Conservatively Speaking

·       What Happened in Massachusett’s-Ted Election

·       Obama and Crew Have “White House-itis”

·       Danger From American Muslim Extremist

·       One Of Worst Years in Democrat Party History

·       Hysterics Over California Rains

Obscurantism (uhb-SKYOOR-uhn-tiz-uhm, ob-skyoo-RAN-tiz-uhm) noun:
1. Opposition to the spread of knowledge. 2. Being deliberately vague or obscure; also a style in art and literature.

ETYMOLOGY: From Latin obscurare (to make dark). USAGE:“Jean Kirkpatrick possessed the rare gift of being able to write subtle and challenging studies of international politics and to formulate strikingly simple and apt phrases to cut through obscurantism and cant.”

 

Obama gets MASS KICKING is on verge of contrition – but he’s still “right” – tells Setphanopolis.

A year to the day after occupying the White House Democrats awoke to the aftermath of a historic political earthquake as “TAXACHUSETTS”, the bluest of blue states, elected a Republican Senator for the first time since 1972. In the third repudiation in as many months Obama’s policies and practices were soundly  rejected and the seat held by Ted Kennedy for nearly half a century is now in the hands of a stalwart conservative, Scott Brown campaigned against Obamacare, deficit spending, un and underemployment, and mollycoddling of terrorists. The defeat means Democrats no longer have the 60^th vote to stop a legislation killing filibuster. Brown won decisively 52% to 47% and Coakley quickly conceded.

Even before the results are final there is virtually a stampede away from Obama’s agenda sending ripples through the nation for instance:

·         Senator Webb (D) Va. demanded a slowdown saying no more votes should be taken on healthcare until Brown is seated. There has been talk of a political fight to delay Brown’s seating.

·         Democrats fearing their own political futures in the 2010 elections are demanding moderation and an end to secret talks on Obamacare.

·         It’s unclear how much the impending defeat impacted Erroll Southers, President Obama’s nominee to lead the Transportation Security Administration, to withdrawn his name from consideration. He was opposed because of a belief he would unionize TSA workers and because he lied on his application.

Residual hubris kicked in as the so often belligerent White House senior adviser David Axelrod urged Obama to order full speed ahead. Obama’s former campaign manager, David Plouffe, added on Wednesday’s “Good Morning America”: “I’m very confident we can pass health-care reform.” Democratic leaders insisted they planned to press ahead with health reform, and met late into Tuesday night in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. But they made no decisions about how to proceed.

The Drudge Report headlined a photo of Brown in his 200,000 miles pickup truck asking “Will he run for President?”

A few are speculated that Republicans could switch the more than 40 seats to take majority in the House, and kick out the unlikable Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) San Francisco.

It wasn’t clear Tuesday night how Democrats could now pass Obamacare, or how hard the White House is prepared to push. A statement by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs announcing that President Barack Obama called Coakley and Brown made no mention of health reform.

Their options are few, and extremely complex, mostly involving legislative tactics that would be difficult to pull off in the best of circumstances, let alone at a time when members are worried they could be the next Martha Coakley – a seeming Democratic shoo-in laid low, in large part, by health reform.

Concerned liberals nationwide are counseling a more sophrosyne approach.

Homosexual U.S. Rep. Barney Frank, when asked whether Coakley’s recent dip in the polls was related to sentiments about President Obama, quipped, “President Obama is not Martha Coakley in drag.”

NEWSMAX’S Ron Kessler write, “(L)ongtime White House aides have a name for it: “White House-itis.”

It’s a malady of arrogance that grips presidents and their aides as everyone they come in contact with bows and scrapes before them. 

What else explains the Obama administration’s transparent disregard for the truth?

The latest example was an opinion piece by David Axelrod, Obama’s senior adviser, in The Washington Post. Axelrod took Karl Rove to task for saying that congressional Democrats “will run up more debt by October than Bush did in eight years.”

Axelrod compared the $236 billion budget surplus President Bush inherited from President Bill Clinton with what he said was a $1.3 trillion deficit Bush handed Obama.

Not once did Axelrod refer to Obama’s wild spending spree that has dwarfed the Bush deficits, which were caused in part by the war on terror and the Iraq war.

Axelrod did not mention that most of the deficit he attributed to Bush was a projection of spending Obama initiated. He did not mention that Democrats have raised discretionary spending by 24 percent, not counting the stimulus package of $787 billion. Nor did he mention the fact that Obama’s binge spending will lead to an increase in the national debt to 76 percent of the gross domestic product by 2019, the highest proportion in 60 years.

If that took chutzpah, it was par for the course for Obama and his aides, who said that Fox News is not a news organization, when anyone who has watched the network knows it is.

In the same vein, Obama repeatedly claims that his healthcare proposal will save money and “bend the cost curve” of rising healthcare premiums. He is right — in the opposite direction. The Democrats’ plan would not only raise premiums, it would raise taxes while reducing the quality and availability of healthcare.

Just as regularly, Obama expresses regret for not making Washington more bipartisan, yet he laces his speeches with gratuitous swipes at Republicans and excludes them from healthcare planning sessions. 

Clearly, Obama and his aides have a bad case of White House-itis. As noted in my book “In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes With Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect,” no one can imagine what it means to be president and how easily the power of the office corrupts. 

To be in command of the most powerful country on earth, to be able to fly anywhere at a moment’s notice on Air Force One, to be able to grant almost any wish, to take action that affects the lives of millions, is such a heady, intoxicating experience that only people with the most stable personalities and well-developed values can handle it. 

Simply inviting a friend to a White House party or having a secretary place a call and announce that “the White House is calling” has such a profound effect on people that presidents and White House aides must constantly remind themselves that they are mortal.

“The White House is a character crucible,” Bertram S. Brown, M.D., a psychiatrist who formerly headed the National Institute of Mental Health and was an aide to President John F. Kennedy, tells me. “It either creates or distorts character. Few decent people want to subject themselves to the kind of grueling abuse candidates take when they run in the first place,” says Dr. Brown, who has seen in his practice many top Washington politicians and White House aides.

“Many of those who run crave superficial celebrity. They are hollow people who have no principles and simply want to be elected,” Dr. Brown says. 

“Even if an individual is balanced, once someone becomes president, how does one solve the conundrum of staying real and somewhat humble when one is surrounded by the most powerful office in the land, and from becoming overwhelmed by an at times pathological environment that treats you every day as an emperor? 

“Here is where the true strength of the character of the person, not his past accomplishments, will determine whether his presidency ends in accomplishment or failure.”

Thus, unless a president comes to the office with exceptionally strong character, the crushing force of the office and the adulation the chief executive receives can lead to arrogance and disaster.

Axelrod closed his Washington Post article by saying that “the course correction that was so badly needed after the previous administration has begun in earnest.” With those words, Axelrod emulated the arrogance of his boss, who often speaks of reducing the deficit while he piles on more spending. 

Only those infected by an extreme case of White House-itis would have the gall to make such claims in the face of the administration’s record, which threatens to bankrupt the country. 

The foregoing is by Ronald Kessler chief Washington correspondent of Newsmax.com.

My own experience now with some 350 candidates and politicians at all levels pretty much confirms Brown’s views.  Narcacism is the least of sins for most politicians. Morally the worst was a Tennessee candidate who ambushed his opponent blowing his head off with a deer rifle. But, the alltime ass was Ohio Congressman Wayne L. Hayes.. Happily there have been exceptions who did not succumb to the various “itis” maladies – I judge those to be about 10%.

Asperity (ah-SPER-i-tee) noun: Harshness or roughness. ETYMOLOGY:Via French from Latin asper (rough).

In the past two years, more than 30 American Muslim extremists have been arrested in U. S. on various terror-related charges including providing material support to terrorists and plotting to plant bombs in the U.S., the Anti-Defamation League reports. Since 9-11 there have been a reported 139 such incidents involving foreign and domestic Muslims and one third of those in the past year.

The organization’s magazine, ADL on the Frontline, warns in its winter 2010 issue that these extremists, “who have domestic addresses and U.S. passports, constitute a growing terrorist threat in the United States.”

That threat came into focus in November when authorities say Virginia-born Muslim Nidal Malik Hasan opened fire at Fort Hood, Texas, leaving 13 dead and 29 wounded.

Two months earlier, American Muslim convert Michael Finton was charged with attempting to bomb the federal courthouse in Springfield, Ill.

That same month, Najibullah Zazi, a U.S. permanent resident, was charged with conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction in the U.S. Officials believe he was plotting to blow up commuter trains.

“An alarming number of recent plots and conspiracies have involved, or been led by, American Muslim extremists,” said ADL National Director Abraham Foxman.

“It is a troubling reminder of the broad problem of increased radicalization among a small subset of the domestic Muslim population. Many of these extremists are fueled by hatred of Jews, Israel, and America, and have been influenced, to some degree, by the ideologies of extreme intolerance propagated by terrorist movements overseas,” he added. 

Most Muslim extremists in the U.S. are American-born converts to Islam, first-generation Americans, or naturalized U.S. citizens or permanent residents, according to the ADL.

They share the belief that they are fighting against a Western enemy that victimizes Muslims around the world.

One factor fueling the threat is the increased availability on the Internet of extremist propaganda in English. This material, previously available largely in Arabic, might include instructions for carrying out suicide bombings.

Al-Qaida has an American spokesman, Adam Yahiye Gadahn, who converted to Islam and creates English-language videos inviting others to join the movement. One of his videos called America and Israel “forces of evil.”

Terrorist organizations also publish online magazines in English, the ADL noted. Last year the Al Mosul Islamic Network released what it called an “English jihad magazine,” which called for Allah to “destroy the enemies of Islam . . . the Jews, Christians, atheists, and the betraying criminals.”

Oren Segal, the ADL’s director of Islamic affairs, said ominously: “There are several Muslim extremist groups trying to raise their profile in America. The more support these groups get, the more influential they can become.

“We’ve got a serious problem that’s growing, and promises to keep growing.”

Critics of the Jewish organization points to its defiant clenched fist logo saying it is adamantly anti-Islam, and is raising false alarms or at least exaggerating the threat. Supporters say Obama has a pro-Islam tilt is dangerous and such claims come from anti-JDL groups are from the southern end of a north bound horse.

The heaviest snowfall in over 60 years is being reported in Beijing, China. To give you an idea of how bad it is, the army is now using snowplows to run over dissidents.—Leno

Political analyst Charlie Cook says the terms “gruesome” and “psychologically devastating” come to mind when he considers the political developments for Democrats over the last few weeks.

In his “Off to the Races” column for National Journal’s CongressDaily site, Cook points to these developments:

·         Within a matter of hours on Jan. 5, Sen. Byron Dorgan of North Dakota and Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, both Democrats, announced that they would not seek re-election in November.

·         The same day, Michigan Lt. Gov. John Cherry, the all-but-certain Democratic pick for governor, “decided his party’s nomination wasn’t worth having” and withdrew from the race.

·         Then came revelations about Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s 2008 comments about candidate Barack Obama, referring to him as “light-skinned” with “no Negro dialect.”

·         These setbacks followed the announcements in December that Democratic Reps. Dennis Moore of Kansas, Brian Baird of Washington, and Bart Gordon and John Tanner of Tennessee would not seek re-election.

·         And on Dec. 22, Rep. Parker Griffith of Alabama announced that he had switched from Democrat to Republican.

Each post that was Democratic will not necessarily be Republican after November, Cook observes.

But “it’s the collective traumatic impact of these Democratic setbacks that causes the most damage, potentially moving other incumbents to decide to retire, undermining recruiting and chilling party fundraising, which until now has gone quite well.”

Cook predicted that Democrats will lose from 20 to 30 House seats in November, not the 40 the GOP needs for a majority.

In the Senate, Democrats will likely lose from four to six seats, including the one left open by Dorgan, according to Cook.

He said the most vulnerable senators, in addition to Reid, are Michael Bennet in Colorado, Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas, Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania, and Barbara Boxer in California.

Chrysler is recalling 22,000 vehicles that’s good news – at least they actually made and sold that many.

It’s been raining in Southern California causing mudslides in the burn areas denuded by recent wildfires that ripped through Santa Barbara and Ventura counties north of LA. But it is nothing like the flash flood that could literally shoot off the hills along the Ohio River, and of course the nearly annual river floods of years ago when it was routine to see a garage or house float by.

Thirty years ago I moved to California and noticed an almost complete lack of adequate storm sewers and that every time even an inch of rain falls streets and highways flood and hydroplaning cars and trucks are the rule rather than the exception.

Perhaps the cat is the most inconvenienced as I have unlimbered my Texas slicker, Panhandle slim hat and boots for their annual moistening.

Otherwise after three decades little has changed

The war of late night words reached a crescendo in recent days with more nastiness than a political race. The exception is the “loser”, Conan Obrien, will pocket $40 million.