Monterey Bay Forum

Let’s see. The Christmas Day bomber. He got Miranda rights. And the Times Square fellow who almost blew up the Square. He initially got Miranda rights. With a hem and a haw. And the Ford Hood psychiatrist that shot a bunch of fellow soldiers. As he was in the military I suppose he will — if able to stand trail – get a military trial. And there was a student who shot a couple of recruiters. Who else have I left out? All this in President Obama’s first year.

Do I feel safer now that Obama is President? Do you feel safer? Who should feel safer? Jihadists probably do feel safer!! With Miranda rights given to persons who commit domestic terrorism it will be many a year before their legal rights are exhausted.

BlogBabel Tags: domestic terrorism, jihadists, Obama, safety

Obama ran as a centrist. He governs as a leftist. He promised an end to bi-partisanship. He governs by out-sourcing legislation to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. (more…)

BlogBabel Tags: federal deficit, health care, Obama

February 13, 2010

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February 12, 2010
Dear Mr. President: Why We Are Not Hiring
By C. Edmund Wright

Mr. President, did I really hear you say that businesses aren’t hiring because they can’t get bank loans? Are you kidding me?Please indulge me for a moment, and we can get to the actual reasons.

But first, I must add that every time you step up to the microphone — for example, your impromptu presser on Tuesday — the painful decision to shut down my business of eighteen years is validated by your words. And I should thank you for that.

For the record, that decision was formalized on November 5, 2008. Check your calendar.Some fifteen months later, I can say that it was the best business decision I have ever made. With your hands on the levers of the government and the economy, I wanted to have as little at risk as possible.

Don’t get me wrong — it was a torturous and gut-wrenching decision that went against every fiber of my being. I had to betray deeply rooted entrepreneurial instincts and set some more mundane material goals. And while it might seem extreme, I think my mindset speaks to the real reason businesses are not hiring now.

So what is that mindset?

It’s not complicated. I am neither a swooning David Brooks enamored of your pant crease nor a silver-spoon trust-fund baby like Christopher Buckley. I’ve simply had some twenty-five entrepreneurial ventures — with a good number of strikeouts to be honest — and real-world experience told me exactly who you are and exactly what the business climate under your rule would be like.
And I was exactly right.

Consider: Eighteen years ago, I was statistically in poverty, but I had dreams and plans. At the time, Reaganomics still set the economic tone, and a fired-up Newt Gingrich was forcing conservatism on the Clinton White House. There were actually politicians who praised business-owners and profits.
Against that backdrop, I’ve beaten some long odds and had a pretty good run. It’s been extremely hard, and the move up was not a straight line. There were times I wanted to quit. Without a doubt, though, I am better off than I was eighteen years ago, before I started under Bush 41 — and ten years ago, when Bush 43 was elected — and six years ago, when he was reelected. And so are all of the folks who have been on this ride with me.

Having said that, my business is not better off than it was just three years ago.

That’s when decades of liberal energy policy came home to roost, and four-dollar gas took several hundred thousand from my bottom line faster than I could possibly react. That same gas price slammed my customers — and my customers’ customers — forcing our company into a vice of rapidly rising costs and rapidly dropping revenues. Oh, and for fun, there were also slower payments from our customers. Thank you, environmental wackos!
We were not alone.

The fuel price domino nudged the subprime mortgage domino — itself an outgrowth of liberal lending policies — and we have all seen the unraveling of a financial system underpinned by real estate values. Those valuations were the basis for any number of derivatives and credit default swaps and so on. Putting the Wall Street talk aside, the net result to business of this massive wealth-destruction is that employees are more desperate for money, and customers are less willing to buy and slower to pay when they do.

This is the Main Street carnage of “unfettered government” on small business and families. It is the destructive fruit of environmental leftists, the Fannie-Freddie cronies in government, and other corrupt liberals and crony capitalists in positions of unmerited influence.

It crushes the bank account and the spirit of the entrepreneur — and it is all caused by government incompetence from beltway bureaucrats with zero business experience…you know, like you and practically your entire administration.And sadly, this is also the result of many Republicans giving in to the Democrat liberals all too often. One of the worst, ironically, is John McCain, who was always “reaching across the aisle” to vote against tax cuts and vote for energy restrictions and so on.

I’ll admit that the prospect of running a small business under a McCain administration with Reid and Pelosi running Congress was not all that enticing, either. But it was your election that inspired me to pull the plug. After all, I saw how your Illinois buddies refused to let Republic Window even close down on their own terms, so I figured I better get out before your government and some union figured out a way to prevent me from quitting a business that I dreamed up, financed, created, and built from scratch.

You weren’t lying when you told that Chicago public radio station in 2001 that the Constitution constrained your vision for government, were you?
Things were getting bad enough with Bush and other Republicans unable or unwilling to fight the encroaching liberal governmental infestation of our lives, but the thought of having a president who believes in that infection — who would champion it and push it — just scared the hell out of me. It beat the entrepreneurial spirit out of me, too.

So I decided to sit the risk-reward world of business ownership out for a while. Like many, we are no longer willing to take all of the financial and legal risks and aggravation of owning and running a business…not with even higher taxes, more regulation, more litigation, and more emboldened bureaucrats on the horizon. People who have a dream to build a better life by taking risks and starting a business instinctively know when those principles are under attack.

And with you, Sir, in the White House, these principles are indeed under attack. Why this surprises anyone is a mystery to me. Jeremiah Wright hates these principles. So did Saul Alinsky. So do Van Jones and Bill Ayers and Andy Stern. I don’t know any “structural feminists,” but I bet they hate them too. And so do you. This is part of the America that you promised to “fundamentally transform.”

I knew what that meant. I could sense the bulls-eye on my back. This is who you are.

And since you clearly do not understand business at all, let me give you a short primer:

Any business idea, from the first day it is hatched, is nothing more than a series of cost-benefit analyses that the idea-holder either acts on or passes on. Sometimes the first decision is to forget the idea. Sometimes the first decision is to move ahead and invest some cash.

Perhaps a few million cost-benefit analyses later, you might have Microsoft or Home Depot or ESPN. Or you might have Bill’s Plumbing or Johnson’s Quality Homes or a café or an electrical wholesaler, and so on. And those businesses still operate on a constant stream of risk-reward decisions. In the business world, there is no neutral gear.

(There: Now you have more useful information than Jamie Gorelick or Franklin Raines got from Harvard.)

And when we have a president and ruling class who are clueless about and hostile towards business, the risk-reward equation shifts dramatically against further investment of time, talent, and capital. And that’s where we are today.

I never really doubted my decision. Yet when I see you hold job summits featuring environmentalists and unions, lawyers, and poverty pimps, I am even more thrilled to be out of the game. When I hear you fantasize that the only reason businesses won’t hire is that they can’t get a loan, my decision is further validated. And when you say that small business is clamoring for you to pass health care, I know that you have taken total leave of your senses.

So again, thank you, Mr. President. Even without your teleprompter, you are convincing. You have convinced me I made the right decision and convinced others not to hire. I only hope and pray that the midterms of 2010 might reverse my decision. That is what every fiber of my being is hoping for.

Until then, don’t blame George Bush and the banks. Feel free to blame me — and all the other “Atlas Shrugged” entrepreneurs — who are now on the sidelines, hoping Storm Obama will pass.
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BlogBabel Tags: American Thinker, business, loans, Obama

This picture was an official picture released by the Obama White House.

Results of the Beer Meeting: Priesident Obama did not apologize for his remark calling the police “stupid”. Professor Gates demanded and not get an apology from Sgt. Crowley.

from The American Thinker blog:

“I am stunned that the official White House Blog published this picture and that it is in the public domain. The body language is most revealing.

Sergeant Crowley, the sole class act in this trio, helps the handicapped Professor Gates down the stairs, while Barack Obama, heedless of the infirmities of his friend and fellow victim of self-defined racial profiling, strides ahead on his own. So who is compassionate? And who is so self-involved and arrogant that he is oblivious?

In my own dealings with the wealthy and powerful, I have always found that the way to quickly capture the moral essence of a person is to watch how they treat those who are less powerful. Do they understand that the others are also human beings with feelings? Especially when they think nobody is looking.

Hat tip: Rick Richman

Update from Thomas Lifson:

I think this photo constitutes another major Obama blunder.

As some AT commentators point out, this picture becomes a metaphor for ObamaCare. The elderly are left in the back, with only the kindness of the Crowleys of the world, the stand up guys, to depend on. The government has other priorities.

One of the major subtexts of the health care debate involves the public’s fear of indifferent, powerful bureaucrats ruling their lives. It is one thing to wait in line at the DMV to find out which other line you should wait in, in order to begin the process of waiting for multiple bureaucrats to go through the motions of processing your request. I have spent entire afternoons going through this process.

But when we get to health care, waiting often means enduring pain and dysfunction longer than necessary, sometimes a worsening of the condition, and sometimes death.

That’s why I think this image will have genuine resonance. It captures something that older Americans in particular can relate to. The President presses ahead with a program that will tell them to take painkillers instead of getting that artificial hip.

At every stage of the entire Gates affair, Obama has provided a revealing tell. The “acted stupidly” blunder revealed that he automatically blames the police and thinks they really are stupid to begin with. It didn’t trigger a single alarm bell in his mind as he figured out what to say.

Then, the non-apology apology revealed an arrogant man who cannot do what honest people do: admit it when they make a mistake.

Now at stage three, the beer photo op looked OK. It didn’t turn into a disaster.

But then in a small moment that nobody in the White House had the brains to understand, Obama goes and send a body language message like this.

I think he is going to get deeper and deeper into trouble. He is no longer repeating the familiar scripts dreamed up for the campaign. He was a master performer.

But when he goes improv, as a president must do, he lets his true character show. This helps widen the level of doubt that Obama is the same guy a majority voted for. Those doubts can only grow.

Andrew McCarthy has assembled an overwhelming case that Obama has lied about who he is. I predict that more and more Americans will become open to the argument that they have been had by a sophisticated and ruthless effort to foist a phony on America.

Update from Clarice Feldman

BlogBabel Tags: cops, knee jerk reaction, Obama

written by Cameron Jackson cameronjacks@gmail.com

Wise people do not go around saying that they are wise. Judge Sotomayor has known for 10+ years that she might be considered for nomination to the Supreme Court. In her remarks she refers to herself as the “wise Latina” who she believes will make a better decision than a white male.

For Sotomayor to hold herself out as wise is not a wise decision. And to do so by connecting her wisdom to her racial background is dumb. That she made the “wise Latina” remarks in a number of speeches over a 4-5 year period is idiotic. It might even be viewed as a moronic decision considering that she knew she was on the list for possible nomination.

People we now call mentally retarded used to be called dumb, idiot or a moron. Those were commonly employed educational terms to describe students with low levels of functional intelligence.

For Judge Sotomayor to repeatedly say she is a “wise Latina” who will make better decisions because of her race/gender/rich experience shows a questionable level of functional intelligence. She may test smart on an IQ test – we have no information on that issue — but per her “wise Latina” remarks she can act in a dumb manner.

Getting a possibly dumb Latina on the bench may be exactly what President Obama wants. For Obama, it is all about leveling the playing field so everyone gets equality — except for Obama and close supporters.

After all, functionally dumb people should have an equal chance as a smart person to be on the Supreme Court. That is Obama’s thinking it appears. President Obama can just have Sotomayor over for social gatherings so that she learns how he wants her to vote on certain issues.

So how “dumb” is Obama? Not that dumb.

Asked questions during the nomination process about her “wise Latina” remarks, Sotomayor has tried to spin it differently. Do you think she succeeded? Or is her nose growing longer and longer?

“Pat Leahy opened the questioning of Judge Sonia Sotomayor by asking her some softball questions about her controversial speeches and decisions. In response, Sotomayor’s characterization of her “wise Latina” speech was strikingly disingenuous:

I want to state up front, unequivocally and without doubt, I do not believe that any ethnic, racial or gender group has an advantage in sound judging. I do believe that every person has an equal opportunity to be a good and wise judge regardless of their background or life experiences.

What — the words that I use, I used agreeing with the sentiment that Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was attempting to convey. I understood that sentiment to be what I just spoke about, which is that both men and women were equally capable of being wise and fair judges.

That has to be what she meant, because judges disagree about legal outcomes all of the time — or I shouldn’t say all of the time, at least in close cases they do. Justices on the Supreme Court come to different conclusions. It can’t mean that one of them is unwise, despite the fact that some people think that.

So her literal words couldn’t have meant what they said. She had to have meant that she was talking about the equal value of the capacity to be fair and impartial.

Sotomayor employs a rhetorical dodge by focusing on how she interpreted Justice O’Connor’s famous statement that “a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases.” She says that O’Connor couldn’t have meant that the the wise man and the wise woman will reach the same decision in every case, since judges often disagree. Rather, she interpreted O’Connor’s statement to mean that men and women have an equal capacity to reach wise judgments.

Of course that’s correct: O’Connor was saying that men and women shouldn’t reach different decisions because of their genders. But here is where Sotomayor hides the ball. Having created a diversion by talking about what O’Connor meant, she slipped in this key statement: “the words that I use, I used agreeing with the sentiment that Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was attempting to convey.”

That statement is a falsehood. Sotomayor’s whole point in quoting Justice O’Connor was to disagree with, or at least express reservations about, O’Connor’s view that the judge’s gender shouldn’t affect the outcome of a case. Here is the passage from Sotomayor’s speech:

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging. Justice O’Connor has often been cited as saying that a wise old man and wise old woman will reach the same conclusion in deciding cases. I am not so sure Justice O’Connor is the author of that line since Professor Resnik attributes that line to Supreme Court Justice Coyle. I am also not so sure that I agree with the statement. First, as Professor Martha Minnow has noted, there can never be a universal definition of wise. Second, I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.
Thus, Sotomayor’s characterization of the context of her “wise Latina” remark is the opposite of the truth. She wasn’t “agreeing with the sentiment that Justice O’Connor was attempting to convey,” as she told Senator Leahy. Rather, she staked out a position in opposition to O’Connor’s. In her speech she expressly disagreed with O’Connor’s view, as Sotomayor put it, “that both men and women were equally capable of being wise and fair judges.”

I’ve been on the fence as to whether Senators should vote to confirm Sonia Sotomayor, but this rather breathtaking dishonesty provides strong grounds to vote against her confirmation.

UPDATE: Later in the proceedings, Sotomayor couldn’t resist fudging the facts once again:

SOTOMAYOR: …I was talking about the value that life experiences have, in the words I used, to the process of judging. And that is the context in which I understood the speech to be doing.
The words I chose, taking the rhetorical flourish [i.e., "wise Latina"], it was a bad idea. I do understand that there are some who have read this differently, and I understand why they might have concern.

But I have repeated — more than once — and I will repeat throughout, if you look at my history on the bench, you will know that I do not believe that any ethnic, gender or race group has an advantage in sound judging. You noted that my speech actually said that.
And I also believe that every person, regardless of their background and life experiences, can be good and wise judges.

LEAHY: In fact, if I might…

KYL: Excuse me. Just for the record, I don’t think it was your speech that said that, but that’s what you said in response to Senator Sessions’ question this morning.

Indeed, Sotomayor said no such thing in her speech; she said the exact opposite

BlogBabel Tags: a wise Latina, Judge Soyomayor, Obama, Supreme Court, women

Spend 18 million to redesign the Recovery.gov website? That is what Obama will spend.

And it DOES make sense from Obama’s point of view. Obama wants to weaken the private sector and strengthen the public sector. The $18 million will create more government jobs. And the private sector is weakened because they have to pay for the re-design of this ONE website. It is all about power — shifting power from the private sector to Obama’s control.

See the following article posted also on Something To Say Today.

18M Being Spent to Redesign Recovery.gov Web Site
July 08, 2009

“For those concerned about stimulus spending, the General Services Administration sends word tonight that $18 million in additional funds are being spent to redesign the Recovery.gov Web site.

The new Web site promises to give taxpayers more information about where their money is going than the current version of the site.

“Recovery.gov 2.0 will use innovative and interactive technologies to help taxpayers see where their dollars are being spent,” James A. Williams, commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service, says in a press release announcing the contract awarded to Maryland-based Smartronix Inc. “Armed with easy access to this information, taxpayers can make government more accountable for its decisions.”

The contract calls for spending $9.5 million through January, and as much as $18 million through 2014, according to the GSA press release.

“We are pleased that another major milestone has been achieved,” Earl E. Devaney, chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, says in the press release. “We thank the GSA for its assistance and look forward to working with Smartronix.”

UPDATE: The RNC has released a new web ad mocking the Obama administration’s decision to allocate additional funds to the redesign of the Recovery.gov Web site.

July 8, 2009 | Permalink | Share | User Comments (115)

User Comments

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Just hearing the word “transparency” ( as mentioned
by Earl E. Devaney, chairman of Recovery Accountability and Transparency) makes me feel ill.

How did we ever live without the “t” word for all
these years…. Did you have to look up the meaning of the word, since nobody is living by it since the
election?!

Posted by: 2smart4u | Jul 8, 2009 10:30:26 PM

This is just a smokescreen so we dont realize he wants to veto the intelligence bill that would force Obama’s legislation and the government to actually be transparent and have to answer for what they have done.

Posted by: guesswhaturwrong | Jul 8, 2009 10:48:16 PM

I could redesign a whole lotta “innovative and interactive” websites for $18 million.

If they were talking about how much the band-width cost to keep the site up and running, I MIGHT be able to see it. But just a redesign???

I think maybe the government is already “accountable” for this bone-headed idea.

Posted by: Jaylah | Jul 8, 2009 10:48:31 PM

Who ever heard of spending $18 million dollars on a website? Who is getting the money???

Posted by: guesswhaturwrong | Jul 8, 2009 10:49:20 PM

Once the numbers are posted what are we going to be able to do about it really anyway?

Posted by: guesswhaturwrong | Jul 8, 2009 10:50:27 PM

guesswhaturwrong, that intelligence bill dates back to 1947. If you’re going to whine about it, whine at Harry S Truman and every president since then. Not Obama.

Posted by: Jaylah | Jul 8, 2009 10:50:38 PM

Hmmm… 18 Million bucks to redesign a government website….riggghhht! That’s enough money for 18 responsible 40 somethings to live the rest of their lives in relative comfort. It’s far less money than was spent so our Socialist leader and his black-hearted wife to have “date night” in New York on our dime.

Posted by: Taxpaying victim | Jul 8, 2009 10:54:17 PM

Classic government…. Doesn’t know what anything costs, and spends 20 times what anyone else would (18 million for a web site is crazy!).

Posted by: Jen | Jul 8, 2009 10:59:09 PM

So it’s supposed to tell us what’s happening to our hard earned money? Unless the home page says “Here. Here is where your money is going,” then this is the most ridiculous thing ever ON TOP of being a waste of money in the first place.

Posted by: Pete | Jul 8, 2009 11:00:04 PM

Oxymoron of the day: Responsible Government Spending.
It ranks right up there with “Vacation bible school”.

Posted by: Taxpaying victim | Jul 8, 2009 11:04:18 PM

“Oxymoron of the day: Responsible Government Spending.
It ranks right up there with “Vacation bible school”

LOL Well said!

Posted by: Jaylah | Jul 8, 2009 11:12:21 PM

At this point even this foolishness does not surprise me. I have lost all faith in our government.

Posted by: CWG | Jul 8, 2009 11:15:21 PM

All the good intentions and idealism of Obama is being squandered by those who were entrusted with executing and enforcing his plan viz. his cabinet and his staff. The stimulus will be judged not by the 18 million dollar web site but by the reversal of the job loss trend, by the economic growth and by the recovery of 401k plans. That the stimulus monies were intercepted and swindled by the usual suspects is no surprise. A second stimulus would be a disaster of epic proportions when the first one was so grossly mismanaged that the states used it for pie in the sky projects even though the states are in dire straits. It would have been preferable to let the states pay the funds towards their deficit reduction instead of unwanted porky projects. Businesses small and large are cutting costs and reducing the payroll to try and balance their books. Why can the government not do the same instead of getting bloated and mounting the deficits, sky high. All the talk of the windmills and green energy was just blowing hot air during the campaign.

Posted by: gjkotw01 | Jul 8, 2009 11:16:01 PM

Is this administration completely nuts, or are the contracts for this redesign going the way of pork? Personally, I’d like to know the name and URL of the company that has been contracted. The dollar figure is patently absurd.

I repeat……Is this administration absolutely NUTS!?

Posted by: John Vacek | Jul 8, 2009 11:24:10 PM

OK kids..those that think 1.6 million a year to develop, staff and maintain a web site with a national presence, purpose and verifiable data set is a lot, please sit down. You obviously don’t know anything. That’s a site staffed and maintained by AT MOST eight FTEs. (full time employees) If you could do it for less, I suggest you bid the gig.

Posted by: vidtweeker | Jul 8, 2009 11:29:10 PM

You mean to tell me the government spent 18 million dollars to keep informed and answer the question of over 300 million people. Talking about your glass house! Finally a government that reports to the people!! I suppose next your going to tell me people actually have jobs to do this. Wow! straight forward and easy to understand! No economics of dung!! Go Obama Go!

Posted by: rightbehind | Jul 8, 2009 11:33:37 PM

18 million? I could have done it for 9 million!

Posted by: SamTyler1973 | Jul 8, 2009 11:37:41 PM

For God’s sake… a web design job pays only about 20k a year these days at best.

I run a multi section/topic political site and do it in my spare time and do all the graphics and imbed live feeds chat and statistics for nothing.

Maybe I should get out of the health care business and stop saving lives for a living and work for the government.

For more go to: Something To Say Today

I knew Obama was going to be true his word and cut the pork. I am guessing He meant instead of “fat” products (pork) he meant something more “Herbal”. You know, the kind one can smoke and lots of it. Because obviously someone in Washington is smoking something that kills brain cells.

Posted by: David Baron | Jul 8, 2009 11:43:14 PM

BlogBabel Tags: Obama, recovery

April 09, 2009
Obama doubles down on the bow to the Saudi King
By Thomas Lifson
The White House is denying that President Obama bowed before the Saudi King, committing a major mistake. Ben Smith of Politico reports:

“It wasn’t a bow. He grasped his hand with two hands, and he’s taller than King Abdullah,” said an Obama aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Michael Goldfarb summed up the problem for Obama succinctly in the Weekly Standard:

So who you going to believe — Barack Obama or your lying eyes?

The story is officially “in play” now that the White House has spoken, albeit from an anonymous source. American citizens are implicitly asked to view the demi-prostration and decide for themselves. The evidence simply does not support the official position of the Obama administration.

Here is a 13 second clip of the bow:

Please note the following two freeze frames, which expose the White House spokesman as a liar:

(source)

Another freeze frame, also showing that the President was not performing a two-handed handshake

(source)

So why would the White House lie, instead of just admitting that the President made a gaffe? Well, for one thing, history teaches us that bows between official representatives of nations are a rather serious matter.

We live in an age of a Clash of Civilizations (in Samuel Huntington’s words), with many in the Islamic world convinced that Western Civilization, ascendant for the last few centuries, is about to be humbled by Islam, the once and future dominant force in the world. No Caliph exists today as head of the entire Islamic world, but the number two slot is amply occupied by King Abdullah, as guardian of Mecca and Medina, Islam’s two holiest cities.

Over three hundred years ago, another world civilization accustomed to being the largest and richest on earth, faced a challenge which turned into a clash, which turned into a fall. China, the Middle Kingdom, unquestioned as the dominant nation of East Asia, came into regular contact with the Western nations. At the time, the only pattern of diplomatic relations recognized by the Son of Heaven (China’s emperor) and his court was that of tributary emissaries to the Middle Kingdom. Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and the other nations of East Asia understood and accepted that China was dominant, and when their representatives came to Beijing, they performed the required prostration acknowledging their (and their rulers’) subordinate place in the pecking order. They also brought “gifts” to the Son of Heaven, and were sent home with “gifts” from the Imperial Court, amounting to trade, disguised as nothing so crass as commerce, but rather as a sign of supplication from them and benevolence from the Emperor.

In plain English, if you wanted to be received and recognized as legitimate at the Imperial Court, you had better bow down before the Emperor in a kow tow (叩頭), prostrating oneself before the glorious ruler, and touching the head to the floor.

This was not an idle matter of protocol, and everyone knew it, especially the emissaries of European rulers who made their way to Beijing, in search of trade relations: tea, silk, porcelain, and other products of China that were of finer quality than anything available elsewhere.

One of the most famous incidents in China’s history of contact with the West occurred in 1793, when the Earl of Macartney came to Beijing as an emissary of the King of England, carried to Tientsin (the port city for Beijing) on a warship. The Chinese officials deemed the presents he brought to the Emperor from King George III as “tribute”, putting the Macartney mission in the context of traditional tribute relatons.

But when it came to the kow tow, Macartney refused. In the words of the acknowledged dean of American China historians, the late John K. Fairbank of Harvard,

[Court officials] urged Macartney to practice the performance of the kowtow. This he stoutly refused to do, and he only went down on one knee before the Chien-lung [the Emperor], as he would have done to his own sovereign. The emperor issued an edict commending King George III for his “respectful spirit of submission” but pointing out that “our celestial empire possesses all things in prolific abundance”…

Ben Smith noted a somewhat analogous response from Saudi Arabia, following the fateful bow:

Interestingly, a columnist in the Saudi-backed Arabic paper Asharq Alawsat also took the gesture as a bow and appreciated the move.

“Obama wished to demonstrate his respect and appreciation of the personality of King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz, who has made one of the most important calls in the modern era, namely the call for inter-faith and inter-cultural dialogue to defuse the hatred, conflict and wars,” wrote the columnist, Muhammah Diyab.

Alas for the Son of Heaven and his nation, the Opium War followed a few years after the demi-prostration of the British envoy, and it was established that China was subordinate to the cannons, guns, and warships of the Western powers, who proceeded to help themselves to China’s wealth, sending opium [over China's feeble objections] in return for what they desired.

President Obama voluntarily bent his knee and bowed his head before the most important ruler in the Islamic world. Let us hope that it does not require a war to right this insult to American sovereignty.

Thomas Lifson is editor and publisher of American Thinker. He has taught courses on East Asia at Harvard and Columbia Universities.

BlogBabel Tags: bows, Obama, roots of Obama

Interesting viewpoint by a first generation African American woman whose cultural roots are Igbo from Nigeria. The following article is from The American Thinker. She comments on President Obama’s post- colonial cultural (socialist/ Marxist) roots. The apple, Obama, did not fall far from the tree, i.e., his father’s values, she says.

My view: Given the 15 + Czars that President Obama has created so far (more coming) to run the government the way Obama wants it run – not what We the People want – Obama’s despotic, undemocratic values are readily apparent. Given that we really have a One Party government – the Democratic Party — currently Obama can push through his despotic appointments – his multitude of Czars. These people, his minions, answer only to Obama. They should answer to Congress and to We the People. Congress holds the power of the purse. But it is a Democratic Party controlled purse.

When will Our Representatives wake up? Well, since Our Representatives are mostly concerned with their own re-election, only when MORE people COMPLAIN vociferously …. then and only then will things change. So even if you live in a overwhelmingly Democratic district – make your voice known regularly.

Rationing of everything by the government is President Obama’s goal. Control of the private sector is President Obama’s goal. Reducing America to a third world power is President Obama’s goal. How? Destroy the power of the private sector. And that is what his policies seek to do.

What has Obama done in 6 months? He took over a couple of car companies. He seeks control of the financial institutions. Bank of America was forced by his administration to take over Merill Lynch. We are trillions of dollars in debt – which will be passed on for generations. Obama seeks Cap and Trade so that private companies have to pay to use energy. That will drive the cost of energy up. Look at Spain with 18 percent unemployment. Spain is the most visible example of a failed “green” economy.

Is this what Americans sought when they embraced HOPE and CHANGE?

Per the Wall Street Journal editorial page today, Obama wants rules so that a 100 year old mother will “learn” from her family and doctor that she should accept pain meds instead of cost ting society for the surgery of a pacemaker. That statement tells it all. This is a real story and the woman now age 105 is has spirit and doing OK with her pacemaker. Let “society”and “government” decide what is best for the elderly according to Obama. Obama waffled and did not answer when asked whether he would seek the best (i.e. most expensive) care for his own family…

President Obama is one cold, arrogant man who dislikes American democratic values. He wants the power to re-make America in his image of how society should run. That’s my view. cameronjacks@gmail.com

contact leikenga@gmail who writes the following article:

“Had Americans been able to stop obsessing over the color of Barack Obama’s skin and instead paid more attention to his cultural identity, maybe he would not be in the White House today. The key to understanding him lies with his identification with his father, and his adoption of a cultural and political mindset rooted in post colonial Africa.

“Like many educated intellectuals in post colonial Africa, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. was enraged at the transformation of his native land by its colonial conqueror. But instead of embracing the traditional values of his own tribal cultural past, he embraced an imported Western ideology, Marxism. I call such frustrated and angry modern Africans who embrace various foreign “isms”, instead of looking homeward for repair of societies that are broken, African Colonials. They are Africans who serve foreign ideas.

“The tropes of America’s racial history as a way of understanding all things black are useless in understanding the man who got his dreams from his father, a Kenyan exemplar of the African Colonial.

Before I continue, I need to say this: I am a first generation born West African-American woman whose parents emigrated to the U.S. in the 1970’s from the country now called Nigeria. I travel to Nigeria frequently. I see myself as both a proud American and as a proud Igbo (the tribe that we come from — also sometimes spelled Ibo). Politically, I have always been conservative (though it took this past election for me to commit to this once and for all!); my conservative values come from my Igbo heritage and my place of birth. Of course, none of this qualifies me to say what I am about to — but at the same time it does.

“My friends, despite what CNN and the rest are telling you, Barack Obama is nothing more than an old school African Colonial who is on his way to turning this country into one of the developing nations that you learn about on the National Geographic Channel. Many conservative (East, West, South, North) African-Americans like myself — those of us who know our history — have seen this movie before. Here are two main reasons why many Americans allowed Obama to slip through the cracks despite all of his glaring inconsistencies:

“First, Obama has been living on American soil for most of his adult life. Therefore, he has been able to masquerade as one who understands and believes in American democratic ideals. But he does not. Barack Obama is intrinsically undemocratic and as his presidency plays out, this will become more obvious.

Second, and most importantly, too many Americans know very little about Africa. The one-size-fits-all understanding that many Americans (both black and white) continue to have of Africa might end up bringing dire consequences for this country.

Contrary to the way it continues to be portrayed in mainstream Western culture, Africa is not a continent that can be solely defined by AIDS, ethnic rivalries, poverty and safaris. Africa, like any other continent, has an immense history defined by much diversity and complexity. Africa’s long-standing relationship with Europe speaks especially to some of these complexities — particularly the relationship that has existed between the two continents over the past two centuries. Europe’s complete colonization of Africa during the nineteenth century, also known as the Scramble for Africa, produced many unfortunate consequences, the African colonial being one of them.

The African colonial (AC) is a person who by means of their birth or lineage has a direct connection with Africa. However, unlike Africans like me, their worldviews have been largely shaped not by the indigenous beliefs of a specific African tribe but by the ideals of the European imperialism that overwhelmed and dominated Africa during the colonial period. AC’s have no real regard for their specific African traditions or histories. AC’s use aspects of their African culture as one would use pieces of costume jewelry: things of little or no value that can be thoughtlessly discarded when they become a negative distraction, or used on a whim to decorate oneself in order to seem exotic. (Hint: Obama’s Muslim heritage).

On the other hand, AC’s strive to be the best at the culture that they inherited from Europe. Throughout the West, they are tops in their professions as lawyers, doctors, engineers, Ivy League professors and business moguls; this is all well and good. It’s when they decide to engage us as politicians that things become messy and convoluted.

The African colonial politician (ACP) feigns repulsion towards the hegemonic paradigms of Western civilization. But at the same time, he is completely enamored of the trappings of its aristocracy or elite culture. The ACP blames and caricatures whitey to no end for all that has gone wrong in the world. He convinces the masses that various forms of African socialism are the best way for redressing the problems that European colonialism motivated in Africa. However, as opposed to really being a hard-core African Leftist who actually believes in something, the ACP uses socialist themes as a way to disguise his true ambitions: a complete power grab whereby the “will of the people” becomes completely irrelevant.

Barack Obama is all of the above. The only difference is that he is here playing (colonial) African politics as usual.

In his 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father — an eloquent piece of political propaganda — Obama styles himself as a misunderstood intellectual who is deeply affected by the sufferings of black people, especially in America and Africa. In the book, Obama clearly sees himself as an African, not as a black American. And to prove this, he goes on a quest to understand his Kenyan roots. He is extremely thoughtful of his deceased father’s legacy; this provides the main clue for understanding Barack Obama.

Barack Obama Sr. was an African colonial to the core; in his case, the apple did not fall far from the tree. All of the telltale signs of Obama’s African colonialist attitudes are on full display in the book — from his feigned antipathy towards Europeans to his view of African tribal associations as distracting elements that get in the way of “progress”. (On p. 308 of Dreams From My Father, Obama says that African tribes should be viewed as an “ancient loyalties”.)

Like imperialists of Old World Europe, the ACP sees their constituents not as free thinking individuals who best know how to go about achieving and creating their own means for success. Instead, the ACP sees his constituents as a flock of ignorant sheep that need to be led — oftentimes to their own slaughter.

Like the European imperialist who spawned him, the ACP is a destroyer of all forms of democracy.

Here are a few examples of what the British did in order to create (in 1914) what is now called Nigeria and what Obama is doing to you:

Convince the people that “clinging” to any aspect of their cultural (tribal) identity or history is bad and regresses the process of “unity”. British Imperialists deeply feared people who were loyal to anything other than the state. “Tribalism” made the imperialists have to work harder to get people to just fall in line. Imperialists pitted tribes against each other in order to create chaos that they then blamed on ethnic rivalry. Today many “educated” Nigerians, having believed that their traditions were irrelevant, remain completely ignorant of their ancestry and the history of their own tribes.
Confiscate the wealth and resources of the area that you govern by any means necessary in order to redistribute wealth. The British used this tactic to present themselves as empathetic and benevolent leaders who wanted everyone to have a “fair shake”. Imperialists are not interested in equality for all. They are interested in controlling all.
Convince the masses that your upper-crust university education naturally puts you on an intellectual plane from which to understand everything even when you understand nothing. Imperialists were able to convince the people that their elite university educations allowed them to understand what Africa needed. Many of today’s Nigerians-having followed that lead-hold all sorts of degrees and certificates-but what good are they if you can’t find a job?

“Lie to the people and tell them that progress is being made even though things are clearly becoming worse. One thing that the British forgot to mention to their Nigerian constituents was that one day, the resources that were being used to engineer “progress” (which the British had confiscated from the Africans to begin with!) would eventually run out. After WWII, Western Europe could no longer afford to hold on to their African colonies. So all of the counterfeit countries that the Europeans created were then left high-and-dry to fend for themselves. This was the main reason behind the African independence movements of the1950 and 60’s. What will a post-Obama America look like?

Use every available media outlet to perpetuate the belief that you and your followers are the enlightened ones-and that those who refuse to support you are just barbaric, uncivilized, ignorant curmudgeons. This speaks for itself.

“America, don’t be fooled. The Igbos were once made up of a confederacy of clans that ascribed to various forms of democratic government. They took their eyes off the ball and before they knew it, the British were upon them. Also, understand this: the African colonial who is given too much political power can only become one thing: a despot.
L.E. Ikenga can be reached at leikenga@gmail.com.

For more go to: American Thinker

BlogBabel Tags: Add new tag, Africa, African roots, Democratic Party, democratic values, despoitism, Government, health care, marxist, Obama, one party rule, politics, ratiioning, socialism, third world countries

The essence of Obama’s response 6-24-09 to rationing of health care:
Maybe that 100 year old mother should take a pain pill and not get pacemaker surgery said Obama 6-24-09 when two doctors questioned his plans for rationing health care. This remark was made in response to a question by one of the doctors concerning a a real 100 old mother who is now 105 and living with vitality of spirit says her daughter. The daughter helped her get a pacemaker when first denied. Take a pain pill old woman!! No pacemaker for you!!

That strikes me as a cold, calculating remark. Obama will cut health care costs on the bodies of the old. Once a person is no longer making money in Obama terms that person has lost value. By the time a person is a 100 the value of that person has shrunk to barely above zero. I guess that is why Obama when a Senator could support third trimester abortions. He probably thinks that the fewer the people there are in the world the fewer people the government has to feed, cloth and provide health care for.

Obama sidestepped and did not answer when asked whether he would opt out of the health care program he and Congress get if he had a loved one that needed a procedure not covered by the NEW plan Obama wants.

The following is from:

Views on Government-Funded Health Insurance
According to the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll, 62 percent of Americans support creating a government-funded entity to offer health insurance to those who don’t get it elsewhere. But if that caused many private insurers to go out of business because they couldn’t compete, support plummets to 37 percent.

The White House has shown some flexibility about a government-run plan. In a meeting with a bipartisan group of governors today, the possibility was raised of states offering public plans of their own instead of just one federally administered plan, according to a source with knowledge of the meeting. And White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told Democratic senators Tuesday night that the president was open to “alternatives” to the public plan.

Sawyer asked Ron Williams, the CEO of Aetna Insurance, “Is the president right that you need to be kept honest?”

Williams said he disagreed with the notion of a public plan.

“It’s difficult to compete against a player who’s also the person refereeing the game,” Williams said. He proposed working to “solve the problem as opposed to introduce a new competitor who has rule-making ability.”

Gibson pointed out that the president constantly makes the argument that if you like your insurance you won’t have to change it. And yet from the audience, John Sheils, senior vice president of The Lewin Group, a health care policy research and management consulting firm, estimated that up to 70 percent of those with private insurance would end up on the public plan.

“There are a whole series of ways that we could design this,” the president said, arguing that employers would be given a “disincentive” to shift their employees to the public plan.

Another neurologist, Dr. John Corboy of the University of Colorado Health Science Center, asked the president, “What can you do to convince the American public that there actually are limits to what we can pay for with our American health care system and if there are going to be limits, who’s going to design the system and who’s going to enforce the rules for a system like that?”

Obama, however, didn’t directly answer the question.

Related
WATCH: Obama’s ‘Uniquely American’ Health Care PlanWATCH: Watch Full ‘Prescription for America’ ProgramTRANSCRIPT: ‘Prescription for America’”If we are smart, we should be able to design a system in which people still have choices of doctors and choices of plans that make sure that necessary treatment is provided but we don’t have a huge amount of waste in the system,” he said.

He said he had “great confidence” that physicians “are going to always want to do right thing” if they have the right information and a payment structure that focuses on evidence and results and not tests and referrals.

“We should change those incentive structures,” the president said. “Our job this summer and this fall,” he said, is to “identify the best ways to achieve the best possible care.”

The president cited the Mayo Clinic as an example of a medical center where experts had figured out the most effective treatments and eliminated waste and unnecessary procedures.

Sawyer said that e-mails ABC News had received argued that “the Mayo Clinic is exactly the point,” indicating that private companies are solving this problem, and raising the question as to why the government needs to get involved.

“And, unfortunately, government, whether you like it or not, is going to already be involved,” Obama said, citing Medicare and Medicaid.

One questioner — Marisa Milton, vice president of health care policy for the HR Policy Association, a public policy advocate for human resource executives — said that “other industrialized nations provide coverage for all their residents” with “high quality care” without spending more money.

“A lot of those countries employ a different system than we do,” the president said. “Almost all of them have what would be considered a single-payer system in which the government operates what is essentially a Medicare for all.”

The president said he didn’t think it wise to attempt to “completely change our system root and branch” since health care is one-sixth of the U.S. economy. It “would be hugely disruptive,” he said, arguing that citizens would be forced to change their doctors and insurance plans “in a way I’m not prepared to go.”

End-of-life issues were raised as well; right now it is estimated that nearly 30 percent of Medicare’s annual $327 billion budget is spent on patients in their final year of life.

Jane Sturm told the story of her nearly 100-year-old mother, who was originally denied a pacemaker because of her age. She eventually got one, but only after seeking out another doctor.

“Outside the medical criteria,” Sturm asked, “is there a consideration that can be given for a certain spirit … and quality of life?”

“I don’t think that we can make judgments based on peoples’ spirit,” Obama said. “That would be a pretty subjective decision to be making. I think we have to have rules that say that we are going to provide good, quality care for all people.

“We’re not going to solve every single one of these very difficult decisions at end of life,” he said. “Ultimately that’s going to be between physicians and patients.”

“End-of-life issues were raised as well; right now it is estimated that nearly 30 percent of Medicare’s annual $327 billion budget is spent on patients in their final year of life.

Jane Sturm told the story of her nearly 100-year-old mother, who was originally denied a pacemaker because of her age. She eventually got one, but only after seeking out another doctor.

“Outside the medical criteria,” Sturm asked, “is there a consideration that can be given for a certain spirit … and quality of life?”

“I don’t think that we can make judgments based on peoples’ spirit,” Obama said. “That would be a pretty subjective decision to be making. I think we have to have rules that say that we are going to provide good, quality care for all people.

“We’re not going to solve every single one of these very difficult decisions at end of life,” he said. “Ultimately that’s going to be between physicians and patients.”

BlogBabel Tags: Health, Obama, pacemaker, ration

Monterey Bay Forum in Aptos, CA 831 688-6002 reprints from American Thinker

April 09, 2009
Obama doubles down on the bow to the Saudi King
By Thomas Lifson
The White House is denying that President Obama bowed before the Saudi King, committing a major mistake. Ben Smith of Politico reports:

“It wasn’t a bow. He grasped his hand with two hands, and he’s taller than King Abdullah,” said an Obama aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Michael Goldfarb summed up the problem for Obama succinctly in the Weekly Standard:

So who you going to believe — Barack Obama or your lying eyes?

The story is officially “in play” now that the White House has spoken, albeit from an anonymous source. American citizens are implicitly asked to view the demi-prostration and decide for themselves. The evidence simply does not support the official position of the Obama administration.

Here is a 13 second clip of the bow:

Please note the following two freeze frames, which expose the White House spokesman as a liar:

(source)

Another freeze frame, also showing that the President was not performing a two-handed handshake

(source)

So why would the White House lie, instead of just admitting that the President made a gaffe? Well, for one thing, history teaches us that bows between official representatives of nations are a rather serious matter.

We live in an age of a Clash of Civilizations (in Samuel Huntington’s words), with many in the Islamic world convinced that Western Civilization, ascendant for the last few centuries, is about to be humbled by Islam, the once and future dominant force in the world. No Caliph exists today as head of the entire Islamic world, but the number two slot is amply occupied by King Abdullah, as guardian of Mecca and Medina, Islam’s two holiest cities.

Over three hundred years ago, another world civilization accustomed to being the largest and richest on earth, faced a challenge which turned into a clash, which turned into a fall. China, the Middle Kingdom, unquestioned as the dominant nation of East Asia, came into regular contact with the Western nations. At the time, the only pattern of diplomatic relations recognized by the Son of Heaven (China’s emperor) and his court was that of tributary emissaries to the Middle Kingdom. Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and the other nations of East Asia understood and accepted that China was dominant, and when their representatives came to Beijing, they performed the required prostration acknowledging their (and their rulers’) subordinate place in the pecking order. They also brought “gifts” to the Son of Heaven, and were sent home with “gifts” from the Imperial Court, amounting to trade, disguised as nothing so crass as commerce, but rather as a sign of supplication from them and benevolence from the Emperor.

In plain English, if you wanted to be received and recognized as legitimate at the Imperial Court, you had better bow down before the Emperor in a kow tow (叩頭), prostrating oneself before the glorious ruler, and touching the head to the floor.

This was not an idle matter of protocol, and everyone knew it, especially the emissaries of European rulers who made their way to Beijing, in search of trade relations: tea, silk, porcelain, and other products of China that were of finer quality than anything available elsewhere.

One of the most famous incidents in China’s history of contact with the West occurred in 1793, when the Earl of Macartney came to Beijing as an emissary of the King of England, carried to Tientsin (the port city for Beijing) on a warship. The Chinese officials deemed the presents he brought to the Emperor from King George III as “tribute”, putting the Macartney mission in the context of traditional tribute relatons.

But when it came to the kow tow, Macartney refused. In the words of the acknowledged dean of American China historians, the late John K. Fairbank of Harvard,

[Court officials] urged Macartney to practice the performance of the kowtow. This he stoutly refused to do, and he only went down on one knee before the Chien-lung [the Emperor], as he would have done to his own sovereign. The emperor issued an edict commending King George III for his “respectful spirit of submission” but pointing out that “our celestial empire possesses all things in prolific abundance”…

Ben Smith noted a somewhat analogous response from Saudi Arabia, following the fateful bow:

Interestingly, a columnist in the Saudi-backed Arabic paper Asharq Alawsat also took the gesture as a bow and appreciated the move.

“Obama wished to demonstrate his respect and appreciation of the personality of King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz, who has made one of the most important calls in the modern era, namely the call for inter-faith and inter-cultural dialogue to defuse the hatred, conflict and wars,” wrote the columnist, Muhammah Diyab.

Alas for the Son of Heaven and his nation, the Opium War followed a few years after the demi-prostration of the British envoy, and it was established that China was subordinate to the cannons, guns, and warships of the Western powers, who proceeded to help themselves to China’s wealth, sending opium [over China's feeble objections] in return for what they desired.

President Obama voluntarily bent his knee and bowed his head before the most important ruler in the Islamic world. Let us hope that it does not require a war to right this insult to American sovereignty.

Thomas Lifson is editor and publisher of American Thinker. He has taught courses on East Asia at Harvard and Columbia Universities. To see more articles go to American Thinker at http://www.americanthinker.com

BlogBabel Tags: bow, Obama, president, saudi arabia