Obama: "You lie!"

Our jaw-dropping President Obama has once again re-written history in a public forum, this time creating a utterly fantasized history of Islam in the U.S. to curry favor with Muslims. This editorial in the Washington Times fisks his recent Ramadan speech and echoes my own reaction: that's bullshit--what the hell is he talking about?

Does your average American yet understand how much this President lies? Or why? Obama does not just tell little white lies the way ordinary politicians do, to try to make potential supporters, donors, or voters feel all warm and tingly. Obama baldly rewrites history without blinking an eyelash. Why would he do this sick routine, in front of God and country? Is he counting on Americans to be so poorly educated or inattentive that they will not be able to even notice? Is he counting on Americans being so polite, deferential, or so stupid that they will accept everything he says, no matter how outrageously untrue it is?

Here's what I think is going on. Obama is not just verity-challenged. He is now the figurehead in the U.S. of the crowd set in motion years back by 'the Communist system,' talked about by ex-KGB member Uri Bezmenov, in this 1985 interview, after he had defected to the U.S. (here is Part 2 of the brief interview). If you have no time to watch any other videos today, please make time to watch these. Bezmenov is not the first or the only such person to say such things with authority, but he is concise. It is good to know what we're up against. This is not playacting, and incredible as it seems to contemplate, it is no joke.

Isn't it convenient how taqiyya and Communist subversion seem to have so many things in common? Just like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Nazis did. Wouldn't it have been interesting if Obama had talked about that at the Ramadan dinner?

These links today come from a powerful essay by Victor Davis Hanson, well worth reading, and from the trenchant comments that follow. Fortunately we can see that not everyone is uneducated or unengaged in this country. Many Americans are doing all they can to enlighten the unenlightened to the dangers we face, and to fight for the life of their country. Patriotism is not dead.

Looking back: "You lie!" Joe Wilson was rude, but right. How right he was! In dire times, against such enemies, polite reticence is no longer a primary virtue.

UPDATE: Did you know there are over 70 socialists in Congress? Interesting list.

Signs of the Age of Obama-the-Jobs-Killer

This is what our unnecessary recession looks like. This is what happens when wealth drops out of the economy and the economy stalls. Toddlers trampled. Babies going into seizure. People getting sick from standing in long lines in the heat for a government handout.

This is what our resident socialists want for our country--the government in charge, handing out the basic necessities of life to people who have no recourse. Take a good look and realize how much like the old Soviet breadlines this is. This is the goal of progressives and leftists--they want to be in charge, in power over handing out pittances to the crowds of the powerless and the poor.

These thousands of people are there today because of the job-killing policies of Obama and his leftist cronies: Pelosi, Reid, and all the other leftists who want a government-welfare society, who don't understand economics, who distain the free market system and hate capitalism, who think the evil rich haven't paid enough of their fair share yet, who think they can jerk Americans around and the dollars will keep rolling in somehow to pad their fantasy slush funds. They won't be satisfied until all Americans (except themselves and their "special" friends) are in these bread lines--for food, housing, medical care. It is Obama and the Democrat-controlled Congress whose long list of job-killing policies and proposals continue to prolong this recession and make these crowds of unfortunate people swell and swelter. It is Obama and the Democrats who are either clueless or purposeful in promoting high unemployment. They are literally endangering people's livelihoods and lives.

If you think I'm angry about this, you're damn right I am, me and lot of other ordinary Americans. Any thinking, feeling person would be furious at the waste and the exploitation. This is the ugly face of the Age of Obama and the leftists, and the rest of us Americans are not going to sit on our hands anymore when it comes to elections and politics.

AFTERTHOUGHT: Instead of funding outings for bigwigs at strip clubs, Michael Steele and the local Republicans should be down among these lines of people, handing out water bottles and fans and talking about how Democrat politics have eviscerated the economy and prolonged unemployment, and how Democrat politics seek to keep the serfs on the big-government plantation. The Tea Party people should be down there with voter registration forms, too, asking "How's that Hope and Change working out for you?" Because it's a good bet that the "usual suspects"--socialists, Marxists, union goons, and leftist "community activists" will already be out there among the people running their mouths.

Hat tips to Drudge and Neal Boortz.

A good day for laughing

I must run out for my stint volunteering at my daughter's local public school, but I thought I'd share with you a couple of items that gave me a good laugh this morning:

Proposed Islamic men's gay bar next to Ground Zero mosque

Ace's Top 10 list of how Michelle Obama honored her friend's bereavement while on vacation in Spain

Then there's this good news about the political awareness in our country: people are starting to see the light. Freedom of speech and information is having the effect foreseen by The Founders. Even among Democrats.

Government failure, bureaucratic disfunction, and the case for laissez faire

Eric Perkerson has written an online article called "The Antiregulation Case," urging that proponents of the free market step up their game when it comes to arguing against what is effectively doomed and misguided government "regulation" in cases like the Gulf oil spill and Washington's heavyhanded, ignorant, and harmful intervention in the financial system.

First of all, good luck in arguing for laissez-faire anything in this benighted, emotional age of 'we-know-what's-best-for-you/fork-over-your-wallet-and-we'll-pay-your-neighbor's-mortgage' Obama and his Democratic/socialist hench-folk. But Perkerson is yet another rational voice fighting the good fight for thinking people, and I applaud all such efforts. If there are any Americans of free will and open mind left (and I optimistically believe there are many), may they continue to read such things and learn.

I learned from reading this article and following its links the names of some concepts I am glad that economists and political scientists are aware of and studying: regulatory capture, government failure, and iron triangle.

It seems clearer to me than ever that anyone purporting to be, or studying to become, a political scientist or a politician, rather than acquiring a law degree, should be majoring or double-majoring in economics (which implies a vitally-needed ability to handle math and analytical, self-defensive statistics). Every politician and lawyer should be well-versed in public choice theory. Anything less in an aspiring office-seeker these days automatically denotes incompetence and perhaps sheer hubris.

But Perkerson's very argument is that politicians should not be regulating the marketplace at all. The free market operates efficiently and best, delivering most quickly the optimal benefits to the most, without government intervention, so long as government is there to do its job in upholding the rules of law, contract and property, and to adjudicate and punish the crimes of fraud, theft, and personal injury. In fact, the government's proper job is not to regulate economic activity, but to regulate and enforce the laws that allocate responsibility--including dealing with "externalities" in the natural (or financial) environment that harm others.

As the research of PERC has shown, there are effective free-market solutions to environmental problems, including those of common-property areas (government land, the sea, the air, outer space). Legislating and adjudicating property laws with an economic understanding of incentives (and justice) is the key.

Where I see this all breaking down, besides in our own Federal capital at the moment, is at the international level. Who can effectively and justly legislate and adjudicate the laws of the sea, of space, of international conflict when despots, murderers, and brigands are players? There is currently no international body worthy to do this. All those bright young things currently participating in Model U.N. have their work cut out for them, if they aspire to be more than parasitic poseurs. I hope they are all learning economics, math, and statistics too.

Finally, Perkerson touches on, but doesn't really examine, the moral hazard of our votinig populace here in the U.S. Milton Friedman has talked about how little cost every American voter seems to incur at the time of casting a vote for one politician over another (in fact, most Americans don't even vote, stay home if it's raining, etc.), yet the results down the road--often not on that voter, but on millions of others in our republic affected by the accumulation of such votes--are severe. We are seeing the dire results of this fatal moral hazard at the heart of our government right now. When are we going to see our legislators, judges, politicians, and the American people who supposedly run this joint tackle this problem and fix it?

While on the way to blog . . .

This morning I woke up with some actual thoughts that might be blogworthy, after a long, much-needed post-vacation hiatus of no blogging. While on my way to my computer, I had to stop and spot-clean some cat vomit from the white area rug in the living room. Then I gave the cat some "hairball remedy," which she hates. Such is the life of a housewife, I thought, a life of constant interruptions of the creative urge--then realized that such is the life of any would-be writer--any creative person--any person at all. No need to be sexist or elitist about it. Such is life, period. But it seems it is always a struggle for any writer, especially, to choose whether to pursue the elusive muse or to deal with pressing other facts and obligations--or distractions--including the most mundane or distasteful. And nowadays the obligations/distractions include email and web-surfing. There is only so much time you can spend at the computer a day (and that becoming less and less as bones and muscles protest with age).

Still, I always figured Flaubert would never have been Flaubert if he'd have been a housewife. And Margaret Mitchell probably wouldn't have written Gone With the Wind if she'd had children. In fact, she got so caught up in answering her fan mail after she became famous, that she never wrote another book. You have to be ruthless with yourself and others, and selfish with your time, to be a great writer. Such ruthlessness and selfishness is not a becoming trait in a mother. I have never learned the knack of being both a good mother and a productive writer, as some women can manage. Blogging I can fit into the free corners of my life.

Which brings to mind the ponder of whether Flaubert (or Galsworthy, or Shakespeare) would've been what they were if they'd been bloggers, too. One of the facts that occurred to me while on vacation was how much of a distraction blogging itself is from real writing projects.

Still, some mornings I just wake up and want to blog, without rhyme, reason, or reader counts. What's up with that?