Mr Obama and his pal Russian President Medvedev

The Obama Administration, with the assistance of its Senate allies, is attempting another all-too-familiar scheme to ram a piece of questionable legislation through the Congress before the end of the so-called Lame Duck Session, this time with major foreign policy implications.

Sen. Reid (Democrat-Nevada) is urging senators to accept Mr Obama’s START Treaty, signed by the president and Russian President Medvedev last April. The treaty requires the approval of the senate, by a two thirds majority, before it can become law.

Republican senators have voiced objections to the treaty, claiming that ambiguous language in the treaty raises questions about the treaty’s possible limitation of U.S. missile defense. The preamble of the treaty contains language that republican senators believe could allow the Russians to withdraw from the treaty if they choose to do so. How interesting that we would involve ourselves in a treaty, which has the effect of federal law on our government, with a nation that can unilaterally decide to ignore it if they feel like doing so.

To clarify the situation, Republican senators have asked, repeatedly, for records of the treaty’s negotiations so as to decisively establish the meaning of the treaty’s language. Such requests for the negotiating record have been provided by republican administrations in 1972 for Nixon’s Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and in 1987 by the Reagan Administration for its Intermediate Range Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty.
But, apparently, asking for the START negotiating record is something akin to asking for other closely held state secrets, like President Obama’s birth certificate or his collegiate academic performance. Instead, after only five days of discussion in the senate, and without having clarified the treaty’s language, Senator Dick Durban, number two ranking democrat, has urged that the treaty be brought to a vote. What is the rush, Senator Durban?

While the urgency of completing this treaty, which could have far-reaching effects on the capability of the United States to defend itself from missiles targeting U.S. cities is high on the list of democrat priorities, they did suspend debate on the measure to consider another bill of equal consequence, to them, the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” legislation that would permit homosexuals to serve openly in the U.S. military.

Democrats, and some republicans, seem inclined to accept the word of the Russians. They were also inclined to accept the word of the communist government of the U.S.S.R that preceded the current crowd in the Kremlin. They are inclined today to accept the terms of this treaty despite the evidence of Soviet-era duplicity and outright violation of previous treaties (Reagan withdrew from SALT II in 1986 after it became clear that the Soviets were ignoring the treaty). Committing the United States to an international treaty is serious business, and democrats and republicans should keep in mind that the Russians, like the Soviets before them, will always act in their own interest and never, ever in our interest.

They would be wise to consider the counsel of General George Washington to the Continental Congress on a very different matter of national interest, when he said, “It is a maxim founded on the universal experience of mankind, that no nation is to be trusted farther than it is bound by its own interest; and no prudent statesman or politician will venture to depart from it.” The Russians will always be bound by their own interests, and we should be prudent enough not to venture far from our own. Mr Obama’s treaty with the Russians has the potential to portend great danger to the United States and we should take the time necessary to understand it fully, and amend it if necessary, before making it U.S. law.

Seen on Breitbart's Big Government Blog.....

Referenceing the recent flood of classified documents from "secure" government archives to Wiki Leaks website, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is quoted as saying:

“If we want to keep our nation’s secrets ‘SECRET,’ store them where President Obama stores his college transcripts and birth certificate.”

Good point, seems nothing is more secure than Mr Obama's CV.


Columnist Thomas Sowell, commenting on President Obama leaving office after one term: “…he may also leave the voters wiser, though sadder, after they learn from painful experience that you can't judge politicians by their rhetoric, or ignore their past because of your hopes for the future.

The Religion of Peace

Who says that terrorism, or even the threat of it, is not effective. The radical fundamental Islamists of the world need only express dissatisfaction to send the “leaders” of the west stumbling over each other to get in front of the camera to condemn whatever offense irritated the Islamists this time, hoping to avoid the wrath of the world’s terrorists.

When Baptist minister Terry Jones, Dove World Outreach Center, Gainesville, FL threatened to burn Korans in public on 11 Sept, American politicians came out of the woodwork to condemn the idea of burning the muslim holy book. President Obama himself has weighed in on this “crisis,” saying, "I just hope he understands that what he's proposing to do is completely contrary to our values," Obama said in an ABC interview. He called the plan a "recruitment bonanza for Al Qaeda." Mr. Obama did not elaborate on what might we might do to reduce Al Qaeda recruitment, but it’s good to know that he at least considers increasing recruitment a bad thing. President Obama earlier called the plan a "stunt" and urged the pastor to abandon it.

Other American leaders, from Secretary of State (for now) Hillary Clinton to Defense Secretary Gates to General David Petraeus have rushed to the microphones to condemned Reverend Jones’ threatened Koran burning. Presidential Press Secretary, the hapless dimwit Robert Gibbs, called Reverend Jones’ plan a “monumentally terrible idea.”

While American leaders hustle to the microphones to attempt to mollify the “Muslim World,” Old friend Imam Rauf is still planning to erect his 9/11 Victory Mosque near the site of the former World Trade Center. Responding to public outrage and demands that he move the planned mosque (though not abandon it), he has essentially threatened that attempts to move the mosque away from the Ground Zero site will incite Muslim violence against the United States. "The headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack," he said. “If you don't do this right, anger will explode in the Muslim world," Imam Rauf predicted that the reaction could be more furious than the eruption of violence following the 2005 publication of Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, Fox News reported.

There you have it. If they don’t get their way, they will riot, burn cars, behead journalists, stone women, detonate bombs in crowded places, hijack airplanes, bomb airplanes, fly airplanes into buildings, attack Olympic athletes. You can fill in the blank with whatever form or radical Muslim violence most fits your taste.

Until today, while dealing with violent Muslim “religious” fundamentalists has been difficult and sometimes deadly, we have been dealing with a group that is confined to the use of conventional weapons. They do not even have access to aircraft that they have not first hijacked. But the whole game will change the instant Iran becomes a nuclear power.

While we can wince and feel uneasy about the horrific violence perpetrated by Muslims all over the world in the name of the Religion of Peace, we have been relatively safe from, if offended by, that violence. But what happens when the Iranians, and by extension their allies in the “Muslim World” have nuclear weapons, what will the reaction of American politicians be when they are offended by some Baptist minister? Will we see our President further pressuring Israel to greater and greater concessions to the Palestinians? Will we see him agreeing to a “limited establishment of Shari’a Law in Dearborn, Michigan, to satisfy the demands of the “Muslim World”?

The Muslim World understands one thing: strength. They understood that when King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, Los Reyes Catolicos, crushed the Caliphate of Cordova in January, 1492 and cast the Moors from Spain. They understood that when Israeli tanks rolled up to the Suez Canal in June, 1967, and they understood it when U.S. armed forces streamed into Baghdad in 2003. But what the Muslim World understands better than anything else is weakness. Every time they threaten violence and see western leaders cower before their threats, they are convinced they have a winning hand. That, more than anything else, serves to increase al-Qaeda recruitment.

Human Rights and the United States

The Obama Administration, through its diplomatic surrogates in the Clinton State Department, has recently released a report to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights as part of that organization’s Universal Periodic Review. In that report, the Obama Administration pats itself on the back for restoring American virtue, badly stained by the Bush Administration. The report admits flaws in the human rights record of the United States, like the fact that one of its constituent states, Arizona, actually writes laws intended to protect itself from unlawful invasion by illegal democrat voters from Mexico. The report also admits that the United States actually detains illegal combatants captured on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan in the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Good lord, where will it stop?

What the State Department report does not mention is why a great nation like the United States would even consider contributing any information, let alone a report, to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. While the Commission’s name intones a concern for Human Rights around the world, the actions of the Commission’s member states indicates something quite different. Interestingly, the U.S. State Department also publishes “Country Reports,” (http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/) outlining the conditions that may be expected in various nations of the world, even those who make up the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. A quick trip through the pages of the State Department’s Country Reports on some of the nations on the UN Commission members makes for interesting reading.

The African nation of Angola, a member of the UN Human Rights Commission, is a nation governed by the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) since 1979, and is characterized by a “tight, centralized control” by that government. The State Department report indicates that while there are no reports of politically motivated killings, police use of excessive force resulted in at least two deaths in 2009 and as many as 23 in 2008, along with reports of routine police torture and killing of prisoners in custody. Other highlights mentioned in the State Department’s Country Reports on UN Commission members include:

Burkina-Faso: Corrupt security forces, which “continued to abuse prisoners with impunity, including frequent threats, beatings and torture to extract confessions.” Prison condition in the country were “harsh and life-threatening.”

China: “severe cultural and religious repression of ethnic minorities” is commonplace, and “extra-judicial killings, executions without due process, torture, forced confessions and forced labor are routine.

Saudi Arabia: ruled by Islamic Shari’a Law and characterized by "routine disappearances, torture and physical abuse, there is no freedom of speech, assembly, association, movement, or religion" in this nation that condones violence against women and children.

With a membership like the nations listed above, among many others, what possible motivation could the Obama Administration have for condescending to even submit a report on human rights in the United States? Why would that thought even occur to any American, let alone someone living in the White House?

The answer is that the Obama Administration has long held and often expressed the belief that the United States of America is a deeply flawed nation in need of “change” that only a person of Mr Obama's towering intellect and goodness can affect. Mr Obama does not believe in American exceptionalism and sees our country as equivalent to the likes of Burkina-Faso or China or Lybia. In short, Mr Obama and his administration hold a deep loathing of America and a contempt for the American people.

It would have been nice to know how Mr Obama regarded this country before the presidential election of 2008. And we might have known these unpleasant facts if there had been a working, honest press at work in the country instead of a deeply corrupt, derelict media devoted to the election of a man who was completely unqualified and ill-equipped to govern a great nation.

Stay on Vacation, Mr President

A lot of commentary has been written and spoken regarding President Obama’s work ethic. As this is being written, Mr Obama is engaged in yet another vacation, this one to that enclave of the fabulously wealthy on Martha’s Vineyard. When the president is not on vacation, he still finds the time to play golf, a lot of golf.

Meanwhile, the economy is in the tank and there is now discussion that we may be headed, if not already in, a full scale economic depression. All of the Keynesian attempts to revive the economy have had much the same effect as similar attempts by Franklin Roosevelt to revive the economy in the depression of the 1930’s. Mr Obama’s attempt to rescue the economy by pumping taxpayer money into the hands of blue state governors, labor union bosses, and “green industries” have done little to revive the economy, but have assured that all that money will never be used by the private sector in any actual attempt to grow the economy.

In normal times, a prudent commentator might ardently desire that our Vacationer-in-Chief eschew the beaches and golf courses of the land and get back to the work of reviving the economy, providing incentives for business to invest and grow, ensuring that any American who wants to work has the opportunity to do so. But with this president, perhaps the best thing we can hope for is that he remain on vacation and keep his hands off the helm of the ship of state.

Mr Obama is so completely ideological in everything he does that there is no hope that any solution he might offer to the current economic woes would be anything that would actually work. Anything he would do would be more of the same punishment for the evil rich (with whom he seems comfortable vacationing), hamstringing the malevolent corporations, redistributing the ill-gotten wealth of Americans guilty of all manner of crimes against “social justice," and paying off his loyal supporters in the the labor unions and plaitniff's bar. Unfortunately, any economic growth in the future can only come from those sources Mr Obama spends so much of his time criticizing, and worse.

I think the best thing for the country is that our president STAY on vacation. Better yet, take Senator Reid and Speaker Pelosi with him. On the house. Let them go to Spain of France and book 50-60 high class rooms with a view, and send the bill to the American taxpayers. Even if they all enjoy an open bar and room service for every meal, it would be far cheaper to pick up that tab than to pay for the crushing debt they are hanging around our necks, and the necks of future generations yet unborn, when they are at work in Washington.

So go ahead and make your tee times Mr President, and have as much fun as you can while it lasts. Just keep your hands off the steering wheel, please.

Kerry's Yacht, undergoing maintenace in Rhode Island

Just how does a kept man go about getting a little pocket change to spend? It must be just a little damaging to the ego to have to always go to the little lady to ask for spending money. So, when Senator John Kerry (Democrat, Massachusetts) had to choose a location to moor his new yacht, did he go to his wife Teresa, heir to the Heinz Catsup fortune, and make a deal? Did he propose that if he could save a few bucks on the taxes owed on the 76 foot luxury sloop, that perhaps Teresa would let him have a couple of bucks to keep for himself?


Senator Kerry chose to store his new yacht in the state of Rhode Island, close to his home in Boston, but light years away in terms of tax liability. While the Commonwealth of Massachusetts charges a sales tax of 6.25% on the purchase of a yacht, the State of Rhode Island charges nothing. By mooring the vessel in Rhode Island, Senator Kerry saved his wife a quick $437,500 in sales tax. But that seems like a lot of money to let the Senator have for play money. Perhaps Teresa was more comfortable allowing the Senator to keep the $70,000 in annual excise taxes that would have been charged by Massachusetts if the yacht was berthed there. That’s a little more like it, don’t you think?


The senior senator from the Bay State, the former presidential candidate in 2004, is normally a strong adherent to the redistribution of wealth mantra advocated by his party and particularly by President Barack Obama. The choice to berth his yacht in Rhode Island reveals that perhaps Senator Kerry just wants to redistribute everyone else’s wealth, but retain Teresa’s for his own use, at least that part of Teresa's wealth to which she allows him access.


A spokesman for the Senator denied that taxes had anything to do with the Senator’s decision to berth his yacht in Rhode Island. Kerry toadie David Wade said Friday the boat is being kept at Newport Shipyard not to evade taxes, but "for long-term maintenance, upkeep and charter purposes." Of course, Mr Wade, that is clear for all to see. They do much better long-term maintenance in Rhode Island.


The question for Senator Kerry, and for the rest of the ruling class thieves and plunderers in Washington DC, is just how stupid do they think we are? The answer seems to be very, very stupid. Its hard to find fault with that opinion. After all, what evidence do they have to the contrary? We did almost elect Senator Kerry to the highest office in the land. And we actually did elect an incredibly inexperienced and unqualified first-term senator from Illinios to the same office. But those mistakes are in the past, and the tribulations of the last few years have taught us a great deal about our current leaders. Perhaps, when Americans go to the polls this November, we will show Senator Kerry and his fellow travelers exactly how stupid we are.

One Step Closer to the Public Option

An interesting news story in the New York Times last week points out the next step in the Obama Administration’s campaign to run American health insurance companies out of business and replace them with a government-run “Public Option.” The story, written by Robert Pear appeared on July 15th under the headline “Health Plans Must Provide Some Tests at No Cost.”

The news story indicated that the White House “issued new rules” that direct health insurance companies to provide many screening tests, blood pressure testing, diabetes screening, cholesterol screening, cancer screening, vaccinations, and prenatal care to customers at no cost. Under the new White House rules, insurance companies will be required to provide these services at no cost, with no co-payment, and no change in deductables.

The White House’s issuing “new rules” by which private businesses are now required to conduct their business raises the question (In my mind, if not in the New York Times’) of the president’s constitutional authority to perform such an action. A careful reading of Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States does not contain any language that could be construed as giving the president the authority to direct the actions of private businesses. Even those who contend that Article I, section 8, the so-called “Commerce Clause,” gives the government the authority to regulate interstate commerce must acknowledge that as a power of the legislative branch, not the executive. But this president has not let the question of constitutional authority bother him in any of the other issues he has dealt with in the last nineteen months, why should health insurance companies be different?

On the face of it, the White House action may appear to be welcome news for the oppressed health care consumer. But what are the real effects of these “new rules?” While health insurance company customers may not be required to pay for these free services, they will see the cost of these services reflected in higher premiums for their policies. The story in the New York Times indicated that the White House estimates consumers could expect to see increases of about one and a half percent to their premiums. The White House’s record of cost estimates for its pet projects has not been particularly accurate, not to say misleading or fraudulent.

But when the price for a scare resource or service is artificially driven to zero, a prudent student of economics can quickly predict what will happen to the demand for that scarce resource. Demand will skyrocket. People will have no reason to think twice about ordering this or that test or screening, and the insurance companies will be forced to spread the cost over all their customers in the form of increased premiums. But if the government can tell the insurance companies what services to provide for free, what is to stop them from telling companies what they may charge for their insurance premiums? One has to suppose that at least one of the 243 new bureaucracies created by the Obama Care bill will concern itself with approving or rejecting insurance premium increases.

This is just the first instance of “new rules” emanating from the White House. A month from now, they can require that health insurance companies pay for out-patient surgery, X-rays, MRIs, and any other service they can imagine. One can only imagine if the White House will determine that heart transplant surgery should be free of charge in future editions of White House “rules.”

With the government on the one hand requiring that companies provide certain services, and on the other hand controlling the price those companies can charge for the services, the companies will find themselves in a rapidly closing vice that will squeeze them out of business. And where will we turn when all the health insurance companies are put out of business?

The need for a “Public Option” will become clear. Insurance companies will no longer be able to provide the necessary services, so the government will have to step in to rescue us with the public option. Despite frequent denials by the president throughout the entire legislative process leading up to the passage of Obama Care, wasn’t that the objective of the Obama Administration all along?