The Iranian Rope-A-Dope Snares Obama Administration

     Over this past weekend the United States, under the fecklessness of Secretary of State John Kerry and the "international community," reached a deal with Iran on its nuclear program. And while the ignorant diplomats living in their own little world patted each other on the back, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, seemed to be the only world leader with his feet firmly planted in reality when he called the deal a "historic mistake." His comments were not just hyperbole in as much as Iran has expressed nothing but contempt for Israel, who would likely be the first target of Iranian nukes.
     The "deal" allows Iran to keep enriching uranium while enjoying relief from the sanctions that have been having a deleterious effect on their economy. Prime Minister Netanyahu characterized the deal reached in Geneva as, "cosmetic steps that Iran can easily reverse in a few weeks." But John Kerry, Barack Obama, and the rest of the intellectual elites of the "world community," have placed their own diplomatic hubris above the facts on the ground in Iran.
     The Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, who is the supreme leader of Iran, may be evil but he is not stupid. The sanctions were severely limiting his ability to fund his nuclear program and so he installed  Hassan Rouhani as Iranian president. Rouhani is a cleric that the Ayatollah has convinced the "world community" is a moderate. The Iranian rope-a-dope worked flawlessly, but then when it comes to John Kerry and Barack Obama, it was not exactly a herculean task. While the self-congratulatory elites were swilling the wine of their own ignorance, the Ayatollah must have been guarded in his success being so easy.
     The most amazingly obtuse part of the Obama administration with regards to the Iranian deal is that they actually touted inspections as the mechanism for preventing Iran from violating the agreement. Have these glittering jewels of colossal ignorance learned nothing from the ineffectiveness of United Nations inspectors in Iraq in the 1990s, and their inability since then to find their own butts with both hands? Not to mention the foreign policy impotence they have displayed throughout the world from North Korea to Syria and beyond.
     A spokesman for Prime Minister Netanyahu stated that if a nuclear briefcase bomb is detonated somewhere in the world five years from now, it will have its roots in this "deal." A sobering thought for everyone but the Obama administration, still intoxicated by the poisonous highball of their own incompetence and ignorance.

A Post-Nuclear Option America

     The effects of Harry Reid and Senate Democrats' power grab on Thursday of this week in eliminating filibusters of Presidential nominees, will not only allow the President to have a rubber stamp for any radical to which he wishes to hand the reigns of democracy, it will also have the effect of changing the function of that once esteemed body. Beyond the shameless hypocrisy of Democrats like Mr. Reid, Mrs. Clinton, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, and others, who vociferously objected to the nuclear option in 2005 when Republicants controlled the Senate, is the distinction between the House of Representatives and the Senate being obliterated.
     For more than two hundred and thirty years, the senate filibuster has been the mechanism to prevent the tyranny of the majority, apparently something that is not so important to Democrats now that they are the majority. The founders created the two chambers of congress to be very different. The House of Representatives was the immediate body where a simple majority ruled. The Senate was the deliberate body where a single member could and should be able to prevent a vote based on principle and constitutional ethics. With the implementation of the nuclear option, Harry Reid has made the United States Senate irrelevant to its founding charter and unnecessary in the legislative process.
     The nuclear option implementation is a calculated risk by Democrats because they fear the loss of the senate in next November's mid-term election. With all the audio available of Democrats calling the nuclear option un-democratic and against the spirit of our founding documents, they run the risk of not only looking hypocritical, but they also risk exposing the under garments of their tyrannical nature. The fact that they have done this now and not in 2009 when Barack Obama was inaugurated, is a sign that they think the ObamaCare debacle has hurt them politically, and will hurt them in the near future. The damage that can be done in the next year with uncontested nominees from this President is immeasurable.
     I would suggest to Republicants running in next Fall's mid-term election to run against ObamaCare and for restoring the integrity of the senate by reversing the nuclear option once they have wrestled the majority away from Harry Reid and his band of authoritarians. The nuclear option not only changes a fundamental way in which the United States Senate has operated since its founding, but illustrates in stark terms Democrats' disdain and contempt for the founding principles of this great nation.

The Kennedy Assasination And The Lefts Denial

     Living in denial is the true mark of a committed Leftist. As this truism relates to the Kennedy assassination, it is a two for one. Those on the Left have lied to themselves over the decades that John F. Kennedy was some sort of a standard bearer for the modern day Left, and that his assassination, though committed by one of their own, was really the work of those on the Right. Neither of these assertions by the Left have the slightest bit of validity to bring to the reality party. But then, when it comes to valid reality, most Leftists run screaming in the opposite direction.
   Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, thirty fifth President of the United States of America. President Kennedy, a Democrat, would today be more comfortable and find a more suitable home in the Republicant party. John Kennedy believed in a strong national defense, fewer handouts to non-producers, and cutting taxes. All things that are kryptonite to the modern Democrat party. Not only would John Kennedy be a Republicant, but he would most likely take up residence in the Ted Cruz wing of the party. He certainly would not be in the John McCain/Lindsey Graham cabal.
     It has always fascinated me how all the conspiracy theories about President Kennedy's assassination have originated from the Left, many of the earlier ones being funded by the KGB of the old Soviet Union. We now know this for a fact because of the books written by former KGB agents after the fall of the Soviet Union. The reason for the attempted deception of conspiracy theories has always been quite obvious to me, Lee Harvey Oswald was a known communist and Leftist love communism with as much vigor as they hate conservatism. To accept that a Left-winger killed John Kennedy is an unacceptable reality to Leftists who rewrite history to suit their own agenda. So conspiracy theories about the Kennedy assassination are a two-fold attempt to exonerate the communist, Lee Harvey Oswald, while at the same time blaming the Right for his despicable act.
     And so on this fiftieth anniversary of Lee Harvey Oswald, a Left-winger, assassinating a president, who would be more conservative than half the Republicants currently serving in congress, the Left-wing media will attempt their best to rewrite the history of that awful day to somehow blame the Right for the actions of one of their own. Be prepared for the tortured twists in which the media will engage for the purpose of perpetuating the denial with which all Leftists cloak themselves in order to mindlessly practice their ideology.

Duplicitous Green

     Let me begin by saying that I am not in favor of deliberately or unnecessarily polluting the planet on which we live. I am also not in favor of manufactured solutions to artificial problems, like global warming, becoming public policy. I do not use "green" products because, very frankly, I have not found one that performs its function as well as its "non-green" equivalent. I believe that when it comes to protecting the environment, there are no better methods than those that come from conservative thought. I am the ultimate recycler, the majority of my furniture consisting of re-purposed items being a testament to that fact.
     The "green" lobby that petitions politicians on behalf of the green industrial complex is duplicitous in both its thinking and actions. Energy efficient refrigerators are exemplary of this condition. Sure your energy efficient ice box will save you $100 a year on energy costs, but having only a third of the life span of pre-energy efficient refrigerators, it will end up costing you much more than that old box. And it is not only the individuals additional costs in replacing the energy efficient refrigerator, but the extra energy it uses to manufacture, sell, and deliver the new box. And these efforts must be engaged three times as often as with refrigerators of the past.
     Recycling newspapers may seem at first glance to be saving trees, and in so doing, saving the planet. But when one adds in the costs, both in real dollars and energy expressed in BTUs, of collecting, transporting, and processing all those old newspapers, it really does not make sense from an environmental standpoint. And the fact that there are more trees in the continental United States now than at anytime in the last 200 years, means it is a resource that does not need saving. The timber industry over the last 70 years has done an excellent job of replanting more than what they harvest.
     Electric cars, which receive their recharging from electricity provided by coal-burning plants, are not winning any awards for energy efficiency. Beyond the range problems, expense, and inconvenience of electric cars, is their enormous contribution to environmental pollution through the mining of the minerals necessary for their batteries. Not only that, but the United States is trading being dependent on Middle East sources for oil, for being dependent on South American sources for lithium that make electric car batteries work.
     The supporters of compact fluorescent light bulbs defend their use of mercury by saying the reduced amount of energy they use reduces the mercury being spewed into the air by the coal-fired electric plants. But like much of what the Left uses to sell their oppression, the preceding argument is based on theory and speculation tied in a nice neat package of static analysis. There is no on-to-one relationship between a single bulb and the amount of mercury put in the atmosphere by the power plant that illuminates it. Therefore, using a compact fluorescent bulb that requires less electricity is not going to reduce the amount of time the plant must run to fulfill all energy needs demanded of it. Those plants will still be operating 24/7, 365 days a year. No amount of light bulb tyranny by Leftists is going to change that fact.
     The duplicitous nature of the modern "green" movement does not help advance the cause of conservation or individual liberty. Its goal, like that of every other Leftist movement, is to destroy or severely hamper capitalism and the free market. Leftists, like the "greenies," are unable to function in a competitive, free, and results-driven system and attempt to use environmentalism to impede and subjugate those who can.
    

The Lethal Leftist Cocktail

     By now, everyone knows that the Obama administration reported the statistics from the ObamaCare exchanges, and the numbers were, well to say the least, underwhelming. But the 106,000 persons who supposedly signed up for ObamaCare included those who put a plan in their online shopping cart, but never proceeded to the checkout to actually purchase the plan. The actual number of persons who went entirely through the process and purchased plans is closer to 25-30 thousand. Whether this methodology was an intentional way for the administration to juke the stats, or whether it was pure ignorance of how online businesses count their sales, it is, nevertheless, illustrative of the one-two punch of Leftism.
     The Left aims to impose their agenda through a cocktail with equal parts deception and ignorance. I can believe that this administration, 80% of whom never worked in the private economy, think that someone placing an item in an online shopping cart is a sale. I can also believe that this administration, 80% for whom honesty is the title of a Billy Joel song and nothing else, would deliberately try to mislead Americans that the President's health care plan is a smaller disaster than it actually is. And therein lies the rub, the pain and debacle of Leftist policies comes as a result of the deliberateness of deception and the ideological ignorance inherent in Leftist thought.
     Added to the deception and ignorance of the Leftist cocktail is a generous amount of arrogance, which prevents the Leftist from allowing the sanitizing light of reality, truth, and facts to constitute any semblance of a set of core principles. The Leftist is set adrift in a sea of political opportunity without the benefit of a rudder with which to steer his ship. For the Leftist, there is no past or future worth concern, there is only the present and its fleeting promises that can be used to gain political power over a free nation. This is the reason that Barack Obama is not concerned with lying to the American people, that and the fact he knows the journalistically impaired media will turn the water of his lies into the wine of truth to be served to an unsuspecting public.
     The lethal cocktail of the Left not only impairs the imbibers' duty to probity and good sense, but its effects are felt throughout our culture as more are influenced by its intoxicating poison. It is time for the sobering-up of our nation with the conservative values which allowed it to become the greatest in history. Values that were so important and as close to divinity as mere men could come, that they were written into our founding documents. We must choose to drink from the eternal spring of liberty instead of the stagnant, tainted water from the well of Leftism.

The Lefts Redefining Of Words

     I read a book in high school entitled, "Brave New World", by Aldous Huxley. The statists who controlled the society of a Brave New World had sanitized the language of all words they deemed "offensive". They even went so far as to outlaw certain thoughts that threatened the fragile fabric of their Utopian, statist society. I have been reminded again and again of this book in recent years with the enactment of hate crimes laws and the Lefts demonization of any idea that is anathema to the statist ideal they seek to impose on the rest of us.
    The latest reminder of "Brave New World" thinking has been the labeling of certain organizations as "Hate Groups" by those on the left, simply because these organizations have a different opinion on the definition of marriage. They lump groups such as Focus On the Family in with Neo-Nazis and the KKK. This is a favorite tactic of the left, especially when they know that their position is not the majority opinion in the country, and they have no substantive arguments to persuade people to their side. They seek to marginalize those with different opinions so that others are afraid to join them for fear of being labeled a "Hater".
     Sometimes the bastardization of words by the left takes the form of reducing the word's meaning in order to allow a favored group to avoid responsibility for their behavior. This redefining words is a close cousin to what the late Daniel Patrick Moynahan referred to as Defining Deviancy Down. However, where defining deviancy down is accepting more and more deviant behavior as normal, the Lefts word redefinition actually aims to remove deviancy from our language and culture altogether. Deviant behavior becomes, in the Leftist world, not defined down, as Mr. Moynahan suggested, but redefined out of existence. So children no longer engage in bad behavior, but are autistic, as a function of behavioral problems being reclassified as autism. And the deviancy of alcoholism and drug abuse have become the disease of addiction.
     The reason for the Lefts attempt to sanitize the culture of the concept of deviancy is that it implies an individual status, and as such, places responsibility to correct the deviancy squarely on the individual. As the Left has redefined words, they have at the same time reclassified unacceptable personal behavior as public health and welfare issues. Of course this results in a bigger role for a centralized government power to gobble up more individual rights as a function of providing a responsibility escape clause for those engaging in what use to be deviant behavior, but now has become excusable human affliction.

Obama Prosecution Of S&P Transparent As Saran Wrap

     With all the talk about ObamaCare lately and debate and discussion about the "presidential lie," a government prosecution by the Obama Justice Department has quietly proceeded, almost unnoticed. I am of course talking about the Obama administration's legal action against Standard and Poors, a division of McGraw-Hill, and one of the largest credit ratings agencies in the world. The Obama Justice Department is in the process of prosecuting S&P for their role in rating as solid investments the mortgage-backed securities which were at the epicenter of the financial crisis of 2008. As per usual with the actions of the Obama administration, the motives for this one are highly questionable, if not down right scandalous.
     If the government is going to prosecute S&P for misleading investors as to the credit worthiness of Residential Mortgage Backed Securities and Collateralized Debt Obligations, then they must also prosecute themselves. It was federal regulators, who are supported in their jobs by tens of billions of taxpayer dollars, who looked the other way as these "investments" were bought and sold multiple times. Lest anyone forgets, it was Democrats in Congress, through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, that pushed not only the mortgage lenders to make bad loans, but then encouraged the selling of these bad loans as investments.
     It is little more than ironic that no other credit ratings agencies are being prosecuted by the federal government in this manner. Added to the irony is that until August of 2011, Standard and Poor's was not on the Obama Justice Department's radar either. It was then that S&P downgraded the credit worthiness of the United States government, the first time in our history such a downgrade has occurred. The Obama administration was in the process of "negotiating" with House Republicants to raise the nation's debt limit. The downgrade was not only an embarrassment to the administration, but it lent fuel to the fire that the President and his Democrats had not been good stewards of the people's money. It was after the downgrade that the Obama administration began a campaign against Standard and Poor's to place the blame for the 2008 crisis squarely on their shoulders.
     It is ironic that the Obama administration is using its Justice department to prosecute S&P for the very crisis that was in part caused by Bill Clinton using his Justice department to force the bad loans in question to be made in the first place. Whether the government is ultimately successful or not is not important, the idea that the executive branch could use its Justice Department to punish administration detractors, is a concept that would cause a great amount of consternation among our founders. It is anathema to the great nation they carefully crafted, and an assault on the ideals of limited government and separation of powers.