A very interesting article from the New York Times regarding conservatives’ efforts to find an acceptable Presidential nominee, with a central focus on the Council for National Policy (full disclosure: I’m a member of CNP’s Board of Governors). A most interesting read.

Full text after the jump. Original link here.

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Surprise surprise: big majorities favor winning in Iraq before any pullout, and think the Democrats are going too far in their opposition to the war. That’s the finding of a new national survey, one which you’ll no doubt hear nothing about on the nightly news.

And oh by the way: violence in Baghdad is down a whopping 80% since the surge began, according to Army sources. You won’t hear that one from the MSM either.

Full results of the poll after the jump.

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Jonathan Livingston Obama
By: Ann Coulter

I’ve caught Obama fever! Obamamania, Obamarama, Obama, Obama, Obama. (I just pray to God this is clean, renewable electricity I’m feeling.)

Only white guilt could explain the insanely hyperbolic descriptions of Obama’s “eloquence.” His speeches are a run-on string of embarrassing, sophomoric Hallmark bromides.

In announcing his candidacy last week, Obama confirmed that he believes in “the basic decency of the American people.” And let the chips fall where they may!

Obama forthrightly decried “a smallness of our politics” — deftly slipping a sword into the sides of the smallness-in-politics advocates. (To his credit, he somehow avoided saying, “My fellow Americans, size does matter.”)

He took a strong stand against the anti-hope crowd, saying: “There are those who don’t believe in talking about hope.” Take that, Hillary!

Most weirdly, he said: “I recognize there is a certain presumptuousness in this — a certain audacity — to this announcement.”

What is so audacious about announcing that you’re running for president? Any idiot can run for president. Dennis Kucinich is running for president. Until he was imprisoned, Lyndon LaRouche used to run for president constantly. John Kerry ran for president. Today, all you have to do is suggest a date by which U.S. forces in Iraq should surrender, and you’re officially a Democratic candidate for president.

Obama made his announcement surrounded by hundreds of adoring Democratic voters. And those were just the reporters. There were about 400 more reporters at Obama’s announcement than Mitt Romney’s, who, by the way, is more likely to be sworn in as our next president than B. Hussein Obama.

Obama has locked up the Hollywood money. Even Miss America has endorsed Obama. (John “Two Americas” Edwards is still hoping for the other Miss America to endorse him.)

But Obama tells us he’s brave for announcing that he’s running for president. And if life gives you lemons, make lemonade!

I don’t want to say that Obama didn’t say anything in his announcement, but afterward, even Jesse Jackson was asking, “What did he say?” There was one refreshing aspect to Obama’s announcement: It was nice to see a man call a press conference this week to announce something other than he was the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby.

B. Hussein Obama’s announcement also included this gem: “I know that I haven’t spent a lot of time learning the ways of Washington. But I’ve been there long enough to know that the ways of Washington must change.” As long as Obama insists on using Hallmark card greetings in his speeches, he could at least get Jesse Jackson to help him with the rhyming.

If Obama’s biggest asset is his inexperience, then if by the slightest chance he were elected and were to run for a second term, he will have to claim he didn’t learn anything the first four years.

There was also this inspirational nugget: “Each and every time, a new generation has risen up and done what’s needed to be done. Today we are called once more, and it is time for our generation to answer that call.” Is this guy running for president or trying to get people to switch to a new long-distance provider?

He said that “we learned to disagree without being disagreeable.” (There goes Howard Dean’s endorsement.) This was an improvement on the first draft, which read, “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.”

This guy’s like the ANWR of trite political aphorisms. There’s no telling exactly how many he’s sitting on, but it could be in the billions.

Obama’s famed eloquence reminds me of a book of platitudes I read about once called “Life Lessons.” The book contained such inspiring thoughts as:

“When was the last time you really looked at the sea? Or smelled the morning? Touched a baby’s hair? Really tasted and enjoyed food? Walked barefoot in the grass? Looked in the blue sky?” (When was the last time you fantasized about dismembering the authors of a book of platitudes?)

I can’t wait for Obama’s inaugural address when he reveals that he loves long walks in the rain, sunsets, and fresh-baked cookies shaped like puppies.

The guy I feel sorry for is Harold Ford. The former representative from Tennessee is also black, a Democrat, about the same age as Obama, and is every bit as attractive. The difference is, when he talks, you don’t fantasize about plunging knitting needles into your ears to stop the gusher of meaningless platitudes.

Ford ran as a Democrat in Republican Tennessee and almost won — and the press didn’t knock out his opponent for him by unsealing sealed divorce records, as it did for B. Hussein Obama. Yet no one ever talks about Ford as the second coming of Cary Grant and Albert Einstein.

Maybe liberals aren’t secret racists expunging vast stores of white guilt by hyperventilating over B. Hussein Obama. Maybe they’re just running out of greeting card inscriptions.

Some should tell Nancy Pelosi that playing politics with our national security is not the way a House speaker ought to behave.

Pelosi’s latest move in that direction was making William “the Fridge” Jefferson of Louisiana a member of the House Homeland Security Committee. Yes, that’s the same William Jefferson who’s the subject of a continuing federal corruption investigation. A year-and-a-half ago, subpoenas were served on Jefferson’s office and the FBI found $90,000 in cash stashed in his freezer at home.

Last summer, in the middle of an election year when she was labeling the GOP Congress corrupt, Pelosi removed Jefferson from the Ways and Means Committee. Now, with her party having won the midterm elections, she’s shown her true colors in moving Jefferson to Homeland Security.

Pelosi’s cavalier attitude on national security was also on display when she was reportedly considering Alcee Hastings of Florida to head the House Intelligence Committee. Hastings was a federal district court judge who was charged with accepting a $150,000 bribe in exchange for a lenient sentence for two men who had been convicted of 21 counts of racketeering. He was later impeached by the House, but responded as any self-respecting sociopath would — by running for and then winning a seat in the House.

The ensuing uproar over the prospect of an impeached judge running an intelligence committee forced the new speaker to withdraw his name publicly from consideration. Pelosi’s new choice for the intel committee? Sylvester Reyes. This is the same Sylvester Reyes who, when asked whether Al Qaida was a Shi’ite or a Sunni group, implied he didn’t know the answer and then foolishly blurted out, “Shi’ite.”

Clearly, when it comes to national security (not to mention other matters), it’s time for Nancy Pelosi to grow up and to take the responsibilities of her new job seriously.

Mainline American Protestantism, when its elites were still theologically orthodox, viewed the United States as a providential instrument for prosperity and freedom. But after its elites abandoned traditional Christianity for a plethora of radical ideologies, it discovered that America is actually “demonic.”

The recently published “American Empire and the Commonwealth of God” vividly illustrates the cosmological hatred that mainline Protestant elites, especially in academia, now reserve for their country. “Empire” is a project of the Presbyterian Church (USA) publishing house, Westminster John Knox Press.

Authored by three theologians from United Methodist seminaries, with help from a Jewish professor of law from Princeton, “American Empire” asserts that the United States is the “primary threat to the survival of the human species (along with that of may other species as well).” At least one of the authors argued that America is worse than Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, and all four writers rejoiced in resistance to the “empire,” whether it is from communist Cuba, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, or various Islamic dictatorships.

Ultimately, the authors believed, the only effective restraint to the American “fascist” empire is a world government. The three theologians, with seeming sympathy from the Jewish law professor, rejected traditional Jewish and Christian concepts of an omnipotent God. Instead, they advocated a “process theology,” in which the deity is constantly evolving in reaction to human and natural events.

Not surprisingly, the authors of “Empire” faulted the supposed oppressions of the American imperial project on traditional Judaism and Christianity, which rely on the Bible’s supposedly dangerous notions of God as King and Lord. The authors’ brand of “process” religion depends on liberation theology, feminist theology, and eco-theology, they gladly acknowledged.

How else can the American Empire be stopped, unless God is reinvented, the authors grumbled.

“A theology of omnipotence electrifies the halo of American domination,” fretted author Catherine Keller, a theologian at Drew University’s seminary in New Jersey. “Might it be the very doctrine of divine omnipotence that charges the halo with its holy electricity?” she wondered.

Unfortunately, “even many thoughtful people assume that faith requires some big guy in the sky,” Keller complained. But more preferably, she opined that “God is called upon not as a unilateral superpower but as a relational force, not an omnipotent creator from nothing, imposing order upon inert entities, but the lure to a self-organizing complexity…”

Similarly, fellow “Empire” author John Cobb, a celebrated process theologian at Claremont School of Theology in California, excoriated the mindless Christians who “worship a cosmic ruler who came to earth to save them and sanction their country.” More intelligent Christians, like the dwindling numbers of students at radical seminaries, will look to the “actual message of Jesus” and help reverse the “headlong plunge of our nation into the lust for world domination.”

Of course, George W. Bush, who once named Jesus as his “favorite philosopher, is among these thoughtless Christians, Cobb readily asserted. But the process theologian is non-partisan in his contempt for America. He warned that the “goals of the dominant faction in the Democratic party are not so different from those of the Republicans.” The only difference is that Democrats will pursue “multilateral methods” that make “American hegemony more acceptable and secure greater support from others,” which helps to reduce the costs of empire.

Princeton professor of law Richard Falk easily agreed with Cobb, noting the absence of any “mainstream alternative” in either political party to the “fascist implications” of the Bush-Cheney worldview. The epithet “global fascism” applies with equal validity to the extremism of jihadists and the proponents of American empire,” Falk equitably concluded. Llikewise, the mainstream media in the U.S. is untroubled by “the national readiness to commit mass suicide and engage in terrorism on a grand scale.”

“Terrorism” is natural for the American hegemon, observed author David Ray Griffin, a professor at Claremont School of Theology and a 9-11 conspiracist who believes the Bush Administration, and not al Qaeda, blew up the World Trade Center and torched the Pentagon. After all, American history is rooted in the “extermination” of about ten million Native Americans and another ten million African slaves. Its blood thurst still unsated, the United States, as fascist lord of “global apartheid,” now murders about 150 million citizens of the planet every decade, making it far more genocidal than any other tyranny in world history. Characteristic of his careful scholarship, Griffin derived these figures from his assumption that ALL deaths everywhere relating to poverty are the responsibility of the United States.

America’s ongoing global genocide might get worse. The human race is on a “trajectory towards self-annihilation through human-caused climate change,” which naturally is made in America. But all is not gloom and doom for these troubled theologians. They see in Jesus the antidote to American fascism. Griffin rejected the central Christian idea that Jesus bodily rose from the dead, which was actually a doctrine that the church contrived decades after Jesus’ death. Instead, Jesus had a spiritual “resurrection” over the demonic power of the Roman Empire.

Similarly, this Jesus, who is now recognizable as a feminist eco-theologian, will motivate a new generation of faithful apostles to rally against America’s global fascist empire. “For Christians in this country to denounce and work against the America empire will, of course, require courage, because we may be subjected to one of the many contemporary forms of crucifixion,” Griffin nonetheless warned. “It is good, therefore, that we have our resurrection faith.” Except this “resurrection” is, for Griffin, not a real thing, but merely a helpful political metaphor.

“The American Empire and the Commonwealth of God” was being sold by the United Methodist Publishing House at an annual Methodist Congress on Evangelism that I attended last month. But the book seemed to be untouched by the hundreds of Methodist evangelists and pastors streaming by, who were more attentive to the conference’s simplistic Gospel preachers. These naïfs, evidently lacking enlightenment, spoke of a bodily resurrection rather than the “resurrection” into eco-feminist consciousness for which Griffin et al hope.

This begged the question. If theologians write a book, and almost nobody reads it, did the book really happen? Likewise, religious Americans are largely tuning out the tired voices of 1960’s era protest religion, with its endless harangues, indecipherable conspiracies and self-contempt. Mainline Protestant elites may have collapsed into insensibility. But their audience has thankfully moved on to better performances.

(1) When asked about his ideology, if a politician answers, “I’m a fiscal conservative,” chances are (a) he’s socially liberal and (b) either he is not a fiscal conservative or he will abandon his fiscal conservatism when the going gets tough.

(2) It’s been said that as people get older they become more conservative.  That’s true, unless they live in Washington.

(3) Watching liberal Republican blue bloods trying to “out-liberal” the Democrats on issues like abortion and gay marriage is like watching a group of 80-year-olds trying to be “hip” by frantically inserting nose rings while lining up for tattoos.  They look pathetic and you almost feel sorry for them…..(Well, almost….)

(4) Why are liberals called “progressives?”  What is so progressive about opposing the most creative, dynamic economic system in history, one that thrives on freedom and has lifted more people out of poverty and hopelessness than any other in history?

(5) Those who panic about global warming make as much sense as a person who after seeing the sun set, worries that it may never rise again. 

(6) Despite all the talk about “natural” being better, you’re still more likely to get sick from nature than from anything we’ve done to it.  Bacteria and viruses continue to cause far more illness than the products we create or the processes by which we create them.

(7) At the heart of modern environmentalism is a colossal contradiction:  On the one hand, it criticizes people for what they do to nature.  On the other hand, it denies that people are anything but a part of nature.  Why criticize what we’re doing to nature if we’re simply obeying nature’s call?  

(8) How can secular liberals be more compassionate than religious conservatives if they give less money than religious conservatives do to charity? 

(9) The key to being happy is lowering your expectations and demands.  This way, when good things happen, you’re grateful and surprised and when bad things happen, you’re better able to handle them. 

(10) The worst ambulance chasers aren’t lawyers.  They’re politicized preachers looking to inject race into every quarrel among people

Liberals seize every opportunity to compare Iraq to Vietnam, for reasons that seem self-explanatory to those who’ve carelessly embraced the media spin about both conflicts.

Liberals do this at their peril. Vietnam and Iraq are indeed similar, but not in the way the left would have us believe.

Here are five examples of the striking similarities between them, not one of them favorable to the denizens of the left:

(1) Both in Vietnam and in Iraq, America’s military was fighting with at least one hand tied behind its back. As is often the case when a democracy goes to war, concerns about civilian casualties and world opinion restrained our forces from delivering a knock-out blow to the enemy.

(2) In both wars, partly for geopolitical reasons, our military was prevented from going after the regimes that were behind much of the trouble. In Vietnam, the North Vietnamese regime was terrorizing South Vietnam via the Viet Cong and in Iraq, the Syrians and Iranians are terrorizing the democratically elected government and the people via the homegrown insurgents and the foreign terrorists who infiltrated that land with their blessing.

(3) In both conflicts, there were serious mistakes made in executing plans for victory. In the case of Vietnam, politics barred our forces until almost the end from going directly after North Vietnam’s military infrastructure in a sustained way. In the case of Iraq, politics stopped our military from occupying the Sunni Triangle after Saddam’s overthrow. Had we done so, we could have nipped the insurgency in the bud. (Mark Steyn fans may recall his witty piece about his trip to Fallujah right after Saddam fell. Once the people discovered he was American, they treated him the way a frightened Old West town treated a feared gunman, with infinite deference and respect.)

(4) In both cases, America’s media provided saturation coverage of every misstep and miscalculation and little coverage of our military’s many successes, military and otherwise, with the passage of time. The most egregious example in Vietnam was the 1968 Tet Offensive, which began as a massive Viet Cong push that threatened to overrun U.S. military headquarters, but ended with American forces counterattacking and then virtually decimating the VC. The media breathlessly reported the enemy’s early successes but not our ultimate and dramatic victory. In Iraq, the media’s sin is an abject failure to report the strong, steady progress in all but a portion of Iraq, including the building of a genuine civil society, especially in the non-Sunni areas.

(5) In both wars, despite numerous obstacles and its own share of errors, America’s military was poised for victory, not defeat. In the case of Vietnam, it had virtually destroyed the Viet Cong and was taking the fight directly to the North Vietnamese when Congress cut off funds. In Iraq, it defeated Saddam’s armies and deposed the mass-murdering dictator in a matter of weeks. It has since continued to foil the Sunni minority, who had tyrannized the majority during Saddam’s reign, from its many attempts to destroy the fledgling Iraqi democracy since it was instituted.

So if the left wants to compare Iraq to Vietnam, I say let’s do it. In so doing, it refutes its own cherished ideas and beliefs, while vindicating those of principled conservatives.

As usual, on-the-ground economic facts trump the conventional liberal wisdom promoted by the usual suspects — the media and the current leadership in Congress.

The following Heritage Foundation Backgrounder summarizes and then debunks ten of the most popular economic myths that the left would have us believe.

Continue reading ‘Refuting the Revisionists on Bush’s Tax Cuts’

Joe Lieberman — the former Democrat VP nominee and Connecticut Senator whom MoveOn borked for disagreeing with them on precisely one issue* — rides to the rescue of all that is sane. With Dumocrats in full cry to defund the troops and leave Iraq to al Qaeda (their favored foreign policy solutions always involve America’s defeat), Lieberman — the “independent” on whom the Dem majority rests — made clear today that any such attempt may well be met with a Senate control-switching response.

Should Lieberman get angry enough, his vote plus Dick Cheney’s gives the Senate back to the Republicans. And should he need the chairmanship of the Armed Services Committee to help him get that angry, well, we’d love to see it happen.

Now: let’s see if McConnell and Lott can handle this as well as Lott’s opponents (in 2001) handled Jim Jeffords. And let’s all thank Joe Lieberman for proving you can be a Democrat and a patriot. We were beginning to wonder.

* Well, I say only one issue (the war). In reality there appear to have been two. Throughout the campaign to defeat Lieberman in his primary, the left-wing bloggers never missed a chance to smear the Senator from Connecticut as “Jew Lieberman” and demean him with other such racist, anti-Semitic epithets. But then, what would you expect from the party of tolerance?

White House wreath placed in honor of Ronald Reagan’s birthday

JEFF WILSON
Associated Press
SIMI VALLEY, Calif. - Former President Ronald Reagan was remembered in a ceremony Tuesday on what he would have called another anniversary of his 39th birthday.

Former Attorney General Edwin Meese III and Col. James B. Seaton III, commanding officer of the Marine Corps’ Camp Pendleton, placed a wreath of white roses on behalf of President Bush at Reagan’s grave at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Museum.

Bush said in a proclamation that the wreath and military honors were sent “in tribute to his distinguished service to a grateful nation.”

Two World War II vintage military aircraft flew over the ceremony and Marines offered a 21-gun salute.

Reagan, who died on June 5, 2004, at 93 after a 10-year battle with Alzheimer’s disease, was remembered by Meese as a Cold War warrior for his “peace-through-strength” mantra. Meese said Reagan led the United States out of a national malaise and ended the Cold War.

“He had integrity,” Meese said. “And he had perseverance…. We celebrate the legacy of Ronald Reagan.”

Seaton told the crowd of about 600 seated on a sunny lawn near the grave that Reagan was an inspiration to the Marine Corps during his presidency and that legacy lives on today as the military faces adversaries in Iraq.

“America didn’t become great because we took the easy road,” the colonel said.

Former first lady Nancy Reagan, reported feeling a bit under the weather and reserving her energy for an evening library fundraiser honoring former President George H.W. Bush, said in a statement that her husband would have enjoyed the tributes.

“It’s hard to believe that Ronnie would have been 96 years old today,” Mrs. Reagan said. “I know he would have been thrilled to see the military band and color guard, the Naval Academy Glee Club and the flyover at his library today, and he would have been touched that so many of his old friends are coming to celebrate on his behalf.”

On Tuesday night, Mrs. Reagan planned to present former President Bush with the 2007 Ronald Reagan Freedom Award during a gala at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

The award is given to those who “have contributed greatly to the cause of freedom worldwide.” Past recipients include Colin Powell, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Jordan’s King Hussein, Lady Margaret Thatcher, the Rev. Billy Graham, Bob Hope and Rudolph Giuliani.

“George was not only my husband’s dedicated vice president, but he was also Ronnie’s loyal friend,” Mrs. Reagan said in a statement.

“Working closely with Ronald Reagan was one of the great joys of my life, and receiving this prestigious Reagan Freedom Award is something I will treasure always,” former President Bush said in a statement.

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