Gun shop sales and gunbroker sales slowing back to "normal"

The gun boom is officially over. Business has slowed to "normal" at the gun shop where I work and gunbroker is also slowed to a walk or even a crawl instead of a steady run.

We currently have 750 auctions running on gunbroker and for the past while we're getting few sales and tons of offers to trade old wore-out junk for our new or top-quality used guns. Thanks for the offer, but we'll pass.

Like the gentleman today who wants to trade his Winchester 70 .300 H&H Magnum for our Colt Cobra.

Now with all due respect, Winchester 70s are fine guns, but we've already got at least two or three used ones selling for less than $500. And the folks in our area don't do a lot of elephant hunting so there ain't much call for .300 H&H Magnum rifles.

And anything with the Colt pony on it is always a good seller, particular a fine double-action revolver like the Cobra. So let's think about this. Should be trade for a rifle we'll probably die with before we sell it for our Colt Cobra?

Don't think so.

I know Obama's busy with the gulf oil spill at the moment, but I wish he'd find time to say something mean about grabbing our guns. The gun business needs a shot in the arm or a kick in the pants right about now.

Cartoons of the Day: Iranian nukes? What Iranian nukes?

Pruden and Krauthammer analyze Obama's 'Soft on Terror' policy

Who says God doesn't have a sense of humor? He granted us exactly what the stupid generation wanted in this past election by elevating the least qualified man evah to the highest office in our land, President Barack Hussein Obama.

What hath God wrought? Could it be our first Muslim president was put into place by the Almighty to allow America to be humbled by the Arab terrorists?

Wesley Pruden of the Washington Times considers the implications for our nation's security the "soft on terror" reputation Obama is busily building with every day in office.

Mr. Obama now turns to jobs, jobs, jobs, and promises to do for job creation what he did for health care reform and what he's doing to protect us from terror catastrophe. Which may not be enough, but he's doing a bang-up job of protecting the rights of terrorists.

The president displayed an unusual array of friends and enemies. He lectured the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, six of whom were seated as a group on the front row, for their decision to uphold the First Amendment as it applies to corporations (which are comprised of individual citizens). No one can remember when a president ever breached manners and protocol in such a breathtaking way. When the president inaccurately asserted that the court had "reversed a century of law," Associate Justice Samuel Alito was captured on camera mouthing the words "not true," which is apparently the judicial way of saying "you lie!" But Mr. Obama is a onetime law professor and it's possible that his lecture was kindly intended to fill in the gaps of the legal knowledge of the learned justices seated before him. Professors are always eager to display what they know, even if what they know isn't so. We should give the president the benefit of the doubt, even if the stoic justices clearly did not.

Eric Holder, his attorney general also seated among house seats, appeared to be having a high old time, laughing and smiling and basking in the synthetic admiration that high government officials are accustomed to. Mr. Holder is the author of the remarkable decision to grant Miranda rights to the man who tried to celebrate Christmas by blowing up an airliner over Detroit. (Who says radical Muslims have no respect for the holidays of other people's religions?)

President Obama boasted of how much better he is at fighting terrorism than George W. was: "In the last year, hundreds of al Qaeda's fighters and affiliates, including many senior leaders, have been captured or killed, far more than in 2008." Since neither the Bush nor the Obama administration has published body counts (that's so Vietnam War), it's a claim that even the Associated Press concedes is impossible to verify.

What is easy to verify is how soft the Obama administration continues to be on terrorists. No waterboarding (not even when a grubby bewhiskered terrorist clearly needs a bath), no harsh questioning. No fair treating such a soldier of Allah like FDR was willing to treat a soldier of the Nazis or a Shinto warrior during World War II.

It's not fashionable in certain circles to notice this, but we can be sure the Obama treatment of terrorists is taken into account in other places. British intelligence officials say that over the past week an "unusually high number" of prospective evil-doers on the airlines' no-fly list have tried to board airliners bound for the United States. As a consequence, the London government has raised the assessment of the terror threat from "severe," which means an attack is reckoned "highly likely," to "critical," which means an attack is "imminent."

The London Daily Mirror quotes British security sources that an Egyptian man tried to board an American Airlines flight last weekend in London bound for Miami. The next day a Saudi man tried to board a United Airlines flight from London to Chicago. They were sent home.

All this is enough to give Americans nightmares, particularly when it's not at all clear that the high officials of the government are taking the threat as seriously as we expect them to. When Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, told Congress that it was a mistake that FBI field agents, and not specially trained interrogators (but not waterboarders), had questioned the Detroit bomber, he retreated later in the day to say his remarks were "misconstrued." Since so much Washington talk is electronically recorded now, government officials who blurt out inconvenient truths no longer have the luxury of saying they were "misquoted." Bureaucracy has become a dangerous game.

Sir Charles Krauthammer cuts to the bone, as usual, with his analysis of Obama's terror policy.

WASHINGTON -- The real scandal surrounding the failed Christmas Day airline bombing was not the fact that a terrorist got on a plane -- that can happen to any administration, as it surely did to the Bush administration -- but what happened afterward when Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was captured and came under the full control of the U.S. government.

After 50 minutes of questioning him, the Obama administration chose, reflexively and mindlessly, to give the chatty terrorist the right to remain silent. Which he immediately did, undoubtedly denying us crucial information about al-Qaeda in Yemen, which had trained, armed and dispatched him.

We have since learned that the decision to Mirandize Abdulmutallab had been made without the knowledge of or consultation with (1) the secretary of defense, (2) the secretary of homeland security, (3) the director of the FBI, (4) the director of the National Counterterrorism Center or (5) the director of national intelligence (DNI).

The Justice Department acted not just unilaterally but unaccountably. Obama's own DNI said that Abdulmutallab should have been interrogated by the HIG, the administration's new High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group.

Perhaps you hadn't heard the term. Well, in the very first week of his presidency, Obama abolished by executive order the Bush-Cheney interrogation procedures and pledged to study a substitute mechanism. In August, the administration announced the establishment of the HIG, housed in the FBI but overseen by the National Security Council.

Where was it during the Abdulmutallab case? Not available, admitted National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, because it had only been conceived for use abroad. Had not one person in this vast administration of highly nuanced sophisticates considered the possibility of a terror attack on American soil?

It gets worse. Blair later had to explain that the HIG was not deployed because it does not yet exist After a year! I suppose this administration was so busy deploying scores of the country's best lawyerly minds on finding the most rapid way to release Gitmo miscreants that it could not be bothered to establish a single operational HIG team to interrogate at-large miscreants with actionable intelligence that might save American lives.

Now, don't you feel better about our security since Obama's policies are clearly explained by the eminent pair of Pruden and Krauthammer? Me neither. But it sure brings clarity to the mind, somewhat like Samuel Johnson said the prospect of a hanging in the morning will do.

And it's our nation that's hanging in the balance. Come on 2012, we may not survive until then.

Time to start serious prayer for and about President Obama

I've decided to quit complaining about Obama and begin praying for him. My prayer for him henceforth is Psalm 109:8, "Let his days be few; and let another take his office." Amen.

Obama's 'crotch salute' for Old Glory on display at Ft. Hood

President Barack Hussein Obama's got that bowing-to-royalty thing down pat, at least when it comes to Arabs and Asians. Curiously, he had no bow for the Queen of England, leader of the nation we formerly had a "special relationship" with P.O. (Pre Obama).

But our rookie Dither-in-Chief is still having a lot of trouble with what to do with his hands when our National Anthem is played and Old Glory is honored.

You may recall that moment early in the 2008 presidential campaign when Hillary and other Democrats on stage saluted Old Glory with hands over hearts while Obama stood with his hands down, folded. That infamous photo has come to be known as "the crotch salute."

Well, the crotch salute is back. This photo was taken at the memorial service at Ft. Hood army base in Texas during the presentation of our flag. Note the other civilian on stage with hand over heart and the military members saluting the flag while Obama reprises his infamous crotch salute. While I respect the office of the President, this guy is disgracing it. As a veteran I gotta say, "Hey Obama, I got a crotch salute for you!"

I see your dither and raise you another bow to royalty

As our Dither-In-Chief continues to extend his Guinness record for the world's longest dither, leaving our troops at war in Afghanistan slowly twisting in the wind, here comes another low point during his current World Apology Tour in Asia.

I liked it so much I stole it whole hog from Townhall.com.

This Is Getting Embarrassing...

Posted by: Meredith Jessup at 12:12 PM

First this... Now this... Even the LA Times is asking, "How low will the new American president go for the world's royalty?" President Obama first denied he had bowed to the Saudi royalty, but his actions were crystal clear during his visit to Japan this week. In Japanese culture a deep bow like this is a sign of respect and "deference to a superior." Sweet--just the message I want my president sending! This kind of "deference" is pretty unprecedented. I guess this is just some more of that "change" Obama promised us all--indeed another teachable moment. Go ahead and do a Google search to try and find other instances of American presidents bowing to the Emperor of Japan. And while you're at it, see if you can find any other world leader bowing. Go ahead... I'll wait.

'Fear and Loathing' anti-gun news from Obama's Press Corps

If you get your "news" from the so-called mainstream media (AKA Obama's Pet Press Corps) then you probably heard about the guy in New Hampshire who threatened Obama with a handgun at church and the white guy in Arizona who threatened him with an assault rifle.

Only problem with the reporting of those two "events" is the facts don't support the reporting. The guy with the handgun was nowhere near Obama and Obama didn't come to the man's church. And the man was wearing a handgun because Obama's union thugs had attacked him.

And the "white guy" in Arizona with the assault rifle? Actually he was black and the truth also not reported is the whole "event" was staged by a radio shock jock to get some cheap ratings.

The Washington Times takes a look at the facts vs. the so-called reporting in an editorial:

In Portsmouth, N.H., a man carrying a gun, William Kostric, joined an Aug. 11 health care protest. This was blocks away and hours before Mr. Obama's town-hall meeting in that city. Mr. Kostric was given permission to be on church property where the protest occurred and was not at the place the president visited. What most of the coverage left out was that Mr. Kostric didn't carry his gun only for the protest; he legally carries a gun with him all the time for protection.

While the media regularly used terms such as "hotheads" to mischaracterize the situation, the coverage ignored that union members who opposed the protest had attacked Mr. Kostric and a friend, kicking, pushing and spitting on them. Despite violence against him by Mr. Obama's supporters, Mr. Kostric did not draw his gun or threaten anyone.

On the CBS Evening News, Katie Couric asked, "Are we really still debating health care when a man brings a handgun to a church where the president is speaking?" Deliberately or not, she got the facts wrong. As we know, Mr. Kostric did bring a gun to the church, but the president was not there and never was scheduled to speak there. Mr. Obama spoke at a separate event at a local high school at a different time. Not letting facts get in the way of her hysterical story line, Ms. Couric linked Mr. Kostric's gun to "fear and frankly ignorance drown[ing] out the serious debate that needs to take place about an issue that affects the lives of millions of people."

In another case in Arizona, a black man staged an event with a local radio host and carried a semiautomatic rifle a few blocks away from another Obama town-hall meeting. According to the radio station, the staged event was "partially motivated to do so because of the controversy surrounding William Kostric." This occurrence was not an example of an outraged gun-toting Obama protester, but a stunt to garner attention for a shock jock. Of course, this inconvenient truth was ignored by most news outlets.

MSNBC misrepresented the facts to try to back up a bogus claim about racism being behind opposition to Mr. Obama's agenda. On Donny Deutsch's Aug. 18 show about the Arizona town-hall meeting, the producers aired a clip of the anonymous black man carrying the so-called assault rifle -- but the network edited the tape so the man's race was obscured. Truth be damned, MSNBC anchor Contessa Brewer said, "There are questions whether this has a racial overtone. I mean, here you have a man of color in the presidency and white people showing up with guns strapped to their waists." Another commentator on the same show worried about the "anger about a black person being president." The supposed result: "You know we see these hate groups rising up."

If you must read a newspaper daily, I strongly suggest The Washington Times as one reliable source and of course Fox News as the only media outlet worth watching on TV.

Obama's union thugs bring 'hope and change' to St. Louis

On the left, we have the union thugs who beat up a black conservative and a woman at a St. Louis town hall meeting who dare to challenge their great and mighty Obamessiah. I've been busy on other stuff, but here's a sampling of what's being said about the infamous incident.

Unreal!... SEIU Thugs Who Beat a Black Conservative & Smashed a Woman In Her Face Now Claim They Were the Real Victims

SEIU Gets Violent...Again

Steyn: The Community Is Restless

Obama: Report Your Friends and Neighbors!

Eye Witness to St. Louis Scuffle: 'SEIU Representative Punched Him In the Face.'

And a followup video that catches the union thugs, male and female, in their followup assaults.


And on the right, we have Ann Coulter talking about "the beauty of conservatism."

How can we lose, Ann Coulter's standup in spandex vs. Obama's union thugs? No contest.

Obama's 10 Commandments just slightly different than God's

Stole this from The Patriot Depot website because I agree wholeheartedly that President Obama is obviously governed by a different set of rules than many of the rest of us, particularly us Bible believers. The Patriot Depot says they've been watching and have figured out what Obama's top 10 rules are, and it ain't the 10 Commandments that God gave Moses on Mt. Sinai.

After observing Obama on the campaign trail and during his first six months in office, we have concluded that our President lives and governs according to his own set of “Ten Commandments.” They’re certainly NOT the Ten Commandments you learned in Sunday School. In fact, many are the direct opposite! To prove that our conclusions are correct, you will find a link to source documentation for each commandment on the Patriot Update web site.

The text on the front of the T-shirt reads:

The Ten Commandments According to Obama

I. Thou shalt have no God in America, except for me. For we are no longer a Christian nation and, after all, I am the chosen One. (And like God, I do not have a birth certificate.) SOURCE

II. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, unless it is my face carved on Mt. Rushmore. SOURCE

III. Thou shalt not utter my middle name in vain (or in public). Only I can say Barack Hussein Obama. SOURCE

IV. Remember tax day, April 15th, to keep it holy. SOURCE

V. Honour thy father and thy mother until they are too old and sick to care for. They will cost our public-funded health-care system too much money. SOURCE

VI. Thou shalt not kill, unless you have an unwanted, unborn baby. For it would be an abomination to punish your daughter with a baby. SOURCE

VII. Thou shalt not commit adultery if you are conservative or a Republican. Liberals and Democrats are hereby forgiven for all of their infidelity and immorality, but the careers of conservatives will be forever destroyed. SOURCE

VIII. Thou shalt not steal, until you've been elected to public office. Only then is it acceptable to take money from hard-working, successful citizens and give it to those who do not work, illegal immigrants, or those who do not have the motivation to better their own lives. SOURCE

IX. Thou shalt not discriminate against thy neighbor unless they are conservative, Caucasian, or Christian. SOURCE

X. Thou shalt not covet because it is simply unnecessary. I will place such a heavy tax burden on those that have achieved the American Dream that, by the end of my term as President, nobody will have any wealth or material goods left for you to covet. SOURCE

If you're looking for a t-shirt to make a statement, here's one. The Patriot Depot has more too.

Obama fiddles, Iran burns, MSM applauds his "calm"

Obama should buy himself a fiddle. At least he'd have something to play with while the whole world burns down around his shoulders and he stays "calm." That's how the so-called mainstream media terms his nonengagement during the so-far biggest international crisis of his young administration. Sad note is his policy of hiding under the bed when the brown stuff hits the fan has worked out pretty well for him. When during the presidential campaign the economy suddenly collapsed into the continuing credit crisis, what did Obama do? Absolutely nothing.

He just continued on campaigning as if nothing had changed. What did John McCain do? Stopped campaigning and went to Washington to try to lead an effort to solve the crisis. And what did McCain get for his efforts? Ridicule by the MSM when the crisis wasn't solved and MSM praise for Obama's "calm" in the midst of the storm. Calm hell! He was "voting present" like he's always done when there's any small threat to his "political viability," just like President Bill Clinton.

Hey, I think I see a pattern here. President Jimmy Carter yanked U.S. support from the Shah of Iran and backed Khomeni's return to Iran for the revolution that put the mullahs in power. And what did President Clinton do when he had a chance to blow away Osama? Voted "present."

So President Obama is just following in the footsteps of the two most recent Democrat "leaders." Which certainly explains why this run-on-at-the-mouth-about-anything-and-everything president was so strangely quiet about the crisis in Iran for three long days before finally coming forth with his plan: to keep "dialogue" going with the mullahs who stole the Iranian election.

Hey, that's Obama's only executive experience, as Jesse Jackson said, because he's never run nothing but his mouth. So don't expect him to do anything but keep talking while Iran burns.

Sir Charles Krauthammer, as usual, sees through the crisis to its two inevitable conclusions, one good to very good to fantastic for freedom in the Middle East and one bad, very bad to worse.

This revolution will end either as a Tiananmen (a hot Tiananmen with massive and bloody repression or a cold Tiananmen with a finer mix of brutality and co-optation) or as a true revolution that brings down the Islamic Republic.

The latter is improbable but, for the first time in 30 years, not impossible. Imagine the repercussions. It would mark a decisive blow to Islamist radicalism, of which Iran today is not just standard-bearer and model, but financier and arms supplier. It would do to Islamism what the collapse of the Soviet Union did to communism -- leave it forever spent and discredited.

In the region, it would launch a second Arab spring. The first in 2005 -- the expulsion of Syria from Lebanon, first elections in Iraq and early liberalization in the Gulf states and Egypt -- was aborted by a fierce counterattack from the forces of repression and reaction, led and funded by Iran.

Now, with Hezbollah having lost elections in Lebanon and with Iraq establishing the institutions of a young democracy, the fall of the Islamist dictatorship in Iran would have an electric and contagious effect. The exception -- Iraq and Lebanon -- becomes the rule. Democracy becomes the wave. Syria becomes isolated; Hezbollah and Hamas, patronless. The entire trajectory of the region is reversed.

All hangs in the balance. The Khamenei regime is deciding whether to do a Tiananmen. And what side is the Obama administration taking? None. Except for the desire that this "vigorous debate" (press secretary Robert Gibbs' disgraceful euphemism) over election "irregularities" not stand in the way of U.S.-Iranian engagement on nuclear weapons.

Even from the narrow perspective of the nuclear issue, the administration's geopolitical calculus is absurd. There is zero chance that any such talks will denuclearize Iran. On Monday, Ahmadinejad declared yet again that the nuclear "file is shut, forever." The only hope for a resolution of the nuclear question is regime change, which (if the successor regime were as moderate as pre-Khomeini Iran) might either stop the program, or make it manageable and nonthreatening.

That's our fundamental interest. And our fundamental values demand that America stand with demonstrators opposing a regime that is the antithesis of all we believe.

And where is our president? Afraid of "meddling." Afraid to take sides between the head-breaking, women-shackling exporters of terror -- and the people in the street yearning to breathe free. This from a president who fancies himself the restorer of America's moral standing in the world.

God save America and the world from the "I vote present" leader in power in Washington.

Ralph Peters at The New York Post (yes, Virginia, there is a real newspaper left in NYC) likens the current crisis in Iran to one of the most shameful incidents in recent history, 1956 in Hungary.

Of all our foreign-policy failures in my lifetime, our current shunning of those demanding free elections and expanded civil rights in Iran reminds me most of Hungary in 1956.

For years, we encouraged the Hungarians to rise up against oppression. When they did, we watched from the sidelines as Russian tanks drove over them.

For decades, Washington policymakers from both parties have prodded Iranians to throw off their shackles. Last Friday, millions of Iranians stood up. And we're standing down.

That isn't diplomacy. It's treachery...

And Obama's treachery, Peter says, is giving the green light to the mullahs to do to the Iranian people what the Russians did to the Hungarians in 1956: send in the tanks and crush heads.

Obama's ignorance of history is on naked display -- no sense of the brutality of Iran's Islamist regime, of the years of mass imprisonments, diabolical torture, prison rapes, wholesale executions and secret graves that made the shah's reign seem idyllic. Our president seems to regard the Iranian protesters as spoiled brats.

Facts? Who cares? In his Cairo sermon -- a speech that will live in infamy -- our president compared the plight of the Palestinians, the aggressors in 1948, with the Holocaust. He didn't mention the million Jews dispossessed and driven from Muslim lands since 1948, nor the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Christians from the West Bank.

Now our president's attempt to vote "present" yet again green-lights the Iranian regime's determination to face down the demonstrators -- and the mullahs understand it as such.

If we see greater violence in Tehran, the blood of those freedom marchers will be on our president's hands.

Actions have consequences. Obama's vote "present" could have deadly consquences in Iran.

Swine flu & first 100 days of Obamessiah's reign

I have consciously restrained myself from commenting on the current putrid state of politics because quite frankly what's going on in Washington, D.C., gives me the urge to regurgitate.

So I'll let Doug Giles comment for me on the outlines set forth in the first 100 days of the coming of the Obamessiah, which he aptly describes as the formation of The Obama Doctrine.

Conservative commentators are taking Obama to task, stating that Barack is putting us in a pre-9/11 mindset. A pre-9/11 mindset? I think you boys and girls are being too nice. Forget pre-9/11 . . . this is pre-7/11. And from a security standpoint, sooner or later his policies are going to make life in the US, let’s say, really inconvenient.

Now, should Charlie Gibson ever interview you non-Kool Aid swillers on TV and in the course of the interview lower his tortoise shell reading glasses and contemptuously ask you with that oleaginous look on his face, “So, Mr. or Ms. Conservative, exactly what is the Obama Doctrine?” From what BHO has said and done in the last 100 daze, you can tell Chuck’s tacky backside it’s this: The Obama Doctrine is the systematic emasculation of those aspects and entities that, heretofore, have kept us safe. It is the politically correct castration of our nation’s cojones, or tomatoes, or testicles or whatever you want to call ‘em.

Yes, according to our Gelding-In-Chief, everything is our fault, our strongest allies are to be dissed, bows are to be given to Saudi Kings, high fives go to Hugo, Ahmadinejad gets a bromance vid from BHO via YouTube, and talks are conducted with Cuba about burning a Cohiba with the Castro brothers. In addition, Obama’s administration says Israel is the pain in the middle east, the US should throw billions at rogue nations, we ought to nuke our nukes . . . all the while blaming everything on GW, telling the world Islam doesn’t spawn terrorists, and forbidding our interrogators to interrogate those who wish us dead. What’s next, BHO? A détente with el Diablo?

Yeah, what I’ve deduced from Obama’s teleprompter is this: The Obama Doctrine is, essentially, that America sucks. Everything is our fault. And to go forward, we must castrate everything that has kept us secure, because, y’know, we wouldn’t want to continue to be safe and strong anymore, right?

Got it? Me too, and it ain't the swine flu that's making me feel queasy. God help the U.S. of A.

And in case you're feeling a bit queasy too, here's a rare bit of print being critical of the Obamessiah's "accomplisments" in the first 100 days from the The Chronicle Herald of Canada in the Novia Scotia News, of all places. It's written by Andrew W. Smith, a columnist in Oklahoma who obviously can't find a newspaper here in the states to print his commentaries. I'm astonished to find there's a newspaper left in print anywhere that isn't enthralled with Obama.

Smith writes "So here is a small selection of news on the most powerful man on Earth which has been deemed unfit to print:

•Obama’s first two major bills alone, the "stimulus" and "omnibus," cost nearly twice as much as was spent on Iraq over six years – $1.2 trillion vs. $650 billion.

•Obama abandoned his campaign promise of "a net spending cut," his first annual deficit – not counting bailouts – being three times the worst deficit under President George W. Bush.

•Obama’s objective in his first G20 summit – commitments to spend our way to prosperity with massive stimulus boondoggles across the G20 – was rejected out of hand.

•Obama’s objective in his first NATO summit – commitments to combat troops for Afghanistan from "our European allies," which Obama and his party imagined were ready and willing to fight if only someone "enlightened" like him were running things – was predictably refused, with some more European non-combat contingents offered as a token.

•Obama’s Defence Department announced cuts of $1.4 billion to missile defence, the day after North Korea test-fired its long-range, multi-stage ballistic missile.

•Obama’s economics were criticized by Warren Buffet, whose endorsement had been candidate Obama’s highest economic credential.

•Obama reversed the free trade Bush policy that had allowed about 100 Mexican tractor-trailers into the United States, which the Mexican government immediately used as an excuse to levy tariffs on 90 American goods amounting to $2.4 billion in U.S. exports.

•Obama’s "tax cuts for 95 per cent" turned out to mean $13 a week from June to December, to be clawed back to $8 a week in January – as compared with President Bush’s 2008 tax rebates of $600 to $1,200 plus $300 per child, which were notably scoffed at during the election campaign by Michelle Obama.

Maybe there's hope for the Republic after all. If not maybe we can flee to Nova Scotia.

Pay no attention to the bowing, just keep applauding

The Obamessiah has returned from his first trip abroad amidst the cheering throngs. And that was just the media. Without even mentioning his deep Muslim bow to the King of Saudi Arabia -- another first for our Rookie President -- Sir Charles Krauthammer sums up the results:

Our president came bearing a basketful of mea culpas. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own people for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness, for genocide, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantanamo and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world.

And what did he get for this obsessive denigration of his own country? He wanted more NATO combat troops in Afghanistan to match the surge of 17,000 Americans. He was rudely rebuffed.

He wanted more stimulus spending from Europe. He got nothing.

From Russia, he got no help on Iran. From China, he got the blocking of any action on North Korea.

And what did he get for Guantanamo? France, pop. 64 million, will take one prisoner. One! (Sadly, he'll have to leave his swim buddy behind.) The Austrians said they would take none. As Interior Minister Maria Fekter explained with impeccable Germanic logic, if they're not dangerous, why not just keep them in America?

When Austria is mocking you, you're having a bad week. Yet who can blame Frau Fekter, considering the disdain Obama showed his own country while on foreign soil, acting the philosopher-king who hovers above the fray mediating between his renegade homeland and an otherwise warm and welcoming world?

After all, it was Obama, not some envious anti-American leader, who noted with satisfaction that a new financial order is being created today by 20 countries, rather than by "just Roosevelt and Churchill sitting in a room with a brandy." And then added: "But that's not the world we live in, and it shouldn't be the world that we live in."

It is passing strange for a world leader to celebrate his own country's decline. A few more such overseas tours, and Obama will have a lot more decline to celebrate.

Retired Marine Major Ollie North isn't so diplomatic as Sir Charles about the infamous "bow."

The president of the United States is back in Washington from his "I like you, you like me" excellent adventure in Europe and "surprise" trip to Baghdad. It was nice of POTUS to thank the troops. He should have bowed to them instead of to King Abdullah.

Members of the O-Team -- recovering from late-night teleprompter edits, grand parties and jet lag -- now deny that the apparently obsequious gesture to the Saudi king was really a "bow." Perhaps it would be better described as a "curtsy."

North agreed with Krauthammer on the unreported (the media is still in full swoon and can't be expected to pay attention) link between Obama's appeasement rhetoric and defense cuts.

The North Koreans defied his warnings of "severe consequences" and test-launched a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile. In Tehran, the ayatollahs ignored his Utopian plea for "the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons" and claim to have turned on 7,000 more centrifuges to refine uranium. Somali pirates "dissed" his "deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world" and hijacked an American-flagged vessel in the Gulf of Aden.

The O-Team was so exercised over the first piracy of an American-flagged merchant vessel since 1866 that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton fired off a full rhetorical volley. While the crew was busy retaking the ship, she said that "we're deeply concerned" and "following it closely" and that "the world must come together to end the scourge of piracy."

More telling than the vacuous hot air blowing from London, Prague, Ankara, Baghdad and Washington was the defense budget presented this week. It assures adversaries and allies alike that we will be unprepared to fight a serious adversary in the future. Hollow talk, empty oratory and impossible dreams are now commonplace in American politics, but the O-Team's Euro-expedition may have set a new foreign fantasy record. Actions speak louder than words -- no matter how flowery the rhetoric...

Unfortunately, less than 24 hours after Mr. Obama mentioned the North Korean "provocation" and Iran's "dangerous pursuit of nuclear weapons," his defense budget revealed how seriously he takes those and other threats. The O-Team intends to reduce our ability to project power overseas and to protect the American people from nuclear attack.

If the Obama defense budget is approved as submitted, we will increase spending on protecting our troops ashore and fleet at sea from attack by ballistic missiles carrying weapons of mass destruction but cut homeland ballistic missile defense by $1.4 billion. We will increase the number of small "littoral support ships" but reduce our ability to project power from the sea by cutting our carrier fleet from 12 battle groups to 10. We will not modernize ground combat mobility for the Army or the Marines, and POTUS will have to wait a few more years for a new helicopter.

Obama fiddles and bows while America burns and slides into third-world status. And the crowd applauds (and that was just the media, again).

Triple Dud on the North Korean ICBM and U.S. hostages

As expected, the North Korean ICBM launch turned out to be a triple-dud. Dud one is the launch, which fizzled in the second stage and splashed harmlessly into the Pacific Ocean.

Dud two is Obama's "Ban the bomb!" speech, where instead of responding to the North Korean threat, he instead blamed the United States for being a nuclear power ... blah, blah, blah.

And dud three is the milque toast response on the North Koreans holding two American citizens hostage by Susan Rice, Obama's mouthpiece at the useless diplomatic gaggle in New York.

The U.S. envoy to the United Nations said Sunday that the Obama administration hopes two American journalists detained in North Korea will be released swiftly and safely. Still, Ambassador Susan Rice acknowledged there are no guarantees.

Rice said the United States is continuing to work with Swedish diplomats who represent U.S. interests in North Korea to win freedom for Euna Lee and Laura Ling. The journalists work for former Vice President Al Gore's San Francisco-based Current TV media venture.

Rice said the two are safe, "to the best of our knowledge."

Obama's motto: "Making the world safe for socialism by talking endlessly about nothing."

Speaking of foolish talk, here's the Saturday Night Live translation of Obama's industry plans.

When Freddie Met Fannie II: The Sequel opening nationwide

In the news today Barney Frank says he wants to push for prosecution of the people who caused the country's financial meltdown. Say what? The Congressman(?) from When Freddie Met Fannie wants to prosecute those who caused the current recession/depression? "The Great and Wonderful Wizard of Oz says pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"

In other news, the Great and Wonderful Obamessiah says though we are now in the midst of the worst disaster of biblical proportions since the 10 plagues God visited upon Egypt, all will soon be brightness and bluebirds singing under his masterful leadership, as Jonah Goldberg reports.

But there's good news! According to his budget -- which he assures us is an "honest accounting" of our predicament -- the economy will shrink by only a measly 1.2 percent this year (it fell by a 6.2 percent annual rate in the final quarter of 2008) and then take off next year with 3.2 percent growth and soar for years to come.

So don't worry, be happy, Bwarney Fwank and the Obamessiah had absolutely nothing to do with the financial meltdown in their roles as the champions of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and to prove their innocence they are going to search every public golf course in the land to find the dastardly villains who brought this unspeakable evil upon us. Oh wait, that's O.J.'s job. Whatever.

Obama's true colors not Democrat blue but Socialist red

Famed stock-market analyst Barack Hussein Obama offered us bitter, backwoods clingers to God and guns some sage financial advice yesterday: "Buy low, sell high."

What's coming next? A penny saved is a penny earned? Better make that a billion saved is a billion earned. Or maybe "A few billion here, a few billion there, after a while it adds up to some real money." He's already used "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." Presidential plagiarism.

Tony Blankley has coined a phrase for our times that rings true: Obama Lied, the Economy Died.

I am trying to capture the spirit of bipartisanship as practiced by the Democratic Party over the past eight years. Thus, I have chosen as my lead this proposition: Obama lied; the economy died. Obviously, I am borrowing this from the Democratic theme of 2003-08: "Bush lied, people died." There are, of course, two differences between the slogans.

Most importantly, I chose to separate the two clauses with a semicolon rather than a comma because the rule of grammar is that a semicolon (rather than a comma) should be used between closely related independent clauses not conjoined with a coordinating conjunction. In the age of Obama, there is little more important than maintaining the integrity of our language against the onslaught of Orwellian language abuse that is already a babbling brook and soon will be a cataract of verbal deception.

The other difference is that Bush didn't lie about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He merely was mistaken. Whereas Obama told a whopper when he claimed that he is not for bigger government. As he said last week: "As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress to send me a recovery plan by Presidents Day that would put people back to work and put money in their pockets, not because I believe in bigger government -- I don't."

Michael Gerson calls this The Week of Revelation as Obama reveals his true colors, not Democrat blue but red, not as in Republican red, but as in Socialist red with a capital S.

Obama chose a time of recession to propose a massive increase in progressivity -- a 10-year, trillion-dollar haul from the rich, already being punished by the stock market collapse and the housing market decline. This does not just involve undoing the Bush tax reductions but capping tax deductions to collect about $30 billion a year. Despite all the rhetoric of "responsibility" and shared sacrifice, the message of the Obama budget is clear: The wealthy are responsible for the economic mess and they will bear the entire sacrifice so that government can "invest" in the people.

But governments do not "invest," they spend. Such spending can be justified or unjustified. It is wealthy individuals, however, who actually invest their capital in job creation. Most have much less capital than they used to. Under the Obama budget, they would have less still. This does not seem to matter in the economic worldview of the Obama budget. Equality is the goal instead of opportunity or economic mobility. And government, in this approach, is more capable of investing national wealth than America's discredited plutocrats -- meaning successful two-income families, entrepreneurs and professionals.

Even Maureen Dowd, the red-head at the Noo Yawk Times, joins in the chorus of nay-sayers on Obama. She's either off her meds again or she forgot to drink her Kool-Aid yesterday.

In one of his disturbing spells of passivity, President Obama decided not to fight Congress and live up to his own no-earmark pledge from the campaign.

He’s been lecturing us on the need to prune away frills while the economy fizzles. He was slated to make a speech on “wasteful spending” on Wednesday.

“You know, there are times where you can afford to redecorate your house and there are times where you need to focus on rebuilding its foundation,” he said recently about the “hard choices” we must make. Yet he did not ask Congress to sacrifice and make hard choices; he let it do a lot of frivolous redecorating in its budget.

He reckons he’ll need Congress for more ambitious projects, like health care, and when he goes back to wheedle more bailout billions, given that A.I.G. and G.M. and our other corporate protectorates are burning through our money faster than we can print it and borrow it from the ever-more-alarmed Chinese.

Team Obama sounds hollow, chanting that “the status quo is not acceptable,” even while conceding that the president is accepting the status quo by signing a budget festooned with pork.

Obama spinners insist it was “a leftover budget.” But Iraq was leftover, too, and the president’s trying to end that. This is the first pork-filled budget from a new president who promised to go through the budget “line by line” and cut pork.

On “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, dismissed the bill as “last year’s business,” because most of it was written last year.

But given how angry Americans are, watching their future go up in smoke, the bloated bill counts as this year’s business.

It includes $38.4 million of earmarks sponsored or co-sponsored by President Obama’s labor secretary, Hilda Solis; $109 million Hillary Clinton signed on to; and $31.2 million in earmarks sought by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood with colleagues.

(Even Barack Obama was listed as one of the co-sponsors of a $7.7 million pet project for Tribally Controlled Postsecondary Vocational Institutions until he got his name taken off last week.)

And then there are the 16 earmarks worth $8.5 million that Emanuel put into the bill when he was a congressman, including money for streets in Chicago suburbs and a Chicago planetarium.

Blame it on the stars, Rahm, or on old business. But as Shakespeare wrote in “Lear”: “This is the excellent foppery of the world, that, when we are sick in fortune — often the surfeits of our own behavior — we make guilty of our own disasters, the sun, the moon, and the stars.”

As Scooby Do sez, "Ruh Roh!"

Fear and loathing in the hallowed halls of NY Times

David Brooks is the token conservative on the New York Times op-ed staff and occasionally he actually writes something I agree with. So this morning when I saw the headline Why Experience Matters, I thought “Glory be! He’s going to point out that Obama has no executive experience!”

Wrong. What was I thinking? The NYT would never allow any writer in its hallowed halls to utter a discouraging word about the Obamessiah. So I really wasn’t overly surprised to find that Brooks was referring to McCain’s VP Sarah Palin, whipping girl of the MSM and the leftwing nutroots.

So was there a single mumblin’ word in Brooks’ musings on experience about the inexperienced Obama, who as was said about Jesse Jackson, “Ain’t never run nothing but his mouth?” Of course not. But Brooks did say a few true things about Palin before comparing her to “W” which is of course the ultimate put-down from the left. (I wonder where he got the idea to compare McCain-Palin to “a third term for President Bush”?)

Palin is the ultimate small-town renegade rising from the frontier to do battle with the corrupt establishment. Her followers take pride in the way she has aroused fear, hatred and panic in the minds of the liberal elite. The feminists declare that she’s not a real woman because she doesn’t hew to their rigid categories. People who’ve never been in a Wal-Mart think she is parochial because she has never summered in Tuscany.

Look at the condescension and snobbery oozing from elite quarters, her backers say. Look at the endless string of vicious, one-sided attacks in the news media. This is what elites produce. This is why regular people need to take control.

And there’s a serious argument here. In the current Weekly Standard, Steven Hayward argues that the nation’s founders wanted uncertified citizens to hold the highest offices in the land. They did not believe in a separate class of professional executives. They wanted rough and rooted people like Palin.

Another one of those Freudian slips, like Maureen Dowd had yesterday: Trying to say something nasty about Palin but letting the truth slip in.