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I alluded in my most recent update on the president’s America-Bashing Tour that there was more to discuss about his speech to the Ghanaian Parliament. Here it is:

A week or so ago, I was out for drinks and overheard a typical Obamaphile going on about how great this speech of his was. Nothing struck me until he expounded as to why he liked it: The president had actually called on Africans to take responsibility for themselves and practiced some tough-love, according to this friend-of-a-friend of mine. Having not read it, I withheld comment. As I read through it in putting together the aforementioned post, I actually was struck by the tone.
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California’s Junior Senator has kept her job, largely by obscuring her record and attacking her opponents.  In 1998, when running for reelection, she famously “guarded herself from contact with reporters so she would not have to answer questions about Bill Clinton; the [then-]president’s brother-in-law Tony Rodham was then married to her daughte Nicole.”*  (More in a subsequent post on what this says about Ma’am’s hypocrisy.)

Yesterday, while volunteering at Outfest, LA’s gay and lesbian film festival, when chatting with a young gay man, definitely not a Republican, though interested in politics, he mocked Mrs. Boxer for her insistence on being called “Senator.”  Seems that whenever people see this clip, they find Ma’am to be petty and offensive. So, I post it in the interest of getting it out there, reminding people of what Ma’am is really like.

Recall, that while Ma’am objected when Brig. Gen. Michael Walsh called her “Ma’am,” she did not object when when Black Chamber of Commerce, President and CEO Harry Alford.

The more people know about this woman and her record, the less chance she stands of reelection.

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President Obama returned from the latest leg of his America-Bashing tour quite a while ago, so my apologies right off the bat for taking so long to get this map updated. Also, the site I usually use to make the map is flaky for some reason, so I’m back to this more boring map till I figure out what’s up with that. I’m sure by the time Obama next travels overseas, it’ll be up and running.

First off, Turkey. Yes, I know you’ll say he didn’t go to Turkey on this trip. But a commentor noted on my most recent post that I’d left that off from his trip back in April. Your diligent blogger, I went back and checked out his speech to the Turkish Parliament, and found this passage:

The United States is still working through some of our own darker periods. Facing the Washington monument that I spoke of is a memorial to Abraham Lincoln, the man who freed those who were enslaved even after Washington led our Revolution. And our country still struggles with the legacy of our past treatment of Native Americans.

With that housekeeping taken care of, on to his Russia/Italy/Ghana trip:

In Russia, The One had this to say about the end of the Cold War:

Make no mistake: this change did not come from any one nation alone. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.

While not exactly a bash of the US, when combined with his oft-repeated trope that “[b]y no means is America perfect”, it’s simply another unnecessarily self-deprecating cowtow. It counts in my book.

As for Italy, all I could find was this press conference he held in L’Aquila. While he does air some dirty laundry in response to a question about our current health-care debate, I didn’t find anything that rises to actual bashing of America. If somebody knows of something, please let me know via the comments section. But as for now, he gets a pass for that nation.

In Africa, the president visited the nation of Ghana where he said in a speech in Accra:

Yes, a colonial map that made little sense bred conflict, and the West has often approached Africa as a patron, rather than a partner.*

Here he faults not only the US, but the entire civilized world, apparently. And:

In my country, African-Americans — including so many recent immigrants — have thrived in every sector of society. We have done so despite a difficult past, and we have drawn strength from our African heritage.

…because you cannot speak of America in Africa without mentioning our ugly past. Give the president some slack, of course, because what’s he supposed to say, huh? Obviously, Ghana goes on the list.

Which brings our total (pending something I missed in Italy) to a whopping 11 nations (excluding his “alleged” own) from which the president has shown his contempt for the United States:

Canada
Great Britain
France
Saudi Arabia
Mexico
Trinidad and Tobago
Egypt
Germany
Turkey
Russia
Ghana

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)
*I’ll have more to say about this and other things in this speech in an upcoming post.

I was not in-country when Jared Polis, the gay heir to Blue Mountain Arts, a greeting-card company created by his mother and netting him tons of money to use to seed his own entrepreneurial aspirations (and he’s a Democrat?!), was elected to represent Colorado’s ultra-Leftist 2d District (which includes Boulder). As such, I was pretty ho-hum to learn another gay Democrat had been elected to Congress, let alone from that district.

But when he wrote an Op-Ed piece for the Wall Street Journal coming out against the auto bailouts in favor of liberty-minded cuts in taxes, in blatant defiance of spendthrift Democrats running the House (before he even got there!), I sat up and took notice. While his voting record has been pretty lock-step Leftist (he voted for the pork stimulus and the cap-and-trade bills), he has recently taken another bold step in defense of sound and responsible fiscal policy and (natch, therefore) against his party’s leadership.

Thursday, Polis led a group of 22 Democrats in the House in a letter to Speaker Pelosi, admonishing her, that, among other things, “[i]f our nation is going to lift itself out of recession, small businesses will once again need to lead the way.”

The entire letter (save for the sops to the notion that this ridiculous healthcare Stalinization bill “could not come at a better time”) reads like it could have come from the Club for Growth or Heritage Foundation. It even gives passing reference to the pending expiration of Bush’s tax cuts. (One wonders if perhaps Jared will be so bold as to call for a halt to that?)

I recommend you read the whole thing. It makes the case that Republicans who oppose the surtax have been making since it reared its ugly head. Perhaps coming from members of her own party, Pelosi will listen.

Then again…

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

UPDATE (from Dan):  Sorry, Nick, not ready to call the guy a hero.  So, what if he writes a letter?  Obama promised to go line-by-line through the federal budget, rooting out waste, then to give us a “net spending cut.”  Not seeing that, are we?  Until he puts his money where his mouth is and breaks with his party on key votes, ending that, as you put it, “lock-step Leftist” voting recrod, I’ll see him as just another grandstanding Democratic politician, mouthing the words they know their constituents want to hear while spending our money like drunken sailors and regulating like self-righteous busybodies who “know,” due to their superior education, knowledge and innate wisdom what’s best for all of us.

In August 2006 hortly after then-Virginia Republican Senator George Allen, running for re-election, called an operative from his opponent’s campaign “macaca,” he apologized:

Reached Monday evening, Allen said that the word had no derogatory meaning for him and that he was sorry. “I would never want to demean him as an individual. I do apologize if he’s offended by that. That was no way the point.”

Despite the apology, the Washington Post alone would ran over 100 articles (159 by one count) suggesting the Republican was a racist.  While Allen’s former colleague from the Golden State Ma’am Babara Boxer has yet to apologize for an exchange which demonstrated more clear racial bias than did Allen’s odd comment,* I doubt any large California paper will run nearly that many articles suggesting the Democrat is a racist.  Indeed, I wonder if any of them will notice it at all.**

Ma’am Boxer is counting on the complicity of the press in keeping her arrogant and offensive statements from the public.  It’s why we in the rightosphere must do the work the media would do were the junior Senator from California a Republican.  Had a Republican woman so arrogantly demanded that someone testifying before a Seante committee call her “Senator” instead of “Ma’am,” they would have made mincemeat of her, mocking her in editorials and TV news items.  Had a black businessman accused a Republican Senator of racial condescension, it would have lead the news and made the front page of any number of papers.

Talking heads would debate the comment on cable news networks.

Since her first statewide campaign in 1992, Ma’am Boxer has won election and reelection by attacking her opponents, not by defending her record.  What has she done for the Golden State which currently has an  unemployment rate of 11.6%, a full 1.7% higher than at the peak of the 1992 recession just before she was elected to the Senate?

It’s time to remind voters how little she has done for the state while promoting a left-wing agenda and to show just how arrogant and often incoherent she has been.  She has been an embarrassment to the State, quickly regaining the crown of Senate clown that former funnyman Al Franken seemed certain to usurp.

More on this anon, much more.

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I sincerely apologize for the lack of posting on my part the past few weeks.  Up until last Saturday, it was mostly all due to a significant increase in my work-related responsibilities.

Then came Marley….

So now I’m officially wiped out!  Marley is 3 months old and 23 pounds and quite a handful — but worth every minute.  Oh, and the original PatriotPooches — Saxby & Shadow — are adapting well, if not completely understanding.  I keep telling them that Marley is change you can believe in.  (Saxby growled at that remark)

Anyway I’m sorry for my blog-tardiness.  I’ll try my best to catch up.  You can always find my immediate thoughts at Twitter.

Have a great weekend everyone.  Zzzzzzzzzzzz.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

UPDATE (from Dan):  While I don’t have a new puppy, I have had a number of obligations today and yesterday which has caused my blogging to be slower than it has been in recent days, so I join Bruce in wishing y’all a great weekend and will try to get a few posts up on Saturday and Sunday.  Note, I say, “try.”

Perhaps, it was the juxtaposition of reading Daniel Henniger’s essay pondering the “point and purpose of the President’s orations” while watching the President’s speech to the NAACP on CNN as I was doing my cardio just moments ago that this thought returned to me.

Obama doesn’t seem to smile when he speaks or even to look at the audience (but then I’ve never been in the audience to see him speak so that could just be my perception).  Unlike Reagan (whom I have seen speak), when Obama pauses, he barely changes his expression, not responding to his listeners or even appealing to them, instead titling his chin upward and waiting for acclaim (or expecting deference?).

And this from a man who, in Henninger’s words, appears to be “making the public speech the central act of his presidency.”

Why does he always so earnest?  (Perhaps more on this anon.)

First, note how my junior Senator doesn’t object when Black Chamber of Commerce, President and CEO Harry Alford calls her “Ma’am.” Guess she worked hard for that appellation.

This left-wing lady can’t seem to understand how a black businessman who pays property tax in our state might disagree with the NAACP.  By her logic then, all gays march in lockstep with HRC and “Equality Calfornia.”

Dan Riehl has more (via Glenn).

UPDATE:  After watching the video, Ed Morrissey offers:

I just love it when white politicians set themselves up as arbiters of racial authenticity, especially when they try to scold minorities for drifting off the political reservation. It belies a “soft” bigotry, if you will, when Barbara Boxer assumes all black people think the same and hold the same opinions — or even worse, that they should.

UP-UPDATE (via Ed above): Duane Patterson also calls her on her condescension:

Boxer’s entire M.O. as senator is to wield liberal ethnic or gender groups as a bat to bludgeon any criticism to her agenda. That’s not debating, that’s bullying. That’s not respecting racial diversity. It’s using racial groups as a weapon. It may be lost upon Senator Boxer, but not all African-Americans agree on everything. Not all Minnesotans do, either, for that matter. Maybe she could have cited some statistics that challenged Mr. Alford’s material, and had a fruitful discussion about the merits of implementing a cap and tax and tax system. Boxer can’t have that discussion. She’d lose. Instead, she implies she has more black people supporting her than opposing her, so Mr. Alford must therefore be discredited. Her stunt yesterday was reprehensible, shameful, and another blush in a long line of embarrassments all non-union voting residents of the Golden State have had to endure.

Read the whole thing!

There has been a lively discussion on my post yesterday about Army Reserve Major Stefan Cook. And in fact, at a libertarian gathering I attended last night, the topic came up when a lunatic conspiracy theorist, kind of out of nowhere, raised Cook as some sort of hero.

(As an aside, I think the whole question of Obama’s birth status is as moot as it is ridiculous. Conservatives spinning their wheels about it look as pathetic and devoid of substance as the Bush-haters did after Florida in 2000. Believe me, we’ve got tons of policy differences, and dwelling on something so difficult to nail down as this will only waste our resources that would be better spent fighting cap-and-trade, activist judge nominations, confiscatory tax increases, Stalinization of our healthcare industry, take-overs of our other industries…need I go on?)

More information has come to light since I posted, and I’m kind of glad I caveated my original reaction as heavily as I did. I knew Cook was a kook, simply based on his expressed reasons for not wanting to deploy. Moreover, based on some of the links I received in the comments of my original post, and what has happened today in Federal court, I find his derangement goes even further.

Here’s what looks like is going on with this jackass:
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World Net Daily today publishes a piece about Army Reserve Major Stefan Frederick Cook. (Caution, in fairness, like most WND articles, it’s very one-sided and devolves into a non-sequitur attack on Obama…fun to read, but not very enlightening. But anyway.)

Long story short is that this embarrassment of an Army officer has chosen to fight his deployment under the argument that The One is not the legitimate President (and therefore Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces), and so Cook doesn’t have to do what He says. Boilerplate nutjobbery, sure. This man should be brought before a court martial, stripped of his rank, and dismissed from the service. Plain and simple.

That’s how it would have happened a mere seven months ago.

But more striking than this idiot’s claim is the current result. Check out this quote from Cook’s attorney, reacting to the news that Cook’s deployment order had been revoked:

“We won! We won before we even arrived,” she said with excitement. “It means that the military has nothing to show for Obama. It means that the military has directly responded by saying Obama is illegitimate – and they cannot fight it. Therefore, they are revoking the order!”

If we are to connect the dots that seem to be present in this story (again, getting my info from WND may be a mistake, and when I Google him, all I get are conspiracy theorists yammering about Obama’s citizenship and Olbermann calling Cook awful things, of course no actual old-school media outlet is going to carry a fair story about dissent in Obama’s military, are they?), this sets a very dangerous precedent.

As Commander in Chief, it is incumbent upon Barack Obama to hold this man responsible for his dereliction of duty. If this is some mistake (or perhaps just a coincidence, as orders get cancelled all the time), the Defense Department should issue a statement saying so immediately. Otherwise, this degrades Obama’s ability to effectively command the US military and leaves us all less safe.

I have applauded many things the president has done defense-wise, including his authorization for force against pirates and his retention of many Bush policies regarding the War on Terror. To allow some petty officer (pun intended) to defy an order like this, would bring Cook’s attorney’s words to life: “military has nothing to show for Obama”, and God save us.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from HQ)

UPDATE from Bruce (GayPatriot): The folks at Mudville Gazette are cautioning that this story may be a hoax or something less-than-spectacular.

Shortly before Hillary Clinton took office as the nation’s sixty-seventh Secretary of State, I asked, “Could Hillary be a great Secretary of State?”

It seems, however, that the man who appointed her is doing everything possible to make sure we answer that question in the negative.  He has marginalized her as few (if any) of his predecessors have marginalized the highest ranking non-elected official in the Cabinet.

As John Fund notes in today’s Political Diary, “she has kept a low profile not entirely of her own choosing”  becoming “invisible.” Having designated special envoys to trouble spots around the world, the president doesn’t appear interested in soliciting her opinion on how to respond to foreign crises.   It doesn’t seem the President turns to her for advice as his predecessor looked to hers or as other successful foreign policy Presidents like Reagan, Eisenhower and Truman looked to theirs (George Shultz, John Foster Dulles and Dean Acheson respectively).

Watching the two of the them together, one doesn’t have the feeling that they respect one another, rather that he is being gracious to allow her into his august presence while her eyes shoot daggers at him.  I couldn’t find any video online of Tonya Reiman, the body language expert (who appears regularly on O’Reilly) analyzing the joint appearances of the President and Secretary of State.  It would be fascinating to hear what she has to say.

The White House scheduled a Rose Garden appearance for the President at the same time she had planned a speech to assert herself.  Guess they don’t want this woman getting much media attention.

So, I’m just wondering how long can this ambitious woman stand to be marginalized?

I had hoped Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner or White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel would be the first major Administration official to step down, but now I’m wondering if it’s going to be Mrs. Clinton.

“This is standard operating procedure for the left: don’t debate your opponents; destroy them.” – Rush Limbaugh

“Democrats are a party of women, and nothing drives them off their gourds like a beautiful Christian conservative.” – Ann Coulter

It is amusing not just to read what certain liberals have to say about Sarah Palin, but to listen to them talk about her. They call her unqualified to serve as President of the United States (or in any executive capacity whatsoever) yet remain clueless about her record (save what she said in an interview with the anchor of some news show with rapidly declining ratings. The define her as a “whack job” or its equivalent, yet when pressed on why they find her so extreme mumble something incoherent or repeat some mantra based on inaccurate, incomplete or just plain dishonest reporting.

I think a lot of people in this part of the world (i.e., Hollywood) delight in expressing their hatred of this good woman because they know it will endear them to their peers, kind of like raving about the Lakers just after they won the Championship. Interesting how so many on the left find common ground through shared hatred–while at the same time accusing conservatives of promoting hate.

Now, while I grant any public figure is fair game for criticism and do believe the outgoing Alaska Governor is far from perfect, having made several blunders in office and on the campaign trail, I remain astounded and amused at how the mere mention of her name sends some liberals into uncontrollable fits of apoplexy.  Don’t just take it from me, take it from one of the most adorable Palin critics, the Malcontent’s Robbie who calls her an “inconsequential figure” lacking “qualifications for office“:

I still adore Sarah Palin. I can’t help it. Not for her political brilliance, mind you, but for her curious ability to drive certain misogynistic, anti-semitic lunatics right off a cliff. . . .She drives all the right people crazy in all the best ways.

And like us, he finds the anti-Palin hysteria says more about the hysterics than it does about her:

I’ve long thought the criticisms of Sarah Palin were always far more about her detractors than about her. Listen closely to the people who hate her most, and it doesn’t take long to find their insecurities and bigotries bubbling to the surface.

There’s quite a bit of that happening in the wake of her resignation, and countless experts are certainly spending entirely too much time on this inconsequential figure explaining why their neuroses are justified entirely by the vaccuum of knowledge they seem to have accrued about the woman.

Read the whole thing

My new desk lamp came equipped with one of those new supposedly environmentally-friendly light bulbs, you know the fluorescent kind that will be mandated in a few years. Well, maybe they may be environmentally friendly, but they’re not eye-friendly. It creates an odd glare which makes it more challenging to read my computer screen.

At first, I thought it was my eyes, then later my computer screen, but when I realized I had no trouble reading the screen when I looked at it in different light, assumed it was the bulb; I hadn’t had the problem with my old lamp.

Since the plastic on my lamp started to melt when I put in a regular bulb, looks like I’ll need a new desk lamp. When I pick that up, I’ll definitely be stocking up on those standard bulbs soon to be banned.

Has anyone else had such an experience with the new bulbs?

I have this thought every now and again when I “friend” someone on Facebook who doesn’t know about my politics.  Given the circles in which I have traveled over the years, it seems the better part of the people I have met are to the left of the political center.  Now, many of these people do know about my politics, given that I have been “out” politically even in some very liberal circles.  But, some do not.  And I wonder how they might react when I link a post I have written here.

On more than one occasion, when I have come out politically to friends (& acquaintances) in Hollywood, they were surprised that someone so “thoughtful,” “creative” and/or ‘sensitive” (their adjectives not mine) could be Republican.

So, it struck me (and not for the first time) that while we intellectual conservatives with an artistic bent (as well as artistic conservatives with an intellectual bent) have regularly traveled in circles where we are a minority, many of our liberal counterparts have rarely encountered conservatives.

I wonder if that is why so many (but fortunately not all) on the left so readily dismiss conservative ideas without even considering them and why some otherwise very smart liberals do not seem capable of engaging their “ideological adversaries” on an intellectual level, preferring ad hominem attacks to argument.  We, in contrast, are used to defending our ideas and often encounter liberals who accord them (and us) much respect.  So, we know there are thoughtful liberals out there and thus do not define them as a monolithic narrow-minded bloc.

Some of their ideological confrères (and -soeurs) out there, however, don’t seem to meet many intellectual (or intelligent) conservatives.  So they just assume . . .

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President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor said yesterday that the Roe v. Wade is “settled law.”

By that standard, she would (had she been asked in 1932) have called Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 decision upholding Jim Crow laws, “settled law” .

No wonder Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy scheduled the Sotomayor confirmation hearings for the middle of the summer when fewer Americans are focused on the news and thus less likely to follow the debate over her nomination.   With fewer people following the hearings, there will be a smaller pool of people who might object to her performance, decreasing the likelihood that all that many people will call in to their Senators to tell them to vote against the confirmation of a judge whom they don’t believe qualified to serve on the highest court in the land.

I mean, I have been reluctant to follow the hearings.  And if I, a law school graduate with an interest in legal philosophy and the direction of the court, show such disinterest in the hearings, how then would the average American, less interested in politics and the law, than I, react?

I have skimmed a few blogs to learn of the goings-on on Capitol Hill and Obama’s nominee doesn’t seem to have acquitted herself very well.  A plurality of Americans now oppose her nomination.  Bookworn found her “incoherent” and “weaseling.”

In a nice roundup on reaction to the hearings, Glenn links Randy Barnett who offered:

One of the things we hope to learn during confirmation hearings is a nominee’s approach to the constitutional protection of liberty. But in her exchange with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) about the second amendment and its potential application to the states, Sonia Sotomayor revealed remarkably little about her understanding of how the Supreme Court protects liberty under the fourteenth amendment. For example, more than once she said a right was “fundamental” if it was “incorporated” into the fourteenth amendment. But this gets it backwards. The Supreme Court incorporates a right BECAUSE it finds it to be fundamental. When asked how she understands the criteria by which the court concludes that a right is fundamental, she did not give a substantive response.

This kind of confirms my impression of her from what I’ve read in the weeks since the President announced her nomination.  She seems to lack the intelletual firepower of the two Justices most recently appointed to the Court.  And that of such distinguished would-be Obama nominees like Pam Karlan.   She seems instead to repeat the standad lines of a liberral, “ethnic identity” jurisprudence.

Well, she does seem to be a suitable replacement for such an undistinguished justice as David Souter.

I was trying to come up with a clever analogy to build on my post earlier this month faulting the President for focusing on enacting regulatory schemes rather than promoting econmic recovery, when I (via Glenn) chanced on Ben Stein’s recent op-ed in the New York Times.

Stein whose father was the late economist Herbert Stein, a graduate of America’s finest liberal arts college, believes “we should just concentrate on ending the recession and talk about the other plans later,” contending that the President’s efforts have been “too diffuse”:

When I think about the economy I think about a plump man who has just been hit by a truck while crossing a street and is in severely critical condition with internal bleeding. Instead of just stabilizing his hemorrhaging, the doctor decides that while the patient is unconscious, he might as well also do a face lift, some coronary bypasses and a stomach-stapling to keep him from gaining weight while he is recovering (if he does recover). After all, a crisis is not to be wasted.

The problem is that all these ambitious operations create too much of a burden for the human body to bear.

Exactly.

And let’s hope that should the President focus on the economy, he turn away from plans similar to those which prolonged the Great Depression and adopt instead plans which led to a near quarter-century of economic growth.

OF INTEREST:  Ben Stein Republicans.

OBAMA AT ALL-STAR GAME: “We’re Out Of Money.”