder of Daniel Pearl, we've forgotten just how vicious our enemies are. Perhaps, after all of the sacrifice and expense of the past decade, we're inclined to relax our vigilance.

We’d better not!

Doctor, Doctor, Give me the News .............

In a January 2008 Democratic presidential debate, Hillary Clinton and Obama both promised to deliver universal health care plans. But Obama hit Clinton for supporting a requirement that individuals buy their own health care.

"She believes that we have to force people who don't have health insurance to buy it. Otherwise, there will be a lot of people who don't get it," Obama charged. "I don't see those folks."

After winning office, however, Obama came around to Clinton's point of view. No surprise. As the fiscal watchdog group the Concord Coalition noted in a policy brief, the individual mandate, by guaranteeing a healthier insurance pool is what allows the new system to avoid this "death spiral" of increasing insurance costs.

So it is ironic, and deservingly so, that the very mandate against which candidate Obama campaigned could prove to be his plan's weakest link.

Now, I am not rooting for conservatives to win in federal court on the grounds that it is unconstitutional to require Americans to buy something. How is it constitutional for Washington to make me pay for someone else's health care but unconstitutional to make them pay for their own care? Nor do I relish the prospect of federal judges overturning a law enacted by elected officials.

That's why House Republicans were right to vote to repeal Obamacare on Wednesday. This is how politics should work.

Consider how the previous Congress jammed through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act with too little scrutiny and barely any debate over costly provisions.

The Democrats' health care plan also included a new Community Living Assistance Services and Support Act which set up a federal voluntary long-term care insurance fund. As the Concord Coalition noted, by promising to pay in-home care benefits for which countless seniors could qualify, the program invites "induced demand." What's more, Medicare and Medicaid chief actuary Richard S. Foster warned that adverse selection, those who sign up are the most likely to present claims, is likely to make the program "unsustainable."

Obamacare's requirement that health plans include adult children, up to age 26, as ordinary dependents of insured workers has added to the price of employer-paid plans. That provision helped prompt SEIU 1199, the large and powerful local health care workers union on the East Coast, to drop dependents' health care coverage from its plan.

Ditto the requirement that plans not charge co-payments for services deemed to be preventive. The bill was classic Washington: politicians lavishing unfunded benefits -- while demanding that others exert restraint.

When he ran for office, Obama said that his health care plan "will cut the cost of a typical family's ... premium by $2,500." But how are employers supposed to curb rising health costs when Washington is stripping away the leverage to contain them?

In 2008, Obama didn't see folks declining to buy health care.

I'll tell you what I don't see -- $2,500 in savings per family. Not ever.

I Had a Dream .....................

Sometimes I have weird dreams. No, not that kind. I stopped doing those in my late teens but every once in while one might be nice. 

But, last Sunday night, I dreamed I was being scratched to death by a teenage tiger and then last night my latest reverie was of tonight’s state dinner for the Chinese.  Here’s what I remember.

As the attendees strained to control their desire for a bathroom break and/or bed, Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, shuffled in with a little tray which held a discreet and folded piece of paper. It was the tab for the dinner and he nudged it under the elbow of Obama who glanced at it and pushed it over to Biden. He, in turn, added the appropriate gratuity and had a page give it to the Chinese Premier. Hu pulled out his Black American Express Card and mouthed to his translator, “This goes on the bill as well”.

As we stand today, for every dollar this regime spends, 41 cents is borrowed and 22 cents of that is borrowed overseas. And that’s why Obama and we are playing nice with the Chinese Communists.

Foreign dignitaries visit the United States frequently. Most of them stay for a few days in Washington, D.C. Some of them visit the United Nations in New York. Few of them stray from the governmental and cultural centers of the United States. So, why is Chinese President Hu Jintao traveling to Chicago?

So, this week, Obama invited President Hu to visit the White House. By contrast, the Dalai Lama of Tibet was forced to walk out of the White House's side door near an enormous pile of trash bags.

From there, Hu will move on to the Windy City, where he'll be hosted by Richard Daley, brother of new White House chief of staff Bill Daley. Hu will spend his time in Chicago visiting a Chinese car spare parts factory and a Chinese school. Exclaimed Daley: "It's a big deal. Big, big, big, big. Big deal." It is a big deal -- for Obama.

The same week that Obama invited President Hu to the United States, media outlets reported that Obama was preparing to launch his 2012 campaign in earnest. The Wall Street Journal broke the news that Obama's re-election campaign would be announced this month "with fundraising likely to begin in March or early April." Politico.com stated that Obama's advisers were "quietly working to bring back together the major donor base that produced a record-breaking fundraising haul in his first run for president."

At the same time, many of these outlets reported that Obama faced an uphill battle to raise cash. Obama has alienated the same Wall Street contingent that put him in power; he has alienated the pharmaceutical companies, whom he blackmailed repeatedly during his push for Obamacare. Even Obama's erstwhile allies are shying away from his re-election campaign, with his approval numbers on thin ice.

Where's a struggling Democratic incumbent president to turn? To China, perhaps.

It seems unlikely that Hu is visiting Chicago to hang out at Chinese schools or manufacturing plants. Both New York and San Francisco have larger Asian populations than Chicago. It's even more unlikely that Hu is visiting Chicago because it's a booming economic hub -- the state of Illinois raised its income tax by 66 percent this week due to revenue difficulties.

Hu is visiting Chicago because he is likely meeting with Obama's campaign, which is located in Chicago. David Axelrod is already back in the Second City prepping Obama's campaign. Bill Daley's home base is in Chicago. Rahm Emanuel, a chief architect of Obama's original victory, is running for mayor in Chicago. During the 2008 election cycle, foreign money flooded into Obama's campaign coffers from countries, including Thailand, France, Austria, Germany, Brazil, Hong Kong, Sweden, Uganda, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Historically, we also know that Democratic presidents seeking to raise money for re-election have not been shy about reaching out to the Chinese. In 1996, the Democratic National Committee, desperate to recover from a shocking midterm defeat, worked with Chinese agents to funnel money into U.S. elections. In return, President Clinton declassified millions of pages of secret military technology, allowing China to dramatically accelerate its weapons capabilities. No wonder Gen. Ji Shengde, the Chinese intelligence head, explained to one of the Democratic money launderers, "We really like your president. We want to see him re-elected."

If they liked Clinton, they must love Obama who has made America's economy almost completely reliant on China's. He has slashed America's missile defense capabilities. He has stated over and over again that China is a model of development. Obama has already outsourced America's debt to China. Why not outsource his re-election campaign, too?

This sycophantic display by Obama to President Hu is sickening enough in light of the fact that China continues to support anti-American regimes around the globe. It is even more sickening when we consider that Obama's personal ambition is matched only by his opportunism, and that his administration -- a combination of Chicago thuggery and Clintonian trickery -- is short on cash. If you're wondering where Obama's 2012 cash comes from, therefore, guess Hu.

The only question remaining is how low will Obama bow?

It's time to wait and see.. But not for too long .............

We are all surely grateful that Representative Gifford’s condition has been upgraded from critical to serious in the wake of the shooting in Tucson. As I heard that news this morning and as Congress prepares to return to work, perhaps it’s time for us to look at what lays ahead on Capitol Hill.

Prognosticators are rarely held accountable in Washington, but Senate Democrats may want to consider holding Chuck Schumer accountable for his analysis of the benefits of Obamacare. Last March, Sen. Schumer smugly predicted, “by November those who voted for healthcare will find it an asset and those who voted against it will find it a liability.”

Well, November has come and gone and it is safe to say the 65 House Democrats who lost their seats in 2010 might quibble with Schumer’s prediction. Indeed, the weight of Obamacare hung like an albatross around the necks of these defeated Representatives. And the wreckage is likely not over.

This week, the House will again vote on Obamacare – this time, to repeal it. After this vote, House members will have no where left to hide on the question of repealing Obamacare. The upside – if there is one – for the far-left is only 13 of the 34 House Democrats who courageously voted against the federal government’s hostile takeover of our health care system remain. And yet, many of them are now waffling on their position.

Take Pennsylvania Democrat Tim Holden. Holden voted against the bill, he said, because he felt strongly “it was not in the interest of my constituency.” Yet, last year, he refused to join 173 of his colleagues in signing a bipartisan discharge petition, which would have forced then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi to allow a vote on repealing this legislation which Holden claimed to be against. Why the disconnect?

Until now, the political heat for obfuscation on Obamacare has largely been directed to members of the House. On Wednesday, the true position of every member of the House will be bright as day. Then, the House will roll up its sleeves to do the critical work of defunding and delaying the implementation of this costly legislation while the battle over repeal moves to the U.S. Senate.

Senator Claire McCaskill, for example, will face the voters of Missouri in less than two years. This is a state in which 71 percent of voters voted to block the Obamacare individual mandate from being implemented. Moreover, Missouri’s House voted last week overwhelmingly to urge their Attorney General to join the multistate lawsuit against Obamacare.

It is clear where Missouri’s voters stand on Obamacare. Unfortunately, it is not clear where McCaskill stands.

Granted, she has already voted against repeal once. Last March, Sen. David Vitter offered an amendment to repeal Obamacare and McCaskill sided with the far-left in voting against repeal. But since then, she has sought to whitewash her vote by coming out against the individual mandate. Well, which is it Senator?

According to election guru Larry Sabato, McCaskill is “very vulnerable” in 2012. Obfuscation and hedging on one of the most important issues facing our country can’t help.

And what about Sen. Jim Webb? Webb, also up for reelection in 2012, said President Obama did “a really terrible job” on health care. He also hails from Virginia, which is leading the charge on one of the two major lawsuits against Obamacare. Over the next two years, he will have multiple opportunities to repeal a bill that the President did a “terrible job” on. Will he have the courage to back up his words?

And the Senator from Montana, Jon Tester is also changing his tune. Last year, when Obamacare passed, he thought it was “a good bill,” which would “stop this broken health care system.” Today, he calls it a “work in progress. “

21 Senate Democrats are up for reelection in 2012, along with the two Independents. Each of those 23 Senators will have to explain to their constituents whether they favor the new taxes, higher premiums, lack of options and special-interest favors that are part of Obamacare.

Obamacare was front-and-center in the tsunami election that brought Republicans to power in the House. Repeated votes in the Senate over the next two years will leave Senators with no place to hide. Those up for reelection will face a choice: Vote for Repeal or Vote to be Replaced.

Been there. Done that. Got the T-Shirt.

Many reporters, even some on the Right, are praising Obama for his memorial remarks in Tucson, Arizona. He did a good job of reading the TOTUS, (Teleprompter Of The United States) and let’s face it he should bearing in mind the practice he’s had.

I agree, with a few qualifiers and gentle cautions. For a start it was not a memorial, it was a pep rally or, being as kind as I can be, a political event along the lines of Paul Wellstone’s funeral. How many memorials or funerals have you been to where, in order to commemorate the event, they handed out free T-Shirts?

Obama was eloquent in his tribute to the victims and appropriately acknowledged that "none of us can know exactly what triggered this vicious attack ... or what thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent man's mind."

More importantly, he said: "But what we cannot do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on each other. That we cannot do. ... Let us remember it is not because a simple lack of civility caused this tragedy; it did not."

I don't know whether he was delicately reprimanding unhinged voices from the left in that statement or why, if he believes the blame game is damaging to the national psyche, he didn't use his bully pulpit earlier to condemn the hysterical accusers of right-wing talk. But I'm grateful nevertheless for his gracious words, and I applaud him for them.

I also appreciated his and some of the other speakers' elegant and fitting references to Scripture. I was a bit confused by his seemingly New Age admonition that we "use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations," but to each his own. However, what does that mean?

All in all, we must be gracious in turn and applaud Obama but regrettably, the atmosphere of the event was anything but appropriately somber and more closely resembled a political rally.

But where do we go from here? Where does Obama go from here?

I doubt that the political left will tone down its bellicose rhetoric -- its clear effort to blame the shootings on right-wing thinking and expression. No less a prominent figure on the left than MSNBC's Chris Matthews just suggested -- again -- that talk radio played a role in the shootings. More disturbingly, he said, "We can assume innocence in terms of Palin's role or anything Glenn Beck said or anybody else, but you can't exonerate them until we know the truth here."

Exonerate them? They should never have been accused in the first place. So it's outrageous for Matthews to lend further credence to the slanderous allegations by saying we can't exonerate them until we know the truth. We already know enough facts to say that the accused killer, Jared Loughner, isn't a bitter-clinging, Palin-following tea partyer. Matthews' statement is reminiscent of the old Democratic line justifying the appointment of a special counsel to investigate alleged Republican corruption even when there was no evidence of it: "It's the seriousness of the allegations, not the nature of the evidence, that's important."

Even Democratic luminary James Carville recognizes the resurrection of this tactic among his brethren, saying in a television interview, "Everything about the shootings points to politics except the evidence." That's a far cry from Matthews' formulation, hmm?

So if we take Obama (and Carville) at his word, are we not entitled to assume and expect that Obama henceforth will resist from reinstituting his well-established pattern of demonizing his opponents with combative imagery, for example, "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun" or telling Hispanics to vote Democratic to "punish our enemies" or, most recently, identifying Republicans as "hostage takers" with whom he was "itching for a fight"?

I don't know that Obama, the avowed Saul Alinskyite, is capable of switching gears and trying to govern in some other way than by targeting, isolating and demonizing his opponents, but his November "shellacking" may be causing him to reconsider, even if he doesn't go so far as adopting Clintonian triangulation.

But the more important question involves Obama's prospective position on freedom of political speech in this country. Will he truly distance himself from his leftist base's conspiratorial scheme to silence voices on the right by attempting to link their speech to violence?

For let there be no mistake, the left has promoted a selective censorship syllogism at least as far back as Clinton's opportunistic linkage of conservative talk radio to the Oklahoma City bombing.

 That syllogism is: Conservative talk is often hate speech; hate speech leads to violence; so conservative talk must be severely regulated.

That's the rationale behind the left's efforts to resurrect the Fairness Doctrine, to promote network neutrality rules and to justify campus speech codes.

This march to "criminalize" conservative speech, I believe, began when liberals realized they had lost a monopoly on the media with the advent and explosive popularity of alternative media.

So, I'm willing to praise Obama for a fine speech. But will he follow his own words and lead his party away from its destructive efforts to silence its opponents?