and divinely inspired.

Byron York has written a great column today in which he paints a picture of a Barack Obama who is constitutionally restless (yeah, bad pun, I know) and impatient with limits on his power.  It's amazing to read how "community organizing" wasn't enough, how neither the Illinois Senate nor the U.S. Senate was enough for him.

Of course not.  And it fits perfectly with the impression of a man who will not negotiate, because he feels he does not need to.  This is not about representation.  It is not about compromise.  It is about being right. Obama sees himself as being morally superior to everyone on every position, and therefore he ought not have to answer for anything.  That is behind his perennially lifted nose, his irritation at being asked pointed questions, his disdain for Americans, and his ire at failing anything.  He should not fail.  He should never fail.  Because he is right.  He has been chosen.  It is his destiny.

And why, suddenly, is Der Obamameister so frustrated?  Because he does not have the power as President that he thought he would.  Because he does not have the power he believes he deserves.  Because all of those dumba$$es out in New Jersey, and Virginia, and New York, and - oh, God - Massachusetts - dared to vote against his policies, and so against Him.  And he cannot fathom that.  So what does he say?  That he had not communicated his ideas well enough to the people.

Because if I had, you knuckle-dragging ignorant cretins, you would never have opposed me.  No one who is enlightened could possibly oppose me.

And why doesn't Obama have the power he wants?

Because of Franklin, and Madison, and Jefferson, and Hamilton, and Jay, and Adams, and all of the rest of those brilliant, and educated, and inspired men who knew history and human nature, and knew that men (and women) like Obama have always lived among us and will always live among us, and that the only way to protect ourselves from them is to establish a system that absolutely stymies one-person control.

Tonight, before I go to sleep, I will thank God for those men.  Every single last one whose voice and thought and signature were on those precious first documents.  I will thank them for creating a system that has stopped Obama in his tracks.  And I will pray that we have the wisdom and the insight and the courage to keep alive what they created.

Thank you, Pamela Geller, for exposing this truly creepy fascist brainwashing curriculum.

Time to put another conservative in the Senate.  Make Mike Pence Indiana's Scott Brown.  Read here.

... then here is a little history lesson for you, courtesy of Glenn Beck. Say what you will about him, he pulls together the history that most in the Pravda press either don't know or don't want the public to know.




Thanks to Glenn Beck for producing it, Jonah Goldberg for speaking in it, and for linking to Ed Driscoll's site, where I found it posted.

A "free market" isn't the same as an unregulated one - and I for one would not want an unregulated market anymore than I would want the government to own everything.

I don't honestly know why Canadians pay less than we do for prescriptions - and I would LIKE to know.  I question whether it isn't because the Canadian government subsidizes the cost, but even if that's true, I would suspect that there are other reasons.

Without a limit on non-economic damages, forbidding docs from owning the machines would just be a guaranteed source of income for someone else - who would have as much incentive for profit.

Finally, we already have a standard of care - negligence and gross negligence are actionable.  But that doesn't help if juries interpret that standard of care, and know that they can find "negligence" or "lack of due care" with impunity, because some insurance company in the background (in their view, anyway) is going to pay the bills.

Being able to buy health insurance across state lines, like we do life insurance and car insurance and casualty insurance, would increase competition, and reduce costs.

Finally, I love the analogy to Simon Peter and the boat.  But I will add that if every single one of the apostles had done the same thing, the boat would have swamped.  And while Jesus Christ could keep them all alive and raise a sunken ship, I don't think anyone in the federal government is that skilled, so I'd just as soon not sink anything, and expect the government to bring it back. :)

Thanks to the Townhall bloggers for finding and posting this!

 The election of Scott Brown on January 19^th is truly a remarkable moment in American politics. But unlike some, I was not surprised. Too many political pundits seem not to understand Americans. (And yes, even Massachusetts voters are Americans.) Scott Brown’s election was remarkable because it should be a wake-up call not only to President Obama and the Democrats in Congress, but all the writers and pundits who seem to have lost sight of how Americans feel about themselves and their country.

Brown’s election is the first time that many Massachusetts Democrats voted for a Republican since Ronald Reagan ran for President. And this tells us plenty. Reagan appealed to Americans of all political stripes (except the media and academia, of course) because he understood how Americans think. Reagan loved America. He enjoyed meeting his countrymen. He had an indelibly positive attitude about life, and about politics, because at his core, he believed in the principles that make America distinctive, powerful, and prosperous – which is to say free - even while understanding that American isn’t perfect. It was easy for Reagan to be affable, humorous, and grounded in public and in private, because he legitimately felt that way. Leftists and the media (but I repeat myself) characterized him as a dolt, because they confuse negativity with gravitas, and panic with power. And Leftists love to campaign and govern on negativity and panic.

The best elected leaders – like Reagan - campaign on a platform of positive principles, and voters flock to them in droves. But when there is no one who proclaims the greatness of America, and the unlimited resourcefulness, creativity, resilience, generosity, and ingenuity of Americans – especially in the face of great economic or social challenges -- then yes, voters can and will gravitate to the naysayers, the complainers, and the woe-is-you career politicians who build their empires on the backs of the poor and the ignorant, and whose policies keep those same people poor and ignorant. 

President Obama and the liberals in Congress are all of this ilk, and they got spanked in Massachusetts, not only by Republican and conservative voters, but by the fabled “Reagan Democrats”: independents and lightly left-leaning Democrat voters who are live-and-let-live on social issues, and tolerant of reasonable taxation for effective programs run by an accountable government, but firm on national defense and prudent fiscally. These voters have been betrayed by Obama and congressional Democrats who have been on a spending orgy domestically, and an “apologize for America” tour abroad. Americans – Republicans, Independents, Libertarians and Democrats alike – have seen themselves and their country mocked, belittled, and mistreated by their elected officials. And they are fed up.

Obama is the worst of the bunch. And in a “bunch” that includes Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barney Frank, that is saying something. The standard line is that Obama ran as a “centrist,” and a “populist.” He is neither, and I for one am bored with this tired trope. Those who say it must not have listened to a thing he said, or read anything about those from whom he took his inspiration. His condescending remarks about pick-up trucks just two days before the Massachusetts election are right up there with his “bitter clingers” crack during the presidential campaign, or his “acting stupidly” slur about Cambridge police officers. And these are not just “slips,” “gaffes,” or “tin-eared”: they are true reflections of Obama’s ingrained liberal elitism and his utter disdain for the American working class. But then, Obama doesn’t have much good to say about upper-class Americans, either. 

Reagan inspired all Americans to see their commonality with each other. Obama prefers to divide and conquer, and his schtick is to mock some other group while he is talking to you. This rhetorical sleight-of-hand is a classic political con game: while he fans your ire about confiscating bonuses from undeserving “Wall Street tycoons” and “fat cat bankers,” he and his cronies are busy stealing from you.

Contrary to what the pundits proclaim, Americans do see it. They made that clear in the April tea parties. They made it clearer in the August townhalls. And then they watched in while they and their countrymenwere mocked as extremists, belittled as angry nincompoops, humiliated with vulgar sexual slurs, and worse – ignored – by the very politicians they elected to represent them.

So now Americans are speaking where they are always best heard – at the voting booth.

Will those in power finally “get it”? I’m not so sure. Those who buy into the “Obama ran as a centrist” line are now predicting that – after conservative victories in Virginia and New Jersey last year, a close shave in New York 23, and a resounding defeat for Obamanomics, Obamantanamo, and Obamacare in Massachusetts – our wily and deft (in their eyes) President will “move to the center” as Clinton did.

They don’t understand Obama, and I predict that they are wrong. Clinton was a politician; Obama is an ideologue. Clinton was willing to compromise to remain politically viable. Obama – as amply demonstrated by those in his inner sanctum like David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel - will be willing to manipulate the rules to obtain his ends. Obama has signaled this all along, loud and clear. His background as a “community organizer” is built on an ends-justify-the-means philosophy whose founder, Saul Alinsky, was quite explicit about the need and justification for doing whatever it takes, including deceit, to get what you want done.

Americans have made quite clear that they do not want Obama’s “remade” America, and that candidates who run on a platform of concern for and appreciation of Americans’ judgment, fiscal prudence, strong national security, and government accountability can win.

One of the most common complaints in conservative circles for years has been, “we don’t have a Reagan anymore.” That’s an excuse. The principles matter as much as the person. We don’t have Reagan, but we have a Hoffman, a McDonnell, a Christie, a Rubio, a Palin, and now, a Brown. And who knows who else out here in Unlikely Candidate Land will take courage from conservatives’ recent victories? I’ll go out on a limb and say that it would not only be possible for a true conservative to win, but win big, even here in Obama’s home state of Illinois. And wouldn’t that send a message?

Republican leadership, take note: You don’t have to be Reagan. You just have to be right.

This writer for the Boston Herald gets it.  What happened to John McCormack from The Weekly Standard is a metaphor for how liberal politicians treat the taxpayers in this country. 

More about Obama's lack of foreign policy here.

And here.

I've said this before - Obama is utterly uninterested in foreign policy.  His only interest is in wealth redistribution.

Golly, more record-breaking cold temperatures? 

This is pathetic.

OK, I get it - she's nice and approachable.  But when the head of Homeland Security can comment on the near-mass murder of 288 people on an airliner last week by saying that "the system worked," and Broder takes to her defense by saying, "Golly gee, she sure was bright-eyed," we're at a new low.

Here's the bottom line.  While Napolitano is busy scouring the nation for Iraq War veterans, church-going pro-lifers, and defenders of the Second Amendment, denying the existence of Islamic terrorists, and referring to terrorist attacks as "man-caused disasters," Islamic terrorists are actually making attempts at terrorist attacks on U.S. soil  (or airspace, if you prefer).

Plenty of people are already saying that Napolitano is incompetent and needs to go.  But I think they are missing the larger point.  "Incompetence" signifies trying to do something, and doing it poorly.  But what Napolitano is doing, in fact, is exactly what the Obama administration WANTS her to do.

It's beyond "incompetent" when terrorists from foreign nations are entitled to greater presumptions of innocence than people who hold opposing political views.

Now HERE'S the truth of the matter, written as always in the inimitable style of Mark Steyn.