Sentence First, Trial Later

A few weeks ago I went to see the new “Alice in Wonderland” movie; the one with Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. While it didn’t have too much in common with the book I loved as a child, there was one congruence namely that it portrayed a topsy-turvy world where up was down, true was false and real was imaginary.

Well I keep looking for the rabbit hole and the Cheshire Cat because fact is looking more and more like fiction.

Perhaps someone can explain to me where it is written down that profit is private and debt is public. Let me explain.

It doesn’t seem to matter whether we are talking about Greece, General Motors, Goldman Sachs or some other G Spot, one central fact remains. When they are making a profit, they get to keep it but when the ink turns red then all of a sudden it’s my fault and my problem and some latter-day Robin Hood wants to rob me in order to pay them.

Now before someone wants to point out that Goldman Sachs was not bailed out directly by taxpayers, but instead received tax dollars as a creditor of AIG, Goldman received $12.9 billion in the “backdoor bailout” of AIG because of the credit default swaps it owned that AIG had insured. Goldman and other of AIG’s counterparties were paid by the government 100 cents on the dollar in this bailout, whereas creditors in bankruptcy court often get less than 50 cents on the dollar.

It was about this time that the phrase “too big to fail” crept into the lexicon of every liberal democratic on Capitol Hill as well as union leaders and “talking head economists" on television.

Now, I freely admit that I’m no John Maynard Keynes nor a Milton Friedman but doesn’t anyone other than me see a fatal flaw in this scenario?

What would be so bad about Greece going belly-up? I’m sure they’d still have ouzo, retsina and feta cheese to sell. Of course, it might mean that the 35% of all Greeks who work for the Athens government might have to forgo their six weeks of paid annual vacation and retirement at age 35 or whatever it is but why should I have to pick up the tab? And that tab is purported to be at least 1 Trillion dollars which, it seems, is Obama’s favorite number.

And yes, I know it’s supposed to be a problem for the countries who switched to the Euro but as they can’t and won’t bail out the Zorbas alone, enter the International Monetary Fund. And guess who is the biggest contributor to the IMF? Why, yours truly of course to the tune of some 20%.

And the bailout of General Motors had nothing to do with that company’s inability to make and sell cars that people actually wanted to buy. But it had everything to do with the United Auto Worker’s sweetheart labor contracts and the fat paychecks the union bosses were addicted to. And they, after all, were a large part of the reason why Obama and his lefties on the Hill became the regime we have today.

Free market capitalism is risky. Competition is risky. If the risk of losing ones shirt is removed from Wall Street, many would argue that this will provide an incentive for Wall Street to engage in more risky behavior and for the “too big to fail” institutions to get even bigger. One need look no further than the so called Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) for an example of how bailouts make big banks and Wall Street firms bigger.

Don't just take my word for all this: Neil Barofsky, the Special Inspector General for the TARP program was quoted in CNNMoney.com in saying that,

“After financial institutions threatened the stability of the economy by making irresponsible bets, the government responded by sending them massive infusions of capital. In addition, Treasury gave companies cheap loans to encourage them to buy risky assets like mortgage-backed securities that were a major cause of the credit crisis. The report also notes that “too big to fail” firms only got bigger because of TARP.”

And this is the dirty little secret, the fatal flaw in Obama-era economics.

So if you think this can't happen again, remember who is writing the legislation including one Senator Dodd who got a sweetheart deal from a mortgage company and whose defence was that he didn't understand what he was signing.

Furthermore, can no one see that what happened to General Motors a year or so ago and what is happening in Greece today is precisely the future of these United States while the same idiots in DC including the “Idiot in Chief” continue their policy of print and spend?

Are we too big to fail?

Who will bail us out? The Chinese. Not for much longer.

Pass me the little bottle whose label reads. “Drink Me”.

Or any other bottle for that matter!

Principle before Profit

The hysteria continues around Arizona’s SB1070 and the latest seems to be the United Nations who cannot be expected to comprehend it and the Attorney General of these United States who should.

Six “Special Rapporteurs” of the UN’s Human Rights Council decided that the aforementioned legislation was probably in conflict with several international conventions. Of course they did not specify just what these were and it’s interesting to note that 3 of the 6 are from bastions of civil liberties such as Mexico, Kenya and Pakistan.

Last Sunday, Eric Holder opined that SB1070 “could or possibly could” involve racial profiling. Then yesterday, this same luminary was on the Hill being grilled by a Judiciary Committee and was forced to concede that he hadn’t read it but had “glanced at it”.

Or could it be that he hasn’t read it because he wouldn’t understand it? If this is the case, here is a modern fable that might help him to comprehend the problem and I am indebted to a friend from California for it.

“If you had tickets to a sports event, concert, Disneyland, or an airplane flight, and when you got to your assigned seat, and someone else was in that seat, what would you do? You would call for a person in charge of ticket checking and have the person in your seat removed. You would be properly asked to show your ticket, and you would gladly and proudly do so, for you have bought and paid for that seat. The person in your seat would also be asked for a ticket, and they would not be able to produce one. They would be called “gate crashers” and they would be properly removed.

Now in this huge stadium called the USA we have had millions of gate crashers. We have been asking security to check for tickets and remove the gate crashers. We have been asking security to have better controls in checking at the door. We have asked security to lock the back doors. Security has failed us. They are still looking the other way. They are afraid to ask to see the tickets. Many people say there is unlimited seating, and whether there is or not, no one should be allowed in for free while the rest of us pay full price!

In section AZ, of Stadium USA, we have had enough of the failures of Security. We have decided to do our own ticket checking, and properly remove those who do not have tickets. Now it seems very strange to me that so many people in the other 49 sections, and even many in our own section do not want tickets checked, or even be asked to show their ticket! Even the head of Security is chastising us, while not doing his own job which he has sworn to do.

My own ticket has been bought and paid for so I am going to proudly show it when asked to do so. I have a right to my seat, and I want the gate crashers to be asked to show their tickets too. The only reason that I can imagine anyone objecting to being asked for their ticket is that they are in favor of gate crashing, and all of the illegal activities that go with it such as drug smuggling, gang wars, murder, human smuggling for profit, and many more illegal and inhumane acts that we are trying to prevent with our new legislation.

Is that what I am hearing from all of the protestors such as Phoenix Mayor Gordon or US Rep. Grijalva? If you are not in favor of showing tickets, (proof of citizenship, passport, green card, or other legal document) when asked, as I would proudly do, then you are condoning those illegal activities.”

Now if you would like to read SB1070 for yourself you can go to the page linked below and there you will find the entire document. It’s not easy reading but, as a Texan reminded Holder yesterday, it’s a helluva lot shorter than the healthcare bill.

http://www.kfyi.com/cc-common/news/sections/special/immigration/?_show

It wouldn’t be a bad idea to print out the text, carry it and produce it whenever a bleeding heart liberal unloads on you.

Also let us never forget that the porous border isn't just about Manuel and Rosa working hard to put rice and beans on the table for little Carlita and Carlos. It's about human smuggling. It's about "coyotes" who profit from that traffic. It's about kidnapping and ransom. It's about drug cartels and the attendant violence. It's about murder sometimes by horrific means. Imagine being stripped naked and bound frontally to a saguaro cactus in the Sonoran desert with spines penetrating your eyeballs and being left to die ... eventually.

And speaking of bleeding heart liberals, it’s funny to hear them bemoan the possible commercial impacts on Arizona from SB1070’s implementation.

Aren’t they the group which trumpets the merit of "Principle before Profit"?

The Times They are a Changin .......

It was no coincidence that Karl Marx was Jewish as were several of his collaborators.

And the tradition of liberalism continues to this very day as we can see by the fact that a full 78% of those practicing Judaism as well as those who consider themselves to be culturally Jewish if not religiously observant voted for Obama in 2008.

But not any longer, and no small wonder as we witness the policies of this White House with respect to Israel.

The National Security Adviser, General James Jones is not known as a friend of the Jewish State. It was Jones who put together the team of Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski to meet with the President and advise him to impose a solution on Israel.

Earlier this week we may have gotten some insight into why Jones is not a fan of the Jewish Homeland. He was giving the keynote speech at a Washington Institute For Near East Policy and started it out with a “Joke” that borders on anti-Semitic, teaching the crowd that Jews are just greedy merchants in the same vein as Shakespeare’s Shylock.

It went like this:

“A Taliban militant gets lost and is wandering around the desert looking for water. He finally arrives at a store run by a Jew and asks for water. The Jewish vendor tells him he doesn’t have any water but can gladly sell him a tie. The Taliban, the jokes goes on, begins to curse and yell at the Jewish storeowner. The Jew, unmoved, offers the rude militant an idea: Beyond the hill, there is a restaurant; they can sell you water. The Taliban keeps cursing and finally leaves toward the hill. An hour later he’s back at the tie store. He walks in and tells the merchant: “Your brother tells me I need a tie to get into the restaurant”.

It is incidents like this as well Obama’s treatment of Prime Minister Netanyahu and his unabashed toadying to the Arab world that have brought about a stunning turnaround where Obama has lost roughly half of his support among Jewish voters.

A poll by McLaughlin and Associates found that, while 78 percent of Jewish voters cast their ballots for Obama, only 42 percent of Jewish voters would vote to re-elect him. A plurality — 46 percent — would consider voting for anyone else. That compares with 21 percent who voted for John McCain.

Ever since he learned of Obama’s ties to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, has been warning fellow Jews that Obama would be antithetical to Jewish interests, not only as they relate to Israel but also to issues that affect all Americans.

Before Obama was elected, Klein, whose organization of 30,000 members is the oldest pro-Israel group in the country, felt like a pariah. Now, as he speaks to Jewish audiences on a weekly basis, he has found that the climate has changed dramatically.“As I speak at synagogues now around the country, I haven’t had a single person during Q and A or after my talk ask how I could be so critical of Obama,” Klein said.

Klein tells his audiences they should not be surprised that Obama’s left-leaning policies appear to tilt more toward the Palestinians than to Israelis. He cites the fact that Obama and his wife, Michelle, spent 20 years listening to Wright, who routinely denounced Israel as a racist state and America for allegedly having created the AIDS virus to kill off blacks. Wright, whom Obama described as a mentor and sounding board, even gave an award for lifetime achievement to Louis Farrakhan.“God damn America,” Wright shouted in one of his sermons.

Obama’s speeches have been “inimical to Israel and supportive of the stream of false Palestinian Arab claims concerning Israel,” Klein says. “He is relentlessly pressuring Israel while applying virtually almost no pressure on the Palestinian Authority to fulfill its written obligations. He is worse than Jimmy Carter was when he was president. It was so obvious if you just looked at Obama’s associations before he was elected. Jews simply ignored that.”

David Remnick’s book “The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama” quotes an unidentified campaign aide to Hillary Clinton as saying that, if the stories about Wright’s ties to Obama had appeared in January 2008, “it would have been over,” meaning Hillary would have won the Democratic nomination for president.In fact, those stories on Wright were appearing as early as January 2008 but the mainstream media ignored them and would not pick them up until mid-March.

Before the election, Klein remembers, “If I talked about Reverend Wright in talks at synagogues, they would say I was using guilt by association. I would always explain you can’t say that. He chose this church. He chose to have a friendship with Wright because this is a person he is comfortable with and because Wright espouses views he believes in.”Klein notes, “If a Jew was a member of a synagogue where the rabbi preached hatred of blacks, it would be clear that that Jew would be comfortable with anti-black racism. I couldn’t remain for a week at a synagogue where a rabbi made a hateful speech toward blacks. I’d quit immediately.”But now the tide is turning, Klein says.

As recently as last weekend, “At the synagogue where I spoke, two of my most left-wing lunatic friends were saying, ‘My God, Mort, you were right. I never should have voted for Obama.’”Several Jewish leaders have turned against Obama as well, Klein says, some openly and some behind the scenes because they do not want to cut off ties with a president. Klein quotes one of the most prominent Jewish leaders as having told him recently, “It’s better if I’m on the inside than the outside. So there’s no point in my publicly criticizing him because then I won’t have influence.”

“What influence?” Klein asks rhetorically. “It felt so good to so many liberals to be voting for the first black man to run for president that nothing else mattered,” Klein says. “They felt good proving that they are not racist.”Only 17 percent of Orthodox Jews now would vote to re-elect Obama, according to the McLaughlin poll. Among conservative Jews, 38 percent would vote for him again. Fifty-two percent of reform Jews would re-elect him. Among Jews who have been to Israel, 36 percent now would cast their ballots for him. When polled, 12 percent responded they did not know or refused to answer.

“The majority of Jews now realize that this guy is bad for Israel, let alone bad for America,” Klein says.

And there you have it.

Do you feel lucky punk?

I wasn’t sure if I should talk about Faisal Shahzad of Times Square infamy or not. Eventually though, after another think, I came up with a couple of angles which have one element in common and that one element is stupidity,

Let’s start with Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, who couldn’t have been more wrong with his predictions.

Well before Mr. Shahzad was identified and arrested the worthy Mr. Bloomberg predicted that the perpetrator of the attempted bombing in Times Square would be “homegrown”, and furthermore that he or she would be “disturbed or deranged”.

These idiocies were voiced in an interview with Katie Couric who agreed with joyful enthusiasm. Buoyed up by this support Mr. Bloomberg waxed even more eloquent leaving no doubt that, in spite of his claims to be a Republican, at best he is a RINO, (Republican In Name Only) and more likely a liberal. Why else would he seek to pin the blame for the terrorist attempt on a “Right Winger with a political agenda possibly because of a dislike of the healthcare legislation”?

What would have really made his day would have been to show a direct link to the Tea Party because that organization seems to be the bete noire of the liberal Left these days. Even Obama himself refers to its members as “Tea Baggers” which is a euphemism for a sexual act which I shall not define but if you’re interested Wikipedia will. What a sophisticated man he is, so urbane and polished.

But back to Mayor Bloomberg and his predictions who said not a word when the bomber turned out to be of Pakistani origin, was trained in that country and was heavily influenced by a cleric called Anwar al-Awlaki and since his arrest at least 8 others have been identified and arrested as well.

Now let’s turn to Faisal Shahzad who is perhaps simply the latest in a succession of stupid terrorists following hard on the heels of the “panty bomber” last Christmas. It can also be argued that the United States has enjoyed an amount of luck which we probably don’t deserve and cannot reasonably expect to continue.

"Yes, we have been lucky," House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (Ohio) said yesterday, "but luck is not an effective strategy for fighting terrorism."

The GOP's criticism has been broader than the questions that have been raised surrounding the circumstances of Shahzad's arrest, such as whether he should have been read his Miranda rights and why he made it aboard an airliner despite being put on the no-fly list earlier in the day.

While the FBI and local authorities deserve some praise, the intelligence agencies have, for the third time since the Fort Hood attack in November, failed to interrupt an individual before the act.

"I look at the Christmas deal," said Rep. Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (Calif.), referring to the attempted airliner bombing over Detroit, "and I look at this deal, and I say, 'Wow, one of these times they are going to get it right.' "

"How many times can we count on our enemies' incompetence?" said Rep. Mike Rogers (Mich.), a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee. Rogers contended that the intelligence agencies have curtailed some crucial information-gathering activities of overseas CIA officers, although he declined to specify which, saying it was classified.

Before the Bush Administration left office, Vice President Dick Cheney observed that, “We have to get it right every time. The bad guys have to get it right just once”.

How right he is!

Oh What a Tangled Web ........

In the wake of the passage of SB 1070 in Arizona and the furor it generated in some quarters, it is interesting to note that voters in the state approve of the measure by a 70 to 30% margin and across the country the approval rate is pretty much the same.

Still the Obama regime continues to hammer at it for reasons that are all too easy to discern. Try these on for size.

For a start, it highlights the regime’s failure to secure this nation’s borders and it also makes it even more unlikely that Obama can persuade Congress to pass “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” in the near future.

But just when you think you’ve heard it all something always crops up to confound the belief.

Arizona has enough to contend with in terms of Mexico-generated illegal immigration into this country with the attendant strain on public resources and money but now we find out that we have to confront homegrown "people smuggling" as well.

Just yesterday, Arizona State School Superintendent Tom Horne said that children from the country of Mexico have been crossing the border and have been attending Ajo, Arizona schools for quite some time.

Mexican children have been crossing the border at the Lukeville Port of Entry, and have been boarding buses to take them to school, and Horne has the video to prove it. Not only has this been going on under the nose of the top educator in Arizona, but the Superintendent of Pima County Public schools Linda Arzoumanian knew about it and has let it continue.

On Wednesday, Horne came to Tucson and in a press conference showed the video. He also called on the Pima County Superintendent to account for her lack of oversight.

It is an ever-present complaint from every school district in the country it seems that they have too many kids and not enough money to go round. Well, now we see that is plainly false as this school district was eager to collect the $6000 per student per year. And this per capita endowment has been going on for quite a while and the total runs well into 7 figures.

Your tax dollars at work!

Naturally the State wants its money back and I'm willing to bet the School District won't have it. So then, the state's only recourse would be to deduct the amount from future allocations which would hurt the Arizona students who remain in the system.

Something about the "Law of Unintended Consequences" springs to mind.

Superintendent Horne and the Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard also want legislators to close a loophole through which state money has been going to a Douglas public charter school. Videotape also showed students who live in Agua Prieta, Mexico being driven to the Omega Alpha Academy charter school across the border in Douglas, AZ., despite denials by the school's executive director, Jose Frisby.

With a state wide budget deficit of $1.6 billion, and $141 million cut from public education every dollar counts. "Arizona tax payers can no longer support the cost of educating their own children as well as those from Mexico”, Horne said.

Yer Think?

Open Mouth, Insert Foot ...........

One had only to listen to the “talking heads” news shows yesterday and in the previous week to know that none of the people who are so incensed at Arizona’s SB 1070 which deals with illegal immigration has ever read it.

To see this confirmed, one need look no further than the Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton who appeared on one of these programs. Now it would be reasonable to question where her area of responsibility and the subject in question demonstrates much, if any, congruence. But since when has ignorance stopped a politician from proving it by opening their mouth? Anyway, Hillary opined, and I paraphrase, that if Arizona law enforcement pulled over someone with an accent and even if the person was a legal resident from another state, they’d be required to show proof of their legality. As she understood it she concluded.

Well Hillary, since 1946, Federal immigration law has mandated that all Resident Aliens carry their so-called “Green Card” at all times. And in 1946, the party in power was Democratic with the now much-revered Harry Truman at the helm. How do I know all this? Because I carried one for years until I became a citizen in the mid 80’s.

I am grateful to a friend of mine who is contemplating a run for the Arizona Senate for bringing my attention to the preposterous assertions which follow. I’d tell you my friend's name but I don’t have his permission.

Anyway, one of the first Op-Ed correspondents who swung into the anti-Arizona fray writes for the New York Times and again, the most obvious characteristics were ignorance and stupidity.

He started out like this, “Arizonans, like all Americans, have every right to be furious about Washington’s protracted and bipartisan failure to address the immigration stalemate. To be angry about illegal immigration is hardly tantamount to being a bigot.”

So far so good but common sense would not prevail for very long. “But the Arizona law expressing that anger is bigoted, and in a very particular way. The law dovetails seamlessly with the national 'Take Back America' crusade that has attended the rise of Barack Obama and the accelerating demographic shift our first African-American president represents.”

Would someone please tell me where any valid connection can be made between any provision of the Arizona statute and any one race, nationality or ethnic group? Furthermore, much of the new law was lifted straight out of Federal legislation which was promulgated long before any modern crusade came into being and long before Obama was inflicted on us all.

But he went on, “Officials in at least 10 other states are now teeing up their own new immigration legislation. They are doing so even in un-Arizonan places like Ohio, Missouri, Maryland and Nebraska”.

Again, the writer attempts some amazing leaps of credibility. Does this buffoon really think that the problems being experienced are restricted to the southern border states of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas? And does he further believe that other states don’t see problems with illegals from Africa and Eastern and Western Europe and Asia as well as Central America?

Then he went on to try to equate the Tea Party with SB 1070 and again I ask, just where is there any evidence of this? Many Arizonans are Caucasian. Some Caucasians belong to the Tea Party. Some Arizonans belong to the Tea Party. Is this enough to prove cause and effect? With that logic in mind, try this: Crows are Birds. Crows are Black. Ergo all Birds are Black.

And I would be remiss were I not to point out that many members of the legal Latino community in Arizona are heartily sick and tired by the violence and drug dealing which they see and hear about every day. They have children and young people too and want to see them grow up safe and healthy and to be able to find work when the time comes.

What then followed may not be the most ridiculous assertion of the whole piece but it’s close. “The angry right and its apologists also keep insisting that race has nothing to do with their political passions. Thus Sarah Palin explained that it’s Obama and the ‘lamestream media’ that are responsible for ‘perpetuating this myth that racial profiling is a part’ of Arizona’s law.”

If it isn’t the New York Times and the Washington Post and MSNBC and CNN et al who are insisting it’s all about “being brown”, then who is it?

From the Governor on down, it has been made clear to law enforcement that any profiling is illegal and so does SB 1070. Furthermore any such activity will be dealt with accordingly and we know that the Feds are looking over Arizona’s shoulder as well because they’ve said so. And they’d just love to shine that spotlight wouldn’t they?

In a rare admission that Obama himself is playing the race card as well as the sex card, the New York Times article concluded with a mention that Obama put up a routine YouTube video calling for the Democratic base to mobilize last week which he defined as “young people, African-Americans, Latinos and women and that the Republican National Committee attacked him for playing the race card”. As well they should because that’s what it is.

Now the clarion call has gone out to the Unions around the country as well as the socialist enclaves of places like San Francisco and Oakland to boycott everything Arizonan. Well, I for one, can get along by baking my own sourdough bread and I can’t think of a darn thing I want from Oakland. And if you’d ever been there, you’d know why.

And the latest attempt is to pull next year’s All Star game from Phoenix. Now that’ll really be popular with Latinos both legal and otherwise who will glean so much income from that event but I’m sure it make perfect sense to liberals.

After all when did they care about people? Ideology is all that matters.

And here is a codicil to this post. The candidate for the Arizona Senate is one Doug Little.

Go get 'em Doug!!

No More Mr. Nice Guy!

I suppose it depends to some extent where one stands on the subject of Obama but it’s obvious from even the most liberally-biased pollster that many, many people who voted for him are getting a little queasy. And it’s not just his push to European-style Socialism but his demeanor as well that has many likely voters switching their allegiance in droves.

From where I sit, Obama simply doesn't deserve the reputation he's had for his style and temperament and for being gracious, civil, bipartisan and post-racial. He is often ungracious, uncivil, hyper-partisan, race-oriented and vindictive. He mocks and ridicules almost for sport. More than any president in my memory, he often does not comport himself like a president.

Why does this matter? Well, if I even have to answer that, he is the face of America. The left constantly talked about George W. Bush's swagger and his cowboy diplomacy and how that damaged our "image" in the world and our relations with other nations.

But George W. Bush was nothing if not circumspect, discreet and respectful in his dealings with foreign leaders and his dealings with his political opponents. He was exceedingly presidential, demonstrating an extremely high respect for the office he held and what it represented.

How the president presents himself does matter for all the obvious reasons, but I believe Obama's behavior and the public's perception of it are relevant for other equally important reasons. He came into office with a reputation for being sophisticated, gentlemanly, above the political fray and open-minded.

But it was a facade, facilitated by good looks, a seemingly pleasant demeanor and an extraordinarily fawning, and forgiving, media. He has been getting a pass on his unseemly conduct for way too long, which partially explains the disconnect between his personal “likability” and the unpopularity of his socialist agenda.

If the public were fully attuned to how “unpresidentially” he has consistently behaved, it wouldn't be nearly as approving of him personally and, in turn, politicians wouldn't be so afraid to call him out on his Machiavellian and brutish behavior. If more people understood this man's actual character they wouldn't, in the face of his consistently highhanded tactics in pushing each and every one of his destructive agenda items, reflexively assume he's such a nice guy who means well. Then, they might be more vigilant, and heaven knows we need mega doses of vigilance these days.

There are several theories about why Obama is consistently getting a pass, beyond the media's corrupt liberalism and the allies he's created through his racial and class warfare, but that's another post for another day. The point for now is that he is getting a pass, and his behavior is increasingly indefensible.

We talk about Obama as a graduate of Saul Alinsky's school of thuggish street agitation, but it is more than just a casual charge. He is Alinsky personified with a disarming smile. It's not just a matter of his having embraced a political strategy that involves hitting below the belt and abusing power to help his friends and hurt his enemies. His behavior is not just a tactic; it's part of who he is. It is apparent that he has been coddled so long that he simply has zero tolerance for any opposition.

Indeed, he is exactly the opposite of who he billed himself to be: "I will bring a new type of politics to Washington." As a committed liberal ideologue, he is neither a “uniter” nor one willing to consider both sides of an issue. But it's not just his extremist views that are divisive. He is also often personally divisive, petty and mean-spirited.

From the time he cavalierly dismissed Hillary Clinton during a presidential debate with "You're likable enough, Hillary," it was clear that some cold blood ran through his veins. As president, he has been gratuitously nasty with people who have dared oppose him, and he has affirmatively targeted and demonized entire industries to advance his agenda.

Consider: his command that "the folks who created the mess" not "do a lot of talking"; his endless “scapegoating” of George Bush; his rude treatment of foreign leaders, from Britain's Gordon Brown to France's Nicolas Sarkozy; his abominable treatment of Israel and its leader, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; his character assassination of inspector general Gerald Walpin for blowing the whistle on his friends; his demonization of surgeons and primary care physicians as dishonest mercenaries, Republicans as "liars," secured creditors as "speculators," tea partiers as "domestic terrorists," Arizonans as "irresponsible," rural Americans as bitter clingers and America itself as being "dismissive," "arrogant" and "derisive" and as having "a responsibility to act" because it is the only nation to have ever "used a nuclear weapon"; his vilification of Wall Street "fat cat" bankers, big pharma, big oil, insurance companies, big corporations, corporate executives, Cambridge policemen, conservative talk show hosts and Fox News; his snubbing even of the liberal press pool; his egomaniacal behavior at the health care summit; and his administration's flirtation with criminalizing Bush-era officials for their legal opinions.

And the litany grows with every week of this regime.

In the 2008 election, the watchwords were “Hope” and “Change”.

In the 2010 and 2012 contests, I Hope we Change it back.

Somehow I think we will ……….