The KGB Speaks

An 18-minute interview (in 2 parts) with ex-KGB Uri Bezmenov from 1985. He explains the weakness within America that the KGB dedicated 85% of its resources to exploit.

To change the perception of reality of every American, to such an extent that despite the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest in defending themselves, their families, their communities and their country.

It is a great brainwashing process which goes very slow and is divided in four basic stages. [Demorilization. Destabilization. Crisis. Normalization.]
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The useful idiots, the leftists, who are idealistically believing in the beauty of Soviet Socialist or Communist or whatever system - when they get the solution they become the worst enemies.

That is why my KGB instructors specifically made the point never bother the leftists. Forget about these political prostitutes. Aim higher.

Look out Kos Kids, Huffington Ho's, and Democratic Underground losers...

Sunday Evening Cigar

We received some Torano cigars in a free sampler pack recently, and lit one tonight. A Carlos Torano Exodus 1959. Tasty, very smooth with an even burn. Different than what we're used to, so the jury is still out, but definately not a reject.

Two American Thinker articles deserve mention tonight. It appears more are making the outrageous comparison between Obama and previous Communists. Pretty soon the political discourse will be completely derailed as all conservatives will see Ushanka-wearing commies around every corner! It reminds us of the time an Obama supporter tried to buy one of our Commie Obama hats because she thought it was "cute". But we digress...

James Lewis' 9-page article, Obama as Leninoid, starts with a bang, but does lack momentum. The point is: those with knowledge of history of evil are making comparisons that seem to stick.

As to "scapegoating the rich and all enemies of the regime":

Leninoids always find victim groups, or create them, or import them, and then claim to speak on their behalf. That is happening today in the United States with illegal immigrants. These are not just accidents but deliberate policy.

and to the tactic "Demonizing the Opposition":

It's weird for an American president to consider most of the American population "the enemy."

Andie Brownlow's article is From Russia With No Love, discusses the 'ol KGB theory that the US can be destroyed from within in four steps: Demoralization, Destabilization, Crisis, and then forced Normalization. A good refresher about the tactics of that For-The-Greater-Good crowd.

Can America return to conservative values and save itself from the jaws of Marxism, or will it spiral down a path of self destruction guided by none other than the former Soviet Union?

It can be argued that the destabilization of our culture and economy, magnified by policies of the Obama Administration, conform to KGB plans for the collapse of the United States. The only question remains: Is Obama masterminding the current events for economic collapse, or is he just the hapless puppet holding the hot potato?

Andie blogs at AndieBrownlow.com.

Glenn Beck

Glenn Beck, owner of our fine hat, has been on fire this week. Attacking? No. Asking. Asking questions like "who is the enemy" that the Civilian Defense Force - equal in size of the DOD - is going to pursue? Fair questions, assuming free speech is allowed.

Would Glenn's show have anything to do with today's news that our Dear Leader is worn out from his vacation and will be going on to Camp David next week? We can't blame him. If someone as convincing as Glenn were to do the same to us, we'd hide too.

About 15 minutes of video:

UT: HotAir

Karl's Weekend Reading

We comb through 20-40 articles per week for this post, and one thing is becoming obvious: the conservative voices have hit critical mass on the problems with ObamaCare. For each page of the socialist legislation, there is an equal number of valid points to reject the idea of government care. For us and those like-minded, this wasn't necessary to know a bad thing when we saw it. But for many others who are just starting to listen, these arguments are doing to ObamaCare what SDI did to Soviet military thinking. Its no wonder our Dear Leader wanted to rush this through.

We assume you're reading these pieces too, so we won't bother you with the links. So this week - links to non-ObamaCare pieces that, as required, are top-notch articles worthy of your weekend reading.

Obama's Summer of Discontent, by Fouad Ajami in the WSJ, is a great read. Rush read parts of this article this past week and said it was one of those articles he wishes he wrote. Us too! Our quotes below do not do it justice, so please click here to read it all. He talks about how Obama fit into a short window of national despair and doubt in last year's campaign, and how the nation has restored its self-confidence despite a leader that wishes against it.

We were led to this summer of discontent by the very nature of the coalition that brought Mr. Obama, and the political class around him, to power, and by the circumstances of his victory. The man was elected amid economic distress. Faith in the country's institutions, perhaps in the free-enterprise system itself, had given way. Mr. Obama had ridden that distress. His politics of charisma was reminiscent of the Third World. A leader steps forth, better yet someone with no discernible trail, someone hard to pin down to a specific political program, and the crowd could read into him what it wished, what it needed.
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The Obama devotees were the victims of their own belief in political magic.
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Those protesters in those town-hall meetings have served notice that Mr. Obama's charismatic moment has passed. Once again, the belief in that American exception that set this nation apart from other lands is re-emerging. Health care is the tip of the iceberg. Beneath it is an unease with the way the verdict of the 2008 election was read by those who prevailed. It shall be seen whether the man swept into office in the moment of national panic will adjust to the nation's recovery of its self-confidence.

Bret Stephens at the WSJ comments on Obama's intent to pursue CIA interrogators. Seen as a way to distract from the ObamaCare embarrassment, this pursuit of America's protectors appears to be a bone thrown to the wacky lefties who prefer apologies for America to Death Panels. Stephens comments on the hypocrisy of the left who screamed about the (in the end, lawful) disclosure of Valerie Plames' identity and who equally scream for the heads of those who saved American lives. He also warns that disclosure of these agents' identities will lead to threats to their safety.

Liberals have never liked the CIA, except when it suited their partisan purposes. That's fine: There's much not to like about the agency, and the U.S. might well be better off without its bungled operations and laughable intelligence estimates. But having shouted themselves hoarse over Mrs. Wilson, their enthusiasm for this new round of outing is a bit unseemly. Especially when lives are actually at stake. Especially when a liberal president has pledged to protect those lives.

Daniel Henninger also opines on the CIA witch hunt, The War On Terror Is Over. He concludes, "The war on terror is being downgraded to not much more than tough talk. Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Iranians, not yet converts to the West's caricature of its own legal traditions, will take note. In time, they will be back. The second war on terror is in the future."

This litigation nightmare, together with the chilling effect of the special prosecutor's potential indictments, has as its goal making the price of aggressive interrogation too high under any circumstance, including a one-hour-bomb scenario.
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This means that the class of person who blows up skyscrapers, American embassies or the USS Cole would spend less time under a bare light bulb than a domestic robbery suspect.
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...it's a death sentence for an effective war on terror. It makes what's left of the war—telephone wiretaps or monitoring money transfers—vulnerable to a steady stream of congressional and legal objection. That lets the Obama administration evade political responsibility by letting others wind down the war on terror.

Wednesday Afternoon Cigar

A short Santa Damiana and a cool breeze...

Ya, The Government Can

Does he know he will have to get a license for singing in the near future?

The Best Argument Yet...

We've been quick to point out the flaws in the 'Obama is not a Socialist' arguments. But yesterday, Rush may have made a good argument against.

Democrats are being sacrificed on the altar of Obama's authoritarian fascism. The man is eating his own. We gotta stop calling it socialism, folks, because socialism's lost it's bite and what he's doing is really not socialism anyway. Socialism is where the government owns the means of production. Fascism is where politicians run it but it's privately owned. We are fascists. Obama is turning this into a fascist nation, think Mussolini. Other than the automobile business, some of the banks, they've taken that over and they're running that, but for the most part he's in bed now with the Big Pharma. He's going to be in bed with them and running it, making decisions for the private sector but he's not going to own it. But he's got everybody scared to death.

So fascism is the more apt analogy to what this country is becoming with Barack Obama at the helm. And because it is his party and they are engaged in the biggest and most dangerous political gamble in history, they are betting that Obama's march to fascism and his relentless slandering of America will result in their reelection.

Except the auto companies and some banks...

We are still going to call our Commie Obama Rally Cap 'facisionable'.

The Dark Side

This isn't Birther or Truther stuff, but "conspiracy" comes to mind. The challenge is to discount these thoughts as fringe and random. Are you up to the challenge? (This is not the typical Ushanka.us blog post - you've been warned.)

To put things in context, we'll start with Glenn Beck's recent review of Van Jones, one of Obama's Czars:



U/T: John Lott

Next, Pat Dollard reviews recent changes in law that give FEMA and the US Military new powers over American citizens - in three parts:

Part I
Part II
Part III

Friends, in my first post, I asked you to suspend your disbelief in a government conspiracy and take a trip down the rabbit hole and look at the things that have happened and been put in place that makes the idea of a conspiracy not only believable, but likely.

In my second post, I laid out the tools and authorities that the government could use to bring about a coup to upset the rule of law as laid down by our Constitution. I tried to lay out the “shadow government” that is FEMA, who would have control over all aspects of our lives. I showed you the military arm of the government. All governments rule implicitly through the threat of force. Through USNORTHCOM and its combat hardened troops, the people that gave us Waco massacre and ruby ridge have all the firepower needed to help suppress the citizenry. I also showed you that plans have been drawn up for how to deal with civil unrest by the Army War College, since shortly after Barry became the alleged commander in chief.

Now in this final post, I’d like to take you through the scenarios that are in place, any of which could be used as an excuse to remove the Constitutional restraints placed upon our government.
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In light of these theories, Barry’s championing of the South American treaty that would limit gun ownership and trading as well as reloading of ammunition by private individuals, and the House’s attempts at passing bills, including the House’s version of health care reform, that would create roadblocks to citizens being legally able to own a weapon without a federal license, becomes understandable.

Theories aside for a moment, there are some facts that I think need to be considered in context of my postings. First, with few exceptions all three branches of our government are populated with socialists and Marxists that see the Constitution as an inconvenient obstacle to the furtherance of their agendas. We have a potential usurper in the Oval office who has surrounded himself with self described Marxists, Communists, and Leftist activists. And the alleged president himself has more than once shown nothing but disdain for Constitutional governance.

Blog, Truth and Common Sense, has a post this week: "If I were taking over a country, what would I do next? An exercise in thinking like the enemy." An exercise detectives, marketing professionals and our military tacticians ask themselves every day.

I think the election of Obama, who by any serious observer is recognized now as being “polished and handled” by others, was the linchpin that holds the whole effort together. He is great for being the living example of a shell game. Everybody is so enamored with the first black President being elected they don’t look at what he is bringing on board.

So, now that he’s in position, what is the next step?

We're just posting links here...

The End Must Be Near - UPDATED & BUMPED

The End Must Be Today.

We have nothing more to say about the former senator than what we've said below and in older posts.

We'll be listening for two things in the coming days:
1) What legislation MUST be passed in the senator's memory, and
2) A list of his accomplishments.

Posted 8.20 at 11am:The liberals progressives communists in the state-run old-media didn't get a chance to milk the Cronkite death prior to the event. They won't make that mistake with Ted Kennedy.

Judging by the random appearances of Ted Kennedy pics, and headlines with his name, the end must be near. Unfortunately, Kennedy is a liberal, so on the political front there isn't a life worth commemorating, as there are no accomplishments to point to. If we had to say something nice about the man, it would be something like this:

Ted Kennedy did not propose the idea that US veterans should pay for their own health care.

It just doesn't have a ring to it.

Instead, like the Wellstone funeral, the MSM and their mindless followers will keep the Kennedy story 24/7 now, when he dies, and probably a few weeks thereafter. From today's Yahoo home page:

As you can imagine, we're overloaded with ideas when posting a blog entry about Ted Kennedy. The topics of auto wrecks, failed policies repeated ad nauseam, zero personal responsibility, and Crown Royal come to mind. The Daily Kos and Democratic Underground kids have an equally tough challenge: finding a success that can be attributed to the senator.

Our #1 beef with the senator goes back to 1983-1984. You'll recall, Andropov called Reagan's Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) bluff that he'd deploy the Pershing missiles in Europe if the Soviets didn't remove their missiles in the prison called Eastern Europe. Whoops. Reagan spent most of 1984 deploying the missiles in Britain and W. Germany. This was also a year after Reagan suggested SDI (missile defense), which had commies, and like-minded US senators, in a tizzy.

Through his friend and former Democrat senator from California, John V. Turnney, this Massachusetts senator relayed a message to Andropov with the intent to help the Democrats take the White House in November. (We'd use the words "treason" and "traitor" here, but we don't want to lower the political discourse...) Kennedy, at that time in 1983, considered himself a possible candidate for 1984.

Kennedy's offers to the leader of the Evil Empire, the Soviet Union:

1) Andropov to invite the senator to Moscow where Kennedy could help "arm Soviet officials with explanations regarding problems of nuclear disarmament so they would be better prepared and more convincing during appearances in the USA."

2) "...organize in August - September of this year [1983], televised interviews with Y. V. Andropov in the USA." The intent was a "direct appeal" from a visiting Andropov to the American people. Kennedy offered to arrange these interviews with "Walter Conkite and Barbara Walters."

And our fellow 'conservatives' call us "a right wing nut" and "stupid" for comparing the Democrats to communists.

Quotes taken from Paul Kengor's The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, pages 205-209. Only $6.78 at Amazon! Link

Obamacare: When I'm 64

Chimpsy, a happy owner of our Commie Obama Rally Cap, has a new video out today:



UT: Chimpsy's Radio

We Just Didn't Listen!

A mandatory 10-minutes with Glenn:

We have been screaming for a man to tell us the truth, and then when someone tells us exactly what he believes in plain English, we refused to listen to him. Nobody took this man at his word.

The question is: when will you begin? How much more evidence do you need before you wake up an go 'wait a minute, wait a minute, hang on, what's he doing'?

Capitalism: The Trailer

From the fat guy who wants us to emulate Cuba's Healthcare system:



Doesn't he realize the neighborhood donut store is capitalism?

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you...

Friday Afternoon Cigar

A Rocky Patel Sun Grown smoldered as we caught up with our extremist podcasts...

UPDATE 6PM: Our first podcast, Rush's show today, we learned about the VA 'Death Book'.

Rush tells us that the dastardly Bush canceled the VA booklet, Your Life, Your Choices, aka the Death Book. Obama, the first US president that suggested veterans pay for their own health care, brought the book back to life - so to speak. We downloaded the book - from here - and here are screenshots from the cover, page 21, and page 23:

Link to Wednesday's WSJ article by Jim Towey, The Death Book for Veterans:

If President Obama wants to better understand why America's discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.

Last year, bureaucrats at the VA's National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, "Your Life, Your Choices." It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA's preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated "Your Life, Your Choices."

Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.
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When the government can steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living, who needs a death panel?

One can only imagine a soldier surviving the war in Iraq and returning without all of his limbs only to encounter a veteran's health-care system that seems intent on his surrender.

More like "Your Life, A Death Panel's Choices". But we'll hear our President tell us that this is only for those veterans...

Karl's Weekend Reading

We're doing something different this week. Our first three below aren't article recommendations per se, but instead quotes that stand alone as both entertaining and destructive.

On healthcare reform, WSJ's James Taranto provides three gems from his Best of the Web column:

Rules for Republicans, Too:

Our Fearless Independent Media

"Obama Takes On Health Care Critics"--headline, NPR.org, Aug. 11
"Obama Takes On Health Care Reform Critics"--headline, Voice of America Web site, Aug. 11
"Obama Takes On Health Care Critics"--headline, Associated Press, Aug. 12
"Obama Takes On Health Care Critics"--headline, USA Today, Aug. 12
"Obama Takes On Critics at Town Hall Forum"--headline, Chicago Tribune, Aug. 12
"Obama Takes On Health Care Critics"--headline, Slate.com, Aug. 12
"Obama to Take On Health-Care Critics"--headline, Washington Post, Aug. 14

Spammer in Chief:

Al Gore might have taken the initiative in creating the Internet, but no one seems to have bothered to teach basic netiquette to Barack Obama and his White House staff. As they have grown more desperate in their attempts to remake America's medical system in the image of the post office, they have resorted to increasingly obnoxious email tactics.

First was flag@whitehouse.gov, the address for reporting "fishy" speech. After being pilloried endlessly for what critics thought was an effort to compile an enemies list, the White House deactivated the address--and blamed its critics.
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We are far from convinced that the White House takes online privacy very seriously, although we will concede that the White House takes the perception that the White House doesn't seem to take online privacy very seriously, seriously.

and Unilateral Invasion, in regards to the go-it-alone attitude of the congressional Democrats

So let's see if we have this straight: Democrats sought to go to war with one-sixth of the U.S. economy. They didn't have a plan, and now they have no allies, so they've decided to go it alone.

Of course, if we really wanted to be cruel, we'd point out that the Republicans are acting like the French.

THAT would lower the political discourse and stifle debate!

Also in the WSJ, Daniel Henninger writes about the core issue coming out of the healthcare 'debate', the tea parties and the general mood of Americans toward their government - trust. In Government We Trust?

I believe Madoff's massive and destructive breach of trust had an effect on the public mind that carried beyond the tragedy of its immediate victims. After Madoff, John Q. Public set the bar really high for anyone seeking a big commitment of trust with money. But that's exactly what the ambitious Obama health plan did.
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...people seem to think that if a popular president can just find the right way to describe this entitlement, the American people will take his word for it. Maybe there was a time when a strong presidential personality could sell big things. Those days are gone. The government frittered them away.

Red Ink

Found this through Instapundit. Here are two of the images:

It is going to be a long and expensive 3.5 years...

Blind Squirrel Behind Socialism Poster

Firas Alkhateeb is the artist. A 20-year old muslim history student at the University of Illinois. A Dennis Kucinich supporter.

He photoshopped the Time magazine cover in January. Then someone else took his joker-art and created the socialism poster.

Alkhateeb tells the LA Times:

Regardless, Alkhateeb does agree with the Obama "Hope" artist about "socialism" being the wrong caption for the Joker image. "It really doesn't make any sense to me at all," he said. "To accuse him of being a socialist is really ... immature. First of all, who said being a socialist is evil?"

Even a blind squirrel finds a nut once in a while. We blame the public schools for this...

Be sure to visit our posts below. Yesterday's post with the joker video. Creeeepy. And our collection of poster spinoffs.

See Alkhateeb's flickr album. Some good photoshop work, plus plenty of pictures of mosques and the Kaaba in Saudi Arabia.

U/T: Drudge

OMG

UT: SondraK, and Freedom's Fool

Commies Uncovered

Fantastic investigative journalism by new-media blogger Patterico's Pontifications.

Che-lovers, fake doctors, Obamabot lefties and... a Democratic congresswoman. Peas in a pod destroyed in two blog posts - here and here.

U/T: Knowledge is Power

Needs More Cowbell

Honduras Commie Update

From last week: two articles with breaking news on the Honduras/Zelaya issue, and the links to crime and communism.

IBD Editorial: Honduras Has Won. Aug 7.

In a welcome about-face, the State Department told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Richard Lugar, R-Ind., in a letter Tuesday that the U.S. would no longer threaten sanctions on Honduras for ousting its president, Mel Zelaya, last June 28.
Nor will it insist on Zelaya's return to power. As it turns out, the U.S. Senate can't find any legal reason why the Honduran Supreme Court's refusal to let Zelaya stay in office beyond the time allowed by Honduran law constitutes a "military coup."
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The scariest outcome for Honduras was U.S. sanctions. They would have crushed the tiny country dependent on the U.S. for 80% of its trade. No sanctions, no Zelaya.
This isn't to say U.S. policymakers are happy or that the dispute is over. Honduras is still suspended from the Organization of American States, its trade has been disrupted, Venezuela's oil is still cut off, and its officials still can't get U.S. visas. But the worst is over. Whatever changes that come will be by Honduran consent alone.

Fingers are crossed!

The WSJ Editorial by Mary Anastasia O'Grady, The FARC's Honduan Friends. Aug. 10. She mentions a captured FARC letter that lists 45 mostly communist groups supporting the return of ousted President Zelaya.

Mr. Calderón has been waging a "war" on drug cartels in Mexico that has cost the lives of 1,077 law-enforcement agents since December 2006. Now both he and Mr. Obama are going to have to explain their support for a political faction in Honduras that is allied with organized crime.
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The FARC connection could go a long way in explaining why Mr. Chávez is pushing so hard for Mr. Zelaya to be restored to power. It is already well established that the Venezuelan strongman actively supports the FARC in South America. Rebels have a safe haven across his border and just last month a Colombian army raid on a FARC camp yielded a cache of Swedish-made anti-tank rocket launchers that originally had been sold to Venezuela. Mr. Chávez has still not come up with a credible explanation of how the Colombian terrorists got hold of them.

Karl's Weekend Reading

In case you missed it, Healthcare Reform was in the news this week. Lots of good reading - here are our picks:

Laura Hollis, one of our favorite Townhall writers, gives instructions to us tea-partying, ramble rousers Nazisin her article, Americans Must Refust to be Cowed into Submission:

...how have the liberal elites responded to their countrymen’s concerns, their exercise of their First Amendment rights of free speech, assembly, and petitioning the government? By calling them Nazis, accusing them of bringing swastikas to town halls, characterizing American taxpayers as “angry mobs,” dismissing their grassroots protests as fake “Astroturf,” drummed up and funded by multinational corporations; by cancelling town halls, and insulting constituents who want to know why Congress passes laws without reading them. Uh-huh, sure. When ACORN and other Lefty activist groups pay and bus in homeless people, union members, and others to disrupt and intimidate, that’s “democracy.” When taxpayers, parents, and senior citizens show up on their own and protest how the government plans to spend their money, they’re a threat.

Hey there, average American - NOW do you understand how much they hate you and everything you stand for? The lengths they will go to to discredit and marginalize you, and take from you everything you have worked a lifetime to secure for yourself and your family? They want you to shut up. They want you to go away. They want to humiliate you into backing down while they take over your country, dismantle your constitutional protections, seize your assets, tax you into submission, and insert themselves and their appointed bureaucrats between you and your doctor.

Are you going to lay down and let them get away with it?

Michelle Malkin: The Etiquette Czar's Rules for Patriotic Protest. No ruling on wearing a Commie Obama Rally Cap to future protests, so we'll continue wearing one until told otherwise. Some of our favorites:

No shouting. Congressional representatives cannot sell Obamacare with mobs of unruly senior citizens and small-business owners interrupting to press them on specific sections of the bill. Limit your objections to a library whisper and only challenge your lawmakers with hushed, dulcet tones. Otherwise, you will scare them, and they will be forced to hide behind teleconference calls, sick children at hospitals or union bosses.
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No laughing. Snickering at proponents of nationalized health care is rude, bordering on political terrorism. Stifle all derisive chuckling at bogus statistics and denials that Obamacare will lead to long lines and rationed care. That would be "evil-mongering," as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid put it on Thursday.
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No Nazi comparisons. References to fascism are ugly and un-American. Swastikas have no place in debates about nationalizing 20 percent of the economy. Swastikas may, however, still be used as substitutes for the "S" in "BusHitler" and tattoos on the forehead of Darth Cheney.

James Taranto at the WSJ discusses the poor analogy to Bush going into Iraq to Obama's faltering Healthcare efforts in his Tuesday Best of the Web post, The ObamaCare Quagmire:

...the comparison sells President Bush short in a way that is independent of the merits of the policies. Whereas Obama seems to think the country owes it to him to accept ObamaCare because he was kind enough to agree to be our president, Bush actually made an effort to persuade the public--including the opposite party--that his plan for Iraq was a good idea. The effort was very successful: Congress authorized the use of military force with strong bipartisan majorities, and by early 2003, public approval of the plan was in the 70% range.

Republican politicians did not label opponents of the war effort "un-American," as Steny Pelosi and Nancy Hoyer have done to ObamaCare foes. Bush's White House, unlike Obama's, did not urge supporters to report "fishy" pro-Saddam arguments. Bush did not tell his critics to shut up and "get out of the way," as Obama did last week. The Bush administration simply made a compelling argument and won. The Obama administration, on the verge of losing after making a poor argument, now is lashing out at its critics--which seems a strategy to maximize the damage of this effort.

Yep. Bush = Class.

Karl Rove suggests Obama should snap out of campaign mode and start acting like a president in the WSJ article, Obama and the Permanent Campaign.

Team Obama is suffering from Extended Campaign Syndrome. In an election, campaign staffers are often just trying to survive until the next week or the next primary. They cut corners because they are fatigued or under pressure. They can be purposely combative and even portray critics as enemies.

Carrying this mindset into the White House can get you into trouble, a lesson the Obama administration is now learning the hard way.
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Life inside the White House is far different from life inside a presidential campaign. The spotlight is brighter and scrutiny greater. While the posse in the White House pressroom is still slow to challenge Mr. Obama, ordinary people are forming their own judgments and they are increasingly negative.

Daniel Henninger at the WSJ offers some analysis on the slow-motion trainwreck in Will They Still Love Him Tomorrow?

It's early. A lot of Mr. Obama's centrist admirers are no doubt willing to wait for their moderate man to emerge. I don't think that will ever happen.

The moderates have nearly no presence in the administration, its agenda, or the congressional leadership. Maybe Larry Summers, on paper. The president likes to talk to moderates, but he doesn't ask too many to work for him. The internal exile of Paul Volcker speaks volumes. Obama can't keep the moderate-man conceit going indefinitely.

James Lewis, at American Thinker, lowers the political discourse with his article, At What Point Does a Liberal Become a Stalinist? The gall. But actually, it is a very reasoned, measured discussion.

The first adjective that comes to mind for "liberal" may be "touchy-feely." The best adjective for a Stalinist might be "murderous." That's a pretty big difference. I would never want to mistake a well-meaning liberal for a nasty Stalinist. At the same time, I hope we don't fail to spot any Stalinists who might be looking for mischief and pretending to be liberals.
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Don't look for Communists under every bed, but don't be foolish enough to ignore self-proclaimed Marxist Radicals who wish us ill. Keep your faith in the strength and common sense of the American people. Spread the truth, as you see it, and let others express theirs.

Good advice.

Friday Afternoon Cigar

We smoked a Santa Damiana as we prepared our Weekend Reading post this afternoon.

Open Carry at Obama's Townhall

We don't condone this at these events, but boy is it fun to watch ignorant liberals (MSNBC) get their panties in a bunch over the lawful display of a firearm.



So how many dead in today's event, now that we know it wasn't a gun-free zone?

UPDATE 8pm: Some commentary on the subject from the blogger at SayUncle:

When Josh Horwitz is not busy losing, he writes at the HuffPo. [link] His latest is that some of those Fascist / Nazi / KKK grand wizards / insurrectionists / insurance company lobbyists / racists / insert code word to induce left wing indignation / tea baggers / mobs / and, say, Emmanuel Lewis (for laughs) are carrying concealed weapons to meetings and such. Why, it seems that there have been a few cases of law-abiding concealed carry permit holders doing just that. This, he says, could lead to violence. Strange that it hasn’t yet.

Only violence I’ve seen is when a black tea partier was beaten up by raging Obamabots who chanted racist slurs and business man assaulted then threatened with arrest.

Yep

Huffpo link to Chris Matthews interview of the gun-toting protestor (and Ron Paul supporter), William Kostric. William did pretty good holding his ground with the loser Matthews.

Bunker Madness

Too frick'in funny, and it gets better in the last half.

Look for rightwing troublemakers wearing f*cking Brooks Brothers suits.
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Look for white people wearing nice f*cking Brooks Brothers gray or blue pinstriped suits who don't smell like Democrat protestors.
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I should have been a union thug boss.

Ahh, regrets...



80,000 hits in 5 days.

U/T: Doug at Knowledge is Power

Tipping Point?

Probably too early, but we've detected a change in tone from a couple WSJ editorial writers.

Dorothy Rabinowitz discusses "allusions to the secret police, the East German Stasi and Orwell" in today's paper, Obama's Tone-Deaf Health Campaign:

Crusades are busy endeavors, the enlistees in this one, like those in every undertaking of this White House, concerned with just one message. Which is that the Obama administration is in possession of vital answers to ills and inequities that have long afflicted American society (whether Americans know it or not), and that those opposed to those answers and that vision are cynics, or operatives of the powerful vested interests responsible for the plight Americans find themselves in (whether they know it or not), or political enemies bent on destroying the Obama administration.
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The president has a problem. For, despite a great election victory, Mr. Obama, it becomes ever clearer, knows little about Americans. He knows the crowds—he is at home with those. He is a stranger to the country’s heart and character.

He seems unable to grasp what runs counter to its nature. That Americans don’t take well, for instance, to bullying, especially of the moralizing kind, implicit in those speeches on health care for everybody. Neither do they wish to be taken where they don’t know they want to go and being told it’s good for them.
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It took this battle over health care to reveal the bloom coming off this rose, but that was coming. It began with the spectacle of the president, impelled to go abroad to apologize for his nation—repeatedly. It is not, in the end, the demonstrators in those town-hall meetings or the agitations of his political enemies that Mr. Obama should fear. It is the judgment of those Americans who have been sitting quietly in their homes, listening to him.

James Taranto once labeled as "right wing nuts" those who find similarities between Gorbechov's oversight of his country's destruction with Obama's. Always above it all. Or so we thought. His Best of the Web article yesterday, Obama's Authoritarian Style, suggests a new awareness.

...a disconcerting trend: The Obama administration, perhaps out of desperation, is increasingly adopting an authoritarian style of rhetoric.

Taranto reviews several Obama'isms that help him form this new assessment. Here is one: Obama's quote below was removed from his speech transcript in the official White House transcript.

I expect to be held responsible. But I don’t want the folks who created the mess to do a lot of talking. I want them to get out of the way so we can clean up the mess. I don’t mind cleaning up after them, but don’t do a lot of talking.

Just innocent revisionism, right?

Correction: Derailed

A new poster, with a familiar theme, is popping up in St. Louis. The significance of the Aug 22 date is unknown. Maybe a local Tea Party group? We'll post an update when we find out.

U/T: Dana Loesch

Stripped of the Hope and Change - Updated & Bumped

Not the Hope/Change poster we're used to.

Could someone else be thinking the same thing we do when we wear our sexy Commie Obama hat??

This poster has been seen in our old home town of Los Angeles. Nobody has taken responsibility, but we suspect Nathan Hale, or someone with the same character and values.

U/T: Newsbusters, Tammy Bruce, and Atlas Shrugged

UPDATE 8.4: So an LA/MSM article suggested the only thing missing from the Obama poster is a noose. The momentum on this story seems to be going the other way, and likely with more force with each lib comment. Links:

Jim Treacher has some fun with it.

Michelle Malkin recalls some images of Bush - here and here.

We found the missing noose - here, on Sarah Palin.

And Jim Treacher, in the same theme, suggests "Recursiveness" in his modified poster:

UPDATED 8.4 2:45: Found another at SondraK's site!

UPDATED 8.4 3:45: We couldn't resist...

UPDATED 8.4 3:55: Add a t-shirt to the momentum!

UPDATED 8.6: Cliff Kincaid applies the makeup to Commie Ayers:

UPDATED 8.6 4:50pm: Rusty at Jawa Report posted this pic today:

UPDATED 8.8: We found this several days ago, but do not remember where. Ugh.

UPDATED & BUMPED 8.10: The hits keep on coming! Found more at Moonbattery and FreeRepublic. Here are the most creative:

Our Favorite spinoff:

Swasticas: Rush Responds

Rush Limbaugh responded last Thursday to Speaker Pelosi's outrageous claim of anti-socialist protesters carrying swastikas at the recent rallies. It was a great rant that you can read by clicking here. (link lost - sorry)

Barack Obama is losing the trust of the American people. Another similarity, Obama is asking citizens to rat each other out like Hitler did. Obama's the one that's got the snitch website right out of the White House, flag@whitehouse.gov, asking citizens to report people who are saying weird, odd things. You know, the White House responds, "No, no, no, we're not taking names here. We're not taking names. We're just taking people who are putting up faulty arguments and refuting them." Well, that's not the intention.
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Barack Obama had earned the trust of a majority of Americans. Right or wrong, he was trusted. Those who looked at Obama with clear eyes, however, always knew he was something other than what Obama said he was in speeches and what the State-Controlled Media reported. We knew he wasn't post-partisan. Barack Obama was the Senate's most liberal member. His alliances and associations were exclusively with hard, left radicals. We knew he wasn't post-racial. No one sits in a racially divisive and bigoted church for 20 years without agreement with the message. But people wanted to believe. They hoped love at first sight was the real thing. The American people trusted Barack Obama, but that was then. After Obama's election he has begun to govern, and since he has begun to govern, it isn't just his poll numbers that have fallen. The trust the American people placed in Obama has eroded, and this is key, because if there is no trust with an individual, that person cannot lead. Trust me on this. Obama is losing America's trust.

Photo from Rush's site. Brilliant.

SEIU and Uppity Conservatives

Gateway Pundit has a short report from yesterday's tea-party protest outside SEIU's HQ in St. Louis. They met to protest the SEIU thug beating of black conservative Kenneth Gladney. Kenneth was attacked at a rally on Thursday. He attended yesterday in a wheel chair. Links: Report, and beating video.

It appears our side is hitting back twice as hard. Nice sign!

Pat Dollard links to an NRO article, and attaches this image and his headline, When The Community Organizes Against The Community Organizer.

When the community starts organizing against the organizer, the whole rigmarole goes to hell. Not that these extremists showing up at town-hall meetings are real members of the “community.” Have you noticed how tailored they are? Dissent is now the hautest form of couturism. Sen. Barbara Boxer has denounced dissenters from Obama’s health-care proposals as too “well-dressed” to be genuine. Only the emperor has new clothes. Everyone knows that.

UPDATE 815pm: From Mitch Stewart, Obama's propagandist, in an email this afternoon:

As you've probably seen in the news, special interest attack groups are stirring up partisan mobs with lies about health reform, and it's getting ugly. Across the country, members of Congress who support reform are being shouted down, physically assaulted, hung in effigy, and receiving death threats. We can't let extremists hijack this debate, or confuse Congress about where the people stand.

Burned in effigy? Death threats? We're not exaggerating a bit there Mitch, are we?

Comrades! Report Your Neighbors!

So the White House is asking us to report disinformation true statements about their healthcare socialization efforts?

Click here to see a whole bunch of creative images posted at The People's Cube.

Brilliant!

Karl's Weekend Reading

At Victor Davis Hanson's blog, Praire-Fire Anger. Some excerpts from the 4-pages of thoughts as to why the anger from freedom-loving Americans:

Evocation of “socialism” is still considered inflammatory by the Left, but it is now simply an empirical term, not a slur, given that America’s tax codes and entitlement spending may look like the social landscape in France or Scandinavia in short order.
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The zealotry of expansive bureaucracy and dependency instills fears, rational or not, of a radicalized huge federal work force, a sort of national version of Acorn to the nth degree that in pack-like fashion is mobilized to target potential naysayers.
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One senses that a number of the successful are already detaching themselves psychologically from the American scene—and figuring out how to reduce, shield, and avoid income. They often see themselves, if not in melodramatic fashion, as modern-day Kulaks, targeted for extinction by equality-of-result state, FICA, and federal tax hikes that may result in nearly 70% of their income going for the Obama New Deal.
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I confess that when I first read Dreams From My Father and The Audacity of Hope, first learned in depth about Trinity Church and its tirades about “black middle classness”, first studied the modus operandi of Obama’s state legislative campaigns and the mysterious implosions of both his primary and general election senatorial foes—all this belatedly in late 2006 and early 2007—I had little hope that he would prove to be anything other than the fossilized angry liberal that he is sadly proving to be.

But I erred in one key regard: I assumed his prepped oratory, youth and “cool”, transracial profile, media sycophants, and “Bush did it” excuses would ensure that his ratings stayed well above 60% at least through the midterm elections.

Daniel Henninger suggests many of Obama's original supporters have suffered two reality checks with the size and scope of the health care socialism push. Why Obama May Fail, in his WSJ article this week:

Taxpayers in New York, California and other states at the fiscal brink are asking whether they’d rather pay a jacked-up marginal rate unto death for another federal health-care program or pay taxes to support the quality of life where they live.

The newly arrived inhabitants of the Obama White House, who this week floated the possibility of middle-class taxes to pay for their deficit, talk as if the states don’t exist. Factoring in the “millionaire” health surtax, the Tax Foundation’s recent analysis puts the top marginal rate over 50% in 39 states. This is nuts. Even if they back off on the surtax, the health-care debate has made clear the needs and compulsions of this White House...
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For years, Democratic politicians said the health-care problem was about “47 million uninsured Americans.” Whatever the merits, many people were willing to do something for those with no health insurance. Suddenly, these voters discovered that ObamaCare is about them. When did that happen?

In the same WSJ, Karl Rove argues that politicians that let polls dictate their positions are rudderless. What happened to Hope and Change being the key values of our leaders??

...he is losing control of his agenda and resorting to rhetorical tricks and evasions.
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If some version of ObamaCare is passed, the president will break his tax pledge several more times while adding trillions to the deficit, dismantling the best elements of our health-care system and slashing Medicare by hundreds of billions of dollars.

There are no polling data or focus groups on earth that can help Mr. Obama out of this jam. He has set in motion events he appears unable to control and commitments he cannot keep. Great communicators succeed when the ideas they are communicating are sound. Tax-and-spend liberalism doesn’t work, no matter how pretty its package.

Vote Karl for Congress

A good use of repaid TARP money:

From the WSJ:

Congress plans to spend $550 million to buy eight jets, a substantial upgrade to the fleet used by federal officials at a time when lawmakers have criticized the use of corporate jets by companies receiving taxpayer funds.

The purchases will help accommodate growing travel demand by congressional officials. The planes augment a fleet of about two dozen passenger jets maintained by the Air Force for lawmakers, administration officials and military chiefs to fly on government trips in the U.S. and abroad.

The congressional shopping list goes beyond what the Air Force had initially requested as part of its annual appropriations.

Looking down your nose at the masses is easier from 40,000 feet...

Hitting back, twice as hard

Following their community organizer's orders to "hit back twice as hard", union thugs are now deployed at townhall meetings across the country.

This is disturbing video. Our reason to post is the same reason why Ushanka.us exists: There are a some brave Americans willing to stand up to tyranny. This is our tribute to them.

Kathy Castor - Healthcare Town Hall Meeting in Tampa - 8/6:



See more videos at: Sweetness & Light here & here, and at HotAir.

Fascism in the US

We hope this will be our only post with this title...

It appears the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, has equated those protesting the current health legislation as nazis. From the Speaker's mouth:



It also appears the continuously-campaigning president has created a couple logos to help in his socialized medicine efforts. These images from today's Sweetness & Light:

We found this 3-minute video today on YouTube. Obama's Brown Shirts, by DrDissent:



Found this at today's American Thinker:

We copied this image from Doug Ross' site a while back. Fitting, isn't it?

So, with all this finger-pointing and name-calling, which side is right?

Is it liberals or conservatives who gravitate to leader-worship and a strong, centralized government at the expense of the citizens' rights? We're so busy watching the socialized medicine debate we don't have time to ponder...

UPDATE 4:10pm: Phil Kerpen at Americans for Prosperity offers a rare 2-minute shot back from the right. It appears Rachel Maddow is still trying to explain away the phenomenon that is middle-America's revulsion to Obama's socialized medicine dream.



UPDATE 4:55pm: Rusty at the Jawa Report posted this today:

Bill and Kim - Our $0.02

The personal, the political, and the impact to national security:

Personal: What a relief to get our two hostages back after their kidnapping at the border and subsequent show trial. Kudo's to the former president - now his third accomplishment and the first that cannot be undone by Obama (the others: NAFTA and Welfare Reform). Welcome home Laura Ling and Euna Lee.

Political: The picture at the top is shameful despite what we got in return. The Townhall cartoon says it best:

National Security: It appears part of the visit was used to discuss the North's nuclear program and threatened sanctions. Notice the smile in the top pic? Gordon G. Chang, in Wednesday's WSJ, Mr. Clinton Goes to Pyongyang:

And now there may be one more reason for the regime to continue its alarming conduct. If Mr. Clinton is conducting any nuclear discussions he would be rewarding Pyongyang for jailing the two reporters and making them bargaining chips.

This matters because Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee were not Pyongyang’s only hostages. In March, North Korea detained Yu Song-jin, a South Korean manager working in the Kaesong industrial zone, for criticizing Kim’s paradise. Last week, a North Korean patrol boat seized a South Korean fishing vessel that accidentally strayed into the North’s waters, and Pyongyang is now keeping the four-member crew for no good reason. North Korea may be holding 100 or more Japanese abductees and at least 1,000 South Koreans, some of them prisoners from the Korean War and others kidnapped since then. More broadly, Kim uses all his 23 million people as hostages.