Tag: Barack Obama

Obama’s delusional demand for Air Force a gift for ISIL

by Douglas Ernst 5 Comments

Obama hands AP image

President Obama has a demand for U.S. Air Force personnel that is so delusional that it is hard not to question his mental health. The Islamic State group hides among civilians. It holds large swathes of territory in Iraqi and Syrian cities. Mr. Obama, however, expects the U.S. Air Force to prosecute an air campaign with zero civilian casualties.

Rep. Ed Royce, R-California, told the Washington Free Beacon Nov. 18 that roughly 75 percent of the clear shots on ISIL targets are called off due to the president’s rules of engagement.

“You went 12 full months while ISIS was on the march without the U.S. using that air power and now as the pilots come back to talk to us they say three-quarters of our ordnance we can’t drop, we can’t get clearance even when we have a clear target in front of us,” Rep. Royce, chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said. “I don’t understand this strategy at all because this is what has allowed ISIS the advantage and ability to recruit.”

Things got downright scary when retired four-star U.S. general Jack Keane detailed the president’s impossible demand:

He told the Free Beacon:

“When we agreed we were going to do air power and the military said, this is how it would work, he [Obama] said, ‘No, I do not want any civilian casualties.’ And the response was, ‘But there’s always some civilian casualties. We have the best capability in the world to protect from civilians casualties.’ [Obama’s response], ‘No, you don’t understand. I want no civilian casualties. Zero.’ So that has driven our so-called rules of engagement to a degree we have never had in any previous air campaign from desert storm to the present.”

If the president of the United States is not willing to seriously use ground troops — if he is reliant on air strikes for his anti-ISIL strategy to succeed — he cannot realistically ask the U.S. Air Force for zero civilian casualties.

Mr. Obama is either completely detached from reality, or militarily twiddling his thumbs until his time in office ends. Instead of showing real leadership against an enemy who quickly adapts to changing battlefield conditions, the president seems content to vote “present” on the world stage.

The safety and security of the American people has now been abdicated to men like Russian President Vladimir Putin. Mr. Obama asked for an then accepted a job he was ill-equipped to handle. His fantasy-land demands for the U.S. military will result in dead Americans (possibly on U.S. soil), and when that happens much of the blame will rest on his shoulders.

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Obama: “ISIL is not ‘Islamic,'” but let’s talk about ‘terrible deeds in the name of Christ’

by Douglas Ernst 19 Comments

Obama prayer breakfast APPresident Obama gave an address to the nation on September 10, 2014 in which he said “ISIL is not ‘Islamic.'” Today, at the annual National Prayer Breakfast, he reminded the world of that by oddly mentioning people who “committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” during the Crusades.

Only days after the Islamic State group began burning its victims alive, and only days after Boko Haram did the exact same thing in Cameroon (90 civilians slaughtered), Mr. Obama decided it was the perfect time to wag his finger at Christians over … the Crusades. Oddly enough, none of the president’s speechwriters thought it would be a good idea to remind him that the Crusades were born out of the need to push back against Islamic empire-building.

The Associated Press reported Thursday:

The president said that while religion is a source for good around the world, people of all faiths have been willing to “hijack religion for their own murderous ends.”

“Unless we get on our high horse and think that this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” Obama said. “In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.

“So it is not unique to one group or one religion,” Obama said. “There is a tendency in us, a simple tendency that can pervert and distort our faith.”

Islamic radical terrorist groups are chopping off heads and burning men alive in 2015, and president Obama’s brilliant idea is to start erroneously lecturing audiences on battles that took place around 1100. Worst of all, the man bends over backward to not mention Islam in connection with Islamic terrorist groups, and yet he is quick to throw out Christ’s name to admonish Christians. To rub salt in their wounds, it’s coming from a man who sat in “Reverend” Jeremiah “God d**n America! Dat’s in-da Bible!” Wright’s church for 20 years.

In Mr. Obama’s mind, the Crusades just sprang up out of nowhere. In Mr. Obama’s mind, Christians just marched off to Jerusalem to kill Muslims for no apparent reason. He believes it is inappropriate to call terrorism committed in the name of Islam “Islamic terrorism,” but it is appropriate lay guilt trips on Americans for the actions of the first settlers (never mind the fact that slavery in some form or another was practiced in all cultures throughout the history of mankind until Western Civilization took control).

The Spanish Inquisition claimed around 3,000 lives — or, put another way, 23 more than those lost during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The point isn’t to begin to start a tit-for-tat death toll debate, but to show that Mr. Obama’s bizarre warnings to Christians makes no sense when one considers the fact that Libya and Iraq have imploded, Afghanistan is a mess, Syria is on fire, and Yemen and Pakistan are giant question marks — right now.

Americans need leadership in this present moment, and all they’re getting from Mr. Obama is a poorly crafted history lesson.

Exit question: Who would you rather trust with your life: Jordan’s King Abdullah II or President Obama? The former Cobra attack helicopter pilot, or the community organizer?

King Abdullah II

Pelosi proves she thinks just like Jonathan Gruber by saying she doesn’t know of him

by Douglas Ernst 1 Comment

Nancy Pelosi Jonathan Gruber ObamacareIt seems like every day there is a new Jonathan Gruber quote proving the utter contempt that the architects of The Affordable Care Act hold for voters. The other day he was grinning as he talked about the “stupidity” of Americans, and now his comments from the Honors Colloquium 2012 at the University of Rhode Island are making the rounds: “It’s a very clever, you know, basic exploitation of the lack of economic understanding of the American voter.” It’s all very telling, but not as telling as Nancy Pelosi proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that she thinks just like him.

On Thursday, Ms. Pelosi denied she knew of Mr. Gruber.

“I don’t know who he is. He didn’t help write our bill. And, so, with all due respect to your question, you have a person who wasn’t writing our bill commenting on what was going on when we were writing the bill.” — Nancy Pelosi on Jonathan Gruber, Nov. 13, 2014.

The Washington Post, however, points out that in 2009 she most certainly knew of Mr. Gruber and his work.

“Our bill brings down rates. I don’t know if you have seen Jonathan Gruber of MIT’s analysis of what the comparison is to the status quo versus what will happen in our bill for those who seek insurance within the exchange. Our bill takes down those cuts, even from now, and much less preventing the upward spiral.” — Nancy Pelosi on Jonathan Gruber, Nov 5, 2009.

Ms. Pelosi thinks you are stupid. There is no other explanation for someone who acts as if the Internet does not exist. Only a woman with little to no respect for the American public would tell a blatant lie on camera in 2014 when she knows — she must know — that the power of the Internet will expose her shortly thereafter.

Her chutzpah knows no bounds. She even touts Mr. Gruber’s work on her own website:

Pelosi GruberAs I said before, these are the people who want more control of the Internet in their hands. These are the people who will make sure “Net Neutrality” provides a “free” and “fair” Internet. The same woman who obviously thinks her lies disappear down Orwellian Memory Holes wants to control the Internet like a public utility.

Wake up, Millennials. “Hope and Change” was never about “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” It was about you being the ones that shameless liars were waiting for.

They admit behind closed doors that they think you are stupid. They admit behind closed doors that they seek to exploit your “lack of economic understanding.” And they will continue to lie and deceive until you send them home and deny them of the power and influence they so desperately crave.

Associated Press admits: Obama is in over his head

by Douglas Ernst 11 Comments

Obama Buzzfeed

The Associated Press should win an award for its latest piece on President Obama, titled ‘For Obama, world looks far different than expected.’ In short, author Julie Pace finds the nicest way possible to say that Mr. Obama is in way over his head and failing miserably.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly five years into his presidency, Barack Obama confronts a world far different from what he envisioned when he first took office. U.S. influence is declining in the Middle East as violence and instability rock Arab countries. An ambitious attempt to reset U.S. relations with Russia faltered and failed. Even in Obama-friendly Europe, there’s deep skepticism about Washington’s government surveillance programs.

In some cases, the current climate has been driven by factors outside the White House’s control. But missteps by the president also are to blame, say foreign policy analysts, including some who worked for the Obama administration.

Among them: miscalculating the fallout from the Arab Spring uprisings, publicly setting unrealistic expectations for improved ties with Russia and a reactive decision-making process that can leave the White House appearing to veer from crisis to crisis without a broader strategy.

Rosa Brooks, a former Defense Department official who left the administration in 2011, said that while the shrinking U.S. leverage overseas predates the current president, “Obama has sometimes equated ‘we have no leverage’ with ‘there’s no point to really doing anything’.”

President Obama’s track record offers the world further proof that conservatism will never perish. Like the wise father we rebel against in our youth, its lessons may not always be in style, but they will always be ready and waiting for us to accept.

In 2008, Mr. Obama actually said that history would record his election as the moment in time the oceans began to recede. He won the Nobel Peace Prize for, essentially, not being George W. Bush — and then promptly created the “Terror Tuesday” kill list (also known by the much creepier name: The Disposition Matrix). He became the Marshall Applewhite of modern American politics. He and his supporters seemed to believe that through his sheer awesomeness he would convince former KGB agents (i.e., Vladimir Putin), Islamic extremists (e.g., Iranian mullahs) and brutal dictators (e.g., Bashar Assad) to change their ways. His Awesomeness has failed at bringing forth utopia, and it is only now that the Associated Press feels comfortable cluing independent voters in on the news.

“The president has not had a long-term strategic vision,” said Vali Nasr, who advised the Obama administration on foreign policy in the first term and now serves as dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “They’re moving issue to issue and reacting as situations come up.”

Boom. When you try and be all things to all people — when you stand for everything — you stand for nothing. When you promise the people utopia, you soon find yourself willing to go to places you once defined as the depths of hell in order to bring it to them. When you invest all your hopes and dreams into one man, he will let inevitably let you down.

President Obama sat back and issued red lines and yellow lines and orange lines while 100,000 people were slaughtered in Syria, and now seems poised to act militarily with a “coalition of the willing” because Russian and Chinese thugs at the United Nations don’t care if your name is George W. Bush or Barack Hussein Obama — they will do what is in the best interests of Russia and China.

The president has found out that whether he acts or not, nations around the world will blame the United States for the world’s ills because blaming America is easier than dealing with their own cultural rot and social detritus. It’s just sad that the Associated Press waited until the end of August, when people are at beaches and barbecues and family gatherings, to publish something resembling a true assessment of President Obama’s time in office.

Edward Snowden: The media’s 2012 election failure bears fruit

by Douglas Ernst 20 Comments

Snowden paper

Edward Snowden, depending on who you are, is either a “patriot” or a “traitor.” Until this point I have refrained from commenting on the man because sometimes it is best to take a step back and let the dust settle before charging forward. Now that it has, one thing is clear: The media made the 2012 election about the “war on women” and gay rights in between rounds of cudgeling Mitt Romney (justifiably, to an extent) for his “47 percent” line. Days were filled with on-air jokes about “Big Bird” and other immature sideshows, all the while the NSA was expanding its surveillance on millions of innocent Americans.

Did any serious journalist put pressure on President Obama in the run up to the 2012 election over his expanded drone program, the National Defense Authorization Act, or his “Terror Tuesday” kill list (also called the “Disposition Matrix”)? While the ultimate blame for failure rests squarely at Romney’s feet (the man’s plan for winning over Hispanics was to essentially tell them he hoped they’d all self deport), one can not deny that the mainstream media bent over backwards to keep Mr. Obama’s Bush-on-steroids approach to certain aspects of national security under wraps.

Imagine what the 2012 presidential debates would have looked like if Bob Schieffer and Candy Crowley read magazines like Wired and then asked the candidates substantive questions on national security:

In May 2010, a little more than a year after President Obama took office and only weeks before Stuxnet became public, a new organization to exercise American rule over the increasingly militarized Internet became operational: the US Cyber Command. Keith Alexander, newly promoted to four-star general, was put in charge of it. The forces under his command were now truly formidable—his untold thousands of NSA spies, as well as 14,000 incoming Cyber Command personnel, including Navy, Army, and Air Force troops. Helping Alexander organize and dominate this new arena would be his fellow plebes from West Point’s class of 1974: David Petraeus, the CIA director; and Martin Dempsey, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. …

What’s good for Alexander is good for the fortunes of the cyber-industrial complex, a burgeoning sector made up of many of the same defense contractors who grew rich supplying the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. With those conflicts now mostly in the rearview mirror, they are looking to Alexander as a kind of savior. After all, the U.S. spends about $30 billion annually on cybersecurity goods and services.

That’s a lot of money and a lot of power concentrated in one place. Is it necessary?

In May, Alexander discovered that four months earlier someone, or some group or nation, had secretly hacked into a restricted US government database known as the National Inventory of Dams. Maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers, it lists the vulnerabilities for the nation’s dams, including an estimate of the number of people who might be killed should one of them fail. Meanwhile, the 2013 “Report Card for America’s Infrastructure” gave the US a D on its maintenance of dams. There are 13,991 dams in the US that are classified as high-hazard, the report said. A high-hazard dam is defined as one whose failure would cause loss of life. “That’s our concern about what’s coming in cyberspace—a destructive element. It is a question of time,” Alexander said in a talk to a group involved in information operations and cyberwarfare, noting that estimates put the time frame of an attack within two to five years. He made his comments in September 2011.

That still doesn’t answer the question, but it does provide an important lesson: any cyber assault the U.S. government can dish out on its own people is also generally possessed by its enemies. And that includes “zero day exploits” being used against us:

According to news reports, [defense contractors are] developing ways to break into Internet-connected devices through chinks in their antivirus armor. Like safecrackers listening to the click of tumblers through a stethoscope, the “vulnerability researchers” use an extensive array of digital tools to search for hidden weaknesses in commonly used programs and systems, such as Windows and Internet Explorer. And since no one else has ever discovered these unseen cracks, the manufacturers have never developed patches for them.

Thus, in the parlance of the trade, these vulnerabilities are known as “zero-day exploits,” because it has been zero days since they have been uncovered and fixed. They are the Achilles’ heel of the security business, says a former senior intelligence official involved with cyberwarfare. Those seeking to break into networks and computers are willing to pay millions of dollars to obtain them.

Scary stuff, huh? It’s a shame that multiple news cycles were spent talking about the doomsday scenario predicted by women like Sandra Fluke, who gained a prime time slot at the Democratic National Convention because a radio host called her a slut. But why assume the nation would want to discuss the buying and selling of “zero day exploits” when there are Big Bird jokes to crack?

Is Edward Snowden a hero or a traitor? Is Moe Lane of Red State on to something?

[Other countries are spying on] us and that is how the game is played, and I didn’t ask for a twenty-something arrested-development anti-American man-child to arrogantly decide that American national security was less important than his frankly puerile transnational fantasy ideology. In fact, I would like the American government to go collect said man-child, and try him for espionage, please.

I would say Mr. Lane makes a rather astute observation: Edward Snowden could have held a press conference with Ron Paul and Rand Paul, Bernie Sanders and a wide range of pundits from across the political spectrum. He would have been hailed as a hero. From there he would accept the consequences, and if that involved a perp walk (imagine the fallout for the Obama administration for making such a move), so be it.

Instead, he went to China. And then to Russia. And now … who knows.

All we do know is that Edward Snowden is talking to people who do not care about the well being of Americans and who certainly do not care about the well being of individuals within their own countries. Snowden has sullied his own reputation by hiding behind thug regimes of the highest order.

In 2016, should Hillary Clinton become the Democratic nominee, history will repeat itself. The media will not want to talk about national security because a.) a female candidate is the perfect excuse to return to the “war on women” mantra and b.) talking about dead American bodies in Benghazi makes it hard to assume the mantle of Greatest … Secretary … of … State … Ever. “For-Eva Eva. Eva. Eva. Eva. Eva. Eva. Eva?” When this happens, remember Edward Snowden and demand more. The fate of the nation depends on it.

Obama’s sick psychological experiments on voters affect us all

by Douglas Ernst 10 Comments

Conservatives have known for a long time that liberalism warps the human mind and the human soul, turning individuals with unlimited potential into human gerbils whose only aspiration is to get their hands on the next government pellet. Now, as details leak out about President Obama’s 2012 campaign, it’s clearer than ever that he sees his supporters as a bunch of lab rats.

Ask yourself: Would the founding fathers ever favor a United States of America where career politicians are so hungry for power that they would assemble a “Dream Team” of behavioral scientists to figure out the best way to manipulate the minds of registered voters?

For their part, consortium members said they did nothing more than pass on research-based ideas, in e-mails and conference calls. They said they could talk only in general terms about the research, because they had signed nondisclosure agreements with the campaign.

In addition to Dr. Fox, the consortium included Susan T. Fiske of Princeton University; Samuel L. Popkin of the University of California, San Diego; Robert Cialdini, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University; Richard H. Thaler, a professor of behavioral science and economics at the University of Chicago’s business school; and Michael Morris, a psychologist at Columbia.

“A kind of dream team, in my opinion,” Dr. Fox said.

At least some of the consortium’s proposals seemed to have found their way into daily operations. …

“Mr. Jones, we know you have voted in the past” — acts as a subtle prompt to future voting, said Dr. Cialdini, a foundational figure in the science of persuasion. “People want to be congruent with what they have committed to in the past, especially if that commitment is public,” he said.

Got that? President Obama is watching you. Correction: President Obama has been studying you. His campaign has been sifting through your public data and putting together psychological profiles that could be unlocked, disassembled and then put back together into a reliable Obamabot. It’s downright creepy.

And yet, it gets worse. Your digital history is fair game, too.

What data did [Obama’s team use] — and were they tracking you across the web?

It’s still not clear. …

To pinpoint voters who might actually change their minds, the Obama campaign conducted randomized experiments, Slaby said. Voters received phone calls in which they were asked to rate their support for the president, and then engaged in a conversation about different policy issues. At the end of the conversation, they were asked to rate their support for the president again. Using the results of these experiments, combined with detailed demographic information about individual voters, the campaign was able to pinpoint both what kinds of voters had been persuaded to support the president, and which issues had persuaded them.

Avi Feller, a graduate student in statistics at Harvard who has worked on this kind of modeling, compared it to medical research.

“The statistics of drug trials are very similar to the statistics of experiments in campaigns,” he said. “I have some cancer drug, and I know it works well on some people — for whom is the cancer drug more or less effective?” …

One official with knowledge of the campaign’s data operation said that the campaign’s experiments also tested how long the “persuasion” effect lasted after the initial phone conversation — and found that it was only about three weeks.

This is what we have wrought. No matter who you voted for, these tactics are scary. The government has grown so expansive and we have abdicated so many responsibilities to a ruling “elite” in Washington, that they will now go to any length to win. They will say anything, or do anything that experiments — on you — tell them to do, if it means another two or four or six years in power.

In President Obama’s mind, your free will is a cancer, and the “drug” is the “tested” combination of “experiments” that will get you to pull the lever for him. But it’s not just President Obama; these tactics will be used in 2016, 2020 and beyond by both parties. Republicans and Democrats will seek to play Jedi mind tricks on millions of our most gullible citizens. And as they perfect their craft they will “win” more elections — not because they are the better candidate, or the candidate the country needs — but because they are the candidate who could pull your psychological strings like a mad puppeteer.

Are Republicans any better than Democrats in this regard? No. If they are, it’s not by much. But the difference between conservatives and liberals is, the conservative casts a perpetually suspicious eye on all politicians and seeks to limit the power of the federal government; the left quixotically puts their trust in princes.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some reading to do on President Obama’s “Terror Tuesday Kill List.” For some reason I don’t believe his canvassers or experiments addressed that one.

Joss Whedon, hypocritical millionaire, attacks Romney

by Douglas Ernst 4 Comments
Joss Whedon likes to rant about corporations — unless they’re associated with Marvel and paying him millions of dollars, in which case he keeps his yap shut and pockets enough to keep him safely part of the “one percent” for the rest of his life. How many poor people had to shell out a large chunk of their paycheck to take the kids to see ‘The Avengers,” and how much of that cash is lining Whedon’s pockets? Don’t ask — he’s busy demonizing Mitt Romney.

It wasn’t long ago writer-director Joss Whedon, fresh off the $1.5 billion-plus grossing Avengers movie, went on a memorable anti-corporate rant for the ages.

“We are watching capitalism destroy itself right now,” he told the [Comic-Con 2012] audience. …

Whedon was raised on the Upper Westside neighborhood of Manhattan in the 1970s, an area associated with left-leaning intellectuals. He said he was raised by people who thought socialism was a ”beautiful concept.” …

We have people trying to create structures and preserve the structures that will help the middle and working class, and people calling them socialists,” Whedon said. “It’s not Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal […] it’s some people with some sense of dignity and people who have gone off the reservation.”

Only months ago, you either agreed with the Scooge-McDuck-swimming-in-cash Whedon, or you were “off the reservation.” If you looked at $16 trillion dollars of national debt and considered the current “structure” unsustainable, you were “off the reservation.” If you looked at yearly deficits over $1 trillion dollars and what was going on in Greece and Spain and Italy and most of Europe and wanted to change course, you were “off the reservation.”

Now, just a week before the 2012 election, Whedon is back — and this time the witty, “dignified” director (who wears button up shirts with nothing underneath so you can see his “dignified” waxed chest) is using humor to attack former Gov. Mitt Romney.

You see, if Mitt Romney is elected president it will bring about the Zomney Apocalypse:

“Romney is ready to make the deep rollbacks in health care, education, social services, reproductive rights that will guarantee poverty, unemployment, overpopulation, disease, rioting: all crucial elements in creating a nightmare zombie wasteland. But it’s his commitment to ungoverned corporate privilege that will nosedive this economy into true insolvency and chaos, the kind of chaos you can’t buy back. Money is only so much paper to the undead. The 1% will no longer be the very rich — it will be the very fast. [Mitt Romney isn’t] afraid to face a ravening, grasping horde of subhumans, because that’s how he sees poor people already.”

Joss Whedon looks at our current national debt — $16 trillion and counting — and he doesn’t think we’re insolvent right this very second. No, it’s only after Mitt Romney is elected that we will be on the road to insolvency. Joss might be a good movie director, but he’s really lousy at math, perhaps because he has more money than he knows what do with. He could always give most of it to the government or poor people if he wanted … but he chooses not to.

The dirty little secret that Joss Whedon doesn’t want you to know about is that we’re already broke. We’re very, very broke. We are insolvent right now, and doing nothing will bring about chaos that “money can’t buy back.”

When is the last time you heard Joss Whedon talk about Greece, its debt, its riots, and the “chaos” that was brought about by the kind of “structures” that millionaire liberal movie directors crave for? Answer: Never.

While serious people try and figure out a way to uphold the promises the government made to current retirees, while changing the system to ensure its existence for future generations, Hollywood film directors spend their time trying to convince their fans that Republicans see poor people as “sub-humans.” The fact is, the United States makes social mobility easier than anywhere else in the world. I’m sure we can even point to a few of Whedon’s Hollywood friends as examples of  how one can go from rags-to-riches and from riches-to-rags, but that’s material for another day.

Poor people are definitely not “sub-humans,” but government programs that surreptitiously convince individuals to abdicate important life decisions have the potential to rob them of their humanity. The end result of the kind of programs Whedon seemingly advocates for creates, for example, Obamaphone Lady. Joss Whedon doesn’t want you to acknowledge the insidious changes to the human spirit that government dependence creates, because he wants you focused on the shortcomings of corporations.

So ask yourself: Would the world be better off without Marvel? Would the world have been better off without the WB Network, which aired Whedon’s television series Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer? It seems as though Joss Whedon likes when money exchanges hands — particularly his hands — but doesn’t like it that other people are perfectly free to spend their capital as they see fit.

If anyone is acting like a mindless zombie these days, it’s Joss Whedon.

Related: The Avengers: Marvel’s finest hour
Related: Joss Whedon: Now that I poop $100 bills, let’s embrace socialism

Slain SEAL’s father should have punched Biden for ‘cue balls’ crack

by Douglas Ernst 1 Comment
Joe Biden introduced himself to the father of a slain Navy SEAL by asking: “Did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?” Charles Woods should have responded to the insensitive, clownish question by crushing Joe Biden’s aviator glasses with his fists.

Imagine your son has just died because he did the right thing and tried to protect an ambushed American ambassador — despite the orders from his own government to “stand down.” Imagine your son was part of a team that requested multiple times for help, only to be denied. Imagine you’re Charles Woods and your son, a former Navy SEAL, charged into the smoke, gunfire, terror and the chaos in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, and only days after his death Vice President Joe Biden walks up to you and says:

“Did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?”

What would you do? Based on the actions of your deceased son — a hero — it’s obvious that honor runs through your veins, but the world would not have held it against you if you punched the vice president in the face.

Joe Biden is a boor. He is a boob. He is an embarrassment of the highest order. The world laughs at his “gaffes” … but Americans are the ones who pay the price for the Obama administration’s incompetence.

Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to “stand down,” according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to “stand down.”

Woods and at least two others ignored those orders and made their way to the consulate which at that point was on fire. Shots were exchanged. The rescue team from the CIA annex evacuated those who remained at the consulate and Sean Smith, who had been killed in the initial attack. They could not find the ambassador and returned to the CIA annex at about midnight.

At that point, they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied.

How did the Obama administration respond to these attacks? Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Charles Woods the administration would “make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.” Clinton was of course talking about the now-infamous anti-Islam Youtube video which, up until that time, perhaps a few dozen people in the world had seen. Worse, the timeline of events suggest Clinton was going to “prosecute” a citizen for no other crime than making a video! And yet, not a peep from the left as the maker of “Innocence of Muslims” sits behind bars, his next hearing not scheduled until after the 2012 elections.

But I digress. The point of this post was to shed light on what an insensitive jerk Joe Biden is. “Blue Collar Joe” (who is anything but) has a sick idea of what “blue collar” guys like Charles Woods are like, and it’s a pumped-up version of his own blowhard nature. Biden smirks, dons aviator glasses, and puffs out his chest because he wants people to believe he’s a bad ass. He’s not. He’s a career politician who has led a cushy life in Washington for decades. He is the epitome of “soft,” just as Tyrone Woods was the epitome of “hard.”

Hopefully, in a matter of weeks Joe Biden and Barack Obama will be the epitome of unemployed, while Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan begin the tough task of getting America’s economy back on track.

End game: Obama courts women willing to wear giant birth control costumes

by Douglas Ernst 2 Comments
This is how President Obama’s campaign sees women — weirdos who are willing to dress up as a giant package of contraceptives at the direction of Planned Parenthood or White House political adviser David Plouffe.

With less than three weeks before the election, polls for Mitt Romney are looking good. Trend lines have given conservatives a boost of confidence, and the liberals who once said this election was in the bag are suspiciously quiet. Some, like Bob Beckle, are still saying “it’s over,”  but the prediction now applies to Mr. Obama. While I am on record as saying that the first debate was Romney’s “Rocky IV” moment, there are aspects of his momentum that can traced to the Obama campaign’s strange calculation: Most women are single-issue voters who are one Planned Parenthood roll call away from buying a giant contraceptive costume to wear to a campaign event.

As National Journal notes:

[W]ith white women, several polls suggest that Obama’s advantage has narrowed or vanished since his disastrous first debate.

Most ominous for Obama is evidence that the slippage has occurred not only among usually Republican-leaning blue-collar white women but also their white-collar counterparts. Largely because most college-educated white women hold liberal views on social issues, the Democratic nominee has carried them in four of the past five presidential elections; in 2008, 52 percent of such women backed Obama. Until Denver, national surveys consistently showed him winning a majority of these white-collar women. Number-crunchers in Romney headquarters believe their candidate is unlikely to prevail unless he can reduce that margin.

Several polls since the Denver debate say that Romney has done just that. Both this week’s ABC/Washington Post national survey and the cumulated results from the past two weeks of Gallup nightly tracking polls found that Obama had fallen behind Romney among college-educated white women and was attracting 45 percent of them or less, according to data provided to National Journal.

The Obama campaign saturated the airwaves early on with attack ads that painted Mitt Romney as some sort of cutthroat businessman who looked at people and saw numbers on an accounting spreadsheet. They painted Romney as a guy who dreamed he was Scrooge McDuck, hoarding gold coins acquired from the exploited “masses,” and the stolen uteri of unsuspecting females.

And then Denver came — and Romney said this about deficits:

“I think it’s a moral issue. I think it’s, frankly, not moral for my generation to keep spending massively more than we take in, knowing those burdens are going to be passed on to the next generation and they’re going to be paying the interest and the principal all their lives.

And the amount of debt we’re adding, at a trillion a year, is simply not moral,” 

So how do we deal with it? Well, mathematically, there are three ways that you can cut a deficit. One, of course, is to raise taxes. Number two is to cut spending. And number is to grow the economy, because if more people work in a growing economy, they’re paying taxes, and you can get the job done that way, (Mitt Romney, 4/10/12).

When you intellectually hit someone over the head with the fact that not only are we bankrupting the nation with reckless spending, but that it is morally bankrupt to leave our kids and grand kids saddled with a mountain of debt, it resonates. That is something women care about. Because they’re smart, they know that the nation has a spending problem, as opposed to a revenue problem. Because they’re smart, they know that if you lower the tax rate on small businesses and it jump starts economic growth, the nation will actually see its tax revenues increase.

The Obama campaign once had promoted an ecard that read: “Vote like your lady parts depend on it.” While this was thrown down the memory hole in Orwellian fashion when it blew up in their face, there is an aspect of the line that rings true. Our kids are a part of us. Our grandchildren are a part of us. And so, in that sense we should vote like our “parts” depend on us. Mitt Romney treats women like complex spiritual beings, as opposed to myopic drones mentally stuck in 1920.

While Mitt Romney obsesses about job creation, the Obama campaign obsesses about binders and Big Bird. We’ll see how that works out for them in only a matter of weeks.

A tale of two Big Birds: Mark Steyn vs. Charles Blow

by Douglas Ernst 10 Comments
Charles Blow of the New York Times says if you pick on Big Bird you answer to him. That seems like an empty threat, given that he’s protected his Twitter account from anyone who disagrees with him. It’s unfortunate that he thinks the extremely lucrative Big Bird needs the same protection.

After Mitt Romney took President Obama to the cleaners in the first presidential debate (so much so that Bill Maher said it looked like President Obama spent his $1 million Super PAC donation on weed), liberals needed to latch onto something. They found it: Big Bird. What kind of inhumane, heartless bastard would want to “kill” Big Bird? The answer is no one, but since we’re dealing with adults who act like Sesame Street watching toddlers, we get a false dichotomy — either the government funds PBS or Big Bird will cease to exist.

President Obama’s supporters think they have a winner with the death-to-Big-Bird rants, when in reality their temper tantrum makes it clear to independent voters that they are not up to handling the serious financial problems America faces.

First, let us look at Mark Steyn’s reaction to the affair:

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting receives nearly half a billion dollars a year from taxpayers, which it disburses to PBS stations, who in turn disburse it to Big Bird and Jim Lehrer. I don’t know what Big Bird gets, but, according to Senator Jim DeMint, the president of Sesame Workshop, Gary Knell, received in 2008 a salary of $956,513. In that sense, Big Bird and Senator Harry Reid embody the same mystifying phenomenon: They’ve been in “public service” their entire lives and have somehow wound up as multimillionaires. …

[W]hether or not everybody loves Sesame Street, everybody has seen it, and every American under 50 has been weaned on it. So far this century it’s sold nigh on a billion bucks’ worth of merchandising sales (that’s popular toys such as the Subsidize-Me-Elmo doll). If Sesame Street is not commercially viable, then nothing is, and we should just cut to the chase and bail out everything. …

If Americans can’t muster the will to make Big Bird leave the government nest, they certainly will never reform Medicare.

Now, let us look at the reaction of Charles Blow of the New York Times:

Since 1969, Big Bird has been the king of the block on “Sesame Street.” When I was a child, he and his friends taught me the alphabet and the colors and how to do simple math. …

Big Bird and his friends also showed me what it meant to resolve conflicts with kindness and accept people’s differences and look out for the less fortunate. Do you know anything about looking out for the less fortunate, Mr. Romney? …

Let me make it simple for you, Mr. Romney. I’m down with Big Bird. You pick on him, you answer to me. …

I don’t really expect Mitt Romney to understand the value of something like PBS to people, like me, who grew up in poor, rural areas and went to small schools. These are places with no museums or preschools or after-school educational programs. There wasn’t money for travel or to pay tutors.

I honestly don’t know where I would be in the world without PBS.

First of all, not a lot of people can “answer” to Charles Blow because he’s locked his Twitter account (an odd step for someone who writes for a major American newspaper). Charles is untouchable — kind of like Big Bird.

Steyn’s central argument is that Big Bird is worth big bucks. The makers of Sesame Street and the top brass at PBS have done quite well for themselves. Public Broadcasting is very lucrative for the guys in charge. The kind of content that PBS provides is at the touch of our fingers. It’s everywhere, and it’s cheap. And so the question becomes: Should the American taxpayer be subsidizing this? The answer is no. And if we can not even bring ourselves to let Big Bird leave the nest … is it any wonder why we have government-mandated health care that encourages children to stay on their parent’s medical coverage until they’re 26 years old?

Charles Blow’s piece, in contrast, is purely emotional. He “honestly doesn’t know” where he’d be without Sesame Street. That’s an incredibly sad admission, but if he’s honest about it, let’s examine the subject a little more closely.

Again, absent government funding, the content provided by Sesame Street would essentially still exist. Investors would buy the rights to Big Bird. (Even Mark Levin has said that he would do so.) The Sesame Street crew would end up on Nickelodeon or ABC family or any number of shows on basic cable. Sesame Street and its decades of glory are available on DVD, on Youtube, etc. Big Bird might even wind up in kiddie crossovers featuring Dora the Explorer and “Blue” from Blue’s Clues. Think of the possibilities, Charles!

The Vice Presidential debate is coming up. President Obama’s team is so desperate I wouldn’t be surprised if Joe Biden started harping on Big Bird just to keep the conversation going for another week. If he does, more power to him. It’s a debate us conservatives are more than happy to have. And guys like me don’t lock their Twitter account like Charles Blow, either.